The Lost City of Heracleion | Hacker News Reader

The Lost City of Heracleion

daily.jstor.org

59 pointsdiodorus9 comments

This article is light on content and even lighter on photos. I poked around for some better articles, and there are some out there, but I didn't find anything worth linking. I'd love to see an extensive article from National Geographic.

The British museum had an exhibition called “Sunken Cities: Egypt’s Lost Worlds” which included Heracleion. There is a book about the exhibition available and the BBC made a documentary which is available on iPlayer (for those with a TV license in the UK)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04lss20

I saw artifacts from this city in an exhibit, "Egypt's Sunken Cities". It's pretty awesome. They go through the rituals and celebrations each day for a festival for Osiris that was celebrated in the city, and later show the cultural exchange and syncreticism between the ancient Greeks and Egyptians.

it's a very good point that is lost or buried in 'the west' (e.g. anglophone world) that greek-egyptian connections have been present and fairly strong for centuries and millennia and continue to this day

The thing to remember is that the Ptolemies ruled Egypt by conquest and pushed cultural syncretism. If you browse a museum with an extensive Egyptian collection, the Greco-Roman period items have a noticeably different style and really stick out. Compare representations of, say, Serapis and Osiris.

One of the many reasons Cleopatra VII was notable is she was the only Ptolemy to actually learn the Egyptian language.

> the west' (e.g. anglophone world)

hmm... just for clarity for a non westerner, is Germany and France not part of the default West, as they are not anglophones?

Has Germany ever been truly part of the West?

https://www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/reb-23043

I'd say yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire

also, this was misphrased on my part. I started to mean 'the west', but realized I could only speak to my experience of perceptions of greek-egyption relations in 'the anglophone west' and mis-parenthesized the west as anglophone only.

the above article is good at pointing out that central / continental perspective of the last several hundred years is or has been different from that in the low countries + uk (and it's offshoots).. but seems to ignore the historical background of this w/r/t the protestant reformation (see HRH link ^); prior to this, 'the west' was western christendom, and the general alliance of the same countries generally continues today in modern post-enlightement/secular form (EU/Nato).

probably should have just said anglophone world.. started to leave it at 'the west', but actually have no sense of this perception outside of anglophone countries (e.g. germany).. hence poorly selected combination of west+anglophone.. apologies

Reply on news.ycombinator.com