ANCIENT EGYPTIAN UNDERWORLD GOD NOW A CULT MEME IN JAPAN

OUR Egyptologist friends are all excited about the launch of the demonthings.com/DemonBase, which is the most detailed catalogue of ALL secondary and minor deities and so-called "demons" mentioned in the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead and other documents.

"Demon" is an emotionally loaded word. But we have no other work to approximate the spiritual entities the Ancient Egyptians respected in the afterlife ... spirits both benign and malignant, good and bad, beneficial and potentially dangerous.

Getting these "demons" to work for you and lend their powerful energies to help you in the DUAT underworld was a vital objective in many of the magical spells mentioned in the ancient documents.

Take MEDJED, for example. This obscure, armless Ancient Egyptian underworld deity who shoots lethal rays from his eyes has become a cult social media star in Japan ... spawning mangas, animes, clothing, coffee mugs, candy, rice cakes and video games.

After a slumber of 3,400 years, MEDJED, whose name means "The Smiter," has been summoned forth from the Egyptian DUAT underworld ... to be the latest fad accessory for young people in Japan.

His name is mentioned in only one source, the Greenfield papyrus version of the Book of the Dead, and was never intended to be uttered aloud by mortals, except by priests in prayers for the deceased. 

His image was only meant to be seen by the KA (soul) of the deceased ... and by the Gods of Egypt.

Medjed remained buried in obscurity until 2012, when the British Museum held an exhibit on ancient Egypt at the Mori Arts Center Gallery in Tokyo. Visitors were surprised by the god due to his unusual appearance and a certain similarity to the character  Obake no Q-Taro. 

Japanese netizens quickly found Medjed to be cute, and began creating fan art of him.

Medjed soon became a full-fledged meme, taking on a life of his own, as memes often do. 

His fearsome role as Osiris's guardian (he is said to be able to fly and eats human hearts) and cute, simple appearance allow for a versatile range of depictions. 

He is even called "the oldest yuru-chara" (regional mascots like  Funassyi and Kumamon).

Medjed now has not one, but two different Japanese Twitter accounts, @Medjed_tweet and @medjed_god, with a total of 6,915 followers.

Suzuri, an online market for handmade goods, sells Medjed merchandise.

Online stickers are also available of Medjed.

The Japanese news and entertainment site Netlab also hosts a manga, "Joyful Medjed," portraying Medjed, a pharaoh, and other Egyptian gods as salarymen.

Medjed also stars in a free smartphone game, Soratobu Medjed-niisan ("Big Brother Flying Medjed"), where players navigate him through an obstacle-ridden pyramid.

Recently, the popular online puzzle game Puzzle & Dragons introduced a character named Medjedra as Osiris's guardian, proving how well-known Medjed has now become.

FREDDIE MERCURY GETS AN ASTEROID AS A CELESTIAL 70th BIRTHDAY GIFT

OUR beloved Saint of Antinous ... Freddie Mercury ... would have turned 70 years old today, and to mark the occasion, the late Queen frontman received his very own asteroid. 

In this YOUTUBE VIDEO, Queen guitarist Brian May announced that Asteroid 17473 will from now on be known as Asteroid 17473 Freddiemercury, in honor of "Freddie's outstanding influence in the world."

The announcement was formalized yesterday with a certificate of adoption from the International Astronomical Union and the Minor Planet Center. 

The asteroid, discovered in 1991, is located in the main Asteroid Belt between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. 

Nearly two miles wide, the asteroid only reflects about 30 percent of the light that falls on it, and can only be seen with powerful telescopes.

But it is an appropriate gift for the man who once sang of himself as "a shooting star leaping through the sky."

"It's just a dot of light," May said in the video, "but it's a very special dot of light."

An asteroid is also named for Antinous. The ANTINOUS ASTEROID is located in the Inner Solar System.

The Inner Solar System bodies are called "Apollo Asteroids" and are all named for Classical deities, including Antinous, of course.

In the modern Religion of Antinous, FREDDIE MERCURY IS A SAINT of Antinous the Gay God.

Saint Freddie Mercury was a courageous performer whose gayness, while not always stated, was a visible part of his persona. He served as an inspiration for millions of gay men, particularly those who, like him, fight ethnic prejudice every day of their lives.

ROMULUS SHRINE TO JUPITER LOCATED AT BASE OF PALATINE IN ROME

IN the old Roman calendar, September was the seventh month of the year in counting March as the first. Among the festivals observed in September were several honoring Jupiter. 

He was hailed as the chief of the gods and had many epithets as a result.

As Jupiter Optimus Maximus, he occupied the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus on the Capitoline hill with the goddesses Juno and Minerva. With them, he received a Lectisternium (September 13) and the Ludi Romani  (September 5-19). 

He was honored with festivals as Jupiter Liber and Jupiter Fulminator (September 1) and as Jupiter Stator (September 5).

Jupiter Stator is the hand of Jupiter giving Roman troops their unstoppable force.

Romulus built a temple to Jupiter Stator at the foot of the Palatine Hill, Italian archaeologists say.

The ruins of the shrine to Jupiter Stator (Jupiter the Stayer), believed to date to 750 BC, were found by a Rome University team led by Andrea Carandini.

"We believe this is the temple that legend says Romulus erected to the king of the gods after the Romans held their ground against the furious Sabines fighting to get their women back after the famous Rape (abduction)," Carandini said in the Archeologia Viva (Living Archaeology) journal.

Historians have always been intrigued by ancient references to the temple, but never knew precisely where it was located or what it looked like. The lithograph above is a fanciful 19th Century idea of its possible appearance.

According to myth, Romulus founded Rome in 753 BC and the wifeless first generation of Roman men raided nearby Sabine tribes for their womenfolk, an event that has been illustrated in art down the centuries.

Carandini added: "It is also noteworthy that the temple appears to be shoring up the Palatine, as if in defence".

Rome's great and good including imperial families lived on the Palatine, overlooking the Forum.

Long after its legendary institution by Romulus, the cult of Jupiter the Stayer fueled Roman troops in battle, forging the irresistible military might that conquered most of the ancient known world.

In the article in Archeologia Viva, Carandini's team said they might also have discovered the ruins of the last Palatine house Julius Caesar lived in - the one he left on the Ides of March, 44BC, on his way to death in the Senate.

THIS COLORFUL GOBLET REVEALS ROMANS WERE NANOTECH EXPERTS

THIS colorful 1,600-year-old glass goblet shows the Romans were experts at nanotechnology, according to scientists.

The glass chalice, known as the Lycurgus Cup because it bears a scene involving King Lycurgus of Thrace, appears jade green when lit from the front but blood-red when lit from behind—a property that puzzled scientists for decades after the museum acquired the cup in the 1950s.

The mystery wasn't solved until researchers in England scrutinized broken fragments under a microscope and discovered that the Roman artisans were nanotechnology pioneers, according to a report in SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE.

They impregnated the glass with particles of silver and gold, ground down until they were as small as 50 nanometers in diameter, less than one-thousandth the size of a grain of table salt.

The exact mixture of the precious metals suggests the Romans knew what they were doing ... "an amazing feat," says one of the researchers, archaeologist Ian Freestone of University College London (UCL).

The ancient nanotech works something like this: When hit with light, electrons belonging to the metal flecks vibrate in ways that alter the color depending on the observer's position.

 Gang Logan Liu, an engineer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who has long focused on using nanotechnology to diagnose disease, and his colleagues realized that this effect offered untapped potential.

"The Romans knew how to make and use nanoparticles for beautiful art," Liu says. "We wanted to see if this could have scientific applications."

When various fluids filled the cup, Liu suspected, they would change how the vibrating electrons in the glass interacted, and thus the color.

The original 4th Century AD Lycurgus Cup, probably taken out only for special occasions, depicts King Lycurgus ensnared in a tangle of grapevines, presumably for evil acts committed against Dionysus, the Greek god of wine.

If inventors manage to develop a new detection tool from this ancient technology, it'll be Lycurgus' turn to do the ensnaring.

THE CAVALRY IS COMING BACK TO FORTS ALONG HADRIAN'S WALL

THE stalwart Roman Legions engage in skirmishes with howling barbarians ... and you can be right there all this weekend at two Roman forts along Hadrian's Wall.

Be sure to check out HADRIAN'S WALL LIVE mock battle events at Housesteads and Birdoswald forts. You'll see armies clashing and gladiators fighting hand-to-hand.

And be sure to mark your calendars for a series of major exhibits at museums and sites along Hadrian's Wall in 2017, between April and September, focusing on the underrated role of the cavalry along Rome's frontier.

The Hadrian’s Cavalry exhibition will focus on the story of Roman cavalry regiments which were a vital but less well known aspect of the frontier garrison. Cavalry and part-mounted units were the elite of the auxiliary forces of the Roman army providing long-range reconnaissance, high-speed communications, shock tactics and mopping-up operations on the battlefield.

Alongside presentation of the training, equipment, daily life and military operations of cavalry troopers and their horses, the exhibition will explore the role of the regiments in projecting the Roman imperial image through their impressive armour and other equipment, and the powerful individual stories of regiments who came to Hadrian’s Wall from other parts of the empire. 

Each participating Roman site and museum across the Wall will host part of the exhibition.

Cavalry regiments were stationed at key locations on major road and river crossings along Hadrian’s Wall supported by part-mounted regiments at many other forts. The cavalry regiment at Stanwix just north of Carlisle was one of only three 1,000 strong cavalry regiments in the Roman army.

The cavalry regiments were costly to raise and maintain. The troopers were highly paid and lengthy training was required for both men and horses. Their equipment – including full face parade helmets like that found at Crosby Garrett and horse armour such as the Vindolanda chamfron – was expensive, exotic and designed to impress.

The exhibition programme will include live re-enactment, learning and community engagement activity.

“The sheer quantity, quality and range of objects from sites across Hadrian’s Wall provides opportunities to tell many different stories as well as celebrating the beauty and interest of the objects themselves,” said Bill Griffiths, chair of the Wall-wide project steering group and head of programmes for Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums.

“Evidence from sites along Hadrian’s Wall has informed understanding of cavalry regiments across the Roman empire.

“From Segedunum we know that cavalry horses were stabled with the troopers in adjacent rooms in customised barrack blocks, while Chesters Roman Fort is the best preserved cavalry fort in Britain.

"Many of the best known writing tablets from Vindolanda were written by Batavian troopers posted there following their deployment as shock troops to overpower the druids on Anglesey and before their subsequent deployment to the Danube to support Emperor Trajan in his war against the Dacians.

"The three metre high tombstone of Flavinus from Hexham Abbey is one of the most celebrated portrayals of the cavalryman-barbarian motif from across the empire.

“We are also hoping to work with museums across the Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site to assemble a unique collection for this exhibition.”

Hadrian’s Cavalry will cost £790,000 in total, and the remaining £100,000 needed will be generated through ticket sales, donations and sponsorship. Planning and preparation for the exhibition will start in 2015 and continue during 2016 for the opening at Easter 2017.

IN A FIRST, EXPERTS SAY EGYPTIANS USED METAL IN SHIPBUILDING

A piece of wood recovered at a dig near the Great Pyramid of Giza shows for the first time that ancient Egyptians used metal in their boats.

Up until now it had always been thought the Egyptians crafted their water-going vessels entirely from wood.

Archaeologists say circular and U-shaped metal hooks were found in one of the components of a boat, discovered the same year as Khufu's "solar boat", buried near the Great Pyramid.

Solar boats, buried in pits next to royal burial chambers, may have been used for a pharaoh’s funeral procession, while others were intended for travels in the afterworld.

The piece of wood measures eight meters (25 foot) in length, 40 centimeters (almost 16 inches) wide and four centimeters in thickness.

From the boats found across Egypt, "we have not found the use of metals in their frames like in this boat", Mohamed Mostafa Abdel-Megeed, an antiquities ministry official and expert in boat-making in ancient Egypt, told AFP on the sidelines of a Cairo press conference.

The U-shaped hooks were used "to place the paddles to prevent friction of wood against wood", said Sakuji Yoshimura, an Egyptologist from Japan.

The Great Pyramid … also known as the Pyramid of Cheops … is the largest of the three Giza pyramids. It houses the tomb of Pharaoh Khufu who ruled more than 4,500 years ago.

ANTINOUS ENABLES YOU TO DISCOVER THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE HEART

IN ancient times, Antinous was known as a miracle worker. His worshipers prayed to him for miracles, oracles, visions and answers to problems in their daily lives.

The Egyptian hieroglyphs on the OBELISK OF ANTINOUS state clearly that Antinous answers the prayers of all who call upon him through dreams and visions, for example.

The hieroglyphs also make cryptic references to his ability to work magic through his heart. This is a reference to the Ancient Egyptian concept of the "Intelligence of the Heart."

The Egyptians knew that the brain is the center of motor activity and sensory perception. But they believed the heart is the center of a form of intelligence which has baffled most mainstream Egyptologists ... who assume the Egyptians believed the heart was where cognitive thinking occurs.

But the Egyptians had a very different view of the universe from our rational, scientific view of the universe. We dissect facts and analyze them. But while the Egyptians were very good at analyzing facts, they also retained the Zen-like ability to see the whole ... which leads to contemplation ... not analysis.

The Egyptians understood that if you want to find an intelligent solution to a problem, your brain can do the work. You have all the necessary intelligence inside the bone in your skull.

However, most people use their brains the same way they use their muscles. You can strain your head just as if it were a muscle, and work very hard trying to arrive at an answer, but it doesn't really work that way.

When you really want to find an answer to something, what you need to do is contemplate the problem. Visualize your question as well as you can, and then simply wait.

If you don't, and if you instead try to find the solution through brute mental strength, you may be disappointed, because any solution that comes in that way is likely to be wrong.

But when you have waited for a while, the solution will come of itself. That is what the Egyptians called the Intelligence of the Heart ... using your heart instead of your head.

It will work for you in the same way your stomach will digest your food for you without your having to supervise it consciously. Our attempts to supervise everything consciously have all led to consequences that aren't too good for our stomach, and the reason for that is quite simple.

Conscious attention, which employs words, cannot think of very much. We are forced, therefore, to ignore almost everything while we are thinking. We think along a single track, but the world doesn't proceed along a single track.

The world is everything happening altogether everywhere, and you just can't take all that into consideration because there isn't time.

However, the Intelligence of the Heart can take it all into consideration because it is capable of handling innumerable variables at once, even though your conscious attention cannot...

The hieroglyphs on the Obelisk of Antinous promise that Antinous the Gay God enables us to discover the Intelligence of the Heart ... the Intelligence of HIM ... he opens his heart to you ....