Comments

  1. Gnumann says

    No Jebus

    Why go for the cheap knock-off when you can have the original (Osiris).

  2. Sili says

    Why go for the cheap knock-off when you can have the original (Osiris).

    Please tell me you don’t buy into that Murdock crap.

  3. DLC says

    Where’s Damkina ?
    How about Kali ? come on, you gotta have the blue skinned protector of children and death goddess in there!
    Pft, call yourselves an idol seller ?

  4. Gnumann says

    Please tell me you don’t buy into that Murdock crap.

    I must confess ignorance towards what the “Murdock crap” is… (but if the Murdock in question is Bob, he is definitely not my uncle).

  5. Akira MacKenzie says

    I guess they got overstocked on Egyptian pantheon items. I’m still waiting for their Babylonian gods to go on sale. I need an Ishtar for the family room, but I’m NOT going to pay MSRP!

  6. normalanomaly says

    Man, this brings back memories of grade school. It’s just the sort of factoids and corny puns I always got in social studies. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was meant to be shown to second graders.

  7. Katrina says

    The publishers consider full reproduction of these particular deities unsuitable for a family newspaper.

    ::gigglesnort::

  8. Brian says

    Oddly enough, I already have a statue of Thoth. It was a gift a friend purchased for me from a museum gift shop. I don’t actually worship it very much. In fact, I can quit anytime I want to.

  9. julietdefarge says

    I’ve got a geriatric cat that is so darn near (pardon the phrase)catatonic that she almost qualifies as statuary.
    This ad reminds me of Dudley Moore as the idol carver who needed bosom models in Holy Moses.
    Love the idea of giving your tot a scary hippo-woman with pendulous breasts at bedtime.

  10. RFW says

    If someone actually set up such a business, with a more extensive product line and with care and attention paid to quality and finish, they’d likely be surprised at the good business they’d have.

    But you’d have to offer a lot more than just the ancient Egyptian pantheon. The obvious addition would be the Greek-Roman pantheon, but various middle eastern and Anatolian deities would be a good idea too: Adonis, Attis, Diana of the Ephesians with her thousand breasts, Ishtar, Cybele. Plus the Mayan and Aztec pantheons (the latter extremely bloodthirsty), Hindu gods and goddesses, and the many curious semi-divinities of the Tibetans.

    I foresee, too, that you’d have to offer these idols in a range of sizes from one suitable as key chain fobs up to larger than life size ones for the more generously sized living rooms. The interior decoration business would go nuts over them.

    The trick to success would lie in offering a really good looking product that doesn’t cost a small fortune.

  11. rottcodd says

    Since nobody’s said it yet, I’ll source this: this is from the Egyptian Echo, part of Usborne’s excellent Tabloid Histories. Each of these books treated a historical period in the form of a tabloid newspaper, complete with ads such as this one. Definitely recommended, those books were a part of my childhood, and they’re quite funny too.

  12. CJO says

    Where’s Set? No pantheon is complete without a destroyer god.

    Set was never exactly that, and, originally, he wasn’t even a particularly demonic figure.

    The cult originated in Upper Egypt, came to national prominence as the patron native Egyptian god of the Hyksos kings (with Assyrian goddeses for consorts), which continued into the reigns of the Ramsessides, whose power base was the same delta location as Avaris, the Hyksos capital, some of whom could evidently still revere Set enough to take his name (Seti and Setnakht for example). Exactly how the divinity was regarded is difficult to know, but it is certain that he could not have been identified with chaos and destruction as he later was, because pharaonic propaganda always emphasized the singular importance of the monarch precisely as a guarantor of order, justice and the Egyptian Way (ma’at) against chaotic forces.

    The process of the demonization of this figure is an interesting question, and unfortunately the focus of ancient sources like Herotodus on the myth of Isis and Osiris (and the Greek identification of Set with Typhon) doesn’t reveal what we would really like to know. It may be that, because he had his origins on the desert oasis frontiers of Bronze Age Upper Egypt, and was associated with foreigners and the untamed desert, that he was relegated to the bad guy role by identification with Assyrian and later Persian power that threatened and eventually conquered the ancient pharaonic culture.

    Sorry to indulge in a lecture in response to a humorous comment; the development of Egyptian mythology is one of my current interests.

  13. CJO says

    Diana of the Ephesians with her thousand breasts

    Artemis. I know, later identified in mythology with Roman Diana, but certainly never worshipped as such by Ionians at Ephesus. And she’s sqarely within the Greek pantheon; I don’t know why you would include her in “various middle eastern and Anatolian deities”. (Greek Ionian culture displaced that of the native Anatolians, though it’s probable that Ephesian Artemis originated as a syncretization of the Greek goddess and a native cult.)

  14. 'Tis Himself says

    Diana of the Ephesians with her thousand breasts

    It must have taken her all day to put on her bras.

  15. Part-Time Insomniac, Zombie Porcupine Nox Arcana Fan says

    *crickets*
    .

    .

    .

    .

    One part of me wants to *headdesk* just because. The other part of me wants to buy a bunch and scatter them around the school just to see what happens.