Recent comments in /f/history

MadRoboticist t1_ixetk3j wrote

Reply to comment by talossiannights in Ancient Egyptian mummification was never intended to preserve bodies by IslandChillin

Yeah, the Egyptians believed in reincarnation and that they were eventually going to need their bodies again which seems to me would make preservation an essential goal of the mummification process. I don't really understand how they are coming to this conclusion without presenting any new findings; especially given the claim that egyptologists have apparently been very wrong about a central component of Egyptian society for decades.

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buteo51 t1_ixerudt wrote

Reply to Ancient Egyptian mummification was never intended to preserve bodies by IslandChillin

If the claim is that mummification wasn’t intended to allow us to take mummies out of their tombs and put them through an MRI machine, I guess that’s true.

I’m far from a professional Egyptologist but they put a lot of importance on staying facially recognizable. It’s why defacing statues and chiseling images off of walls was such an impactful act of desecration.

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Vessarionovich t1_ixeoeiz wrote

Reply to comment by the_grinning_cat in The trials of the Cuban revolution. Interesting facts about them as well as the roles of Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, Che Guevara and the historical forces that drove these events. by Anglicanpolitics123

>Do you have any source on the "billions" of aid to Cuba from decades ago?

According to the US government, aid in 1983 alone totaled $5.3 billion....far, far more than any US aid given to any Latin country then or now...

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp85t00287r000400450001-0

>Aid for basic necesities, while useful and necesary, won't fix any of the problems caused by not being able to freely trade with the world.

What kind of apologia are you advancing here? The aid was massive....far transcending "basic necessities".

> Which is what the USA and Israel prohibit Cuba to do.

Again, a bizarre representation. Israel and the USA are the only countries in the world to boycott the Cuban economy. They don't prohibit Cuba to trade with and receive aid from the rest of the world. Why hasn't that trade and aid done anything to help Cuba's decrepit economic system? Perhaps because it is the same stultifying socialist system that strangled the Soviet Union and compelled China and Vietnam to pursue market reforms.

>How far do you think Israel (to give an example of a similar sized country) would go with an economic blockade of the extension and duration that the cuban blockade has had?

Israel has indeed suffered an economic block-aid from much of the Muslim world for the entirety of its existence. Yet, it's doing so well economically that some Arab countries have abandoned the effort so as to benefit from economic relations with Israel.

>For example, in the US political repression is strictly enforced against communists, and communist parties have historically been persecuted, criminalized and sabotaged by the FBI and the CIA.

I see. Communists in the USA are arrested and imprisoned in the USA just like non-Communist activists are arrested and imprisoned in Cuba? Believe it or not, the Communist Party of the USA exists legally....its representative runs for President every 4 years. Is there any non-Communist equivalent in Cuba? Better do some remedial studying.

>You are free to live your life as you please. Just don't try to coup the government or assassinate the president, that should be simple to do for everyone except CIA agents, right?

Tell that to the hundreds of human-rights activists languishing in Cuban jails for daring to speak out and demonstrate in defense of freedom!

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Rylovix t1_ixeluxv wrote

Reply to comment by Stillcant in Ancient Egyptian mummification was never intended to preserve bodies by IslandChillin

The implication has nothing to do with intelligence. Many religions have believed that the metaphysical is intertwined with the physical world in tangible ways. A perfect example of this is the Greeks. They saw their pantheon as human shaped arbiters but also as vast forces of nature, like war or the seasons. It was a way to relate nature to ourselves, give it a human face that people can petition to for some semblance of control and order in their lives. But specifically they believed that they could speak directly to the gods and the gods could manifest on earth. In this way they did not draw hard lines between the physical and metaphysical, more like lines of who gets where and how.

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Rare_Basil_243 t1_ixegld3 wrote

Reply to comment by talossiannights in Ancient Egyptian mummification was never intended to preserve bodies by IslandChillin

Yes, i think this distinction is only a surprise to people who didn't have very much knowledge of Egyptology in the first place. This quote from the article tracks with how ka statues have been found serving the same purpose as sarcophagi in housing the dead person's ka:

>  "I think that actually has a somewhat deeper meaning…and is basically about turning the body into a divine statue because the dead person has been transformed."

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SituationSoap t1_ixeflzj wrote

Reply to comment by iamerudite in Ancient Egyptian mummification was never intended to preserve bodies by IslandChillin

> If the purpose isn't to "preserve the body for the afterlife," and is instead to guide the soul, and the preservation of the body is just a coincidental byproduct of their rituals, I would say that's a pretty significant 180.

Is there significant evidence that early Egyptian cultures believed in the concept of a soul distinct from the physical body?

I could be mistaken, but my understanding is that the concept of a soul/body dichotomy was more of a Hellenistic Greek thing and wouldn't come around for a couple thousand years after the Egyptians started mummifying folks.

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