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Nobody is allowed to hurt the emotional support Persian!!! Now hush, he's working!

Thank you so much @lalounia for drawing silly comics of the world we both so enjoy dabbling in, and for being such a wonderful artist and friend❤️

Now I've moved done from nice drawings of scenes from "What we become along the way" to making silly joke drawings 😂

@jules-of-the-black-forest I can't believe I hadn't posted this beauty!

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Guys I recently took inventory of coptic textiles for my uni job in our museum, where I came across these little guys and decided I had to share them!

I mean look at them! Little woven rabbits! With red little tongues! Aren't they awesome?

It's amazing really, what people in antiquity could already do with weaving, I feel like we tend to forget that, both because garments oftentimes aren't preserved, and because media for a long time didn't portray it this way.

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Oh man, that sucks! Puttin' the word out for my great friend and ever-patient, beloved beta reader!

Hellooooo, I used to be isitandwonder

tumblr without any warning suspended my blog, which I had for almost 10 years, about 2 weeks ago . This includes my Dune sideblog @I-must-not-fear. Despite my appeal to revoke the decision, nothing happened and Im still suspended...

I actually wish I had at least shared some sexually explicit material 🤭

Anyway, if you wondered where I was gone, I only have this ancient account to use and Im not sure I have the energy to start anew here.

Just wanted to wish you a happy 2025!

Tagging a few Blogs I remember, maybe you can reblog and get the word out should someone wonder what happened. Thank you!

@cristinasea @nkp187 @madfoxx @poppy-in-the-woods @morganwolfe @mrchalamet-mrstyles @mylastvow @jules-of-the-black-forest @eurydike @warriorofdune

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Honestly, some lovely person creating art inspired by something I wrote is probably the best thing I'll ever get, this is where I officially peak as a person. I don't need a career in my field anymore, this is as good as it gets! Thank you so much @lalounia I couldn't be more honoured❤️

And all of it for a silly little story about a connection between two people which trascends any imposed boundary of status or origin, yet which they both would fervently deny if you asked them✨️ Just a little piece of writing in the whole wide world about a general, a slave, a king, the people surrounding them and their journey through one of the most formative periods in history. And I'm so happy there's someone out there who likes it enough to turn it into art!

First eunuch to kill a lion!! ✨

This is based on the lion hunt scene in the story written by @jules-of-the-black-forest :

"What we become along the way" on AO3 (link)

If you like Alexander the great's world, unlikely friendships, shenanigans and of course angst✨! Please do check it out!!

It focuses on Hephaistion and Bagoas (ft. In this drawing) and oh my lord! Just check it out! It's a lovely story and really well researched, I assure you a fun time if you're into ancient themes 🥰

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Hephaistion: I am the most moderate, most peaceful man in this army.

Alexander: Just yesterday you threw a chair at Krateros.

Hephaistion: Which was a moderate, peaceful compromise for the table I was initially planning to throw at him.

Bagoas *holding ice to his face*: I just wish you would have hit him.

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Bagoas: So I was out on a walk today, and I saw some flowers that reminded me of you, so I picked them as a little gift.

Alexander: Awww, that's so sweet, you shouldn't ha-

Bagoas: They're called pansies.

Alexander: Wha-...I...but...you can't...

Alexander: Hephaistion! Are you just going to stand there and let him talk to me like that?!

Hephaistion *wiping a tear, whispering to himself*: This is the best day of my entire fucking life.

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And he's celebrating in style! 🎉🎉

Or at least the Erbach/Akropolis Typus is, the head from Pergamon is not sure yet ;)

For those wondering, Greek months were lunar, and in 356, the 6th would have fallen on the 19th, not the 20th--the date you'll most often see in history books and Wikipedia. ;-)

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Alexander: I love you so much <3

Hephaistion: I love you way more <3

Roshanak:

Roshanak: Well, this isn't really how I imagined being married would go.

Bagoas: I bet.

Roshanak: This is going to take a while, isn't it?

Bagoas: Might as well just leave, really.

Roshanak: Great. So now what.

Bagoas: I could teach you how to do a backflip.

Roshanak:

Roshanak: Sure.

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Okay okay, I don't mean to be bummer, and these images are beautiful and capture the polychromy and splendour of Roman elite houses very well, but at least the first reconstruction of the Hause of the Faun is just...wrong. Dead wrong. And as someone who has just done very extensive research on the house and held a presentation there for a university trip to Pompeji, almost nothing in there is right considering the archaeological evidence.

So, from what I'm seeing,since we're looking past an impluvium towards an entrance, as the viewer we're standing in the tablinum, looking through the tuscan atrium towards the fauces.

So this is where we are. In the tablinum. Which, to start, had a different floor than what we see in this reconstruction, consisting of opus sectile in the shape of cubes (left picture). Then, we're looking through the so-called tuscan atrium. And you know what's funny about tuscan atriums? They don't have columns, and indeed, at the House in Pompeji, there is no trace of columns in the first atrium (as can also be seen in the left picture). Wheras in the second atrium, called the 'tetrastyle atrium' there are, as the name alreade indicates, four columns preserved (right picture). But what we see here in that reconstruction looks more like a combination of the atrium and the peristyles we find behind the atrium.

Then, though this might count nitpicking, in the impluvium, there is the famous statuette of the dancing Satyr which has given the house its name. It seems to be placed in the middle of the impluvium, which is indeed still where it was placed in the house today, yet there is archaeological evidece suggesting it might have been displayed on the nothern end of the impluvium. Not to mention it's pose is off compared to the original (left picture).

Lastly, there is the matter of the walls, which in the House of the Faun were notoriously painted in the first style of Pompejan wall painting, the so called "masonary" style, not the third and fourth style paintings we see im this recomstruction. So the walls would have looked like what you can see in the right picture.

That's actually one of the things which make the house so special; that the owners decided to stick to this -at the time of the eruption- old fashioned style of wall decorations.

I can't confidently speak for the other two reconstructions, though I would love to know whether there's any actual evidence for such vaulted roofs as we see it in this reconstruction of the house of the Labyrinth in Pompejan town houses...

I guess all I'm trying to say is to be careful around such reconstructions, don't take them at face value.

Virtual reconstruction made by Virtual Archaeological Museum, and Comitato Cininnato Pompei.

1. Atrium, House of the Faun. Pompeii.

2. Library and peristyle of Villa of the Papyri. Herculaneum.

3. House of the Labyrinth. Pompeii.

Beautiful

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We love ourselves some surviving antique bronzes ♡

I especially love the reconstruction proposed by Vinzenz Brinkmann, in which he gives one of the warriors a Thracian fox hat to wear!

I mean, look at that little guy, he's just sorta up there! And note how they are polychrome, because even ancient bronzes had different colours, achieved by different alloys.

Now, because I love classical archaeology and cannot keep my mouth shut, I shall add a favourite of mine.

The Charioteer of Delphi, dedicated to Apollon in either 478 or 474 BC. The statue originally stood in the chariot of a quadriga, parts of the bronze horses and the chariot itself have been found. The's also a stone block with parts of a two-line inscription, telling us that a certain Polyzalos dedicated this statue to Apollo (the first line has been erased and rewritten in antiquity, it's a whole story).

It survives due to the fact that it was damaged in antiquity, most likely the earthquake which hit Delphi in 373 BC (which prompted the rebuilding of the temple of Apollo himself), and was subsequently used as filling for the so called Ischeagon retaining wall behind the temple. Greeks loved to use old and broken stuff for fillings.

The Riace Bronzes were found in the sea off the coast of Italy in 1972. They are life sized, bearded warriors cast in the 5th century BCE. Ancient Greek bronzes rarely survive as many were later melted down. We only really know how Ancient Greek bronze sculptures looked like because the Romans were copycats.

Reggio di Calabria, Italy

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Alexander: Hey I like your pants.

Bagoas: Thanks they were half off.

Alexander: Well I would like them full off ;)

Bagoas: People can't just give away stuff for free, Alexander.

Alexander: What? No, that's not what I-

Bagoas: I don't know how you do things over there in Macedon, but that's a terrible way to run a business.

Alexander: No, what I was trying to say was-

Bagoas: No wonder you had to come here for our riches, your economy must be in shambles!

Hephaistion: Oh, this. I like this. We're keeping him.

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Alexander: Love, are you alright?

Hephaistion: I have this headache that comes and goes.

Krateros, coming by: Yo.

Hephaistion: Ah, there it is again.

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Drypetis, in a letter: Bagoas, where are you?

Bagoas, dealing with Alexander's, Hephaistion's, and Roshanak's shit: My limit. I'm at my fucking limit.

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Alexander never died...................... he's just out there................. somewhere.................................... being rawed on a Persian hillside..................................................

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Hard to imagine the true scale of something until you see it in real life...sarissas are some long buggers, and it does look pretty heavy. Imagine that shit coming at you from the other side of the battlefield, I'd be turning on the spot. I wish we would do more experimental archaelogy like that at our uni...just let me be in a phalanx, is that too much to ask?

Anyway, you gotta love the minoan octopus design on the shield^^

Equipment made by my colleague, friend, and fellow Macedoniast, Dr. Graham Wrightson of South Dakota State University. Experimental archaeology teaches us LOADS.

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Bagoas: Why do you look so happy?

Hephaistion: Wow Bagoas, just because I have had a couple of bad days recently you think I can't just be happy? Honestly I think that's very shallow of you, do you truly think me incapable of experiencing joy?

Bagoas:

Alexander: Krateros' horse tripped and he fell off.

Bagoas: Yeah that'll do it.

Hephaistion:

Hephaistion: Right on his ugly mug :D

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Hephaistion: *standing in front of an empty chest*: All my clothes keep disappearing, I have no idea what's going on.

Alexander: *in a chiton that goes down to his ankles*: Huh. Weird.

Bagoas: *wrapped in a very greek chlamys*: Curious, indeed.

Roshanak: *using a himation as a shawl*: I wouldn't think about it too much.