#mehen

[sehetep-shenwer]

We must all ride our own solar barque [LONG POST]

Em hotep everyone

I'm going to attempt astral projecting soon, and will invoke Anubis for guidance, but I have just meditated for about an hour and things couldn't be more clear, especially with the amazing readings given by the awesome people of the Per-Maat server (you know who you are‼️).

I apologize if this is old news and seems like a tangent but during my meditating I have come to realize that ultimately we must all ride our own solar barques both through day and night. Not just the literal ones, but the dark nights of the soul too.

But much like the solar barque we are protected by the Netjeru! I could see Mehen coiling around me against the damnable serpent. Hethert-Nut blew a kiss that opened up hundreds of blue lotus flowers that illuminated the darkness. Horus was cast in a blue glow while Set was in red. The old Gods protect us and even we can slay our own serpents!

The gusts of Shu propel our boat through the night.

The stars of Nut's beautiful body illuminate the path.

Wepwawet assures that we can walk by faith for when we cannot walk by site.

Bastet, the lady of jubilation, is THE Cat that will always protect Her kittens.

You do not sail alone, dear kemetic pagans. You sail a boat that is guarded by the Gods and Goddesses!

To paraphrase some readings I asked for, as I believe they could apply to this, you are the master of your own making. As Ra rises each morning, so will you!

We must sail through dark nights, but we are also blessed to coast through bright days. Not even the damnable serpent can blind you forever, for the sun will rise each day.

My heart is heavy, especially when the sun sets on my life, but I must remember that it will rise too. To paraphrase a dear friend of mine (you know who you are 2 >:).), the sun will always shine once more, even if clouds or night lie in its path.

We sail our boats together to uphold Ma'at!

We ride in the night to confront isfet!

We are all going to be okay!

Dua Netjeru!

And senebty to all of you!

I'm gonna cry myself to sleep now but it's a good cry I promise!!!

[spewagepipe]

The Evolution of RPGs: Mehen

The oldest identifiable tabletop game in human history is Mehen, "The Coiled One", which was found in ancient Egypt and dates back to roughly 3000 BCE.

The exact rules of Mehen are lost to the ages, but we know that it was a game of chance in which players move pawns along a track according to the results of a throw of stick-dice. We now refer to this sort of thing as a "race" game, and while Mehen is a very simple race game, it's not the simplest race game imaginable. Players must choose between multiple pawns, a special "lion" piece that moves last but can reset opponent's pawns, and quirky rules regarding certain dice results. It seems to imply that Mehen is, perhaps, an evolution of an even older game in which the board is nothing more than a way of tracking the score from the dice throws.

[state-of-franklin]

All Brimstone Angels enjoyers should make me a mutual and talk to me about this series because I will combust. 10 years from now I will still combust.

[hesy-bes]

Em Hotep!

Could I get a poem about Mehen please?

Senebty!

O' He of Many Coils,

Circle my khat,

protect my heart from the demons of Duat,

and breathe your breath into my nostrils,

filling my ka with the lifeforce it needs,

to follow the Solar Barque through Duat,

and to be born from Nut,

into a new day.

Dua Mehen!

[gaeldricge]

I adore the hells out of clanless Mehen! He needs a best Dad cup, right now 🩷

[witchberries]

Mehen!!

[chrysocomae]

Don't mind me crying over never playing the same game as the ancient Egyptians.

Here's the board for Mehen. It looks like a zen thing you'd have on an office desk.

Mehen may be named for the mythological snake-god who travels with Egyptian god Ra on his legendary journey into the afterlife.

[shxinny]

Netkheru reptiles IV

¡Hola, chiques! Espero que estén muy bien, hoy les traigo la cuarta parte de esta nueva serie llamada ''Netkheru reptiles'', donde les hablaré sobre sus correspondencias, sus asociaciones y/o sincretizaciones y un poco de su historia, así que, sin más dilación, ¡Empecemos!

13) Mehen

Netkher protectora, Mehen protege la barca solar y a Ra con su cuerpo, su agresividad y su veneno la hacen propicia para defender a Ra y a su barca de los ataques nocturnos hasta que llegaba el alba.

Es representada como una cobra alada portando el disco solar.

14) Meretseger

Personificación de la montaña El-Qurn, Meretseger es la netkher protectora de la necrópolis Tebana, funeraria, protege y custodia los entierros, patrona de constructores de tumbas, la justicia, los muertos, protectora de difuntos y protectora contra animales venenosos.

Fue asociada con los netkheru Ptah y Het-Heret (Hathot) y fue sincretizada con esta ultima.

Está estrechamente relacionada con Ausar (Osiris), pues ella fue quién lo acompaño una vez fue enterrado, aclarar algo muy importante, no hay una asociación romántica entre Ausar y Meretseger.

Es representada cómo una una mujer con cabeza de cobra, una cobra con cabeza humana o una mujer con tres cabezas, una de mujer, otra de cobra y otra de buitre, portadora del disco solar y habitualmente representada con cuernos, de ahí su sincretismo y asociación con Het-Heret (Hathor-Meretseger).

Imagen: Yliade

15) Nehebkau

Hijo de Renenutet en su forma de serpiente y de Serket, Nehebkau es un netkher funerario, protector de la realeza, de los ritos de coronación, protector contra animales venenosos, guarían de las puertas de la Duat y del Inframundo y de los difuntos, debido a que él es quién une el Ba y el Ka una vez fallecida la persona. Se le consideraba un netkher guerrero.

Está estrechamente relacionado con Itemu (Atum) y Ra, debido a que protege a Ra mientras comienza su viaje al inframundo por las noches.

Itemu es el único netkher capaz de contener su poder, ya que es un netkher bastante agresivo, pues tendía a perder el control.

Está relacionado también con Renenutet y Serket, pues es hijo de ellas dos. En su representación cómo serpiente es hijo de Renenutet y, cómo protector y controlador de picaduras y mordidas de animales venenosos, se decía que también era hijo de Serket (Selkis).

Es representado cómo una serpiente con piernas humanas, un hombre con cabeza de serpiente o un hombre con dos cabezas de serpientes.

Se decía que cuando tenía dos cabezas era capaz de atacar en dos direcciones a la vez.

16) Nehy

Lamentablemente no se tiene mucha información de este Netkher, solo su representación y se sabe que fue un funcionario de Thutmose III y portador del titulo ''Virrey de Kush''.

Por hoy ha sido todo, chiques, espero que les haya gustado y que les haya ayudado a conocer más sobre los netkheru, recuerden que todas mis redes sociales y la Per-Ankh están ligadas a mi Beacons, nos vemos en un próximo post, se les quiere mucho ¡Adiós!

[ilearnedthistodaysblog]

#1189 When did people start playing board games?

When did people start playing board games? The first board games were played in Egypt roughly 5,500 years ago. We have probably all played board games at some time in our lives. Christmas isn’t really Christmas without a game of Pictionary or Monopoly. Incidentally, Monopoly is considered the best-selling board game of all time, but that is debatable. The Monopoly we play is attributed to Charles Darrow who started to sell it in the 1930s. However, there were several other similar games that existed at the time and Darrow seems to have taken elements from various games and combined them into his. Still, the design of the game we play today is his, if not necessarily all of the rules and the ideas. Monopoly is often said to be the most popular board game because it is possible to know roughly how many games have been sold. It is about 300 million. However, the most popular board game of all time is probably chess. Millions of boards are sold every year. The only problem with chess is it was invented in roughly the 6th century in India and there is obviously no patent, so nobody can keep track of how many boards have been sold. It is estimated to be in the billions. The oldest board game that archaeologists have discovered was made in Egypt 5,500 years ago. There are two games that come from this period in Ancient Egypt. They appeared during the Old Kingdom. One of them was called Mehen and it is mostly found in pictures. Some physical boards have been found, but the game seems to have disappeared by the time of the Middle Kingdom. The game has the same name as the god Mehen, the snake god, and the board features a coiled snake, so there was probably a religious connection between the two. The game has been found in tombs, so it was probably something to do with the snake god’s religion. The rules of the game have never been recorded, but the fact that it was based on the god Mehen and that some of the pieces have been found imply that the idea was to move the pieces, which represented the soul, along the snake so that the first person there, the winner, could be reborn. The problem with mehen is that two types of counters have been found. One type are basic counters that fit in the spaces on the snake, but the second type are much larger counters in the shape of lions, or large cats, and they are too big to fit in the spaces on the snake. Nobody knows what these pieces were for. A second game that appeared in Ancient Egypt at around about the same time was senet, which was also used in burials and might also have had a religious purpose. The board had 30 squares in three rows of ten and each player had five pieces that were shaped like dogs. In Egyptian mythology, the dog was Anubis, the god of funerary rites and the guide to the underworld. The rules to senet have been lost, but it is probably similar to mehen, in that the soul had to pass across the board and the squares probably represented different stages of life. Wealthy people, such as the Pharaoh Tutankhamun, played senet with ornately engraved boards, while the regular people played on grids scratched into the floor. At the time, there were no dice. There were a few ways that players could have chosen the number of spaces they moved. They could use something called casting sticks. There were four sticks that were colored on one side and not on the other. All four sticks were dropped and the number of sticks that landed color side up were the number of spaces you could move. If all the sticks landed color side down, you could move six spaces. There were also throwing bones, which were a similar system. The first dice was invented in about 2800 BC in what is now Iran. The first dice that had opposite sides that added up to seven was invented in the Indus Valley in 2500 BC. The oldest game that still exists is a version of checkers that was first played in Egypt in about 1400 BC. Each player had nine counters that they had to get across the board while trying to take all of their opponent’s pieces. Versions of this game have been found in multiple countries around the world. There may be some connection between them, but it is more likely that it is a simple game that was invented in many different countries independently. And this is what I learned today. Try these: - #406 Who invented the skateboard? - #962 Why was the abacus invented? - #308 Why did the Olympics restart in 1896? - #415 How does a Geiger counter work? - #828 What game has the best odds in a casino? Sources https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/best-board-games-ancient-world-180974094 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senet https://wellplayedasheville.com/blog/board-games-a-brief-history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehen_(game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_game https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/top-10-historical-board-games https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/histories/board-games https://www.fun.com/best-selling-board-games-all-time.html?srsltid=AfmBOopuB_hWBkLm1OSIQMBjiD1ehZcidZOdjISg79EydsltkfrRIdTU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_(game) https://www.awesomedice.com/blogs/news/history-of-dice https://nabataea.net/explore/petra/petra-rules-for-ancient-games By Maler der Grabkammer der Nefertari - The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=154294 Read the full article

[pleasantsweetsmiracle]

(MEHEN)

[sehetep-shenwer]

Vintage image offering to Mehen!

[sehetep-shenwer]

O ya like snakes? MEHEN!!!

“i want to worship a/pep because some destruction and chaos is necessary for life and can be helpful, it should be considered sacred not evil”

“i think it could be cool to honor ap/ep because death and decay is natural and should be honored, not shunned”

[nurgletwh]

Do you have a sona or a particular way in which you portray yourself? Asking for fanart purposes.

Huh. I haven’t ever really thought about it. I mean, I’ve resonated with some of the D&D characters I’ve played (a certain highly chaotic, absolutely flamboyantly bisexual prismatic Dragonborn rogue comes to mind), and @grumpyoldsnake gave me a drawing of a sphinx tabaxi bard I had a lot of fun with. But nothing akin to what I’ve seen some people identify with!

I think ���messily chaotic with strong helpful yet sarcastic vibes” covers most of it. My writing probably clued you in to that one, though. xD

[shazzyluka]

Haiii!

So I've started reading a Brimstone Angels, so I doodle Mehen!

[dragoon-mid-jump]

I am very much enjoying all the Reaper Job bonus flavor dialogue in these patches.

Though, I would also use this post to explain how exactly Y'dehlya came to join the Reapers’ ranks and what powers she now wields. I’ll start with her Dragoon powers, because those lead into and fuse with her Reaper ones.

(Upon pressing “Keep reading”, many paragraphs will appear in sequence. It is recommended that you set aside sufficient time to view this post in its entirety.)

My take on Y’dehlya actually being able to use the Dragoon Soul Stone despite having not a single drop of Ishgardian blood in her veins stems from expanding on the “inner dragon” all Dragoons apparently have. It is my understanding that the Soul Stone only resonates with those who have a dragon’s spirit within them. For Ishgardians, this is easily explained with the reveal of Thordan I and his Twelve Knights murdering Ratatoskr and consuming her flesh a thousand years before ARR, enough time for draconic power to take root and lay dormant inside every Ishgardian living in the game’s present.

But Y’dehlya’s is from a different circumstance. The simpler reason I thought of was that Persephone’s combat transformation was very draconic in appearance, and Y’dehlya’s soul enduring seven whole Rejoinings and bringing that back to her. The more complex one is that Hydaelyn bound Persephone’s Shard on the Source to the soul of a stillborn child of Midgardsormr at his behest. Or I could just do both. Either way, with these plus the meddlings of (in order) Nidhogg via the Eye, resonating with a Dragoon Soul Stone, Midgardsormr removing Hydaelyn’s blessing and binding himself to Y’dehlya, and Hraesvelgr bestowing his own Eye unto her awakens/creates a manifestation of Y’dehlya’s latent draconic powers: Mehen.

Mehen in ancient Egyptian mythology is the equivalent of Jormungandr and Ouroboros. A deity that protected Osiris-Ra as he traveled through the night/underworld by coiling around him.

With all the other dragon influences around her soul, it was almost impossible for her at first to truly sense Mehen’s presence throughout ARR and HW. It was easily mistaken for one of the others’. As for StB, she had not only hung up the mantle of Azure Dragoon alongside Estinien at the end of the Dragonsong War, but went the extra mile and left the Soul Stone in Aymeric’s care, the war burned her out that much. And yet, there were still some events that made her fall back on those abilities, which also helped her to reconcile herself with them. The DRG Job Quests from 60 to 69, as well as taking the spear up again for the Nhaadam help Y’dehlya find the courage to reclaim the Stone when Aymeric offers it back to her in Ala Mhigo before the showdown against Zenos-Shinryu.

The Omega Raids was the first time Mehen truly showed themself to Y’dehlya, manifesting physically at Midgardsormr’s behest and introduced themself appropriately. In order to qualify as a candidate for Omega’s challenge, Mehen quickly adopted a more humanoid form, manifesting as a Raen Au Ri that resembles Y’dehlya (or moreso Persephone).

Due to having no set preference themself between being more “masculine” or “feminine”, Mehen manifests in whichever form they are feeling at the moment.

When Omega traps Y’dehlya and U’reksh and starts testing their pain tolerances up to the extent that they could very well die, Midgarsormr uses the last of his available power to free Y’dehlya and entrusts Mehen with her. It is then that Y’dehlya unlocks Life of the Dragon and together, they free U’reksh and cause Omega to retreat and recalibrate. After the whole Omega Raid storyline is completed, Y’dehlya introduces Mehen to the rest of the Scions, and later Estinien, Orn Kai, Vedrfolnir, and Faunehm during the lvl 70 DRG quest. Mehen resolves to want to learn more and more about the world while traveling within Y’dehlya.

Flash forward to ShB. Y’dehlya and Mehen were...more aware than they let on about the state of their soul with subsequent Lightwarden absorptions, especially after overhearing Y’shtola and Urianger’s argument over it. In the time between absorbing Amh Araeng’s Lightwarden and the siege on Eulmore, Y’dehlya grew desperate in trying to find her own way to save the both of them.

During a check-in with the Source, she happened upon the events of the first Reaper quests. The words “Lemures” and “Reaper” coming from the attendant and his employer tip her off to who they want her to deal with. She’s heard whispers of this group before through the grapevine, as well as solid confirmation from Y’kouha. And so, with Mehen’s consent and hearing the summoned voidsent itself beg for death via devouring upon hearing their plight (it’s a win-win exchange, the voidsent finally gets sweet release and their devourers get their powers), she readily accepts, because what is the antithesis of sin eater, but voidsent? And thus, this lovely explanation from Zero is what takes place between Mehen and the voidsent, becoming the Void Dragon/Voidwyrm and taking on the appearance of a Xaela:

If the voidsent powers stemmed from a being who was already friendly towards their host, theoretically, there shouldn't be any fear of being taken over. This doesn’t stop Y’shtola from immediately grilling Dehlya on her choices once she takes notice out of further concern and anger at Urianger and the Exarch for driving her to this. Y’dehlya stands her ground. The other Scions have very mixed reactions when the cat’s out of the bag, but eventually grow to accept it. Both Urianger and the Exarch in particular feel incredibly guilty and more or less continue to do so into EW, both admitting it to Y’dehlya and Mehen at different points despite their forgiveness and a look at the brighter side of the circumstance.

As for learning how to use a scythe, Y’dehlya’s practically a natural, but part of that will be explained further down.

Anyway, back to ShB. Unfortunately, the absorption of the voidsent wound up doing little in the long run after absorbing Innocence and Y’dehlya is locked out of using Mehen’s voidsent powers until the fusion with Ardbert.

The fusion with Ardbert also triggered a new power in her that seems to only activate against Ascians and Ancients in subsequent MSQ battles: Her weapon suddenly becomes a scythe made out of aether, her skill with it is like never before, and her outfit becomes that of a tattered black cloak. It’s like Enshroud, but it isn’t; her soul is channeling Persephone’s power and skill, manifesting thus, and disappears a short time after it is no longer needed.

After returning to Sharlayan at the end of Main Endwalkere, however, the tattered black outfit and white scythe become permanent. The scythe itself even looks like an actual forged weapon now (See the lvl 89 Reaper gear for reference). Y’dehlya takes this as a sign to becomes a Reaper in full and dyes the cape her signature fuchsia.

Y’dehlya’s Enshroud form bears an uncanny resemblance to Estinien’s final form when he was possessed by Nidhogg, but with a predominantly black, purple/fuchsia, and red color scheme.

[gaeldricge]

same 😩 I'm addicted to that series!

if i had more energy or patience and maybe some drawing skill and was 80% more insane none of you would be safe from my brimstone angels posting