Saturday, March 03, 2012

Supports? Secret ones.

I am going to veer off of our usual archeological topics and talk about something interesting in my personal life. You may or may not have figured out at this point that I am a practicing Kemetic. (Remember back to Kemet being the word for Egypt?) Kemetic refers to someone who practices the Ancient Egyptian faith.(I promise to get into the different variations I have heard in one of the next posts.) The rest of my family is not, in fact, most of them are Christian of some flavor. I don't know if the events today made this more shocking or not. I think it was just a surprise of the most unexpected kind regardless of the religious affiliations involved.

Today, I was over helping my mom and step-father with some things to finish up their move to their new house. My step-father is one of those men that likes swap meets and flea markets and the like. He had a gift for me, or rather gave me something that he thought I would be interested in. He gave me an antique set of pharmacist's (Apothecary at the time they were made) scales. Then informed me that he thought I could fix them up and keep them with all of my statues.

I was floored. I rarely speak about my religion to my family, almost never in fact. Some how, in those little bits he picked up, not only that I wanted a pair of old school scales but that they were meant for my offering space. He didn't mention my religion at all, just a passing phrase that made it all feel extremely supportive.



A little bit of background for the reason for the scales. We, in modern culture, associate the scales with justice, honesty, truth perhaps. It was no different in Ancient Egypt. Ma'at, the goddess of truth, justice and fairness, was symbolized by the scales which were used to determine whether or not a person lived a "good life". Good in this sense relating to living one's life by the laws or truths of Ma'at. The scale is a central and important piece in belief and the imagery of the faith. It has the same sort of weight as something like the crown of thorns or the cross in Christianity where it is a sign of service and sacrifice for the better of others among other things.

Sadly, I don't have my camera charged so you will have to be satisfied for the time being with a rather cruddy camera phone picture. If I remember I will post an image of them when they are all cleaned up.

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