Swampycreatures - Welcome To The Swamp

swampycreatures - Welcome to the Swamp
swampycreatures - Welcome to the Swamp

More Posts from Swampycreatures and Others

3 months ago

would you enter my terrible haunted mangrove?

a scary picture of a moss-covered dark pathway filled with gangly trees

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4 months ago
swampycreatures - Welcome to the Swamp

Have you seen this post?

Have You Seen This Post?

You probably have. It currently has over 120,000 notes, largely because of this addition.

Have You Seen This Post?

Of course it's going to get reblogged, this kind of unsourced factoid does numbers on here. But something about it wasn't quite right.

A bit of searching turned up the origin of the "fact".

Have You Seen This Post?
Have You Seen This Post?

Alright, so it's someone who posted this on reddit 4 years ago and somehow ended up in the search hits. And the post confuses the electric eel (from South America) with the electric catfish (from the Nile, which the Egyptians would have known about).

Have You Seen This Post?

Reminder: this is an electric eel (Electrophorus electricus). It is from South America. (image from Wikipedia)

Have You Seen This Post?

And this is an electric catfish (Malapterurus electricus). It is from the Nile and would have been familiar to the ancient Egyptians. (image from Wikipedia)

And then of course people were speculating in the notes to that post about trade routes between South America and Egypt. Excellent scholarship everyone.

At this point I was ready to call it another made-up internet fact that gets reified by people repeating it. But something was still bothering me.

An ancient Egyptian slab from 3100 BC. What could that be...

Oh.

Have You Seen This Post?

The Narmer palette. It's the goddamn Narmer palette. (image, once again, from Wikipedia)

So where is this "angry catfish"?

It's not the Egyptian name for the electric catfish.

It's... Narmer. It's Narmer himself.

Have You Seen This Post?

Narmer's name is written as above (detail of top middle of the palette), using the catfish (n`r) and the chisel (mr), giving N'r-mr. The chisel is associated with pain, so this reads as "painful catfish", "striking catfish", or, yes, "angry catfish" or other similar variants, although some authors have suggested that it means "Beloved of [the catfish god] Nar".

So.

Where does this leave us?

It would appear that this redditor not only confused electric eels with electric catfish, but also confused a Pharaoh's name with the name of a fish. And then it got pushed to the top search hits by a crappy search engine and shared uncritically on tumblr.

In short, "the electric eel is called angry catfish" factoid actually literacy error. Angry Catfish, who ruled upper Egypt and smote his enemies, is an outlier adn should not have been counted.

Also the Arabic name for the electric catfish is raad (thunder) or raada (thunderer).

References

Afsaruddin, A., & Zahniser, A. H. M. (1997). Humanism, culture, and language in the Near East: studies in honor of Georg Krotkoff. Eisenbrauns.

Clayton, P. A. (2001). Chronicle of the Pharaohs. Thames & Hudson.

Godron, G. (1949). A propos du nom royal. Annales du Service des antiquités de l'Egypte, 49, 217-221.

Sperveslage, G., & Heagy, T. C. (2023). A tail's tale: Narmer, the catfish, and bovine symbolism. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 109(1), 3-319.


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1 year ago

When you accidentally delete your whole Tumblr account (trying to delete a side blog) so you start over 🥲

9 months ago
Like To Charge Reblog To Cast

Like to charge reblog to cast

1 year ago
Boycott. Please Remember To Boycott. You Can Make A Difference.

Boycott. Please remember to boycott. You can make a difference.

-

Edit: See this link for more on what to boycott from BDS. And here as well.

Boycott. Please Remember To Boycott. You Can Make A Difference.

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7 months ago

Hi ♡ I'm opening more slots and a new type of commission to help cover some unexpected vet bills 🐾

Hi ♡ I'm Opening More Slots And A New Type Of Commission To Help Cover Some Unexpected Vet Bills 🐾
Hi ♡ I'm Opening More Slots And A New Type Of Commission To Help Cover Some Unexpected Vet Bills 🐾
Hi ♡ I'm Opening More Slots And A New Type Of Commission To Help Cover Some Unexpected Vet Bills 🐾

I now have a Character Sheet commission option ✨ It includes a half body fully rendered illustration, two mini items/illustrations of your choice and some text/description of your character. I'm open to discussion for anything you'd like to add/change, and you can find more details as well as my other commissions prices and samples on my Ko-fi ♡

Hi ♡ I'm Opening More Slots And A New Type Of Commission To Help Cover Some Unexpected Vet Bills 🐾
Hi ♡ I'm Opening More Slots And A New Type Of Commission To Help Cover Some Unexpected Vet Bills 🐾
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Please contact me at ✉ saradiiation@gmail.com or directly fill my commission request form *before* booking a commission on kofi so that we can discuss your project first.

Thank you for the support! 🙏❤️

Hi ♡ I'm Opening More Slots And A New Type Of Commission To Help Cover Some Unexpected Vet Bills 🐾
Hi ♡ I'm Opening More Slots And A New Type Of Commission To Help Cover Some Unexpected Vet Bills 🐾
Hi ♡ I'm Opening More Slots And A New Type Of Commission To Help Cover Some Unexpected Vet Bills 🐾

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swampycreatures - Welcome to the Swamp
Welcome to the Swamp

🐸 25 🐸 She/They 🐸 Call me Swampy! I’m a creature! https://swampycreature.carrd.co/

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