my favorite thing i’ve learned in college is that way back in ancient china there was this poet/philosopher guy who wrote this whole pretentious poem about how enlightened he was that was like “the eight winds cannot move me” blahblahblah and he was really proud of it so he sent it to his friend who lived across the lake and then his friend sends it back and just writes “FART” (or the ancient Chinese equivalent) on it and he was SO MAD he travels across the lake to chew his friend out and when he gets there his friend says “wow. the eight winds cannot move you, but one fart sends you across the lake”
i googled this bc i desperately wanted this to be real, and guess what…it is.
the dude’s name was su dongpo (also known as su shi). his original poem went like this:
稽首天中天，
毫光照大千，
八風吹不動，
端坐紫金蓮
(Humbly bowed my head below all skies Minutest lights shine through my deepest bounds Immovable by strong winds from eight sides Upon purplish gold lotus I seated straightly by the low mound) (x)
on which his friend wrote “放屁” (fart, literally), and you know the rest.
i hate when people in movies/tv are reading ancient languages and they translate everything really smoothly and poetically, as if when people who study ancient languages aren’t consulting three different commentaries and sobbing profusely when we read
ok so like…. it says
“come you all into the deepest cavern, or maybe that’s fireplace, depends on usage, and having come may you give your…. treasures? Skin? Pants? I don’t know, something…. to the….. about-to-be-adored guy, that one who…. okay, he either causes earthquakes or sleeps a lot, I think this might be an idiom….”
“ok, sorry that took so long and i hate to disappoint but i’m still not entirely sure what it means, like, it could be something about a religious ceremony or it could be a dick joke. leaning towards dick joke, might be both. knowing the ancients, probably both. this could very well be an ancient dick temple and we should probably leave.”
Funnest part is when you get shit like this:
Why yes that is a text comprised of almost exclusively crocodile hieroglyphs.
We also can’t get a coherent translation because the grammar makes absolutely no sense. Participles and Participial statements all the way. Sobek who is Crocodile of Crocodopolis who advances the Crocodile for the Crocodiles….
The crocodile hieroglyph is also used to write sovereign and an adjective meaning power…so the text is suuuuuuuper confusing.
I can’t help but wonder if the crocodile hieroglyph text (which I never knew about, that is AMAZING) is the ancient equivalent of a sestina or another complex poem form. With the crocodile symbol meaning so many different things, and the result being so difficult to translate, it might make more sense as a poem or some other stylistically rigid text.
Either that, or it was the Egyptian equivalent of a student being made to write lines on the chalkboard.
I will not take the name of Lord Sobek in vain
I will not take the name of Lord Sobek in vain
I will not take the name of Lord Sobek in vain
I will not…“Shakes out chiseling hand” Take the name of Lord Sobek in vain….
Looks like an ancient shitpost to me.
mai nayme is hep and wen i wryt upon the wal so smooth and wite i bless the kynnge commend his akh but then get tyred and carve the croc
It’s the equivalent of “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.”
wupacing 