The ancient Egyptian civilization existed for over three THOUSAND years.
So how diverse were they? Pretty motherfucking diverse.
I wish Glen Hanson had drawn Isis closer to typical Egyptian art. That way, I wouldn't have this issue. If he was only going to show one Egyptian character on the cover, she should have looked like the art. Now if he showed all four Egyptian girls from the story, that would have been a fabulous opportunity to show diversity.
Now his Isis is still beautiful, but I don't like anything that perpetuates the myth that all Egyptians were one thing.
Moving on, Aphrodite's got some trouble. She got a D in Hero-ology because she caused a little thing called the Trojan War. So she decides to use her vacation time to create a Lonely Hearts Club for mortals to get back in their good graces. Meanwhile, both her professor for that class (Mr. Cyclops) and Principal Zeus are extra grumpy. Thanks to some fucking up from Pheme, Aphrodite's club is not going well until she gets half a letter from a boy named Pyg. She and her goddessgirlfriends end up in Egypt to investigate and there they meet four Egyptian goddessgirls. Isis, Egyptian goddess of love, has the other half of the letter and she and Aphrodite embark on a mission to help Pygmalion, the letter-writer. Pygmalion's a complete jerk and the two girls keep trying to compete until they realize they need to team up. Upon finally discovering Pygmalion's actual problem, which you know if you know the myth, they solve that lickety-split and are now friends. Back in Greece, Aphrodite does some more successful matchmaking and ups her grade from a D to a B.
That's the basic story. However, the most interesting bits to me are the exchanges between the Greek and Egyptian goddessgirls. Each group believes they're the true gods, because they hadn't known others existed. (This is quickly contradicted in Book 7, where athletes from "other magical realms" also compete in the Olympics.) There are a few sequences where, say, Persephone talks about the Underworld and then Ma'at tells her how the Underworld really is, or so she thinks. Each one is right, because each version exists for those gods. Unfortunately, this is never really resolved and each agrees to disagree and still be friends, while not believing the existence of the other's Underworld. This would have been a great opportunity to show that these religions all coexisted together and there was no single right religion. I was disappointed that Holub introduced a pretty complex subject and then didn't take it all the way.
Another thing she left hanging was Hathor. Hathor is shown in the book to always have her nose in a scroll and when she doesn't, she's not very nice. Everyone, including her friends, seems not to trust her. But we're NEVER TOLD WHY. Her trick on Athena, Persephone and Artemis is written off as "sometimes she doesn't play fair." She and Isis have several moments where Isis seems almost nervous around her and this is never developed.
Here's what I headcanon:
In Egyptian mythology, it's not Isis who's the goddess of love. It's HATHOR. So I think they switched places. I'm not sure what the motivation would have been, but the book character of Isis acts like mythological Hathor, while book Hathor is more like mythological Isis. Isis was tricky, tricky, tricky and ambitious. I could see her behaving exactly as book Hathor did.
I'm not sure why Holub made the choices she did. Maybe because Isis is the most well-known Egyptian goddess name and she wanted a recognizable name? So she swapped the two, but then had them behaving fishily to make up for the deception? But this is the same author that created a character out of Pheme, who is very obscure. She could have easily just used Hathor in the first place.
Aphrodite the Diva is definitely one of my favorite books from this series because it opens up a ton of possibilities. I wish there was a series about the Egyptian goddesses or at least a one-off super special. Ditto the Norse characters who appear in Girl Games. I can't remember if they branched any further than those two other mythologies. I'll see soon enough!
2 comments:
It was not necessarily a myth that the Egyptians were of brown complexion. First off, they lived in a warmer climate, which if you look at most on the border they don't exactly look white. Secondly, if you look at preserved drawings of Ancient Egypt, you'll see that most of them were painted brown and some only paled in color because of age.
Furthermore, does it matter if the Egyptians were dark skin? :/ Other than that, I love your collection of books. :) It brings me back to childhood.
I never said the Egyptians weren't brown-skinned. However, they were not all black, which is a misconception that I hate perpetuated and that was my point here. Like I said in the post, Ancient Egypt was an enormous melting pot, so there would have been a lot of diversity. They were not one race that all looked the same.
And accuracy does indeed matter to me. Why? Because I'm an Egyptologist. This amazing ancient civilization matters so much to me that I got a masters degree in it.
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