Egyptian Gods – The Complete List (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: Egyptian Gods – The Complete List (2016)

#31

Post by torgoguys » Sun, Sep 12, 2021, 12:38 PM UTC

idoubtit wrote: post #25

If a web site claimed it was "Programming Languages - The Complete List", with a list of a few dozens items, would it be popular? It would describe POP-1 in one sentence, same as Lua, B or Caml. Some influential languages would be missing, while others would appear in the list though they were in used for a limited time in a single lab. And the most important point: would it mean anything to anyone who does not yet k…

>I see little value in such lists.

Maybe to people especially interested in the subject, but to those with a casual interest, such lists can be a fun introduction to a subject as it provides a way to write a lot of little vignettes. Witness other comments to this post calling out and talking about some of the things they saw in this list that they liked.

Re: Egyptian Gods – The Complete List (2016)

#32

Post by yawaramin » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 12:47 AM UTC

riffraff wrote: post #17

yawaramin wrote: post #13

I often joke (well, mostly to myself) that Horus was actually the First Avenger.

I'm not a comics expert but the marvel universe incorporated Egyptian gods as the heliopolitans, and Apocalypse was an ancient Egyptian too. So, your idea seems plausible in some parallel earth-xyz :)

You may have gotten the reference already, but–I was actually referring to Horus being known as 'The Avenger' because he avenged the murder of his father Osiris by his uncle Set.

Re: Egyptian Gods – The Complete List (2016)

#33

Post by janto » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 1:10 AM UTC

I really like this statue of Sobek, the crocodile diety: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sobek_Oxford.jpg

Re: Egyptian Gods – The Complete List (2016)

#34

Post by tsimionescu » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 7:03 AM UTC

torgoguys wrote: post #31

idoubtit wrote: post #25

If a web site claimed it was "Programming Languages - The Complete List", with a list of a few dozens items, would it be popular? It would describe POP-1 in one sentence, same as Lua, B or Caml. Some influential languages would be missing, while others would appear in the list though they were in used for a limited time in a single lab. And the most important point: would it mean anything to anyone who does not yet k…

>I see little value in such lists. Maybe to people especially interested in the subject, but to those with a casual interest, such lists can be a fun introduction to a subject as it provides a way to write a lot of little vignettes. Witness other comments to this post calling out and talking about some of the things they saw in this list that they liked.

The problem is that, sometimes, simplistic introductions do more harm than good to understanding of a subject - especially when they are presented as introductions to a subject.

This list is similar to explanations of quantum computing that claim the qbits solve all versions of the problem in parallel - it may give you a wrong intuition about what the subject even is. In this case, it may make you think that there were actual humans that worshiped all of these gods and only these gods - when in fact, over 3000 years of Egyptian civilization, gods changed and merged and so on; and most likely the very idea of worship and humans' relationship with the gods changed.