Aaaand … done!

Sobek and Heru-sa-Aset enjoying Their new shrine. ❤

I was a bit delayed finishing the shrine. We had a couple of days of what counts for ‘rainy’ here in Perth. The weather wasn’t right for painting, so I did other things. But it’s all done now, with its final layers of varnish, and I got it all finally screwed together after lunch. So now you all get an epic picspam because it’s DONE and it looks AMAZING and my gods like it very much. 😀

I will cut it for you to save epic page loadingz because there are pictures and text and other assorted longish things. ❤

Bit of a flatter angle on it to show off the glyphs a little better. I think the whole thing looks amazing, tbh, once it’s all together like that. Yes, I took my statues out, because I wanted to see how it’d look and where I might want to place Them. I’m still undecided about shrine cloths, but we’ll see once it’s all in place and the room’s done. I could get smallish pieces to use on either side. That might work. Splitting a fat quarter in half might work, and at least then I could have the same fabric. Hmm.

The pedestalboxes are undecorated at this stage, just with gold and black. I haven’t really decided what else I want on them, so I might leave them for now. I don’t usually get into the gold and black thingo, but it matches the rest of the shrine quite nicely, I think.

And I know I was bemoaning my lack of ability to sense energy in an earlier post, but man, I do feel it every now and then, and I did feel it when I had my gods there on the new shrine. Good energy. I felt They were very happy with it. 😀

Have a bit of a closer look at the gods and the top of the table. I’m not sure I’ll keep that exact positioning; I might shift Them both to centre Them on Their respective third of the shrine, but we’ll see. It looks pretty good, though. I love symmetry, so we’ll see how that all turns out. I still think it looks really good though, imperfect though it is.

The boxes will be used for keeping sacred jewellery and other assorted objects, to keep them close, and to keep the shrine tidy. The statues are just adorned with Their respective prayer beads now, mostly because of simplicity and half my other stuff is packed away.

…Oh, that’s right. I found an awesome silver candelabra thingy for a centrepiece. That’s going in the middle, with candles, and there’s a nice central plate where I can keep Their prayer beads. I hardly had it out long enough before it was packed away. CLEVER SASHA IS CLEVER. XD *facepalm*

  Have a close-up of the glyphs, because I did promise that. IDK how clear they are, given Sobek’s got a little smushed up towards the end, but there you go. I think I managed them pretty well, given my not-great ability.

To detail them a little better, we have Sobek’s here on the left, and Heru’s on the right.

Sobek’s begins with a lunar glyph thingy. I liked the way it could be a crescent moon or a boat, because that’s tied in with how I see Him, as the Night Boat.

Heru has a solar disc on a boat, inspired by a glyph I saw in one of the many glyph fonts I looked at. I liked the symmetry of it, as much as I liked the symbolism. The Day Boat to contrast with the Night Boat on Sobek’s side.

The Eyes and ankhs were the first elements I wanted to include on them, actually. The rest kind of came afterwards. But those two were always there, because I feel it’s appropriate to have them there. I only have Eyes on the front, because laziness, but I probably ought to have done them on every side. Oh well. Next time, etc.

It’s a very short version of the offering formula that follows underneath the Eyes. I didn’t feel I had the space to write the whole thing. And it’s mirrored because symmetry. /pedant. I think it works, though, and I know there is precedent for changing the direction of the glyphs, depending on which way you’re meant to read them, so I don’t think it’s that much of a strange thing to do.

Sobek’s reads (top to bottom):

An offering given to
Sobek
Great God
Lord (of)
Bakhu

My rendering of Bakhu here is a bodged up one, based on how I would render it. I normally try to use established spellings for things when I’m fixing up hieroglyphic things, but I couldn’t find Bakhu anywhere in glyphs in the resources I had available to me, so I made up my own. It’s also (kinda) a pun on a word I found in Mark Vygus’ glyphic dictionary. I found a placename, Bahu, that was some sort of place on the western bank of the river?, and used that to help form the word Bakhu. The squished up bird next to the leg (B) is meant to be the crested ibis thing used to write the word akh/akhu, for the blessed dead (because word play and appropriate sound), but yes. It’s a little squashed. The mountain-y thing next to the quail chick (W/U) is a mountain-y/Western Horizon sort of thing I borrowed from Bahu. And the roundy circle thing to denote a placename. Like I said, it’s probably not entirely accurate, but it does the job.

Heru’s is a little more straightforward, and follows the same sort of structure. I am very proud of my Heru-bird, which, apart from a bit of a badly formed beak, looks pretty falcon-y, tbh. Heru’s title at the end is Lord of the Two Lands. And I used that rendering of ‘two lands’ because its easier to paint. XD

Have a close-up of my dodgy winged solar disc as a final photo. 😀 I think I redid it twice, and I still couldn’t get the lines properly straight or curved enough. Stupid solar disc. XD The figures on either side are other more boat-like renderings of the Night Boat (left) and the Day Boat (right). They are pointing the directions they are because the shrine will be aligned west-east along a northern wall, so they’ll be facing the right directions. They are a little less bodged up than the solar disc. Stupid solar disc. I drew pencil guidelines on and everything. *curses* Still, it is what it is. And it’s not that unrecognisable. Anyway. Enough of that. Let’s just go and bask in the epicness of the shrine, and I’ll go out and paint me some moar Ivar. Because there is always moar Ivar to stain. /the joys of Ikea. 😀