| Former Visiting Professor Jarvey
Join Date: Dec 2013
Posts: 570
Hogwarts RPG Name:
Braith McCormack
Graduated | 
SPOILER!!: Silent Students Quote:
Originally Posted by Tegz  Was there much point of answering? West knew what those were, his dad was a curse breaker after all, and he'd spent a whole bunch of time in Egypt -even time in Egypt with Botros the previous year. Better then to let others answer maybe? All logographs and abjads were interesting to him though, even when he already knew about them, so West kept his attention on the professor. Quote:
Originally Posted by Team ronmione History of Magic and Ancient Runes. Great, that's all Tag needed. Ancient Runes, which he was starting to feel odd about, and History of Magic combined. So, when McCormack set the items on the desk he simply inched out of his seat for a couple of seconds and tried to get the best look he could get from here.
He was most certainly not going up there and have the possibility of being stared down by Botros in hopes of him hoping his student knew what that was and then Tag getting it wrong.
Nope. No idea at all. So the boy just sighed in his seat and listened to everyone else's answers. Rather not risk anything if he wasn't sure, anyway. Quote:
Originally Posted by fanficfanatict The sixth year squinted to get a better look at the items on his Professor's desk when he noticed that everyone else had picked up what he had. At first glance, perhaps he was wrong because there were more ancient cultures then Greek, Roman and Egyptian, it all did look rather Egyptian to him. But that was mostly because of the type of artistry and, yeah, the eye.
That was very Egyptian looking to him.
BUT seeing as how everyone else had ready answered, he was just gonna sit in silence. As per usual. Quote:
Originally Posted by Meizzner Nigel knew the fun could only last one class now that Professor McCormack had actually looked at the roster for the class. Oh well. Now on to what they would be learning. Today. Nice this was awesome. The Prefect was very interested in this. He did wanted to be a curse breaker after all.
Was the first one a cartouche? Nigel could not really tell, but logograms were always interesting.
He walked up to get a closer look and went back to his seat and continued to take notes. Quote:
Originally Posted by hermionesclone The idea of combining History of Magic and Ancient Runes was... interesting. Really. A lot of the things they did in Ancient Runes had a history part to it, yeah? Magical history and legends. Like Norse mythology and how the runes came about and...
...
... Oh?
With some difficulty, Alec sat up a little straighter and looked towards the front. Ancient Egyptian artefacts? Hieroglyphs? He squinted at the items there. SQUINT. No wonder he was getting wrinkles with all of this squinting. The boy rubbed his eyes before looking back at the front of the classroom again. He couldn't see much but... he did notice that blue shape that the History of Magic professor had held up before. The second one.
... Egyptian artefacts? He was going to agree with that. Nodnod. Quote:
Originally Posted by Cedric When McCormack lifted the objects, Schuyler recognized the symbols as Egyptian hieroglyphics. Her blue eyes flickered to Botros then because just recently, when they were dancing together at Airey's lesson, the Ancient Runes professor had told her that tidbit of information about the snake bands that the women wore. Maybe he had been planning this lesson around that time.
But anyway, the objects. She left her seat - slower than usual - and approached the table. She checked them out and then returned to her desk. Most of the other students had already contributed what she knew, or thought she knew, about them, so Schuyler simply scribbled down a few notes and fought the urge to try her hand at doodling one of those Egyptian eyes. Taking notes, quietly observing, learning through osmosis.. it was all good to Braith. They were behaving themselves and would end up absorbing information somehow, even if just through listening. Though he was slightly surprised by the silence of a specific few.
SPOILER!!: slightly off-topic Quote:
Originally Posted by nanyjj At the History of Magic Professor's words, Leah got up gingerly and walked up to the desk. The artifacts were beautiful, but not really her style. What were they supposed to do again? Oh, observe.
The girl stared, and stared, and stared but nothing came to mind. She thought of Ancient Egypt but someone else had answered that. "That one has a stick man on it," she finally said, pointing at the third one from the left, giggling. Quote:
Originally Posted by DaniDiNardo Lex was still holding on to the Professor's head of BLONDE hair when she felt a hand on her shoulder. With one last sniffle she turned to find it was Cassia...with her blonde hair still in tact. Wibble. She wanted chocolate. This was horrid. Truly horrid. How could they invite her to a class where the Professor was aging in reverse when she was likely to shrivel up and DIE by the end of the week?? This was CRUELTY. Oh and what? She turned to see Hair Boy...complimenting her hair. The smile she gave him was only half there. It was nice he thought that but Lex knew the truth.
She made no fuss when the Professor removed her hand but gave a small sigh. A glance at the HoM Professor told her he might have been a little perturbed by her display just now but jeeeeeez, open your eyes man! The Professor had BLONDE hair! This wasn't natural.
This was gonna make it even harder for her to concentrate, did they know? She knew. It was happening already. Professor McCormack was speaking but her eyes were glued to Professor Botros. Could he see her staring at him?? Because she wasn't about to avert her gaze. Something was seriously wrong.
Her ears tuned in intime to hear talk about artifacts and she looked to the table as she hadn't gone to her seat just yet. Er.....
"Poorly constructed pieces of art?" It looked like something her 4 year old sister could pull off. Just saying. Um. Braith wasn’t sure what to make of either of these answers really. He looked at each of the girls, then back at the artifacts, then back at the girls again. At least they didn’t repeat Egypt? And yeah, he supposed the one looked something like a stick figure, but these were treasured relics, Miss Cambridge. ”Well,” he said after a moment’s thought. ”We aren’t really going to focus on their aesthetic values today...” SPOILER!!: Egypt/hieroglyphics answers Quote:
Originally Posted by FireboltAvis88 Sander sat up when it seemed the class was beginning. He squinted to see what Professor McCormack was showing them. It looked like stones with weird carvings on them. But not being able to see what they were, Sander got up from his seat and slowly walked up where the objects lay and studied them when it was his turn to do so.
To him the engravings on the objects looked like hieroglyphics. He had seen something like that once when his parents took him to the National Museum of History back home.
Raising his hand, Sander decided to hazard a guess.
"Professor are those engravings, hieroglyphics? I think I recognize the symbol for the sun and water on one of them. Did you get them from Egypt?" Quote:
Originally Posted by lemon It was really hard to see the artifacts Professor McCormack was showing them. Since her eyes were having so much difficulty seeing, it would have been better to move closer (even though her seat was in the very front of the room), but Alice couldn't bear to get up. Her knees. They HURT. So much. Commuting would be too much effort for her little frail body.
So she went with what someone else said. Egyptian heiroglyphics, then. And their shape was just right for...
"Is that one a logogram?" Maybe. It was a guess. "Also called a logograph. Graphemes and stuff." Gran had mentioned something about them before, but Alice hadn't been paying much attention because cursebreaking things were such a snore. Really, put her right to sleep. Quote:
Originally Posted by Deezerz Ahh, so it was a joint lesson. Huh. How come she hadn't remembered that? Bev was sure she would...would she? Eh. It didn't matter. She was in the right classroom. She walked over to the desk that had her name tag on it, one at the front, and sat down carefully.
While the History of Magic professor started the lesson she took out a piece of parchment, quill and glasses, of course. Slipping them on she still had to squint at the artifacts. One of them stood out the most. Maybe because it was printed on one of the little black pearls on her bracelet, or because she's read about it countless of time.
She raised her hand gingerly. "That one is the Eye of Horus," she said. It was, right? The eye-looking thing. Squint, squint. "It is believed to protect the wearer. It's also very important in Egypt." Quote:
Originally Posted by lazykitty Ha, others should take note. It seemed that she'd gotten a smile for pretending everything was hunky - dory.
As class began, Layla got ready to take notes. Only, it seemed they would be starting off with a test of what they knew. And she recognized the objects immediately, having studied them in every art and history class she'd ever taken. "Those are artifacts from Ancient Egypt. The engravings on them are hieroglyphs and that's the way that the Ancient Egyptians communicated," she replied. But, she couldn't see how they connected to magic, or the study of the history of it. Didn't magic start in Europe? With Merlin? Or was she mistaken? Quote:
Originally Posted by GrapehGrape Adelaide was kind of staring at Botros. Whatever was going on in this castle was weird. Botros seemed to be getting younger while students and other teachers were getting older. How was this even remotely possible in anyway?
...But then McCormack was talking and holding up things. What were they? Really she couldn't see very well from where she was sitting so she got up and walked to the desk. He had said it was all right. Addi inspected the things a little before turning back to the professor.
"They're from Egypt and seem to have hieroglyphs on them." She pointed to the blue one with the eye. "That's the Eye of Horus. He was one of the Egyptian gods." Yay for her childhood mythology obsession paying off in a class.
She went back to her seat and waited for him to go on. Quote:
Originally Posted by SlytherinSistah Having steeled himself against what he thought would be a general barrage of the information that often accompanied talks about Egypt, Cutty put up his hand and offered a reply to Professor McCormack, "They're written in Mdw Ntr." Or as it was known in English, the Divine Language. Quote:
Originally Posted by Daydreamer11 Alex squinted at the artifacts, trying hard to see the symbols that were written on each one. She recognized them as hieroglyphics, as the other students had mentioned. Alex raised her hand because one of the symbols looked familiar to her. "One of the symbols is an an ankh and it's known as the symbol of life", Alex said. She wasn't extremely knowledgeable about hieroglyphics in general, but she was confident about the answer she had given. Quote:
Originally Posted by TakemetotheBurrow She was still staring only now it was just occasional glances over at Botros because Professor McCormack was talking and Ella did find the artifacts he was showing quite interesting. She'd read enough to know that they were from Egypt. The Eye of Horus was a good indicator of that. And because several other classmates had already given information that she knew, the blonde tried to think of anything else that would have been of use to the others. Hmm.
Oh, the beetle! "That's a Scarab beetle on the first one, I think. They were important symbols and I think...associated with the sun." Maybe. They were also associated with dung but Ella wasn't about to say that.
And Oakey would have loved this class, did Botros know?
She'd need to write him about it. Quote:
Originally Posted by FearlessLeader19 Grinning from ear to ear, adi waved to Benny as he settled down. Too bad he won't get to have a little chat with him as the class was starting. Time to focus! Focus he must but that was sort of difficult after Sophie had said yes to his question.
Focus, focus, focus! Adi eyed the objects the History of Magic Professor was showing them. They reminded him of cavemen as they would draw on caves but these drawing were on stones or rocks or something. The symbols were familiar..."Those are Egyptian symbols,'' he said, his hand in the air. He recognised them from that computer game he played at home- Amazing Adventure: The Lost Tomb. Quote:
Originally Posted by carpediem
Caelen looked up and focused as the professor started talking. Because she didn't want to miss this weird double lesson by sleeping in class. Or by daydreaming the whole time. Lessons were important things, ya know?
Also, she thought she figured out the carvings. They came from somewhere in the Middle Eastern part of the Ancient world. But the question was Mesopotamia or Egypt? They both used carvings like that, but she couldn't remember what the carvings had in common. One used a lot of triangles, she remembered that. The other -the Egyptian one, she thinks- uses a lot of shapes and abstract things to mean language. Hmm, it was probably Egyptian because of the second one. But which one should she say? Why not both?
"Umm, it's either Egyptian or Mesopotamian because of the use of the ancient language. But probably... Egyptian. Because of the way the language looks." Okay, she made that guess sound surprisingly smart.
And what about the Professors lack of oldness? He never explained, only looked uncomfortable when people noticed it. Which made her feel like it was a LITTLE less fishy. Because what evil mastermind feels uncomfortable with his own work? Which meant that maybe the potions professor gave him a potion and he was now sporting the cool head of hair. But she would still have to keep her eye out.
That reminded her. She didn't need the potion, so she decided to keep it with her. Caelen figured it would come in handy soon and she didn't want to waste it on herself. A.K.A someone who didn't need it right now. A fact that the little redhead was proud of. Not that she was part of a probably small group of students who still looked young and probably didn't know why, but that she didn't need anything to help her. And of course she wasn't proud of the poor students who WERE really really old, because it seemed to be hurting them, but hey. She had a potion, if anyone needed it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lady of Light Delilah took out her parchment and her quill, placed them on her desk just as the professor announced that they were going to be discussing magical artifacts. Ooooh, interesting.
She squinted as Braith held them up one by one. Uh... She chewed on her lip for a moment before raising her hand. "Professor.. They look like ancient Egyptian artifacts. Hieroglyphs, I think?" Yeah, no. She wasn't hundred percent sure.. Oh, well. The girl leaned back against her seat as she listened to the answers given by others. Quote:
Originally Posted by Grrr..Meow Bay got up from his seat to take a closer look at these artifacts.. he's seen these before very shortly when his father was bringing them up to his office.. Bay looked at the Professors and said
"These are from Egypt…i know one is the Eye of Raw….." thats what he thought it was called it sounded the same as what his father said.. "these are really cool" he added.. moving out of the way of other students he made his way back to his desk. Quote:
Originally Posted by aaetha Well that was pretty obvious, wasn't it? Adrienne definitely thought so, at least. "They're Egyptian, of course." Even if you didn't know anything about hieroglyphics, it was still easy to tell just from the general aesthetic of the things. She'd always been fascinated by that particular culture, especially the idea of mummification. Who would have imagined that someone's religion would require that they wrap someone up and bury them underneath a pyramid so they could move on to the afterlife? Much more interesting than the modern religions that people always had.
"I think I see... definitely at least one Eye of Horus, the falcon-headed god, and is that an ankh?" Two very traditional Egyption symbols. How could anyone not be able to answer this question? Quote:
Originally Posted by Squishy Curiously, Lux got up from her seat and headed over so that she could get a better look at the artifacts. They looked really neat, and she actually thought she had some idea of what they were. Raising her hand, she said, "I think these are Egyptian. Ummm... hieroglyphics. That was how they used to write." She had seen other stones like these before, and knew that they were even written on walls. Quote:
Originally Posted by Expecto-Penguin Kace smiled when the professor greeted him and now it was time to get the class rolling. He saw the professor bring up some artifacts. They looked pretty cool and old in his eyes. The professor wanted to know, what he knew about them. He got up from his seat and went up to the front of the classroom. Kace looked at them some more and examined them.
"Professor the blue stone looks like a fish in my opinion. But the first one looked Egyptian because it has a scarab beetle on it. The green stone looks like it has an eye on it and a person dancing. I guess they are all egyptian symbols of some sort?" he squinted and then put the stones down. He gave it his best shot. He still thought the blue stone was pretty cool. Quote:
Originally Posted by UnicornDragonPatronus A combination of the classes- she hoped it would make these two classes, which had held her attention so far, even more interesting. She listened as the Professor spoke and craned her neck, hoping to see the artifacts a little bit better. When there was no one else getting up, she walked forward to take a better look at the pieces.
When she returned to her seat, she raised her hand. "They all look like they are Egyptian, sir," she said. "Although, they aren't all similar- are they from different time periods?" she asked. Granted, that could also mean that they were from different artists... but, she was just hypothesizing. Quote:
Originally Posted by Cassirin That was really unhelpful advice that Botros was offering, and Mo made faces as he took his seat. Didn't he know that Mo was already eating right and drinking water and otherwise trying to take care of himself? Didn't he know that?
Mo frowned a bit through the first question, although he eyed the artifacts with an interested eye. Those looked like things that Uncle Leon had around the house, but Mo wasn't an expert by any means. Or even well versed. Just observant. "Those marks look like hieroglyphics, Professor. It's an Egyptian language - not an alphabet, because each hieroglyph stands for a word rather than a sound. A logograph." Which his classmates had said, but hadn't necessarily explained. Quote:
Originally Posted by Rosa Chispa Princessa Oichi could barely tell what was going on but suddenly she saw an image and knew what it was but there was something different about these. Eyes? Oichi responded, "I think these are hyroglyphics but I have clue what the eye depictions are about, but they look creepy" Egypt... Egypt... Egypt.. M‘hmm, yeah they were from Egypt. He thought they’d figure that part out pretty easily. They all included hieroglyphics and imagery fairly representative of that region of the world, but seriously. Once one or two said it, did it need to be repeated? He really was looking for something a little more in-depth from the students, especially after they had been shown to be so intuitive from his last lesson, but perhaps he had been too vague and general in his own asking. Though the ones who had answered did so correctly, only one so far had come close to the path he was looking to lead down. "Yes, class, these artifacts all come from Egypt," he said with a nod. "I'm sure most of you were able to tell by the hieroglyphics carved into some of them." That would be most telling, yeah? "Of course, the hieroglyphs used by the Egyptians are symbols representative of words, known as logograms. Thank you for the explanation, Mr. Branxton." The Ravenclaw captain got a nod for his concise answer. As did Mr. Mordaunt for his knowledge of the specific name of the language. "Technically these relics could be called logograms, though I'm really looking for what type of magical relic these items are." Still too generalized? Possibly, but they'd get there. Quote:
Originally Posted by Anna Banana She scowled as she tried to form an answer to the question. She'd get up and take a closer look at the objects, but she wasn't sure her bones would be up to it. "That," she said, raising her hand and pointing to one of the objects, "is an amulet. It's designed to protect another person from danger." Now Braith had been pleased with the answers up until now, even the ones that had been slightly repetitive. They were all able to use their observational skills to figure out at least the basics of these relics with little to go on. And he had been even more pleased with Miss Wayne's answer as she seemed to veer in the direction that he wanted to take the class. But this next answer was exactly where the lesson was headed next. "Precisely, Miss Newell," McCormack gave the young, sullen-looking girl a slightly-crooked grin. "Each of these artifacts are indeed amulets, infused with magic to protect the possessor from harm." He gave an approving nod to the Slytherin, then looked up at the rest of the class. They were still listening, yeah? "Now, several of you mentioned specific symbols found on these amulets and that will become useful a little later. But for now, I'd like to discuss just the amulets, specifically those that originate in Egypt. What do you know about Egyptian amulets or even amulets in general?" Or what can you find out to share and discuss? Crack a book kids, hopefully you brought it today.
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