lyre

the devils dictionary
n. An ancient instrument of torture. The word is now used in a figurative sense to denote the poetic faculty, as in the following fiery lines of our great poet, Ella Wheeler Wilcox:

I sit astride Parnassus with my lyre,
And pick with care the disobedient wire.
That stupid shepherd lolling on his crook
With deaf attention scarcely deigns to look.
I bide my time, and it shall come at length,
When, with a Titan's energy and strength,
I'll grab a fistful of the strings, and O,
The world shall suffer when I let them go!
—Farquharson Harris
(also: instruments of torture)
(also: ancient instruments of torture)
(also: modern instruments of torture)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

wasp

trustycoffeemug
(n.) an animal much like a bee, but characterized by pure evil and bent on wreaking misery throughout the cosmos.

(also: hornet), and for that matter (also: yellowjacket), cuz they're all the same damn thing, no doubt employing some fiendish masquerade to better infiltrate human society.

chicken

trustycoffeemug
(n.) the demon cluck-bird is its name, eat its wings to make it tame

these birds, often raised domestically on farms, are known for their gormless stupidity and delicious versatility: their flesh is high in protein, their eggs make a nourishing breakfast, and their necks are easily wrung for convenient sacrifices.

defying the age old philosophical query, there is no particular motivation a chicken might have for crossing a road, as they do not know what roads are.

byzantine

trustycoffeemug
(adj.) describing any system with excessively complicated administrative obstacles to circumvent

originates from the eastern half of the roman empire, where red tape spread like cobwebs across the minarets

camera

trustycoffeemug
(n.) a device used to scan one's surroundings and convert the scan into a two-dimensional image which can later be shown to your neighbors at boring get-togethers.

may also steal souls.

ancient egypt

trustycoffeemug
where to begin? egyptian history spans over 5000 years. egypt was ancient long before the single day on which rome was built.

to be as brief as is feasible, the upper and lower portions of egypt first became unified sometime between 3200 and 3000 BC, possibly by somebody named Narmer or Menes, who thus became the founder of the first dynasty of pharaohs. narmer's dynasty dicks around for a bit, leave behind a few prototype tombs in the village of saqqara, and is replaced by a second dynasty. that dynasty does more dicking around and is replaced again. this more or less sets the tone for the rest of egyptian history.

old kingdom egypt (3rd-6th dynasties); the big pointy pyramids you're thinking of come from the fourth dynasty
* an intermediate period (7th-11th dynasties)
middle kingdom egypt (11th-13th dynasties); the book of the dead, that famous egyptian book you've heard of, only shows up in rough draft form around this period
* another intermediate period (13th-17th dynasties)
new kingdom egypt (18th-20th dynasties); tutankhamun, the one pharaoh everyone has heard of, was the second-to-last pharaoh of the 18th dynasty
* sure, why not another intermediate period (21st-25th dynasties), followed by some twilight years (the late period extending to the 31st dynasty), during which egypt got conquered by persians


By this point it's already the 330s BC, and greece (led by alexander the great) took over egypt and left it in control of some doofus named ptolemy. not too long after that, it was conquered again by the romans, by which time we've only just arrived at caesar boinking cleopatra.

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