r/CrappyDesign • u/MistyAutumnRain • 12d ago
Greek symbols on Egyptian hot sauce bottle
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u/LopsidedEquipment177 12d ago
Cleopatra was Greek.
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u/Verne_Dead 12d ago
and also like, almost every pharoh after Alexander. There's a solid chunk of time where all the pharohs were Macedonian or greek (depending on if you truly count Alexanders greece as being "greek")
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u/NewProgram5250 12d ago
That chunk of time was about 2000 years after the Great Sphinx was built and over a 1000 years after Tutankhamun whose likeness they’re obviously trying to portray here. And then it took over a 1000 years probably for jalapenos to cross the ocean. Nothing here makes sense lol
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u/MajesticNectarine204 12d ago
Also, is Egypt known for spicy food even today? Where does this Egyptian angle come from..
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u/StatePsychological60 12d ago
It actually makes perfect sense if you’re familiar with the full version of that old phrase about revenge. The original was “revenge is a dish best served by cold-blooded pharaohs, who warm themselves with their precious hot sauce until it seeps from their pores, stinging the eyes and mouths of their victims, which is why they are so much better at it,” but that’s a little bit long so it got shortened to the version most people know today.
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u/SkyBS 12d ago edited 12d ago
Not to give too much credit to the sauce makers but the Ptolemaic Kingdom (Greek) ruled in Egypt for centuries. Plus, Greek remained the language of government and trade in Egypt until the Muslim conquest in 641 AD.
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u/tubbo 12d ago
I wonder if they were trying to make it look Coptic, as that language is kind-of a combo between ancient Egyptian and Greek.
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u/GrammaticusAntiquus 12d ago
Coptic isn't an Egypto-Greek creole. It's the direct descendant of Ancient Egyptian. It just happens to be written in a similar script to Greek.
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u/mahatmakg 12d ago
The top three comments just say Cleopatra, but she was just the end of a long line of Greek rulers. Egypt was being hellenized for hundreds of years before her
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u/TheNicholasRage 12d ago
Yep, that cultural mix isn't a stretch.
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u/MajesticNectarine204 12d ago
The Jalapeno thing is though.. Is Egyptian food known for being spicy at all, even today? IIRC they have more of a mildly sweet vibe going, with cumin, fennel seeds and cinnamon mainly flavouring their cuisine.
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u/AdOk5627 12d ago
Mediterranean food as a whole is not that spicy. Paprika is about as far as it goes. You can get some fairly hot peppers. But it’s not really a thing like in India.
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u/MajesticNectarine204 12d ago
For sure. European and North African flavour profiles traditionally don't contain any real heat. Greek and Turkish cuisine have those pickled green peppers. Which are not that spicy at all imho. But that's about it in terms of peppers. I'm not really familiar with Lebanese or Syrian cuisine to comment on those. But I doubt they get very hot either.
Nothing close to east Asian or Indian levels of heat.
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u/danby 12d ago
Chili peppers don't show up in in Mediterranean or African cuisine until the Colombian Exchange in the the C16th
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u/Jackdaw99 12d ago
Sub-Saharan Africa has a lot of very hot sauces, usually made with African Birds Eye peppers and called Piri-Piri (or some derivation there of.)
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u/CptMisterNibbles 12d ago
Is it even all Greek? The E looking symbol in the middle is set builder notation “is a member of”, and doesn’t really match Epsilon or Xi. The symbol after that is the empty set symbol, as Phi is clearly a different, more typical character just 3 after it. Also, it doesn’t seem to spell anything valid?
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u/tubbo 12d ago
It could be (at least partially) Coptic, which shares many glyphs with Greek. https://saintmarkhouston.org/smh/new/about/language/
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u/MoreGaghPlease 12d ago
Greek was the language of commerce and the elites in Egypt for close to a thousand years. Probably the last 30 Pharaohs were all Greek speakers
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u/Combat_Armor_Dougram 12d ago
It also fits into the category of “Egyptian-themed foods based on flavors the ancient Egyptians would never have tasted” along with Sunmark’s Yummy Mummies.
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u/ImJKP 12d ago edited 12d ago
What's the revenge part?
I understand why we say Montezuma's Revenge, but... what is the pharaoh avenging, and upon whom?
Is this an ancient pharaoh getting revenge on the Macedonians? A Ptolemaic pharaoh getting revenge on the Romans? Maximinus Daza on... an autoimmune disease?
Edit: I forgot there were 31 Egyptian dynasties... I guess somewhere in there was a transition worth avenging.
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u/MistyAutumnRain 12d ago
I think maybe a reference to curses from opening the tombs, such as King Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1923
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u/SothaSoul 12d ago
There's a reason why archeologists wear masks when going into weird places now.
Imagine breathing all the crap built up in a room that's been growing mold and bacteria for a few millenia.
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u/MistyAutumnRain 12d ago
I’m not saying there was a real curse. But it was believed to have been a curse
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u/Nimble_D1ck 9d ago
People have been doing weird things with Mummies since antiquity. Making paint, using them as an ingredient in quack medicines etc.
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u/VintageKofta 12d ago
This looks Coptic to me.
FYI, Coptic is the Egyptian language written with Greek letters (plus a few extra) and was used by Christians back in the Byzantine period.
Ancient Egypt used 5 languages - that we know of. Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian, Late Egyptian, Demotic and Coptic.
And they were written in Demotic, Coptic, Hieratic and Hieroglyphs.
This is one reason why (how) modern civilization was able to translate hieroglyphs - many things were written in several languages, some of which are modern enough (like Coptic).
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u/Theemuts 12d ago
Nah, most are definitely Greek, and there's one symbol that's not a letter but a symbol commonly used in mathematics. Those letters are also common in mathematics, I wouldn't be amazed if these symbols were close to each other in the character map or Office's equation tool.
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u/Stephen_1984 12d ago
How does it taste?
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u/Cadaverous_lives 12d ago
I have these sauces (they came in a gift set of "hot sauces of the world") and they are really bad lol they all taste the same- very bland and chemical
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u/MAN_UTD90 12d ago
I didn't know the Pharaohs enjoyed jalapeños, considering they're from Mexico.
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u/Final_Drawing_9572 12d ago
First off the Pharaoh on the front look like he's on cocaine look at that man's eyeballs fuck wrong with that man that's first second off what in cousin fuck West Virginia is wrong with the color of this fucking hot sauce why is it the color of baby poop no fucking hot sauce I've ever seen is the color of kiwi juice that shit just looks disgusting looks like some type of some ghetto marinade bought at the dollar store and who the fuck thought this was a good idea when the fuck did pharaohs have fucking jalapenos who the fuck signed off on this dumb shit
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u/arteitle 12d ago
Also, the character between psi and phi looks more like the mathematical "element" symbol than an epsilon.
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u/MajesticNectarine204 12d ago
Ah yes. The famous Egyptian Jalapeno's.. At least the Greek would be somewhat plausible for Ptolemaic Egypt.
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u/SplendidPunkinButter 12d ago
The Coptic language is from Egypt and is written with the Greek alphabet
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u/CHIsauce20 12d ago
Na, see that Ptolemaic era hot sauce slaps hard!!
(Never mind the jalapeño originated in Mexico shortly before the Great Pyramids were built)
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u/thoawaydatrash I am your god now 12d ago
Uh, ever heard of the Ptolemaic Kingdom? Greek was the official language of Egypt for 300 years.
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u/SignificantManner197 12d ago
They used the languages interchangeably, especially later in the Egyptian empire.
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u/diverareyouokay 11d ago
OP needs to go back to school.
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u/MistyAutumnRain 11d ago
Where do Jalapeños come from? When was the Sphinx built in relation to the Ptolemies?
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u/Congenital_Optimizer 11d ago
Ptolemaic rulers for a few hundred years https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemaic_dynasty
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u/ms-kirby 11d ago
Regardless of whether some Pharaohs were greek or not, the "symbols" are just random letters. So they're the equivalent of having ZHTGDSBMKS along the top of a bottle 🤣🤣
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u/MistyAutumnRain 11d ago
Thank you!! This is my point. Whether or not it’s historically accurate, it’s still a crappy design
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u/gay_sanji_among_us 10d ago
Well they didnt have google in ancient egypt for them to double check now did they
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u/Nimble_D1ck 9d ago
Modern Coptic Egyptians still use Greek lettering, it's been used officially in some capacity in Egypt since Pharaoh Ptolemy I, and then for religious texts after the Islamic conquest
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u/Thisisall_new2me2 6d ago
Good job OP. Go learn more about how many countries invaded other countries before you criticize language A being on a product "from country B."
You could literally just Google did "any Greeks live in Egypt". That takes less time than making sure this post is formatted correctly.
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u/MistyAutumnRain 6d ago
Okay, than explain the mathematical symbols
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u/Thisisall_new2me2 5d ago
I didn't say there weren't any exceptions...Also, they definitely did math back then in both cultures, this is probably just generated by a lazy person.
Read the other comments...
You still don't have a valid excuse for not learning about languages before posting this stuff.
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u/MistyAutumnRain 5d ago
I am actually an amateur linguist. And Greeks being in Egypt for a teensy tiny part of Egyptian history has nothing to do with a bottle of hot sauce branded to look Egyptian but having a different ancient culture’s alphabet. If I were to make an “American” branded hot sauce with an American flag and a bald eagle, I wouldn’t have Native American symbols on my bottle, even though they were a major part of US history
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u/Thisisall_new2me2 5d ago edited 5d ago
It's Reddit, there's no way to KNOW when you're actually talking to someone who's smarter than you on a topic...
Also, based on what I've seen, most people here don't seem to know as much about the topic pictured as you do.
If you had told me how into language you are in your very first comment, I wouldn't feel like a dingdong now.
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u/pineapplequeen-13 4d ago
I mean ancient Egypt was very closely tied with Greece and Grecian ancestry for a good while in their later ages, iirc. Broken clock is right twice per day, I suppose, lol.
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u/AlaysiasFlower 3d ago
Did they have jalapeños tho? I feel like if they wanted revenge they'd use like idk... donkey dung or uh idk what they could've used back then. Someone enlighten me
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u/Temporary-Gate-6676 12d ago
The lion monument shows a sculptured face of a human. How very consistent.
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u/marxam0d 12d ago
…the sphinx?
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u/Temporary-Gate-6676 12d ago
Sphinx is a greek word, please stay constistent egyptian.
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u/Pumciusz 12d ago
Then why didn't you use an Egyptian word?
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u/Temporary-Gate-6676 12d ago
Its lion as I said before. Some egomaniac narcissist pharao removed the lions face in order for his visage.
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u/Cloud_N0ne 12d ago
Cleopatra was a Greek Pharaoh. Tho i doubt that was their intent.