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TheHipcrimeVocab t1_je7rxyz wrote

Cool article. The British controlled Egypt in 1936, so it would be impossible for a massive German excavation to take place just outside of Cairo. But, hey, it's a movie!

I found this odd: "The sadistic Sturmbannführer Arnold Toht (the surname is an Egyptian wink, recalling the name of the scribe god Thot..." First, I've never heard him given a first name, so I don't know where that came from. Second, I'm pretty sure his name is related to the German word for death (e.g. Tohtenkopf; "Death's Head"), not an Egyptian god.

This article talks about how burials in Northern Europe were used for propaganda purposes by the Nazis:

>The ideology of 1930s Germany helped shape scholars’ initial interpretation of the grave. Discovered barely a year and a half after the Nazis took power, politics quickly became enmeshed in the skeleton’s story. Archaeologists were a fundamental part of Adolf Hitler’s nation-building program, which sought to locate physical evidence of the original Aryans, who the Nazis believed were blond-haired and blue-eyed and came from northern Europe. Hoping to support this idea, another archaeologist on the scene—who was a member of the Amt Rosenberg, a cultural policy and surveillance body within the Nazi party—proclaimed the grave that of an ur-Aryan based on the presence of the single stone ax and microliths. “The Nazis thought the burial belonged to a white man from the Neolithic,” says Harald Meller, director of the State Museum of Prehistory, an erroneous and dangerous conclusion that was part of a larger campaign to prove that the German “race” had been in northern Europe for thousands of years.

https://www.archaeology.org/issues/501-2303/features/11195-germany-mesolithic-shaman-burial

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BishopofHippo93 t1_je7vwvo wrote

There is no h in Totenkopf, the German word for dead is “tot” and Death is “Tod.” The added h could be a reference to Thoth, but I suspect it was not intended.

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proposlander t1_je8j337 wrote

What’s interesting about the first and third Indy movies, which have the Nazis as the big bad, is that they have what could be interpreted as subtle digs against certain groups that collaborated with them. In the first movie, you have the French archaeologist which could represent the Vichy, and the Arab informant which could represent some leadership in the Arab world who at times also collaborated (e.g. Grand Mufti of Jerusalem). In the third movie, you had the American business man that collaborated with the Nazis representing the American corporations that had trade relations with them, and those in the US that were sympathetic like Ford/Lindbergh, etc.

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Divine_Tiramisu t1_je9430f wrote

Egypt was a protectorate, not a colony of Britain.

The Egyptian royal family became a puppet to the UK after getting into debt while building the Suez Canal.

That's why they leased the canal to the UK for 99 years.

The Nazis would have been free to move about Egypt as they pleased, only seeking permission from the local government.

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Private_4160 t1_je8ldpt wrote

I figured Todt, the engineering firm.

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outoftimeman t1_je8zzx7 wrote

The Organisation Todt was a state-agency, not a firm. Small nitpick, sorry

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Private_4160 t1_je9p2hu wrote

Yeah had no idea what to call them, figured "party construction apparatus" was weird.

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Efyrum t1_jeb3cu6 wrote

Just because Egypt was a British protectorate didn’t mean Germans were banned from entry or archaeology. Britain and Germany were pretty friendly in 1936.

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quondam47 t1_jebpnj9 wrote

He’s given a first name in the novelisation.

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