Balance & Krokotopia: Their Relation with Ancient Egypt

Balance and Krokotopia

A Guide to their relation to Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt: a vast desert filled with towering pyramids and intricate beliefs. What a civilization they were! It's clear to see the relation of Krokotopia and Balance to Ancient Egypt, but we are going to look deeper, far past the obvious, to see the hidden relations KingsIsle has made for us to discover! 

Balance

Balance is a school that draws from the others and infuses it's own magic. But I bet you'd be surprised at how accurate Balance magic is when you compare it to Ancient Egyptian magic!

Magic

• Comparison of magicians and magic to schools of magic, not including balance (yet)

The Egyptians had many types of magicians:

• Elementalists
• Fire, Earth, Water, and Wind
• Storm & Ice are sometimes considered Elemental
• Necromancers
• Death Magic
• Diviners
• Charm Makers
• Healers
• Statuary

You'll notice that a lot of these are schools of magic in Wizard101. Could it be possible that Egyptian magic influenced basic Wizard101 principles?

So here is where I'm going with the types of magic and Balance...

• Elemental magic- let's use Fire, Ice and Storm.
• Elemental schools are the first part of the infusion of balance and other schools.
• Spells like Elemental Blast, Hydra, and Elemental Blade use Elemental Magic- which is Egyptian
• The description of each type of Elemental Magic perfectly describes the Wizard101 equivalent
• Necromancy, Death Magic, and Healers
• Death and Life Magic in Wizard101
• Necromancy and Death Magic Combined is the Wizard101 Death School
• Healers: What the Life School is centered around
• Chimera, Spirit Blades, and Spirit Blast use Necromancy, Death and Healing magic
• Statuary

• This magician creates figurines, or shabti, to help in battle
• Myth and their minions

Magicians summoned creatures, used avatars, and spells. They battled and dueled other magicians. Magicians used wands, staffs, and even amulets in battle.

Avatars were a version of the gods that helped empower them... Could this be a relation with auras?

Direct Relations of Egypt and Balance

Balance appears to be a desert themed school, centered around desert creatures and Egyptian culture.

Creatures of the Desert

• Scarab
• Scorpion

Desert Event

• Sandstorm

There are 3 spells that are related to Egypt:

• Scarab
• Judgement
• Ra

Scarab

• Sacred creature
• Symbol of Khepri, the Scarab God, who is an aspect of Ra in the morning
• Very common in Egypt
• Many amulets, jewelry, and hieroglyphs are of scarabs

Judgement

• Winged lady holding balance scale and possible khopesh
• balance scale- market place
• khopesh- Egyptian sword
• This is either the goddess/being/creature Ma'at, Goddess of Order (balance)
• Or Isis, Goddess of Magic.
• Both are winged
• I think it is most likely Ma'at, since she is the Goddess of Order, which is balance, which embodies the school.
• The only way Isis could be considered is because she is the Goddess of Magic, and she is winged- but with rainbows, so that potentially eliminates her.

*The goddess Isis is not related to the group of terrorists who's name is coincidentally the same.

   

Judgement

    

Ma'at                           Isis

Which one is Judgement?

*Note: a major difference is the head dress*

Ra

• Sun God
• King of the Gods
• Patron of Pharaohs
• In Ra's spell, he holds a staff and an ankh, which is historically correct
• He uses the sun to do damage, which is also correct since Ra is the sun god
• Ra spell: Ra appears as part bird; Gods had animal forms, and were also represented with an animal head.
• His animal is a falcon
• Almost the entire spell is historically correct with a little twist
• His head dress is incorrect
• Other minor incorrections

     

Miscellaneous

• Niles the Balance tree is named after the river Nile
• The Balance School is in Krokotopia
• Krokotopia

Krokotopia: land of the pyramids, restless spirits, enslaved manders and angry kroks. Sounds a lot like Ancient Egypt, right? Ancient Egypt, land of the great pyramids, tombs, enslaved people, and gods. Very similar indeed. But did you know there's more in common then meets the eye?

Obvious Similarities

• Pyramids
• Hieroglyphs
• Desert Environment
• "Krokosphynx"
• NPC names
• Location names
• Titles of NPCs

*I'm not going to expand on these because they are self explanatory

Less Obvious Similarities

• Marleybone explorers: Marleybone is like England, and they did explore Egypt and excavate it
• Mander slaves: could be similar to the Hebrew/Jewish people being enslaved by Egyptians
• Some hieroglyphs actually resemble real ones:
• Eye of Horus
• Ankh
• Misc. that are just Krokotopian versions of the real one
• Temples
• The Krokonomicon
• Necronomicon

The Zigazag Dungeons

These dungeons have a whole lot of direct references to Ancient Egypt! Some you may be able to pick up, others, you might not.

• Apep The Snaky One- Represented as a snake
• Apep, aka Apophis, was the snake God of Chaos
• Ammit the Devourer- Represented as a krok
• Ammit the Devourer stood beside the scale of Ma'at and ate the wicked souls after judgement
• She had the head of a crocodile, torso of a lion and hindquarters of a hippo
• Anubis
• God of the underworld/dead, guided the dead souls
• Mentioned in quest dialogue
• Ammit's location on the scales
• She is located on The Scales of Judgement
• Ammit stands on one side of the scale
• Battle her on this scale
• The poor manders are also there, awaiting the judgement of their hearts
• The other scale has a feather resting on it
• This is The Feather of Truth
• Hearts are measured against this

This will be updated as more similarities are made.

Sources

• The Kane Chronicles by Rick Riordan
• Ancient Egypt Online
• Wizard101 Central Wiki
• Wizard101.com

Originally posted in Wizard101 Central > Guides on April 29th, 2015.

If you have made a similarity or contradiction to this guide, PLEASE leave a comment for others to see! I may add some similarities that have been brought to my attention!