[Warning: This post contains heavy sentiment and lamenting, if this is not something you wish to see, please feel free to move on to happier, fluffier posts/pages]

This is one of those times when I would ask my father. He is one of the few people who could give me an accurate answer. I wanted to do an ink sketch of a stuffed toy dog in Ancient Egyptian armour.

Except, when I Googled “Ancient Egyptian Armour”, I got a lot of Hollywood, highly stylised armour. I wanted something more realistic to what they would have worn in those times. I then remembered things my father was studying. Ancient Egypt was a catch all phrase. In order to get a better picture, I would need to be more specific and enter in a region such as Sumeria, Mesopotamia, or Palestine etc…

If my father was still here he could have given me clear directions along with some intriguing anecdotes about Ancient armour and this would have been so much faster. Which brings me to why I’m posting this here instead of in my own process blog. In order to give more insight into the man known as Jim Wagner.

Jim Wagner had a vast knowledge of language and stemming from that, knowledge of various cultures and their history. One of them was Ancient Africa and the Middle East (please note my own ignorance on the subject and therefore I am only speaking extremely colloquially and in the most general of terms). I grew up with access to specialised knowledge thanks to my father. I’m only now just beginning to understand how rare this knowledge was and it only saddens me more that this wealth is now gone.