If you enjoyed this, you might also like David Maculay's "Motel of the Mysteries", which imagines a 41st-century archaeologist attempting to interpret a 20th-century motel (and getting it hilariously wrong).
> Perhaps the single most important article in the chamber was the ICE (No. 14). This container, whose function evolved from the Canopic jars of earliest times, was designed to preserve, at least symbolically, the major internal organs of the deceased for eternity. The Yanks, who revered long and complex descriptions, called the container an Internal Component Enclosure.
I have a special connection to this topic. When my then-girlfriend was in college (early 1980s) she mentioned this essay to me. Crucially, I didn’t see the word. Just heard it from her. She took the whole thing seriously, even though she mentioned it sounded just like modern folk.
So she wrote an earnest essay taking the anthropological parallels seriously, and got a C because she hadn’t got the joke. She was a tensely serious student and correctly talked the prof into a higher grade because there was no reason she should have got it.
Thing is, I was constantly reading words backwards all the time just to hear them pronounced. It must have been annoying as hell. In my head when I heard the word, never having seen it, I spelled it “Nassirema” which isn’t interesting backwards. So for once in the many years we went out I didn’t bother to blurt out the word in reverse. She was the kindest person I have ever known, but she was a little annoyed.
Sorry, Elizabeth Green, wherever you are! I’m still ashamed of myself for that one.
I'm ashamed to say I horrifiedly read that entire thing without getting it, although that did grant me the opportunity to read it again from a whole new perspective. Funny stuff. That was awesome.
Interestingly, I recall reading this article in high school as a class assignment. It was part of a required course for all Freshmen too, with a standardized curriculum.
I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that 13-year-old me was wondering why he’d never heard of the Nacirema before. Until we discussed in class the next day, I didn't realize it was "American" spelled backwards.
Edit: Actually, I think the particular article we read in school was "The Mysterious Fall of the Nacirema". Thank you to UncleSlacky for posting it elsewhere in this thread, I didn't realize there was more than one.
I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that 30-year-old me was wondering why I'd never heard of the Nacarima before. Until I read your comment, I didn't realize it was "America" spelled backwards.
> No matter how ill the supplicant or how grave the emergency, the guardians of many temples will not admit a client if he cannot give a rich gift to the custodian. Even after one has gained and survived the ceremonies, the guardians will not permit the neophyte to leave until he makes still another gift.
My Sociology teacher had us read this in class. When I told her it was about Americans, she told me I was wrong and that she had been using this as a teaching aid for over a decade.
