Q. Just what is this "Third Fury" business all about, anyway? 

A. The Three Furies, also known as the Erinyes or the Eumenides, were divine personifications of vengeance in Classical mythology. They were primordial goddesses, the daughters of the night, older than Zeus himself. While they incited both humans and gods to brutal acts of vengeance and rage, they also protected the downtrodden and persecuted those who had unfairly escaped the hand of human justice. They were particularly concerned with maintaining the proper order of the universe, and so took a special interest in crimes against nature itself, such as familial murders.  It is from Virgil's Aeneid that we know their names: Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera. 
     I chose to call this site "Third Fury" because I share a name with one of those three venerable ladies -- namely, Megaera. There isn't anything in particular that marks her as the third, but I thought it made the reference a little more clear. There are, after all, three of them.

Q. So you're the Third Fury. Is that drawing on your front page supposed to look like you?

A. No, not really. I actually look more like this (here making my Fury face for comparative purposes):

Q. Well, who are you?

A. I am Megaera Lorenz, a fourth-year graduate student in the PhD program in Egyptology at The University of Chicago. I was born in Arkansas, and spent some of my childhood in New York State and Pennsylvania, but did most of my growing up on the island of Guam. I went to college at The University of Guam, and later transferred to Penn State, where I earned a BA in Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies. I am married to a punk rocker, and have two cats. When I'm not totally swamped by Egyptology, I write, draw, design jewelry, and listen to classic jazz. I have been known to occasionally sing with jazz bands.


Now, get thee back to the homepage, and look around some more!