Sheep and Goats

Tag: Great Pyramid

  • Live Tweets from Ancient Egypt: Part 5

    Great Courses, Bob Brier, tweets composed and sent while dog-walking. AI screwups corrected in brackets

    For continuity, start with Part 1:

    Lecture 9-10

    Oh my. The individual tweets from Egypt are coming out pretty rough. AI does a number on them. I dress them up later for the blog post, but—should I spare followers these tweets? AI somehow managed to put a Starbucks in Ancient Egypt.

    I am going to rename the Pharaohs on account of AI. Not only it screws up the names, but even one or two words on either side. Sometime I can’t decipher the sentence I have tweeted. So if you read about Richard the pyramid builder, don’t worry. I’ll make it right in the blog

    Or put brackets to indicate the correction.

    Now Bob is talking about the Great Pyramid. And he’s about to go into conspiracy theories. Let’s see what he has to say. Incidentally the builder of the Great Pyramid was Kenny [Khufu], son of Steven [Snefaru], who built the first one

    Bob relayed some stories about the pyramid, it’s magical qualities, he doesn’t buy that I had never heard myself. 

    Napoleon went inside the Great Pyramid as his men marched around it. He asked to be left alone for a time. When he emerged, he was Adam.[ashen—thanks, AI] People asked him why, he would not tell them. Even on. St. Helena . He almost told someone. And then didn’t.

    The Great Pyramid was built with free men, paid.Not slaves. Very little slave labor in Egypt, Bob says. The time of the Exodus was much later.

    90,000 men working in three shifts.

    Howard [Herodotus] the Greek historian said a Gyptian’s [Egyptians, not ‘a Gyptians’] used machines. Did he mean levers? There is no written record of how the pyramids were built. Like a trade secret.

    There is a helicopter hovering 200 yards away. With a guy perched on the runner. Are they setting him down atop the power tower? I think so. Let me get it from a different angle.

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    Yes. It is somehow servicing the tower. Didn’t Jehovah make flying things that are soundless? Lord, this thing is noisy!!

    Oh, and in case anyone is confused, this helicopter I see while walking the dog and narrating the Egyptian tweets. I’m not saying the helicopter is in ancient Egypt.

    No more than 2 inches variation of level over 2 acres. Precise, but no great need for mathematics, says Bob. Still, I am reminded of Smart Ancient Syndrome (SAS). Just once I would like to see archaeologist say, my God these people were stupid! But no, it is always about how smart they were.

    Tourists enter the Great Pyramid by the robber’s entrance. It was chiseled in the ninth century. The actual entrance was unknown. Today it is known, but sealed up.

    Here is a pup that just brought his ball to me on the end of a strap. Dropped it at my feet. He wants me to fling it! I do and he runs happily to fetch it. Uh oh. Now he is bringing it back.

    They use core bald [“corbelling”] step ceilings to relieve the weight on pyramid ceilings. I have avoided this word because a, I wasn’t sure what it was, and B, I know full well that AI would mess it all up

    It is how the upper portions of the interior rooms gradually come together in a series of step-like patterns to distribute the weight. If you were upside down, you could climb them from the top as though climbing stairs..

    Two theories on how the mass of stones got so high. A long ramp. That would have been a quarter-mile. A huge undertaking in itself. Or corkscrewing around the structure as it is being erected. I think I have read massive objections to both simply

    as a matter of moving that much mass. Don’t know if he will go there or not. At this point, it seems like he will breeze over them as to trivial appoint to consider.

    Yes, he does not expand. But does say how you can’t get a sheet of paper between the blocks. A remarkable achievement, Bob says, and then moves on to the trick of coordinating so many people to do it. 

    Oh OK. He attributes it to the power of a god-king, who can lean into people, make them do what he wants. That’s why he likes powerful kings so much. I’m not sure I buy that either. I mean, they can lean into him, but I’m still not sure with what result.

    While all the other dogs run around the dog park, there are six now in total, but my old dog walks straight up to the people and stands by them. They always like him. One of them called him wise.

    If I am right there Bob ignores the physical impossibility of certain feeds, or at least extreme improbability, then it is an example of how this system of things work. People become brilliant in their own fields, not worrying overmuch about how or if they link to other fields.

    You really don’t get as much battery life as you think you should. No wonder they sell them by the dump truck load at Costco. The first time my batteries went dead, I didn’t recognize the problem. I had expected the narrative to slow down, as it would on a cassette tape.

    Bob blows away the theories of some competing archaeologists. They’re wrong, he says. They probably are. Bob represents the majority view

    Bob represents the majority view, and he has the platform for that reason, but so much of history is the victor writes the rules. How much of it is true here? He presents it all very well, but what of that verse that the rival comes through and says it all differently.

    ”The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.” Proverbs 18:17

    The Greek archaeologists of another lecture series stated, What if you found figurines and Arches? Are they gods and temples? Or are they Barbie dolls and McDonald’s?

    No, Napoleons troops did not shoot off the nose of the spanks. [Sphinx]  Napoleon would not have allowed it.. He revered history. And a prior relief of the spanks shows its nose already shut off.

    One portion of the Sphinxes beard is in the Egyptian museum. Another portion in the British Museum. Egypt would like it back. Bob thinks the British would like to give it back.

    But they don’t give it back due to the president. [precedent]  Give the beard back, and next thing you know, they will want the Rosetta stone back.

    Almost all Egyptian tombs were west of the Nile. They even said, he’s a westerner, just as people say, ‘He’s gone south.’ Why west?  Sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Ra was the sun god.

    Last king of the 6th dynasty—Pepi II, is the longest ruling king in history. Ruled from a boy till his death at 98.  Bob thinks maybe that’s why the old kingdom collapsed. He is a god-king, and thus cannot be supplanted. But he is too old to lead armies. Do I buy this?

    Go to Part 6

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  • Live Tweets from Ancient Egypt: Part 4:

    Great Courses, Bob Brier, tweets composed and sent while dog-walking. AI screwups corrected in brackets 

    For continuity, start with Part 1:

    Bob starts his lecture by once again gushing about the advantages of a strong king. What comes to my mind was the Israelites pestering Samurai [Samuel—thank you, AI] before about the same. Yeah! That’s what we want! A king! Trusting in God is so for losers. We want a king!

    The first Egyptian city the invading Greeks came across was Memphis. They asked the name of it They couldn’t pronounce the answer. The closest they could come was a word that later morphed into Egypt. (No, and it wasn’t because Elvis wasn’t there to say it right)

    Petrie was the first archaeologists to pay his workers for every discovery they made. Up till then, the saying was that archaeologists discover only large objects, never small. The reason was that the workers would pocket the small items themselves to sell privately.

    One kings mama fied arm [mummied arm] was donated to the Egyptian museum in 1890. The Director stripped the gold rings off the arm, kept them in the museum, and threw away the arm. The archaeologists later said that sometimes museums are dangerous places.

    A fine bit of ancient trivia, Bob is so full of them. He is so good. This item is that jackals have an unusual digestive system, and prefer decayed meat. That’s why they would frequent cemeteries. Anything shallow buried in the sand didn’t stand much of a chance against them.

    Why can broken pottery usually be found along migration routes? “Pilgrims tend to  drop pottery, and break them.” Case closed.

    Old Ferrells [pharoahs would have “rejuvenation ceremonies“. Easy athletic contests for them, for instance. It’s sort of reminded me of the James Earl Jones pre-funeral in the new Eddie Murphy movie. A pre-funeral that he had while he was still alive. Unfortunately, the movie is so filthy we didn’t get far into it.

    Hey my Starbucks was built around a kings burial place. Sort of like a gazebo. Someone got the idea of putting a gazebo top a gazebo. And then another one. The first pyramid head five of these top each other in a step like pattern.

    [I don’t know how AI made this a Starbucks. The idea is that burial places would be ancient ditches. Then someone thought to put a top over them, like a gazebo. For someone else, a top over that, and so forth.

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    No, there is not a Starbucks inside the Great Pyramid, though there probably would be if Starbucks had any say in it.

    The professor likes an unfinished monument better than a finished one. With an unfinished one, you can see how they were constructing it.

    The dog is old now, and we are not at the dog park. After a heavy rain, that park will be muddy. We are on a path it has gone many times. But lately it reaches a certain spot, says no more, and pulls as if to go back home. I always indulge him. He’s a good dog.

    Sarcophagus. And esophagus. There is a relation. Bob says. The first (sarcophagus) was known as a “flesh eater.” This is because the first one of these things they opened, expecting a mummy within, was empty.

    Tomb robbers, Bob says, were usually drawn from the workmen who built the tombs, they knew where things were. That’s why he thinks one decoy to him was left on touch for millennia. They knew nothing was in it.

    End of lecture seven. Start of lecture eight: snap follow [Sneferu], the  great pyramid builder.

    There are pyramids in the desert that collapsed while being built. They didn’t always get it right. There was much trial and error, and snap a low [Sneferu] was the one who figured out how to do it.

    Oh. One of the early pyramids collapsed because the corners were built on unstable sand, that shifted. Isn’t there a verse in which Jesus says you are not supposed to do that?

    Bob has been inside this damaged pyramid, you drop down, walk through a long tunnel, then have to climb a ladder 55 feet high. He says it’s the most dangerous thing he’s ever done. Inside are cedar beams, Cedars of Lebanon…

    They were carted in at the time of building in an attempt to shore up the collapsing room, alas, to no avail—the tomb was abandoned and not used. But Snefalu’s [Sneferu—Snefalu is my bad—was I thinking of Scooby Do?] His hird pyramid was good. He is buried there.

    The Egyptians were terrible sailors, Bob says. Let me say it right out, he says. It is because they were spoiled by the Nile.

    If you look at Egyptian paintings, you can tell if the boat is going north or south by whether or not the sails are up. if they are the boat is heading south with the wind at its back. If they are not, it is heading north letting the current take it downstream. 

    Go to Part 5

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  • Smart Ancient Syndrome (SAS) and the Evolutionist Parade

    Archeologists dug up something from Canaanite days and the story we heard is the story we always hear: this was an advanced civilization. Surprisingly advanced. We have no idea how they did what they did without power tools.

    I should have a dollar for every report like this one:
     

    An archaeological dig in Jerusalem has turned up a 3,700-year-old wall that is the largest and oldest of its kind found in the region, experts say.
     
    Standing 8 meters (26 feet) high, the wall of huge cut stones is a marvel to archaeologists. “To build straight walls up 8 meters … I don’t know how to do it today without mechanical equipment,” said the excavation’s director, Ronny Reich. “I don’t think that any engineer today without electrical power [could] do it.”
     
    “You see all the big boulders — all the boulders are 4 to 5 tons,” adds archaeologist Eli Shukron. Canaanites built it.
     
     
     
    Just once I’d like to hear archeologists say “My god! these people were stupid! It’s a wonder they figured out how to procreate!” But no! It’s always about how smart they were!

    This is not what you expect from the evolution model. It’s as if the Evolutionists’ Parade – that troupe of creatures emerging from the slime, each more upright then the one before – reverses itself and marches back into the “primordial soup” from which it came. Folks are supposed to be dumber back then, not smarter. They’re supposed to be like that 2001 Space Odyssey ape straining his feeble brainpower to capacity, suddenly realizing he can use dry bones as clubs, and consequently, clubbing everything in sight – all to the ecstasy of Survival of the Fittest evolutionists! Instead, we find case after case in which those ancients without fuss (or power tools) did things that we still don’t know how to do.
     
    A Canaanite wall is small potatoes. Likely, the Egyptian pyramids offer most striking example of Smart Ancients Syndrome (SAS). To this day we don’t know how they built them. How did they get multi-ton cut blocks over 400 feet up? A gently-sloped inclined plane would be a mile long; “packing it down” enough to support the weight tough to imagine. There’s no trace of any ramp today. Surface stones of the pyramids are cut within 0.01 inch of perfectly straight. the gap between them is 0.02 inch – modern technology cannot do better – and filled with a cement stronger than the blocks they join. Height to base is a multiple of pi. Height of a side to its hypotenuse is a Fibonacci multiple. Interior shafts point precisely to various stars at certain times of the year.
     
    One can get lost in pyramid claims. Alas, I haven’t the time nor incentive to check them out. Is the Great Pyramid really at the exact center of earth’s land mass – that is, does a north-south meridian and an east-west latitude passing through the structure really encounter more land than one drawn anywhere else? It’s no wonder that some have thought space aliens built these things, and others have thought they hold some prophetic significance.

    But if evolutionists are taken aback by such engineering marvels, they fit well with how the Bible presents matters. According to the Bible, we are not ascending from cavemen. We are descending from Adam. That’s why the early Bible record has humans living to 900. Centuries later it is 500. Later still it is 200. Didn’t it get down to around 30 in the Dark Ages before applications of hygiene (not discoveries, since the Hebrews knew it 2000 years before) and later scientific advances brought it back up to the present 80, like a correction in a bear market? Those ancients were not inferior to us; they were superior. They were not dumber than us; they were smarter.
     
    Well…. if they were really smarter than us, why didn’t have cars? Why didn’t they go to the moon? Why didn’t they read the genome?  I can hear the objections now. The answer is that knowledge accumulates. The invention of the printing press speeded it up, as did the invention of the computer. So, just as you can accumulate wealth in a declining stock market, collective human accomplishment forges ahead even as our individual capacities deteriorate.
     
    One is reminded of God’s words from Genesis 11:6:
     
    Look! They are one people and there is one language for them all, and this is what they start to do. Why, now there is nothing that they may have in mind to do that will be unattainable for them.
     
    They’re supposed to be dumber than us. Even Geico knows that. “So easy that a caveman can do it,” goes the slogan. It’s from the evolutionist model. But against all evolutionist expectations, those “cavemen” weren’t all that dumb. We could learn some things from them.
     
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    EDIT:  Hmmmm. Not saying it dovetails in all respects, but here is supplemental material from a geologist and carbonate sedimentologist, under the title Ancient People Were Smarter Than Us.

     

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