Subject: Re: Wales, Sea Peoples, Philistines and Greeks
From: Draxz@tir.com
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 1996 02:48:52 GMT
"Alan M. Dunsmuir" wrote:
>In article <50igl9$8qe@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, Saida
>writes
>>I know I once read that in Cornwall on the coast of Britain, there are a
>>lot of dark, Mediterranean-looking people, not descended from the Romans,
>>but from a sea-faring people who happened to show up there. I can't
>>recall who it was conjectured that these adventurers might be. Do you
>>know anything about this?
>Cornwall is one of the final bastions (with Wales, Britanny in NW France
>and Galicia in NW Spain) of the Brythonic Celtic peoples, who predate
>the Romans' arrival in the UK by a couple of thousands of years.
>Their provenance is well known, and has nothing to do with either the
>Egyptians or the Sea People.
>--
>Alan M. Dunsmuir
They could be the surviviors of the illfated Spanish Armada. After
getting their butt kicked in the channel they were forced to return
home by going around England. Then they got it kicked again big time
by storms coming between Ireland and the British Isles. Many ship were
run aground. I'm not sure but I think I picked up that ditty in The
English Speaking People by Winston Churchill.
Subject: Re: Egyptian Tree Words
From: Saida
Date: Mon, 09 Sep 1996 23:13:51 -0500
Olice Certain wrote:
>I've been following this thread for quite a while, and I think that
>Steve and Saida are only trying to point out the possibility of some
>English words *borrowed* from Egyptian. I don't think either of them
>has tried to claim Ancient Egyptian as the ancestor of the
>Indo-European languages. Just my 2 cents...
Hi, Olice, I'm glad you've been reading the thread and haven't lost
sight of its original purpose! Your 2 cents worth are exactly what is
needed at this point. What a learning experience this discussion has
been and now Greg Reeder has kindly given us what must be the ultimate
list of Egyptian trees, foreign and domestic. Obviously the people in
this group have access to some great sources!
Troy Sagrillo and I could argue for a long time on the pronunciation and
transliteration of Egyptian (although I acknowledge him my master in
this regard). Nevertheless, perhaps to the surprise of some persons, we
have brought out that, yes, it was possible for ancient Egyptian to get
into English. Some dictionaries even admit this--mine don't, drat them.
They are pretty old, I suppose. True, the words "borrowed" from
Egyptian appear to be costly, exotic dainties, but such things always
demand notice. It is beginning to look as if the path of some of these
words is via Latin, which should be no surprise, but perhaps yet other
words took a different route. Something else that is emerging from all
this is that it pays to keep an open mind.
Steve Whittet knew there was something there and he stuck to his guns
through monumental opposition. Give him a little credit. Steve and I
formed our opinions independently. We have never compared notes and are
not part of any plot.
I know Loren Petrich is not convinced by trees or birds or bees, but
Loren has been a big help in this thread. I don't even know whether
Loren is a man or a woman, but, if I had the expertise to do a proper
study of the subject discussed here, I would like to work with Loren at
all times. Perhaps I should begin a thread about Egyptian dog names
next, dogs being closely associated with trees, and the Egyptians had no
fire plugs. I think.
Subject: Re: 200 ton Blocks
From: abbadon@idirect.com (Zodiac)
Date: 10 Sep 96 04:07:21 UTC
Why does everyone underestimate the limits of human engineering? You seem
to imply "if WE can't do it today, than it just can't be done!" If we had
this attitude prior to 1903, it is highly unlikely that the airplane would
have been built, much less we would have travelled to the moon. Just
because that we couldn't build the Great Pyramid today, does not mean that
we will not be able to build it tomorrow, nor does it mean that our
ancestors could not build it yesterday. It seems to me that believing
extraterrestrials are responsible for everything we can not explain is akin
to having devout faith in an invisible being and attributing the
unexplainable to His doing. Either is a suppression of intelligent thought
and reason.
Zodiac
====================================
She walks in the twilight, her steps make no sound,
Her feet leave no tracks on the dew-covered ground.
Her hand gently beckons, she whispers your name;
But those who go with her are never the same.
====================================
Subject: Re: Egyptian junkie pharaohs
From: stjg@wpo.nerc.ac.uk (Gonzo)
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 1996 07:50:33 GMT
pmv100@psu.edu (Peter Van Rossum) wrote:
>This indicates to me that you are not very familiar with many
>archaeologists. Most researchers who I know are more than
>happy to go against the grain since its a major way in which
>careers can be made. The difference is that you need to have
>solid evidence before presenting an idea.
>
That's true for folks just starting out (i.e. the first 10 years,
tops) The problem is, of course, that the 'older' archaeologists have
built careers on certain things and vehemently attack anything that
contradicts their theories : they are only human after all - and it
would be a lifetime of belief and work destroyed. Unfortunately, most
of these are in highly respected academic positions and their words
can carry weight. Instead of calling something absurd - as a lot of
them do straight away, maybe the 'open mind' approach would be better.
An example on UK TV recently was an eminent Egyptologist (Professor
something from Oxford- sorry can't remember...) (funnily enough on the
subject of cross Atlantic trade in ancient times) saying the idea was
so absurd, that nobody was doing any research on it ! That's an
interesting way of actively proving or disproving any
theory............ The absence of evidence is in no way
disproving....... after all how can x million christians or X million
muslims be wrong..............
Just my tuppence worth.
>>Lacking a time machine, the case for no contact can never be
>>proved. Sufficient evidence will surface to change the minds
>>of reasonable people. Then we can say -Yes there was some
>>contact so what? - and move on.
>
>Again, good to see you've got such an open mind. Near as I
>can tell all you're saying is, "I read a book by Heyerdahl decades
>ago, it changed my mind, therefore it must be true." Wake up.
>
At least Heyrdahl proved it could be done (*and* yes I agree it
doesn't mean it *was* done in ancient times......) . Most eminent
archaelologists denied that the technology or sea-worthyness of
ancient ships existed for such travel and if so why don't they exist
today....the old 'progress' theory - nothing is every lost - only
progress occurs..... I just like to think of the Roman Empire and the
dark ages that followed it - when a helluva lot of knowledge was lost.
I just dislike straight out denials - it smacks of arrogance.
Subject: Re: Cocaine Mummies ?
From: stjg@wpo.nerc.ac.uk (Gonzo)
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 1996 08:49:33 GMT
Claudio De Diana wrote:
>Dear Sir,
> I post to you personally but also on sci.archaeology
> so maybe somebody else could answer.
>
> Well, I am here in Muenchen (Munich, the capital of the
> Freistaat Bayern (Bavaria)) and I am really interested
> in knowing the exact name of the museum in which these
> mummies are exposed and possibly, it was cited not in your
> but in another post, the name of the Bayern Scientistist/Professor
> who spoke during the program.
>
> Best regards,
> Claudio De Diana
>
I'm sorry, but I cant remember the name of the scientist - I believe
though that she is one of the orginators of the nicotine in the hair
test, she also has done a lot of forensic work for the German police.
As for the museum, the mummies were part of a 19th century Emporer's
collection stored in a Munich Museam (it seemed a very big place
judging from the pictures) - also the mummies are apparantly no longer
on public display. and that's all I can remember from that part.
Sorry, must have been the steak I ate last night - early stages of
BSE......
S.Gontarek
Subject: Re: Ugaritic Musical Notation, oldest?
From: piotrm@umich.edu (Piotr Michalowski)
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 1996 10:53:02
In article <513pj0$kjb@news2.cais.com> idoh@cais.com (Ido's ) writes:
>Does anyone have more information on the supposed Ugaritic Cuneiform
>tablets that contain musical notations from 3500 BCE? It appears that
>Pythagrous/Greeks acquired the "western" musical scales from the
>Canaanites.
The materials you are thinking of are in Babylonian cuneiform, but found at
Ugarit, and, to make it more complicated, they are of Hurrian songs. The date
is around 1300 or so. Ann Kilmer has written extensively about this, as have
a few other people. Her own reconstruction assumes that the "musical
notations" refer to pitches. I believe that she may be coming out with a
different interpretation soon. There are also c. 1800 BC texts from
Mesopotamia concerning the tuning of harps. From all of this Kilmer has
reconstructed scales that are, in essence, very much like the modes of our
major scale (i.e. Dorian, Lydian, etc). These are not Canaanite, however, as
al the documentation is in Hurrian, Akkadian or Sumerian.
My own opinion, for whatever it may be worth, is that her scales cannot be
correct. Our scales, although they have Greek names, do not go back that far,
and I do not believe it probable that ancient Near Eastern music was based on
such scales. Pentatonics of some sort, maybe, but not modern tempered scales.
In any case, the best place to look up, for the most up-to-date bibliography
and information would be the entry Musik in the Reallexikon der Assyriologie
(the article is in English). Kilmer and Steve Tinney will be publishing some
new fragments of Sumerian "musical texts" in a forthcoming volume of the
Journal of Cuneiform Studies.
Subject: Re: Need help - otters in Egypt??
From: phouli5090@aol.com (PHouli5090)
Date: 10 Sep 1996 11:05:23 -0400
Does anyone have information about otters in ancient Egypt? I've seen
representations that are close, but are identified as ichneumons.
One would think there would be some kind of otter god, but I haven't
found a reference to one.
Thanks in advance -
Sara
Actually, there has been quite a bit written in the Egyptological
literature about so-called otter representations in ancient Egyptian art.
Some authorities would see an otter depicted in the Dynasty VI mastaba of
the vizier Mereruka at Saqqara, while others have identified bronze
figurines from the Late Dynastic Period as this beast as well. Recently, I
have reviewed all this material and have challenged these long accepted
identifications in an article, see: "On Herodotus (II,72), and the
Question of the Existence of the Otter (Lutra sp.) in Ancient Egypt",
Gottinger Miszellen: Beitrage zur agyptologischen Diskussion 153 (1996)
pp. 45-55. You could also have a look at my The Animal World of the
Pharaohs (Thames & Hudson, 1996) pp. 124-27. I hope this provides you with
the information you require.
Best wishes,
Patrick F. Houlihan
Subject: Norse sailings to Vinland/Markland (Was: Deep Sea Sailing in Palaeolith)
From: kalie@sn.no (Kaare Albert Lie)
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 1996 16:47:44 GMT
S.NEMETH@IX.NETCOM.COM (Stella Nemeth) wrote:
>kalie@sn.no (Kaare Albert Lie) wrote:
>>The Skalholt Annals report that in 1349 a ship sailing from
>>Markland (a Norse name for the district north of Vinland - both
>>in America) to Greenland was hit by a storm and blown too far to
>>the south. The small ship with a crew of 18 men had to run before
>>the wind all the way to Iceland, where it found a harbour of
>>refuge. The Annals also report that the ship was smaller than
>>those that sailed between Iceland and Norway, and that it had no
>>anchor. (Probably due to lack of iron.)
>I am unaware of this written report about a West to East voyage
>between the Old and New Worlds at that late date. Thank you for
>sharing information about it. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell,
>there is no physical evidence of such a long term settlement. The one
>settlement we do have evidence of, which seems to have been inhabited
>for about a decade, is so far north that I can't imagine anyone
>choosing to live any further north than that. I understand it either
>still is, or just recently has been released from, permafrost.
>>The Norse (with 'Norse' I here mean what erroneously usually is
>>called 'Viking': Norwegians, Icelanders, Greenlanders ... )
>>sailings to America are thus documented for a period of ca. 350
>>years, not a decade.
>But where did they live? The settlements that have been found belong
>to Natives of the Americas. Those Natives did not speak Norse.
Good question. I wish I had a good answer .... :-)
We have, however, documentary evidence for sailings over a period
of at least 350 years. So where did they live?
We do not know for sure that they settlede there. The Norse of
Greenland may have gone there for hunting/fishing/woodcutting
expeditions of a year or so, and just camped in temporary
buildings, before going back home to Greenland. In that case,
there will be few traces of them. Or they may have gone for even
shorter expeditions, just trading with the Native Indians, which
would leave even fewer traces. Another alternative is that they
settled in one/some of the more inviting places - so inviting
that later Europeans picked the same places for settlements. In
that case, the Norse settlements may be hidden below some modern
town(s).
Documents exist (Skalholt Annals and Bergen records).
Archaelogical evidence may still be waiting to be unearthed.
The Natives of North America did not speak Norse when later
Europeans found them. But some of them looked quite European.
When the Portuguese caught some "wild people" in Newfoundland and
brought them to Lisboa in 1502, it was reported that these people
had fair skin and were taller than the Portuguese. Their eyes
were not brown, but rather greenish, reports Alberto Cantino. "If
the man had not had such a wild stare, he would be exactly like
us", he wrote. An English report from the first part of the 16th
century tells the same: The author did not know that the people
he saw in Westminster Abbey were "wild Americans" before someone
told him that they were caught in Newfoundland or Nova Scotia two
years earlier.
This is no hard evidence. But it is reasonable to think that if
some of the Norse settled in America, they might give up their
own European minority culture and join the neighboring majority
culture, marry native wives, and after a few generation it would
hardly be possible to distinguish their descendants from the
other natives (except for some colour differences). This
acculturation is what happened to the Norse in Normandie.
IF the Norse settled .... excepting the short-time settlement of
L'Ance-aux-Meadows, this looks like a wild guess. But again -
there is documentary evidence for this.
>>As for New World articles documented in the Old World, the books
>>of the port of Bergen (Norway) report that ships from Greenland
>>brought hides (fur) of marmots, otters, beavers, wolverines,
>>lynx, sables and black bears. None of these animals lived in
>>Greenland. They must have been caught in America.
>Questions about the fur trade during the immediate pre-Columbian
>period have come up in sci.archaeology before. I do have questions
>since I don't remember how this was resolved during the last round.
>Are these animals native to Russia and points East?
In that case, the ships would hardly be reported as coming from
Greenland. Greenland is west across the ocean from Bergen. Russia
is north along well-known coastal sailing routes. No Bergen clerk
could confuse this two destinations in his records.
>At what point did the Greenland settlements finally fail?
There were two separate settlements in Greenland: The Western (or
rather North-Western) Settlement (WS) and the Eastern Settlement
(ES). The distance between these two settlements was quite large.
In the first half of the 14th century there were very severe
winters. At that time, people in the ES began to suspect that
something was very wrong in the WS, since they had not seen any
boats from the WS for a long time. They feared the Eskimoes might
have attacked them, and a rescue expedition led by Ivar
Baardsson, the Bishop's deputy, set out to help them, some year
after 1341. They found the WS deserted. No trace of people were
found, no bodies, no bones. The farms and the churches - among
those also a cathedral - were just abandoned. Cows, horses, sheep
and goats were roaming freely around. There was no evidence of
any attack or of Eskimoes at all - and hunters as the Eskimoes
were, they would hardly just have left the animals roaming there.
Ivar Baardssons expedition slaughtered as many of the animals as
they had room for in the ships.
Gisle Oddson's Annals report in 1342 that the inhabitants of the
Western Settlements "voluntarily fell from the true faith and
turned to the peoples of America".
Obviously the northernmost Greenlanders (of the WS) finally had
enough of the severe winters, and emigrated to Markland or
Vinland, where they knew the climate to be better. There is no
report that tells of their return. So what happened to them?
Could some of their descendants be among those Natives later
caught like wild animals and brought to Lisboa and London?
Records from Iceland and Rome (the Norse were catholics at that
time, and Rome was always well informed) says that the last ship
to leave Markland - in 1347 or possibly 1360 - left a people that
already had become heathens.
The Eastern Settlement, however, was thriving, and archaeological
finds (Paul Nørlund, 1921) show that they dressed in the latest
European fashions up to about 1500, when the settlement suddenly
came to an end. There is no clear evidence, but good reasons to
suspect that there was a slave hunting raid that finished it off.
>I think that if there was conclusive evidence of a continued Norse
>presence in Newfoundland or the Canadian mainland it would have become
>common knowledge once the Newfoundland settlement was found.
Lots of informations remain "hidden" in archives all over Europe,
and it is no easy task to research it and put the bits of
evidence together. Kaare Prytz has done important research on
this, and published two books in Norwegian. One of them is
translated into English: "Westward before Columbus".
______________________________________________________________
Kåre Albert Lie
kalie@sn.no
Subject: Re: 200 ton Blocks
From: Kevin@Quitt.net (Kevin D. Quitt)
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 1996 13:54:48 GMT
On Tue, 10 Sep 1996 04:52:26 GMT, sphinx@world.std.com (SPHINX Technologies)
>Now how would you go about doing the same trick with the 1200-ton blocks
>mentioned by another poster?
Bigger wheels, perhaps more than just two on the ends, and a lot of people
pulling on ropes. Again, the pyramids weren't built on beach sand. The
soil is sandy, but hard. When you bring water to it, it'll grow crops, and
sand won't do that.
--
#include
_
Kevin D Quitt USA 91351-4454 96.37% of all statistics are made up
Per the FCA, this email address may not be added to any commercial mail list
Subject: Re: mammals in americas
From: Chuck Blatchley
Date: Mon, 09 Sep 1996 21:07:09 -0700
Elizabeth Jane Monroe wrote:
>
> Larry Caldwell (larryc@teleport.com) wrote:
> : In article <4uiuhk$e2a@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>,
> : chris brochu wrote:
>
> : > Horses and camels had both been in North America since the Eocene, but
> : > died out during the Pleistocene. Camels made it into South America
> : > before then and have survived as llamas, vicunas, etc.
> : If anyone has information on the most recent date that horse remains
> : are found in North America, please post the info here.
>
> There is an on-line resource provided by the Illinois State Museum
> called "faunmap".
It's been a couple of years since I went slogging through the creeks in
Louisiana with him, but Brad McPherson at Centenary has found horse
teeth, particularly hipparion (?), that supposedly died out in the
pleistocene. He seems to be finding them in holocene deposits. We found
camel teeth in nearly the same stratigraphy. These are the loess hills
just east of the Mississippi river.
I'll forward this post to him.
--
Chuck Blatchley Department of Physics
(316) 235-4398 Room 303, Yates Hall
FAX: 235-4050 Pittsburg State University
email: cblatchl@pittstate.edu Pittsburg, KS 66762
Subject: Re: Language of Normans and Britons
From: sgraham@bfsec.bt.co.uk (Steve Graham)
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 96 16:03:15 GMT
In article ,
Kathy McIntosh wrote:
>In article <50kavb$9q8@detroit.bfsec.bt.co.uk>, Steve Graham
> writes
>>In article ,
>> souris@netcom.com (Henry Hillbrath) wrote:
>>
>>>Henry VII was a from a Welsh
>>>family ("Welsh" is what the Normans called the unassimilated Saxons,
>>>Angles, etc.)
>>
>>
>>eh? Is this a typo, or are you really asserting that the Norman term for
>>"Saxons" was "Welsh"? Seems bizarre to me.
>>
>>What did they call the ancestors of today's Welsh? (or "unassimilated
>>Britons", if you prefer)
>The Normans did call them Welsh. It means forigner. The Celtic and
>Saxon inhabitants of Wales called themselves Cymric or Cymry, meaning
>comrades.
The point I was trying to make was that "Welsh" is an Anglo-Saxon word,
and I couldn't understand the French-speaking Normans using it, even if
they did mean it literally as "foreigners".
If you can refer me to an 11th or 12th Century Norman source that calls
the Saxons "Welsh" or even - 'ow you say "ouelsh",
I will shut up and go away.
Subject: Re: Egyptian Tree Words
From: Saida
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 1996 10:19:42 -0500
Troy Sagrillo wrote:
>
> Saida wrote:
>
> >
> > You also stated that you believe my way of transliterating Egyptian is
> > "phonologically misleading". There is nothing intentional in this, you
> > know, but you are right. Yet the other system is no more helpful,
> > because we have much less of an idea how Egyptian was pronounced than it
> > was written.
>
> But, with all due respect, what is the point then of making up a
> pronunciation? (snip)
Troy does not mean, I am sure, to give the impression that I,
personally, am making them up. For my spellings I check Budge and
Gardiner and try to determine what's most reasonable. I have learned to
read Coptic because I consult that language whenever possible. Where
the vowels are absent, Coptic is often the best bet and, otherwise, the
vowel "e" serves pretty well. Vowels are not the basis of any given
word, anyway. Change them or substitute them and the word will still be
understandable. If you use only the consonants, you will have the word
wrong 100% of the time instead of just sometimes. That is also a point
of view.
> > I have some theories on this pronunciation that would
> > surprise most people interested in this subject. I believe, given its
> > geographic location, that Egyptian has been treated too much like a
> > Semitic language as regards its intonation. Yet it seems to me that
> > Egyptian is such an eccentric language that we cannot count on Semitic
> > to give us much of an idea how it sounded.
>
> Egyptian is no more eccentric than any other language; it just has its own
> set of rules. And you are right about using only Semitic sources for
> reconstructing Egyptian phonology, but they *are* the closest we have, and
> the ones with the most interchange with Egyptian (Berber languages are also *
> extremely* helpful, but much less well known).
>
> > Even the "ayin" sound, which
> > is so distinctly Semitic, has been attributed to Egyptian, yet I am far
> > from sure that their "ayin" signs (the foremost being the extended
> > forearm) were pronounced in the Semitic fashion.
>
> Not at all! `ayn is a general phoneme found in most Afro-asiatic languages,
> Semitic and Egyptian included, but also Berber languages.
I don't know about Afro-asiatic at all, but I do know about Semitic.
They certain do have the "ayin" but, then again, they also have the
hard, burring "r". Of course, we have not clear idea what ancient
Hebrew speakers once employed for their "r" and in modern Hebrew it has
become pretty weak, probably due to the Germans who revived it, with
their deep-throated "r" sound. I strongly feel, as I said, that the
Egyptians did not have the strong, forward "r" and their vocalization,
identified as "ayin", seems to have been heard by Hittites, Greeks and
others as a sort of nasal sound, i.e. "Ozymandias" for User-Ma'at-Re.
Perhaps the trouble was their unfamiliarity with this gutteral. As you
can see, the "r" in User did not make much of an impression. Sure, the
"ayin" might have been there, but with Egyptian, I wouldn't take
anything for granted.
BTW, I still can't find anything better for "palm tree" than the "yam" I
gave before. Why would I pronounce it like that? Despite its varied
spellings, the clue is provided by the spelling *reed, vulture, owl*.
That is very clear, no question. Where there is an "i" before a vowel,
it must be pronounced "y". That is only logical.