Subject: Re: Spiral ramp on GP (was: Neolithic Stonehenge road?
From: Jiri Mruzek
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1996 02:47:26 -0700
> Frank Doernenburg wrote:
> > Dear Jiri,
> > I didn't want to call you a communist, but you bought the subject of
> > occupation and communism on the table. I simlpy stated, that this discussion
> > has nothing to do with communism, occupytion or Nazca - its a pyramid
> > discussion, so keep politics outside, understood?
Politics no, but Nasca yes. Staying away from insults, and patronizing
tone would be my suggestion on avoiding getting hurt with a counter.
> > What you write is, please forgive me, bloody utterly nonsense.
Forgiven, on the spot. Bloody, utterly nonsense is bloody sporting!
> > All your mails
> > are based on wrong numbers. With these, I can prove anything.
You mean my numbers, if true would be so convincing?
>> Please stick to
> > the correct numbers, found by egyptologists in this century, and please don't
> > argue on fossiline sources.
Don't generalize. Shoot!
> > Lets start with your 70 ton blocks. Please show me where they are. They are
> > not in the roof of the king's chamber. Anyone with a pocket calculator could
> > prove this! I will show you.
They are not? Show us then..
> > When you are in the king's chamber next time, please look up to the ceiling.
> > What do you see? Oops, the ceiling is made up from 9 blocks, spanning it from
> > north to south.
Why should I go "Oops"? But, otherwise you're doing fine. I am looking
at the
same on p.62 of Tompkins' Secrets of the Great Pyramid. It says that it
is a
vertical section of the King's Chamber looking North. The third block
from
the west stands out for its height and breadth.
> > The blocks are between 1.00 and 1.7 meters wide.
So let's carry 1.7 meter in mind, as the breadth of the big tall block..
> > Each block is about 8.50 meters long.
Alright, 1.7 times 8.50 equals 14.45 square meters. Go on.
> > The largest block of the lower nine (the blocks of
> > the upper chambers are much smaller) is partially 2.60 meters high,but
> > because he is domed you can calculate with a medium height of 2 meters.
14.45 times 2 equals 28.9 cubic meters, and we discounted the volume of
the dome. The dome seems to have less than a fifth, or sixth, of the
block's
height. With the dome, the block should have at least 32 cubic meters.
> > This *largest* block has the volume of about 17 to 20 cubic meters.
So, where could the mistake be?
You counted the largest block, as one of the narrowest at 1.18 meter!
1.18 x 8.5 x 2 = 20.06 cubic meters.
I won't ask, how you got as little as 17 cubic meters.
> > These blocks are from Aswan granite, the so called Syenit. And this material
> > has a specific weight of 2.6 g per cubic centimenter. So I get a weight of
> > about 44 to 52 tons for this block.
28.9 times 2.6 equals 75.14 tons!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hands up, boy!
With the three cubic meters for the dome we get 82+ tons..
The result makes a mockery out of your moralizing above.
This has happened before, but your tone never changes.
Please, accept it, as you say. Your superiority has a thin veneer..
*
*
*
> > The other blocks are much smaller, a
> > typicle block from the higher chambers has a volume of about 10 to 14 cubic
> > meters and a weight of 26 to 36 tons.
Knowing your margin of error, we may safely double your figures. Voila,
now we get 50 - 70 tons as the weight range for the blocks. And that's
just what they say..
One more thing about the higher ceiling beams. They are definitely
larger than what you say. For instance, there are only eight blocks
forming the ceiling of the Davison's chamber above the K.C. This must
increase their average breadth, and thus total weight. Howard-Vyse
says that all the block above Davison's chamber weigh over 50-tons..
> > But what *if* there was one 70 ton block, so what? I showed you, that with a
> > few hundred workers you could easily transport such a stone, too.
And I showed you how you couldn't turn corners! Remember F. M. Barber's
figures for a sixty-ton block? It would have to be hauled by 900 men,
if the incline of the slope were 1 in 25.
> > ramp, but on the pyramid itself! One theory says, that all the heavy blocks
> > were transported to the pyramid body itself at the beginning of the
> > construction. They were stored somewhere on the gigantic square and when
> > the most part of the first layer was finished, a short ramp was built to the
> > begun next level, and all the blocks were pulled up one meter to be stored
> > elsewhere. Then the lower level could be finished. After this, the second
> > level was started. After a while, the heavy blocks were transported to the
> > already finished parts of the next level, to be again stored somewhere. With
> > each transport, the blocks hat only to me lifted one meter and pulled over a
> > distance of a few meters. And so on. So what?
This theory deserves one of my Atlantean Awards!
It is the most labor intensive proposition so far. Are you desperate,
or what? Basically, you have a little mountain of blocks in the middle
of the platform. Thus, to get a yard higher, you propose to carry these
blocks sideways and then elevate them to their spot on the pile.
Then you reverse the process to go a level higher.
Instead of carrying each stone horizontally only once - you repeat
it twice (to and fro) on every course of the masonry!
> > What is typical for you people: You don't seek for solutions for a problem,
> > you are only interested in anti-solutions.
You people??? Germans with a superiority complex are funny.
> > Its a destructive and
> > pessimistic/negative behaviour. With more of you people around, seeking only
> > for reasons why something couldn't work, we would still be in caves,
You really could join Hitler's after-dinner chats! If there were a lot
of people like me, we would still live in caves.. Maybe my family
doesn't like moving!
> > and you
> > would have thousands of reasons why the concept "fire" couldnt work unless
> > some UFO gives us a plasma burner.
What's the matter? Are you telling me not to criticise your fragile
constructions? Are you telling me what not to think?
Enough of this unpleasant discussion. Begone for now!
Jiri Mruzek
Subject: Re: 200 ton Blocks
From: Jiri Mruzek
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 16:35:07 -0700
Frank Doernenburg wrote:
> Hi!
> I don't know what your sources are, but they are crap. This time, your
> Baalbek-claims
> First: The three blocks used weight about 800 tons each, the heavy, unmoved
> block weights about 1200 tons.
Howdy, Frank!
Crap? Vice-versa. I have a photo of the "unmoved" stone - it lies some
distance from the quarry! It looks so ginormous, I wouldn't be surprised
if it weighed 2,000 tons.. I will be putting its photo on my webpages,
although it wasn't made by me, with credit to Charroux, with hopes that
he wouldn'tn mind, as his picture still serves his causes, along with
a couple of links to sites with nice photos of the Trilithons. It's
good when people see these blocks before any discussion.
> Second: The quarry for the blocks lies higher then the temple, about 15
> meters. Distance to the platform: about 600 meters, but to get round a ditch
> the way had to be about 1100 meters long.
So, you made it a big deal that there was a downwards inclined plane,
but now it turns out as having a negligible slope of 1 part descent
to each 73 parts of horizontal movement. As to the actual weight,
without the actual measurements of the blocks, and their specific weight
we shall have to keep on making rough estimates.
> Third: A German expedition dug 1904/1905 through to the foundations of the
> temple. The temple platform is through and throug of Roman origin. They found
> typical roman masonery, roman trash and so on, down to the bedrock. Nothing
> un-Roman was found! Btw: The temple platform was not built from massive
> stone, but typically roman honeycombed. Only the outer shell looks like a
> massive building.
Re: > Nothing un-Roman was found!
Baal was the god celebrated at this important religious site of Baal-bek
long before the Romans showed up, and perhaps even before that. There
must have been buidings there (probably temples with monolithic blocks, no?).
Do see the point in my objections to the likelihood of findings by these
Baalbek excavators. Did they manage to pick an untouched spot?
> Fourth: The trash you can read about the temple comes mostly from a book from
> 1864 ("Voyage autour de la mer morte" by Felicien ce Saulcy) and an article
> from a professor Modeste Agrest, who based his story on a book "published in
> Paris in 1898" - long befor any serious dig was done.
Without this "trash" we would not be on Baalbek's fascinating subject.
Hey, if there are any 510-ton monoliths in Rome, or wherever, I want to
be told of them by history teachers. After all, the moving story of
these monolithic obelisks belongs to marvels of engineering..
How come, such impressive pictures to go with an impressive story -
are rarely presented? Just this publicity should draw another million
tourists a year to Rome.
So, give us the location, please, in case we go on the road.
> These sources were used
> by authors like Daeniken and Sitchin. The first real investigation from
> 1904/1905, published 1921 (Wiegand, Ballbek, 3 bde, 1921-1925), is
> "forgotten" by these guys.
> Read some real literature about the things you are phantasizing about.
Science-fantasy? As in Science-Art? Of Palaeolith? Kewl..
Jiri Mruzek http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jiri_mruzek/
*********************************
A sure thing - the upper limit of Roman capacity was 510-tons.
Subject: Re: Learning Hieroglyphics
From: rosmord@cachou.ens-cachan.fr (Serge Rosmorduc)
Date: 20 Sep 1996 12:04:35 GMT
A few additions to the many texts already cited :
K. Sethe's Lesestuecke have been reedited, and, if I remember well, were
not too expensive. You don't need to read german to understand the
hieroglyphs in them :-)
A recent dictionnary aimed at beginners have been published ... with a
minor problem :
Grosses Handwörterbuch Ägyptisch-Deutsch : (2800-950 v.
Chr.) : die Sprache der Pharaonen
Hannig, Rainer
Mainz : P. von Zabern, c1995,
ISBN 3805317719
a recent dictionary, in german ; it is very complete, and quite
good. Includes both Middle and Late Egyptian terms. It looks like a
bilingual dictionnary for two modern languages, in a way (lots of
colloquial expressions); the only problem (beside it being in german),
is the lack of text references. But, then, the dictionnary size would
be doubled. Lots of interesting annexes, Proper Names, Sign List, Map,
and so on... The price is about 100$, which is expensive, but
reasonable, given the quality of the book.
As far as Middle Egyptian is concerned, Faulkner is very good. I feel the
couple Gardiner's grammar + Faulkner dictionnary is a sound ground to
start.
A good news is that
clues for the
exercices are available on the WWW, in the
Griffith Institute!
Middle Egyptian: An Introduction, Englund, G. Uppsala University, 1988
ISBN 91-506-0660-3
A short introductory grammar, in English, which is up-to-date,
but without exercises.
I provide on my WWW site a little bibliography on the subject, plus a few Egyptian
texts :
http://www.lifac.ens-cachan.fr/~rosmord/EgyptienE.html
regards,
--
Serge Rosmorduc,
rosmord@lifac1.ens-cachan.fr
lifac
ENS de Cachan
61, avenue du Pr\'esident Wilson
94235 Cachan Cedex
tel (16 1) 47 40 24 93
fax (16 1) 47 40 24 64
http://weblifac.ens-cachan.fr/~rosmord/AEgypt.html
Subject: Re: A Harem For the Next World?
From: Saida
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1996 08:01:05 -0500
Kathy McIntosh wrote:
>
> In article <323EEF07.1E37@PioneerPlanet.infi.net>, Saida
> writes
> >I have a little book called the "Dwellers On the Nile" by Sir E. A.
> >Wallis Budge, now a bit dated, but nevertheless full of useful
> >information about life in ancient Egypt. Paging through it today, I
> >came upon something I hadn't picked up on before and it rather shocked
> >me:
> >
> >"So convinced were the primitive Egyptians that every man, living or
> >dead, should posses a wife and concubines that, on the death of a man of
> >wealth and importance, several women were killed in order that their
> >spirits might go to the Other World and minister to his wants there as
> >their bodies had served him in this world. The bodies of some women who
> >were murdered for this purpose at the death or burial of Amenhotep II,
> >about 1448 B.C., may be seen lying on the ground near his sarcophagus,
> >in his tomb at Thebes, to this day."
> >
> >Surely not! I realize that the tomb of Amenhotep II had many
> >occupants--relatives, assorted persons identified and otherwise, about
> >17, I think--but I have never read that there were women strewn about
> >just in case the pharaoh might rouse himself sufficiently for a little
> >hanky-panky. ("Sorry, dear, I am simply DEAD!" would be a reasonable
> >excuse under the circumstances, and it is difficult to have a headache
> >once the brain has been removed.)
> >
> >I have always thought Amenhotep II rather a cruel despot after his
> >treatment of the seven foreign princes, but this is the first reference
> >I have ever seen to human sacrifice among the dynastic Egyptians. Does
> >anyone know if there can be any truth to this or was Budge's imagination
> >just working overtime?
>
> I've never seen any evidence for this, but I have been told about it
> plenty of times in various lectures I've attended. Somebody out there
> in the electronic wonder world must be able to enlighten us. Please.
> --
> Kathy McIntosh
Hi, Kathy et al!
Yesterday I tried writing to Serge Rosmorduc of Paris, but his E-mail
address is no longer valid. I wanted to ask him if he had access to any
French books by or about Victor Loret, who explored the tomb of
Amenhotep II, so we could find out if Loret had any comments about the
occupants of this tomb. Perhaps someone else out there has something by
Loret.
Subject: Re: Mummies Flesh sold in Europe:
From: Saida
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1996 08:10:10 -0500
GROOVE YOU wrote:
>
> The melanin in the epidermis, whether it is deeply seeded or shallow,
> irregardless it will remain in the skin and the melanin deposits can
> counted and the race of the mummy can be determined.As a matter of fact
> under the skin we are all the same(genotypically speaking), but what
> determines race is your phenotype, and the Ancient kemetians had the same
> phenotype as any other black's that you will anywhere this earth.
> Mummies that are white will not have the Melanin levels that are found in
> black cultures period.
A lot of mummies still have their hair, though, which, though it might
change somewhat in color from a chemical reaction to the embalming
materials, doesn't change in texture. Though I am not saying that no
mummies were ever found that had woolly hair, I think it is significant
to mention that, among the royal mummies, none of those who actually
possess hair, have it. They all appear to have the fine, stringy
caucasian hair that, from what I have seen, even the lighter-skinned
black person rarely has. Take a look at them sometime, Groove, if by
chance you really want to find out the truth.
Subject: Re: Pyramids and Aliens
From: "Ann McMeekin"
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1996 14:32:41 +0100
> Welcome to sci.archaeology, Ann! Mind the pigs at the door. This is
> not an entirly useless place, I should console you. If you are willing
> to brave the animals of the jungle, and if you can keep your tongue
> sharp, (nice tongue by the way) you can possibly come out ahead.
>
> (what I meant by that strange compliment was that you are perfectly well
> suited for sci-dot-archaeologing if your words thus far are any
> indication.)
Thank you for the welcome :-)
Despite a less than auspicious entrance, I will be sticking around. I
don't scare easily, and while I may get irritated occasionally (sometimes,
I admit, in the extreme), I'm not about to run away crying.
> I warn you, the resident stiffies are a terribly paranoid lot. Always
> rambling on about fabulous things like trolls, pyramidiots and even
> Invisible Pink Unicorns(TM)! ;>
> Sorry August, I couldn't resist!
Well, I've seen Pink Elephants while on medication... does that count ?
> One sure way to pick up on old discussions is with DejaNew.
> http://www.dejanews.com/
> Do a search on the thread name, or whatever...
Thank you. That's one of the things you either know or you don't.... I
didn't.. hence the whole carry on :)
> I hope apologies come easy to you!
If I'm in the wrong, I will always apologise. If not, wild horses
couldn't drag one out of me
--
Ann McMeekin
am@rtel.co.uk
100702.75@compuserve.com
Section Leader for Mystic Places on Compuserve's Mysteries Forum
GO MYSTERIES
Subject: Re: Greeks and ancient Egypt
From: fjyurco@midway.uchicago.edu (Frank Joseph Yurco)
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1996 15:01:23 GMT
Dear Siro,
Regarding this issue of the Greeks in Egypt in the Ptolemaic Era, 323-
30 B.C. if you count Ptolemy I Soter as the first continuous ruler, 332-
30 B.C. if Alexander the Great's conquest is included. In this period,
Greeks from all over the Greek world were recruited to serve in the
Ptolemaic armies, and many of these settled in Egypt, where as Cleruchs
they were granted land. The Ptolemaic rulers, though were very conscious
of the ancient Egyptian culture, and took pains not to overtly offend
the Egyptians. The Greeks were settled mainly in Alexandria and on newly
reclaimed land, such as the Fayum, where the lake was drained to its
current level, and the land reclaimed was opened to Greek settlers. The
Ptolemaic rulers were least active in "Hellenizing" their kingdom. The
court system was dual, Greek and Egyptian, and both Greek and Egyptian
Demotic languages were spoken. Also large numbers of Jews were settled
in Egypt at this time, and smaller numbers of Kushites, and other
Mediterranean folk. While the Greeks were the ruling class, the Ptolemies
made no hard and fast rules to separate the different ethnics. So,
some Greek-Egyptian intermarriage did occur, especially later in the era.
The Jews kept largely to themselves. For the best, most detailed assess-
ment of the subject see, Koen Goudriaan, Ethnicity in Ptolemaic Egypt,
Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1988. As he notes, there was no official Ptolemaic
policy governing the different ethnic groups. Relations were not always
smooth. There was some Egyptian hostility towards the Greeks, manifested
in revolts against the Ptolemies after 217 B.C., but some Greeks and
Egyptians nonetheless intermingled. It was the Romans who set up the
policy of strictly separating the different ethnic groups, strictly
forbidding intermarriage, and heavily penalizing those who violated these
precepts. For Roman policy, Naphtali Lewis, Life in Egypt under Roman
Rule, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983, remains the single best discussion
of life in Roman ruled Egypt.
Most sincerely,
Frank J. Yurco
University of Chicago
--
Frank Joseph Yurco fjyurco@midway.uchicago.edu
Subject: Re: A Harem For the Next World?
From: grifcon@usa.pipeline.com(Katherine Griffis)
Date: 20 Sep 1996 16:37:42 GMT
On Sep 20, 1996 08:01:05 in article ,
'Saida ' wrote:
>Hi, Kathy et al!
>
>Yesterday I tried writing to Serge Rosmorduc of Paris, but his E-mail
>address is no longer valid. I wanted to ask him if he had access to any
>French books by or about Victor Loret, who explored the tomb of >Amenhotep
II, so we could find out if Loret had any comments about the >occupants of
this tomb. Perhaps someone else out there has something by >Loret.
Since I have already sent this to Saida, I will post part of Frank Yurco's
comments to me about this issue, when I e-mailed him on the issue:
"...The only period for which sacrificing humans to accompany
the dead king is at issue is the Dynasty I burials at Abydos, and even
there, there is ambiguity based on the incomplete preservation of the
superstructures of the royal tombs. In Dynasty XVIII, there is zero
evidence for women being sacrificed. What Budge claimed about Amenhotep
II's tomb is now explained by the fact that his tomb became one of the
caches where the royal plundered mummies were reburied. That accounts for
the stray male and female mummies, one of whom indeed turned out to be
the famous Queen Tiye...... It is unfortunate that Budge's
seriously outdated works keep being reprinted. It is a gross disservice to
scholarship, and does nothing but mislead the wider audience that reads
this outdated materials, and then falls for the weird interpretations, like
the one considered above."
This pretty much confirms information that I had, and that I had sent to
saida. Budge is, unforunately, quite unreliable in a good portion of his
works (based on modern scholarship standards), and in some cases, was
merely speculative.
Katherine Griffis (Greenberg)
Member of the American Research Center in Egypt
Subject: The Egyptian concept of Ma'at in the Platonic Dialoges: was Re: Egyptian Tree Words
From: whittet@shore.net (Steve Whittet)
Date: 20 Sep 1996 17:00:45 GMT
When you don't have a word for something and someone gives you one
it suddenly becomes a lot easier to deal with. Take architecture
for example. The creation of orders of architecture and the naming
of the elements in those orders created a system which people could
use to build with.
>
>>There are elements of architecture such as the
>>"fluted Doric columns" which Hatshepset's architect
>>used in her mortuary temple which anticipate the
>>Greek orders of architecture by almost a millenium
>
> So what if that's an imitation?
It isn't so much that it is an imitation, (which is really the
sincerest form of flattery), as that it is a system which people
could use. Prior to the creation of the system, the system was
not used, after it was created and given a name, architecture
became more and more common.
>
>>The Platonic Dialoges closely follow the Egyptian ideas
>>of what was right and proper as illustrated by their
>>celebration of the Goddess Ma'at.
>
>Absolute baloney. How does it follow Egyptian ideas as opposed to
>ideas from elsewhere???
Ma'at was the Goddess of Truth, and represented the essence of
everything which was right and proper. The idea of the good.
The Egyptians concieved of living the life in Ma'at or doing what
was right and proper as a way of becoming one with Neter (nature).
They were trying to live in harmony with their world by first
measuring, weighing and judging what was straight, plumb, level,
well proportioned and in balance. How else can we explain their
obsession with accuracy in measurement and proportion and good
craftsmanship, but that it was something they believed in?
Look at the Platonic Dialoges. What is Plato investigating?
The Idea of the Good. What does this consist of? It seems to
have something to do with living a life in which one strives
to do what is right and proper. Plato emphasises measuring,
weighing and judging what is right. He talks about a State,
a Republic organized to live according to Laws which are
based on standards of what is right and proper.
Charmides or Temperence
Lysis or Friendship
Laches or Courage
(Presenting the standards of Similarity, Difference, Motion and Rest
then in Protagoras, using the standards to ask and answer questions)
Protagoras, is about speaking the truth, how discussion
is one thing and how making an oration is quite another. About
asking and answering questions, about the difference between
Becoming and Being and the question
"Can a man become truly good, built four square in hands and feet
and mind, a work without a flaw"
"There is a very ancient philosophy which is more cultivated
in Crete and Lacedaemon than in any part of Hellas"
"Justice is the health of states"
"Are wisdom and temperence and courage and justice and Holyness
five names of the same thing?"
"The art of measurement would do away with appearances, and showing
the Truth...this result is the art of measurement"
"The right choice of pleasures and pains, in the choice of the more
or the fewer and the greater and the less and the nearer and remoter,
must not this measuring be a consideration of their excess and defect
and equality in relation to one another?"
Now I could go on about this for weeks and months and years, but
the point is that "By the dog of Egypt", Plato is talking about
the Egyptian concept of "living the life in Ma'at"
> And how does it closely parallel some Egyptian text?
Every Egyptian text evidences the obsession with doing what is
right and proper. Balance, proportion, "the art of measurement"
If you don't understand that, you can't understand Egypt.
Euthydemus or Wisdom
Cratylus or Truth
"Hermogenes: 'Suppose that we make Socrates a party to the argument?'
Cratylus: 'If you please.'
Hermogenes: 'I should explain to you Socrates that our friend Cratylus
has been arguing about names; he says that they are natural and not
conventional; not a portion of the human voice which men agree to use;
but that there is a truth of correctness in them which is the same for
Hellenes as for barbarians.'"
>For one thing, nowhere do Plato's dialogues contain, as far as I am
>aware, instructions to assert that one did not commit any of a long
>list of offenses ("I did not pilfer Temple grain", "I did not talk
>too much",etc.) when one was being judged.
The reason the Egyptians assert that they lived the life in Ma'at
and did what was right and proper, while avoiding doing anything
which was not right and proper, is that they had concieved of the
"idea of the good" and of "the art of measuring", weighing and judging
what was good, which Plato endeavors to explain to us in his dialoges.
>More seriously, there is no discussion of rule by an allegedly divine
>monarch who is careful to keep the family lineage pure by inbreeding.
No, and in fact that is not a part of the Egyptian concept of what
was right and proper either. The Egyptian king or pharoah was a
statesman. A man who represented the state. The Egyptian pharoah
was seen as symbolic of the state. The state of Egypt included
the state of all its people. If everything was seen as proceeding
harmoneously then the state was healthy. The reverence shown to
the symbol of the state was really a very healthy attitude of
pride in what the people had accomplished. That is why people
build pyramids. Not for the glory of a king but for the glory
of the state which the king represents.
On his crown (ity) the king worth the vulture (Mut) and cobra
(Uraeus), which symbolized the Mut-Ur-ity of the state and
statesman.
>
>
>--
>Loren Petrich
steve
Subject: Eratosthenes: Was Re: Egyptian Tree Words
From: whittet@shore.net (Steve Whittet)
Date: 20 Sep 1996 17:04:06 GMT
>>It has been shown that the calculations of the earth's
>>circumference made according to Erathosthenes on the basis
>>of astronomical observations and measurements he claims to
>>have made himself actually agree with the measurements having
>>been made during the reign of the Hyksos for example.
>
> WHAT measurements?
On Fri, 3 Feb 1995, Winfield Featherston wrote:
> Also, if there is anyone out there who is familiar with
> Eratosthenes'measurement of the circumference of the earth,
> I would like some information on a specific detail of the
> experiment. I am currently teaching a class in which
> Eratosthenes' experiment is discussed, and a question arose
> concerning one of the assumptions underlying the experiment.
> The assumption in question is that Alexandria and Cyene
> (or, alternately, Syene) lie on the same line of longitude.
> I understand that this assumption is important for the
> accuracy of the results of the experiment -- what I'm
> not sure of is what reason there might have been for
> assuming this in the first place.
> Perhaps there were navigational methods available in the
> Second Century B.C. that allowed Eratosthenes to rely on such an
> assumption. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
This was the response which I saved
Eratosthenes' works exist only in fragments. There are also
commentaries by Strabo.
The following excerpt is the most detailed and apparently
authoritative account I could lay my hands on, pointing out the
limitations of data, and the fudging of unmbers. Other references
identify Syene as the modern city Aswan, or near it.
Excerpt from _The Dictionary of Scientific Biography_ ed. by
Charles Coulston Gillispie. Scribners, 1971. Entry on Eratosthenes
by D. R. Dicks. My own explanations in square brackets. This 16 volume set
is something every library should have, and I am fortunate to have most of
it in my personal library. [I'm missing volumes 4, 9, 10, and 13, just in
case anyone knows where I can get them at a reasonable price.]
Naturally, the data at his disposal, mainly travelers' estimates
of days' voyages and marches, which are notoriously unreliable--the
only scientific data available were the gnomon measurements of
Philo, prefect of Ptolemy, at Mero [Last letter is umlauted `e']
(Strabo, _Geography, 77_), of Eratosthenes himself at Alexandria,
and of Pytheas at Marseilles (_ibid_., 63), together with some sun
heights recorded by the latter (_Geographical fragments of
Hipparchus_. p. 180)--were of dubious accuracy, and any mapping
done on the basis of them was bound to be largely guesswork.
Hipparchus has no difficulty in showing that the figures and
distances given by Eratosthenes are mathematically inconsistent
with each other, and he therefore rejects them, together with some
of the sensible alterations proposed by Eratosthenes for the
traditional map, thus demonstrating that inspired guesswork
sometimes gives better results than scientific caution (_ibid_.,
pp. 34 35).
It is uncertain whether the measurement of the earth's
circumference was first published in the _Geography_ or in a
separate treatise; if the latter, it would at any rate have been
mentioned in the larger work. The method is described in detail by
Cleomedes (_De motu circulari_, 1, 10), the only ancient source to
give it. Assuming that Syene was on the Tropic of Cancer (because
there, at midday on the summer solstice, the gnomon--i.e., a
vertical pointer set upright on a horizontal base--cast no shadow
and a well, especially dug for this purpose [according to Pliny,
_Natural History_, 11, 183] was illuminated to its bottom by the
sun's rays), and that this town and Alexandria were on the same
meridian, Eratosthenes made a measurement of the shadow cast at
Alexandria at midday on the solstice by a pointer fixed in the
center of a hemispherical bowl, known as a "scaphe" [Greek word not
representable in ASCII]--presumably he used this form of gnomon
because the shadow of a thin stylus would be better defined than
that of a large pillar or post) and estimated that the shadow
amounted to 1/25 of the hemisphere, and thus 1/50 of the whole
circle. Since the rays of the sun can be regarded as striking any
point on the earth's surface in parallel lines, and the lines
produced through the vertical gnomons at each place meet at the
center of the earth, the angle of the shadow at Alexandria (ABC in
Figure 1) is equal to the alternate angle (BCD) subtended by the
arc BD, which is the distance along the meridian between Alexandria
and Syene, estimated by Eratosthenes at 5,000 stades; and since it
is 1/50 of the whole circle, the total circumference must be
250,000 stades. This is the figure reported by Cleomedes.
Hipparchus accepts a figure of 252,000 stades as Eratosthenes'
measurement (Strabo, _Geography_, 132, corroborated by Pliny
_Natural History_, 11, 247, whose further statement that Hipparchus
added 26,000 stades to Eratosthenes' figure is incorrect--see
_Geographical Fragments of Hipparchus_, p. 153), and it seems
fairly certain that Eratosthenes himself added the extra 2,000 in
order to obtain a number readily divisible by 60; he divided the
circle into sixtieths only (Strabo, _Geography_, 113-114), the
familiar division into 360=F8 being unknown to him and first
introduced into Greek science by Hipparchus (_Geographical
Fragments of Hipparchus_, pp. 148-149; D. R. Dicks, "Solstices,
Equinoxes, and the Pre-Socratics," in _Journal of Hellenic Studies_
86 [1966], 27-28).
The method is sound in theory, as Hipparchus' recognized, but its
accuracy depends on the precision with which the basic data could
be determined. The figure of 1/50 of the circle (equivalent to
7=F812') for the difference in latitude is very near the truth, but
Syene (lat. 24=F84' N.) is not directly on the tropic (which in
Eratosthenes' time was at 23=F844' N.), Alexandria is not on the same
meridian (lying some 3=F8 to the west), and the direct distance
between the two places is about 4,530 stades, not 5,000. Probably
Eratosthenes himself was aware that this last figure was doubtful
(without trigonometrical methods, which he certainly did not know,
it would have been impossible to measure the distance accurately),
and so felt at liberty to increase his final result by 2,000.
Nonetheless, the whole measurement was a very creditable
achievement and one that was not bettered until modern times. On
the most probable value of the stade Eratosthenes used (on this
vexed question, see _Geographical Fragments of Hipparchus_, pp.42
46), 252,000 stades are equivalent to about 29,000 English miles,
which may be compared with the modern figure for the earth's
circumference of a little less than 25,000 miles.
Dr. Donald E. Simanek Office: 717-893-2079
Prof. of Physics Internet: dsimanek@eagle.lhup.edu
Lock Haven University, Lock Haven, PA. 17745
A more complete discussion of how Eratosthenes measurements were off
because they had been madea millenia earlier is includded in
Stecchinis appendix to Peter Tompkins "Secrets of The Great Pyramid"
>
>--
>Loren Petrich
steve
Subject: Re: Egyptian Tree Words
From: whittet@shore.net (Steve Whittet)
Date: 20 Sep 1996 17:04:43 GMT
>>The cultural, scientific, religious, architectural, engineering,
>>military, trade and natural philosophical jargon of the Egyptians
>>ought to have been borrowed along with the Egyptians social
>>stratification and concepts of order.
>
> But it was NOT. Many of them rather transparent coinages from
>existing words, words often with impeccable Indo-European pedigrees.
It wasn't just Egypt, Stephen Berlant tells us that in Sumerian
we have the word Lugal evolving into the Roman Legal and perhaps
the Greek Logos is on the same tree. I find the expansion from
the sense of a ruler as a great man, a land owner or landlord,
who made rules and laws, to the sense of a legal system with
written laws and contracts interesting.
I have seen a list of Sumerian IE cognates published in sci.lang.
Sumerian pictographs seem to have exact correspondence to similar
pictographs on the Phaistoes Disk from Crete and in Egypytian
Hieroglyphics.
> JUst to give ONE example, "pentagon" means "five-angle" in Greek,
So where do the Greeks get this from. Does the Greek language
itself have roots? What might they have been?
The Numbers in Greek The Numbers in Hebrew Egyptian
with Masculine with Feminine with with
1 Ena e a echad e a achat wa a
2 dhIo dhi shanyim h yi shtayim h yi snw
3 trIa shlosha shalosh hmt
4 tEsera era arba'a ar a'a arba a ra fdw
5 pEnde hamisha hamesh diw
6 Eksi ksi shisha hisha shesh hesh srew or sisw
7 eptA [s]epta shiv'a shiv'a sheva sheva sfh s h
8 oktO o to shmona mona shmone mone hmn hmn
9 enEa e ea tish'a, ish'a tesha esha psd s
10dhEka eka assara ara esser e er md
> and the first part is cognate with English "five", not to mention
> the corresponding word in just about every other Indo-European
> language, and the second part with English "knee", Latin "genu", etc.
(>"location of bending"). Anyone with a
>good dictionary, like the copy of the American Heritage Dictionary on my
>hard disk, can *easily* find other examples, and I've done so myself,
>though I prefer not to clutter this posting with them.
Thank you, we have done this more than once before
>
> It may be possible that many of these words were
>imitation-translations, such as an English-language purist calling a
>pentagon a five-knee. But are they? One problem here is that such
>translations are hard to distinguish from independent inventions.
There seem to be as many similarities as differences, six and seven
are good matches, five requires us to think analagously. A hand has
five fingers. An o[pened] Hand might well have had the meaning five,
so might fist. Fist and five appear to have more in common than fist
and hand. Pend has more in common with the word opened. An opened
hand would allow us to count the fingers. Is the etymology of the
Greek word five perhaps similar to the etymology of the word opened?
Do 'hamesh' and 'diw' also have a relation to a cognate of 'opened'
or is there yet another link in the chain?
>
>>When we look at the linguistic comparisons it thus makes some
>>sense to look at the borrowed jargon as well as the words for
>>body parts and the counting numbers from one to ten.
>
>WHAT "borrowed jargon"? Present some examples other than "ibis"
>and "ivory" and so forth. And DON'T use ridiculous etymologies.
Borrowed jargon might include words like "embalm", "incense",
"ebony", scribe or script...you need to look at industries
which were common to Egypt or the Near East, but less common
to the Greeks,
"caw" = container for papyri "caw r "
as the etymology of the word "coffer"
but there are also common words as well
an Egyptian phrase "m km n at" meaning
"in the twinkling of an eye"
as the etymology of the word "moment"
"3fry" = boil
as the etymology for "fry"
"3hw" = misery, trouble, illnes, injury, pain, sufferer
as the etymology of "ow" and "ouch"
"3sr" = roast
as the etymology of "sear"
"aqhu = battle axe, hew with an axe
"3tyt" = nurse
as the etymology of "teat" or "tit"
"3k3yt" = precise, accurate
as the etymology of accurate
>Try to look at some *real* ones before constructing your own.
"Middle Egyptian", Faulkner, p 1-6
> And I mean those of present-day languages with a long paper trail,
> such as present-day English.
"wnhr" = be skilled as the etymology of "winner"
"wr" swallow, great, greatness,
"wrhy" = anointer
as the etymology of "worthy"
"wht" = failure
as the etymology of "quit"
"whyrt" = dockyard as the etymology of "wharf"
"wsr" = strong, powerful, wealthy, influential
as the etymology of "visir"
"wts" = raise, lift up, (with the determinative of mast and boom)
as the etymology of "winch"(wts, wits, guitch,[hitch][cinch] winch)
>
>>As others have shown, there are enough matches to suggest there
>>was some influence, which is the point we wish to prove.
>
>Influence or common ancestry? As in a common ancestor of Egyptian
>and Indo-European being Nostratic.
Piotr doesn't seem to like that idea:), I have no problem with it.
Something like *ne- for "we" or *wete-
>for "water" is a possible example of that.
wa'b = pure (pouring water as the determanitive)
wa'bi = priest (pouring water as the determanitive)
"w3h" = flood, as the etymology of wave
"wdnw" = flood as the etymology of "sodden"
"waw" = wave of sea as the etymology of "water"
I think the Egyptian "watur" = ocean
as an etymology for "water" and
all using the root "wa" for water
and
"[n]uit" = goddess of moisture as the etymology of "wet"
>
>--
>Loren Petrich
steve
Subject: Re: A Harem For the Next World?
From: Saida
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1996 12:13:31 -0500
Saida wrote:
>
> Kathy McIntosh wrote:
> >
> > In article <323EEF07.1E37@PioneerPlanet.infi.net>, Saida
> > writes
> > >I have a little book called the "Dwellers On the Nile" by Sir E. A.
> > >Wallis Budge, now a bit dated, but nevertheless full of useful
> > >information about life in ancient Egypt. Paging through it today, I
> > >came upon something I hadn't picked up on before and it rather shocked
> > >me:
> > >
> > >"So convinced were the primitive Egyptians that every man, living or
> > >dead, should posses a wife and concubines that, on the death of a man of
> > >wealth and importance, several women were killed in order that their
> > >spirits might go to the Other World and minister to his wants there as
> > >their bodies had served him in this world. The bodies of some women who
> > >were murdered for this purpose at the death or burial of Amenhotep II,
> > >about 1448 B.C., may be seen lying on the ground near his sarcophagus,
> > >in his tomb at Thebes, to this day."
> > >
> > >Surely not! I realize that the tomb of Amenhotep II had many
> > >occupants--relatives, assorted persons identified and otherwise, about
> > >17, I think--but I have never read that there were women strewn about
> > >just in case the pharaoh might rouse himself sufficiently for a little
> > >hanky-panky. ("Sorry, dear, I am simply DEAD!" would be a reasonable
> > >excuse under the circumstances, and it is difficult to have a headache
> > >once the brain has been removed.)
> > >
> > >I have always thought Amenhotep II rather a cruel despot after his
> > >treatment of the seven foreign princes, but this is the first reference
> > >I have ever seen to human sacrifice among the dynastic Egyptians. Does
> > >anyone know if there can be any truth to this or was Budge's imagination
> > >just working overtime?
> >
Since I posted the above message, I have gotten various mailings--all
trashing Budge's scholarship, with which I do not agree. Sir Wallis
Budge's sovereign did not knight him for being an idiot. He was one of
the greatest Egypt scholars and Near Eastern language experts of his
time. But time passes. Even if Budge had been universally accurate in
all his endeavors and assertions, you know the chances are good that
present-day scholars would STILL disagree with him. Sure, none of us
would like a physician whose knowledge ends with the medical wisdom of
forty years ago treating us, but that doesn't mean that doctor knows
absolutely nothing about medicine. If Budge's works continue to be
reprinted it is because they are informative and entertainingly written.
Yes, they are outdated, but it is to be hoped that those sufficiently
interested in ancient Egypt to read them will also be looking into
modern works on the subject to compare them with! I ask you, where is
the like of Budge today, with the great scope of his knowledge? All I
can say is, I wish there were people now, with the advantage of all the
years of research since Budge's day to their advantage, writing the kind
of books Budge wrote covering every aspect of Egyptology.
Now, getting back to this business of the tomb of Amenhotep II. People
have been telling me not to believe everything I read. I'm not even
sure I believe everything I write myself :) Apparently, it is easier to
give advice than information, which is what I am soliciting. The only
thing that made me even wonder about this claim of "murdered concubines"
is the reputation of Amenhotep II. He was, after all, the king who
personally dispatched seven foreign princes with his mace. I am not
quite sure whether he first tortured them by hanging them from the prow
of his ship, although I read in Barbara Mertz that he did. I have not,
personally, seen the text of this "exploit". Of course, these men were
considered enemies, a category in which, one hopes, Amenhotep did not
place his wives and concubines.
According to Peter Clayton in "Chronicle of the Pharaohs", here is the
list of persons found in the tomb of Amenhotep II (KV35):
Amenhotep II
Amenhotep III
Merenptah
Ramesses IV
Ramesses V
Ramesses VI
Seti II
Siptah
Tiye (?), the "Elder Woman"
Thutmose IV
6 anonymous human remains, not all necessarily royal
Among these last six were a young prince, a bald-headed woman, a man
lying in a funerary boat to which he was stuck with pitch. That
accounts for thirteen. Who else? I'll try to find out. That certainly
doesn't leave room for many harem ladies, unless there were bodies lying
about that Clayton doesn't know about. That is why I would like to know
what the full account of Loret's impressions of the tomb says.
Subject: Egalitarianism in the North American Northeast: was Re: Norse sailings to Vinland/Markland
From: mbwillia@ix.netcom.com(Mary Beth Williams)
Date: 20 Sep 1996 18:53:49 GMT
In <51n0ug$1ii@italy.eng.sc.rolm.com> sheaffer@italy.eng.sc.rolm.com
(Robert Sheaffer) writes:
>
>In article <516gtq$fjv@dfw-ixnews5.ix.netcom.com>,
>Mary Beth Williams wrote:
>>
>>The peoples of Eastern Canada and Maine are matrilineal and
matrilocal,
>>meaning that the status of women was much more elevated than it would
>>have been among women from patriarchal societies such as the Norse.
>
>Let's be careful with terminology here: a number of societies are
indeed
>matrilineal and/or matrilocal. However, there is no society that is
>not patriarchal; i.e., male dominance and a predominance of male
>leadership is a human universal. Despite many claims of
""nonpatriarchal"
>societies from feminists, there is not one such claim
>that stands up to critical scrutiny. For a detailed
>examination of claims of alleged
>"nonpatriarchal" societies, see _Why Men Rule_ by Steven Goldberg.
>Other scholars have noted the lack of correlation between the
>status of women and whether the society is matrilineal, matrilocal,
>both, or none.
>
>Also, I would dispute that women among the native peoples of Eastern
>Canada enjoyed an "elevated" status. The late feminist/Marxist
>anthropologist Eleanor Leacock made exactly such a claim, which I
>investigated and found to be based upon selective quotations and
>deliberate omission of contradictory evidence. See my expose of the
>deceptions concerning her supposed 'native American
>gender-equal society' on my web page
>at http://patriarchy.com/~sheaffer/patriarchy.html/ .
>Perhaps you were unaware that Leacock's depiction of the
>supposedly elevated status of women in these societies was
>an ideologically-inspired fabrication.
>
>>MB Williams (Kennebec/Penobscot (Wabanaki))
>>Dept. of Anthro., UMass-Amherst
Mr. Shaeffer,
Have you read anything regarding gender in anthropology since Leacock
wrote in the 1970's? (if I recall correctly, her article first appeared
in _Toward an Anthropology of Women_, and was supporting the idea that
patriarchy has not always been, as you claim, a human universal, but,
was intimately linked to the development of private property.) Its all
nice and good that you place your *expose* of Leacock on your web
page... How about putting it in a peer-reviewed journal like the
hundreds of gender anthropologists/archaeologists have been doing now
since Leacock and others pioneered the field twenty years ago? (Oh,
yeah, and I have submitted successfully to the peer-review media on the
subject of egalatarianism in Northeastern pre-Columbian cultures, e.g.
see Williams and Bendremer, *An archaeology of maize, pots and
seashells: Gender dynamics in Late Woodland and Contact Period New
England*, in Claassen and Joyce, eds., _Women in Ancient America_,
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.)
There is a substantial gender bibliography located on the University of
Kentucky web site... I recommend you take a look at it to get up to
speed on the research in the field, research that deserves more than a
blanket refutation, particularly since many of the scholars, i.e.,
Conkey, Watson, Claassen, Hasdorf, etc., etc., are easily included in
the elite of the anthropological field.
MB Williams
Dept. of Anthro., UMass-Amherst
PS, I will not be following this thread with any consistancy due to the
recent birth of my daughter, so any responses will have to be taken up
by others. Hence, I am x-posting this to sci.anthro., where a similar
discussion has been taking place.
Subject: Re: Sumerian etymology of the word Lugal
From: Marc Cooper
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1996 14:52:12 -0500
Berlant@cyberix.com wrote:
> I've been waiting patiently for Mr. Whittet -- or some equally courageous soul
> -- to take what has evidently been considered Mr. Michalowski's "bait" and
> proffer the virtually self-evident, Indo-European "borrowing" of Sumerian
> LUGAL.
[snip]
> was the maker of rules. Accordingly, there are more than adequate grounds for
> believing that the striking resemblance Sumerian "LUGAL" bears to the stem of
> Latin words pertaining to law "legal-" -- and, only slightly less to, say, the
> latter's recognized Greek cognate "logo-" -- is no coincidence.
>
> Considering, then, the wealth of evidence that "l" and "r" have frequently
> interconverted in the evolution of language, there are also more than adequate
> grounds for believing that the Latin word "regalis" for "kingly" is none other
> that the "r" variant of Latin "legal", ultimately traceable to Sumerian LUGAL
> rather than Proto-Indoeuropean *reg- and *leg-, respectively. Q.E.D.
Steve,
I don't know whether or not Piotr Michalowski was baiting anyone when he
indicated that there may be alternative etymologies for lugal. I thought
that he was being careful, since etymology, particularly in a language
in which the phonetic value of many words is at best tentative, is
always difficult. "Big man" is a reasonable and direct translation of
the two signs which combine to form lugal. In fact, in proto-literate
pottery and seals there are images of a "big man" who holds a spear and
seems to be in charge of others who are drawn smaller. That said, the
Sumerian word "gal" also means "cup." Sumerian kings and gods are
occasionally shown in seals offering a cup of beer or wine to a lesser
party. Hence, another possible etymology is "Man (or Lord) of Cups."
As for your suggestion of an I.E. etymology based on possible Latin
cognates, my understanding of the etymolgy of the Latin words concerning
royalty and legislation would make it unlikely. ...but what a hoot if
you are right!
Marc Cooper
mac566f@nic.smsu.edu
Subject: Re: Egalitarianism in the North American Northeast: was Re: Norse sailings to Vinland/Markland
From: brunner@mandrake.think.com (Eric Brunner)
Date: 20 Sep 1996 21:21:50 GMT
Mary Beth Williams (mbwillia@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
: In <51n0ug$1ii@italy.eng.sc.rolm.com> sheaffer@italy.eng.sc.rolm.com
: (Robert Sheaffer) writes:
A silly troller, really! What a frothy work of pother.
: Welcome to The Domain of Patriarchy on the Internet
:
: Robert Sheaffer - robert@patriarchy.com - Chief Patriarch and
: Oppressor-General
:
Then, when writing specific to Eleanor Leacock:
: Deceptions of a 'Gender Equal Society':
:
: Eleanor Leacock's Depiction of the 17th-Century
: Montagnais-Naskapi
:
: by Robert Sheaffer, June, 1993
:
: The late Eleanor Leacock was an anthropologist and feminist who published
: claims of societies that were supposedly "Egalitarian," in regard both to
: wealth, and to sex. Her writings display a strong Marxist bent. She wrote
: a long and admiring introduction for her new edition of Engels' The Origin
: of the Family, Private Property, and the State, which was published by
: International House Publishers (New York, 1972), the publishing arm of the
: Communist Party of the USA.
Heck. Nearly everything I write displays a "strong Marxist bent", I'm a
materialist after all, and any critical edition of Engels' Origin deserves
a long and admiring introduction -- it is one of the major items in the
history of European Intellectualism since 1789, and who else in the US but
the CP USA had the resources and corporate integrity to publish, in 1972,
a critical edition of a work which originally was in German and in the 19th
century, and rather highly out of fashion in the Vietnam/ColdWar emprisioned
US?
Now, on to the "meat" of the article.
1. Sheaffer cites that the Innu Nation (modern political form of the
Montagnais-Naskapi Nations) being patriarchial in the late 20th century
refutes the possibility that the 17th century anticeedents were not.
I'd go on, but I'm in a bit of a hurry, and the scholarship of this web
page is more strident than I'm used to. It must be some Euro male thing.
--
Kitakitamatsinohpowaw,
Eric Brunner
Subject: Re: The Minoan Linear A Language?
From: Berlant@dynanet.com
Date: 20 Sep 1996 22:20:27 GMT
In article ,
piotrm@umich.edu (Piotr Michalowski) wrote:
>In article "Alan M. Dunsmuir"
writes:
>>
>
>>In article <51pvfs$9qv@shore.shore.net>, Steve Whittet
>> writes
>>>That's six out of the nine pictographs I have
>>>so far identified as equivalent to cuniform values
>>>are essentially also congruent with Egyptian glyphs
>>>and the glyphs of the Phaistoes Disk which was
>>>found on Crete and can be identified as a
>>>precursor to Minoan Linear A and B
>
>>No it can't.
>>--
>
>Righto! Only Steve could associate a disk that cannot be read, and may not
>even be writing, dated to about 1700 BCE, with Sumerian signs from around
> 3100 from far away.
SNIP---
Au contraire. As Piotr should have recalled, an earlier debate here over
whether the Phaistos disk had been credibly deciphered or not ended abruptly
with my posting an open letter from Edward Rockstein on the subject.
I am reposting it here for the edification of Piotr, Mr. Dunsmuir, and anyone
else who may have more detailed knowledge and/or convincing evidence refuting
Steve's illusions [SIC] -- i.e., to the fact that the disk had indeed been
deciphered.
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 1996 21:23:44 -0500 (EST)
I am sending this by E-mail since I appear to be unable to post
directly to newsgroups from my service. Feel free to post it if
you think it would add beneficially to the dialogue on the
Phaistos disk. Doc Rock
--------------------------------
Phaistos Disk Another View
---------------------------------
In 1973 a decipherment of the Linear A script was first
published (this decipherment was republished in 1977). The
decipherment was based on the following premises: 1) all Cretan
and Cypriot scripts were syllabic; 2) Linear A, a Cretan Bronze
Age script, might have been used for a dialect of Hittite (the
Hittites then inhabiting that part of modern Turkey ENE of Crete
and North and West of the Sumerians and Akkadians and due east
over water and land from Greece); and 3) a comparative study of
the forms of the signs in the known syllabaries of the region
and of their corresponding sounds might provide an entree into
the reading of Linear A. The other scripts compared included:
Linear B (Mycenean) , Cypriot, Sinaiatic, Cuneiform Hittite,
Hieroglyphic Hittite, and Hieroglyphic Egyptian.
A chart, based on the comparison, was drawn up and then a list
of Linear A characters was made assigning the syllabic values of
the isomorphic characters of the other scripts. The results of
this grid were then plugged into Linear A texts that had been
discovered by Sir Arthur Evans, inter alia, and published with
photographic and line drawing illustrations in Brice (1961).
The resulting texts appeared to be a dialect of Hittite showing
Nesian Hittite influence and Luvian influence as well.
The texts which emerged and were translated correlated well with
the nature of the objects upon which they were
inscribed--agricultural terms on what appeared to be crop
inventories, religious terms on libation tables, etc. It became
apparent that the decipherment was producing meaningful
readings. The decipherment also reinforced the contention that
Hittite-continental influence predominated at Knossos (Qunusi as
named in the Linear A records) and Phaistos (Piziti) until the
holocaust circa 1450 bce when Mycenean military conquest made
Crete subordinate to the Peloponnesus.
"So what does this have to do with the Phaistos disk?" you well
may ask.
An analogous attack was made on the characters of the Phaistos
disk. The disk pictograms were compared by analogy to the
Linear A script which appeared to have many possible derivative
characters--derivative in the same way that Hieratic derived
from Hieroglyphic and modern Chinese characters derived from
older pictographic forms into more ideographic forms. This
study of the characters on the disk and a proposed grid of
related Phaistos and Linear A characters which had been drawn up
were also published in 1973.
Since the Phaistos disk was first reported by Evans in 1921 from
a Linear A horizon dated to circa 1600 bce, it is not
unreasonable that there might have been some cultural connection
despite the lack of any other similar examples of text.
This proposed decipherment of the Phaistos disk made the
following inferences: 1) the text reads from the CENTER of the
disk running to the periphery in a clockwise fashion; 2) the
lines appearing sporadically between groups of characters that
were thought by some to be word dividers, were, rather, a form
of pangkun, a mark of elision such as used in the Old Javan
script.
The Phaistos disk probably represents the oldest surviving
example of "moveable type." The symbols almost certainly were
individually cast from metal and impressed into clay before the
disk was firing. A comparison of the symbols on the first and
second face clearly indicates that the "fonts" were slightly
different, hence indicating that there was more than one set of
symbols and, therefore, that there must have been many tablets
produced at some time. If the decipherments are good and
reasonably accurate, as I believe they are, it would seem
probable that the Phaistos disk might represent an earlier
cultural antecedent to later Anatolian civilizations such as the
Hittite and that the disk may have been preserved as a religious
item or perhaps merely as a cultural treasure.
Why do I regard these two decipherments as credible? (My bona
fides: I have a doctorate in Oriental Studies from Princeton
University where I specialized in Medieval and Ancient Korean
literature with minors in Japanese and Chinese. I have studied
the origin, development, and evolution of Chinese characters,
the Korean alphabet, and the Japanese syllabary. I have also
done six years of Latin, one of Greek, Russian, Mongolian,
Uygur, Old Turkic, etc. I have published on the origin of the
so-called Runic Turkic script and the Szekely "Runes" of
Hungary.)
I find the Linear A decipherment credible because it is based on
cultural context and logic and reads in the many texts to which
it applies--it provides texts which are logical in their
specific contexts. The Phaistos decipherment seems credible,
but not provable since we have so little context. If more text
in the Phaistos script were to be found, that would be a proper
test. Lacking such, we can only make an informed supposition
about the adequacy of the approach and the quality of the
resultant text. It uses the same approach as the highly
credible Linear A decipherment. In my opinion the matching of
the Phaistos pictograms to Linear A characters is logical and
seems to be correct. The resulting text appears to read in an
Anatolian language related to that of the Linear A texts--which
adds confidence that if the script were derivative, it often
happens (not always) that the languages may be related. The
resulting decipherment yields a text from one face of the disk
which is ten lines of alliterative verse in feminine rhyme--it
extols the disk as an oracular aid in the interpretation of
omens. The reverse face is a nine sentence prose instruction as
to how a priest may determine the fate of someone by
interpreting the behavior of birds.
I recommend that you secure these articles and judge their
merits for yourselves. The decipherments were reprinted in "The
Minoan Language--Linear A Decipherment," _The Epigraphic
Society Occasional Publications_ (ESOP), Volume 4, Part 1, 1977,
no. 77, pp. 1-65 and "The Phaistos Disk ca 1600 B.C.," _The
Epigraphic Society Occasional Publications_, Volume 4, Part 1,
1977, no. 79, pp. 80-96. Runs of ESOP may be found in Belgium
at the International Committee for Breton Language, Parvis de
St. Gillis, 81060 Bruxelles and Katholieke Universiteit,
Universiteitsbibliotheck, Mgr. Ladeuze Plein 21, B, 3000 Leuven,
inter alia; in the UK at the British Library, Overseas English
Section, Great Russell St., London and the Council for British
Archaeology, 112 Kensington Road, London, SE, 11 6RE, inter
alia; in Norway Universiteitsbiblioteket, Tidskriftkontoret,
Dremmensvein 42, Oslo 2. Many libraries in the US such as the
Hesburgh Library at Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, NY Public
Library, Maequette Historical Society, Marquette, MI, Harvard,
Yale, etc.
Respectfully,
Dr. Edward D. Rockstein rocks@romulus.ncsc.mil
Regards,
Steve Berlant
Subject: Visit 1686 La Salle Shipwreck!
From: Andrew and Rebecca Hall
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1996 18:07:42 -0700
Dear All:
The La Salle Shipwreck Project WWW site has been updated with links to media accounts of the
project, ranging from the first newspaper reports from July 1995 to CNN Interactive's story on
the project last week. The URL is:
http://www.thc.state.tx.us/belle/index.htm
Below is the official Trip Guide for the La Salle Shipwreck Project. I have posted this
elsewhere, and this may be a duplicate posting to this list. If so, my apologies.
Archaeologists and others with a professional interest in the project should contact the Texas
Historical Commission well in advance of their intended visit, so that any special accommodations
may be made.
Please don't write me to tell me the mileages listed below are off. I fought that battle
already, and lost.
-----------> Andy Hall
______________________________________________
La Salle Shipwreck Project Trip Guide
Visit a 300-year-old shipwreck! The is excavating the Belle,
a ship once belonging to French explorer Rene Robert Cavalier,
Sieur de La salle, in Matagorda Bay. This information will help
you plan your trip to this historic site.
Where is the shipwreck?
The La Salle Shipwreck is in Matagorda Bay near Palacios and
Port O'Connor, Texas. Palacios and Port O'Connor are located
along the Gulf Coast approximately halfway between Corpus
Christi and Houston.
----- Distances to Palacios from. . . -----
Austin 165 miles
Corpus Christi 110 miles
Dallas 318 miles
Galveston 113 miles
Houston 107 miles
San Antonio 166 miles
--- Distances to Port O'Connor from. . . --
Austin 187 miles
Corpus Christi 120 miles
Dallas 360 miles
Galveston 172 miles
Houston 163 miles
San Antonio 177 miles
How do I reach the shipwreck site?
To reach the shipwreck site, we recommend taking a tour with
a company offering daily trips to the site. Tours will be
available once excavation begins (adults and children 10 and
older only, please).
For more information on companies offering tours to the
shipwreck site, please contact the Palacios or Port O'Connor
Chambers of Commerce (please see numbers listed below).
What else can I do in the Matagorda Bay area?
Due to the unique ecosystem created by the barrier island that buffers
the Texas Coast from the Gulf of Mexico, both communities are renowned
for their fishing and bird watching.
Many of the companies providing tours to the shipwreck site also offer
fishing and birding excursions in the Matagorda Bay area. Please
contact the local Chambers of Commerce (listed below) for a complete
list of fishing and birding guides in the area.
Where can I stay?*
Palacios
Luther Hotel
(512) 972-2312
Fountain Terrace Motel
(512) 972-2547
Moonlight Bay Bed & Breakfast
(512) 972-2232
The Main Bed & Breakfast
(512) 972-3408
Serendipity Resort & RV Park
(512) 972-5454
Port O'Connor
The Cottage Bed & Breakfast
(512) 983-2227
Port Motel
(512) 983-2724
Tarpon Motel
(512) 983-2606
Bay City
Econolodge
(409) 245-5115
Matagorda Hotel & Conference Center
(409) 244-5400
Port Lavaca
Day's Inn
(512) 552-4511
* For additional listings, please contact the local
Chambers of Commerce
Where can I eat?*
Palacios
Dairy Queen
(512) 972-2554
Palacios Mexican Restaurant
(512) 972-2766
Petersen's Restaurant
(512) 972-2413
Shimek's Restaurant
(512) 972-3821
Subway
(512) 972-2273
Yangchow Restaurant
(512) 972-2724
Port O'Connor
Clark's Seafood
(512) 983-4388
Josie's Mexican Food
(512) 983-4720
The Spot
(512) 983-2775
Bay City
K-2 Steakhouse
(409) 245-6936
Whataburger
(409) 244-4959
Port Lavaca
El Patio
(512) 552-6316
Gordon's Bayside Grill & Club
(512) 552-1000
* For additional listings, please contact the local
Chambers of Commerce
For more information. . . .
Palacios
Palacios Chamber of Commerce
1 (800) 611-4567
Palacios Beacon (newspaper)
(512) 972-3009
Port O'Connor
Port O'Connor Chamber of Commerce
(512) 983-2898
Port O'Connor Dolphin Talk (newspaper)
(512) 983-4617
Bay City
Bay City Chamber of Commerce
(409) 245-8333
Bay City Daily Tribune (newspaper)
(409) 245-5555
Port Lavaca
Port Lavaca Chamber of Commerce
1 (800) 556-PORT
Port Lavaca Wave
(512) 552-9788
Texas Historical Commission
The , the state agency for historic preservation, was
established in 1953 by the state legislature. The agency
administers a variety of programs to preserve the archeological,
historical and cultural resources of Texas.
The agency employs close to 100 people who work in fields
including architecture, archeology, economic development,
heritage tourism, urban planning and public administration.
The staff of the Texas Historical Commission is available to
answer questions and provide preservation assistance. For
information on any of the agency's programs or for a copy of
the our publications list, please direct inquiries to:
The Texas Historical Commission
P. O. Box 12276
Austin, Texas 78711-2276
phone: (512) 463-6100
fax: (512) 475-4872
The Texas Historical Commission has provided this information
for your convenience. We are not responsible for, nor do we
endorse, the services provided by any of the businesses listed.
Information for this guide was provided by area Chambers of Commerce
Return to the .