Newsgroup sci.archaeology 48074

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Steve Whittet (whittet@shore.net) wrote:
: In article , petrich@netcom.com says...
: >
: >In article <533hgo$r1m@shore.shore.net>,
: >Steve Whittet  wrote:
: >>In article <532vip$iul@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>, rg10003@cus.cam.ac.uk says...
: >
: >>The question is why would people from Cental Asia want to
: >>migrate to Turkey in the first place? ...
: >
: >        Ever hear of wars of conquest?
: Ever hear of commerce? Businessmen find it easier to make a
: profit if they don't kill off their potential customers.
Slowly, slowly! First you ask the question 'why?' and when you get an answer 
you fend it off with your preconceived ideas. You just assume that commerce is 
the sole motivation for everything. But - as we all know - it is not. 
Commerce doesn't explain the Roman conquest of Gaul or Germany, it doesn't 
explain the Vandals' ransacking of Rome, it doesn't explain Djenghis Khan's 
strom to the west. There wasn't that much trade in Gaul or Germany - 
especially no trade the Romans couldn't have conducted peacefully, after the 
fall of Rome to the Vandals there wasn't a lot left for commerce, and that 
Djenghis Khan was a merchant would be complete news to everybody.
: Military conquest is not good for business but requires substantial
: economic support to be effective. Ever wonder why authoritarian 
: military regimes  don't seem to last very long?
That may be true in most cases, but firstly I have just shown that trade is
by no means the only motivation for expansion.
And just as an example of military conquest serving trade purposes I would like 
to introduce Saddam Hussein's occupation of Kuwait. It was signalled to Saddam 
that the US would consider this an inner Arabic matter, so he had no fear for 
adverse effects - and would have been in control of a significant portion of 
the world oil.
: >>> If you can speak Turkish you can basically talk and understand 
: >>>all the Turkic peoples between Turkey and West China.
: >>That is because of a much later development called the Silk Road
: >>which provides a mechanism connecting these peoples together.
: >
: >Horseshit. Trade links do NOT produce the remarkable linguistic
: >similarities that Mr. Graessmantel had mentioned.
: Why not?
If they did the whole of the mediterranean should be speaking Latin.
: >Consider Japanese, and how it has acquired numerous words first from 
: >Chinese,
: The Japanese did not trade with the Chinese?
You are desperately trying to miss the point. Of course there was trade, but 
the Japanese don't speake Chinese - and don't understand each other - whereas 
the Turkic peoples speak lanuages which are extremely closely related, in fact 
closer than any trade links could have possibly accounted for.
: >and now from English.
: Seems to me I see an awful lot of Japanese cars around...?
Yes, but you don't great your boss: conichewa (sp?), do you?
: >Yet its basic vocabulary and grammar remain distinct from both --
: So? What you have shown is exactly the sort of connection I described
: with the aquisition of numerous words and concepts, the degree of
: distinction of basic vocabulary and grammar is really not an issue.
Well, the fact that English has an awful lot of Latin words (by whichever way 
they got in) doesn't make English related to Latin, let alone an Englishman 
able to understand Latin. And the languages you claim were merely linked 
by trade are so close that they understand each other without any difficulties.
: >none of the mutual intelligibility or semi-intelligibility of the Turkic
: >languages (how does Turkic compare to the Romance or the Continental
: >Scandinavian languages?). For example, despite acquiring a lot of English
: >words and learning English words, there are not many Japanese motivated to
: >put verbs in the middles of sentences instead of at the ends of them (the
: >normal order in Japanese). 
: The issue is the borrowing of concepts, semantics, not syntax.
Just borrowing concept and semantics doesn't enable speakers of the respective 
languges to converse without difficulties. 
Ralf
: >
: >-- 
: >Loren Petrich 
: steve
--

Saida  wrote:
>In the linguistic threads we have been talking about the possible extent 
>of the influence of the Egyptian language or how far Egyptians reached 
>in their commerce and or communications.  There are a couple of stories 
>that make some intriguing suggestions.  One is contained in the writings 
>of Hecataeus of Abdera, who travelled to Thebes in the time of Ptolemy 
>Soter and visited the mausoleum of Ramesses II there, the Ramesseum.  
>Hecataeus claimed he saw a library therein and also a wall decoration 
>depicting Ramesses' Bactrian campaign.  That would have put the pharaoh 
>in Afganistan, I believe!
***Interesting, I didn't know this reference. Can you quote it
verbatim, or better give a reference? My quess would be it deals with
the legendary figure Sesostris, about whom the Greeks told all kind of
fantastic stories, like they did around the mesopotamian Ninus.
So not  real history.....
>Another tale, held to be apocryphal, but perhaps, like all such stories, 
>contains elements of truth. Here it is as described by Budge in his 
>book, "The Mummy":
***This so called Bentresh Stela is generally to be held a
propogandistic forgery of the Persian/Ptolomaic time, to boost the
prestige of the god Chonsu. So it is a mixture of fact and fiction
(as indicated below)
The full text of the stela  you can find in Lichtheim's Ancient
Egyptian Literature.
>"The reigns of Rameses X and Ramses XI are of no interest.  Of the reign 
>of Ramses XII, their successor, an interesting though fabulous story is 
>recorded.
***This is odd: the Stela is generally accepted to deal with
Ramses II !!
In the text, the royal names of Ramses ii are named, being however
mixed up with some names of Tuthmosis IV (one of the things showing
the stela to be a forgery) -  fact 1 + fiction 1.
Also it is accepted that some popular story was used, that had some
historical basis.
  A stele found near the temple of Chonsu at Karnak states that 
>the king was paying his usual visit to Mesopotamia to receive tribute 
>from the tribes subject to him. 
***Ramses II never visited Naharina (Mesopotamia) - fiction 2
>>Each chief brought his offering of 
>gold, etc., but the chief of Bechten brought his eldest daughter, who 
>was a most beautiful girl and gave her to the king.  She found favour in 
>his sight and he married her, and gave her the official title of "royal 
>spouse".
>Sometime after they had returned to Egypt, a messenger came to the king 
>from Bechten saying that a young sister of his wife, Ra-Neferu, called 
>Bentresh, was grievously ill, and entreated him to send a physician to 
>heal her.  A very learned scribe called Tehuti-em-heb was despatched, 
***A person with the name Thotemheb actually really lived during
Ramses ii 's reign - fact 2
***The prinses was called Nefrure. This shows the source of the 
whole story: in his 32nd year Ramses II married a princes of Hatti
(Hittite, Anatolia), who was given the name: Ma'at-Nefrure !
So: 
marriage with foreign princess and name of the girl - fact 3 + 4
date of the marriage is 32nd year, not  23th (or 15th) as the stela
says - fiction 3 
>but when he arrived in Bechten he found that the illness of Bentresh was 
>caused by an evil spirit, and he was unable to cure her.  Another 
>messenger was sent to Egypt and he asked that the god Chonsu himself 
>might be sent to cure Bentresh, and the king having asked the god to 
>consent to this proposition, prepared a suitable shrine and sent the god 
>to Bechten, where he arrived AFTER A JOURNEY OF ONE YEAR AND FIVE 
>MONTHS.
**Yes, a fairytale lenght.....fiction 4
Notice the scribe messes up with the 'year 15' at the beginning; 
Chonsu is back home  33th year, after travel of 1 year 5 months;
he is in Bechten 3 years and 9 months, after having arrived after a
travel of 1 year 5 months, having left Egypt in 26th year. 
So the marriage must have been 2 times (1 y 5 m) before that, being
the time it needs Thutemheb to travel back and forth - so it should
have read 'year 23' instead of 'year 15'.  
>As soon as the god was brought into the sick maiden's chamber, he 
>addressed the demon who possessed her and drove him out of her.  The 
>demon acknowledged the authority of the god, and promised to depart to 
>his own place if a great feast was prepared in his honour; the chief of 
>Bechten gladly made a feast, and the demon departed.  The god Vhonsu was 
>detained in Bechten for three years and nine months, and at the end of 
>that time he returned to Egypt, his priests bringing rich gifts with 
>them..."
>A journey of seventeen months--even for a god!  Where could Chonsu have 
>gone that took that long? 
***fairytale land?? :)
> At the beginning of the story, Ramesses XII 
>was in Mesopotamia.  I don't much about ancient travel, but that does 
>not seem like it was seventeen months away from Egypt--unless Chonsu and 
>his priests were held up somewhere in a mountainous area by heavy snows 
>and were forced to wait for more clement weather.
***On both travels?? Not likely....
>  Where was Bechten and 
>what sort of name is Bentresh?  Does it contain the Arabic element of 
>"bint" or "daughter"?  Does Bechten have anything to do with Bactria, 
>that land alledgedly conquered by the long-ago Ramesses II? 
***You are quoting the tradition of Hecataeus, which as said is no
history. But his text is interesting, as it shows a contemporous clue
as to the origin of the name Bechten, like you say below. Of course
Bactria was a toponym not known in Ramses' time, only after the
Persian time. Thus showing the forgery again. The scribe just picked
the farest location he had heard of in HIS time - some eastern Perzian
province; even messing up the name -  fiction 5
> Bactria was 
>called in Egyptian "Bakhter", as written on the Maskhutah Stele.  My 
>dictionary also gives the Persian and Babylonian cunieform spellings of 
>this word.  Bechten is "bekhten" in Budge's dictionary and the two place 
>names are spelled nothing alike in glyphs. "Bekhten" is described as "an 
>Asiatic country; situation unknown" and it is taken from the Bekhten 
>Stele.
**I think not even the travel to Afganistan would take a year and 5
months, although perhaps a cart of oxen with a statue would, i could't
tell.
>Also, if the name of the possessed girl had the prefix of "Bint", then 
>her father's name would have had to be something like "Tarash".  Maybe 
>someone can come up with something related to all this.  All I can think 
>of is Taras, as in Bulba, but that seems to be a Mongol name.
**The name Bentresh is thought enigmatic, and judged Aramaic in form.
You suggest:  'Daughter of Tresh' 
The latter then should rather be a god's name rather than a father's
name. I know of none.
The bottomline of all the above being:
the historical fact of the marriage of Ramses II with an Hittite 
princess, is mixed with the fictious deeds of the mythological 
Sesostris [=who was based on the three greatest conquering faraos
in Egyptian history: Sesostris III, Tuthmosis II and  Ramses II] to
bolster some  theological claims.
Please Saida. keep in mind not to take the Bentresh Stela  for history
as it stands! 
kind regards,
Aayko

Steve Whittet (whittet@shore.net) wrote:
[...]
: Doesn't it? Look at an elementary science text trying to explain
: the Big Bang. See the Raisin's move apart as the bread rises...
Ahh, yes of course, I remember the inscriptions on the big 'Ptang' spellt with 
some bread on a pedestal...
[...]
: >>>        emptor is an agent noun derived from emere "to buy", from IE *em- 
: >>>"to take, distribute"
: >
: >>to buy is to make a deal or contract with an offer and acceptance 
: >>of the price which creates an agreement or a meeting of the minds
If you try desperately enough you'll find that every single verb should be 
spellt with 'pt' for making. After all in southern Germany you caome across 
dialect constructions such as 'to make a nap', 'to make a pause', 'to do sit', 
so you can basically derive any word from doing/making something - sorry of 
course I ptmeant to ptwrite to ptdo and to ptmake.
: >        Mr. Whittet, I don't see the relevance of that comment. Now why 
: >don't you learn some Latin grammar and see for yourself where the -ptor 
: >of emptor came from?
: The point, Loren, is where did it come from before it reached 
: your latin grammar. Emo, ere, emi, emptus...
: aptus,= fitted, suitable, apt (well made crafted) a pt, ptah
: creator, craftor, cra ftor, 'ptor, (or craftah, ptah)
: It's your basic Boston accent...:)
Now, why does the word inept spring to mind???
: >>>        One thing to be noted about Mr. Whittet's "definitions" is his 
: >>>amazing willingness to reveal how semantically unconnected they are. Not 
: >>>to mention how wrong some of them are.
: >
: >>what I am looking for here are the patterns you so love Loren...:)
: >
: >        So what?
: you are right Loren, the giver should be thankful...:)
Well, if the patterns were actually useful .....
Ralf
: >-- 
: >Loren Petrich   
: steve
--

In article  seagoat@primenet.com (John A. Halloran) writes:
>
>In article  piotrm@umich.edu (Piotr Michalowski)
>writes:
>>to this day no one has come up with Sumerian 
>>etymologies for most Sumerian city names.  Jacobsen's etymologies have found 
>>little acceptance (as opposed to some of his graphic discoveries)
>  and we 
>>really do not know what the origin of Nibru, Urim, Lagasha, etc. was.
Answer:
>What is wrong with Jacobsen's very detailed argument for deriving both Nippur 
>and Sumer from nig~ir, found in Toward the Image of Tammuz, p. 418?  He quotes 
>Poebel for g~ > b, saying that this development is known only from Eme-SAL but 
>that the Nippur dialect had leanings towards Eme-SAL.
>I have a note that urim meant 'doorpost', in Semitic.  Ur was on the west bank 
>of the Euphrates.
>A Sumerian etymology for Lagash is proposed by Armas Salonen in Voegel und 
>Vogelfang im alten Mesopotamien, Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae, ser. 
>B, v. 180, Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Helsinki 1973, pp. 128 and 277.  Many 
>Sumerian cities appear to have had birds for totems.
1.  Ur.  This is but one more example of the hopeless results from this hunt 
and peck method.  Languages have structures, and differences count for 
something, in fact minimal pair of distinctive features are the foundations of 
modern phonology.  Just because things look the same does not mean that they 
are.  The name of Ur was Urim in Sumerian, with final /m/, as the spelling 
uri3/5.ki-ma indicates.  The word for "standard" is urin, with final /n/, as 
the Akkadian loan word urinnum well demonstrates.  These are unrelated words, 
they as similar as /dump/ and /dumb/ in English are (no SW semantics please, 
and no Egyptian etymologies).  The fact that Ur was on the Euphrates is 
meaningless; all Sumerian cities were on the banks of some watercourse.
2.  Jacobsen wrote that article in 1939!  That is prehistory as far as 
Sumerology is concerned, and he cited Poebel's works from much earlier.  His 
etymology is simply wrong for numerous reasons.  He assumed that Nippur was 
oritginaly nig~ir, from the Sumerian name of Sumer ki-en-gi(r).  We now know 
that this simply mneans "native land" ki + g~ir, as in dumu g~ir, "native 
son."  His eme-sal commentary is obsolete.  No one spoke eme-sal, there is not 
one example of it in administrative or legal texts, no personal names, etc.  
It was a stylized prononciation used primarily in the rituals of the gala 
priest and for monologues of goddesses in myths.  It has nothing to do with 
"women's language," as that would be eme munus.ak and this is definitely to be 
read with sal, "thin."  It is hardly associated with Nippur, in fact, qute the 
opposite, there are relatively few eme-sal texts from Nippur; most of them 
come from the late Old Babylonian period from Northern Babylonia, and from 
much later sources, including a very large corpus from Seleucid Babylon and 
Sippar.  The various phonological changes that Jacobsen cites are irrelevant.  
It was rather unconvincing to begin with, but today it is a completely 
impossible etymology.
3. Lagash.  All these etymologies confuse the writing system from the 
language.  Most, although not all, Sumrian city names were written early on 
with a subsystem of STANDARD OF MAJOR DEITY(+UNUG) (my own theory is that UNUG 
is the early sign for "city" that was replaced by a Semitic loan iri [usually 
transliterated uru], but that is another issue).  Thus Ur (Urim) is written 
with the sign that was originally the standard of the moon god Nanna and UNUG. 
This has nothing do with the etymology or the way the city name sounded.  I 
eve wrote an article on some of these issues "On Some Early Sumerian CIty 
Names," in the Kutcher Memorial Volume.
I cannot do this with all the mistakes that you make, or I would have to 
completely dedicate my life to this hunt, which is so flawed that it simply 
cannot be, sorry.

Saida wrote:
> However, all this leaves no room, then, for all the
> similarities I see between Egyptian and Anglo-Saxon (this includes
> German) and which I cannot regard as coincidental, no matter what the
> linguistic classification of Egyptian has come to be.
Saida, *no one* is telling you that there are **no** words ultimately of
Egyptian origin in English. Yes, there are *some*, and they all are loan
words into Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew (pharaoh being the best
example here), and then into English (and sometimes via yet another
language such as French or Spanish (like adobe)). But those handful of
words does not change the fact that English is an IE language and
Egyptian is AA. The Lebanese dialect of Arabic is *filled* with French
loan words, but French is still IE and Arabic is still AA.
Regards,
Troy

Steve Whittet wrote:
> 
> In article , piotrm@umich.edu says...
> >
> >In article <325671D6.3AF3@utoronto.ca> Troy Sagrillo
>  writes:
> >>
> >>Orel, Vladimir E., and Olga V. Stolbova. 1995. Hamito-Semitic
> >>Etymological Dictionary: Materials for a Reconstruction. Handbuch der
> >>Orientalistik 1; Der Nahe und Mittlere Osten 18. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
> >
> >I had no idea that this had appeared--thanks for posting that here.  Is this
> >from Diakonoff's team that was working for years on the Afroasiatic root
>                                                          ^^^^^^^^^^^
> >distionary?
> 
> It appears to say "*Hamito-Semitic* Etymological Dictionary"
Yup. The term *is* used by many Eastern European scholars. But the
general trend is towards Afroasiatic. In fact the editors of the dict.
write: 
"As to the term _Hamito-Semitic_ itself, it is used as an absolute
synonym of Semito-Hamitic and Afro-Asiatic. Our choice of this
particular varient reflects a long tradtion which, from our point of
view, is the only relevant factor in terminology"
I disagree with this notion of tradition as an overriding factor in
terminology as I think "Hamito-Semitic" is baseless, but I understand
their desire to keep with tradition.
Troy

whittet@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
>Why is the diffusion of language presumed to be something which
>happened slowly a long time ago rather than rapidly fairly recently?
Let me try to explain with an example.
Let's take Linear B.  I think we're all agreed the language of the
Linear B tablets is Greek.  If we compare with the roughly
contemporary Hittite texts found at Hattusas, we see certain
similarities in the language (linguists explain this by the fact that
both Greek and Hittite are Indo-European languages), but it's equally
clear that the Hattusas tablets are *not* written in Greek: they're in
Hittite.  The differences are obvious enough.
As a matter of fact, one could argue that the Linear B tablets are so
characteristically Greek, that in many ways they more closely resemble
Modern Greek than they do Hittite.  Linguistics is not an exact
science, I'm afraid, so I cannot scientifically quantify this
assertion.  All I can appeal to is the innate (or at least acquired
very early on) "feel" for language that humans have.  And if I were to
compare an Athens newspaper [A] with a Linear B tablet [B] and a
Hittite Cuneiform tablet [C], I think I would be able to spot the
"Greekness" in the first two.  Very few people would maintain that
Linear B is definitely closer to Hittite.  Maybe about equally close.
Now let's put it graphically:
  [A] ------------ [B] --------------- [C]
We know that the distance between A and B is about 3500 years.
The distance between B and C can thus be estimated at 3500 to 4000
years.
That takes us to approximately 5000 BC as the point where Greek and
Hittite "meet", give or take a thousand years (Renfrew argues for
7000/6500 BC, Mallory for 4000/3500 BC).
The calculations are not exact.  Some linguists, the so-called
"glottochronologists", thought they *could* make exact calculations,
but they were dead wrong.  However, there are certain "tolerance
limits".  There are 2000 years between Latin and the modern Romance
languages, which, as anyone can see, are closely related.  Now if
someone were to say (hypothetical example) that Phoenicians landed in
the Aegean c. 2500 BC, and that by 1500 BC this had resulted in the
Greek language, then c. 500 BC Phoenician and Greek should have been
about as close to each other as Spanish and Italian, or about as far
from each other as Spanish and Romanian.  The distance between Greek
and Phoenician is of course incalculably greater than that, by several
magnitudes.
==
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal                     ~ ~
Amsterdam                   _____________  ~ ~
mcv@pi.net                 |_____________|||
========================== Ce .sig n'est pas une .cig

I am not a scholar but I saw on the discovery channel that cocaine has been
detected in the mummies from ancient Egypt.  This is AMAZING considering
the only known source is in South America.
Where can I find more information on this discovery?
Thanks,
Jim
Indianapolis, IN

William Belcher wrote:
> 
> In some of Petrie's materials in the University College of London,
> Institute of Archaeology, there are etched Carnelian beads associated with
> some Old Kingdom burials. These type of beads with an eye motif are
> associated with the Indus Valley Civilization, so trade (perhaps through
> intermediaries) with the Indian subcontinent is not inconceivable.
But the carnelian sources in Africa are much closer.
However, as you say, it is not inconceivable that Indian carnelian was
coming into Egypt from time to time, perhaps with a shipment of lapis
lazuli.
Troy

Steve Whittet wrote:
> 
> In article , petrich@netcom.com says...
> ...snip...
> >
> >In article <538g5e$f9e@shore.shore.net>,
> >Steve Whittet  wrote:
> >
> >>I was thinking of "Ptah r" where "r" is more of a verb
> >
> >        Actually, Mr. Whittet shows his ignorance of the structure of the
> >Egyptian language, whose preferred syntax was verb-subject-object.
And by claming that /r/ is a verb to begin with....
[snip]
Troy

Steve Whittet wrote:
> 
> In article <32567129.7757@utoronto.ca>, t.sagrillo@utoronto.ca says...
> >
> >Steve Whittet wrote:
> >[snip]
> >> Ptah was the Egyptian god responsible for making or creating
> >> the sky. In that sense he was the sky father or creator in the
> >> same sense the Bible uses the word father or creator.
> >>
> >> The Egyptians believed that things were created by giving them
> >> a name "r". Thus the act of creation or naming by Ptah was
> >> written as "Ptah" "r".
> >
> >Nonsense! There is absolutely no text with "Ptah r" meaning "father" (or
> >anything else if "r" is taken as a *noun* (which you seem to be impying)
> >-- /ptH r/ would be breaking every rule for forming a genetival
> >construct [now /r ptH/ is another story...]). Besides the noun /r/ means
> >"utterance; speech"; "name" is /rn/
> >
> >> As Saida has pointed out your analysis would be greatly improved
> >> by an introductory course in Hieroglyphic Egyptian
> >
> >Hmmmmmm.........
> 
> I was not really implying that "r" be taken as a noun. although, it
> could be in some cases. (Ptah, his name, his word, his writing)
> 
> I was thinking of "Ptah r" where "r" is more of a verb
> 
> Ptah says
> Ptah speaks
> Ptah created the name for, (or as an Egyptian would take it)
> Ptah created or made.
1. /r/ is NOT a verb. Period. It is a) prep. ("to", in the direction of;
concerning; at"); b) a conj. ("so that; until; according as"); c) a noun
("mouth; opening; utterance; speech; language").
2. EVEN *if* /r/ were a verb (which it is not), the word order is wrong. 
And please, **where** is this text??
[snip]
Troy

In article <538s7e$rgh@shore.shore.net>,
   whittet@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
>The reference is to cloves at Terqua, not nutmeg. Both are spices
>native to the Mollucas (Meluhha) in the Singapore straits.
>
A correction, Steve, the Moluccas (where the spices are located)
are south/southeast of the Philippines and west/northwest of Irian Jaya.  
Malacca, a city of Malaysia, is located in the Singapore straits.
Paul Kekai Manansala

Jiri Mruzek wrote:
> 
> Jim Rogers wrote:
> > Jiri Mruzek wrote:
> 
> > > Ahem, Stella, it's reactionary to think that Egyptians enjoyed
> > > such senseless labor. I am appalled that some around here are this
> > > much politically incorrect!
> 
> > So what about all that "senseless labor" that built huge cathedrals
> > in Europe in the Middle Ages?
> 
> What "all that labor"? Do you have any idea of the huge difference
> in the amount of material contents between cathedrals and the GPOG?
> Obviously you don't, but it's like the diff between a hummingbird's
> eggshell, and a dozen ostrich eggs.
Do you have any idea of the engineering challenge to building a vast
dome, supported only at its rim, high above a cathedral floor, using
only materials and techniques available in the Middle Ages? Obviously
you don't, but it's like the difference between an ostrich egg and a
bucketfull of bacteria. 
> > > The sense of purpose is all over the Pyramid. It is so obvious.
> > > It precludes the possibility of being a tomb quite clearly.
> 
> > Why? If Pharaoh is a "god" to you, isn't the honor worthwhile? Those
> > crazy Europeans wasted lots of energy building memorials to the
> > torture of their god, what's so strange about an actual tomb for him?
> 
> Europeans recognize the existence of one God (if they believe at all).
> It seems that you know more than one god. Be wary of Devils in Disguise.
> The God is dead - long live the God. Is that it, Jim?
Who are you to judge the fitness of the ancient Egyptians' purpose? They
*did* believe, more or less, "The God is dead - long live the God," with
each new Pharaoh. The significance is that they considered Pharaoh to be
the living, breathing God, and building a huge tomb for him in his
afterlife (still a god, but no longer in the world of the living) seems
at least as sensible as those silly Europeans building memorials to the
torture and death of their God, who doesn't even walk among them in
physical form, contemporaneously, as Pharaoh did. 
Jim

Saida wrote: 
> >Why do you people insist
> >upon ignoring everything really interesting that I've posted and just
> >pick at the most insignificant--like what I called my parents as a
> >child?
MALloyd wrote:
> Maybe because you offered it in your post like it was evidence of something
> and I had not read enough of your posts to realize you didn't really care
> about evidence?  Ah well I know better now.
It was evidence of what I called my parents as a child.  Period.  Would 
you now like to tell me what concrete, irrefutable evidence that ancient 
Egyptian could not have survived into Anglo-Saxon I have ignored or 
don't care about?  It seems to me I have given everybody ample evidence 
to the contrary.  Do you maintain my evidence has received a proper 
amount of "caring" or "concern"?  I'll bet you don't "care" about that 
in the least.  And don't tell me I'd better accept the latest "dogma" on 
the classification of ancient Egyptian, because, knowing the history of 
scholarship in this area, I am very skeptical.  I'll give you an 
example:  I have been studying grammar, etc. out of "Egyptian Grammar" 
by Sir Alan Gardiner, a book still widely sold and recommended--I have 
never seen a line written anywhere that it was out of date.  Suddenly, I 
discover, in this group, that a certain glyph has been assigned a 
phonetic value  "of which Gardiner was not aware"!  In plain English, 
the sign that used to be thought of as the "alif" is now supposed to be 
another "r".  Even now I am trying to find other examples besides the 
ones I have been given by my informant to try to figure out how this 
conclusion was reached well over a hundred years after the decipherment 
of hieroglyphs.  I want to see just what is going on that has made 
scholars change their minds about what has been accepted for so long.
Now you can "concern" yourself with this.  If you claim to have read all 
my posts and have reached the conclusion that I don't care about 
evidence, then I claim that you are either lying about having read very 
many of my posts or just plain can't read.

The identity and purpose of the Dorset Chalk Carving known as the 'Cerne
Abbas Giant' has long been a subject of contention.  Some claim the
Giant represents the Pagan Chieftain Dumnorix, holding aloft the Severed
Head of an Enemy.  Some, meanwhile, claim it represents Nodens or
Cernunnos.  Some have even claimed that the Giant was cut in the
Eighteenth Century and represents one of the Bronte sisters after a
course of hormone treatment.  However, Mr. Rodney Castleden, in his
excellent and aptly-titled book, THE CERNE GIANT, sheds new light upon
the mystery; for the Giant was only recently restored to its current
state, and it is likely that its original condition was very different.
According to Mr. Castleden: 'In the Summer of 1976, Rodney Legg thought
he could see the outline of a Gigantic Terrier as a slightly darker
shape immediately to the north of the giant'.  Mr. Castleden goes on to
elucidate that 'it was a simple profile of a short-legged, but immense
Dog, rather like a Scotty, but 50 metres long'.
Here we have proof that the Beaker People were not, as historians
suggest, displaced by a group whose superior Ceramics skills shamed them
into leaving the country, but instead chased off by huge fierce Scots
Terriers one twentieth of a kilometre in length.  Indeed, the White
Horse of Uffington, long thought to have been an Ichthyosaurus, may
instead prove also to have been a Scotty.  Here, also, is the reason why
the Scots Terrier is such a Redoubtable Creature, for, despite his
currently reduced circumstances, his Racial Memory is one of being the
size of a Tyrannosaurus.  Why did Scotties of such size die out?
Evidently because of the paucity of Tartan Dog Overcoats in
Tyrannosaurian Sizes.  Is it not, however, possible that the Rude Man is
in fact not Waving His Weapon menacingly at his Canine Companion, but
instead saying, Here, Nice Doggie, Fetch the Stick, and you may have
this Severed Head Of An Enemy as a special treat?  What would such huge
Dogs live on?  Elephants would appear to be the only logical solution.
However, many quite Gigantic animals, such as Whales and Aardvarks, are
known to subsist on quite Tiny animals such as Krill*.  Perhaps, then,
these prehistoric Dogs also subsisted on a land-dwelling variety of
Krill, grown to the size of Elephants due to Radioactivity.
It is true that legends tell that whoever Sits on a particular part of
the Giant better left to the imagination overnight will conceive and
bear a child; however, on my visit to the Giant, I spoke with numerous
unhappy homosexual couples who had attempted this experiment without
success.  I myself did not wish to attempt the experiment, for I am a
heavy smoker and have my Child's Health to think of.
Yours
Reverend Colonel Ignatius Churchward Von Berlitz M.A. (Dom. Sci.) Oxon.
(Oklahoma)
*It is my theory that , though they have long been thought to be
Terrible Carnivores of the Sea, the Baleen Whales display a marked
degree of intelligent caution in approaching their victims, and single
out old and diseased Krill from the herd, many whales participating in
bringing down a single Krill.

On Sun, 6 Oct 1996, Stephen P Ryder wrote:
> I am doing research at the moment on how disease spread throughout North 
> America eradicating hundreds of thousands of Indians whose immune systems 
> could not combat European sicknesses.  I am hoping to specialize on how the 
> American Indian diet affected their immune systems, as well as the spread of 
> disease in general after European contact.
Two things:
First, although this is well past the Contact-period epidemics, you might 
pursue intentional programs of infection on the part of the United States 
government during the 19th century, particularly the "Indian War" 
period.  US gov't representatives gave smallpox-infected blankets to 
Native Americans on reservations.  You might start with a book called 
"Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee".
Second, not all diseases are infectious.  The Tohono O'odham (formerly 
the Papago) of southern Arizona have very high levels of diabetes.  This 
appears to be a consequence of dietary changes.  The Bureau of Indian 
Affairs was not out to increase the incidence of diabetes, but the 
dietary "supplements" and education provided the Native Americans by the 
BIA emphasized high protein and fat content, and quick-release 
carbohydrates.  The historical diet to which the Native Americans were 
adapted was, of course, focused on local resources, which are 
nutritionally quite different from  European foods.  This dietary change 
is apparently quite significant in the high incidence of diabetes.
The direction which you're pursuing is the one that would come most 
quickly to mind when thinking of the situation, but I wonder how 
successful you will be in pursuing it.  Most infections diseases that 
spread epidemically kill people before the skeletal system can react, so 
there won't be a lot of paleopathological evidence.  You could look at 
mortuary populations for the period in question -- if you can find them, 
and if the kind you data you need are available.  I suspect the 
Contact-period epidemics are a situation which we know occurred, but will 
be able to learn little about when, where, how, how fast, and by what, 
exactly.
Cheers,
Rebecca Lynn Johnson
Ph.D. cand., Dept of Anthropology, U Iowa

On Sun, 6 Oct 1996, Paul Cohen wrote:
> Does anyone here know of archaeological excavations where GPS 
> technology has been used? Is GPS used anywhere systematically 
> in connection with excavations?
> 
> Also I'd like to know what technical support is used for the
> registering of positions and mapping in connection with 
> marine arcaeological excavations.
The current issue of the SAA newsletter has an article about GPS in 
archaeology -- does anybody know the website for it?  I have to go to 
class in a minute, and I'm sure to forget about it afterwards.
Cheers,
Rebecca Lynn Johnson
Ph.D. cand., Dept. of Anthropology, U Iowa

Call for papers for a symposium on GPS and GIS applications in
archaeology.
1997 annual meeting of the Society for California Archaeology (SCA),
March 26-30, Rohnert Park, Sonoma County.
Co-Chairs: Patricia Martz, CSULA; Steve Schwartz, Navy Air Weapons
Station at Pt. Mugu; Jed Unrot, CSULA.
Papers should not exceed 15 minutes presentation time.
Please send abstracts by December 10, 1996 to:
Pat's fax @ (714) 559-8139 or respond to this message.

Victor Reijs  writes:
>Hello There,
>I am looking for more information about paramagetism. Can somebody help 
>me. I heard that Philip Callahan was doing work on this. But do people 
>have more info on this? It seems that stone (like stone rings, 
>menhirs, stone towers in Ireland) could be some sort of antenna, 
>depending on this paramagnetism.
Excuse me a moment while I stop laughing.
Paramagnetism is a property of certain materials in which the application
of an external magnetic field causes the magnetic moments (of the atoms)
to align parallel to the applied field.  Its opposite is diamagnetism, the
moments arrange antiparallel.  It has absolutely nothing to do with antennas,
unless you count the fact the conduction band electons in most metals make
them paramagnetic.  Most oxides, such as the minerals that make up stones,
are diamagnetic.
Why can't people who believe in things like this invent their own technical
vocabulary rather than using existing terms in inappropriate ways that make
them sound like frauds or idiots to the scientific community?  Even if they
had something, nobody will take them seriously.
-- 
-- MA Lloyd (malloy00@io.com)