Livio C. Stecchini

[Michael Collins]

hello bom shankra, unfortunately I am busy with my day job just now. will get back to you ltr on the significance of 14 and the body of Horus. Mike C

[bom shankra]

what is frustrating with livio's style is his use of millimeters 4 to decimal places when refereing to a cubit - thats tenths of a micron (facepalm). even petrie gives mm to two decimals!

e.g. one thats funny in a couple of ways :- he gives a figure for a measure, in this case it's the outside height of the coffer in the GP

Stecchini says and I quote (red my comment) " the height taken as 2 cubits of 524.1438mm (Stecchini states that the outside height of the coffer alone is calculated by this cubit in order to "establish a link between the coffer and the rest of the Pyramid)= 1048.29mm, in terms of the cubit of 526.3231mm (he says earlier in the text that the coffer is based on this cubit, and that a hand of 1/7 of this cubit is the intended measure) , this equates to 13.9422 'hands'; possibly the figure was rounded to 13.9333'hands' = 1047.63mm"

he's saying the coffer was established using hands 1/7 of a cubit of 526.3231mm, but there is a singular correlation of the use of 2 cubits of 524.1438mm for the external height of the coffer, but there is a slight discrepency, but this discrepency was not of importance, just the starting point in the conception of the coffer. (width 13 hands, length 30.3 hands, and height 13.9333 hands (tenths of a micro-hand?). anyway, it all computes to establishing that the coffer is exactlly 80 artabas (not really, stecchini says"its volume = 5488.3 cubic hands, Now 5488 cubic hands is 16 cubic cubits, or 80 artabas")

so thats crystal clear isn't it.

I'm not saying there is any flaw here but - (facepalm)!

I get what hes saying

[Michael Collins]

Hi Bom Shankra, Stecchini noticed [measured?] the internal capacity of the GP coffer [in the upper Kings chamber] at 8 cubic cubits, which is 2744 cubic hands [he said 2745 and a bit?]

why that is important, or at least interesting, is because 2744 is 14 cubed ...and there are AE 'legends' that the body of Horus was broken into 14 pieces, but his mother Isis recoverd and reassembled all the pieces and brought him back to life. There are a couple of versions of that story but same underlying theme

So what does that mean? Just an interesting but meaningless story????

Horus was a 'sun god' , son of Ra...so it means the 'body' of the son 'sun' was composed of 2744 elements [14 cubed]

The 'body' was not a person or a being but some sort of inanimate 'thing' composed of 2744 pieces.

That relates to the story in the Westcar papyrus that tells Cheops sought to discover the secret number of things in the flint coffer of Thoth. It must have been an important number ...the number of the beast.

Gleeson in Before The Delusion gives his explanation of what all that means ...that would be giving away his story. Its worth reading. Cheers, MC

[Harte]

I'd like to see the evidence that the artaba was used in the 4th dynasty.

Harte

[Michael Collins]

I don't know that anyone claimed anything about an artaba. MC

[bom shankra]

I don't know that anyone claimed anything about an artaba. MC

Stecchini is promoting this idea, Peter Tompkins alleges he 'reminded' him (stecchini) that Petrie had found the coffer in the kings chamber to be designed in even numbers of fiths of a cubit, whereupon Stecchini ''resolved the millenial riddle oif the coffer showing thast it contains exactly 40 artaBAS (40 cubes whose sides are one geographic foot, and the outside volume is twice this amount, or 80 cubes of one geographic foot (of 307.7957mm)"

Stecchini is also saying that the Cubit of 526.3231 cubed = 5 artabas, which is why he suggests this was the cubit used in planning the coffer.

In other words the design in even numbers that Petrie suspected was volumes, and not linear measures. (even though it isn't actually exact, and leaves a lot to be desired!). There is more in Stecchinis appendix on this; and maybe I'll backtrack a bit, and see if I can make a better case at some point in the near future... but, for now at least, I can't offer prove the existance of the georaphic foot, or artabs in 4th dynasty Egypt, (any evidence I may be able to coax out of Stecchinis work is likely to be of the empirical kind)

The coffer has been discussed firstly thanks to the interest shown by Mike, and secondly I used it merely to give an example of the difficulties encountered in attemping disambiguation with Stecchinis 'material'

So Mike, cheers for the contribution, though I'm not quite positioned to discuss the mythological aspects of the subject, but I am prepared to suspend judgement until a case can be put forward for the significance of the details supplied. I'm of the school of thought that hidden doctrines and scientific theories etc are often encoded in mythological tales, and welcome further elucidation (don't worry about giving away the story!)

[Michael Collins]

Hey Bom, I'm so dumb I didn't even know S referred to the artaba. I'm not very interested if the measurement was exact...but there is a coherent story behind the significance of the number 14 cubed. There are even AE illustrations that show a box [coffer] containing 14 sets of items, and lots of AE literature refs to putting together the 14 [or 7] mounds of 'god' . I can look up all that stuff, don't remember off the top of my head. Its all in Gleeson anyway.

I guess I am motivated not by how they measured etc...but what was it for?

I undertsand there is recent stuff proving over again that the compass alignment of the GP was very exact ...much is made of that...but what is the point? It's nice but what was it for? I don't know, seems just to be a coherent irrelevancy

Cheers

MC

[Harte]

I undertsand there is recent stuff proving over again that the compass alignment of the GP was very exact ...much is made of that...but what is the point? It's nice but what was it for? I don't know, seems just to be a coherent irrelevancy

Cheers

MC

IMO, it wasn't aligned with north at all, but aligned with the east-west path of the Sun. Would that help you see what it was for?

Because the base is rectangular, this automatically aligns it with north-south as well.

Harte

[Michael Collins]

Hello Harte, I didn't actually say it was aligned to north ...I just said it was 'aligned'

Interesting that it was aligned - intentionally or by default ? - with the east-west passage of the sun

Interesting because the Pyr texts , and other AE texts, actually say the sun rose in the west. Not that that would change the orientation, but it would change the direction.

You'll see in Faulkner's trans of the PT that he footnotes the original text says the sun rose in the west ...which he called a 'blunder' and changed it to east.

MC

[Harte]

Hello Harte, I didn't actually say it was aligned to north ...I just said it was 'aligned'

Interesting that it was aligned - intentionally or by default ? - with the east-west passage of the sun

Interesting because the Pyr texts , and other AE texts, actually say the sun rose in the west. Not that that would change the orientation, but it would change the direction.

You'll see in Faulkner's trans of the PT that he footnotes the original text says the sun rose in the west ...which he called a 'blunder' and changed it to east.

MC

From Budge:

Originally the text was the most important part of the work, and both it and its vignettes were the work of the scribe; gradually, however, the brilliantly illuminated vignettes were more and more cared for, and when the skill of the scribe failed, the artist was called in. In many fine papyri of the Theban period it is clear that the whole plan of the vignettes of a papyrus was set out by artists, who often failed to leave sufficient space for the texts to which they belonged; in consequence many lines of chapters are often omitted, and the last few lines of some texts are so much crowded as to be almost illegible. The frequent clerical errors also show that while an artist of the greatest skill might be employed on the vignettes, the execution of the text was left to an ignorant or careless scribe. Again, the artist at times arranged his vignettes in wrong order, and it is occasionally evident that neither artist nor scribe understood the matter upon which he was engaged. According to M. Maspero the scribes of the VIth dynasty did not understand the texts which they were drafting, and in the XIXth dynasty the scribe of a papyrus now preserved at Berlin knew or cared so little about the text which he was copying that he transcribed the LXXVIIth Chapter from the wrong end, and apparently never discovered his error although he concluded the chapter with its title. Originally each copy of the Book of the Dead was written to order, but soon the custom obtained of preparing copies with blank spaces in which the name of the purchaser might be inserted; and many of the errors in spelling and most of the omissions of words are no doubt due to the haste with which such " stock" copies were written by the members of the priestly caste, whose profession it was to copy them.”

Errors in the PTs plague the proper translation of such.

Harte

Edited March 19, 2013 by Harte

[Michael Collins]

Hello Harte, you appear to be confusing the Book of the Dead and the Pyramid Texts. I agree there are [seem to be] many obvious errors in the BoD.. But the PyrTexts not so - they are original texts etched in the inner walls of pyramids at Saqqara [sp?].

Both Budge and Faulkner noted several places where the texts said the sun rose on the west ...too many instances to just write off as a copying mistake ...unless you want to. MC

[Harte]

I don't want to, it's just that those are the only mistakes I can find.

Care to link me to this claim in some meaningful way? I'd be interested to see this, though I don't think it has much to do with anything. I mean, nobody here is claiming that the Earth used to rotate the other direction, right?

Harte

[Michael Collins]

Hello Harte, I really can't be bothered since you are obviously closed to consideration. But yes, the Egyptians, Hebrews and Greeks all claimed the Earth overturned. I can chase the actual quotes if its worth it. MC

[TheSearcher]

Hello Harte, I really can't be bothered since you are obviously closed to consideration. But yes, the Egyptians, Hebrews and Greeks all claimed the Earth overturned. I can chase the actual quotes if its worth it. MC

Please do, I for one would like to see them.

[Harte]

HA, He "can't be bothered."

Harte

[Michael Collins]

Well I remember reading all that stuff but it is rather tedious to find the exact references. Meanwhile I do have a day job.

I'll let you know when I have time to get around to it

MC

[TheSearcher]

Well I remember reading all that stuff but it is rather tedious to find the exact references. Meanwhile I do have a day job.

I'll let you know when I have time to get around to it

MC

Well most of us have a day job as well, you know. And I didn't say you need to do it right away.

[bom shankra]

moving swiftly on...The ARTABA according to stecchini is derived from the geographic cubit (defined as 1/1 800 000 of the length of egypt from 31.30 deg tom 24.00 (7 deg 30 min) = 831 091m (smithsonian geographical tables). (stecchini states his findings for 1800000 cubits = 831 084m ( 1 geographic cubit = 461.6935mm)).

the ARTABA according to stecchini is 2/3 of this cubit cubed (= 307.7957mm, = geographic foot, and the multiple of the geographic foot is the stadium of 600 feet. also, the stadium is 1/600th of a degree, so there are 360000 geographic feet in a degree)...

skiping throught the narrative...

stecchini is building up his theory, and alludes to the period when the constitution of the USA was drafted, and draws attention to a special clause to prepare the ground for the adoption of a new decimal system of measures, which was advocated by all enlightened people, and when the french revolution moved to put the decimal system into law, The congress of the USA considered adopting the same system. However, Thomas Jefferson opposed the plan, on the grounds that the french system was inadequate, since it did not consolidate time with length volume and weight. So continuing with stecchinis theory, that the unit of length relates to rotation of the 'vault of heaven', which is in fact 1000 geographic cubits a second.

So, back to the ARTABA, stecchini believes it was divided into 64 pints (64 cubes with a side of a hand), and the pint was divided into 50 qedet of 9.1125 grams (employed to weigh gold and silver)...

next stecchinni digresses, and talks of brutto, and netto ( which I interpret as rough, and precise.)...

now follows a segment I found interesting, a cubic cubit filled with water was according to stecchini to be the standard amount that could be carried by an ass.. in Akkadian, stecchini states, these units were called imeru, which means 'ass'. the Masoretic texts of the O.T. uses Hmr, but with different vowel pronuciations to refer to ass, or the weight / load, and supposedly makes puns on the confusing aspect. hellenistic Egypt uses gomarion for ass, derived from gomos, - 'load'. modern greek, ass = gomari, Italian = somaro, from greek sagma, "pack saddle". the corresponding English word is sumpter, which corresponds to German saumtier, in turn corresponding to Italian bestia da soma- 'pack animal',and finally, in German Saum means 'burden', and also refers to a large unit of weight or volume( and a corpse on a stretcher).

This is just a snap shot of stecchinis reasoning on weights volumes and measures, and I would like to leave the ARTABA there for the time being. unless anyone has objections, I will resume with a shedule in subsequent posts that I think will lay better ground works to relay some of the key points of stecchinis theories relating to his specialised subject of ancient metrology, and its relevance to old kingdom A.E.

Edited March 26, 2013 by bom shankra

[Michael Collins]

Hello Harte et al

Re the Earth rotation - here's a first installment, from Egypt

The Egyptian devil was called Typhon or Set. Typhon was described as 'a writhing ball of fire, twisted like a coil' [comet or asteroid, Pliny the Elder. Natural History, 20]

Set was an 'iron hearted devil' [meteorite] described as the overturner or inverter [Plutarch, from memory]

An Egyptian map of the world, on leather, recovered by Jesuit Fr Kircher - showed the poles reversed [prob in Ars Magna Sciendi or Mundus Subterraneus]

And the stellar map of the constellations from the temple of Dendera – now in the Louvre – was found in situ with its orientation inverted. [ie inverted vs current orientation] Citation lacking.

Several places in ancient E texts said the sun rose on the west

and set in th east

...but this was 'corrected' as a 'blunder' by modern translators [

Budge, E.A.W. Legends of the Egyptian Gods, 239; The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts, I, Sp. 18 ,Faulkner trans.]

I quite realise the fact that the E 'devil' was an asteroid/meteorite does not change rotation - it just adds to the picture as to how the rotation changed. Incidentally, prior to the change Earth also rotated upright in a regular 360 days, divided into 10 months; It was only later the surviving Es added the 'five added days' to the 360 there had been before [citation needed]

More ltr, MC

[Harte]

Hello Harte et al

Re the Earth rotation - here's a first installment, from Egypt

The Egyptian devil was called Typhon or Set. Typhon was described as 'a writhing ball of fire, twisted like a coil' [comet or asteroid, Pliny the Elder. Natural History, 20]

Set was an 'iron hearted devil' [meteorite] described as the overturner or inverter [Plutarch, from memory]

An Egyptian map of the world, on leather, recovered by Jesuit Fr Kircher - showed the poles reversed [prob in Ars Magna Sciendi or Mundus Subterraneus]

The Egyptians didn't know the poles. That being said, their principle direction was what we call south today owing to the fact that the Nile came from there.

And the stellar map of the constellations from the temple of Dendera – now in the Louvre – was found in situ with its orientation inverted. [ie inverted vs current orientation] Citation lacking.

It was Greek. The Egyptians had no zodiac, which I assume is what you're talking about. At any rate - citation lacking but necessary.

Several places in ancient E texts said the sun rose on the west

and set in th east

...but this was 'corrected' as a 'blunder' by modern translators [

Budge, E.A.W. Legends of the Egyptian Gods, 239; The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts, I, Sp. 18 ,Faulkner trans.]

This is the source I was looking for. Thanks. I'll get back to you.

I quite realise the fact that the E 'devil' was an asteroid/meteorite does not change rotation - it just adds to the picture as to how the rotation changed. Incidentally, prior to the change Earth also rotated upright in a regular 360 days, divided into 10 months; It was only later the surviving Es added the 'five added days' to the 360 there had been before [citation needed]

More ltr, MC

Flat out wrong. The Earth has slowed over billions of years. But at no time in the history of humanity has it ever revolved around the Sun in 360 days. However, again, citation needed.

You are referring to old calendars, I believe. the Egyptians had a 360 day calendar, with a long festival at the end waiting for Sothis to reappear (Sirius.) Those festival days didn't count - there were five of them.

Harte

[Michael Collins]

Hello Harte

The E's didn't know the poles - says you. I assume you mean the principal [main] direction

The dendera zodiac may have been found in a Greek era temple, or temple restored in the Greek era, but the zodiac itself was ancient

How do you appear to personally know the Earth has never revolved in 360 days?

The quotation said - from memory - they added 5 days to the 360 that there had been before - plainly implying that there had been a prior period. I'll find the source. The E's called themselves 'those who remain' [in translation] which is just a way of saying survivors. Hebrews also called themselves remnants and survivors.

Cheers

MC

[Harte]

Had a long response but lost it.

Here:

The poles of the Earth. They had 4 directions like us, but they oriented around south rather than north. So what?

The Egyptians never had a zodiac.

Rhythmites. Curious people like myself actually read stuff throughout their lives and don't just live on fringe topics and youtube.

The Egytpians did not call themselves that. The Hebrews were surviving remnants after they were destroyed by Assyria - 2 tribes left out of 12.

Harte

[bom shankra]

I had a post all prepared, but I see theres still chat going on. I'm not too concerned with the topic, just a couple of points, Harte, as far as poles go, thats a 'loose fish', you aren't the worlds leading expert on the subject, and I beg to differ. The A.E. didn't use the zodiac so much as they reckoned by 'constellations'.

Mike, your saying the circular zodiac at Dendra, greek or otherwise, is 'inverted' where did you peruse that info? What I would bring attention to is that according to peter Tompkins,

"Shwaller agrees with Lockyer, the temple of Hathor at dendra is built on remains of much older temples, and in that the zodiac in question the constellations are arranged in a spiral, and the symbolic figures are marching counterclockwise in the 'diurnal' direction of the stars. The zodiac is in a circle at the center of which is our north pole. This circle is in a square oriented with the walls of the temple (or about 17 deg. east of north). our north pole is correctly located in the consrellation of the jackal, or little bear as it was in ptolemaic times, but the zodiac also shows the pole of the ecpliptic, located in the breast of the hippopotamus, or constellation of Drago. - To schwaller, this explains the spiral formation of the constellations. The mythological figures representing the constellations are entwined in two circles - one around the north pole, and one around the pole of the ecpliptic, and where the two circles intersect marks the point of the equinox, or due east( not sure if wording is correct here, the temple is 17 deg east of north, and the line in question is perpendicular to the square containing the zodiac...), this line runs between pisces and aires, and indicates when the temple was built. there is another 'east' line which runs through the ram (circa 1600bc...), and two stylised hieroglyphs on the ring of the zodiac indicates a line running through the end of gemini, and the beggining of taurus. (third or forth millenium)

there is one particular representation on egyptian charts of the constellations - a hawk headed man holding in his outstreched arms a line which ends against the figure of an ox leg, representing the constellation of the great bear - according to stecchini, this line always ends at a very specific position, at times with an arrow point, which divides the seven stars of the great bear into for and three. This line says stecchini does not indicate the meridian passing through the north pole, but the meridian passing through the pole of the ecliptic.

Are they right? schwaller might be considered a bit left field, but does that discredit his theories?

[Harte]

I had a post all prepared, but I see theres still chat going on. I'm not too concerned with the topic, just a couple of points, Harte, as far as poles go, thats a 'loose fish', you aren't the worlds leading expert on the subject, and I beg to differ. The A.E. didn't use the zodiac so much as they reckoned by 'constellations'.

I'm aware of the Egyptian's considerations of and about the night sky. I'm also aware that I'm not only not an expert, but especially not the "worlds leading expert" on the subject. I have looked into it, however.

The fact is, the Egyptians didn't have a zodiac, defined as the ring of constellations roughly in line with the plane of the ecliptic - the zodiac used in Sumer and Greece and India, as well as by modern scam artists, to provide advice to the easily fleeced. That's an important distinction, if you think about it.

In fact, there were a few constellations that were recognized by the Ancient Egyptians, mainly in the Northern sky. To the south, there were primarily star groups with no formally recognized "shape" or pattern to them, that contained stars that were considered individually, most of them associated (again, individually) with various dieties. However, when these southern groups are written about by modern scholars, they are still refered to as "constellations," though they don't make particular shapes. Read about Egyptian Decans for more info about this.

A decent listing of the various constellations and decans can be found near the bottom of this page. As you can see, most are not associated with shape-type patterns made in the sky, but some are. There's a pic of your Ox Leg from Senenmut's tomb and another from the tomb of Seti I on that page as well (you will see that by the time of the New Kingdom, the Ox Leg - Ursa Major - had morphed into an upright ox.)

You might also be interested in the information available at Catchpenny's page (Larry Orcutt.)

Note that no earlier such map has been found than Senenmut's, which is New Kingdom (18th Dynasty.)

Anyway, I said I had a long post ready but lost it. There was something wrong with the internet at my job. Didn't mean to make such curt statements but I felt I needed to respond, and I didn't have the time to re-compose all I'd written, with links re-inserted, etc.

Harte

[bom shankra]

I appreciate what you saying, all I wanted to say (without actually launching into a detailed counter argument), was that arguments for awareness of poles do exist. I'll look into the links you are drawing my attention to, and perhaps pick it up later.

meanwhile, I drew a represention of stecchinis land of to-mera (land of the MR meridian triangle). its scaled to 1:1 longitude to latitude, not to scale, and the nile is composite, but locations are correctly proportioned. and all details accurately represent stecchinis actual monologue.