Alcibiades9, on 22 December 2012 - 08:02 PM, said:
Yes. It was meant to be. Hopefully the elves are busy working on a sense of humour for you.
And as for Vyse's graffiti in the relieving chambers, well... the jury is still out on that one. You need to read the full story of Howard Vyse and his race to somehow link the GP to Khufu to get a meaured view of this. Even if the graffiti is genuine, "Khufu's gang" (as it is often translated) doesn't mean a damn thing. Khufu could have been the foreman of a work group... you know, Khufu, good boss, firm but fair, liked his beer. And out of the whole, massive structure of the GP this is the only written reference we have to who it is supposedly built for? Nope. No way. Get a grip Cormac.
Kilroy was here. But was Khufu?
Here's an example of where an understanding of hieroglyphs, as well as an understanding of the modern development of our ability to translate and interpret them, is critical to the situation.
It's altogether possible quite a few men of that time were named Khufu. It's even possible one of the foremen was named Khufu. It was a common custom for men to name their sons after the reigning king, and even in numerous instances to change their own names to that of the king.
But in all of Egypt there was only
one man who could have the name Khufu in a cartouche, and that was the king. The cartouche was a royal seal and was for royalty alone. No common man named Khufu would've dared put his own name inside a cartouche, much less a common worker at the site of the king's pyramid.
The graffiti in the relieving chambers is actually quite complex. It's written in a very linear form of hieroglyphs that would've been the common "handwriting" of the day. The graffiti is considerably more than just Khufu's name splashed here and there. His name exists within sentences following the syntax of the ancient language. Also, although the informal name Khufu is to be found in the graffiti, so is the formal name Khnum-Khuf (or Khnum-Khufu) and his Horus name, Medjedu. This clarifies beyond question that the man identified was King Khufu.
That said, as adventurous and colorful as Howard Vyse was, there was simply no way he could've "faked" the graffiti. Those who have studied the graffiti are certain beyond doubt that it's authentic. To that end I would recommend Ann Macy Roth's excellent
book on workmen's graffiti of the Old Kingdom. It's the best source I can cite for this situation.
Bear in mind, when Vyse blasted his way into the relieving chambers, only fifteen years had passed since Champollion had deciphered hieroglyphs. Very few people in the world could yet translate a simple sentence in hieroglyphs. What the graffiti represents is something well beyond the ability of someone like Vyse to comprehend, much less fake.
The jury is not out when it comes to people who study and research ancient Egypt. No one who fits this description doubts the graffiti's authenticity. The charge of fraud, as best as I can reconstruct, was begun by Zecharia Sitchin thirty years ago, in one of his early fringe books on alien intervention—and it has only compiled and snowballed in the fringe camp since that time. Sitchin's argument of fraud was laughably inept and is simple to disprove, so I for one would not recommend following the train of thought of someone such as he.
A few years ago I began a thread to establish the orthodox view on the graffiti and to show why Sitchin was so obviously wrong. If you or anyone else is interested in digesting more details, that discussion can be found
here.
Lastly, the graffiti is hardly unique to the Great Pyramid. Similar graffiti has been found in and on the other Giza pyramids, as well as on one or more of Sneferu's pyramids. Graffiti is actually very important to the establishing of historical facts, as well as to linguistic studies.
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