1650 replies to this topic

[Scott Creighton]

cormac mac airt, on 05 December 2012 - 02:37 AM, said:

The key part here of any relevance is this:



So any radiocarbon dating only applies to the linen/finer linen modelled tendons and bones. There's nothing here to suggest that any actual bone was radiocarbon dated. And, as opposed to these modelled tendons and bones, Jean-Phillipe Lauer was said to have found pieces of skin, bone from a human left foot and an upper arm. None of which could be mistaken for the 'finer linen modelled tendons and bones' previously mentioned.

cormac

And this is proof of what exactly? Intrusive burial certainly. Primary burial, most certainly not.. Perhaps now you will appreciate why Zahi Hawass considers C14 dating useless and its results "imaginery". Sorry - but you have to do better.

SC

Edited by Scott Creighton, 05 December 2012 - 09:55 AM.

[cormac mac airt]

Scott Creighton, on 05 December 2012 - 09:48 AM, said:

And this is proof of what exactly? Intrusive burial certainly. Primary burial, most certainly not. Perhaps now you will appreciate why Zahi Hawass considers C14 dating useless and its results "imaginery". Sorry - but you have to do better.

SC

You don't know that, nor has it ever been determined. Per the quote from Lehner's book, the parts radiocarbon tested were linen and modelled (false) tendons/bones made from same and not actual human bones. So the radiocarbon dating is irrelevant as far as the human remains Jean-Phillipe Lauerare found are concerned. And since we know that part of a girls hip as well as a boys body were also found within or under Djoser's pyramid and they are also NOT described as linen/linen modelled then the radiocarbon testing is irrelevant to them as well. And they have not been determined as intrusive.

cormac

[Scott Creighton]

cormac mac airt, on 05 December 2012 - 10:16 AM, said:

Quote

CMA: You don't know that, nor has it ever been determined. Per the quote from Lehner's book, the parts radiocarbon tested were linen and modelled (false) tendons/bones made from same and not actual human bones. So the radiocarbon dating is irrelevant as far as the human remains Jean-Phillipe Lauerare found are concerned.

SC: False tendons/bones? Here is what was actually found:

Quote

”The tomb of King Djoser, founder of Dynasty 3 which initiated the Old Kingdom, had been plundered in antiquity when it was opened in 1900.  No complete body was present but scattered bones and body parts betrayed the presence of ancient looters. One of these was an isolated foot wrapped in linen bandages. Removal of the outer layer demonstrated that the foot was enveloped by a resin-impregnated linen cast. The superficial layer of the cast was covered with a resin layer thick enough to permit its creative artist to sculpt the tendons and other normal, superficial anatomical structures of the foot. However, recent radiocarbon dating suggests that the alleged remains of Djoser are actually at least a millennium more recent than Dynasty 4.” (Strouhal et al, 1995).-Arthur C. Aufderheide, The Scientific Study of Mummies p.225

SC: The model tendons and linen wrappings were part of the foot. And it dates to 1,000 years AFTER Djoser if C14 dating is to be believed. No wonder Hawass has a problem accepting C14 results. Back to the drawing board for you.

SC

Edited by Scott Creighton, 05 December 2012 - 11:00 AM.

[cormac mac airt]

Scott Creighton, on 05 December 2012 - 10:58 AM, said:

SC: False tendons/bones? Here is what was actually found:



SC: The model tendons and linen wrappings were part of the foot. And it dates to 1,000 years AFTER Djoser if C14 dating is to be believed. No wonder Hawass has a problem accepting C14 results. Back to the drawing board for you.

SC

So apparently I was wrong. It's apparent though that you didn't know this either prior to this post, since you tried to use Lehner's TCP to validate your contention and it never actually did. Hawass doesn't even enter into this discussion, except for you to have some boogey-man to blame for things. What would be of interest to me would be to see the actual radiocarbon dating study that the above is based on, to see what protocols, etc. were actually used.

Two other problems lend themselves to your RVT theory as well. The first is that there is also some indication the the pelvic remains of the teenage girl found in one of the shafts on the east side of Djoser's pyramid would appear to date to a few hundred years BEFORE his pyramid was constructed, with no evidence that any of the shafts are contemporary to said construction. The second is that the latest associated vessels found in the 6th and 7th shafts can be attributed to Hotepsekhemwy, but it is NOT an established fact that Djoser directly succeeded him. The possibility also exists that Sanakht may have reigned, at least briefly, between the two. Therefore there to is no way to attribute the storage of these vessels within the shafts, specifically, to Djoser's reign.

cormac

Edited by cormac mac airt, 05 December 2012 - 06:08 PM.

[Alcibiades9]

kmt_sesh, on 04 December 2012 - 03:17 AM, said:

Forgive me for being quite blunt, LRW, but I've been reading a number of your posts lately, and the more you post, the more scattered you seem. The above is a very good example. Please share with us the training you've undergone to transliterate and translate Egyptian hieroglyphs and to comprehend the ancient language.

Well, allow me to answer that: you have no training, and therefore your understanding of this topic is demonstrably weak.

The monument you found happens to be one of the best ones I've seen in some time for the spelling of one of the ancient names of Egypt. You see a bird, indeed, but do you know how it functions? I thought not. It is a monoliteral representing the "m" sound, in this instance. The hillock in front of it represents a "k" sound. The small bread loaf behind the owl represents a "t" sound. So, put them together in the proper order: k + m + t = kmt, an ancient name for the country of Egypt. The circle glyph behind the owl is a semantic determinative representing a physical place, land, or location, which reinforces the meaning behind kmt.

That is how one properly interprets this particular grouping of glyphs. I honestly don't understand what you're hoping to achieve with your fit over calling the pharaonic Egyptians "ancient Egyptians." Why do you think this term is used, considering "Egypt" is in fact not one of the names for the ancient country? How many laypeople are going to understand terms like Kemet, or Tawy, or Ta-mery, or rekhyt, or other terms the ancients themselves used to describe their nation and themselves? There's a reason a certain lexicon is employed. No reason, really, to throw a fit over it.

I come across as terse because I've grown weary of your presumptions that your opinions can match the level of knowledge represented by legitimate scientific and historical research. Your opinion doesn't matter at all. Nor does mine. What matters are the conclusions reached by peer-reviewed research. You go on and on with opinions and try to paint some ludicrous conspiracy theory lurking behind the world of academia, which really only shows you have very little understanding of how the world of academia functions.

I can see why you post the way you do. You clearly don't understand the methodology of research, so you toss aspersions at the academic community and hope they'll stick. They do no stick. They fall flat and reflect very poorly on you.

Goodness.

"Goodness has nothing to do with it"
- Mae West

[questionmark]

kmt_sesh, on 04 December 2012 - 11:10 PM, said:

Yes, but generally only in the spelling of foreign names or words. Linguists have posited that most or all dialects in the ancient Nile Valley did not possess an "L" in their language, so the Egyptians tended to use a handful of different glyphs to try to represent this sound. The "R" glyph (D21) was one of these. However, by far the most common to represent the "L" sound was the glyph depicting a recumbant lion (E23). See the hieroglyphic spellings for names like Ptolemy and Cleopatra.

When used to represent phonetic values within texts or inscriptions written by Egyptians for the sake of their own language, the "R" glyph did not stand for an "L."

Which still is the case in many old alphabets, like in the Greek there is no B (no, that is not beta but wita) where a B is formed by the diphthong MP and it has no D (it is some kind of hard  Z sound) and is formed by the diphthong NT. Neither B or D existed in real ancient Greek.

We could add Phoenician, Hebrew and last but not least Sumerian that did not know a C and where most vowels only existed in combination with consonants to that list (without a claim of completeness).

[kmt_sesh]

Scott Creighton, on 05 December 2012 - 10:58 AM, said:

...

Quote

”The tomb of King Djoser, founder of Dynasty 3 which initiated the Old Kingdom, had been plundered in antiquity when it was opened in 1900.  No complete body was present but scattered bones and body parts betrayed the presence of ancient looters. One of these was an isolated foot wrapped in linen bandages. Removal of the outer layer demonstrated that the foot was enveloped by a resin-impregnated linen cast. The superficial layer of the cast was covered with a resin layer thick enough to permit its creative artist to sculpt the tendons and other normal, superficial anatomical structures of the foot. However, recent radiocarbon dating suggests that the alleged remains of Djoser are actually at least a millennium more recent than Dynasty 4.” (Strouhal et al, 1995).-Arthur C. Aufderheide, The Scientific Study of Mummies p.225

SC: The model tendons and linen wrappings were part of the foot. And it dates to 1,000 years AFTER Djoser if C14 dating is to be believed. No wonder Hawass has a problem accepting C14 results. Back to the drawing board for you.

SC

As strong an advocate of carbon dating as I am, there is something wrong with this. The form of mummification described for these human remains is strictly Old Kingdom in nature. That is, the reforming of the body into a kind of statue of itself by means of linen and plaster (including the careful molding of details, as mentioned in the quote). Placing these human remains a millennium after the time of Dynasty 3 or Dynasty 4 would drop them into the seventeenth century BCE, or thereabouts.

Mummification was nothing like that by those later periods. The practice of sculpting the body of the deceased was already going out of practice by the end of Dynasty 6 (see Ikram and Dodson's The Mummy in Ancient Egypt, 1998: 113-14). Not many mummies have survived from the turbulent First Intermediate Period, but of those which did survive, it's evident that the sculpting of the corpse had been abandoned by then.

So all in all, the carbon dating definitely does not conform to the style of mummification.

I have Aufderheide's book, by the way. It's terrific.

Edited by kmt_sesh, 06 December 2012 - 03:33 AM.
Spelling

[cormac mac airt]

kmt_sesh, on 06 December 2012 - 03:26 AM, said:

As strong an advocate of carbon dating as I am, there is something wrong with this. The form of mummification described for these human remains is strictly Old Kingdom in nature. That is, the reforming of the body into a kind of statue of itself by means of linen and plaster (including the careful molding of details, as mentioned in the quote). Placing these human remains a millennium after the time of Dynasty 3 or Dynasty 4 would drop them into the seventeenth century BCE, or thereabouts.

Mummification was nothing like that by those later periods. The practice of sculpting the body of the deceased was already going out of practice by the end of Dynasty 6 (see Ikram and Dodson's The Mummy in Ancient Egypt, 1998: 113-14). Not many mummies have survived from the turbulent First Intermediate Period, but of those which did survive, it's evident that the sculpting of the corpse had been abandoned by then.

So all in all, the carbon dating definitely does not conform to the style of mummification.

I have Aufderheide's book, by the way. It's terrific.

I didn't know about the bold portion above, but if this is the case it would question the validity of the radiocarbon dating protocols in use at the time the date of "1000 years later" was determined. I would also have to question just how stringent the measures were to eliminate any question of contamination of the tested samples. From that perspective, it isn't sounding anywhere near as definitive as one is lead to believe.

cormac

Edited by cormac mac airt, 06 December 2012 - 03:38 AM.

[kmt_sesh]

cormac mac airt, on 06 December 2012 - 03:37 AM, said:

I didn't know about the bold portion above, but if this is the case it would question the validity of the radiocarbon dating protocols in use at the time the date of "1000 years later" was determined. I would also have to question just how stringent the measures were to eliminate any question of contamination of the tested samples. From that perspective, it isn't sounding anywhere near as definitive as one is lead to believe.

cormac

I've read about the C14 testing in numerous different books but had forgotten it involved the putative remains of Djoser. I had thought it concerned the remains of the young boy also found in the subterranean areas. That's my memory for you.

In any case, I don't recall ever reading particulars on the C14 testing. Aufderheide's book provides the citation and the name of the full paper in the References section, but I can't track it down. I just checked JSTOR and couldn't find anything satisfactory there. However, for a little light reading, my JSTOR queries brought up a paper called "Paleoparasitological Report on the Stool from a Medieval Child Mummy in Yangju, Korea." Doesn't that sound fun?

I'm going to keep looking for the Strouhal paper but I'm out of time tonight.

[Scott Creighton]

kmt_sesh, on 06 December 2012 - 03:55 AM, said:

So all in all, the carbon dating definitely does not conform to the style of mummification.

SC: I rather suspect that if you look into the matter with even some cursory research you will find that this is just the tip of the iceberg. The science of C14 radiocarbon dating contradicts the chronology of consensus Egyptology all over the place.

SC

[Alcibiades9]

Scott Creighton, on 06 December 2012 - 11:39 AM, said:

SC: I rather suspect that if you look into the matter with even some cursory research you will find that this is just the tip of the iceberg. The science of C14 radiocarbon dating contradicts the chronology of consensus Egyptology all over the place.

SC

Scott, radio carbon dating is a 1960s technology which is slowly unravelling.  Not accusing you personally, but I've noticed that BOTH orthodoxy and alternative thinkers either cite it or dismiss it to suit their particular needs at particular moments.  I certainly wouldn't trust it.

[Alcibiades9]

cormac mac airt, on 05 December 2012 - 05:34 PM, said:

So apparently I was wrong.

cormac

Good God, you admitting you were wrong Cormac?  My helmet almost popped off when I read that...

[cormac mac airt]

Alcibiades9, on 06 December 2012 - 04:00 PM, said:

Good God, you admitting you were wrong Cormac?  My helmet almost popped off when I read that...

Doesn't help Scott any. First he tries to use a source to claim the remains are 1000 years older and in the next breath he's complaining that radiocarbon dating isn't accurate. It doesn't work both ways, it's either one or the other. And no, radiocarbon dating isn't unravelling. But it has been refined greatly since its earlier days.

cormac

[Scott Creighton]

cormac mac airt, on 06 December 2012 - 05:04 PM, said:

Doesn't help Scott any. First he tries to use a source to claim the remains are 1000 years older and in the next breath he's complaining that radiocarbon dating isn't accurate. It doesn't work both ways, it's either one or the other. And no, radiocarbon dating isn't unravelling. But it has been refined greatly since its earlier days.

cormac

SC: Let us be quite clear here lest others be led astray by your twisting of the facts. I do not claim the remains are 1,000 years old (at least) – that’s the scientists doing that. And neither am I complaining that C14 science isn’t accurate – that’s other scientists doing that. I merely report these contradictory positions. It’s up to science to sort out its own contradictory mess, not I. As matters presently stand, however, the consensus Egyptological opinion holds that these remains cannot belong to Djoser because they apparently date to a later period. How much later seems to be anyone’s guess. But even if the C14 dating of these remains was found to be in error, it STILL doesn’t prove the remains belong to Djoser. That is the FACTS of these remains as they are presently understood. Little point in blaming the messenger, dear boy.

SC

Edited by Scott Creighton, 06 December 2012 - 05:49 PM.

[Alcibiades9]

cormac mac airt, on 06 December 2012 - 05:04 PM, said:

Doesn't help Scott any.
cormac

A very revealing comment....