Jump to content
Join the Unexplained Mysteries community today! It's free and setting up an account only takes a moment.
- Sign In or Create Account -

Pyramid Texts for Astral Travel


The Puzzler

Recommended Posts

This is art and an assumption.

What is wrong with just figuring out how the pyramids were made?

What is wrong with just doing the tests and studies that would lead

to an answer even if that answer might not be ramps.

They're so afraid it won't be ramps that they won't even look at

anything else.

You're evidently the only one in the world who suffers from some sort of ramp obsession. You've also closed your eyes to many decades of research, each subsequent year of which becomes more sophisticated and comprehensive than the last. Many scholars much smarter than you and I have been figuring out how the pyramids were built, and there is a vast body of literature out there to support their work. If you think Petrie's The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh and Lehner's The Complete Pyramids are enough to equip you with an understanding, be aware that you haven't even nicked the surface. You cannot blame the researchers and their solid work for the fact that nothing points to geysers or hydrology technology. Pretending their theories and results can be ignored will not get you anywhere.

Tests and studies have been going on without a stop of over a century, and you have to realize that nothing observed by people who've actually been there and studied the Plateau and its monuments, would tend to support your personal opinions. If you somehow have the tenacity to believe countless professional researchers are wrong and only you are right, you have no recourse but to prove you're right. You have not yet done so.

Mercer's online translations and internet photos of the Great Pyramid do not even put you in a position to begin to question orthodoxy. You're only possible recourse is to become expert in linguistics to prove the linguists wrong about the Pyramid Texts, and to spend a hell of a lot of time at Giza itself to prove geologically that geysers were there. Somehow you seem to think you can get around this. You cannot. Professional researchers are not going to be looking for something for which there is no evidence, so you're going to have to find it yourself.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 254
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

  • cladking

    69

  • kmt_sesh

    47

  • SlimJim22

    32

  • crystal sage

    27

I honestly have no idea where you get this from. Deep down I think you say these things because modern translations don't gibe with your personal opinions and speculations, but always remind yourself before writing something like this: I, cladking, do not know how to translate; I do not understand the ancient religion; I am not familiar with the research guidelines and protocols observed by modern historians. If you bear these things in mind, you will perhaps save some face.

You're assuming you understand the Egyptians and I don't. This assumption

is wholly dependent on your also being correct that the pyramids are tombs

built with ramps and the PT are spells. We could both be wrong but we can't

both be right.

I was trying to stress the fact that you do not know how to translate hieroglyphs, period, so you are not in a position to critique one translation from another. It is utterly and completely irrelevant how you might think something sounds when it comes out in English. "This sounds better for my argument" is a tacitly poor tactic.

What I said was I'm naturally going to be suspicious ANY time the same word

is translated in various ways to suit the translator's assumptions. Mercer

admitted doing this with []gb (the violent inudation that causes abundance)

and Allen did it with I[].t-wt.t (yeast gas?). Neither is necessarily wrong

but I'm still suspicious and don't know why anyone wouldn't be. I don't "ad-

just" things to fit my preconcieved ideas.

That the Texts were meant to be read in a specific order was known long before James Allen published his translations.

I've suspected this from the beginning. Most people give me grief over it.

I never said, implied, or suggested that Allen's order is necessarily wrong

merely that it's necessarily presumptuous to rewrite our version of it.

You yourself do not have a solid understanding of the ancient Egyptian religion, so you yourself don't even understand what the "literal understanding" of the Texts is.

And again. You need to prove this. Somebody needs to show that the evidence

that the pyramids were built with water, not ramps, is irrelevent. If they were

built with water than the PT were probably meant literally.

Without a sufficient understanding of how to translate them, no one is equipped to dispute a scholar's translation of them. There is no getting around this. You can read English perfectly well, but you can't read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, so you're still just spinning your wheels. And your tires are flat. ;)

I am not disputing Allen's expertise. I have little doubt it is vast. This

doesn't mean he's correct in any particular. It's even within the realm of

possibility that I'm right and his translation is best. I am no scholar and

don't know this language and that will remain true even if I'm proven correct.

I'm bowing out of this discussion in this thread because I don't believe it's

on topic but I'm sure the subject will come up again and look forward to it. I

would be interested in your response anyway.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Tests and studies have been going on without a stop of over a century, and you have to realize that nothing observed by people who've actually been there and studied the Plateau and its monuments, would tend to support your personal opinions. If you somehow have the tenacity to believe countless professional researchers are wrong and only you are right, you have no recourse but to prove you're right. You have not yet done so.

I believe it's equally true to say they have no recourse but

to show they are right. It is the egyptologists who have sole

access to the data and the sites yet have failed to prove even

their most basic assumptions in 150 years.

A better argument can be made that these were made for astral

projection than that they were tombs. This is why there is an

endless array of crackpot theories; orthodoxy is just another

theory. At least with some of the other crackpot theories the

motivation of the builders rings true instead of sounding like

some sort of fairy tale.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

...

pg 6 2nd paragraph he refers to a middle kingdom copy!!!

pg 7 last paragraph (little confidence)

pg 7 1st para ((remained same over Egyptian history)

...

I'm sure you have a hardcopy but for everyone else;

http://books.google.com/books?id=6VBJeCoDdTUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=James+Allen%27s+Pyramid+Texts&source=bl&ots=mr_S59GARA&sig=l22IL_e65lTU8pvEei_HZtBc-fw&hl=en&ei=moFaS8TKBoWGNNXw2IcP&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CA8Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Page 6: Actually it's in the third paragraph. When citing a page, the beginning paragraph, even if continued from the previous page, counts for the current page. I'm not trying to be picky, I just want to make sure other interested parties can find the segment. The paragraph begins "The Resurrection Ritual occupies..."

The sentence in question reads: "The title of this rite in a Middle Kingdom copy indicates that it was performed after the offering rituals" (2005: 6). This has nothing to do with the spell in question, to which Allen is not referring. Few if any of the Pyramid Texts as they occur in the Old Kingdom had headings or titles, so how they were organized under headings later on helps to clarify the order in which the ritual in question was actually carried out. The spells themselves remain more or less the same, whether they were written in Dynasty 5 or Dynasty 12. This spell can be found in the burial chamber of the pyramid, its typical location.

This does nothing to help your argument.

Page 7: I'm not sure what you mean by "little confidence." I read the whole page and perhaps I missed something, but you'll have to elaborate.

Page 7: In the second paragraph, actually. It's the paragraph beginning "The Pyramid Texts are largely concerned...," under the heading "The Function of the Pyramid Texts." And, yes, the deceased in the Egyptians' minds shared a relationship with both Osiris and the sun (principally manifested as Re; ibid: 7). This is true from the late Old Kingdom on, and the Pyramid Texts corroborate the belief, although in the Texts it is only the king to whom we refer. The religion as revealed in the Pyramid Texts is a clear reflection of how funerary and afterlife beliefs were developing, and how they would eventually spread to the people at large.

This, too, does nothing to help your argument.

This is pointless. The entire introduction is just full of stuff

that doesn't appear in the PT and is pulled from other eras. He ob-

viously uses translations and understandings from later eras as well.

I was hoping you would refer to the spells themselves, cladking. Not Allen's introduction. You're nitpicking and drawing out of context introductory material, but you're not bringing your argument into the translations themselves. You need to show where in the translations you believe he is doing this, nothing less. If you can cite a specific example, and if I feel it's worth my time, I'll perform one or two translations myself. I don't know if you want to do this, because as I've demonstrated in the past, Allen's translations are very faithful to the hieroglyphs. And that's all that matters.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

While my own personal suspicion is that the pyramid was used as some type of conscience expanding, projecting, or altering device; but the author of the article is less than convincing.

Clearly the author knows very little about particle physics. It sounds like they just read the "news" or saw a couple discovery channel shows and think they are onto something.

The only thing I'm convinced of is that it aint a TOMB! That seems to be an idea created by people with a very narrow knowledge base (and people unable to say "I have no idea). When you spend your life studying ancient tombs in Egypt (which there are many) and you take a look at the great pyramid, what else are you going to think it is?

When your only tool is hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Although in all honesty, I would think an Egyptian tomb expert would be the first in line shouting "that is nothing like an Egyptian tomb!". Perhaps they would rather get published and secure tenure... /shrug

That said, the fringe guys suggesting it's a nuclear reactor or some device to speak with nibblers are just as out there as the "experts" and their tomb theories.

In all honestly, there is very little evidence to support ANY theory about what it's purpose was. Of course, our lack of serious scientific investigation isnt helping.

You so right .....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My point is that, as an engineer, he should be familiar with scientific method and should be approaching this problem as such. I dont care if he's the world's leading nuclear physicist, without a scientific foundation for a claim, it's meaningless. (the leading nuclear physicist would know this of course)

"there may exist some technology which makes something we think is impossible, possible" is an argument you can make for any theory, hypothesis, or claim that you can imagine. And it's a baseless argument. It might be true, but without evidence and scientific method behind it, it's meaningless speculation.

Theory: "Ancient people actually created the planet earth from a can of playdoe".

Response: "That's physically impossible"

Baseless Argument: "Well they might have had a technology we dont understand"

Point is, to "believe" something, you should want some hard science behind it. You want to be able to predict the behavior of things, using your "belief", and have it match the experimental result.

Personally I try very hard to remain in the "I have no idea" box on anything with limited evidence or limited experimental possibilities.

That's where I'm at with Giza. I have no freaking idea what that thing is. I'm pretty sure every theory I've ever heard is crap, and therefore, I have no idea.

Of course the problem is that we can really do much experimentation. We need to dig and dismantle and reverse engineer the entire site, the entire country! Without that, anything more than wild speculation is all we have, be it "tombs and spells", "nibblers", or "atomic reactors".

To properly test a theory like "atomic reactor" you would want to do a bunch of "it is physically possible" science with leaders in those fields and assemble first a scientific basis for your theory. Then using that science you construct your DETAILED theory, exactly how is this nuclear reaction happening? What would be the resulting changes to the structure itself? Now perhaps you can ask some questions like "if it was a reactor, what would we expect to see if we test the rocks and dig into things and start really digging around in there? Then you dig around, and see what you find.

Bottom line: Dunn is not trying to prove a theory, he's trying to sell books.

Of course, the "experts" are trying to keep their careers and keep the grant money flowing, so they're not exactly doing real science either.

And that's pretty much why it's a mystery.

Wonder why a CIA sponsored research lab is doing at Giza. (Standford Research Institute)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Page 6: Actually it's in the third paragraph. When citing a page, the beginning paragraph, even if continued from the previous page, counts for the current page. I'm not trying to be picky, I just want to make sure other interested parties can find the segment. The paragraph begins "The Resurrection Ritual occupies..."

The sentence in question reads: "The title of this rite in a Middle Kingdom copy indicates that it was performed after the offering rituals" (2005: 6). This has nothing to do with the spell in question, to which Allen is not referring. Few if any of the Pyramid Texts as they occur in the Old Kingdom had headings or titles, so how they were organized under headings later on helps to clarify the order in which the ritual in question was actually carried out. The spells themselves remain more or less the same, whether they were written in Dynasty 5 or Dynasty 12. This spell can be found in the burial chamber of the pyramid, its typical location.

This does nothing to help your argument.

Page 7: I'm not sure what you mean by "little confidence." I read the whole page and perhaps I missed something, but you'll have to elaborate.

Page 7: In the second paragraph, actually. It's the paragraph beginning "The Pyramid Texts are largely concerned...," under the heading "The Function of the Pyramid Texts." And, yes, the deceased in the Egyptians' minds shared a relationship with both Osiris and the sun (principally manifested as Re; ibid: 7). This is true from the late Old Kingdom on, and the Pyramid Texts corroborate the belief, although in the Texts it is only the king to whom we refer. The religion as revealed in the Pyramid Texts is a clear reflection of how funerary and afterlife beliefs were developing, and how they would eventually spread to the people at large.

This, too, does nothing to help your argument.

I was hoping you would refer to the spells themselves, cladking. Not Allen's introduction. You're nitpicking and drawing out of context introductory material, but you're not bringing your argument into the translations themselves. You need to show where in the translations you believe he is doing this, nothing less. If you can cite a specific example, and if I feel it's worth my time, I'll perform one or two translations myself. I don't know if you want to do this, because as I've demonstrated in the past, Allen's translations are very faithful to the hieroglyphs. And that's all that matters.

You have to be a fantastic person to place yourself in the mind of 4500 years old writers. I'm a translator, not Egyptian translator, modestly a English to French translator. Often I have to use several dictionaries to understand what the English author meant by using one word rather than a synonym in order to avoid an error in translation. I've practiced for many years, re-translating texts by other people in order to perceive their level of understanding one word vs another.

I've translated English version of Camus (one of my favorite authors) into French only find complete difference of perception and ultimately I got another text. I've read Beckett's work (Samuel) who did his own translation of plays, some were originally in French translated in English, some vice-versa.

I've even noticed people of the same origin, same class, same education who had a different understanding for the use of one word vs another.

I do not know Egyptian, therefore I will never promote one translation over another. Yet I worked on several translation to found it's extremely difficult work.

As started, you have to be a fantastic individual because you have certainties I couldn't dream to have.

Actually at my age I have only one certainty: that of not knowing anything for certain.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You're evidently the only one in the world who suffers from some sort of ramp obsession. You've also closed your eyes to many decades of research, each subsequent year of which becomes more sophisticated and comprehensive than the last. Many scholars much smarter than you and I have been figuring out how the pyramids were built, and there is a vast body of literature out there to support their work. If you think Petrie's The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh and Lehner's The Complete Pyramids are enough to equip you with an understanding, be aware that you haven't even nicked the surface. You cannot blame the researchers and their solid work for the fact that nothing points to geysers or hydrology technology. Pretending their theories and results can be ignored will not get you anywhere.

Tests and studies have been going on without a stop of over a century, and you have to realize that nothing observed by people who've actually been there and studied the Plateau and its monuments, would tend to support your personal opinions. If you somehow have the tenacity to believe countless professional researchers are wrong and only you are right, you have no recourse but to prove you're right. You have not yet done so.

Mercer's online translations and internet photos of the Great Pyramid do not even put you in a position to begin to question orthodoxy. You're only possible recourse is to become expert in linguistics to prove the linguists wrong about the Pyramid Texts, and to spend a hell of a lot of time at Giza itself to prove geologically that geysers were there. Somehow you seem to think you can get around this. You cannot. Professional researchers are not going to be looking for something for which there is no evidence, so you're going to have to find it yourself.

Serriously, /thread.

kmt_sesh, it's good to see some common sense in here. Even though previous replies should have ended the thread.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You have to be a fantastic person to place yourself in the mind of 4500 years old writers. I'm a translator, not Egyptian translator, modestly a English to French translator. Often I have to use several dictionaries to understand what the English author meant by using one word rather than a synonym in order to avoid an error in translation. I've practiced for many years, re-translating texts by other people in order to perceive their level of understanding one word vs another.

I've translated English version of Camus (one of my favorite authors) into French only find complete difference of perception and ultimately I got another text. I've read Beckett's work (Samuel) who did his own translation of plays, some were originally in French translated in English, some vice-versa.

I've even noticed people of the same origin, same class, same education who had a different understanding for the use of one word vs another.

I do not know Egyptian, therefore I will never promote one translation over another. Yet I worked on several translation to found it's extremely difficult work.

As started, you have to be a fantastic individual because you have certainties I couldn't dream to have.

Actually at my age I have only one certainty: that of not knowing anything for certain.

Anyone who seriously studies the ancient Egyptian civilization must learn to develop the ability to put aside attitudes and sensibilities of modern Western people. As you can see from the posts of many people at UM who do not understand this concept, the necessity of this is either ignored or not adequately appreciated. As such, the things many people write about ancient Egypt are basically anachronistic and nonsensical.

This necessary mindset also happens to include the translation of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs into English. Now, I fully understand that most people do not know how to do this, and I certainly don't begrudge them that. You have to be interested in learning to translate, and you have to be open to the idea of very hard and sustained work. As a translator yourself, you are fully aware of this, I have no doubt. What rubs me the wrong way is when people feel they are equipped to understand fully the ancient language in translation even when they have no idea how to work with the ancient language. There is too much of this phenomenon at UM and elsewhere, and all it leads to is unreliable and speculative assumptions without basis in fact.

I could not do what you yourself do, Paracelse. The only time I studied French was in high school a great many years ago, which means...I can't read or translate French. Even then I found French to be very difficult. I've had more success with German, which is sometimes necessary because a lot of Egyptological literature is written in German. You might find this odd to hear and it's something I've told many people over the years, but I honestly find ancient Egyptian easier than French.

I'll use the Pyramid Texts as an example because it's the subject cladking and I were debating. When I work on translations of the Texts, I use Faulkner's dictionary of ancient Egyptian as well as the seminal dictionary printed in German, the Wörtebuch. I principally refer to Allen's and Hoch's grammars on the language for matters of syntax. I then compare my results to Allen's translations of the Pyramid Texts and often to Mercer's, the latter of which are outdated but provide useful comparisons often enough. Faulkner's translations would be better than Mercer's but Faulkner's are out of print, not available on the internet like Mercer's are, and a copy of the book is ridiculously expensive. I used to borrow the copy we had in the docent's library at the Oriental Institute but it's been missing for a long time now, dammit.

As you know, translating is not an exact science. It's also not a great mystery, however. Ancient Egyptian possessed a considerably smaller vocabulary than did English or German or French, so this is why different English words might be used by translators. But the grammar and syntax of the ancient language are well understood. If I produce a translation that is nothing like Allen's or Mercer's or anyone else's, then I know my work is simply in error. Of course, this has happened to me on more than one occasion. It requires that I start over, and to date I have always been able to determine where my mistakes were. So, somewhat different vocabulary might be employed, but in the case of ancient Egyptian, if a completely different meaning is the end product, someone is simply in error (in the case of my own work, it would be me, naturally).

I am not a professional historian. I do not conduct translations for a living. At most I am an amateur historian, and I use my work in the Egyptian galleries of the two museums where I work. I've spent years translating the inscriptions in those two museums. In total I've spent over 20 years studying ancient Egypt and the Near East, and over ten years learning the ancient language. I feel pretty confident with the translations I do, but I am not an expert, and there is nothing fantastic about me. I have friends with whom I work in the museum setting who are much more polished translators than I am. We do this because of our love for ancient Egypt, and to hear the ancient voices speak. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is not possible to put aside our modern attitudes when trying to determine the worldview of an ancient race as much as it is possible to theorise on how a bumble bee flies.

History is littered with so called experts that said something was not possible only to find out that they were in fact wrong. In many cases, very wrong. Ask Galileo. Oh thats right, he was murdered by the Catholics in the 1600's saying something that disagreed with the then accepted world view.

The best we can do is read the theories and unproven translations of people that quite frankly would not tell us if there was anything in there that challenged the accepted view of modern society. (Probably because they do not wish to experience a similar fate to the previously mentioned person)We can be absolutely sure of that.

Nicola Tesla is another example. For those that know little about the man, he was single handedly responsible for the way in which we use AC electricity today. He invented the power generator (Powerstations), transformer, power line transport system, relays, street lights amongst other ground breaking technologies. However his most revolutionary invention was wireless electricity. He could send power through the air in the form of radio waves. Why do we still use cables?

Another example are the many documented accounts that say that over the last 200 or so years ancient giant skeletons were found and transferred to the Smithsonian Institute and then were mysteriously lost. Almost every single one. How does a discovery that may help answer questions regarding human development over the last 100,000 years get lost by the top archeological/historical institute in the world? And on more than one occasion?

What possible harm could a pile of oversized human bones do to us? Challenged accepted beliefs thats what.

Forgive me when i say that trust in the accepted views of history has waned to almost non existance for me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've had a change of opinion on the relevency of any interpretation

of the Pyramid Texts in this thread. It is about the PT so any inter-

pretation should be relevent. Since orthodox interpretation appears

so nonsensical I'll try to show how even the PT fit more closely to the

concept of astral projection than they do as a set of incantations for

the king to enter the afterlife. Since all the translators agree but

one I'll mostly limit my work to those who get the same meaning from

the work and use the same means of organizing it.

You're evidently the only one in the world who suffers from some sort of ramp obsession. You've also closed your eyes to many decades of research, each subsequent year of which becomes more sophisticated and comprehensive than the last.

ROFL!!! I have a ramp obsession? Two egyptologists can't talk for three

seconds without pretending the means of building doesn't matter since ramps

have already been assumed. They are the only technologhy the primitives

might have possibly mastered so there can be no doubt that ramps were used.

The only question is what configuration but this isn't a question for po-

lite company and every idea gets shot down as unfeasible, unworkable, AND

unevidenced.

Many scholars much smarter than you and I have been figuring out how the pyramids were built, and there is a vast body of literature out there to support their work.

Yes!!! Quite true on all counts.

But every siogle one of these people ay we don't know how the great

pyramids were built.

You cannot blame the researchers and their solid work for the fact that nothing points to geysers or hydrology technology. Pretending their theories and results can be ignored will not get you anywhere.

This is one of the arguments and denying the evidence exists is skip-

ping ahead to a conclusion. Let's just start (later) on the PT as astral

projection and see how tenuous orthodoxy is. Stick with evidence though

and not conclusions.

Tests and studies have been going on without a stop of over a century, and you have to realize that nothing observed by people who've actually been there and studied the Plateau and its monuments, would tend to support your personal opinions. If you somehow have the tenacity to believe countless professional researchers are wrong and only you are right, you have no recourse but to prove you're right. You have not yet done so.

I'm waiting for them or anyone to show me why the evidence is ir-

relevent or to show me better evidence for another solution.

Mercer's online translations and internet photos of the Great Pyramid do not even put you in a position to begin to question orthodoxy.

The last thing I want to do is try to understand orthodoxy. Literally.

Show me I'm wrong or you're right and then I'll care about ramps and

tombs. In the mean time I intend to continue to attempt to prove

you wrong.

You're only possible recourse is to become expert in linguistics to prove the linguists wrong about the Pyramid Texts, and to spend a hell of a lot of time at Giza itself to prove geologically that geysers were there.

I have absolutely no doubt that I could learn how to read and write

Egyptian and then translate the PT so it's even more supportive of my

ideas than it is now. This is the way peoples' minds work. So let's

save me years of hard work and pretend I have a version of the PT that

is 90% consistent with water rather than only 80%.

Somehow you seem to think you can get around this. You cannot. Professional researchers are not going to be looking for something for which there is no evidence, so you're going to have to find it yourself.

They sure spend enough time looking for ramps and not talking about them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

...

ROFL!!! I have a ramp obsession? Two egyptologists can't talk for three

seconds without pretending the means of building doesn't matter since ramps

have already been assumed. They are the only technologhy the primitives

might have possibly mastered so there can be no doubt that ramps were used.

The only question is what configuration but this isn't a question for po-

lite company and every idea gets shot down as unfeasible, unworkable, AND

unevidenced.

...

I know a number of Egyptologists personally and have attended countless lectures presented by Egyptologists, up to and including topics on Giza. I cannot even count the number of books I've read about pyramids and Bronze Age engineering in general. I mention this because in the pages of UM alone, you have written more about ramps than any Egyptologist I can think of. Yes, you have an obsession for ramps. No one heaps as much attention on them as you. You don't see it, but ramps are not nearly the all-important fact to refute that you think they are.

I think you were of the right mind in the first place to discontinue this debate of ours. I agree that it is still germane to the overall topic of this thread, and feel free to write your own post about Pyramid Texts and astral projection. Funny that even The Puzzler came to the rightful conclusion that the article in the OP was incorrect, but feel free to try to defend it. I was thinking of writing my own post about the article, since I have not directly addressed it yet, myself.

However, I'm having a hard time taking you seriously. You openly state that you have no need to study orthodox research and that it is okay for you to go on presenting your ideas, even though anyone versed in the subjects about which you write can see how lacking in substantive fact your posts are. As such I don't see any reason to continue this debate. Knowing the legitimate research and debating the fine points of it is one thing and can be quite enjoyable; pretending science and research are irrelevant and trying to pass one's self off as knowledgeable is akin to blowing a bunch of smoke, and I am not interested.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You openly state that you have no need to study orthodox research and that it is okay for you to go on presenting your ideas...

Yes, I openly state I have no interest in the orthodox interpretation

of the evidence and the culture. This is because I believe it has been

wholly misinterpreted. I pick up a lot of this interpretation because

I read thousands of posts, web sites, and books which believe this inter-

pretation.

This is really a simple concept. Imagine it's 1865 and you're a well re-

spected surgeon. You have a very heavy work load and don't have time to

wash your hands and instruments between operations because patients will

die if you waste your time being neat. You know from many years of exper-

ience and reading that the most important thing to save the life of a pat-

ient is timely attention. An attendent whose sole job it is to wheel the

patients in and out of the operating room approaches you and says that he's

observed that the first patient of the day and the first patient after lunch

have a five times better chance of survival than any other and he believes

it's because you start the day with clean hands and rewash them at lunch.

Of course you know this theory is ludicrous yet this crackpot keeps finding

circumstantial evidence such as those patients who are first in the day and

after lunch have less than a 10% as high odds of succumbing to strep infec-

tions and that new bone saws also reduce the odds of infection.

At what point do you quit telling him to learn a little medicine and look at

his evidence? At what point do you stop falling back on what you know and

look at the evidence from a different perspective?

How many have to die before you consider that you don't know everything.

Don't take my point wrong here. You are a very open minded person and ap-

pear to have considered much of the evidence I've presented. The point is

that orthodox interpretation is not a defense against a new injterpretation.

You need facts. You need logic. I don't believe that the orthodox inter-

pretation can stand on the evidence alone. This goes double when the inter-

pretation appears to even be at odds with human nature.

I'll go ahead and try to show that the PT fit the concept of astral projec-

tion but better than orthodox ideas I'm beginning to believe that there's

nothing that can shake your (or anybody's) certainty that the ancients were

incapable of using any other technology than ramps.

...And then most people say I'm insulting the ancients!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I realized only today that after all of the debating I've been doing in this discussion, especially with cladking, I never exercised the proper conduct of contributing my own thoughts on the article The Puzzler provided in the OP. Hopefully I can keep my response somewhat short, or as much as the word "short" would apply to a windbag such as I.

Down through the years countless scientists and other specialists with no background in the study of ancient Egypt have been drawn to the topic nonetheless. It's important that such people contribute their ideas and beliefs, based on their own specialized fields of training. But also vitally important is that such specialists take the time to research ancient Egypt adequately so that their contributions are sensible, accurate, and useful.

A good example of a success story is Bob Brier (in this photo he's the one standing up, not lying down :lol: ). Technically Brier is not an Egyptologist. His university training and Ph.D. are in philosophy. This has enabled him to contribute important points to our understanding of the thought process of ancient Egyptian people, but it's not his main contribution. Due to many years of careful research and study on his own part, he's become one of the world's leading experts on Egyptian death and burial, mummification, and paleopathology in ancient Egypt. He is the only modern scientist who has ever mummified a human cadaver, to assess the degree of our current understanding of Egyptian mummification, considering the ancient Egyptians do not seem to have ever written down the processes themselves.

The author of the article in The Puzzler's OP, Alison Chester-Lambert, comes up somewhat lacking, however. It is clear she is an intelligent and well-educated individual, but it is also clear she is positing a position without a fundamental comprehension of ancient Egypt and its religion.

I do not outright dismiss some of the things about which she writes. The term "astral-projection" might be a bit too anachronistic and New Agey to take seriously, so I tend to prefer the term "out-of-the-body experience." I searched my books on ancient Egyptian religion and the Egyptians' own thoughts on the divine elements of each person, but could find nothing to corroborate a belief in out-of-the-body experience. However, I do seem to recall having read at some point in time an argument that could be made in favor of the idea. I apologize to one and all that I cannot corroborate it more than that. As close as I can come with more certainty is the well-known albeit fragmented tale known as the Discourse of a Man with his Ba.

This tale is not really about out-of-the-body experience but it clearly suggests, at least to a point, that the Egyptians regarded the ba as potentially self-aware and able to exist even in life as a separate entity from the body. The ba, for those who are not familiar with the word, is one of the most important divine elements of each person, in Egyptian thought. This is one of those ancient words for which a precise translation is simply not possible, but it's basically the aspect of the person which possesses his or her character, personality, and intelligence. After the death and burial of the individual, the ba could travel freely between the land of the living and the land of the dead and was believed to rejoin the mummified body every evening at dusk, as illustrated in this graphic.

But it remains true that Chester-Lambert's assessment of the Pyramid Texts is far off the mark. She writes that this vast collection of writings from the third millennium BCE seems "random and seemingly unrelated," which tells the savvy student of ancient Egypt that the translations she used for her study were most likely quite old and, arguably, outdated. For example, a student reading Kurt Sethe's translations of the Texts from his 1908 publication might well be confused by the chaotic nature of these writings. The mistake Chester-Lambert makes, and a mistake made by many people not aware of the nature of the early translations, is that there is in fact a recognizable order to the Pyramid Texts. As with any other field of study, it simply took subsequent translators with a greater command of the context and language to discern the logical order of the many spells, which begin in the burial chamber and lead out through the main corridor entrance of the pyramid--the same direction in which the king's soul was expected to travel.

Chester-Lambert writes that "Experts consider them to be magical formulae and 'not coherent,' which is true only to an extent. I've already demonstrated that the spells must be read in a specific order that went unrecognized by early scholars, but to a narrow point Chester-Lambert is correct. The Pyramid Texts are not a story, nor a cohesive narrative, nor were they intended to be. This is something that trips up many beginners in the study of ancient Egyptian religion. It was not the intent of the people who wrote and carved the Pyramid Texts thousands of years ago to compose a novel; it was their intent to ensure that the divine soul of their god-king would safely reach his place in the heavens. This was accomplished through the spells that compose the Pyramid Texts, which to the Egyptians were potent magic. The written word was powerful, most especially when penned in hieroglyphs: what was written was expected to come true.

The author also states: "They [the spells] make constant reference to the cosmos and another invisible world that is intertwined with ours." This is correct. In the Old Kingdom the "heaven" to which kings were believed to reside after death was in the cosmos, in among the stars. The invisible world intertwined with ours is expressed by the ancient Egyptian term Duat (transliterated dwAt), which was the underworld or land of the dead, where everyone else was expected to reside after death. Some of the earliest spells in the order of the Pyramid Texts make it clear how the king was supposed to be spiritually resurrected, retrieved from the Duat, and guided up into the cosmos.

That the Pyramid Texts are funerary in nature is irrefutable. Countless spells make reference to such terms as Krst, which means "place of burial." The Egyptian term for burial chamber, Xnt, is mentioned numerous times, as are items of burial equipment such as the coffin (Krsw). Many spells are devoted to the rituals of offering and anointing the funerary statue and the ceremony known as the Opening of the Mouth, which are well-attested as funerary rituals before the time of the pyramids and for the remainder of dynastic history.

I will wind this up with a note about the hieroglyphic script in which the Pyramid Texts were written. Chester-Lambert writes:

The hieroglyphs are symbols…not words or letters. They can be read as words or letters…but they can also be read on many other levels. They speak to technicians in their own language. The truly awesome power of the hieroglyphs is that they will lend themselves to interpretation through the eye of the shaman, the psychologist or the physicist. Because they all simply have different ways of viewing the SAME world and it`s invisible forces! The hieroglyphs have multiple levels of meaning.

This is a teeny bit of truth stretched far into and beyond absurdity. It is here where Chester-Lambert reveals her most singular failure of proper familiarity with the topic. The hieroglyphs form a phonetic, consonantal script that is well understood today. We do not know how many of the words actually sounded based on the absence of vowels in the script, but we certainly understand the meanings of nearly all words (scholars still quibble over the precise meanings of a handful or verbs and nouns in the Pyramid Texts). It is true that a particular hieroglyph can represent more than one sound and in some cases can even mean what it pictorially shows (for example, the face-glyph can mean "face"), but this is all governed and tightly regulated by the context of a glyph within a word, phrase, or sentence. So it's true that a single glyph in many cases can be used in more than one way, but its context tells the translator how it is meant to be used. The idea that hieroglyphs are a magical and divine pictographic symbology that conceal esoteric secrets was how people regarded them before Champollion deciphered hieroglyphs in 1822. Champollion and those who followed in his footsteps proved definitively that the old attitude about hieroglyphs was foolish whimsy and needn't be taken seriously.

All told, Chester-Lambert is simply trying to invent her own meaning for the Pyramid Texts, just as countless poorly informed fringe writers have tried to do with this and other aspects of ancient Egyptian culture down through time. All have singularly failed. In their vigorous efforts to ignore proper research criteria and the scientific method, they have contributed really nothing to our understanding of ancient Egypt. Their material might be entertaining, and it can certainly give us a merry chuckle, but it's not useful. ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is not based in anything sci-fi or Sitchin-like, it is based in what seems like an obvious answer (to me).

The Great Pyramid was built to be able to be a vehicle for the body to astral travel or astral project, that is have an out of body exprience (OOBE) that took one to the stars and Heavens for a journey and back again.

If anyone is interested I'll add some links and other info on why I think this is the most logical answer for the Pyramid Texts and their use.

Here is a small link to a part that seems to indicate the Pharoah was not dead when he used the texts, he was very much alive.

http://www.midlandsschoolofastrology.co.uk/pyramid_texts_describe_quantum_realm.html

There appears to be a great deal of support for this contention in the

Pyramid Texts. The problem for me exploring this avenue is that there

is no incentive to study astral projection. While I don't discount the

possibility that the ancients believed in it and this was the purpose

of the pyramid and the PT, my interest lies primarily in learning how

these were built.

The problem with the orthodox interpretation of the PT is that from the

earliest time the translators were able to "skip ahead" because it was

immediately obviouis that this work was the earliest version of the book

of the dead and the various other books of spells. It seemed to follow

that this must be a book of spells and this affected the translation. Al-

most nothing survives from the era of the PT and the building of the great

pyramids so the interpretation of this work has a profound effect on the

understanding of the pyramid builders themselves.

While I personally don't find much justification for the orthodox inter-

pretation of this work anyone who wants to reinterpret it in terms of as-

tral projection will both have a field day because there are ample refer-

ences and a nightmare because there are numerous contradictions and non-

sequitors. Some of it just flows as a description of astral projection

but then comes to a brick wall;

1414b. He who ascended, ascended, N., that he might purify himself in the Marsh of Reeds.

1415a. He who ascended, ascended, Horus of the Horizon, that he might purify himself in the Marsh of Reeds.

1415b. He who ascended, ascended, N., that he might purify himself in the Marsh of Reeds.

1416a. N. is purified; N. has taken the śwḥ-vestment.

1416b. N. truly ascends to heaven, permanent like the earth.

N is forever ascending to heaven as birds or by other such extraordinary

means but then there will be a line like 1416a which just reeks of the

concrete. N is in heaven in the concrete. This can only mean that the

pyrasmid is N or that N has taken the properties of a mountain or other

man made structure. But this same thing is reinforced by

N rests in heaven, as a mountain as a support.

This rings of concrete as well. Since there are no mountains in the Land

of Horus we are forced to conclude that they are referring to the pyramid.

Since they repeatedly say that the pyramid is the ka of N we're really left

a dead end.

But with some work I'd wager you could get this to be pretty consistent

with the concept of the great pyramids for the purpose of astral projection.

Afterall there's simply no reason that the dead king might not be intended

to serve as a launch pad for initiates after his death and internment in the

sky.

The simple fact is that the literal meanings of their words have been dis-

counted since even before Masperro was done translating them! No matter

who says otherwise the fact is that words have meanings and the meanings

of the words have not been taken at face value. Of course when there are

people and Gods ascending to the marsh of reeds and there are tossing in-

undations that come to the uplands it can be difficult for right thinking

people to believe in literal meanings. All the words had to be accepted

in a different way so they could have some sort of coherence. Of course,

this coherence could never be achieved if the words are meant literally. All

the meaning has been interpreted right out of them.

I'd applaud anyone who wanted to work on astral projection vis a vis the PT.

I'd be happy to lend support and pitch in. I don't have enough interest at

this time to take it on myself but the simple fact is whether orthodoxy is

right or wrong about everything else, the pyramids might have been built

for astral projection. It's somewhat better evidenced than that they are

tombs; that's actually plundered tombs since there's no evidence of burials

and precious little evidence of riches. And this would still be despite the

fact that the builders said that the sky was the tomb of the king (repeatedly)

and that the pyramid was the ka of the king (repeatedly).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yet I worked on several translation to found it's extremely difficult work.

As started, you have to be a fantastic individual because you have certainties I couldn't dream to have.

I think you fail to consider here that the body of work being translated from hieroglyphs is limited.

People have been working on translations of the same writings for a century and a half.

Also, there is a difference between a proclamation, a eulogy, or even a book of short spells, and a novel.

Harte

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Did someone say astral travel;

1483b. ’Imś.ti, Ḥȝpi, Dwȝ-mw.t.f, Ḳbḥ-śn.w.f,

1483c. who live on truth, who lean upon their d'm-sceptres,

1483d. who guard the land of Upper Egypt.

1484a. He flies, he flies from you, O men, as birds;

1484b. he takes his flight from you (lit., he takes his arms from you) like a falcon;

1484c. he takes his body from you like a kite;

1484d. he is delivered from that which shackles his feet on earth,

1484e. he is freed from that which ties his hands.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

IOW, "He's a deader."

Harte

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So the mainstream theory is that everyone who dies goes to the underworld. But the Pharaoh, using his burial device and the spells on the walls, can prevent this happening to himself and can instead go into space and hang out with the Gods.. right? Is that a fair layman's understanding of the mainstream theory?

And the Astral theory is more or less saying that the spells are describing the experience the Pharaoh is going to have while he (while living) hangs out in his astral project device, right?

So from there, I'd be interested in the spells themselves. To be more precise:

1. Do the spells themselves DIRECTLY reference traditional death and the underworld?

2. Do the spells actually call out the following logical expression: (Normal people go to the underworld but if you use these spells you can go to space)

3. If the above are not true, then mainstream view is getting it's story of the underworld from OTHER Egyptian texts, and are instead are getting #2 by inference across the culture?

So do the spells actually reference the underworld, or is that inferred?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1. Do the spells themselves DIRECTLY reference traditional death and the underworld?

Not exactly. The king doesn't truly "die the death". There are a few

lines which seemingly contradict this but the referent isn't clear and

it could be relevent to astral projection;

285a. So said he who is chief of his department (or, thigh offering). Thou decayest in the earth

285b. as to thy thickness, as to thy girt, as to thy length

285c. (but as spirit) thou seest Rē in his bonds, thou adorest Rē in-his freedom (from) his bonds,

It's improbable that the referent is the dead king since in all cases

he is said to ascend to heaven where his tomb is in the sky. There's

no obvious referent but I believe this is the Osiris aspect of Osiris N.

Mercer didn't translate "D[].t" which later translators translate as

"duat" which is where the dead Gods lived according to much later the-

ology. There's no reason from context in the PT to suppose this word

means "duat". Indeed, context suggests this is something which is a

source for water to be avoided. There's a "hell" translated by Mer-

cer and the earliest translators as well as an underworld but these are

apparently distinct from the "D[].t".

Things could die or never exist according to the PT but this work is

about life and its maintenance even after a life on earth.

2. Do the spells actually call out the following logical expression: (Normal people go to the underworld but if you use these spells you can go to space)

No. Certainly not but stay tuned in twenty years they might. :innocent:

There is very little about people in the PT and almost every reference

to them is of critical importance if you accept the literal meaning.

One reads "men and Gods your arms under me as you raise me and lift me

to heaven". In other words men were necessary to get the dead king to

ascend in the afterlife. Another suggests that men helped to build the

stairway for the king to heaven. Another suggests a possible motive force

for how this was accomplished; "men bury themselves, the Gods fly up".

Mercer opined that this was "in the grave". Men are also said to have

damaged one of the doors and implied they were severely punished and for

the sake of comprehensiveness there is a passage which suggests that if

the Gods don't build a pyramid then men won't be able to die and the Nile

Valley will "heal over". There are a few lines like this that smack of

magic but the bulk has no obvious references to magic if read literally.

3. If the above are not true, then mainstream view is getting it's story of the underworld from OTHER Egyptian texts, and are instead are getting #2 by inference across the culture?

I believe this is quite apparent. The PT just don't say what orthodox

opinion believe they say. The literal meaning has been stripped from

almost every single line in the work and a metaphoric meaning inserted.

If they were meant metaphorically then this is justified and one can see

how the later works evolved from them. If it's not justified one can still

see how the later works evolved from them and the orthodox interpretation

is greatly in error.

So do the spells actually reference the underworld, or is that inferred?

They reference the D[].t.

This word apparently meant the carbonated water under the ground, the hole

through which it shot up (Eye of Horus), the column of water, the lakes form-

ed, and the abundance it generated. The verb appears to have been []gb which

means a violent inundation which causes abundance which is translated various-

ly as "violent", "inundation", or "abundance" dependent upon context.

When the CO2 (I[].t-wt.t) level dropped too low for the Gods to stand they

offered natron "libation" which caused eruptions. Over time this level con-

tinued to drop and natron no longer worked. The Gods became just the dead

part under the ground. This is basically what the word "duat" came to mean;

dead Gods under the ground.

"His name lives on account of natron-offerings and he is divine"

It appears this meaning has been injected into the older writing inappropri-

ately. The words are D[].t (geyser), []gb (what a geyser does), and I[].t-wt.t

(what makes a geyser work).

If you substitute these concepts into the PT it is no longer a book of spells

but a coherent explanation for a theology built on a natural phenomenon as well

as a good glimpse into how great pyramids can be built with water pressure.

Edited by cladking
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So do the spells actually reference the underworld, or is that inferred?

I should be much more clear here.

There is almost nothing in the PT concerning any sort of "underworld".

The very little that is there is mostly "D[].t" which from context al-

most certainly has nothing whatsoever to do with the underworld except

that Nun (the God of water) controls the water in the underworld. Nun

existed before Atum who was the first God who created himself.

There simply is no underworld to speak of. The PT says the king ascends

to heaven to be an imperishable star. He needs men's help for this and

ascends upon a ladder made by the Gods. His tomb is in the sky and the

pyramid is his ka.

This is what the builders of the great pyramids said. They did not con-

tradict themselves and I see no evidence that they made grammatical

mistakes. The apparent errors appear to be caused primarily by misun-

derstanding.

Edited by cladking
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Qwasz, on 13 May 2010 - 02:51 PM, said:

1. Do the spells themselves DIRECTLY reference traditional death and the underworld?

If you substitute these concepts into the PT it is no longer a book of spells

but a coherent explanation for a theology built on a natural phenomenon as well

as a good glimpse into how great pyramids can be built with water pressure.

Qwasz,

If you follow this advise, you will have effectively bastardized a significant piece of Ancient Egyptian religion and rituals (and the understanding thereof), all on the word of someone who isn't even remotely qualified to make the pronouncements concerning same, that he does.

You might want to find someone who's actually knowledgeable on the subject.

cormac

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you follow this advise, you will have effectively bastardized a significant piece of Ancient Egyptian religion and rituals (and the understanding thereof), all on the word of someone who isn't even remotely qualified to make the pronouncements concerning same, that he does.

Quite true. It's not often we are in nearly complete agreement.

But this doesn't change what the builders said. The builders

said the king's tomb was in the sky and the pyramid was his ka.

They used words that implied the so-called duat shot water high

in the air and was equipped with a rainbow.

It's a little late to argue with the great pyramid builders.

You might want to find someone who's actually knowledgeable on the subject.

This is never bad advice but in this case it might not be the best.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

But this doesn't change what the builders said.

YOU don't know what the builders said, so pretending competency or relevancy in discussing same is entirely meaningless.

cormac

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.