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kmt_sesh

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On ‎3‎/‎17‎/‎2017 at 0:18 AM, kmt_sesh said:

Do you have a link or image for this, docy? I can't think of the vase you're talking about. Are you sure it's not a rock painting?

kmt, one sees these reports, but then they go missing.  There was a report of  the oldest  vase  ever found in Egypt depicting  a man lying down in a boat

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so, google that and find the one you mean and post it here , 

just like this ... simple ;

 

Image result for oldest vase ever found in Egypt depicting a man lying down in a boat

but he isnt lying down and we dont know if this is the one you mean 

or maybe it is and you got the lying down detail wrong ?    We cant tell without a pic Docy .

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On 3/19/2017 at 0:23 AM, kmt_sesh said:

How it evolved is not entirely clear but originally it almost certainly wasn't exclusively royal. Many men probably wore something like it as they worked the fields in the hot sun. I'm not sure it's even understood why it became the purview of royals, but it's readily recognizable in royal iconography.

I don't think I'm allowed to say this but.....I don't believe your explanation. Please spare me your wrath, it's just that you deviated from academia here it seems and inserted conjecture. 

Regardless if you'd like to move on I've another question: What would an AE map look like? 

 

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44 minutes ago, internetperson said:

I don't think I'm allowed to say this but.....I don't believe your explanation. Please spare me your wrath, it's just that you deviated from academia here it seems and inserted conjecture. 

Regardless if you'd like to move on I've another question: What would an AE map look like? 

 

You're certainly allowed to disagree with me. I ain't perfect. It's just that my explanation—all of my explanations—are based on orthodox academic research. There are occasions when I will indeed speculate, but when that happens, I try to make it clear in my writing that it's a point of speculation on my part. But remember that there's very little evidence for the names prior to Dynasty 3, so that's a hell of a lot of prior history in which its use and existence cannot be adequately explained.

It's also quite possible you've come across a different explanation I have not seen or have just forgotten. So please feel free to share your explanation and, if you can remember, the source from which you got it.

I'll return in a little while. Time is tight right now.

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16 minutes ago, kmt_sesh said:

I ain't perfect.

Blasphemy!

16 minutes ago, kmt_sesh said:

It's also quite possible you've come across a different explanation I have not seen or have just forgotten. So please feel free to share your explanation and, if you can remember, the source from which you got it.

Negative. It's just something I've always wondered. I have no explanation whatsoever. I definitely could've worded my stance or whatever better: I'm not saying you're wrong by any means. My whole 'internetperson' persona is an admission of my ignorance of life and all that it entails. I guess i challenged you on this one because it's incredibly fascinating but it's hard for me to see your point. It seems like a stretch frankly. 

I don't think it's a stretch that laborers wore something to shield themselves from the sun (basic cloth or whatever). I've dug footers, I've worked a lot in the sun (in the damn sunshine state) I know how it is. Again though, the connection from that to royalty -to me- seems like a stretch.

My whole thing is I'm very comfortable leaving it as an open ended question, one to be investigated further. I think it's okay to admit nobody knows.

 

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Quote

 A vase that old I think pictured  a man landing in Egypt, and not a burial on the waters. 

 

Edited by docyabut2
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2 hours ago, internetperson said:

I don't think I'm allowed to say this but.....I don't believe your explanation. Please spare me your wrath, it's just that you deviated from academia here it seems and inserted conjecture. 

Regardless if you'd like to move on I've another question: What would an AE map look like? 

 

Ahhh ... but educated conjecture is worth more than ignorant conjecture , is it not ?  

What do you think the nemes originated from? 

...  and dont worry about the mummy , say what you want here  ...    unless you are really naughty  posting wise 

then ....

 

images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRgyf2ZklliANF4KNID-YN

 

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18 minutes ago, docyabut2 said:

 A vase that old I think pictured  a man landing on Egypt, and not a burial on the waters. 

Oooohhhhww    !  You were doing so well ....     

why would someone come to Egypt and 'land there' in a boat  in the foetal position.  Your own link indicated funerary scene .

 

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36 minutes ago, internetperson said:

Blasphemy!

Negative. It's just something I've always wondered. I have no explanation whatsoever. I definitely could've worded my stance or whatever better: I'm not saying you're wrong by any means. My whole 'internetperson' persona is an admission of my ignorance of life and all that it entails. I guess i challenged you on this one because it's incredibly fascinating but it's hard for me to see your point. It seems like a stretch frankly. 

I don't think it's a stretch that laborers wore something to shield themselves from the sun (basic cloth or whatever). I've dug footers, I've worked a lot in the sun (in the damn sunshine state) I know how it is. Again though, the connection from that to royalty -to me- seems like a stretch.

My whole thing is I'm very comfortable leaving it as an open ended question, one to be investigated further. I think it's okay to admit nobody knows.

 

How devious! The way I read your post, I thought you had read something credible that disputes what I wrote. But trust me, what I wrote is standard academic theory.

Now that I'm home I did some quick fact-checking. A book I highly recommend is Toby Wilkinson's Early Dynastic Egypt. It's a very enjoybale book, is easy to read and well organized, and Wilkinson is one of today's leading specialist in prehistoric and Early Dynastic Egypt. On page 196 of the book he clarifies that the earliest evidence for the nemes is on the serdab statue I mentioned, of the Dynasty 3 king Djoser (Netjerikhet). There is just very little understanding of it prior to that period.

I explained it as an early pastoral symbol of kingship—a simple headcloth men could've worn in the fields but for some reason was coopted as a royal icon. Think of other ubiquitous symbols of kingship, especially the crook and flail.These are obvious symbols of pastoralism. The crook is the rod used by countless shepherds down through time, and the flail is simply a whip to swat goats on the butt or to shoo away flies. The king is the shepherd of his flock, the people he rules.

I should also state my own belief that just because the nemes was a royal piece of apparel, the king wasn't necessarily the only person who wore it. I personally think it was worn by common men to keep the sun off their heads. At the moment I can't recall if there's research to clarify this or dispute it, so for the moment this is my speculation. I have a very good memory for arcane trivial facts but can't remember people's names or where I parked my car at the mall, so maybe I'm right. Maybe not. I see nemes-style headcloths carved on the heads of two New Kingdom anthropoid coffins we have at the Field Museum, but kingly styles were often coopted for burial goods in the burials of wealthy common people (so that example can be taken as ambiguous).

But as back to earth put it, don't worry about the mummy (me). If you have another idea feel free to share it. That's what this thread is about. We're talkin' about history and learning along the way. :D

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1 hour ago, docyabut2 said:

Thanks for taking the time to find that, docy. It's a beautiful vessel. We have vessels from that period and even older at the Field Museum, but none of them show the body on board like this one does.

That it's authentic doesn't surprise me, although it does seem to be in unusually good shape for a ceramic jug that old. Pottery and rock art from prehistoric times in the Nile Valley often show boats and people on them, but I'm not as familiar with the depiction of a deceased person on them.

However, it does remind me of a lot of boat models from the First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom that do include a mummy. See this example. We have a similar boat model on display in our collection but I wish we had the one in my link. Anyway, such models show a deceased person being transported to a cemetery for burial. It was a fairly common theme. In the Middle Kingdom it usually represents the deceased person being taken to the sacred necropolis of Abydos, even if he or she wasn't really going to be buried in that particular cemetery. The ancient Egyptians were being on religious pilgrimages of all sorts.

The article doesn't really explain it and it's altogether possible the author doesn't understand the iconography, but the depiction of the dead dude on the boat doesn't mean they were fixing to bury him in the river. All it shows is a journey to the cemetery.

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32 minutes ago, back to earth said:

... and Docy, this find opens up a tricky question for the boss ;

 

When and why did  burial position change from foetal to laid out on back  (like a mummy ) . 

;) 

Actually that is pretty well understood. People were still being buried in the flexed position clear through the Old Kingdom, although in the Old Kingdom is when we start to see a lot more burials with people stretched out. This confused Flinders Petrie, who was one of the last holdouts of the old-fashioned and rather racist "dynastic race" theory (stating that a foreign race entered Egypt early on and founded the dynastic kingdom). We know better now, of course, but in looking at Old Kingdom burials, Petrie took to believe that the bodies buried stretched out were those from the "dynastic race" and those in the flexed position were from the native race of stinky-footed bumpkins. Bah!

But it was still quite awhile before it was common to place bodies on their backs. For a long time after the transition from a flexed position, it was the practice to inter people inside coffins on their left sides, with their heads propped on headrests. This is why, from the Old Kingdom though the periods of the Middle Kingdom, you see so many long, narrow, rectangular coffins with a set of Horus eyes painted on their sides:

53_30_1_s1_TF_200911_XL-1024x576.jpg

Inside the coffin, the mummy on its side had its head position just behind the painted eyes. It was believed when the soul returned to the body for the hours of night, it could look out from the mummy and through the painted eyes to watch for the rebirth of Re—these coffins usually faced the east. Then the soul could come out again. The soul might also use the eyes to watch that family members were visiting graves and leaving offerings.

Some mummies have been found in a posture somewhere in between the two, such as this Old Kingdom mummy in an American museum. It looks for all the world as though the individual is cozily sleeping. Is that lady at right about the wipe the mummy's butt?

Bodies were commonly placed on their backs beginning only in the Middle Kingdom, late in Dynasty 11 or early Dynasty 12. This is when you see the first anthropoid coffins, such as this example. This style of coffin was still often placed in an outer rectangular coffin.

So that's a long way to go to answer a simple question, but that is my wont. And coffin typology is one of my very favorite subjects!

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Would this be related to a trend where  ( I am not sure if the time scales relate here ? )   what used to be only for the Pharaoh  gradually became appropriated by nobles and then other groups in the population ? 

( I hope I worded that to make some sense ? ) 

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11 minutes ago, back to earth said:

Would this be related to a trend where  ( I am not sure if the time scales relate here ? )   what used to be only for the Pharaoh  gradually became appropriated by nobles and then other groups in the population ? 

( I hope I worded that to make some sense ? ) 

You worded it perfectly. And yes, this is such an example. So many things royal were coopted by common people, it became part of tradition.

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13 hours ago, Merc14 said:

kmt_sesh,. just speaking for myself but don't sell yourself short, nothing long winded at all about this post as the info is greatly appreciated.  I would guess many, like me, are following and enjoying the reading so indulge yourself!   Great stuff sir.

Thank you, sir. High praise indeed! I'm glad you're following along.

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Chad Genetic Diversity Reveals an African History Marked by Multiple Holocene Eurasian Migrations

The American Journal of Human Genetics 99(6) · November 2016
Abstract
Understanding human genetic diversity in Africa is important for interpreting the evolution of all humans, yet vast regions in Africa, such as Chad, remain genetically poorly investigated. Here, we use genotype data from 480 samples from Chad, the Near East, and southern Europe, as well as whole-genome sequencing from 19 of them, to show that many populations today derive their genomes from ancient African-Eurasian admixtures. We found evidence of early Eurasian backflow to Africa in people speaking the unclassified isolate Laal language in southern Chad and estimate from linkage-disequilibrium decay that this occurred 4,750–7,200 years ago. It brought to Africa a Y chromosome lineage (R1b-V88) whose closest relatives are widespread in present-day Eurasia; we estimate from sequence data that the Chad R1b-V88 Y chromosomes coalesced 5,700–7,300 years ago. This migration could thus have originated among Near Eastern farmers during the African Humid Period. We also found that the previously documented Eurasian backflow into Africa, which occurred ∼3,000 years ago and was thought to be mostly limited to East Africa, had a more westward impact affecting populations in northern Chad, such as the Toubou, who have 20%–30% Eurasian ancestry today. We observed a decline in heterozygosity in admixed Africans and found that the Eurasian admixture can bias inferences on their coalescent history and confound genetic signals from adaptation and archaic introgression.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/310791117_Chad_Genetic_Diversity_Reveals_an_African_History_Marked_by_Multiple_Holocene_Eurasian_Migrations

petrie is dead? actually if you look at pottery and figurines you can almost tell what eurasian villages they came from.

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Back to earth brought up a good point about royal trends. I get this all the time at our Egyptian exhibit. We display twenty-one mummies, although six are now off display and were sent out with a bunch of our storage research mummies for an exhibit we're putting on about the science of studying mummies (CT scanning and such). They're in New York now. It's sad that our mummies get out more than I do. Anyway, every time I'm there people invariably ask if this or that mummy was a king. We certainly have items that belonged to royals, but the fact is, all known royal mummies are in Egypt, on display or in storage there. It's where most of the alien mummies are kept, too (tee-hee).

You'll read in a lot of books that originally, 5,000 years ago when the kingdom was founded, only kings were mummified. I would argue that plenty of the nobility was mummified that far back as well. In those days, after all, the nobles and highest court officials tended to be from the king's family. Now, the court tended to grow and expand through the Old Kingdom, which itself is very early in dynastic history, but one certainly sees more and more people being mummified for burial. These were usually the nobility and elite, of course, but the numbers were growing nevertheless.

It's in the First Intermediate Period when one sees more common people starting to get mummified. It grew only more so in the Middle Kingdom. By the New Kingdom, plenty of people were getting mummified. This follows a noticeable socio-economic trend in which we see the growth of a small but well-established middle class. And the middle class grew only larger as time went on, although it was never a burgeoning part of the demographics. Still most people were humble farmers, herdsmen, and laborers. (The expansion in this form of burial also follows the development of the cult of Osiris, of course, but I'm droning on long enough so perhaps that's best left for another post.)

Basically, if you could afford to be mummified, you were allowed to. There was no law or rule against it. Still, the expense of the process prohibited most of those farmers, herdsmen, and laborers from being able to afford this mode of burial. But there were cheaper methods for embalming bodies, and in very late periods (Greek and Roman Egypt), a lot more people were able to receive some degree of mummification.

Originally, then, only truly the highest elite—less than 1% of the population—were being mummified. Originally it was part of the royal ideology, and it's a good example of something plenty of common people coopted down through time, especially in later periods. The crossed arms one sees on anthropoid coffins was originally a royal icon, but you see the posture on countless private people's coffins, too. Another example is the false beard, a symbol of Osiris, but plenty of people had these put on their coffins just like kings originally did (I've read of the occasional example of even women's coffins having them).

As I like to joke, the kings were the superheroes of the time, and everyone wants to be like a superhero. ;)

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7 hours ago, internetperson said:

Regardless if you'd like to move on I've another question: What would an AE map look like? 

 

The oldest one that we have is called the Turin Papyrus Map and dates to around 1150 BC or thereabouts.  Most ancient maps were relatively primitive; some were simply similar to written directions (go upstream until you reach the big acacia tree with next to the well, then follow the wadi toward the west...etc, etc.)  The Turin Papyrus map is detailed enough that it may have been created by someone who was a surveyor or a scribe working with a surveyor.

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On 3/19/2017 at 9:29 PM, kmt_sesh said:

The big difference is, by my estimation you're much better read than the average Joe (or Jane) and can distinguish fact from fantastical fringe woo. As I've encountered many times while engaging with people in our Egyptian exhibit, many people don't seem well equipped to exercise critical thinking and take fringe nonsense at face value.

I managed to have a decent foundation, though admittedly I only joined here after becoming more skeptical. I used to believe in pretty much all the woo woo. 

Save Creationism, never bought that. 

 

 Do have a question, I remember reading awhile back that examination of mummies had show that many of the Pharoahs had clogged arteries. The natural follow up was that they had rich diets that lead to high cholesterol. 

 But it seems that then naturaly mummified remains from the region were examined and had the same issue with their arteries, adding to the possibilityit was more genetic that diet based. 

 Has there been any follow up?

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^Awesome question shadow! Follow up question, how long was the average lifespan in AE? I also have a follow up question for the follow up question but I don't wanna stack too many questions. Hint: It involves Zahi Hawass not wanting to get sick.

Regarding the nemes I think I could continue to nag about it but I like how this thread is a little more shoot from the hip, rapid fire questions. Google is sooo jealous right now. Considering I'm skeptical about that answer should give me brownie points towards how my mind works. I'm like immune to conspiracy (#narcissist).

That is a really cool pic of that coffin. It looks like it was made only decades ago (testament to how dry it is over there?). 

Edited by internetperson
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I have another question for the boss ; 

 

Why can one never starve in The Egyptian desert  ? 

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1 hour ago, internetperson said:

^Awesome question shadow! Follow up question, how long was the average lifespan in AE?

Depends on who you were.  Average was around 40, but child mortality was high (one in five, if I remember right) and women tended to die earlier (childbirth.)  It is not unusual for a high official to live to 60 or 65 and of course there was Ramesses II, who lived to be over 90.

 

I remember reading that Amarna graveyards had a lot of younger people who died in work related situations.

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2 hours ago, back to earth said:

I have another question for the boss ; 

 

Why can one never starve in The Egyptian desert  ? 

 Because of all of  the sand which is there.

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