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the Serapeum of Saqqara


kborissov

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53 minutes ago, The Wistman said:

Kindly explain to me how your theory of fermentation still works in spite of my refutation of your incorrect imagining (bolded) which you addressed to Kmt Sesh.

What exactly refutes in your post the bolded part of my message? 

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Thanks for weighing in, Wistman, You're perhaps the only person here who's personally familiar with the Serapeum, and I'd wager you and your father have done more research on it than all of us put together. If kborissov cannt see the gaping holes in this theme after reading your post, the fault is not yours. :tu:

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On 7/31/2018 at 12:35 PM, The Wistman said:

fThe brilliant but differing manner of polish on the boxes is also a matter of some debate, still not understood fully.

 

Kindly elaborate

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Bulls have a long history of veneration in Egypt as symbols of kingship. This can be seen as early as the late Predynastic-Archaic Period with the Narmer Palette where on the inverse the king is depicted as a bull trampling his enemies. During the late Predynastic and Early Dynastic Periods, a ceremonial bull's tail was often included as part of the royal regalia. And of course the royal ephitet "Strong Bull" and "Bull of Heaven" was often included as part of the king's titulary. Bull's bones were even discovered in the granite sarcophagus of Khafre in what was likely a Saite (26th) Dynasty reburial.

It should therefore not be in the least surprising that the Apis Bulls were buried with such ceremonial pomp and ritual befitting royalty.

 

Edited by Lord Harry
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On 7/31/2018 at 3:32 PM, kborissov said:

What exactly refutes in your post the bolded part of my message? 

I think, Mr. Borissov, that you aren't as obtuse as you are playing at being.  It seems to me that whenever someone has refuted your claims in a way that disarms your theme, you respond by questioning them, putting them on the defensive, instead of you responding to the points made by your critic.  This tactic of altering the terms of debate so that you maintain the dominant position at all times is quite manipulative.  And slippery, if I may say so.

Nevertheless, I will simply say, to put it bluntly, your ideas are not consistent with the known fact that the Apis , especially in the time of the giant diorite sarcophagi, was far too expensively attended to and far too sacred, revered, and worshiped to then soak it inside its massively expensive sarcophagus and ferment it all to mush and gas.  Such an act would have been considered apostasy.

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On 7/31/2018 at 1:29 PM, kborissov said:

Okey, so explain to me know how anything of this refutes my theory?... 

Well, you can't ferment meat.  Or hide.  Or bone.  At least, not in the same way you can ferment wine and grains.  You don't get near the CO2 output, for one thing.  And for a second thing, there's no history of people in the Middle East fermenting meat.  In addition, we've got Apis bull mummies and it's clear they were prepared by usual mummification methods.

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3 hours ago, WVK said:

Kindly elaborate

The time span of the sarcophagi inside the Greater Vaults is quite lengthy, which may explain why there is so much variance in the design, size, and finish.  The famous few that people point to as mysteries are marvelous in the extreme: massive, geometrically exacting, with a superb mirror finish.  But others are small, medium, and large.  Some are completely unfinished on the outside, and polished on the inside (still exacting in the interior planes and corners though).  Some are amorphous and geometric together, the high polish of the planes simply gliding over the bulges in a seamless, remarkable way.  How and why they did this is not really known. 

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55 minutes ago, Kenemet said:

Well, you can't ferment meat.  Or hide.  Or bone.

I can cook booze out of anything that can ferment. Including making a mean burdock saki and I agree with this 100 percent! :tu:

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2 hours ago, The Wistman said:

I think, Mr. Borissov, that you aren't as obtuse as you are playing at being.  It seems to me that whenever someone has refuted your claims in a way that disarms your theme, you respond by questioning them, putting them on the defensive, instead of you responding to the points made by your critic.  This tactic of altering the terms of debate so that you maintain the dominant position at all times is quite manipulative.  And slippery, if I may say so.

Nevertheless, I will simply say, to put it bluntly, your ideas are not consistent with the known fact that the Apis , especially in the time of the giant diorite sarcophagi, was far too expensively attended to and far too sacred, revered, and worshiped to then soak it inside its massively expensive sarcophagus and ferment it all to mush and gas.  Such an act would have been considered apostasy.

People always get me wrong. I am asking questions when feel something is amiss, and for no other reasons. The same in your case. 

As my theory goes, the granite sarcophagi were used in pre-dynasty where the "bull = KA" along with other components was placed in a granite coffer for practical reason only. That however changed over generations and evolved into Apis cult, Bulls, Ptah reincarnation, and other nonsense. Some artifacts from that time you listed in your post but all that came from millennia later. Reread you post and you will understand what I mean. 

Thanks

 

 

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3 hours ago, Kenemet said:

Well, you can't ferment meat.  Or hide.  Or bone.  At least, not in the same way you can ferment wine and grains.  You don't get near the CO2 output, for one thing.  And for a second thing, there's no history of people in the Middle East fermenting meat.  In addition, we've got Apis bull mummies and it's clear they were prepared by usual mummification methods.

Just as usual you missed the point. Reread my paper on academia.edu to understand better what I meant. Meat there not for fermentation but for acid. 

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12 minutes ago, kborissov said:

People always get me wrong. I am asking questions when feel something is amiss, and for no other reasons. The same in your case. 

As my theory goes, the granite sarcophagi were used in pre-dynasty where the "bull = KA" along with other components was placed in a granite coffer for practical reason only. That however changed over generations and evolved into Apis cult, Bulls, Ptah reincarnation, and other nonsense. Some artifacts from that time you listed in your post but all that came from millennia later. Reread you post and you will understand what I mean. 

Thanks

 

 

The Egyptian word for bull in the Hieroglyphic script was "ka" as was the word which correlates more or less to our western notion of spirit.

However, as the Egyptians did not write out vowels, it is possible and indeed likely that the two words were pronounced very differently. There was not necessarily an association between the two words beyond the superficial appearance of consonants.

Edited by Lord Harry
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27 minutes ago, kborissov said:

...

As my theory goes, the granite sarcophagi were used in pre-dynasty where the "bull = KA" along with other components was placed in a granite coffer for practical reason only....

You really would benefit from some serious research, instead of spinning a story. Stories are fine but you're trying to present this one as fact. If you don't know the culture and context, you cannot conduct a realistic investigation. And inoring the information we've been presenting certainly doesn't help your cause.

For instance, I've already stated that the earliest stone sarcophagi date to Dynasty 3—particularly to the tombs of Djoser and Sekhemkhet. Feel free to doubt me, but don't do so flippantly. Prove your case with soemthing demonstrating the studies of sarcophagi from prehistory. Some photos would be nice, too.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/sarcophagus

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26 minutes ago, Lord Harry said:

The Egyptian word for bull in the Hieroglyphic script was "ka" as was the word which correlates more or less to our western notion of spirit.

However, as the Egyptians did not write out vowels, it is possible and indeed likely that the two words were pronounced very differently. There was not necessarily an association between the two words beyond the superficial appearance of consonants.

Besides which, the glyphs in question are different. The glyph kA for "bull" was a bull's head. The glyph kA for "spirit" (the physical lifeforce) was a pair of upraised arms.

http://www.egyptianhieroglyphs.net/gardiners-sign-list/

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49 minutes ago, kmt_sesh said:

You really would benefit from some serious research, instead of spinning a story. Stories are fine but you're trying to present this one as fact. If you don't know the culture and context, you cannot conduct a realistic investigation. And inoring the information we've been presenting certainly doesn't help your cause.

For instance, I've already stated that the earliest stone sarcophagi date to Dynasty 3—particularly to the tombs of Djoser and Sekhemkhet. Feel free to doubt me, but don't do so flippantly. Prove your case with soemthing demonstrating the studies of sarcophagi from prehistory. Some photos would be nice, too.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/sarcophagus

I am not going to doubt you on the earliest stone sarcofagues. How the granite sarcofagues in the grand gallery of serapeum were dated? 

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4 minutes ago, kborissov said:

I am not going to doubt you on the earliest stone sarcofagues. How the granite sarcofagues in the grand gallery of serapeum were dated? 

Sarcophagi are pretty easy to date based on their style and the texts carved into them. Such clues are very important. I've studied a lot of the royal and private sarcophagi meant for humans, so I can't profess to be as familiar with the texts on the Apis ones. Perhaps Wistman has more information on that.

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32 minutes ago, kmt_sesh said:

Sarcophagi are pretty easy to date, buy them some flowers, a nice meal and you're in there my son.

The truth comes out.

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10 minutes ago, Sir Wearer of Hats said:

The truth comes out.

Yes, it's true. I'm that smitten with sarcophagi. But I'm easy.

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4 hours ago, kborissov said:

Just as usual you missed the point. Reread my paper on academia.edu to understand better what I meant. Meat there not for fermentation but for acid. 

Doesn't work.  We don't add meat to grain products and ferment it.

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3 hours ago, Kenemet said:

Doesn't work.  We don't add meat to grain products and ferment it.

What does not work?... why does not work? ... fill the blanks.

 

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4 hours ago, Kenemet said:

Doesn't work.  We don't add meat to grain products and ferment it.

Might not be a bad marketing idea.

Bacon beer.

Harte

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Or better yet ... Holy Apis , the Best Beef Beer ... direct from Saqqara

~

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26 minutes ago, Harte said:

Might not be a bad marketing idea.

Bacon beer.

Harte

Stored in hickory barrels with chemicals added........which is gross no matter how you look at it....

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50 minutes ago, kborissov said:

What does not work?... why does not work? ... fill the blanks.

 

Meat doesn't ferment. It rots.....

How do you calibrate a square?

I'm still waiting and I know the answer........

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I notice that there is the idea that the Greater Vaults were built in predynastic times, only re-used later for the bull cult; supposedly they were simply joined with the Lesser Vaults when those were built; the stupendous mysterious boxes were ‘already there’, so to speak.  This is a tempting, glamorous theory; full of mystery and possibilities and awe.  People like the way that story makes them feel, and pursue it like a detective mystery.

When we look at the Greater Vaults, we see the rough chipping of the uneven walls, the gaping, cavernous impression (the corridors are wide and large)…and it feeds the imagination.  The mysteriousness of the chambers and the vaulted corridors with those jawdropping boxes seems so otherworldly and informal but strange in a way that does not match what many people commonly think of as AE sepulchral architecture.  Armed with this spurious supposition any speculation can be placed on it all, and thus it ‘must be too old’ for any epigraphic proof to have survived.  Which is neatly convenient to be sure.  Except there’s far too much known about the building program of the Serapeum and its contents for it to be a viable theory.  For those interested, I will demonstrate.

The Isolated Tombs, the first Apis entombments, were formally finessed in the way we usually think of AE structures.  That’s what they were, individual separate structures, intended for one Apis each, though in fact a couple of them held two bulls’ remains.  The tomb chamber was below ground with smooth walls; the single chamber funerary chapel was built above it, pillared at the corners and capped with a pyramidal roof.  The last one of these, built by Ramesses II (which held two intact Apis remains and their funerary equipment) had walls downstairs that were decorated with gold leaf; the previous one built by Horemheb, was the first of these tombs to have decorated walls; the earlier ones were plain. 

Then a different program was initiated, and the excavation of the Serapeum’s galleried catacombs was begun under Prince Khaemwaset -- what we now know as the Lesser Vaults; he made a decision about how it should look, and chose to keep the walls rough (probably justified by the dark, primordial attributes of Ptah) with some cut stone used for structural reinforcement.  With several gaps in burials this section was used for @800 years.

The next section to be built was a southern extension by Psametek I; the rough wall style was maintained and laid on a straight E/W axis perpendicular to the main N/S axis of the earlier Lesser Vaults.  These were used for the rest of the Late Period dynasties.  It is in this section that the first stone sarcophagus inside the Serapeum was used (decorated with texts and carved paneling), necessitating the removal of stelae and causing damaged walls when being installed…a maneuverability problem that would need resolution.  From this point forward stone sarcophagi were used exclusively; in Year 4 of the Persian Darius I a new entrance was concocted, cutting the turn of the exterior staircase and creating a new portal.  However this solution was not satisfactory as a stela from Year 34 of Darius I states that a new entrance scheme had been designed.

Now the entrance staircase was bypassed entirely and the entrance ramp was extended 17 meters westward to a broad new portal that opened onto a new corridor running south, connecting with the extant east/west axis of the gallery built by Psametek I.  This situation lasted until the Ptolemaic era.

Beginning with Ptolemy I a new scheme was devised that would bypass all the earlier extant galleries of the Serapeum.  Just inside the new entrance portal of Darius I, a 12 meter long northern E/W corridor was dug just beyond a new vestibule (hosting dozens of stelae on its walls); simultaneously, at the southern end of Darius’s N/S entrance corridor, the axis of the Late Period gallery would be extended 50 meters, but of magisterial scale and carrying expanded niches for the huge stone sarcophagi of all the Ptolemaic bulls that we’re familiar with, near the center of which a connecting N/S corridor would tie the two new E/W corridors together.  The walls throughout were still roughly hewn, with cut stone support arches at intervals along the southern corridor and niches.  The slimmer northern corridor also hosted numerous votive stelae.  This circuit of corridors is understood as a more practical setup for the ritual entombments which involved many personnel and cumbersome equipment for the movement of the giant sarcophagi.  All of the niches, throughout the entire Serapeum, were originally blocked up and an identifying stela placed on each closure wall.  Only one of all the tombs still maintained its closure wall when Mariette discovered the complex; the thieves had achieved access to it by removing only one block.  The rest were torn down by thieves…or possibly by Christian zealots.  The stelae have been recovered and are, mostly, in the Louvre.  Some of the stone sarcophagi have inscriptions on them, identifying them, but others do not; they are not in any way uniform.

5b62fede5fda9_serapeumdetailedmap.thumb.png.0eea64865c2ff55e95c7b1c80b36ddfc.png

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