Anthony Wrote:
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> Rick Baudé Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Remarkable article. I don't really have
> anything
> > to add or comment on. So having said that I'd
> like
> > to change the direction of the string
> slightly and
> > explore some of the nuances of the PT's if
> > possible, (since that's the bedrock
> foundation
> > that AE mythology resides on IMHO).
>
>
>
> And I think that is exactly why we have so many
> "mysteries" involving Old Kingdom cosmology. You
> can't interpolate backwards when dealing with
> mythology or in a broader sense, works of fiction.
> If we were looking at something akin to a modern
> science, then you could say that they must have
> learned how to do activity "X" before learning how
> to do activity "X2". However, when it comes to
> beliefs/religions/myths, they do not have to
> follow any particular evolution or rules, and they
> can, quite literally, spring up overnight. They
> are only fed by the imagination of a handful
> (possibly even just one) people.

Getting ahead of myself. YOu can see the evolution of AE religion and chart it out. "The eye of HOrus" is mentioned hundreds of times in the PT's but in the BOD of Ani it's only mentioned a handful of times. Clearly as time went on the EOH became less important.
>
> For example, if you want to look at a nifty
> comparison, let's look at an airport. We can
> trace back the evolution of airports, as they run
> parallel to, and are directly related to, the
> development of the airplane. As jets got larger,
> runways got longer. As jets got bigger, terminals
> got larger to accomodate more passengers.
>
> Now, let's contrast that with this particular
> structure being built 90 minutes from me in
> Florida, as we speak:
>
>
>
>
> Just ten years ago, NONE of this existed, nor
> could it have existed, because it had not been
> imagined yet by J.K. Rowling. She invented it,
> even though pieces were "modeled after" elements
> in history or British culture. If an
> archaeologist from the future, using the rules
> that are frequently used to analyze the Pyramid
> Texts, were to come across this structure and try
> to analyze it, they would have to say that Salazar
> Slytherin did indeed live near the year 1000 CE,
> and so therefore, he must have fit into the Celtic
> pantheon or some other such strained conclusion.
> Use your own imagination here.

Sorry you're wrong. I've seen many examples where false ages were and are attributed to literature, it's a whole class of literature called "pseudepigraphia", similar techniques are employed in all the arts and sciences to uncover forgeries. It would take a good future archeoloigst about 10 seconds to figure out that this was the remains of an ancient amusement park and not Harry Potter land.
>
> Even if every element in the Pyramid Texts was
> factually accurate, the links between them are
> little more than mythological fiction. They do
> not need logic to link them together, so you
> cannot use logic to backdate them. They cannot
> reliably be reverse engineered.

They aren't factually accurate. They can be reliably reverse engineered there are dozens maybe hundreds of verses refering the dead ones bones being gathered together, to their bones being put back together. It strikes me that all of these verses must have predated mummification. There would be absolutely no sense in writing about "gathering bones" after mummification had been invented because they would all be in the same place at the same time and the whole purpose of mummification was to preserve the corpse in one piece. Therefore I don't think it's a giant leap of imagination to propose that these verses date back to predynastic times.
>
> Now, this is not to say that the hieroglyphs
> themselves, or the grammar, cannot be dated
> properly, but simply saying that because something
> is in the PTs is therefore proof that it is the
> "bedrock foundation" for understanding Old Kingdom
> mythology is simply unsupportable.

On the contrary for the 5th and 6th dynasty it's the bedrock foundation for those kings, those kings lived in the OK. Therefore the statement is entirely supportable.
>
> In fact, there are times when the PTs contradict
> what we know about OK mythology. It was a dynamic,
> evolving, UNscientific data set. It only takes
> one person and one split second to imagine
> something new.

Hardly anything new here. The PT's contradict themselves. In one section the king climbs on a boat to get to the amduat, becomes a bird, and most amazingly becomes a grasshopper and jumps into heaven.
>
> It's that simple. I know this steps on a lot of
> toes, but I think as more and more evidence is
> discovered that predates the Pyramid Texts, we
> will find that a huge amount of religious
> evolution occurred between 2650 and 2300 BCE...
> and it most certainly was not linear!
>
I don't doubt that the PT's represent the current thought at the time of their writing, and I agree that it certainly wasn't linear.
>
> "Men are apt to mistake the strength of their
> feeling for the strength of their argument. The
> heated mind resents the chill touch and relentless
> scrutiny of logic."" -- William E. Gladstone
>
>
>