Anthony Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Rick Baudé Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> >
> > 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.
>
>
>
>
> Yes, that's based on evidence. However, if you
> were to JUST use the BotD, you would not be able
> to know how significant the EoH was in the Old
> Kingdom.
>
That's sort of my point. You can deconstruct the various texts and follow themes. ideals have a life span too. Some longer; some shorter but they come and go and change and you can follow them.
>
> > 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.
>
>
>
>
> In contrast to your objection, you are actually
> proving my point. A good archaeologist will
> realize this is fiction and therefore doesn't need
> to follow any real rules of evolution.
>
How would a good archeologist know it's fiction unless he had a body of fictional work to draw upon?
>

>
>
> > >
> > > 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.

You do realize that the above quote is YOUR comment don't you?
And that the following quote is your attack on your own comment then?
You have back to back non-sequituirus here!
>
>
> Au contraire. The sun really does rise every day,
> and the stars really do cross the sky at night.
> These are the kinds of facts that others have used
> to make the argument that because these facts are
> accurate, the mythology connecting and explaining
> them must also have been a constant. Clearly,
> that is a non sequitur.


>
>
> > 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.
>
>
> Great. But that doesn't mean the mythology
> surrounding the bones and dead bodies existed even
> ten minutes before the texts were written down.
> (in this particular case, although other tests can
> verifiably date sections to earlier times).
>
If it was just a single verse I'd say it could have been written ten minutes before. But there are hundreds of verses with meticulous instructions among other things about placing the jaw bone back in place etc. Clearly these were written before mummification took place. Later verses describe Anubis washing the intestines of the deceased. Clearly one of the earliest descriptions of the mummification process. However you want to interpret it the fist verses are older/refer to earlier events than the second set.
>
>
> > 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.
>
>
>
> Or simply somebody paying hommage to an earlier
> time. The Egyptians were experts at this, by the
> way.

Yes I know. It falls under the category of "pseudepigraphia". Every culture is good at it. Every time a writer uses "Dost", "Thou","Woulds't" or someother archaic word in a sentence it's a hommage to an earlier era. Only the contemporary grammar and syntax gives it away as a 21'st century hommage.
>

So basically what I can see is we either use your hyper-reductionism which basically say that unless we have a pristine copy of the PT's autographed by the original author we have absolutely nothing and can say absolutely nothing until we have that original text in our hands. Or we can take a much more flexible point of view that the PT's represent the sole surviving corpus of religious texts from the 5th and 6th dynasty. We have to recognize that it's incomplete, but then what isn't, and work with that. I think I'll stick wich choice 2 for the time being.
>
>
> > >
> > > 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.
>
>
>
>
> The Old Kingdom in Egypt lasted a lot longer than
> the Sixth Dynasty. There is the problem of those
> first five that lead up to it...
>
>
>
>
> > >
> > > 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.
>
>
> So how do you reverse engineer that?

There's several ways. You can chart out all the ways that the king gets into the Amduat. By boat, by bird, by climbing a ladder, by turning into a grasshopper and jumping. So far I've only seen the grasshopper used once. So I'll go way, way, way, way, way, out on a limb here and say that it's a fragment left over from an earlier text embedded in the PT's. So it might go back to predynastic times. The same way we have the archaic description of somebody being as "strong as an Ox" even though you'd be hardpressed to find an ox anywhere other than a zoo.
>
>
>
>
>
> > >
> > > 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.
>
>
>
> We are in agreement. When there's evidence,
> there's a way to track the change. When there is
> no evidence, we cannot begin to extrapolate
> backwards from our data set, since the data we are
> attempting to predict is not bound by any rule of
> logic or cause and effect.

Have you read the PT's? IIRC you said you refused to read them. Try them it will make Harry Potter, Dr. Who, and Star Trek look about as complex as "Where's Waldo". Ritva says the Coffin Texts are even stranger.
>
>
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