Rick Baudé Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> We reconstruct building,
> pots, we restore huge hunks of text, based on what
> we know about other texts (Allen does it in the
> PT's uses MK texts to restore missing sections of
> the PT's. Don't know he does it.)



That's because many of the texts are copies of copies, passed down through generations. And yes, it is okay to go backwards with it if the surrounding texts are the same. The problem comes in taking the FIRST samples and trying to backdate them as a block, including all the features and characters in those myths. One cannot simply backdate Isis to the First Dynasty just because she appears in the Pyramid Texts. The cosmology of ancient Egypt was anything but stagnant.



> It would be nice if scholarship was that simple
> but it isn't. How about this quote "The skys two
> REEDFLOATS that he might cross on them to the
> Akhet...the skys two REEDFLOATS..." Allen's PT's
> page 125 verse 320. Notice we're not even up to
> boats yet but floats!But it certainly suggests
> that these verses are much older than the others.
> Of course boats come into play in other verses.
>



The problem is, just because they had invented more complicated vehicles doesn't mean they ceased using the simpler vehicles. A reed float still works... especially if it was known to be used for centuries from other texts they had preserved. In fact, using a reed float might have given the texts more "historicity"... the pseudepigraphical tendency you were mentioning earlier.

Even modern texts use "throwbacks" to make them sound more "substantial". Look at the inclusion of "thou" and "art" in many modern pagan texts as examples. This could be the same thing.





Anthony

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him think.