Hi Jammer,


> Actually I'm going to toss out some ideas here and
> brace myself...

Interesting, you start with the assumtion that your ideas are wrong and hence brace yourself. Why?


>
> 1) Considering the fragments we do possess I
> hypothesize the Egyptians kept records of almost
> everything discussed in the court of Pharaoh. We
> have found some fragments recording such diverse
> subjects as food consumed by workforce, tributes
> tendered, names of key workers, some trial charges
> and sentences, land grants, etc.


True. Listing things as they did, almost to an obsession, is the result of their organisation of the society: it was pyramidal (with guess who on top, heheeh). Hence the need to report from the lowest to the highest level, which was most easily done by simple listings.
What's more, the mere fact of the royals obviously having been literate adds to this phenomenon.



>
> 2) I believe the statement "Thus let it be
> written, thus let it be done" survives in multiple
> evidence of court records... (please note the
> written part).


I don't know if any such written orders survive. We have evidence of orders having been given by the king, but not the nature of those orders i.e. they may have been spoken, not written.




>
> 3) I therefore hypothesize the amount of surviving
> text, particularly papyrus scrolls, is our
> limiter, not what they didn't write.


Yes, the decomposing nature of the papyrus is a problem and I am sure massive amounts of knowledge has literally rotted away. However, even in the examples having survived, there are no examples of the AEs having written: we believ this is so and hence so and so. Their texts (especially the afterlife ones) are based on the assumption that the reader was aware of the beliefsystem supporting the written text, they didn't have to spell it out specifically.



>
> 4) I'm sure the first builders that wanted to take
> tombs from mastabas to pyramids had to justify it
> to the court, possibly including physical as well
> as metaphysical reasons for the change. The fact
> that we weren't lucky enough to recover those
> arguments is, imho, due to the lack of survival of
> the records, not the lack of original records in
> the first place.


But we have no way of knowing whether those "discussions" were recorded.



>
> 5) The bent pyramid is a good example of a new
> idea that didn't work out right the first time
> round. I would guess the reasons for and against,
> judgment of who was at fault, even perhaps
> penalties for the same persons, would have all
> been overseen by Pharaoh and recorded. Again, tis
> a shame they didn't make the survived list.


Again, we don't know if this sort of thing was recorded i.e. a mistake! Moreover, other records from the time of Snefru, such as raiding Kush from cattle and slaves, were carved on stone during the raid, and not written down. (Or as far as we know)


>
> 6) Most scrolls we do have were entombed with the
> owners.
> Unfortunately the scrolls that would help us the
> most are the least likely to be preserved that
> way.


A lot of papyri seem to have been lost during the FIP also. Still, temple records must have survived, seen that the LP dynasties do refer to them and even re-copy those. What happened to those records is a mystery.









Ritva