Rick Baudé Wrote:
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>
>
> At the risk of detonating the "fallacy bomb".
> You're "arguing from silence" on this one.
Read further down...
> How do
> we know the temples were "heavily secured".
They document rooms were known to be the inner, most secured areas of the temples. These documents represented the most powerful magic available to the Egyptians... it wasn't left laying around.
> What
> were they armed with? Spears? AK-47's?
Worse.... eternal damnation and oblivion.
> No the
> first things that would have been looted would
> have been the gold statues, then the copper
> statues, then any gemstones, then any tools
> hammers, chisels, next the crowds would have
> stolen the fine china and any furniture they could
> carry away, but a bunch of illegible texts would
> have been last.
That depends upon the cultural requirements of those doing the looting, doesn't it? These are the things WE would loot first...not necessarily ancient Egyptians, whose entire cultural power base was founded upon heka, the religious magic of the gods. It would be like stealing nuclear technology, or the genie in the lamp. Who needs gold?
> AFAIK we have a variety of papyrus
> fragments, inscribed mastabas, lots of seals with
> various one line messages on them. But no PT
> texts outside of the pyramids. And we have four
> dyansties of pyramids before them and not a SINGLE
> line of any kind of inscription on them. Maybe
> because the PT's hadn't been written yet.
If you're arguing for strictly oral traditions, I don't see it fitting into what they were doing at this time.
The fact of the matter is, there is a probability that the texts were included, as they were in the New Kingdom, in other forms rather than writing them on the walls. We haven't found it because the texts were written on biodegradable materials.
Let me ask you this: How many OTHER places do we find these texts DURING or AFTER the Fifth/Sixth Dynasties?
There is virtually no more evidence for their existence DURING the time they were appearing in the tombs than there is before it. The gods changed dramatically during these times (especially before the texts show up) but the fact is, the texts themselves are not found outside of these six pyramids.
>
> True, but this could have been an inserted text
> such as "to be or not to be" would be an inserted
> phrase from an older text into this message. I
> know that the AE's were good at archaizing texts
> when they wanted too.
It's more than that. I really can't get into it here in this kind of forum, but if you look a them very closely, you'll see what I mean. I'll just ask that you remember it and think about it, not that you accept it just because I said so. Sound fair?
> >
> I don't doubt that once the texts were written
> that they were instantly altered, but I still
> can't help but wonder if the were the result of a
> single author or editor.
Based on what I have seen and read, it's a virtual impossibility. Still, it's a fascinating hypothesis, and I hope you really enjoy investigating it. Good luck!
Anthony
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him think.