Anthony Wrote:
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> What I'm saying is that IF there was another
> method used, and yet there is no apparent impact
> of this other method on the culture, religion,
> beliefs or history of the culture in any
> meaningful way, then the method/technology used is
> simply not important.
Well ... I'm not really too sure about this. Is absence of evidence of impact by a hypothetical technique/method a reliable indicator of "importance" ... ?? And what, anyway, is meant by "importance" in this context?
> For example, we have multiple
> scenes/reliefs/paintings across nearly all of
> Egyptian history showing people baking bread in
> strange, conical shaped "pots". We even have the
> existence of these pots confirmed by Lehner in his
> recent excavations of the village of the workers
> at Giza. The question remains, though... why were
> they shaped like cones? Doesn't that make them
> incredibly difficult to handle and store, since
> they don't have a bottom on which they can be set?
> We can probably answer this question by doing
> experiments with the different shaped pots, and
> maybe even make some startling revelation about
> the ancient Egyptians' knowledge of baking
> technology... but it won't change anything
> meaningful regarding what we know of the culture.
> It's just a flukey little thing they did.
Oh, my goodness me! Non-Egyptologist though I am, I'd still venture to disagree with you on this one! If the reason for the use of the conical pots could be found, couldn't it potentially shed a great deal of light on questions such as the sorts of grain used (and when and how it might have been harvested), the sort of fuel used, the sort of materials of which ovens were made, etc. etc. etc? And that in turn could perhaps have a bearing on all sorts of other questions ...
> It's definitely not a "don't know/don't ask"
> policy. It's a "Does it make enough of a
> difference to our understanding of Egypt to
> warrant time and resources to research it?"
> policy.
Where time and financial resources are in short supply, it must be difficult to work out priorities, admittedly ...
Hermione
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