Hans Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> cladking Wrote:
> -------------------------------------------------------

> > I believe there were only 28 "wag-priests"
> >working
> > in here at a time and 14 spellmen. At 1/10 HP
> > each this would produce little heat for the
> > size
> > of the ventilation system.

> Why would you believe that?

There are provisions for 14 emplacements for lifting devices and a walkway above to access these. There is ample room for two priests at each station. For highest efficiency a steady pace would be maintained and each man would work no more than about 30 minutes with a fifteen minute break.

There is far more "cultural context" than only the Pyramid Texts. There are other writings to help solve for referents and reverse engineer the various processes used. Some of these sources have even been collected or collated. While using the "book of the dead" to solve the older writing is the source of many misunderstandings there are drawings of boats perched on columns of water in this as described in the Pyramid Texts. It really doesn't matter what kind of weight was being passed up the grand gallery. What matters is all the evidence says men were working in here to build the pyramid. Whatever was being done required the airshafts and their existence shows exactly why the grand gallery could hold 42 men; they were needed to build G1 and possibly G2 as well.

> So they are the supreme being you portray them as
> huh? Did they have a word for 'it doesn't work'?

A supreme being, eh?

They were merely a force of nature. Their power was principally one of being on the same page, work in tandem. and see anomalies. They were no Gods.

> Why would it be difficult to understand an English
> word?

Most English words have many many meanings. Indeed, since their definitions are merely composed of more words with many definitions any sentence can mean just about anything. But still some things are true by definition, like the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. You can play around with words and definitions until the shortest in-state flight takes you through Antarctica but the statement is still true by definition. You can use statistics and speculation until there are only 600,000 stones in G1 but it remains exactly the size it is.

> But you exclude there being human, their culture,
> religion and their actually reality -

If I'm correct they had no religion. They didn't believe in magic. Indeed, it is because they lacked words for belief, taxonomies, and abstractions that I propose they could have no religion and no beliefs. I am suggesting they were nothing like you, me or Egyptologists. I am suggesting that it is this difference that has caused us to overlook the obvious that the airshafts were just airshafts and all stones were lifted straight up the sides of five step pyramids one step at a time using counterweights. I am suggesting this is fully consistent with the literal meaning of everything they said; And how will he be assembled, bring the boat that flies up and alight and the copper. Let the two boats be tied together. He is the pyramid. He is a star. Again and again they used perfect English to say exactly what they meant but we parse it to mean something else.

They weren't like us and their culture wasn't like ours and it certainly wasn't like the culture in the "book of the dead". We misinterpret their culture. We misinterpret their words. Where they used only the literal meaning of words we see symbolism, metaphor and parseable words. Look up "serket" in the actual cultural context (not the book of the dead" and you can see the airshafts are hers.

You're taking this off topic and if it doesn't come back I won't respond. Exactly what they were lifting and how they were lifting it has not yet been investigated. Perhaps it was a simple counterweight as Guminda (Houdin) suggests or maybe just about anything else. But the idea that the grand gallery and airshafts were fort religious purposes is a nonstarter. Even if it were true there is simply no evidence for it and there could be no evidence in the future unless we found writing that was completely out of character with ALL the other evidence. It is simply pointless to suppose we will ever find writing that shows the grand gallery was for religious or funerary purposes. Obviously, it's not impossible but that evidence would be unlike anything found to date. Many of the things we take as being axiomatic are the exact same way. There were many ways they could have expressed modern beliefs and we have ample evidence but modern beliefs are STILL not supported in that evidence. It is quite apparent that we are misinterpreting a great deal of evidence. I have merely been proposing one way to tie all the evidence together that employs physical evidence and the literal meaning of what they actually said.

"Serket" is a water scorpion or what we call a "bug" (nepa ceneria). This animal hunts under the water buoyed by a bubble of air that it draws in through two halves of a tube that come together to create a means to draw air from the surface. It breaths this air and can stay submerged for a protracted period. "Nn.twi" is their word for "dorsal air siphon". This word when in a context of the pyramid was their scientific term for "airshafts". If these were actually "ba shafts" or the like there's very little chance it will ever be proven. It would be rather remarkable if it were considering they'd have had to express the concept in a language with no words for "belief", no taxonomies, and no abstractions. This would be a remarkable feat of far more import than that they believed the king ascended to heaven every night through all that air and all that solid stone! In other words, even if you're right it is going to be unprovable while a little simple science could show if other theories are right or wrong.

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Man fears the pyramid, time fears man.