I agree, however the royal surveyors worked from a standardized metric given to them, so it’s my contention that a weighted mean of 20.62 +/-.01 inches is the best that can be for a unit measure we’ll never actually be sure of until a contemporary artifact is found (cubit rod). After all it seems irrational for the draftsman/architect would devise a plan to incorporate a margin of error… as you s
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Mark,
I’ve been wrestling with the Royal cubit issue for a long time. Most don’t realize Petrie published “Inductive Metrology” 5 or so years before arriving at Giza. Given the voluminous extent of his measurements of all 4th dynasty pyramids, temples and tombs he was able to confidently identify the 4th dynasty royal cubit (weighted mean) equal to 20.62 +/- .01 inches and provided a weighted
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Ancient Egypt
Riesner's work on the temple is easily found online in pdf for download, which has plans and photographs of this section of the temple plus his archaeology findings in the corridor.
B.A.Hokom
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Ancient Egypt
Correct, Shepseskaf finished the corridor with mud-brick, covering the unfinished black granite blocks on the south side, yet the north wall of the corridor had no granite behind the mud-brick wall.
B.A.Hokom
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Ancient Egypt
These are unfinished 'black' granite casing stones that were found in the temple's north corridor - on the southern side... intended to be interior casing of the corridor. I stood in front of them in March of 2020 and examined them carefully, they are massive and remarkably joined...
You can find all the details in Reisner's "Mycerinas" The Temples of Third Pyram
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Ancient Egypt
Congratulation Keeperz,
Interesting study. I happen to agree the Old Kingdom dates should be moved back.
B.A.Hokom
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Ancient Egypt
It’s possible Graham Hancock puts Stitchen to shame in a general sense.
B.A.Hokom
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Ancient Egypt
I was unaware Ottomans were Egyptian, I guess you’re going to tell us the Rosetta Stone was a gift and not plunder, heck the bulk of the British Museum’s collection (endeavors of Belzoni) must have been gifted too while England was plotting to carve up the Middle East for the next 100 years. My point was vague … but intended to illustrate how the world has plundered the historical artifacts of Eg
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Ancient Egypt
Egypt's existence today rely's heavily on its colorful and long history, how Egypt's history is exhibited has an extremely high value (more than ever before) to most if not all Egyptians. Egypt deserves reparations... perhaps New York, London, Paris and Rome (to name a few) will return the stolen obelisks to Egypt... ...not so terrible either.
B.A.Hokom
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Ancient Egypt
I'm sure the contract between the museum and the Egyptian government is explicit... you have our permission to explore and recover lost or unknown artifacts, however what ever you find belongs in all aspects to Egypt. My guess, the museum never consulted with the SCA on the intention and representation of artifacts used in the exhibit. I applaud Egypt for not allowing cultural appropriation
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Ancient Egypt
The balance of the scale rests heavily on the unknown side verses the known when it comes to the pyramids and tombs at Giza, however the greatest volume of archaeology evidence lay with all the geophysical surveys done on them, inside and out multiple times. Thus comparatively the lowest value evidence is the most abundant, and this is why Egyptologists have generally moved on, I know of only one
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Byrd Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Can we tell if the cubit sticks we found in
> various tombs actually represent a measurement in
> use at the time? In other words, might they be
> some sort of master object (like the patterns sent
> to workshops) that was used to create other cubit
> measures? Nome capitals and royal cities and
&g
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Ancient Egypt
Petrie "Pyramids and Temple of Gizeh" sec. 142 (p.187);
"...There is no need here to explain the bearings of; and reasons for, all these theories; most of them stand self-condemned at once, by the actual facts of the case. Others, framed on the real dimensions, will bear the first and indispensable test of measurement, which is but the lowest class of the evidences of a theory.
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Hi Chris,
Nice to have your visit.
Yes, inside all those numbers some mistakes were made, good thing it's been corrected (i.e. your link). Petrie understood... (paraphrasing) - ancient site measurements are but the lowest ranking evidences of any theory... an interesting character Petrie was. If you ever have the time you should read his daily journal during both seasons atop the plate
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Ancient Egypt
also, Petrie measured his exterior distances 5-10 times at different times of day to induce a mean and then rechecked from different locations to verify the result. Dash/Paulson 2017 really didn't improve on Petrie's results for G1, however Dash/Paulson didn't survey Khafre or Menkaure pyramids... I think because Dash became ill.
B.A.Hokom
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Ancient Egypt
that's assuming the waypoints used for each pyramids center are correct and what ever error the Haversine formula has built into it
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Ancient Egypt
Size and location are predetermined, hence the architect's draftsman/scribe would task (verbally, by notes or on drawn plans) their surveying team to achieve the dimensions they want at the building site, the architect would only use "one royal cubit length" in his design... he wouldn't incorporate or quantify a margin-of-error, nor would he just decide one day to use a differ
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Ancient Egypt
Wiki is not a source you should ever use for accuracy.
The centers of G1 and G2 are not at the same elevation and the earth is not a perfect sphere, I think the site you linked explains this, the site also mentions the inaccuracy of the Haversine and Lambert formulas for calculating distance between points on a sphere, but it also explains that these are not accurate by at the least .5%. Surv
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Ancient Egypt
copied from one of my earlier posts 6 months ago...
There are a remarkable number of maths or numbers you can pull from all the measurements, however clever we might think the Egyptians were we can't impose our modern thoughts or ideas on what they were up to when they decided to build these enormous structures. Egyptologists are at a loss when it comes to culture inside of the broad term
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Ancient Egypt
Yes, the pages he referenced related to the royal cubit and the sun (p. 229-259), and I briefly reviewed (skimmed) all that came before and after the section.
B.A.Hokom
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Byrd,
The points you've brought up are accurate in the process of analysis, because of course most if not all major discoveries begin as a guess, this is important to realize but their are required steps involved to develop a proof... It begins with observation and from there the ability to find a pattern from the observations, but this is not enough, it needs to be true in all cases (a g
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I think, as a practicable matter, those in the field, surveying and constructing, empolyed Royal Cubits, Palms and fingers... Where as scribes siting in the shade as record keepers, engineers and so on used Royal Cubits and unit fractions.
B.A.Hokom
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Ancient Egypt
Read M. Clagett , book 1; p. 50+ and book 3; ch1 "Ancient Egyptian Science"
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Ancient Egypt
"arcane texts that deal with the founding of Temples mention 'the shadow' and 'the Stride of Ra', the sun-god, hinting at a method using the sun."
It seemed to me years ago Lehner had put this particular statement in almost as a throw-away thought, I like the idea that the statement may reflect actual text contextually, however its highly probable Lehner presented
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I was wrong, the earliest attested use of the Royal cubit is found during 1st dynasty, during the reign of Djer… it’s found on the Palermo stone, measuring the height of the Nile.
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Agree. The earliest known formal use of the Royal cubit was employed for measuring land-area (agricultural) and for temples and if I’m correct this began in the late second dynasty. All measures became standardized in the old kingdom but there were variants of the cubit that were adopted during subsequent periods. For example Petrie used inductive metrology (from his measurements of all 4th dynas
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It looks to me, like the vertical strokes are reminders... the left stroke connects the chicks but the right stroke shows where it's missing in the top cartouche... just a thought of how strokes in field notes are a sort of shorthand reminder when things are not the same.
B.A.Hokom
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This is yet another "social" experiment to blur the lines of truth to reinvent historical facts.
B.A.Hokom
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Ancient Egypt