h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

can't see it but love the phrase

One Nation Under Cthulhu

You'll laugh even more when you get to an unfiltered connection Taff.

I'm Ping myself over at prof's



pit keeps em coming

wanna???

I'm Ping myself over at prof's



pit keeps em coming

wanna???

>>
One Nation Under Cthulhu

Oh, I am soooooo putting that on a t-shirt!!!!

why dont you 2 come on over for a ???

Oo, that's fine!

Not enough blood, but me likes it anyhow!

Nice one Clive. The FSM's evil twin, eh?

Noggin

Hi Gif

If the reconstruction is correct the history of Mykenae must be reduced in age by about 500 years, ending around 700 instead of 1200. This would mean that the late Mykenean and the proto-classical (characterised by geometric pottery) were contemporary, but at this time it was the Mykeneans who mainly controlled the sea trade. On question 2 I think I would want to know if any (or what) particular style of pottery is considered characteristic for the 19th, 20th, and 21st dynasties.

On writing. According to the Greeks themselves, the Phoenician script was brought to Greece (specifically Thebes in Boetia) in about 850 by one Cadmus. At this time the Mykenean Linear B script would still have been in general use (in the standard chronology it disappears around 1200), but presumably the new script grew in popularity because of its ease of use and as it adapted to the Greek language. AFAIK we don't have any definitely dateable writing in the new script until about 100 years after its introduction.

For something on duplicate dynasties and dating try googling a combination of Tell el-Yehudiyeh, Ramses III, and Greek Letters.

I'll be back later.

Noggin

>try googling a combination of Tell el-Yehudiyeh, Ramses III, and Greek Letters

I found this:
http://www.specialtyinterests.net/grktiles.html

Hmm. It is far from clear to me that those *are* Greek letters. In fact... wait!...

>The top row of letters, from left, are A, X, V, and V. The mark on the large tile, may be I; the other is clearly E.

What were modern Englishmen doing living in ancient Egypt? Could it be that everything from 1300 BC to 1300 AD is a myth?

OK, sorry, unnecessary sarcasm off. But seriously - it's far from clear that those marks are letters at all. The 'iota' in particular looks like an accidental mark - a single line that's not even central in the disc. The rest are clearly deliberate marks (we know things like bricks were often given an abstract 'maker's mark'), but it's not at all clear to me they're letters.

Read a little further in the article and you find:
>[Brugsch] brought back from this mound 3600 disks of various sizes, and a great number of tiles more or less broken, bearing either flower ornaments, or birds, animals, and portraits of Asiatic or negro prisoners

Of which half a dozen - one in 600, 0.16667% - have marks that, with a little imagination, could be Greek letters? Not very convincing, is it?

This would be a lot more convincing if there was a Greek text, rather than a few scratches. But the only Greek texts at the site seem to come from a (clearly later) Jewish temple, as far as I can see.

Gif

Hi Gif

First, just to clear up a couple of misconceptions. The tiles in the picture are not *all* the tiles, they are just a *selection* (although I don't know how many there are altogether). Altogether nine different letters were identified; even allowing that some may be random marks (I agree with you about the iota), that would be quite a coincidence. In general, of course, the more complex the mark, the less likely that it's a coincidence. Is there any reason why the makers' marks should be abstract?

The identification is not Velikovsky's. It was made by the archaeologists excavating the site (Naville and Griffiths, 1907,) and confirmed by the experts to whom they submitted the material. The style of the tiles was identified as more Persian than Egyptian.

Although there are Jewish remains at the site, the tiles and discs are from a palace of Rameses III. It has his name all over it (literally).

And in addition - close to the palace Naville and Griffiths excavated a necropolis. The style of the tombs was late Egyptian, very similar to those found in clearly Ptolemaic cemeteries. Most had been emptied of valuables but a few small objects were recovered, including scarabs with the cartouches of Setnakht, Rameses III, and Rameses VI.

The finds led to a disagreement between Naville (who thought the remains must be 4th century), and Griffith (who assigned them to the 12th century on the basis of the Ramesside cartouches). The possibility that they might be Ramesside *and* 4th century was not even considered, the date of the 20th dynasty being considered fixed.
Velikovsky may bee wrong, but it seems at least fair to ask *why* it's considered fixed.

Noggin

The facts, as given, are correct and not in dispute (if only because I've carefully avoided a direct claim that the letters are Greek ). It's only the interpretations that differ.

Hi Nog,

It's not very much of a coincidence, especially when simple marks like a line or a cross are identified as letters. As I pointed out (intending to be humorous, probably just being sarky ) you could just as easily identify them with English letters, they're so generic.

As I said, I haven't come across them before - I'm working on the principle that the photos shown were of the best (or at least a selection of the best) examples, i.e. those that look most like Greek letters. Out of several thousand examples, I would say that six (or nine) examples really *isn't* much of a coincidence.

As to why builders' marks were abstract - don't know, but they were.

OK, so let's move on from pottery alone to the examples you've given of apparently-old pottery found in apparently-new (relatively speaking ) tombs; Tell el-Yahudiya being the second example.

http://egyptsites.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/tell-el-yahudiya/ says 'Pottery dating to the Middle Kingdom and Hyksos Period found at the site [...] To the east of the enclosure there are cemeteries of various dates.' Indeed, it seems that the site gives its name to a distinct type of pottery that is found where it 'ought' to be in the strata: http://www.archaeowiki.org/Tell_el-Yehudiyeh_Ware 'Tell el-Yehudiyeh Ware forms a very useful diagnostic indicator for the MBIIB-C period especially, both in the Levant and in Egypt. '

For further evidence of a continuous flow of pottery into and out of Egypt during this period, see: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=XNdgScxtirYC&pg=PA207&lpg=PA207&dq=Tell+el-Yahudiya&source=bl&ots=wGYCHUooxZ&sig=-Hf__aOSV3ynIXJf9YAeDpBwbBc&hl=en&ei=6__RStvHLo2K4gadjKykAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CBwQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=Tell%20el-Yahudiya&f=false (if that doesn't display properly, it's Encyclopedia of the archaeology of ancient Egypt By Kathryn A. Bard, Steven Blake Shubert, p207, Cypriot Peoples.

And as a final point, you are proposing a c500 year reduction in Egyptian chronology. Yet you're supporting that with an *800* year difference in styles. Your 'revised chronology' would have barely less problem with that than the 'standard chronology'!

From the (admittedly very little) I have read about this, my first instinct is that Naville and Griffiths were each partly right. As noted above, the tombs are of 'various dates', so perhaps some were 4th Century and others were 8th Century? So their mistake was to assume that all the tombs were contemporaneous.

Gif

Hi Gif

Well, the identification of the letters as Greek is not mine, or even Velikovsky's. It was made by the experts at the time, and plainly not as part of a polemic about chronology.

<>

Bit of a circular argument, I think. There doesn't seem to be any logical reason for it to be so, so it must be an empirical observation, capable of revision in the light of new evidence. Which, if correct, this would be.

The first two links are interesting, but actually beside the point, as, despite the proposed reduction in dates, there is no change in their order, and as dates for places outside Egypt are calibrated by Egyptian dates the same goes for them, too.

<<>

I may be misinterpreting your intent here, so apologies if I'm misreading, but it seems to me that I'm doing no such thing. Rather the 800 year difference between the style and the date is in the standard chronology and I'm getting rid of it.

The date reductions vary because in the standard chronology the 18th, 19th and 20th dynasties follow each other, whereas in the reconstruction the 18th, 19th/26th and 20th/28th,29th,30th dynasties are seperated by other dynasties, and the reduction in dates changes accordingly.

Finally according to the excavators the site was abandoned between the end of the Ramesside period and the Ptolemaic period, as no strata (including cemeteries) have been found for this period.

Noggin

You´re all missing the obvious. They learned the Greek letters from aliens.

Time travelling aliens

Probably the same ones as built the pyramids.

Noggin

Nah, it was the Tok'ra who taught the Greeks and Romans: they hated the Goa'uld who built the pyramids.

>> Tok'ra ... Goa'uld <<



When skiffy writers put apostrophes in the names of people/species/planets, what letters are they leaving out?

I think we should be told. Then we can make an informed decision about whether to pronounce them or not.



RF

I just love the way hootoo goes from serious to silly in the wriggle of a tentacle.

Noggin

I hope you're treating my question as one of the serious ones, Noggin.

RF

p.s.

Of course, R'ddyf'eddy.

N'ggin