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The author carefully avoids the continued embarrassments of official Egyptology: * Its insistence upon dating artifacts to whichever pharaoh last carved his ca
by ncmncm 4y ago
The author carefully avoids the continued embarrassments of official Egyptology:
* Its insistence upon dating artifacts to whichever pharaoh last carved his cartouche into some convenient surface, often much more crudely than the work itself.
* The overwhelmingly finer and more precise polish and symmetry of the oldest stonework. Most particularly, the tens of thousands of bowls and bottles abandoned in galleries under the Step pyramid. Some are of corundum, the stone of rubies and sapphires. Many are carved nearly paper thin. Exactly precise mirror symmetry is found only in the oldest statuary, cut from the hardest rock.
* An entire lack of evidence of tools capable of such precision work in such hard stone.
Numerological coincidences are made rich fun of, but the Egyptians, as was common in antiquity, were keen numerologists, and naturally treated numerical coincidences as divinely significant. The builders seem to know of the near match of certain fractions of pi and of phi to better than 0.1%, and use it in especially sacred spots.
Ancient knowledge of usefully precise values of geometric constants, even where not perfect, should not provoke skepticism: they could measure. Building these values into sacred structures need not have been meant to communicate anything but their own piety. Every dimension must be in some ratio to others, and may often be freely chosen. Why would they not choose sacred numbers for sacred constructions?
Perhaps most oddly, though, the cubit used in construction (e.g. in the dimensions of the "King's Chamber", 10x10x20) exactly matches the French "royal cubit" of two centuries ago. The SI meter, officially assigned one forty-millionth of the Earth's circumference (why?), is related to this cubit by another <0.1% coincidence.
- imtringued 4y ago>Ancient knowledge of usefully precise values of geometric constants, even where not perfect, should not provoke skepticism: they could measure. Building these values into sacred structures need not have been meant to communicate anything but their own piety. Every dimension must be in some ratio to others, and may often be freely chosen. Why would they not choose sacred numbers for sacred constructions? When I think about Neom the Line I imagine that even in ancient Egypt architects tried to hype up their designs in some way. A pyramid does not leave much leeway to changes in the design. All you can change is absolute dimensions and angles/ratios. Imagine a VC pitch where entrepreneurs are trying to outdo each other on having the best ratio. Architects that have the same idea will compete based on quality, the better approximation will win.
- ncmncm 4y agoMaybe, but things seem much more hierarchically organized as you go farther back, with a progression of autocratic control over a growing area until a collapse or invasion. So, we know about Imhotep, official Architect to (IIRC) two or more successive pharaohs. Presumably, whatever he says goes, subject to the pharaoh's and then the priesthood's non-negotiables. Also presumably, he has underlings who make less consequential decisions. After he dies or falls from grace, his choices might be revisited. Then we have insular groups and guilds, such as the priesthood, the masons they depended upon, post-flood re-surveyors, canal and irrigation specialists, metalworkers, carpenters, navigators, potters, and scribes, each with its own governance conventions.