Pyramids at Giza were there BEFORE the Egyptians got there.

Originally posted by undo
The standard bearer in the back of the chariot looks like he's carrying a halberd (halbred) with a standard attached. Perhaps this is a fabulous fake of some kind?
It also bothers me that there are black boxes behind the "harness eyes", as if they've been painted over with black paint and a different thing painted in its place. Is this inlay or just the border?


[edit on 26-9-2006 by undo]

By JOVE yer right! A halberd indeed! And his tunic has classic Medieval square DAGS!! Tights and Medieval shoes complete the picture... Now I will have to look at that again...

Nice catch! I was to busy thinking windup toys LOL

They had highly advanced gears 2000 years ago IE the Antikythera Device and the Greeks were pretty good at "hydraulic and pneumatic devices of the ancient Greek culture..."

I kinda like this one too...

Legendary characters used the power of mythology to fly through the heavens. About 100 BC a Greek inventor known as Hero of Alexandria came up with a new invention that depended more on the mechanical interaction of heat and water. He invented a rocket-like device called an aeolipile. It used steam for propulsion. Hero mounted a sphere on top of a water kettle. A fire below the kettle turned the water into steam, and the gas traveled through the pipes to the sphere. Two L-shaped tubes on opposite sides of the sphere allowed the gas to escape, and in doing so gave a thrust to the sphere that caused it to rotate.

LOL the source is a NASA History of Rockets page... SOURCE

So they had wheels gears AND Steam engines that we have actual samples of in the Museum at least documented by mainstream science 2000 years ago...

I bet there is lots of stuff [problimatica] hiding in dingy old museum buildings around the world just waiting to shatter accepted fact.



[edit on 26-9-2006 by zorgon]

[edit on 26-9-2006 by zorgon]

Zorg,

Well I've found a stone relief from the akkadian period, which is about the same timeframe, with similar skirts and close fitting hats (or clean shaven heads):




• provenience: Tell el-'Ubaid

• dimension(s) (in cm):
length: 115; height: 22

• material: limestone, bitumen, shell, copper frame

• date: ca. 2400 BC

• description:
friese with inlays; showing scenes of dairy farming (milking; straining milk etc.)

but so far, i haven't found any combat scenes with flags and halberd type things. The one Odium posted has a flag/standard like the medieval ones - long and kinda pointed at one end, waving in the breeze.




[edit on 26-9-2006 by undo]

Yup but them dags are long and pointed like Roman tunics not short and square
And these skirts are below the knee not the short Medieval tunic...

BTW I just added to that last post..

Damn those guys knew how to drink? Looky the size of that goblet! Thats twice as big as mine..


whats the thing on the right?

[edit on 26-9-2006 by zorgon]

Originally posted by zorgon
Yup but them dags are long and pointed like Roman tunics not short and square

And these skirts are below the knee not the short Medieval tunic...

BTW I just added to that last post..

Damn those guys knew how to drink? Looky the size of that goblet! Thats twice as big as mine..

whats the thing on the right?

[edit on 26-9-2006 by zorgon]

A gate with a bull on one side and cow on the other side. Perhaps to depict this is where the "cows" are kept.

[edit on 26-9-2006 by undo]

Pretty fancy cow quarters for the time period...

Wonder how they kept that much milk [going by the size of the jugs] from spoiling? In that desert heat I would think a couple hours tops without refrigeration.

They'd have a lot of cottage cheese in a short time

Originally posted by zorgon
Pretty fancy cow quarters for the time period...

Wonder how they kept that much milk [going by the size of the jugs] from spoiling? In that desert heat I would think a couple hours tops without refrigeration.

They'd have a lot of cottage cheese in a short time

Hrm, perhaps the Abzu chamber helped with that. Below ground is fairly cool. Houses built below ground level tend to stay the same temperature all year long, provided they are sufficiently sealed to keep the air from constantly exchanging. I still can't help wondering though, with the level of technology we are supposed to believe they had at the time, how there could be an underground chamber in a marshland. I mean, we can't even build a storm shelter below ground in florida because of the water table. Of course, that's actually an argument against the Abzu being an underground chamber (even though the texts mention it being an underground chamber both at Eridu and Nibru).

Oops, forgot time frame. Perhaps they learned from Eridu and Nibru, that storing things underground kept them cool and helped them last longer. There's some ancient town in the Soviet union where they had figured out a refrigeration system. They dug holes in the earth, tunnels that piped cooler, underground air up to a wooden box in which they would presumably store things that were subject to spoilage in warmer temperatures. It was a fascinating article. However, it was in Pravada, which most people in the mainstream archaeological community think is like Russia's version of the National Enquirer, so I didn't think to mention it before now.

Originally posted by undo However, it was in Pravada, which most people in the mainstream archaeological community think is like Russia's version of the National Enquirer, so I didn't think to mention it before now.

No Pravda is official KGB intelligence news source... well used to be... you must believe what says or you go to the gulag in Siberia, da?

But I have been in caves that are not very deep in Canada where there is ice all year and it stays a steady 42 degrees. Thats about ideal refrigerator temp. And the Huron natives knew about it. Be interesting to find out how cool it gets in deep caverns in the desert..

Oh I found this....

15th century BC
Amenhotep son of Hapu had made a statue of Memnon, King of Ethiopia, near Thebes in Egypt, which uttered a melodious sound when struck by the the suns rays in the morning and during sunset. It was suggested that a divine power was partly responsible as the mechanisms were far to simple to sustain the noise.


Athanasias Kircher's drawings of Memons mechanisms and those of a bird which was also activated by the rising sun.

zorgon,

KGB? Yikes. It seems to be a bit more fantastic, these days. I've seen all manner of theories reported in their news articles, which is kinda groovy. It means they aren't so rigid on the questions of the past, that no other possible answer can be entertained. I view it like trying to put together a puzzle in which some of the pieces are time-activated and will not fit, until other pieces are in place. With the current approach to discovering mysteries of the past, we toss out the pieces that don't immediately fit, sometimes on the most flimsy reasoning, and then never revisit the non-fitting pieces again...ever. lol

Well, to get back on the original track of how old are the Giza Pyramids...

As my wife said on our honeymoon, “That’s a long one.” Well, this is a long post & it took a while to collect my references & re-read through my personal library about Egypt. If you must know, I assembled most of my library through the Columbia House Book Club...Mostly history books & most of those about Egypt with some from European & Middle Eastern regions. Plus I make use of public libraries & “Intelligent TV” (Discovery Channel, TLC & others) instead of the mindless drivel that normally shows up nowadays.
Everything in this post is courtesy of the numerous Archeologists & Egyptologists that have been digging in & around Egypt for over a hundred years. There’s nothing in this post that has any unsubstantiated link to any dubious mathematics, unsubstantiated conclusions from religions that weren’t of Egyptian origin or any other sources except from Archeology & Egyptology. This info does take a pretty wide look at the Egyptian society, religion & even something of the historical geology of northern Africa. Any history as ancient as Egypt is like figuring out a jigsaw puzzle with a lot of missing pieces, so everything that has been found must be pieced together to get any idea of the whole picture.
In the example of the geologist (I forgot his name, but there are threads posted around ATS somewhere for reference) who extrapolated that the “water erosion” on the Sphinx indicates an age back to 7,000-10,000 BC or so, he came to that conclusion through his knowledge of geology only, without regard to the people or culture that lived there, nor the excavated archeological evidence even nearby to the Sphinx itself. For example, the Egyptians built "water channeling" ditches among the pyramids which drained nearly directly into the Sphinx enclosure; There's a bit more about desert rain & the dangers of flash floods later in this post, so it would make sense for the Egyptians to consider the possibility of sudden floods. Therefore, this geologist wasn’t giving any credit to the numerous archeologists & Egyptologists who have been digging around & studying the whole region for the past hundred or so years; In short, he came to his own conclusions before he even got his hands dirty.
That’s why this post is so long...It pieces together as much existing evidence as possible to show how modern Egyptologists have arrived at the conclusion that the Giza Pyramids were built by the Pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty.

My major references are: “Hieroglyphs & the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt” by Werner Forman & Stephen Quirke; “Ancient Egypt”, General Editor David P. Silverman (this book is an amalgamation of the works of numerous Egyptologists & archeologists); “Egypt Uncovered” by Vivian Davies & Renee Friedman, in conjunction with the British Museum in London & the Discovery Channel (which also produced a five-part series of documentaries about Egypt). Even though I used more than one reference, the best pics were in "Egypt Uncovered", so all of the pics linked to this post were scanned from that book & uploaded to ATS; I had to spend over 5000 ATS points to up my limit of uploads for this. If there are any other specific references from other sources, they will be noted in each case below, otherwise I merely correlate info from these four primary sources.

Before we can really extrapolate the true age of the Pyramids at Giza, first we should look at the society that built them, the environment they lived in & the way they looked at it, the way they looked at themselves, as well as the development of the skills it took to build such wonders. Yes, Virginia, the Egyptians did build the Pyramids; They have displayed the history of consistently-developing skills & the motivations to do it; Neither Santa Claus nor extraterrestrials have any evidence to back up these other “theories”, Virginia.

To begin, let’s look back to Egypt’s history before they were writing their history: The tribal desert nomads that would eventually form the basis of Egyptian society lived in the western deserts, known today as the Sahara. 30,000 -10,000 years ago the receeding glaciers of the Ice Age transformed northern Africa from lush tropical rainforest into grassy plains, but the seasonal rain-belt has since gradually moved northward (geological shifting of land masses; Continental Drift was responsible for the changing climates). This is what eventually turned the Sahara from thick rain-forest, to grassy plain, to desert. The nomadic tribes that used to be able to live on the grassy plains gradually learned, generation through generation, that life was getting harder & harder to sustain. As time moved on, the environmental pressures from desert-living demanded that the tribe had to become tightly-coordinated & creative in the effort to just continue surviving.

Jumping to the period of time shortly before they migrated into the Nile River Valley, I now refer to one of the areas that collected seasonal rain into temporary lakes (low basin areas, called playas), in southwestern Egypt, known to archeologists today as Nabta Playa. By about 8,000 years ago, the climate of northern Africa had seen people that needed a tightly organized way of life in order to survive. Nabta Playa was the regular seasonal home for a nomadic tribe for a period of about 4,000 years. When the seasonal rains came & collected into a lake is when they stayed at Nabta Playa. How did they know when the season should be ripe for oncoming rain? See the pic below: Co-director of the excavation, Romuald Schild is the man pictured, with the world’s oldest known calendar (only 4m in diameter), similar to a miniature Stonehenge but predating the Stonehenge in England by more than 2,000 years!
Egyptian Stonehenge
They built oval-shaped houses (about 15 of them in three parallel rows had been found) made of sticks & reeds & they lived off the herding of cattle; Mostly, they drank the milk & blood (as renewable resources) instead of living off the meat because water could be very scarce. However, with the seasonal rains collected here, this tribe could build storage pits (over 40 varieties of grain, fruits & roots were found here, along with some of Africa’s oldest pottery) & three deep walk-in wells in which to keep water.
When the rains came & the wells filled, they even built a “festival mound” to celebrate & sacrifice some cattle; Various cattle bones & remains from other feasting were found on & around the mound. Near the mound also were ten large standing stones & a series of thirty mounds covered with huge stones (dragged from over a mile away!), some weighing over 1-1/2 tons. Buried beneath one of the mounds was not a dead ruler, but an early sculpture...In a pit & covered by a large hunk of shaped sandstone!
Early Stoneworking
Even so, the seasonal wells eventually ran dry & they had to pay close attention to their calendar (the mini-Stonehenge) so that they would know when it was time to move on to the next oasis; Perhaps two days delay in moving meant the difference between life & death.
As can be seen from this evidence, even before the ancient Egyptians even lived in Egypt, there existed the ability of rudimentary large-scale stone-working skills & the ruler’s ability to command great cooperative effort from his people.

Eventually (about 6,000 years ago), they found that they couldn’t live in the deserts much longer, as the rain-belt kept moving northward & the playas dried up. So over a period of a couple of thousand years or so such tribes migrated into the Nile River Valley, by around 5,000-4,500 BC. Some of my sources conflict on exact dating, which isn’t very surprising; The book “Ancient Egypt” denotes Predynastic Period from 5000-3100 BC & Protodynastic Period from 3100-3000 BC, while “Egypt Uncovered” shows Predynastic & Dynasty 0 periods from 4500-3100 BC. It’s been truthfully said that if you put more than one person in a room, there will be disagreements sooner or later; Apparently, not even archeologists are immune to this.

Even as these nomadic tribes were migrating into the Nile River Valley, they encountered an already-indigenous people living there; While it’s not certain how they interacted, in a relatively short period of time the first glimmers of civilization began to show in the archeological records. Predynastic graves of a rich minority begin to accumulate the finest (available) in burial goods; This indicates that even by 4,000 BC there were the rulers & the ruled, with a strong belief in a spiritual afterlife. Master craftsman are able to make finely-worked goods; This shows the emergence of a “professional class” which is one of the characteristics of the “Neolithic Age”.

--------------Yep, more text to come----------------

--------------Here we go---------------

Examinations along the River Valley indicate that, even by 3,500 BC, Hierakonpolis (in Upper Egypt) was the most important settlement along the entire river & had a large temple dedicated to the Falcon-god Horus. It wasn’t made of large worked-stone, by any means, but the pic below shows a graphic reconstruction of what it most likely looked like (according to the archeological evidence).
First Temple, Hierakonpolois
Post-holes & trenches are really all that remains. Of the post-holes, the size & depth indicates that the largest poles shown in the pic above would have been at least 12m tall. The temple’s centerpiece was a three-room shrine. The sidewalls were most likely made of colored woven mats, anchored in place by wooden supports. On the makeshift platforms in the oval courtyard is most likely where the king (of Upper Egypt, anyway) would have examined his tribute & made the sacrifices to the patron god, Horus. Around the courtyard, trained craftsmen collected raw materials from all over the region & transformed them into finished goods for their princes & god; Ivory boxes, polished stone jars, jewelry & ceremonial weapons.
The north side of Predynastic Hierakonpolis was an area of large scale industry; Huge pottery jars for brewing wheat-beer (could produce about 300 gallons per day, enough to provide daily rations for over 200 people), potters & tool makers. With a centralized collection & redistribution system, the king could stock up supplies for the lean years & during good years could become quite wealthy from trade.
So it appears that, at least in Upper Egypt where the desert nomads were most likely to have settled, the hard drive it took to survive in the desert produced people who thrived best on innovation combined with the ability to command & organize large groups of people. They also had a strong belief in the afterlife, based upon a Falcon-god that may have its origins in tribal totemism. These characteristics certainly served well in the much more fertile river-valley region of Egypt, where by contrast, barely allowed them to survive in the desert.

Now, on to Buto, the primary settlement of Lower Egypt. The major problem that archeologists had with excavations in the Delta Region lie in the fact that the climate is much more humid than Upper Egypt & eventually buries everything under large quantities of silt carried down-river by the yearly innundation. Due to this, it was a long time before Buto was considered to be anything more than just a legend.
Using drill-coring methods, they’ve found what appears to be the earliest version of Buto, unfortunately buried under several meters of sand & even 3m lower than the current water table!
What they determined about the Delta Region in general is that the Nile branches that cut through the area shift in their courses from time to time, but it wasn’t always the well-watered place we see now; Somewhen during the fifth millennium BC, the Mediterranean Sea backed up the Nile & flooded the banks. When this happened, the safest place for inhabitants was to escape to the higher sand dunes; It was on top of one of these dunes, covering an area of 1 km square, that Buto was found...Still buried under 7m of accumulated sand. This was well below the water table & Buto couldn’t be excavated until modern technology could provide for massive water pumps! Once the pumps were put to use, they uncovered quite a bit of evidence, even under the threat of flooding should the pumps stop; The pumps had to be constantly working or the digs would flood within mere minutes. Even so, they found that Buto was continuously occupied for over 500 years during the Predynastic times.
While Upper Egyptians came from the western deserts, the Lower Egyptians looked to the east; The indigenous religion was based upon a Jackal-headed god (perhaps derived from totemic-symbolism to venerate various ancestors “homogenized” into a single deity; Ancestor worship was common in the Delta Region). Pottery styles that bear the distinctive stamp of the cultures in the Negrev desert were found. But as soon as pottery from Upper Egypt began to appear, the Lower Egyptians tried duplicating Upper Egyptian pottery without having the same materials, skills & techniques. Even though this was not very successful for the Lower Egyptians, it wouldn’t matter less than a hundred years later; The changes were numerous & sudden.
The indigenous pottery in Lower Egypt was abruptly replaced by Upper Egyptian pottery (judging by materials & skills). Also, Lower Egyptian houses were no longer made from bundled papyrus & woven mats, but from mud bricks, like those built in Upper Egypt. Even though no grave sites were uncovered at Buto, other Delta sites confirm that burial practices also changed into the forms practiced by Upper Egypt.
Up until the successful excavations around the Delta region, many archeologists believed that the “Two Lands” was a myth, with the only known indication being the singular artifact of the Narmer Palette. However, excavations at Buto & the rest of the Delta region confirm the most rarely-found occurrence; Archeological evidence of a political event. The unification of Egypt (Attributed to King Menes, aka: Narmer) around 3,100 BC.

Now a bit about the distinctive style of Egyptian Hieroglyphs. According to the archeological finds at Abydos, there was a tomb (actually, it was more like an underground twelve-room “palace”) uncovered that dates to Dynasty 0 (c. 3,250 BC). This “Tomb U-J”, as they named it, seems to be the forerunner of the concept of building a “house for eternity”, which has precedents throughout the rest of Egyptian history. Within this tomb, the burial goods themselves were tagged with hieroglyphs on pottery sherds that denoted the place of origin for the goods. Of the two pics below, the first is the excavated tomb itself & the second are some of the tags found on the burial goods.
Tomb U-J
Tomb U-J Labels
Of the hieroglyphs found on the tags, many of them were noted to have the names of certain animals on them; In the earliest excavations, they indicate that at least some of the Kings did use animal-symbols to write their names...”Nar” (the first part of the name Narmer, for example) means “catfish”. The Tomb U-J was no exception, having tags that denoted many animals, but the greatest number of tags with animals represented was of a scorpion; Could this have been the “Scorpion King” of Dynasty 0? No solid evidence has been found, other than this general indication.
The excavation was dated 150 years before Narmer, at 3,250 BC; This indicates that Egyptians had an advanced form of writing before the Mesopotamians! There are so far no indications that Egyptians hieroglyphs developed from an earlier pictographic stage; The hieroglyphs have denoted not only places & objects, but they also represented vocal sounds, even with the first findings. For example, the Tomb UJ label at the bottom-left corner in the picture (just above) actually spells out the name Per-Bast (Greek version, Bubastis). Another example is that many of the tags found on wine vases in the tomb indicate that the wine came from Mesopotamia! Even that long ago (3,250 BC), Egypt was already trading with Mesopotamia!
There are modern precedents for languages to have developed full-blown without any historical stages of development; 1444 AD saw the invention of the modern form of written Korean script, invented by a group of scholars commissioned by the Korean king of the time; Even more modern, linguistic scholars were commissioned to create the Klingon language for the Star Trek movies! So, it’s possible to think that the Egyptians could have & probably did create their hieroglyphs from scratch; This would merely indicate that they were the first to do so. This is merely one indicator of how innovative the Egyptians could be, even so early in history.

Once unification was complete, Pharaoh moved the capital to Memphis, ideally located at the crux between the Two Lands; Just south of the Delta region, just north of the lower end of the River Valley.
By now, you may see the pattern of thought held by the Egyptians: Universal Dualism. The Two Lands (in two different respects! The Red & Black Lands / Upper & Lower Egypt), the two gods (falcon & jackal), the two cultures united, the Red Lands (eastern & western deserts) & the Black Lands (the silted areas of cultivation), the waters of Nun & the Primal Mound that emerged during the initial Creation, hieroglyphs representing objects/places & vocal sounds, the Order of settled Egypt vs. Chaos (the rest of the world outside of Egypt), etc. This concept was personified by the goddess Maat (the balance between Order & Chaos); It was the primary duty of Pharaoh to uphold the rituals that ensured that balance was maintained. The rituals were never static, but kept evolving throughout Egypt’s long history.
They also believed in a perpetually reoccurring Creation (the rising & setting sun, the yearly innundation that fertilized the fields, etc) as opposed to a single Creation. This is how the Pharaohs saw the afterlife...To ensure eternal existence after mortal death, they ritually linked themselves with the gods that perpetually renewed themselves. Their burial rituals & the construction of their tombs reinforced their link to an eternal afterlife. Another way to link with afterlife everlasting was to associate with things that seemed to never change. Hence the entrance corridors of the pyramids being aligned north, toward the circumpolar star; The Egyptians called it, “the everlasting” or “the undying”.

------Still More-------

-------------This is the end of this posting, I hope-----------

Even as early as the First Dynasty, perhaps even before, there are examples of what efforts the King would take to ensure eternal existence; The tomb of Den (First Dynasty) in Abydos is pictured below, with a second graphic of what its construction was like.
Tomb of Den
Tomb of Den, Reconstruction
There is a distinct connection between the “double-mound” construction of this tomb & the “Primal Mound” of Creation. Another example of the “house of eternity” that saw its beginning at the Tomb U-J mentioned above is the tomb of King Khasekhemwy (last King of Dynasty 2) at Abydos; This is the first example of a “house of eternity” built above ground. In the pic below, this floor plan drawn from its first excavation reveals the “Primal Mound” in the center of the “house of eternity”.
Tomb Floorplan

As another example of the innovations that the Egyptians produced in the area of stone architecture; The world’s oldest dam! The first pic is what it looks like today, the second pic was how it was constructed. The dam was built near Helwan, about 20 miles south of Cairo & was designed to be 14m high & 110m long.
Helwan Dam
Helwan Dam, Construction
The dam was engineered with an inner core of rubble & loose stones, which was held in place with stacked stones. The outer layer was dressed & fitted blocks. According to modern hydrological engineers the Helwan Dam was “over engineered”, but it was built on solid knowledge of hydraulics. Herodotus relates that it was built during the reign of King Menes, but there’s no real archeological evidence to confirm this. Archeologists & Egyptologists place the dam as being built at the dawn of the Pyramid Age (Fourth Dynasty), mostly due to resemblance in construction techniques.
It was originally built to control flash flooding; Even deserts get rain...But with no topsoil anchored by plant life, flash floods due to occasional rain can be terrifying & destructive. Religiously speaking, Seth (the god of chaos & the western desert) controlled the desert storms & was responsible for instigating flash floods; The building of dikes & dams was one of the ways that Pharaoh was supposed to protect Egypt from Chaos & maintain Order.
The engineers calculated that it would have taken about 10-12 years to build the dam, with a small, permanent workforce greatly bolstered by otherwise-idle farmers during the three-month innundation each year. However, when it was about 70% complete Seth sent a flash flood that washed away the inner core of rubble; The dam was never completed, but the engineers figured that it would have been more than adequate to do the job for which it was designed. If it had rained merely three years earlier or later, it wouldn’t have made much difference; Earlier & very little work would have been lost & they could have finished it; Later, it would have been completed.

Yes, this all does relate to the building of the Giza Pyramids, so hang in there!

Some of the Kings used a variation of Den’s “double mound” construction, bringing the mound up to the surface; This was the tomb construction technique known as the “Mastaba Tombs.” But when King Djoser (First King, Third Dynasty) wanted his tomb built, he wanted something better than “any old Ptah, Dick or Hathor”, to use a turn of phrase. This is when the innovations by Imhotep came into play; He stacked mastabas on top of each other, making the first “step pyramid”...Djoser was pleased & Imhotep was eventually deified as the god of architecture & healing.
By now, you should see where the skills of large worked-stone architecture are developing on a grander scale & that as the power of Egypt grew, so did Pharaoh’s resources to command & organize the people.

Now, skipping directly to the first King of the Fourth Dynasty, Snefru. It didn’t take much of a jump in creativity & innovation to start turning the step pyramid into a true pyramid...Just encase the pyramid to make the sides smooth. Overall, Snefru built at least three pyramids: At Meidum, a step pyramid that would have the smooth sides added; At Dashur, the Bent Pyramid; Two miles north of the Bent Pyramid, the Red Pyramid (where he was finally entombed). There are some indications that Snefru may have attempted two other pyramids, but the evidence is not conclusive. Overall, Snefru had 1/3 more stone worked, transported & set in place than the stone used in the Great Pyramid itself & he maintained the support structure need to finish all of those jobs!
Why so many pyramids? Because those first two mentioned were failures; Unmortared stone constructions on that scale run into problems, mostly concerned with weight-distribution with no mortar anchoring to hold them all in place. Snefru’s final success was the Red Pyramid, where he was buried. It was nearly perfect. The sides were slightly off-angle as they approached the top; The pyramidion was built to compensate for a mere two degrees of miscalculated angles at the summit.
For over 20 years, Rainer Stadelmann had been poking around the Red Pyramid; What he found there pretty much sets the tone for how long it took Snefru to build it! In his own words:

Rainer Stadelmann
“When we started excavating here we found part of the outer casing still preserved, but a lot of blocks had fallen or were displaced. On the reverse of these loose stones we found inscriptions in red paint naming the working gangs who constructed the pyramid, for examples, the ‘Green gang’ or the ‘Western gang.’ We also found the name of Snefru in a cartouche. I would say about every twentieth stone was inscribed, but the most exciting thing was that dates were also written on the backs of these blocks.”

The bold emphasis up there is mine. Using those inscribed dates, Stadelmann calculated that it took about 17 years to construct the Red Pyramid!

Now, guess what? We’re down to the wire here...Snefru’s son & immediate successor was Khufu (Greek, Cheops)! The builder of the Great Pyramid itself! When compared to the dates written on the backs of the Red Pyramid stones above, it wouldn’t be hard to believe that Khufu’s pyramid took only 25 years to complete.

The pyramids are, in effect, “Resurrection Machines”. Designed & built to ensure that Pharaoh enters an eternal afterlife. It is even known that “funerary cults” that supplied the constant offerings to the mortuary temple were actually entire villages under Pharaoh’s direct command to produce the food, goods & even the priests to continue the supply of offerings & the rituals. Such tasks were meant to be handed down from generation to generation, ensuring that the offerings to sustain Pharaoh would continue.
It wasn’t until after the Fourth Dynasty that later Pharaohs started adding the “pyramid texts” & afterward “coffin texts”, because they had seen how a change in Dynasty or political strife could cause the mortuary cults to break down. As such, these Pharaohs (starting with Unas, last king of the Fifth Dynasty) would inscribe the offerings & rituals to be placed within the tomb itself so that eternity was still ensured, even if the cult-structure broke down.

What you’ve seen here is the historical evidence that displays the drive/motivation, the development of skills, the creative ingenuity, the ability to command & organize that it takes to build structures on such a scale.

Yes, I’m done...For now.

Midnight,

What a treasure trove of information. Thank you very much for the work you put into your synopsis of early Egyptian history.

But I want point out something about the sphinx. Schoch uses the water erosion as support for his ideas on the age of the sphinx, but he does not use this erosion to arrive at a date for sphinx construction.

I agree with your statements about the visible erosion found on the walls of the sphinx enclosure though. There is no way to say when it occurred. But Schoch's date for the actual construction comes from geoseismic surveys of the floor of the sphinx enclosure, which show what he calls "weathering" of the limestone floor. This sort of weathering is created by exposure to the air and is not related to any water runoff event. Also, this sort of weathering would be unaffected by any covering over of the floor with sand.

Schoch found that the floor in the rear of the enclosure showed far less weathering than that of the front. He took the exposure date of the rear of the enclosure to be the "accepted" date for sphinx construction and, assuming that the weathering progressed in something like a linear fashion, extrapolated from this to the early sphinx construction date for the front of this monument. Thus he believes that the front face and legs of the sphinx may have been carved thousands of years before someone came along and carved out the rest of the monument.

I have my own problems with these kinds of assumptions, and Schoch admits to them as well. I don't mean to say that I am a big "superancient" sphinx proponent, I am not. And I realize as well that your post was more about the culture itself, along with pyramid evolution, than it was about Schoch's theory, which you only mentioned early on. I just wanted to make the point that it was not water erosion per se that Schoch relied on. He points to this erosion as part of his theory, using it in support of what he believes because the date he arrived at could possibly overlap with one of the early wet periods known to have occured at Giza.

Anyway, thanks again and, oh yeah:

You have voted MidnightDStroyer for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have two more votes this month.

Harte

at 3,250 BC; This indicates that Egyptians had an advanced form of writing before the Mesopotamians!

The electronic pennsylvania sumerian dictionary has dates that go back to 3500 bce for cuneiform proper
proto cuneiform has been found from even earlier
this is something that constantly gets overlooked by the egypt first club who think pictures of scorpions on tags are a form of writing and so they don't like to mention it
in addition symbols to do with astronomy which later turn up in sumerian art have been found on cave walls dating from 7000bce in georgia and armenia
in addition the level of technology presnt in sumerian tombs is approx 2000 years ahead of anything found in egypt

Nice work but still all wrong!

We have been chatting with ancient Egyptian spirits and they told us whats really going down.

Ofcourse you won't believe it so discussing it is pointless. The Tibetans know it and have publically said so...

Undo... John's gold mine is underway and Matt only needs 30 million to finish the saucer. I think John left a few spare seats. I reserved one for you. We need to check out the mine on the moon.

Got a small problem though... need a pilot... maybe you could have your hubby ask around if anyone is available?

Okay before you think I am totally off the deep end, I will return you to your regularly scheduled debunking program. But I promise we will bring back pictures

Awesome information! Only problems I see with it are:

1. Very few dates for anything you mentioned. If your effort is to prove the GP was built in the 3rd dynasty, by starting with the beginnings of african civilization, you need to give us timeline markers with the data.

2. If they were building with mudbricks, you gotta wonder where they got the idea.

3. There was writing in ancient Sumer, circa 5000 BC, so it predates Egyptian writing.

That's all I've found so far, but the rest is interesting.

Originally posted by Marduk
The electronic pennsylvania sumerian dictionary has dates that go back to 3500 bce for cuneiform proper proto cuneiform has been found from even earlier

Originally posted by undo
3. There was writing in ancient Sumer, circa 5000 BC, so it predates Egyptian writing.

Okay, so you caught me on the timeframe for cuneiform...But it was primarily pictorial, so that merchants could keep track of contractual obligations. However, have you noticed that, since there's no indication of any earlier stages of Egyptian Hieroglyphs (from the dates I gave above) doesn't mean that they don't exist & just haven't been found yet. I indicated the possibility that Hieroglyphs were created full-blown in pictorial & verbal formats, but that doesn't mean that there are no earlier stages of development. BTW, is the "electronic pennsylvania sumerian dictionary" your sole source of info, or do you look at many sources before you post anything?

Originally posted by Marduk
this is something that constantly gets overlooked by the egypt first club who think pictures of scorpions on tags are a form of writing...

Evidently, you overlooked the tag in the picture that spells out the city-name of Per-Bast. Do you make a habit of overlooking things before you reply to them?

Originally posted by Marduk
...symbols to do with astronomy which later turn up in sumerian art have been found on cave walls dating from 7000bce in georgia and armenia in addition the level of technology presnt in sumerian tombs is approx 2000 years ahead of anything found in egypt

Not entirely true...Not even the Mesopotamians were able to unite into a single geo-political nation before Egypt did. No one beats Egypt for that. Mesopotamia was & remained as a group of independant "city-states", so Egypt's Pharoah was able to organize the resources & manpower of a unified nation far beyond Mespotamia's ability to coordinate the various city-states. This is what gave Egypt the ability to out-build anything the Mesopotamians ever did.

Originally posted by zorgon
We have been chatting with ancient Egyptian spirits and they told us whats really going down.

Personally, I'd rather take the words of numerous physical human beings that have been physically digging around in Egypt for physical evidence, rather than rely on a single, non-physical source of information that can't even supply any "credentials" on the topic of archeology; Even spirits can lie & even though you can't get so many archeologists to agree with each other, the competition at least keeps them honest. Besides, what would Tibean Monks & spirit-mediums know about Egypt unless they leave the monastaries & go see it for themselves? Did they set up the monastaries with cable or satellite TV & watch Discovery Channel (That may be one of my sources, but it's only one source that I use)?

Originally posted by undo
Awesome information! Only problems I see with it are:
1. Very few dates for anything you mentioned. If your effort is to prove the GP was built in the 3rd dynasty, by starting with the beginnings of african civilization, you need to give us timeline markers with the data.

I never said that the Giza Pyramids were built in the Third Dynasty...It was the Fourth Dynasty, starting with Snefru.
As for the dates...Even the Egyptologists have problems with dating methods:
For one, radio-carbon dating for that far back in history isn't accurate enough. They can only use RC dating for helping to confirm if they're even in the right time-period or not according to what they've decyphered from the writings.
For two, the Egyptian Dynasties counted their years according to the length of each Pharoah's reign. In some cases, some of the Pharoahs may be missing from the archeological records, the names of some Pharoahs suffered from deliberate purging by later Pharoahs...And even then, some of those Pharaohs had over-lapping reigns (such as the Prince Regant's early years overlap with his father's later years); Also, during the Third Intermediate Period, Upper & Lower Egypt weren't united when the Hyksos ruled in the Delta, but there was still the Theban Pharoah ruling Upper Egypt until the re-unification at the end of the Period.
For three, Egypt didn't use the same type of calendar as anyone else; They used a 360 day year, with 5 days added on to the end. Granted, this put them off by 3/4 of a day every year. So one of the best "time-stamps" that Egyptologists can use is the rising of Sopdet (Greeks call it Sothis, we call it Sirius), which rises only once every 1,460 years, as it may be mentioned in Egyptian historical records...The Egyptian recording of this event has only one known reference, First Day, Year Seven of the reign of Senworset III (Middle Kingdom). As such, Egyptoligists have been able to use this event as a "benchmark" time to calculate other dates & events.
Some of you (who shall remain nameless for now) also seem to have a bad habit of "hijacking" threads away from the original topic...Perhaps you should have a look here, and specifically look at the quote from that thread:

Originally posted by Majic
Over the recent months, I have been watching as ATS has been hijacked by an increasing number of trolls -- members who repeatedly post in violation of the ATS Terms & Conditions of Use, inject off-topic noise, sloganeering, hatred, bigotry and propaganda into almost every thread and frankly, I have finally had enough.

You few people definitely fit into the "inject off-topic noise" category; One or two hit the "propaganda" category pretty firmly too. Keep it up & people may start lodging formal complaints about it...

Originally posted by Harte
But I want point out something about the sphinx. Schoch uses the water erosion as support for his ideas on the age of the sphinx, but he does not use this erosion to arrive at a date for sphinx construction.

I only mentioned the Sphinx because it happened to be another controversial subject sitting on the Giza Plateau, but I didn't delve into it any more deeply than that because the Sphinx is a different topic that should be in threads around ATS already.
My references to the Sphinx concern more archeological evidence correlated for the book, "Riddles of the Sphinx", by Paul Jordan. He explains why
Shoch has only one or two reasons for his theory on the Sphinx's age whereas the hundreds of archeologists & Egyptologists over the past hundred years (or so) have several good reasons to link the Sphinx with the Fourth Dynasty. However, I'm not going into any more details here because, as I said, that's a different topic from the Pyramids.

My whole three-part post above was to try to get this thread back on the track of the Giza Pyramids & how the existing physical evidence has led up to the timeframe during the Fourth Dynasty as to when they were constructed.

[edit on 29-9-2006 by MidnightDStroyer]

You few people definitely fit into the "inject off-topic noise" category; One or two hit the "propaganda" category pretty firmly too. Keep it up & people may start lodging formal complaints about it...

Are you referring to me? I just follow the conversation where it leads. And you can expect that with a thread OP such as this, that there will be other topics pulled in to verify the claims. Heck, half the time I've had to introduce new information just to answer Marduk's questions or accusations or insults. I agree it went off topic pretty soundly, but then there was a method to the madness, namely, I appreciate thoroughly investigating a subject. This typically requires looking at it from many angles, as you so adroitly indicated regarding the sphinx. So please, spare me the threats and insinuations. I'm just doing the best I can.

BTW, care to define propaganda? Pretty much any theory has the potential to be propaganda (and probably is, since it supports one world view at the expense of some or all the others).

Originally posted by MidnightDStroyer

Originally posted by zorgon
We have been chatting with ancient Egyptian spirits and they told us whats really going down.

Personally, I'd rather take the words of numerous physical human beings that have been physically digging around in Egypt for physical evidence, rather than rely on a single, non-physical source of information that can't even supply any "credentials" on the topic of archeology; Even spirits can lie & even though you can't get so many archeologists to agree with each other, the competition at least keeps them honest. Besides, what would Tibean Monks & spirit-mediums know about Egypt unless they leave the monastaries & go see it for themselves? Did they set up the monastaries with cable or satellite TV & watch Discovery Channel (That may be one of my sources, but it's only one source that I use)?

LOL didn't really expect an answer to that... the Tibetans came in way back while discussing sonic levitation for stone movement, but no need to go there again for now..

The rest was a coded personal message LOL

As to what Tibetans have to do with Egyptians and Mesopotamians... well thats one thing I am looking into, but thats for the star gate thread...

Originally posted by undo I do agree that taking quotes out of context, and thereby missing the whole story, and then speculating on that partial information is far too common a thing.

undo, 'You mean like trying to say that Wormwood is Nibiru? IF I had 10 dollars for everytime somebody took Wormwood out of context, I'd be at least a $100,000-aire.'

Probably, but I don't know enough about either. I have tasted wormwood tea, and I strongly advise against it unless you need it to save your life. It is the most bitter thing I've ever swallowed.
I see examples all the time, in discussions about ancient structures like the Oseirion, Stonehenge, Tiahuanaco, Baalbek, the Giza complex, etc. Also, the one that really puzzles me is this whole 'Illuminati' story. It is the subject of countless books, theories, and websites, yet there is not a shred of solid proof to be found.
I don't usually let that kind of thing get to me, but the 'Illuminati' monster has grown so huge, and is so totally accepted as being fact by so many .... and recalling the complete dearth of actual evidence, irks me. Why is it that people can be so sure of something which at the root of it is totally unsubstantiated. I have also seen a lot of UFO/ET/Pyramid speculation. My view is that it is far more reasonable to surmise that advanced ancient people did it. The possibility of that seems far more plausible. Especially when you consider Homo Sapiens Sapiens has been around for at least a couple hundred thousand years. I also subscribe to the scientifically deduced theory that there was a global catastrophe around 9 500 BC, which would have ended that civilization. The pyramid of Giza is the most durable structure ever built. None of our modern structures come close. Maybe those people wanted to let us know they were here. I believe they were. But I am not sold on ET's at all.

[edit on 9/30/2006 by BlackGuardXIII]