Forbidden Egyptology

Originally posted by iammonkey
Hello sky. Fantastic post. Flagged and star. I’m not sure if you came across this web site. I know its full of a lot of religious stuff, but i have Posted you the main 4 links that deal with the pyramids. They have some interesting things to say on the method that took place to build them. That’s all have to contribute. sorry.

www.bibleufo.com...
www.bibleufo.com...
www.bibleufo.com...
www.bibleufo.com...

From the first link:

When an ancient culture says flying vehicles were used to transport and place the massive components of a megalith over great distances, the experts don’t have slots for ancient flight. But they do have slots for thousands of slaves dragging million-pound monoliths over miles of rugged terrain. No matter how unreasonable, unworkable, or unrealistic their conclusions are, they are published as though they made perfect sense.

I defy anyone to show me where any "million pound" stone has been "dragged for miles" over rugged terrain.
No slaves were used in the construction of the Egyptian Pyramids.
Straw man argument.

The second problem is transportation. Despite a highly sophisticated material handling system of cranes and vehicles in the modern world, we could not even begin to tackle such massive construction projects. A study on the Great Pyramid determined that modern construction techniques were not only inadequate to build this structure, but it could not even be torn down. Primitive labor using wooden rollers, crude ropes, and mud ramps did not move these giants.

Absurd. These pyramids are not economical to build - that is the reason we "can't build one today," and not because we aren't able to.

"Can't be torn down?" Riiight. We blew a friggin hole in the side over a hundred years ago.

The ancient cultures to which these structures are attributed literally had no tools that were capable of cutting or finishing the components. They had no saws, hammers, chisels, measuring tools, or finishing tools that could shape stone. There are instances where the experts will display crude tools, mainly copper or stone implements, and claim these were used to form the components. What they fail to point out is that the blocks they were used to cut are harder than the tools that supposedly formed them. Copper was the only metal associated with megalithic cultures. Copper is so soft that it is not even used to make woodworking tools. Loggers don't use copper axes and carpenters don't use copper saws. There are no copper masonry tools in modern culture and no one used copper tools to shape even the softest of the monoliths. Rock tools are little more than useless.

A flat-out lie. We know for a fact - because the Ancient Egyptians themselves tell us, that they did use copper saws to cut stone. They used sand as an abrasive. This very method has been repeated in modern times, BTW. So much for "we can't do this today," huh?

In our modern culture the wheel is taken for granted. In ancient cultures it did not exist. No wheels, no carts, no pulleys, and no cranes. This is why, when experts depict ancient construction projects, they always show thousands of slaves dragging giant blocks over the ground or up mud ramps. Dirt ramps are the favorite graphic used in illustrations of such projects. Left out of the descriptions of the work and the estimate of the time and labor required, are the ramps themselves. What they fail to point out is the time and material required to construct and dismantle these ramps is often many times that of the construction of the megalith itself.

No ramps, eh? Note that the author is quick to discount the use of ramps. I wonder how he would then explain the presence of the remains of these very ramps he scoffs at at several pyramids in Egypt, including the Great Pyramid?

Again, the pyramids were certainly not built by slaves.

Many of the world's megaliths are constructed with blocks that are literally cut to fit perfectly into totally random patterns. Sometimes this is done over hundreds of feet of precisely fitted walls or throughout entire massive complexes. And not small blocks either, rather monoliths of a ton or more with as many as twelve separate edges cut to perfection. This is not the work of primitive slave laborers, with crude stone tools, and no experience. The experts are silent on this fact.

They are "silent on this fact" because it's not a fact.

A one-ton rock is about 3 ft. by 3 ft. by 3 ft. Smaller for dense stone. Hardly monolithic. And actually, most such stones (not "monoliths") were carved, placed, touched up, re-placed, etc. and shaped through trial and error. Some of this sort of work was done by the Native Peoples in South America after the Spaniards came. Witnessed, IOW.

Even more baffling, than how they built the megaliths, is where they got the blocks. In many cases the blocks were quarried not just miles, but hundreds of miles away. Sometimes the blocks had to be ferried across rivers, where no barges big enough to carry them or cranes to lift them existed. Many times the material at hand was ignored and distant quarries were used. At times, structures were built on high mountains from material quarried from other peaks. This required lowering massive blocks down one peak and dragging them up another. In some cases there are no quarries for thousands of miles, across continents, or even entire oceans. Again the experts are silent.

Bolded portions - true.

Italicized portions - lies.

Seams are found so tight that a razor blade cannot be slipped between neighboring components. We cannot be expected to believe that slaves, hacking away with crude implements, achieved perfection. The experts insult our intelligence (what "intelligence?" - Harte) when they claim this is how it was done. In one case where adhesive was used, in the Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt, the adhesive itself proved to be an anomaly. When tested for composition, it was found not to contain any of the 65,000 known substances on Earth. After at least 4700 years, the adhesive is still perfectly binding the 2.5 million blocks to which it was applied. The experts don¹t even try to theorize about this. The intentional 1/50th of an inch gap engineered into each of the more than 15 million cuts to accommodate the adhesive is conveniently ignored.

Bolded = Bull
You expect the "experts" to not be silent on a subject that is pure fantasy?
"The experts" have actual work to do. They won't spend their time commenting on some flight of fancy written by somebody with some weird agenda that doesn't know what he's talking about.
"15million cuts" I guess comes from 2.5 mil. blocks times 6 faces. Current estimates made after inspecting exposed interiors where the side was blown in has cut this estimate of the number of cut stones in the G.P. in half. Some estimates even place the number at more like 750,000.
Also, the vast majority of stones are only approximately smooth and only on one (outward) face.

This site is so full of straw men it should open it's own cornfield.

Running out on the character length so I'll stop here. I might come back to this if I can't find anything that actually might be challenging elsewhere around here.

Harte



[edit on 2/20/2008 by Harte]

And dont get distracted by the ATS-member Harte. He does what he is born to do: Offer journalistic counter-balance.

reply to post by Harte


May I ask what you do professionally? It would seem its related to history or archaeology.

Originally posted by Skyfloating
reply to post by Harte

 

May I ask what you do professionally? It would seem its related to history or archaeology.

Nope, just a hobby.

I teach Mathematics in an inner city high school.

Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, Calculus etc.

Harte

Originally posted by Harte

Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, Calculus etc.

Very interesting. This would explain your passion for strictness of fact.

Originally posted by Skyfloating

Originally posted by Harte

Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, Calculus etc.

Very interesting. This would explain your passion for strictness of fact.

There is just no question that the only "proof" that exists in the world is Mathematical proof. And those don't actually exist - or their subjects don't, that is.

Maybe you've seen my attempts to get people to call for "evidence" rather than "proof" here in the past.

I've about given up on that, I suppose it's really a question of semantics unless one wants to argue that some requested evidence "doesn't prove anything," in which case I start back in on the undeniable fact that nothing in reality can ever, actually, be "proven" anyway.

So, yeah, you got me.

Harte

Originally posted by Harte
No slaves were used in the construction of the Egyptian Pyramids.

I would be interested in how you are so sure of this. Obviously the master craftsmen would not be slaves, slaves are rarely trained and by their very nature they are expendable. Craftsmen are not and therefore would not be used for the dangerous work of transporting and lifting stone. As any major engineering project of the 19th and 20th centuries clearly demonstrates - from the Manchester Ship Canal to the Empire State Building many men died in the construction, very rarely were those men anything other than common labourers. This is also a contributing factor in why such great feats of engineering are nolonger financially viable - the insurance premiums are through the roof.

It is retained within the doctrine of speculative Freemasonry that they must be "free", ie not a slave before becoming an initiate, just as you were unable to enter the medieaval trade guilds if you were a slave or indentured...if indeed there is any geneaological connection between Ancient Egypt and modern Freemasonry we can assume that that "class" division also existed at the time of the pyramids. Training of slaves not only gave the slaves ideas above their station in life but also would have threatened the "value" of the tradesmen themselves.

Originally posted by Harte
Maybe you've seen my attempts to get people to call for "evidence" rather than "proof" here in the past.

Not knowing the difference between proof and evidence...this is frequently seen...unfortunately. Its so common on ATS that the definitions should be taken up in the ATS T&C. I sometimes try to use other words ("Indicator" for example) for this very reason.

reply to post by KilgoreTrout


Interesting point you bring up there (especially as I attempt to trace Freemasonry back to "time immemorial"...or at least to Egypt).

You are saying that the ancients did discern between "free" and "slave"...and this can be accounted for in the writings.

[edit on 20-2-2008 by Skyfloating]

Well, thank you for this thread. I knew it was only a matter of time before Egypt and those structures at Giza came under a microscope.

In 2005, I had a dream about this very thing. Some people already know what the world will discover very soon. The dream was so real, I have been biding my time in here, till the dream becomes reality. It kind of numbs me a bit, because that means the rest of that dream will probably come true also. I am seeing signs of that, as well.

People don't need to be afraid, unless they have something to be afraid of. You can be your own judge. At the moment, this World is not a very plesant place, for most of the life forms living here.

Be ready for change!

Originally posted by KilgoreTrout

Originally posted by Harte
No slaves were used in the construction of the Egyptian Pyramids.

I would be interested in how you are so sure of this. Obviously the master craftsmen would not be slaves, slaves are rarely trained and by their very nature they are expendable. Craftsmen are not and therefore would not be used for the dangerous work of transporting and lifting stone. As any major engineering project of the 19th and 20th centuries clearly demonstrates - from the Manchester Ship Canal to the Empire State Building many men died in the construction, very rarely were those men anything other than common labourers. This is also a contributing factor in why such great feats of engineering are nolonger financially viable - the insurance premiums are through the roof.

Well, it (of course) depends on what you mean by "slave."
The workers that built the pyramids couldn't walk off their jobs. If that's your definition, then they were slaves according to you.

I ought to point out that air traffic controllers are also slaves under this definition, as are military personnel.

BTW, your comment on why we no longer build such edifices is quite welcome. Cost and lack of utility are both major factors.

Originally posted by KilgoreTroutIt is retained within the doctrine of speculative Freemasonry that they must be "free", ie not a slave before becoming an initiate, just as you were unable to enter the medieaval trade guilds if you were a slave or indentured...if indeed there is any geneaological connection between Ancient Egypt and modern Freemasonry we can assume that that "class" division also existed at the time of the pyramids.

There is, indeed, no connection between Freemasonry and the Ancient Egyptians. No question they had class distinctions though. They needn't be involved with Freemasons for that - look at India's caste system - not exactly Masonic.

Originally posted by KilgoreTroutTraining of slaves not only gave the slaves ideas above their station in life but also would have threatened the "value" of the tradesmen themselves.

The best argument against slave labor building the pyramids is that the Ancient Egyptians could not have controlled that many slaves for that long in that space.

The vast majority of work done to build the pyramids was skilled labor, so by your own argument, these people were not slaves. Moving the stones might not have taken as much skill, but lifting them, quarrying them, placing them, etc. absolutely did. If you consider that as many (or more) of these types were required as there were "stone movers," then you can begin to see the straw man being set up by the author of the page I was commenting on.

Anyway, here's a link to a nice little article about slavery in ancient Egypt. If you're really interested, take a few minutes to read this:
Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Egypt - from the Tour Egypt website

There are a great many people here at ATS that have a lot to gain by going to that link and exploring the whole website. TourEgypt.net is an excellent resource for folks curious about what is actually known - and how we know - about Ancient Egypt.

Harte

[edit on 2/20/2008 by Harte]

Originally posted by Skyfloating
You are saying that the ancients did discern between "free" and "slave"...and this can be accounted for in the writings.

You always do this to me - if there is hole in my argument you'll find it

The medieaval guilds certainly did discern between free and indentured (which is another form of slavery, though generally for a fixed period, usually until the individual came of age, but you were effectively "sold"). You could become neither an apprentice or a freeman of your city if you were indentured. This system was pretty much practiced throughout Europe and I can account for it being rigourously applied in England.

Similarly I would be shocked if a similar practice did not exist in Rome which certainly had a culture of slavery and of apprenticeship as did Greece - I think, though I am not certain, that the Slavic peoples actually got their name from their being used as a source of slaves in Ancient Greece or the term slave comes from the fact that the Slavs were used - one or the other. I would be very surprised if the Egyptian did not use slaves.

If there were wars or conflicts between neighbouring cultures there will be slaves (POWs), where there is a language difference there will be slaves - it seems to be human nature. If there are slaves there will be a division between those that are free and those that are not.

A structured civilisation relies upon rules and those generally apply most vigorously to those at the bottom of the heap, to acheive the status quo, the skilled craftsmen would not have shared their knowledge with slaves, nor may they have been able to if a language barrier existed, but if a slave showed promise I would have assumed that their freedom could have been bought or earned and they would then have been able to be initiated into the craft. Beyond that though I am afraid I know nothing and what I do 'know' is mostly speculative I'm afraid - sorry.

Originally posted by KilgoreTrout

Originally posted by Skyfloating
You are saying that the ancients did discern between "free" and "slave"...and this can be accounted for in the writings.

You always do this to me - if there is hole in my argument you'll find it

Kilgore,

No hole, the answer is in the article I linked - I think.

That is, if I understand the question correctly.

Harte

Originally posted by Harte
There are a great many people here at ATS that have a lot to gain by going to that link and exploring the whole website. TourEgypt.net is an excellent resource for folks curious about what is actually known - and how we know - about Ancient Egypt.

Thanks for the link and I will read it - but I wonder why it is assumed that thousands of slaves would be required - if there were enough Egyptians to build the pyramids then there were surely enough to control a slave a piece - and as you point out and I think that I qualify, slavery was not necessarily as we see it today. It was generally not for life as we have come to see it since the transatlantic slave trade. People were captured and ransomed, they were traded for other prisoners, they may have been able to earn their freedom. This type of slavery is still practiced in some places and it is accepted as the cultural norm...the Ottoman empire had armies made up of slaves and they did not need to 'control' them, it was simply accepted that they belonged to that particular ruler.

It is important in my opinion that we do not impose our perceptions of modern slavery on ancient or pre-New World cultures as it is highly misleading.

Originally posted by KilgoreTrout
It is important in my opinion that we do not impose our perceptions of modern slavery on ancient or pre-New World cultures as it is highly misleading.

Excellent point.

I think it was probably thought of as a great, possibly the greatest, honor to be part of the construction crew of any of the pyramids. Let's not forget that the King was also a God. Getting in on this work might buy one's self passage through to the Hall of Ma'at. Or at least some semblance of afterlife existence.

Information left behind in the temporary villages where the builders lived seems to indicate they took great pride in the work. Not exactly what we would think of as "slave like," though it could fit in with what the Egyptians thought of as slavery in the article I linked.

I suppose that there may have been a few people that the Egyptians thought of as slaves, in the way you mention, that could have worked there. Not likely to my mind, because slaves may not have been eligible for the status that being involved in such a project would bring.

But anyway, I was commenting on the false argument that the "Bibleufo" website (or whatever it was called) just made up so they could argue against it, that archaeologists claim that "millions of slaves" built these and other edifices. That is not the case. In fact, most Egyptologists that I've read hold something like the opinion I expressed - no slaves at all.

Concerning why such an argument is made in the first place, I find that it usually has to do with religious zealots trying to undermine Archaeology in order to show that archaeologists have absolutely no idea what they are talking about.

Now, I wonder why they would want to do that?

Harte

Originally posted by Harte
No hole, the answer is in the article I linked - I think.

That is, if I understand the question correctly.

You are right it does explain it perfectly and it fits in very well with the more contemporary indentured system so there is some suggestion of continuity in the division between slave and freeman. It is only the notion of the Transatlantic slave trade that is muddying the waters IMO and this should be disregarded as an anomaly and the indentured or chattel system of slavery the norm.

It is perhaps more likely therefore that the 'slaves' would have belonged not to the rulers but to the craftsmen themselves...maybe??? And they still must have been considered to at least some extent expendable....you do not risk the lives of your skilled workers, it is simply not cost effective.

I think that we are wandering off-topic....very interesting article though and I shall add it to my favourites

I often thought that the pyramids were stolen by the egyptians and they added to them later. I remember a history teacher once said to the class that under all the sand there are probably loads more of these structures waiting to be unearthed.

reply to post by Harte

BTW, your comment on why we no longer build such edifices is quite welcome. Cost and lack of utility are both major factors.

Harte, you are really the last person I want to engage in argument on this (and that is a complement.) But I’m going to argue anyway: As per above, why would the cost and utility not be pertinent to the ancient Egyptians? The cost must have been ridiculous, especially by their standards, and the utility (as far as we can see) was zero.

In particular, why didn't they use that extravagant amount of effort to build housing, palaces, fountains, storage, observatories, defensive walls, etc. For the price they paid, one would think that they would have crafted something extremely and obviously useful.

What were the pyramids for? If you say they were built for religious purposes, I’m going to ask you for evidence. (Edit: see my footnote below.)

To me, that is really the overriding mystery, compounded by some of the other strange features of the pyramids, like architectural quirks. Notwithstanding any other speculations, it is pure crazy and strange that these structures were ever built.

Edit: Here is an article on the purpose of the pyramids. It is written by Immanuel Velikovsky, who had some profound (but probably wrong) ideas about history. I think the analysis is good, but conclusions may be wrong.

[edit on 20-2-2008 by Buck Division]

reply to post by KilgoreTrout


Well, honestly..I dont know the answer to the slaves-question, so I´m neutral on it. What I HAVE been trying to dig into is the masonic-ancient-egypt connection, which I find difficult to find evidence-of-direct-lineage for (that was the actual purpose of my other thread "ancient secret societies").

Originally posted by Skyfloating
What I HAVE been trying to dig into is the masonic-ancient-egypt connection, which I find difficult to find evidence-of-direct-lineage for (that was the actual purpose of my other thread "ancient secret societies").

I don't think Illusions and I have quite finished with that thread, it is just that it is quite involved and we have other 'commitments'. Whether further discussion will involve finding actual evidence I cannot say, but if you had asked me whether there was a direct lineage a few weeks ago I would almost certainly have said no, now I am not so sure.