It isn’t a contemporary account. He’s very far in time from the old kingdom.
Yeah…like over 2000 years. 
It is the earliest account and each statement here and his other writings is consistent with pulling stones straight upthe side with counterweights. He claimed he was told this by the Egyptian priests. He said it was built in steps and the PT uses the word “battlements”. He said the stones were raised one step at a time. He said the contraption was made of short pieces of wood which is probably consistent with the PT which refers to the boat as being shaped like the “dorsal carapace of a grasshoppper”. I believe this is a mistranslation of exoskeleton of a grasshopper with the dorsal carapace above it. The part shaped like the dorsal carapace might have been the I33.t-sceptre which was the “funnel” used by kebehwet to fill it. This job was done by the “ferryman”. The boat itself had the ribbing on the outside and had to take the punisment of traveling up and down the side. As such it would evolve into the shape of a grasshopper’s exoskeleton with the carapace atop it. To build this the exterior framing would be composed of “short pieces of wood”. These machines lifted 20 tons of stone at a time and were called “the Bull of Heaven”. There is a lot of information about them in the PT because these are the same machines that were used to lift the dead king up for cremation in the “iskn of heaven” on the east side of the growing pyramid top. These machines could be moved from location to location as needed.
Horapollo said that the Egyptians believed water came up out of the ground seasonally. This couldn’t happen in the valley since it is a mile and a half deep sediment filling a canyon so the water must have come up in the desert if they were correct. This is exactly what the PT says many times;
455c. after thou hast taken possession of the white crown in the water-springs, great and mighty, which are in the south of Libya,
The white crown tops the spraying water. It is caught in the mehet weret with the shm-sceptres;
1804a. Thou hast borne off their white crown, while thou art endued with the form of Osiris,
One ancient Arab historian, possibly quoting Manetho (all of whose books were lost), said stones “flew to the pyramid 300’ at a time”. This is the exact lenght of the counterweight run down the 225’ cliff face. The stones first had a piece of paper attached before they flew. A Weigher/ Reckoner is buried on site. The PT says the stones flew like the fledglings of swallows after being “sculpted” from the quarry;
1130a. When thou sayest, “statues”, in respect to these stones,
1130b. which are like fledglings of swallows under the river-bank;
Baby swallows appear to be drawn through the air close to the ground on their first flight.
Why is this concept so difficult to grasp? It’s a task the most common laborer could manage, while paying him the going rate of three squares of fish, onions, and beer. The hole is drilled in a day or two, and the worker eats for a day or two. This is the same exchange of boring work for a means to keep body and ka together that has been going on for millennia and still goes on today.
So what? See above. It’s hard to find any mention or photos of that artifact anywhere but crackpot sites (David Icke’s, f’rinstance–you don’t want to be associated with him!), but it is a lovely, carved object. Unremarkable beyond its grace and workmanship. Probably prototyped in wood and made over a period of months by a master craftsman. Okay, mostly done by his his apprentices because there would be a world of grinding to do, but the craftsman got paid. Twas ever thus.
Where do you get off calling it an mks-sceptre or mks-staff? Those a long staffs with a bump in the middle. My people call them sticks. This suggests exactly how poorly uninformed you are.
More later.
[QUOTE=cladking]
He claimed he was told this by the Egyptian priests.
[/QUOTE]
Who had, what? Passed the information down, father to son or whatever for 2000 YEARS?? They weren’t building pyramids by the time these priests supposedly told him anything and hadn’t for a long, LONG time. Literally thousands of years. The Old Kingdom collapsed in 2181 BCE…1756 years before Herodotus death in 425 BCE. Heck, by the time of Herodotus there had been multiple successor states that had risen and fallen. Even if Herodotus actually was told by priests and even if these priests believed what they were telling him why do you think they would have known what they were talking about?? I don’t think you are grasping the amount of time involved in all of this and how much Egypt had changed during this huge stretch of time. We probably know more today about the Old Kingdom than the supposed priests of Herodotus time knew.
It’s considerations exactly like this that lead me to believe that all recorded history since 2000 BC is predicated on ancient concepts and misunderstandings of ancient language. It is this confusion of ancient ideas that hides the facts from us as surely as modern language masks them.
Ancient language was a sort of mnemonic for all human knowledge. Anyone who could speak all the language and knew all the names of the “natural phenomena” knew everything and could use it all at the same time. Knowledge wasn’t divided into many specialties and any individual mightlearn everuything by speaking to people who knew more. One of the characteristics of this language and the way it functioned as mnemonic was to ascribe human characteristics to phenomena. By remembering the family tree of the “gods” one had a solid footing for understanding ancient science. Animals are pretty much born with this framework but modern language supplants it.
We percieve this ancient mnemonic as anthropomorphization of nature. We see the ancients as believing nature was like humans but they knew the difference in reality. The lenght of time the sunset grew earlier each day after the solstice was simply defined as the lenght of sixty human heartbeats. The second and minute arose. Of course this language had “dialects” where there were not only pronunciation and vocabulary differences but even “metaphysical” differences. For the main part these dialects were mutually intelligible but it might require some effort. But this language simply can not be translated into modern languages (directly).
This simply suggests that in 500 BC there was still lots of the old writing surviving that couldn’t be properly understood. Indeed, it’s quite apparent that the Greeks acquired and studied this writing and the results are everywhere from the hermetic texts to the Bible. It appears even the outline and some of the “Book of Thot” might be reconstructable. Much of “western civilization” is simply derived from ancient Egypt through the Greeks and then Romans.
This is off topic a little but I believe they also used the stars as mnemonics to remember their history. When writing was invented this was all recorded and then oral tradition ceased. When the language collapsed it was not only science that was lost but history as well. The “luminaries” in human history were forgotten when the last ancient language speaker died. The books were all lost because they couldn’t be translated.
There’s no good reason to suppose that the Egyptian priests couldn’t have given Herodotus a fairly good (if somewhat confused) version of how the pyramids were built. By 500 BC the priests might have thought water spraying out of the earth was an old wives tale so they didn’t repeat it.
Of course I don’t know but if geysers are proven today there wiull be people looking for the answer.
The population was only some 1.5 million. Paying people to spend inordinate amounts of time to make simple objects would have been extremely expensive.
Here’s one of the best sites for this object;
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/egipto/esp_egipto_mist_2c.htm
The author has significant expertise in ancient and modern stoneworking. I don’t agree with most of his opiniuon but do respect his expertise.
I have very very extensive reason and evidence that says this object was a floating oil lamp known as the mks-sceptre and became the origin of the word “god” in most modern languages.
Uh, wanting to know about the author I clicked on the title and the name of the site this claimed to come from and got RickRolled. :mad:
What happened was that Geocities closed in 2009. Well, I do look at the quality of the sources a poster uses to get his/her information, and I’m not impressed at all. Also, bibliotecapleyades was found before in other discussions and threads as a site that pushes too much woo woo.
Known by who else(other than yourself?) Where besides yourself can we find reference to this upside-down lamp and the term “mks-sceptre”?
And yet they did. Proof: They left some of it behind. That object wouldn’t take long. Maybe a month or two. Metasiltstone (as your link calls it because the definition of schist has evolved) is soft and easy to work, taking fine details. Still, it requires an experienced hand, which costs more, but then, as now, rich people like to show off how rich they are.
Why not? You just said he is an expert. Why do you know more than an expert? Are you familiar with the Dunning–Kruger effect?
Um, cite? It’s stone, shallow, with gaping holes in the center and around the edges. It won’t float on anything that is liquid at room temperature except mercury. Your idea that it is a mks-scepter is nonsensical because that’s not what a mekes-scepter is! Let’s ask somebody who actually knows about such things, and has cites and everything:
And I beg you to tell us how the word mks/mekes (the ancient Egyptians invented a lot of things, but vowels? Not so much.) “became the origin of the word ‘god’ in most modern languages,” because I can’t think of any examples of it.
Um…ok then. So, to sum up, you feel that ramps weren’t used because of your own interpretation of Egyptian writings. You feel that the ancients wrote and spoke and thought in completely different ways than we do today, and coded their writings to this thought process…but that you have been able to tune in on it to discover stuff and translate their writings. But you also feel (and I use that word specifically) that even though nearly 2000 years had passed, that the information Herodotus supposedly got from these priests (no other source confirms any of this, as far as I’m aware) was tied into the same, er, wavelength as you and so knew all about this stuff enough to tell him. I’ll leave out all the digression, handwaving and mystical stuff.
Well. That’s interesting, no doubt. Tell you what…when you publish all of this in a peer reviewed journal I’ll certainly look at it. Let me know when you plan to publish and perhaps give us a link to it. Should be interesting to see your translations and theories put to the test, academically…
This is incorrect. Pyramid building was still going on in Sudan.
Lol.
I’ll attribute this to not being well known here. 
I don’t claim to know anything at all. It is my contention that intelligence doesn’t even exist as we understand it and that we mistake “cleverness” which is an event for “intelligence” that is a condition. I believe all true knowledge is visceral and almost everything else is either not true or true from only specific perspectives.
My visceral knowledge is at odds with the conclusions of the author but I can defer to his expertise as to the reasons for his conclusions. The object is not art and is not a ceremonial bowl. I have no reason to doubt most of his other assertions. He’s a careful researcher so is quite likely correct within his field of expertise from his perspective. He’s likelier to be correct than most.
I have very limited visceral knowledge of stone beyond moving it using various methods.
What’s your point? They weren’t building pyramids in the style of the Old Kingdom, nor using the same techniques.
Anyone can make anything sound stupid but for the main part you’re essentially correct except that the priests who told Herodotus how it was built didn’t really understand it themselves. They were relaying ancient wisdom as accurately as they knew how. The ancient language can’t really be translated but you can understand it if you solve it for referents. The meaning can be explained but it can’t be put into modern language. The priests were unfamiliar with many of the referents and misunderstood the scientific words in the same way Egyptologists misunderstand them. They all mistakingly believe natural phenomena are “gods” and the meytaphysics is “magic”.
I love defending "mystical"statements if you’d be so kind as to point out one or a few.
Well, my viscera tell me to listen to people who know something for sure, not ones who listen to an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, or a fragment of underdone potato. (I studied literature, too, on my way to an Archaeology degree!)
ETA: Uh-oh, that invalidates everything I say, doesn’t it? Would it help my credibility if I say I didn’t follow on and make Archaeology my profession? :rolleyes:
Yes, I’ve seen some bad stuff on the site.
I’m much more familiar with the work of Solenhofen than I am with the rest of the site.
You know if you go to the high quality sites concerned with pyramid building they all say “they mustta used ramps” despite the fact ramps are debunked. Everyone needs to think for himself and part of this is screening of information. As I said I doubt his conclusions but respect his expertise and have no reason to doubt his facts.
Indeed they do. They want the finest. If you look at the picture you’ll see center stem is very rough looking and the whole thing is lop sided. It is not functional because the lobes would get in the way of hands.
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/egipto/esp_egipto_mist_2c.htm
This is no work of art today and it was no work of art 5200 years ago.
The object is upside down.
It was used with a large heavy wick in the center which held in the air and wicked up a thin layer of oil floating on the water in the mn-canal. So long as it rocked violently oil would be replenished within it but when it ceased rocking it burned out rapidly.
A funny thing about gut feelings is that there are not the same, some are are more educated than others, I have enough experience to tell you that when the sources you rely on are the pits, then one can dismiss most of what you are coming with.
Debunked? lets see the latest ponderings on the matter in more serious publications:
The BBC does make references to internal ramps, that are also supported by the recent work from Jean Pierre Houdin
So, no the use of ramps was not debunked, you must be stuck in ancient times when some proposed a single very huge ramp. That indeed is an idea that is not much considered nowadays.
Well I have if he is telling us that the use of ramps was debunked.
“Mks-sceptre” was the scientific term and “fire-pan” was the colloquial term.
1961b. he has seen the preparation of the feast, and the preparation of the fire-pan,
1961c. at the birth of the gods, on the five epagomenal days, who are before thee,
The pyramid building gods were born on the five days between the years when the “inundation that tosses on the uplands” was born.
1944a. + 2 (Nt. 777). The time of inundation comes, the wȝg-festival comes, to the uplands, it comes as Osiris.
558a. To say: Bdš.t comes; the fire-pan burns.
558b. Those with (ready) hands stand to give an offering to N.
The fire-pan burned only when it was rocked by the water on top of the first step of the pyramid otherwise it would burn out. Men reported to work if the fire-pan burned right before dawn.
There are countless references to the fire-pan and how it worked. One of the most telling is from the coffin texts;
#1094 I have swamped the fire, I have lightened the darkness among those who come
with offerings when ma’at is brought to him who crosses the waterway.
He lightens the darkness by swamping the fire!!!
This says the same thing;
#1089 I will prepare your path in the sky, and its waters will come down so
that you may navigate your bark in it by night.
The falling waters in the sky light the way at night.
…the way goes over the flames under that which the gods create,
503a. which allows each Horus to glide through, in which N. will glide through, in this flame under that which the gods create.
The route of the stones (each horus) goes over the flames which are on the first step under the gods creating the pyramid.
The scientific name was used only once and the meaning is difficult for me to explain;
134b. (so) thou sittest upon the throne of Osiris, thy ‘bȝ-sceptre in thy hand, thou commandest the living;
134c. (thy) mkś-sceptre and thy nḥb.t-sceptre in thy hand, commanding those of secret places.
The king commands those in secret places (shm and w3s-sceptre operators) only when the ba-sceptre (weir) is in his hand and he can only command with the mks-sceptre by night and the nbht-sceptre by day. One signals water by night and one by day. He must be seated in the upper eye of horus to operate these specific sceptres.
It just goes on and on. The fire-pan probably holds 1.1 gal of water (air) and was kept afloat by the renennutet that channeled CO2 from the upper eye. They used a weir to draw off water so as to save the oil that fueled the lamp and to measure the water pressure which was expressed as “kebehwet” or “cubits of water”. This device was the “light” and early biblical writings seem to allude to it. Of course all the later writings are “confused”.