Re: Strange Maths (was Re: Why not 13 months?)
Doug Merritt (doug@netcom.com)
Sun, 23 Jul 1995 17:30:02 GMT
In article <3urtmj$jk7@shore.shore.net> Whittet@shore.net (Whittet) writes:
>I want you to think of this in terms of what an Egyptian of the 4th Dynasty
>has to work with. The wheel hasn't been introduced to Egypt, what you are
>looking at is an artifact of a people to whom accuracy in measurement was
>sacred. It was what was right and proper and expected.
You challenged someone to explain 51d51'. Doing so is my only personal
interest in the thread at the moment. Now you say my explanation can't
work, because the wheel hasn't been introduced to Egypt. This is
just wrong. It is true that they do not have the chariot nor the
wheeled cart as used for transportation. However, predynastic pottery was
made on a potter's wheel. Children's toys of the era have wheels. Temples
have columns constructed from cylindrical blocks, which surely were rolled
into place, and could all by themselves have been used as a rolling
measurement device. They had the wheel, alright.
So your rebuttal is wrong, and the 51d51' angle is perfectly understandable.
As for your comments about Maat and its implications as to their
worship of measurement, I think that this is merely misleading,
for one thing because it incorrectly emphasizes the role of
measurement in Maat, which is a far wider and deeper concept than
that in their culture, and for another because it causes you to digress
away from perfectly ordinary construction techniques.
>I don't want glib thoughtless solutions that spin wheels. If you think all
>the answers are in some book, or a TV program you can watch for 15 minutes
>and understand the marvelous sophistication this building incorporates in
>its proportions, you must be tuned to a channel I don't get yet.
I do not think that the construction of the pyramids was in any
sense trivial, and that is why my interest in this debate is focussed;
if I addressed every issue you raised, we could be at this for years.
I think it suffices for me to pick one of your points and illustrate
that you are under-informed and wrong, and that's what I've done.
Besides, I'm addressing this from sci.physics, and the 51d51' angle
is the only aspect of this thread that remotely justifies a crossposting
here.
I don't even want to know what your underlying agenda is. It's clear
that you believe in some oddball theory, like that the pyramids are
actually 10000 years old, or that they were built by Atlantians or
space aliens or something. I don't know and don't care what your
theory is; I just see that as part of that, you are intent on rebutting
nominal archaeological theory, and I think it's equally clear that
you have insufficient grounds for doing so.
>Although I have been studying the architecture and archaeology of this
>monument for a quarter of a century
Fine, good thing to do. Keep it up.
Doug
--
Doug Merritt doug@netcom.com
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