Posted on 11/16/2007 6:59:19 PM PST by blam
Ancient Egypt's fantastic and weird history
By Terry Deary
Last Updated: 2:21am GMT 17/11/2007
Pyramids and Tombs
• Pyramids were a big signal to tell grave robbers where the pharaoh's treasure was hidden. That's why, by Tutankhamun's time, pharaohs were buried underground.
Napoleon's engineers said the stones of the Great Pyramid would build a wall around France
• Some people believe the young Tutankhamun was murdered by his uncle, Ay, who went on to take the throne. But in 2005 the mummy was given an X-ray, and they found he had a broken leg, which probably led to his death.
• Tombs held everything a God would need in the next life, including a toilet. Even the pharaoh's cats were mummified to keep him company.
• Pharaohs were buried with models of their servants. But early pharaohs were buried with real servants - knocked on the head.
• Why does the Sphinx have no nose? Legend says Napoleon's army used it as target practice. The truth is it was wrecked 500 years before by Mohammed Sa'im al-Dahr, a Sufi fanatic.
• In the 1800s, some people believed pyramids could focus invisible forces, preserving dead bodies and even sharpening blunt razor blades. A Czech engineer, Karel Drbal, even patented the idea - in 1959!
• Napoleon's engineers told him the stones of the Great Pyramid would build a one-metre wall around France. Cut into 6cm rods, they'd reach the Moon.
• Pyramids have been said to be all sorts of things: stone computers, observatories for astronomers or astrologers, and, of course, alien landing sites.
• Napoleon entered the Great Pyramid and came out pale and shaking. He refused to speak about it, but hinted he'd seen a vision of his future.
• The Ancient Greeks said the pyramids were built over 10 years by 10,000 slaves. In fact, they were built by 25,000 or so free men, who were well fed with beef and ale - and each one probably took just five years.
Tomb raiders
• Every pyramid discovered in Egypt has been robbed. That's why the discovery of Tutankhamun's rock tomb was so important.
• A caliph of Baghdad broke into the centre of the Great Pyramid. He found Cheops's coffin - but it was empty.
• Tutankhamun's tomb was robbed shortly after he was buried. The thieves appear to have been caught in the act: they dropped a bag of rings in the tunnel they'd dug.
• Lord Carnarvon, who funded the Tutankhamun excavation in 1922, died a year later. As he died, the lights in Cairo failed and his dog back home howled. "It's a curse!" superstitious people claimed.
• Mummies were buried with "Books of the Dead": these weren't full of curses on grave-robbers, but gave advice on how to get on in the afterlife.
• In 1901 a British historian, Flinders Petrie, was exploring Pharaoh Djer's tomb. He found an arm wrapped in bandages that had been stuffed into a crack in the wall, perhaps by an early robber.
• A robber in the 1880s was caught after selling the treasures of 30 mummies. The Egyptian government "forgot" about his theft and gave him a job… as a guide, showing tourists round the tombs.
• In 1944, a robber reached into a coffin to steal some gold. The lid fell and trapped him, then the roof fell in and killed him. They know when he died because they found that day's newspaper in his skeleton's tattered coat.
• So many mummies were dug up in the 1800s that they had no value: some were even used in the boilers of railway engines.
• The sinking of the Titanic has been blamed on a curse from a mummified priestess that was being shipped to America. It's a great story, but not true.
Mummies
• Mummies were embalmed in a special tent or house called "The Beautiful House". Nice name for a butcher shop.
• If clumsy priests knocked off the fingers or toes, they would replace them with a wooden spare part.
• To make a mummy, "they first take an iron hook and draw out the brain through the nostril" - at least according to the Greek historian Herodotus.
• The eyes can be replaced by black stones - though for Ramesses IV, they used small onions (it's enough to make you weep…).
• The spirit of the mummified pharaoh had to pass through the Duat, a place of boiling lakes, rivers of fire and poisonous spitting snakes.
• From the 1300s, people ground mummies into powder as a cure for illnesses.
• King Charles II would collect the dust that fell off mummies. He used it on his skin, believing the "greatness" would rub off.
• "Mummy" is an ingredient in the Witches' brew in Macbeth.
• In Victorian England, people flocked to watch a Dr Pettigrew unwrap a mummy at the Royal College of Surgeons. Places were so scarce that even the Archbishop of Canterbury was turned away.
• Stolen mummies were sent to the US in the 1890s to be mashed and made into wrapping paper. But customers started to die of cholera. The mummies' revenge!
Pharaohs
• Some historians think the first pharaohs were invaders from the East (and some potty historians say they were from another planet!).
• Early pharaohs would marry every royal princess to make sure there would be no young rivals born.
• After a pharaoh had ruled for 30 years, he had to prove his fitness by running around a fixed course.
• Scribes described Ramesses II's great victory over the Hittites at Qadesh in Syria… even though the Hittites won. Was this the oldest case of spin-doctoring?
• King Pepy II came to the throne aged nine, and ruled until he was 100. They say he had a great system for avoiding insects: he would cover a slave in honey. Flies swarmed to the slave and left Pepy in peace.
• Pharaoh Hatshepsut, a woman, wore a wig on her chin so she looked like a man. Later kings were so shocked at the thought of a woman ruler that they hacked her name off monuments.
• Thutmose II was a great pharaoh who conquered all of Egypt's enemies. But he had a few close shaves: in Syria, he was almost trampled to death by a herd of wild elephants.
• In 1375BC King Akhenaten argued with his daughter and sent her for execution. He also cut off a hand, so she couldn't go into the afterlife.
• In the 16th century BC, Tao and his Egyptians rose up against invaders known as the Hyksos. The skull of his mummy showed wounds from a dagger, an axe, a spear and a mace.
• Egypt's most famous queen, Cleopatra, was a Greek.
Peasants
• Egypt had the world's first bakeries... around 2000 BC.
• Peasants weren't allowed to call pharaohs by their name: they were gods. Even "pharaoh" means "great house", because his body is the house of god.
• Labourers had to pay taxes to keep the Nile's irrigation ditches clear. Tax dodgers were whipped.
• Peasants were not "slaves" – but, like cattle, they were counted as part of a landowner's wealth.
• A really lazy peasant could be punished by having a finger or toe chopped off.
• The world's first labour strike was held on the site of a pyramid.
• Peasants ate bread that was so coarse it wore away their teeth.
• Egyptians made the first sweets in the world: they came from dates picked from trees by trained baboons.
• A "cure" for blindness was to mash a pig's eye, mix it with red ochre and pour it into the patient's ear. A bag of mouse bones, fastened round the neck, cured bed-wetting.
• Peasant children were set to work in the fields as soon as they could walk. They acted as scarecrows.
'Horrible Histories: The Awful Egyptians and The Awesome Egyptians' (Scholastic) are available for £4.99 each plus 99p p&p per order. Please call Telegraph Books on 0870 428 4112 or visit www.books.telegraph.co.uk.
Craig Brown is away.
GGG Ping.
I know Dr. Zahi A. Hawass thinks they were built by willing construction workers whom were very well treated and very well paid. Heck he makes it sound like a day at the beach!
But if you look at their illustrations of construction going on, it looks far less pleasant that the good Dr. Hawass would lead you to believe.
Maybe for their general construction they used slaves but for the pyramids they used voluntary workers...;->
ping
One of those claims that always sounds phony to me. Ran some (very rough) numbers and it turns out to be true. Something around 800 to 900 cubic meters of rock would be available for each of the roughly 3000 kilometers of the perimeter of France.
Of course, it depends on how you define "around France"...
We know different from forensic science performed on Mummies. Their lives were often short, ( 40 was old age for most commoners), malnourished ( food availability was driven by season and regional famine, with poor transportation), full of sickness ( the flue and a common cold could kill you,and VD was so rampant at times that marriage was no guarantee against it), overwork ( dawn to dusk for peasants and their children), and episodes of terrifying violence ( when an army conquerd, it killed everyone, pillaged , burned and then salted the earth.)
It all sounds just like what George Bush has brought about, according to Liberals.
Liberal scientists are now upon us. May they all rot sooner than they think possible, and may DT Suzuki be among the first.
Yeah, Zowie is just full of it on that score, and he’s forced everyone who wants to work in Egypt to toe the party line on that and everything else he spouts. It’s a joke.
“Oh, they had no choice, but they weren’t slaves.”
“Oh, there were bakeries by the hundreds to make bread, so all of the ‘workers’ were free men and women.”
Y’know, because slaves can go twenty years without bread. ;’)
"all of Upper Egypt was dying of hunger to such a degree that everyone had come to eating their children".
Boo...
OK, so it’s late (right coast time that is)
Actually I think the battle of Qadesh was more of a draw than a Hittite victory. Ramses the Great did call it a victory and it is probably true that he almost lost but fought his way back to a dignified withdrawal.
it was wrecked 500 years before by Mohammed Sa’im al-Dahr, a Sufi fanatic
Some things never change
Some people believe the young Tutankhamun was murdered by his uncle, Ay, who went on to take the throne. But in 2005 the mummy was given an X-ray, and they found he had a broken leg, which probably led to his death.Of course, there's also a little-known inscription in Tut's tomb, translates as, "my uncle broke my leg! Help!"
Why does the Sphinx have no nose? Legend says Napoleon's army used it as target practice. The truth is it was wrecked 500 years before by Mohammed Sa'im al-Dahr, a Sufi fanatic.Wow, what a surprise...
The Ancient Greeks said the pyramids were built over 10 years by 10,000 slaves. In fact, they were built by 25,000 or so free men, who were well fed with beef and ale - and each one probably took just five years.Huh? Herodotus (the only surviving account, I believe) reports that the *ancient Egyptians* told him the Great Pyramid took over twenty years, 25? Anyway, this lower figure is more nonsense from Zowie, who claims that the number of stones in the Great Pyramid is about 500,000, and on average they weigh between 1000 and 2000 pounds each. There's basically no one I've ever heard of who follows this particular line of bull -- the generally accepted numbers are 2 1/2 million stones of 1 to 2 tons each (not to mention the massive stones used for the Grand Gallery and the known chambers). KMT had a scholarly article about five years ago which puts the number at about 4 million stones, but of varying sizes and weights. The number of slaves (yes, slaves) employed in the construction of the Great Pyramid have been estimated (since no one knows) as high as 100,000, which is probably more in line with reality (considering that a lot of quarrying and transporting had to be done offsite).
Stolen mummies were sent to the US in the 1890s to be mashed and made into wrapping paper. But customers started to die of cholera. The mummies' revenge!I've read that typhus also lives in old latrine sites for thousands of years.
Some historians think the first pharaohs were invaders from the EastDavid Rohl wrote a book about this; I think, in general, it's believed that pharaonic culture came from the western desert, y'know, before it was desert, moving into the Nile valley as the Sahara dried out.
Some historians think the first pharaohs were invaders from the EastDavid Rohl wrote a book about this; I think, in general, it's believed that pharaonic culture came from the western desert, y'know, before it was desert, moving into the Nile valley as the Sahara dried out.
Whoops, sorry about that duplicate paragraph. :’)
Scribes described Ramesses II's great victory over the Hittites at Qadesh in Syria… even though the Hittites won. Was this the oldest case of spin-doctoring?:') Ramesses II (who was quite young at the time) was suckered into thinking that his adversary was far off, when in fact he was close by and ready to strike with numerical superiority. Ramesses II took part of his army farther toward his objective, hoping to grab it before the enemy could get near, then learned his mistake and (apparently) sent back for the rest of the army to hurry up. The enemy struck, and Ramesses II cut his way out aboard his chariot, reached the other half of his army, and beat a retreat while the other half was slaughtered. There's a nice video discussion about this on that Empires: Egypt disk (PBS I think), in which Kent Weeks describes it pretty accurately, but with some sensitivity toward Zowie's nutty praise of Ramesses II.
Theban Mapping Project (Valley of the Kings etc)
Theban Mapping Project | 1980s to present | Kent Weeks et al
Posted on 01/13/2005 11:03:55 PM EST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1320504/posts
“Peasants ate bread that was so coarse it wore away their teeth”
The reason for tooth wear was that the grinding stones used left stone grit in the flour.
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Thanks Blam. |
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