Posted on 08/12/2012 6:57:33 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
A team of archaeologists excavating a palace in the ancient city of Avaris, in Egypt, has made a gruesome discovery.
The archaeologists have unearthed the skeletons of 16 human hands buried in four pits. Two of the pits, located in front of what is believed to be a throne room, hold one hand each. Two other pits, constructed at a slightly later time in an outer space of the palace, contain the 14 remaining hands.
They are all right hands; there are no lefts.
"Most of the hands are quite large and some of them are very large," Manfred Bietak, project and field director of the excavations, told LiveScience.
The finds, made in the Nile Delta northeast of Cairo, date back about 3,600 years to a time when the Hyksos... a location known today as Tell el-Daba. At the time the hands were buried, the palace was being used by one of the Hyksos rulers, King Khayan...
The hands appear to be the first physical evidence of a practice attested to in ancient Egyptian writing and art, in which a soldier would present the cut-off right hand of an enemy in exchange for gold... a practice undertaken by both the Hyksos and the Egyptians.
One account is written on the tomb wall of Ahmose, son of Ibana, an Egyptian fighting in a campaign against the Hyksos...
Scientists are not certain who started this gruesome tradition. No records of the practice have been found in the Hyksos' likely homeland of northern Canaan, Bietak said..
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
I predict these hands will soon become ‘lost.’
This topic has experienced a wave of popularity.
Unreported here is that his evil rebel twin, Dextrose, would lop off only the left hand of those he vanquished. Hence, the origin of the term ambidextrose! A lot of people don't know that.
Wait ‘til we fully come to grips with it...
/rimshot!
Thou shalt not steal...
...so, they WERE Muslims before there were Muslims? ;-')
***in which a soldier would present the cut-off right hand of an enemy in exchange for gold.***
There are wall paintings in Egypt showing baskets of cut off penes (penises?)of dead enemy soldiers.
Maybe they used them for measuring horses.
On the other hand, you probably wouldn’t want to be the rulers right hand man.
Very interesting paper; thanks for posting the link.
It sounds gruesome, but it was accurate. Often the phrase “I took x number of hands” meant I killed that many...
Sounds like the guy in the tomb was bragging of how many folks he killed, and kept souvenirs.
However, the Hyksos were not Egyptians but Semites, so the idea that it was the punishment of a thief also might be true.
The invaders from Arabia occupied the south of Palestine and simultaneously moved toward Egypt. They conquered Egypt without meeting resistance.
The Amalekite conquerors came from Arabia, but apparently they had Hamitic blood in their veins. They were a nation of herdsmen and roamed with their large herds from field to field.
They mutilated the wounded and the prisoners, cut off limbs, and were unspeakably cruel in many other ways. They stole children and carried off women; they burned cities; they destroyed monuments and objects of art that had survived the catastrophe, and despoiled Egypt of her wealth. They were contemptuous of the religious feelings of the Egyptians.
The Amalekites built a city-fortress on the northeastern border of Egypt. Their chieftains were pharaohs and ruled from their fortress.
AGES IN CHAOS
Unfortunately, Velikovsky so completely turned me off back in the 60s, when I read Worlds In Collision, that I never read anything else he wrote. I didn't even consider it decent science fiction; nor was it as entertaining as Eric Van Danigan's ravings. I just could not get past "comet Venus" spewing carbohydrates onto the earth as the source of the manna during the Wanderings.
To be fair, when in the 70s I read The Late, Great Planet Earth, I was under the impression that it WAS a science fiction satire, and laughed my way through it.
I do like Rohl's Pharaohs And Kings, though I haven't gotten around to reading any of his later materials.
E. W. Bullinger demonstrated similar errors in conventional Biblical dating systems, due to not accounting for overlapping/dual reigns; the Hebrew convention of attributing a full reignal year to a partial calender year, etc.
OTOH, I am only qualified to state that I am a totally unqualified lay man, with just enough reading and course work over the decades to know that the conventional chronologies are badly messed up.
Looks like I'll need to reevaluate, and read Ages In Chaos.
Yes, it’s far from science fiction, you might enjoy Ages in Chaos. And about the natural world, Earth in Upheaval is an eye opener. Guaranteed.
Thanks; I’ll try both.
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