Archaeologists To Ben Carson: Ancient Egyptians Wrote Down Why The Pyramids Were Built

Yesterday, November 4, marked 93 years to the day that the tomb of King Tutankhamen was opened in Egypt, revealing spectacular artifacts and a magnificent mummy of the boy king. The celebration was somewhat marred, at least here in the U.S., by a leading Republican candidate for president, former neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who confirmed a statement he'd made in 1998 - that he believes the Egyptian pyramids were grain silos, not tombs.

The collective reaction from archaeologists and historians, who have command of literally centuries' worth of research into the artifacts and literature of the ancient Egyptians, is... Wait, what now?

Carson said in his 1998 talk at Andrews University, a Seventh-Day Adventist-affiliated university, "And when you look at the way that the pyramids were made, with many chambers that are hermetically sealed, they'd have to be that way for various reasons. And various of scientists [sic] have said, 'Well, you know there were alien beings that came down and they have special knowledge and that's how, you know, it doesn't require an alien being when God is with you.'"

Just to be clear, no scientists think that aliens built the pyramids. There is a small but vocal contingent of people who believe in pseudoarchaeological explanations, but archaeologists have dismantled those harebrained theories at every possible turn. (See, for example, my piece, "What Archaeologists Really Think about Ancient Aliens, Lost Colonies, and Fingerprints of the Gods.") So while it may look good for Carson to deny alien involvement in pyramid building, he also attributes them to a white guy rather than, well, the ancient Egyptians.

Tut died/was killed in his late teens, I think. He had no time to arrange his eternal resting place. They had to put something together in a hurry. Then there was apparently a small scale tomb robbery, and they sealed it up again. Before they could go back and do anything more appropriate, the large deposition of flood debris covered it up possibly within the same year. I have read elsewhere that Horemheb, the next ruler may have had it in for the family, and who knows how busy they may have been struggling with one another. It’s not like they could just get a few moving trucks and cars and run out there to fix things. Planning had to be fairly elaborate and subject to who knows what scheming and sabotage. OK, I found a link, Horemheb, commander of the Army was in Asia (probably meant the Middle East) when Tut died. Ay, Tut’s vizier took over for 4 years. The kingdom had been in a state of turmoil for a while because of Akenaten’s radical “one god” changes and new city of Amarna. The priests of Amen fought this and when Horemheb came back several years later kicked Ay out and tried to erase his memorials. See this interesting article for all the complicated details:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horemheb

Nope, no flood deposit.

Horemheb didn’t succeed Ai. He lived over a century later. There’s a complete blank regarding his origin or details of his life, until he came to power, so there has been an invention of a former career. He was a viceroy, ruling over Egypt under the Assyrian king, and the Assyrian period followed the Ethiopian or Nubian dynasty.

The 18th Dynasty died out (the Amarna period was a pretty nasty denouement),

http://www.varchive.org/tac/seqdyn.htm

> The so-called Nineteenth Dynasty will be found to have been displaced not only by the five hundred and forty years of error in the dating of the Eighteenth Dynasty, but also by an additional one hundred and seventy years — the duration of the Libyan and Ethiopian dominations over Egypt: and the total error will be found reaching the huge figure of seven hundred years.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1774343/posts

> four blue-glazed jars [the pharaoh’s canopic jars, from his tomb] bearing the nametag [cartouche] of Rameses II (1302-1213 B.C.)... actually contained an aromatic salve, while a second jar held the organs of an entirely different person who lived around 760 years later.

— nearly 800 years, which is the figure V derived by the time “Ramses II and His Time” was published. RC dating has always supported his chronology and has so undermined the conventional pseudochronology that it has led Zahi “Zowie” Hawass to claim that RC dating “doesn’t work” in Egypt.

Joseph and Potiphar by Immanuel Velikovsky
...realizing that the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt took place not during the New Kingdom but during the preceding Middle Kingdom, in order to find out whether the personality of Joseph or the patron of the early stage of his career, Potiphar, is referred to in the historical documents, we have to look into those of the Middle Kingdom. The task appears simple. According to the Book of Genesis Potiphar was "an officer of Pharaoh, captain of the guard." In the register of the private names to the Ancient Records of Egypt by James Breasted, we find the name Ptahwer.

Ptahwer was at the service of the Pharaoh Amenemhet III of the Twelfth Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom. According to an inscription of Ptahwer at Sarbut el-Khadem in Sinai dated in the forty-fifth year of Amenemhet III, his office was that of "master of the double cabinet, chief of the treasury." Ptahwer's text reads:
I was one sent to bring plentiful ____ from the land of ____, ready in his reports to his lord, delivering Asia to him who is in the palace, bringing Sinai at his heels, traversing inaccessible valleys, bringing unknown extremities (of the world), the master of the double cabinet, chief of the treasury, Ptahwer, triumphant, born of Yata.
The inscription records the successful accomplishment of some peaceful expedition. Since there is only one Ptahwer in the historical documents, and since he lived in the time when we expect to find him, we are probably not wrong in identifying the biblical Potiphar with the historical Ptahwer.

This being the conclusion concerning Potiphar, we are curious to find whether any mention of Joseph is found in historical documents, too. the fact that from the great and glorious age of the Middle Kingdom only a very few historical inscriptions are extant. Since a great famine took place in the days of Joseph, it is, of course, important to trace such a famine in the age of which we speak. In the days of Amenemhet III there occurred in Egypt a famine enduring nine long years. Of this period we have a revealing document, which reads:

With these expressions the words of the Scriptures can be compared (Genesis 41:54):
And the seven years of dearth began to come, according as Joseph had said; and the dearth was in all lands; but in the land of Egypt there was bread.
Thus it seems that the Pharaoh in whose days was the seven years' famine was the successor of the Pharaoh in whose days began the rise of Joseph's career (if Yatu is Joseph). Potiphar, who lived under Amenemhet III, probably lived also under his successor.

The inscription which deals with Ptahwer mentions a man whose name is transliterated by Breasted as Y-t-w. Among the monuments of Amenemhet III's reign is one of the Storekeeper who was honored together with two other persons, and , with a royal If we remember that according to the Scriptural narrative Joseph was appointed storekeeper of the State (Gen. 41:40-41) in anticipation of the seven lean years, with the powers of a chief Minister of State or Vice-King, we may suspect in Yatu the Biblical Joseph. In the Scriptures it is said that his name was changed by Pharaoh to Zaphnath-paaneah, but still his original name may have been in use until he became next to the Pharaoh in importance.

The inscription that mentions Ptahwer refers to his activity in the mines of the Sinai peninsula. In this respect it is of interest to find that the Jewish traditions connect Joseph with the area of the Sinai Peninsula saying that he kept a large quantity of treasuries near Baal Zaphon, the scene of the Passage of the Sea.

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