Egyptian Dreams

Eio · Citizen Joined: 04 Jun 2014 Posts: 12

It is quite common to see all sorts of articles in the press trying to diagnose ancient Egyptians with various diseases from 'modern perspective'. Most of this stuff seems to be just nonsense IMHO.

Cheers,

Eio
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The Past is Here

Ankhetmaatre · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2014 2:39 pm Post subject:

The earliest potential case of smallpox recorded was found on the mummy of Ramses V, according to Dr. Donald Hopkins*. Unfortunately, even that diagnoses was inconclusive. But frankly, the logic of this speculation escapes me. Even if some Egyptian royals did contract smallpox, in what way does that create evidence for the biblical exodus? Or a scarab of Seti I being found in a biblically referenced Canaanite site, for that matter? It's evidence of something we already knew, certainly - that Seti I had extensive influence in both Egypt and the Levant. Anything else is wild speculation that files in the face of deductive reasoning. There is no evidence of any wide scale migration of an ethnically coherent group moving across the Sinai desert during the New Kingdom period of Ancient Egyptian history. An event that, by rights, should have left a great many artifacts and campfire sites.

It will be very interesting to see if any conclusive DNA testing can be done. According to the article at the beginning of the thread, the burial seems to be very Egyptian.

* http://whqlibdoc.who.int/smallpox/WH_5_1980_p22.pdf
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Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured
~Samuel Langhorne Clemens

Ankhetmaatre · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2014 2:54 pm Post subject:

Sorry, didn't realize that we were directed to move the topic in a different direction!
And on that note, what's really fascinating about this discovery, IMO, is the clay coffins. I wonder if clay was a stand-in for wood because of the expense of wood in that area or because it simply couldn't be had. Clay does have preservative qualities though. Many Native American artifacts are found preserved this way, interestingly.
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Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured
~Samuel Langhorne Clemens

Robson · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2014 3:00 pm Post subject:

Lutz · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2014 3:48 pm Post subject:

Lutz · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2014 3:56 pm Post subject:

Ankhetmaatre · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2014 4:00 pm Post subject:

Thanks, Lutz. I didn't know that clay was used for coffins past the the early dynasties.
_________________
Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured
~Samuel Langhorne Clemens

Lutz · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2014 4:44 pm Post subject:

Lutz · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2014 4:53 pm Post subject:

Second link, direct to PDF, seems not to work ... Try this one :

"Bulletin de liaison du groupe international d'étude de la céramique égyptienne"

and scroll down. "Bulletin de la céramique égyptienne XVIII" is online for download.

Greetings, Lutz.
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Ägyptologie Forum (German)

Eio · Citizen Joined: 04 Jun 2014 Posts: 12

Greetings, all,

Earlier I wrote,

″But of course there remains the possibility that Sarid was already there before Seti I. Do we have some evidence of this?″

And now, I'm providing the answer to this question. Yes, indeed, there's plenty of evidence that Sarid was there already before Seti I. In fact, it was already there in the Early Bronze age II. This typically means ca 3000 BC.

According to this site, there were two strata,

http://daahl.ucsd.edu/DAAHL/SitesBrowseView.php?SiteNo=353202479&mode=browse&user=

It's a Multi-Period Stratified Site; 5 hectares in size; dating to EB II and EB III.

Based on this,

http://www.antiquities.org.il/about_eng.asp?Modul_id=14

There was much Egyptian colonization in the area, and plenty of similar stuff was already found before. The nearby Bet She‘an was a big Egyptian administrative centre.

″A cemetery dating to the reign of Seti was previously discovered at Bet Sheʽan, the center of the Egyptian rule in the Land of Israel, and similar clay coffins were exposed. Evidence of an Egyptian presence was detected in archaeological surveys conducted in the Jezreel Valley in the past″

And here's a detailed article on the subject,

En-Shadud: An Early Bronze I Farming Community in the Jezreel Valley / Braun Eliot ; Gibson Shimon. — [12 p.] In : Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (BASOR), ISSN 0003-097X. - (1984) vol.253 WINTER, p.29-40 http://www.jstor.org/stable/1356937

All the best,

Eio
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The Past is Here

Ankhetmaatre · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2014 6:23 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the updated link, Lutz. 51€ ($70) is more than I want to pay to download an article at the moment, though I'm pretty sure I can come by it another route now that I know the name, merci beaucoup. Wink

Very interesting links, Eio. Here is another along those lines: overview of the late Bronze Age (in Egypt in Palestine) - http://www.bu.edu/anep/LB.html

Of particular interest to the topic is the section entitled, "The Canaanites And Their Contributions: burial practices" this anthropoid coffin lid is very much like the one in the article above: http://www.bu.edu/anep/BethShanCoffinT227.gif
_________________
Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured
~Samuel Langhorne Clemens

Lutz · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2014 7:48 pm Post subject:

Ankhetmaatre · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2014 8:02 pm Post subject:

LOL I was looking at 24! Which for some reason they wanted to charge me 51€ for when I went to download it... no doubt user error somewhere along the line since I had several articles open - May have clicked to wrong one.
_________________
Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured
~Samuel Langhorne Clemens