...
Post A Reply
my profile
|
directory
login
|
register
|
search
|
faq
|
forum home
»
EgyptSearch Forums
»
Deshret
»
Africa: A continent of "Land-Lubbers" ??
» Post A Reply
Post A Reply
Login Name:
Password:
Message Icon:
Message:
HTML is not enabled.
UBB Code™ is enabled.
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Doug M: [QB] Thanks Guys. Another thing I realized later after making my earlier posts, is that the Boat pits featuring boats on mooring devices to stand upright ARE DRY DOCKS. So there you have it right there, ancient boat pits from Egypt are some of the oldest "dry docks" in the world. But unless you get out of the Eurocentric or Hellenocentric mindset you won't see this. Remember many boat pits were associated also with canals and causeways that led to temples and other important sanctuaries which possibly had some sort of mechanism to cut off the water and leave the boat resting on a foundation. This would mean that some boat pits had boats in them that were NOT dissasembled and therefore sat in "dry dock". http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/greatpyramid5.htm [QUOTE] Equally important was the funerary boat, which transported a mummy to its final resting place or, if buried with the deceased, took soul of the dead on its eternal journey. Ahmed Youssef Moustafa believed that the Royal Ship was specifically built as a funerary barque for Cheops and was never part of the royal fleet. [b] Part of the reason for this belief is that ocean-going vessels were usually painted green on the body with yellow ochre at the ends and the protective wedjat eye painted on both sides of the bow. [/b] This is in direct contrast to the hull of the Royal Ship, which is unpainted, indicating that the ship was built quickly and specifically for the king’s burial. [/QUOTE]From: http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/aboat.htm Early sun temples from the old kingdom featured such boats. These temples are also important to understanding the development of the calendar and timekeeping in Egypt. The fact that they all featured obelisks as their central element, indicates to me that they were tracking time and the seasons using the obelisk as a reference for shadows and so forth. Many of these sun temples were also aligned accurately to the cardinal directions, again an indication of their use for time keeping and recording the suns journey through the sky over the course of the year. Another thing that I see in this tradition of sun temples is the obelisk as a refinement of the concept of megaliths that had arisen in the area of Nabta Playa. Just as Nabta Playa used megalithic stones to record the seasons, the solar soltice and possibly time, the sun temples seem to be also doing the same thing. The presence of elaborate offering chambers and vessels for sacrifices of cattle at these sun temples also seems to be another continuation of a tradition that was found in Nabta Playa. [QUOTE] The alter itself, directly in front of (east) of the obelisk, was laid out in the open courtyard approximately in the center of the temple. It is a complex object, made up of five huge alabaster blocks. The central block's upper surface is carved in a 1.8 meter (6 foot) diameter circular form, which may symbolize a rounded offering table or a stylized hieroglyphic sign for Re, the sun god. The four later blocks, each facing cardinal points, have surfaces carved in the form of the hieroglyphic symbol hetep, which means "offering" or "offering table," but might also be translated as "peace" or Another view of the pedestal"satisfied." Hence, the altar might symbolically be read as, 'Re is satisfied' in the four principal directions. This offering table today remains in a good state of preservation, and represents the most beautiful example of its type from all eras of Egyptian history. This alter was situated at the eastern foot of an immense stone pedestal some 20 meters high. Surmounting this pedestal was a 36 meter high obelisk. The pedestal itself, built of limestone blocks with red granite casing, took the form of a truncated pyramid. Southwest of the altar at the south east corner of the pedestal, was an opening into the dedication chapel, which also allowed access to the "chamber of the seasons". Within the T-shaped entrance vestibule of the temple enclosure are five granite lined doorways. Those in the center lead into the courtyard. Those to the side opened into corridors that lead off to the right and left, A granite pillar at the site of Niuserre's Sun Temple inscribed with his cartoucheskirting the courtyard. The right corridor appears to lead around the edge of the courtyard to the storage annexes. On this corridor's east end was a stairway that led to the roof terrace. The corridor to the left (south) lead completely around the courtyard finally providing access first to the "chamber of the seasons" and then the dedication chapel. The "chamber of the seasons" included fine, low relief depictions known as the "Seasons", which portray the changing seasons of inundation and harvest. Doubtless present, but now gone, were reliefs of the third part of the year, the season of emergence (of the fields from the flood or the crops from the ground). However, von Bissing removed these reliefs and transported them to Germany where today they make up one of the most valuable exhibits of the Egyptian Museum in Berlin. Just in front (east) of the "chamber of the seasons" was a small chapel decorated with scenes of the dedication of the temple. Unfortunately, these reliefs were applied to poor stone enhanced with a coating of lime plaster and were in poor condition. Both the entrance and the outside corridors were decorated with Sed-festival scenes, including some of the earliest that we know of, presumably oriented towards the king and his relationship with Re. [/QUOTE]From: http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/niuserresuntemple.htm [QUOTE] Located 100 km west of Abu Simbel, in southernmost Egypt, Nabta Playa is a large, internally drained basin, which during the early Holocene ( ca. 11,000 - 5500 calibrated radiocarbon years ago) was a large and important ceremonial center for prehistoric people. It was intermittently and seasonally filled with water, which encouraged people to come there, and today it contains dozens, and perhaps hundreds, of archaeological sites. People came from many regions to Nabta Playa to record astronomical events, erect alignments of megaliths, and build impressive stone structures. From around 65,000 years ago until about 12,000 years ago the Western Desert was hyper-arid, at least as dry as today and perhaps drier. This began to change after 12,000 years ago when the summer rains of tropical Africa began to move northward, bringing sufficient moisture for a wide variety of sahelian grasses, trees and bushes to grow, and for a few small animals to exist, mostly hares and small gazelle, but also including a few small carnivores. Even with the rains it was still very dry; the annual rainfall was no more than 100 - 150 mm per year, and it was unpredictable and punctuated with numerous droughts, some of which caused the desert to be abandoned for lengthy periods. The earliest (11,000 - 9300 years ago, calibrated) settlements at Nabta were composed of small seasonal camps of cattle-herding and ceramic-using people. These early cattle are regarded as domestic (Wendorf and Schild 1994), and it may have been in the Western Desert that the African pattern of cattle herding developed, wherein cattle serve as a "walking larder" and provide milk and blood, rather than meat (except for ceremonial occasions) and are the economic basis for power and prestige. Pottery is very rare in these sites, but distinctive. It is decorated over the entire exterior with complex patterns of impressions applied with a comb in a rocking motion. The source of this pottery has not been identified, but it is among the oldest known in Africa, and older than pottery in Southwest Asia. These early people probably came into the desert after the summer rains from either farther south or the adjacent Nile Valley, in either case searching for pasture for their cattle. Each fall, when the surface water in the playas dried up and there was no water for them or their cattle, they had to return to the Nile, or perhaps to the better watered areas to the south. By 9000 years ago (8000 bp, uncalibrated), the settlements were much larger, and their inhabitants were able to live in the desert year-round, digging large, deep wells and living in organized villages consisting of small huts arranged in straight lines. The many plant remains in these sites tell us they were collecting large numbers of edible wild plants, including sorghum, millets, legumes, tubers, and fruits. Around 8800 years ago (7800 bp, uncalibrated), they began to make pottery locally, possibly the earliest pottery in Egypt. A few hundred years later, around 8100 years ago (7100 bp, uncalibrated), sheep and goats occur for the first time at Nabta, almost certainly introduced from Southwest Asia, where domestic caprovids had been known for over 2000 years. There must have been many changes in the settlement system to accommodate these new animals; the settlements are very large and contain numerous hearths, but there is no evidence of huts or houses. A major change occurred in the character of the Neolithic society at Nabta occurred around 7500 years ago, following a major drought which drove the previous groups from the desert. The groups who returned to the desert now clearly had a complex social system that expressed a degree of organization and control not previously seen in Egypt. They sacrificed young cows and buried them in clay-lined and roofed chambers covered by rough stone tumuli, they erected alignments of large, unshaped stones, they built Egypt's earliest astronomical measuring device (a "calendar circle" which appears to have been used to mark the summer solstice), and they constructed more than 30 complex structures having both surface and subterranean features. A shaped stone from one of these complexes may be the oldest known sculpture in Egypt. These structures are important because they indicate the way the people were able to organize work, celebrate their culture, and perhaps express their religious beliefs, and furthermore, they tell us that the Saharan people may have been more highly organized than their contemporaries in the Nile Valley. [/QUOTE]From: http://www.comp-archaeology.org/WendorfSAA98.html [/QB][/QUOTE]
Instant Graemlins
Instant UBB Code™
What is UBB Code™?
Options
Disable Graemlins in this post.
*** Click here to review this topic. ***
Contact Us
|
EgyptSearch!
(c) 2015 EgyptSearch.com
Powered by UBB.classic™ 6.7.3