Darwin's Beagle

Hi,

I am engaged in a discussion with a fundamentalist concerning whether or not the inerrant fundamentalist God philosophy makes any sense whatsoever.

A big part of his support for biblical inerrancy seems to lie with archaeological support for statements in the bible. I pointed out that there was no archaeological support for the exodus or that Jews were the makers of the pyramids. He has given me a long list of fundamentalist websites that say just the opposite. My information is from informal reading I did a long time ago and I dont remember the details. Furthermore, history is not my strong suit. Can anybody help me out with a brief synopsis of reliable information?

Thanks in advance

Darwin's Beagle

Vorkosigan

There's lots of good stuff out there.

For who really built the Pyramids, the Nova site has lots of good stuff. Click on 'Table of Contents' and you will soon arrive at Who Built the Pyramids?. That explains in some detail who did it, and how we know. The builders were neither Jews nor slaves.

"Were these militaristic kinds of conscripts? Certainly they weren't slaves. Could they actually have been natural communities of the Nile Valley kind of contributing like the way the Inca build their bridges and so on? .....So the phyles then are subdivided into divisions. And the divisions are identified by single hieroglyphs with names that mean things like endurance, perfection, strong. OK, so how do we know this -- you come to a block of stone in the relieving chambers above the Great Pyramid. And first of all you see this cartouche of a King and then some scrawls all in red paint after it. That's the gang name. And in the Old Kingdom in the time of the Pyramids of Giza, the gangs were named after kings. So for example, we have a name, compounded with the name of Menkaure, and it seems to translate 'the drunks or the drunkards of Menkaure.' There's one that's well attested, actually in the relieving chambers above the Great Pyramid, the Friends of Khufu gang, the Drunks of Menkaura gang, and then you have the green phyles and then the powerful ones. None of this sounds like slavery, does it?"

EstherRose

Sorry not following here. How does the scrawl of gang names in a relieving chamber prove they weren't slaves? Now if you were to show me on any of the thousands of ostraca the sum paid in wages to a laborer on the pyramids and for that particular Pharoah...

Doctor X

Darwin's Beagle:

Wandereth over to the thread:

UR

where I quote a section on evidence against an Exodus. I also link in some great texts.

--J.D.

Soul Invictus

EstherRose,

That quote you entered is interesting to speak on makes for dialogue, however I'm finding a different quote of more material value.

"NOVA: From your excavations of the workers' cemetery you say you found skeletons. Did you analyze the bones, and if so, what did you learn about the workmen?

HAWASS: We found 600 skeletons. And we found that those people, number one, they were Egyptians, the same like you see in every cemetery in Egypt. Number two, we found evidence that those people had emergency treatment. They had accidents during building the pyramids. And we found 12 skeletons who had accidents with their hands. And they supported the two sides of the hand with wood. And we have another one, a stone fell down on his leg, and they made a kind of operation, and they cut his leg and he lived 14 years after that.

NOVA: How do you know that?

HAWASS: Because we have a team here from the National Research Center who are doctors and they use the x-ray and they can find all the evidence about age. They found that the age of death for those workmen were from 30 to 35. Those are the people who really built the pyramids, the poor Egyptians."

I've seen a lot of Hawass on TV. I think this excerpt is material because it rids of the notion that the Israelites built them. (Just in case there are those who give high credence to the historicity of the movie, the Ten Commandments.)

In reference to the "slave" issue, I wish I had Hawass's lecture, as well as a few other experts' talks from the special I saw. They pretty much dispelled the notion of "forced labor" so to speak. Even from the Egyptian course I took in school years ago, I don't once recall them having any type of slave system comparable to one Americans are familiar with. My memory is a bit hazy, however I remember that when I studied on how ancient Egypt and African culture, an example of how an African slave system would work is let's say your tribe caught someone from a warring tribe. You would keep the captured party and they would operate within your system however basic human rights were not denied. They were not treated inhumanely either. It was operating procedure that they could even work out of their servitude and become a free and functional member of society afterwards, so I'm not quite sure of the importance behind if they were slaves or not, when taking their cultural practices into context. Hawass also speaks of the nationalistic nature of the people, so the people found that it was an honor to participate in this type of project...it was endemic to their culture.

EstherRose

Interesting, always was a big fan of Zahi Hawass.

My earlier post was based on Vorkosigan's post. His conclusions did not seem to tally with what he wrote. Now that I have some time, and am not being thrown in several different directions by the family's needs, I have questions of my own.

I'm still not sure what this has to do with slavery of the Jews and building projects.

It is believed by many bible scholars that the Hebrews were not enslaved at first but only later closer to the time of Moses probably after the Hyksos rulers were expelled.

Exodus 1:8 refers to a new king which did not know Joseph. At the end of the Second Intermediate period, the Hyksos were driven out of power and the 18th dynasty of the New Kingdom began around 1539 BCE. This is the time of slaves and slave labor. There was large scale building projects which went on and one pharoah had large amounts of troops guarding the frontier borders. This is long after the time of the pyramids in the Old Kingdom (Khufu is 2551-2528 BCE according to the accepted archaeological timeline). I don't believe the Jews built the pyramids, but they could easily have been used for the later building projects during the New Kingdom.

Do you have evidence for who built the public monuments during that time period?

Clutch

Edit: Ah, never mind.

livius drusus

EstherRose, the paucity of historical evidence for the Exodus has been the subject of several fascinating threads I think you might enjoy perusing. Some of my favorites include:

• Why is there no record of an exodus in egyptian history, covers a wide range of theories.
• Vanderzyden's argument from Brooklyn Papyrus, Hebrew slaves in Egypt, particularly Mfaber's scalpel of a post.
• The Exodus......possible or not?, DavidH's cut of whole cloth theory utterly decimated by Mendeh.

I should warn you however, it is truly engrossing reading. You better lock the door and post a warning to keep those meddling family members of yours from interrupting.

Marduk

It would have been impossible for Jews to have built the Pyramids. They were constructed 4600 years ago, long before Abraham would have been born (even by a Biblical timeline) They would have been Ante-diluvian, long before there were any Jews. I have never before heard anyone, even a Fundy, claim Jews built the pyramids. Even in the movie The 10 Commandments the Jewish slaves were building a city for Ramses, not the Pyramids.
I didn't think the Bible even mentions the Pyramids, they are in Cairo for one thing, the Hykso's settlements were further North.

missus_gumby

The KJV utilises the word "Egypt" 737 times. The words "Pyramid" and "Sphinx" are not used at all.

Martin