The Horus Challenge to Egyptology and Astronomy - Lexiline Journal 367

The Horus Challenge (October 16, 2005)

I consider myself the founder of a new school of archaeology which I call "evidentiary archaeology." See http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LexiLine/message/1327

Any Egyptologist or Astronomer is welcome to debate my findings in my article on the Cult of Horus. The rules are: no ad hominem argumentation (i.e. no personal attacks), no insults, and no other arguments violating the standard rules of logical discourse.

For example, just because Professor so-and-so wrote such-and-such does not mean it is true, nor is it evidence that a given proposition is more likely true. Anyone posting materials to LexiLine containing such banal argumentation will find their articles not posted at all or will find that the offending argumentation has been stricken and postings reduced to substantive content.

The only thing that counts in argumentation here is EVIDENCE, something in law called the "preponderance of evidence". What historical materials and facts do we have at our disposal and how are these to be interpreted? That is all that counts.

In this regard, see this discourse on "truth":
http://www.lawpundit.com/blog/2004/09/law-bloggers-truth-and-legitimacy.htm

THREE WEEKS LATER (November 8, 2005) ...

The Unanswered Horus Challenge

It has now been three weeks, and - perhaps predictably - no Egyptologist or Astronomer has had the knowledge required to come forth and attempt to counter the analysis I have made in my posting on the Origin of the Cult of Horus in Predynastic Egypt.

Just imagine what it would mean for our current conceptions of the History of Astronomy and the History of Ancient Egypt if my basic analysis is correct - which I am convinced it is.

Both the Egyptologists and the Astronomers have overlooked the ancient astronomical connection to the history of civilization, and in so doing, they have badly bungled the mainstream version of man's ancient history. What we read about Predynastic Egypt in mainstream Egyptology books - is fiction to the degree that it does not understand that this culture was a culture of ancient astronomers.

We will continue here on LexiLine to get it right in the hopes that the younger generation of Egyptologists and Astronomers will be able to throw off the shackles of current Egyptological superstition in established academic circles.

AITA IETI Ancient Time Count Systems and Counting Sheep | LexiLine Journal 366

There is a humorous problem in the ridiculous idea - shared by Egyptologists, ancient Near East and Biblical scholars - that when sheep are depicted in ancient documents together with numbers, that the ancients (insomniacs?) are counting sheep.

In Indo-European on the basis of Latvian the term AITA is a sheep and the homophonic IETI (also in Greek) means "to go, passage (of time)". Hence, in view of all of that sheep-counting that the scholars have been doing, they better get back to their drawing boards and retranslate everything having to do with sheep, because the sheep are determinatives for a time count of some kind within the meaning of the particular document.

Star Dating the Shafts of the Cheops Pyramid - Kochab, Thuban, Al Nitak, Sirius | Bauval - Dörnenburg - Gantenbrink | LexiLine Journal 365

Bill McBride, a LexiLine list member, commenting on my posting at 59 LexiLine Newsletter 2005 The Cult of Horus Nr. 4, where I write "Thuban may have been viewed as the pole star ca. 2800-2600 B.C. by the ancients, but we have no evidence of this in available sources....", wrote to me as follows:

>Thuban was the north star in Draco during the building
>of the Great pyramid in Giza.
>This can be proven by doing a precession astronomy
>program like Starry Night Pro.

This is a very interesting observation, with an even more interesting answer.
Thank you, Bill, for raising this question.

There is of course no dispute with the fact that the fairly weak visible star Thuban neared the north celestial pole in the 3rd millennium, coming closest to within 10' of that pole ca. 2750 BC, according to Richard Hinckley Allen's Star Names (p. 206).

However, this does not mean 1) that Thuban was at that time assigned to a constellation which is the comparable of Draco today, or 2) that the ancients actually USED Thuban to mark the north celestial pole.

Thuban is simply not bright enough as a star to be used practically for this purpose and that is why the ancients used the nearby Kochab and Pherkad , which are much more visible.

Bill is surely referring to the work of Robert Bauval on the four main shafts of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Bauval claims that these four shafts point to the stars Thuban, Al Nitak, Sirius and Kochab.

But the actual slope of the shafts does not support this contention. As written by Frank Dörnenburg (Doernenburg) at The Orion-Pyramids: Technical Examinations: The Shafts, the following "corrected" years (i.e. corrected from Bauval's figures) represent in fact the years when the actually measured slope of the shafts would have pointed to the selected star (or near it). This is later than what Bauval claims but supports well our own solar eclipse theory and our dates for the pyramids which are more correctly later than anyone else has thus far suggested. See LexiLine .

Dörnenburg writes that Rudolf Gantenbrink determined the slopes of the shafts and that Bauval has not stuck to these consistently and has used some date correction schemes such as "epochs" which are questionable.

The Gantenbrink data as applied to the stars results in this data:

Star

Decl

Elev.

Shaft

Error

Nec. Decl.

Corresp. Year

Thuban

88°01'

31°57'

32°36'

-39'

87°20'

-2326

Al Nitak

-14°49'

44°49'

45°

-11'

-15°02'

-2496

Sirius

-20°42'

39°20'

39°36'

-16'

-20°26'

-2348

Kochab

80°38'

39°20'

39°07'

+13'

80°51'

-2385

Note that the error with respect to Al Nitak, Sirius and Kochab is about the same and that these could well have been sighted directly. The error with respect to Thuban, however, is disproportionately large, and it is possible that the Cheops pyramid was being used to locate the ACTUAL north celestial pole, which at the time of the building of the pyramids was not directly at Thuban - nor do we have any evidence that Thuban was ever used as the "pole star" in this connection. The Giza shaft simply does not point directly at Thuban.

Quite the contrary, what other reason is there to sight Kochab other than that THIS was the traditional pole star in ancient Egypt, and, as Kate Spence (apparently relying in part on Bauval's work) has written, a line through Kochab and Mizar at the time of the building of Cheops marked "true North" and would have aided the ancients in building the Cheops pyramid, which may in fact have been built because of precession as an instrument to determine or verify precession.

There is even the possibility that KOCHAB as a term is identical in origin with the Greek CHEOP-s, i.e. Cheop=Kochab. That Kochab was used as the pole star in distant antiquity is perhaps also substantiated by the fact that KAWKAB means simply "THE star" in Arabic (Arabic الكوكب al-kawkab) and is basically the same word as the Hebrew term for "star" which is KOKAB.

Richard Hinckley Allen writes (p.450) that it was Ursa Minor that was called Doube (the "guiding one") by the Phoenicians and not Thuban, whereas, as Allen reports, "Jacob Bryant assigned it [Ursa Minor] to Egypt, or Phoenicia as Cahen ourah [Horus?], -- whatever that may be." Allen writes that "Kochab...perhaps was this star the Greek astronomers called POLOS [pole star]. (p. 450)

We thus have many sources that verify Kochab being used as an ancient polestar and no such sources for Thuban.

A 5000-year-old Log Path found in England - LexiLine Journal 364

The Yorkshire Post Today features an article by Emma Dunlop entitled "Walker Discovers 5,000-year-old Log Path on Moor: Find to shed new light on Neolithic man". See http://snipurl.com/i8cp which is a snip of http://www.yorkshiretoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=55&ArticleID=1212340

The find was made at Hatfield Moor, near Doncaster, in South Yorkshire, England (United Kingdom, UK). This remarkable find is one of the finds of the century in this still yet young 21st century. Axe marks can be seen on the wood and the logs are tapered. The logs were placed in parallel and the path is up to 4 meters wide on a path running at least 50 meters to a wooden platform.

The significance of this find can not be underestimated. One of the barriers to our astronomically-based land-survey interpretation of the megaliths has thus far been the entirely false view of Neolithic man held my mainstrem archaeologists and historians of astronomy.

This find will greatly help to lay to rest once and for all the ill- formed theory that Neolithic man was a stupid brute. If these men had the tools and the understanding to make this kind of a hewn, tapered log path (up to four meters wide) ending at a platform (of unknown
significance thus far), then he was also surely well capable of carving figures and cupmarks onto megaliths and using them for astronomically-based land survey.

Here is what my wife, who has a bit of clairvoyance, said about this log path after reading the article:

"They did not make tiny paths. They thought big. The path was created for moving big things."

This is in contradiction to the opinion of the Hatfield Moor archaeological site manager, Archaeologist Dr Henry Chapman, who is quoted as saying:

"This is utterly amazing and the only one of its kind in the world....A find like this could rewrite the history of Neolithic man as we know it. This platform could have been used for a number of reasons. We believe it is too big for a vantage point for hunting, but it could be religiously significant - as a place for offerings to the gods. Or, even more symbolically, it could have been a place where the dead were laid out."

For which latter opinions on religion, by the way, there is not the slightest bit of evidence. Such statements are pure conjencture.

In this connection, we should note as written at http://www.peatalert.org.uk/ that:

"Thorne and Hatfield Moors are the largest remaining lowland peat habitats in England."

See also http://www.shef.ac.uk/assem/3/3nicki.ht and http://www.britarch.ac.uk/briefing/jul97.html.

Indeed, peat is still being extracted there today, which has led to protests and demonstrations, as can be read at the above site. See also http://www.thmcf.org/moors.htm. Perhaps, quite simply, as this area become more and more waterlogged around 3000 B.C., the ancients built such log pathways at critical wet-points on paths used for the piling-up and transportation of peat, either to inland towns or to boats on the Humber. Recall that we have the site of Creswell Crags only about 25 miles (40 km) to the southeast, where evidence of habitation is found long before this log path. Creswell Crags is also on a direct line to Hatfield Moor and then the River
Humber near Goole [not to be confused with Google], a mere 12 miles (20 km to the North), which is an area significant now in terms of waterways as the most inland port in Britain. Surely the sea-faring ancients were also aware of this strategic transport location close to this extensive peat supply. See http://www.goole-guide.net/history%5B1%5D.htm

In fact, in this region, according to http://www.doncaster.gov.uk/about/chamber/default.asp?Nav=Report&ReportID=6037:

"Remains have been discovered dating back to Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Age/Romano-British periods...."

We read at http://www.thenortheast.fsnet.co.uk/Selby.htm

"GOOLE AND ITS RIVERS

Goole lies on the River Humber to the west of Selby and is an industrial port. Goole was once the name for a small stream or ditch. The town is located near to the so-called Dutch River, a drainage channel linking the River Don with the River Ouse. This channel was surveyed by a Dutch engineer called Cornelius Vermuyden in the seventeenth century. Goole is linked to mill towns like Halifax in the Calder valley to the west by the Aire and Calder Navigation canal.

The River Derwent from Ryedale joins the Ouse from the north at Barmby on the Marsh and a few miles further east near Goole, the Ouse is joined by the River Aire near Airmyn. The Aire begins its course in Airedale before travelling through Leeds and West Yorkshire. From Goole the Ouse continues east to merge with the famous River Trent. Close by it forms the massive estuary of the River Humber - a great dividing line between East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire."

In this connection, we should note as written at http://www.olavsrosa.no/en/objektinfo.aspx?id=71902 that the ancients used peat for clothes and textiles made of peat fibres, for fuel, energy production, for roofs, for strewing, for fertilization of the soil and for improving soil quality (the latter is still done today).

The Origin of the Cult of Horus in Predynastic Egypt - LexiLine Journal 363

The Origin of the Cult of Horus in Predynastic Egypt DOC