Valley of the Kings Revisited - LexiLine Journal 346

A new member of our group, kbroscoe (stoneseer) has some observations concerning a previous LexiLine posting:

Hello,

And thank you for inviting me to come to your group. I wondered if you also see what looks to me like a sculpture of a woman standing to the left of the giant, her height being slightly
less than the entire cliff? The curvatious lines there are set in good relief against the more rectilinear forms around her and she appears to be holding something, looks a bit like a pitcher perhaps, because it seems to be held at a tilt, as if pouring. There even seem to be lines forming a bodice of clothing. But the face is not there, could be weathered away? It jumped out to me because of the curves against the straight, and I wondered why this one spot would be carved by nature in curves while the areas surrounding it are more rectilinear? Interesting.
_______________________

Sorry to send again on this one, but after the last message, I looked again at the lady next to the giant. The form I originally saw as perhaps a pitcher, now looks more like the head of a child standing next to her. I believe that Egyptian art often showed smaller figures less in rank, next to huge figures of greater rank, so if you see her and the ?boy? perhaps what I am seeing is the wife and son of the sleeping giant? Who knows, but look anyway. ;)

______________________
______________________ (end of posting by kbroscoe)

Here is my answer to kbroscoe:

It is possible that much of the entire wall is carved and there are possibly numerous figures on it. But I think that getting any agreement on their identification will be a tough job.

Prehistoric Megaliths Western Caucasus - LexiLine Journal 345

Steve Burdic has sent me a link to the following page on prehistoric megaliths in the Western Caucasus - in Russia east of the Black Sea.

The link is: http://www.admiral.ru/hp/wacfund/

The plan in Russia is:

"Therefore, in addition to excavating and reassembling the dolmens, we plan to reconstruct the natural environment and return the ancient cultural landscape to its original appearance. The dolmens will benefit by having added protection as well being placed in their correct setting."

That is fabulously good news and should serve as a model for all nations of the world having megaliths - presuming that the reconstructions do not actually damage the actual sites or megaliths themselves or eradicate evidence of their purpose by reconstructions which manifest somebody's opinion of what the purpose of the megaliths was.

I have not spent any time studying these megaliths yet, but I presume that many of them will prove to be astronomical in nature.

The Extern Stones - Externsteine - in Germany - LexiLine Journal 344

Last weekend I was invited to give a lecture on the Extern Stones (Externsteine) in Germany. The lecture took place at the annual conference of the German "Arbeits- und Forschungskreis Walther Machalett e.V.", May 4-8, 2005, in Horn-Bad Meinberg, which is not coincidentally also the location of the Extern Stones.

See e.g. Sacred Sites http://www.sacredsites.com/europe/germany/externsteine.html for some information in English and a couple of photos of the Externsteine.

If you plug the search term - Externsteine - into Yahoo or Google or one of the other search engines under their Image Search you will see thousands of photographs of these gigantic Ex-Stern-Steine or "Egge-Stern-Steine" (Star Stones in Egge Forest), natural limestones which
reach up to 38 meters (125 feet) high and which (in my opinion) have large manmade carvings on them representing not only the stars but also the original gods of the German pantheon.

In my opinon, Stone 11 of the Externsteine is the Throne of Odin (Wotan) in Nordic legend, marking the stars at heaven's center, while Stones 1 through 5 mark the stars of the ecliptic (the modern Zodiac), each corresponding to an ancient Germanic viz. Norse god.

My lecture (in German) is available as part of a CD-ROM published under the name "Frühgeschichtliche Astronomie in Norddeutschland", Schriftliche Fassung der Referate, gehalten auf der 39. Jahrestagung des Arbeitskreises Walther Machalett am 06. und 07. Mai 2005 in Horn/Externsteine, Price 20 Euro, Design by Stefan Hövel.

The CD-ROM content (only available in the German language) is:

1.Sternensteine – Darstellungen frühgeschichtlicher Astronomie
am
Beispiel der Externsteine (Andis Kaulins) [Star Stones - Prehistoric
Astronomy on the Example of the Extern Stones]
2.Der westfälische Bodenhimmel (Gert Meier) [The Sky Mirrored on
Earth in Westphalia]
3.Das megalithische Blankenburg-System (Christina Linger / Kai-Uwe
Uebner) [The Megalithic System at Blankenburg]
4.Die Himmelsscheibe von Nebra (Andis Kaulins) [The Nebra Sky Disc]
5.Norddeutschland und Ägypten – astronomische und kultische
Beziehungen in der Frühzeit (Gert Meier) [North Germany and Egypt
- Astronomical and Cultic Relations in the Prehistoric and Early
Historic Period]
6.Vitae [Resumes of the Authors]

Anyone who is interested in obtaining the CD-ROM should write to
Dr. Gert Meier
Im Linder Bruch 38
51147 Koeln (Porz-Lind)
Germany.

Koeln is the German spelling for the city of Cologne. Dr. Meier is on the Board of Directors of the Machalett Group, which concentrates on the study of German history and is one of the main groups in Germany for such studies. My lecture, for example, was attended by about 100 persons, and an entry fee was charged.

I will be getting around some time in the near future to translating my lecture (about 50 pages) into English, but this will be a while down the road yet, as time is always short.

Exploring Ancient Skies - LexiLine Journal 343

Here is a what may be a good standard mainstream astronomy book - at "astronomical" price. The book is:

Exploring Ancient Skies : An Encyclopedic Survey of Archaeoastronomy
by A.F. Aveni (Foreword), David H. Kelley, Eugene F. Milone
see http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0387953108/

It costs $298 dollars ! incredible ...

In terms of the contribution of that book to man's understanding of ancient astronomy and comparing that price with my price for Stars Stones and Scholars ($35.99), I should say that my price for each volume of Stars, Stones and Scholars should be multiplied by at least a thousand in order to set the ultimate value of the two books on a legitimate justifiable monetary par.

On the other hand, we are either in this for the money, or for the knowledge.... Perhaps those of us belonging to the latter category still have a lot to learn about the world of high finance....

New Optical Technology for Ancient Manuscripts, etc.- LexiLine Journal 342

Sammye - a member of our group - has sent us the following e-mail....

New Optical Technology for Ancient Manuscripts, etc.
...

Lexiline members may be interested in the recent (17 April 2005) brief article on new technology being used that makes text visible on ancient manuscripts that has thus far been "invisible" due to deteriorated condition of the documents. See
http://snipurl.com/8hs7
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=630166

It's great news that the technology exists and is being used by a team from Oxford University on previously unreadable texts from Oxford's collection of the "great papyrus hoard salvaged from an ancient rubbish dump in the Graeco-Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus more than a century ago. It's also great news that thousands of texts in the Oxford collection alone can now be read and that because of the new technology it is now known that they include unknown, lost, etc. works of Sophicles, Euripides, Hesiod, Ovid, Aeschylus, a "series of Christian gospels which have been lost for up to 2,000 years" and who knows what else. I wonder if the same or a similar technology would work for texts/images on stone and clay as well as papyrus.

I wonder if and when the Oxford folks will make images of texts in their collection available to the world in general. Hope they don't repeat the behavior of the scholars and institutions in charge of the Dead Sea Scrolls, who engaged in the ethnically questionable practice of preventing all but a small number of scholars from seeing most of the scrolls for decades.

You mentioned over a year ago that you were working on some new translations of Sumerian Hymns. Was hoping to hear more about that, but can't recall your saying anything about it since. What's happening on that project?

Sammye

**********

Sammye, that is very interesting. On the question of the Sumerian
Hymns, I am working on them but what I have is not yet suitable for
publication. - Andis