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Secret Chamber In The Great Pyramid?
ferkelparade writes "The Guardian reports that two French amateur archaeologists believe they have located a secret chamber in the Cheops pyramid using microgravimetry and radar. The team believes that this might be the pharaoh's burial chamber - as the chamber seems to be unopened, it might still house the complete burial treasure. More coverage from abc."
I really start to wonder about disturbing the graves of others. I guess the fact that they aren't from a current religion means they don't deserve respect, right?
And I'd like to add to it, if only a little. The knowledge that an archaeologist seeks is not simply for himself, but for the greater interest and good of mankind. It sounds high-handed and trite, I know, but it's the truth. In fact, most archaeologists (and historians in general) act much like the Open Source community does: They share information as if it were a responsibility to do so, and make their goal the discovery of new information to be shared and/or the reinterpretation of old information which would reveal new information. (I hope that wasn't too confusing.)
For what it's worth, most archeological artifacts end up in museums and the protective-but-publicly-accessable vaults (though you sometimes need a reason better than "I just wanted to find out if any Joanne Schmoe can look at ancient pottery shards"), rather than in private collections and on the auction block. For the archaeologist (and, again, historians in general), knowledge alone is its own treasure.
~UP
[Note: To establish my own credibility on this subject, I submit that I am a student and History Major at a university noted within academic circles for its history department; just as an example of this, we had a visiting professor, last year, who was one of the top five asian-history historians on the planet.]
Eat the Path.
Actually, France, England etc. once colonized or conquered Egypt. At the time, it was very common to import artifacts of the newly conquered lands to the home country. Some countries even exposed the local (uncivilised) people of their newly conquered territories.
Instead of taking a picture of an obelisk, you would just take the obelisk with you (the obelisk on the "place de la concorde" in paris is an original specimen brought by Napoleon on his Egyptian campaign) to be able to show your mom where it was you were.
In my opinion, those "stolen" atrifacts have contributed much much more to mankind and science than they would possibly have could while buried in a grave...
--Use ant to make
This brings up the question of whether or not everyone, specifically the pharos themselves, actually believed 100% in the religion of the day.
Did you ever wonder if there was a pharoh that was uneasy at the thought of having their body put through the embalming process? What with their brains being pulled out of their nose and their organs being put into jars I would expect that some of them were not to excited about the prospect.
The ancient Egypitans also believed that the pharohs were gods. It was central to their religion. I think that *maybe* the pharohs themselves knew whether or not they were actually gods, and this knowledge might have had some bearing on their perception of their religious beliefs.
Not to mention marrying and having sex with their sisters. I bet that some pharohs were kind of upset about that, but did it anyways because it was not only expected, but required to make sure that the power system continued to function. The believers knew that this was proper according to the religion and it would be improper to change it, possible weakening the strength of the pharoh who tried to do it. Fear of the population's reaction to violating their belief system could have been a motivator, as easily as the actual belief itself.
Also, I find it strange that with the current climate of acceptable atheism and self directed spiurituality that varys wildly from person to person as a cultural refrence point that almost everyone seems to have the impression that past cultures' populations were all 100% believers, completely succeptible to religious indoctrination.
These are the cultural archaelogy questions that may (probably will not) ever be answered. Pity too, because what REALLY caused people to act in a certain manner is infinitely more interesting to me than the plausible or probably answer.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
If we can get our hands on enough documents from a given culture it gets easier to figure these things out. If I recall right, we know that the Golden Age Greeks didn't really believe any of their mythology, even if they did believe in their gods, which is what you'd expect from such a scientifically-minded culture. Sort of like how most modern-day Christians don't really think that Hell is a physical place in the way it is described in the Bible and would be pretty skeptical if the evening news were to claim that a man was enervated by a haircut.