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Egypt's Oldest Pyramid Is Being Destroyed By Its Own Restoration Team
Taffykay writes The oldest pyramid in Egypt, the Pyramid of Djoserat Saqqara, is being destroyed by the very company the Egyptian government has hired to restore it. The roughly 4,600-year-old structure has been in trouble since an earthquake hit the region in 1992, but in a difficult political and economic climate for the country, those now tasked with preserving the pyramid are said to be doing more harm than good.
Saqqara, in Egypt, is the oldest stone complex ever built by humans
Uh uh...what does that mean? Even Skara Brae is older, and that definitely qualifies as a "stone complex", unless I got horribly wrong what that means, not to mention the assorted individual older monuments in Europe, the Mediterranean, or Asia Minor.
Ezekiel 23:20
Maybe because you keep spamming the fucking link everywhere, dumbass.
Egyptian Muslims have already called for the destruction of the pyramids and the sphinx, juts like the Buddhas of Bamiyan.
Because it'd be pretty damned time consuming to destroy the great pyramids (all of them) and they aren't actively being worshipped as part of another religion so why would they care?
to build a new one that can resist earthquakes?
Except that's exactly what a few of them want.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/iv-drip/destroy-the-sphinx-and-the-pyramids-says-egyptian-jihadist-8306477.html
What makes you think that they do not want to destroy the pyramids, for the same reason?
How about all those tourism dollars? Egypt isn't some moneyless failed backwater state, their tourism industry generates around $13 billion a year, more than the entire GDP of Afghanistan in 2002.
but in a difficult political and economic climate for the country,
Yeah, maybe if they would let some competent people into the country to deal with the pyramids again, this wouldn't happen.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"The Step Pyramid of Djoserat Saqqara"
should be "The Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara"
spotted it as soon as I saw it..., very poor error to make indeed
The pyramids being made by slave labour is something of a myth. There's not much evidence available for early pyramids, but there's plenty of evidence that later pyramids were made by skilled craftsmen and not slaves.
But there's a god bigger than "allah", "Christ", "zarathustra" and any other one you want to name, it's called moneey, and the pyramids bring a lot of money to them, so, I don't think they are going to destroy them
I don't know about slaves specifically but among serfs in northern Europe it was not uncommon to find skilled craftsmen.
Slave and skilled craftsman is not mutually exclusive and there is nothing that says that one can't be both.
Looking out through airplane window and realizing a dark patch between city lights of Cairo was actually a pyramid was a mystical experience for me. Having to stand at least a kilometer away to comfortably grasp the whole too.
Size does matter, or as comrade Stalin would say, quantity in itself is a quality. And it was anything but easy, otherwise structures of such size would be built more often in 4000 years since. They truly are a marvel.
Sphinx, though, is overrated.
"Blah blah blah." - [citation needed]
Gravity wins every time! Try to find a pyramid fixer in the yellow pages. Oh, here it is Joe's pyramid restoration. It says established 2000BC.
Bork like an Egyptian
Stop being rational!
I say that because the people under discussion banned paper bags in their country... simply because a recycled paper bag *might* contain a fiber or two from a Koran... so rational discourse is clearly irrelevant.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
It rather seems that largely during the fertile seasons most of the population would farm the land, and during the unfertile seasons the same would go to work on the pyramids. Doing that every year for decades, they'd all become skilled craftsmen.
Many of the early Mayan and Aztec structures in Latin America have been "restored" in the name of tourism to make them more comfortable. Nicer steps, higher doorways, etc. They're not as well known as the Egyptian pyramids but every bit as historically significant.
Size does matter
That's only when the your ally is not the Force.
Looking at that picture I wonder how people can be so amazed by it.
That's exactly the problem. Pyramids are like the Grand Canyon. Modern photography may have gotten super good at capturing a likeness of their image, but nothing actually beats going there in person and seeing those things in real life!
Doesn't even sound hard other than the heat (which was called fucking life back then, cause no one had air conditioning).
Actually, don't believe your hollywood movies, Egypt was lush with vegetation and had plenty water (which provided its own natural air conditioning during the time those pyramids were built). Please read this article and this article.
Considering that it was made with slave labor, makes it even less impressive.
Yes, that was the totally unproven interpretation of the Europeans when they first visited Egypt. And as another poster already replied (and provided a reference), they're now finding physical evidence that this wasn't actually the case.
There's these steps in northern california, laid by like 80 japanese slave laborers like 100 years ago...
If you think the work of 80 laborers 100 years ago is equivalent to the work of ~10,000 laborers ~7,000 years ago, then that's your choice. Personally, I can't even visualize a period of 7,000 years. So if you're not impressed by several supremely huge man-made structures that have stood the test of time for 7,000+ years, then let's just agree to disagree because I am surely impressed by them.
I would worry less about global warming and more about the ignorant descendents of those once great Egyptians, who are today practicing a religion that could very well lead them to one day soon decide to demolish these relics because their 6th-century child-molesting prophet said they were idolatrous.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
We are all descendents of those Egyptians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_human_migrations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXiLMb-OFgY
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Based on what I've read (and talked to Egyptians). the closest original descendents of the Egyptians that built those pyramids are the modern day Coptic Christians (whose numbers in Egypt are ever dwindling nowadays). Via their trade with Byzantium and other other Christian nations at the time, the Pharoes and their subjects converted slowly over to Christianity. The muslims are a result of the Arab hoards that invaded and laid waste to the area back in the day. Once their conquest was done they settled and now are the dominant people there. They have little to do with the original Egyptians and their civilization.
This is important: terrorists who claim to be fighting for Islam...are criminals using religion as an excuse and justification for their crimes.
Unfortunately, some parts of the world just aren't ready for democracy.
But there's a god bigger than "allah", "Christ", "zarathustra" and any other one you want to name, it's called moneey, and the pyramids bring a lot of money to them, so, I don't think they are going to destroy them
Yes, Islamic fundamentalists are quite the promoters of foreign tourism. That's why so many sightseers are queuing up to view the ancient wonders of Afghanistan.
So what you're saying is that there was a group of people minding their own business who built pyramids, but a horde of violent, religious fanatics showed up on horseback, took their lands, scattered the indigenous people, destroyed their civilization, took charge and settled the area in massive numbers that over the centuries crowded out the indigenous peoples, all while trying to force them to convert at the point of a sword. And in recent years the conqueror's descendents have been making money showing off the pyramids as part of a major tourist industry. Why do I feel like I've heard this happening elsewhere?
> Yeah! With blackjack! And hookers!
Make that poker instead of blackjack. Liquor in the front, poker in the rear.
I think I've just come up with very efficient ballistic plating for that part of the world: just cover the vest with very visible Korans! The bullets will keep missing you as if by magic!
Ezekiel 23:20
The pyramids being made by slave labour is something of a myth. There's not much evidence available for early pyramids, but there's plenty of evidence that later pyramids were made by skilled craftsmen and not slaves.
My business is steam turbines. Complicated machinery with very tight tolerances, requiring great skill to put together. We use 1 or 2 experienced turbine experts per shift and have a cadre of millwrights (gorillas) to do the dirty/boring/mindless/unskilled labor. There is no need for everyone on a job to be an expert.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Last we heard, tourism tanked in Egypt not long after the Muslim Brotherhood took over and good relations with minorities went out the window. Then the recent military takeover made tourism even less stable because the Muslim Terrorist Nutjobs look at foreigners as infidels to killed ASAP.
Why would I want to fly around the World to some religious ghetto to look at a pile of rocks?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
no the real shame is that you have no grasp on the actual history of the pyramids.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
The people you know as Egyptians are not strictly autochthonous; it is presumed that the original neolithic farmers re-entered Africa (and Egypt) coming from other parts of the Fertile Crescent (Middle East) once agriculture was invented. It's not quite so simple, but I'm pretty sure that my lineage, when traced backwards, joins African lineages too early for me to have anything to do with the ancestors of contemporary Egyptians, other then being something of a distant cousin (like all of us).
Ezekiel 23:20
There were skilled slaves too, that's not the why it's believed that the pyramids were built by free labor. There are two reasons that I know of: first, there is some writing on the side of one of the pyramids talking about their construction and, in particular, what the workers were fed. This was considerably more generous (more meat) than slaves would have received. The second reason is that tens of thousands of people worked on the pyramids and is just isn't possible to manage that many slaves when your most advanced weapon is a bronze sword (the chariot wasn't introduced to Egypt until after pyramids were no longer being constructed).
Prophet my ass. He was a late stage schizophrenic who went off to the mountains, heard voices, and concluded it must be angels (Allah never communicates directly with humans, he is to Other that he uses angels...its in the escape clause of his contract). Modern schizophrenics are typically enamored with religion and also hear angels, devils, Jimmy Carter, Kim Jong-un, the arch-angel Gabriel, and funny talking frogs (think the Loony-Tune's cartoon with the frog singing but only when the owner cannot make any money off him).
The entire situation reminds me of the joke where a fellow advertises to sell his talking dog. A prospective buyer goes to the fellow's house and is told the dog is in the bedroom. So the guy goes in and asks the dog to speak. The dog greets him, "How ya doing?". And guy is awed and asks the dog what he's been doing all these years. The dog props himself on an elbow and says that he was involved in the WTC rescue effort and saved 20 people. He also was sent up in the space shuttle to perform science experiments and found a new form of matter. And he helped fly helicopters after Hurricane Katrina, saving people. The guy is totally blown away, so he goes out into the other room and asks the fellow why he's selling his talking dog. The guy says in a loud voice so the dog can hear "BECAUSE HE'S A BIG LIAR!"
Uh, nope. Christianity came a century later after the last of the native kings (queen, in fact). By the time Christianity appeared, Egypt was a prosperous Roman province, ruled by a prefect (governor), not by a king. Modern Egyptians are also mostly descendants of the Ancient Egyptians; the Muslim part of the Egyptian society are largely descendants of Muslim converts from Christianity who started appearing after the Muslim conquest of Egypt in the 7th century took place. I'm not really sure that any "laying waste to the area" took place, in fact, the contemporary Copts probably welcomed the Muslims, because after the Byzantines, Muslims were a breathe of a fresh air (this was *before* the Copts started getting screwed by Muslims, obviously), which should tell you something about how the Byzantines treated the Copts.
Ezekiel 23:20
Islamists are not interested in Western tourism dollars. You might as well say "Well look at all the money you can make selling pork and alcohol!" The argument just doesn't appeal to them.
Tell me what the difference is between "fighting for Islam" and "using religion as an excuse and justification for their crimes." Honestly it sounds about the same, except perhaps for connotation.
I mean, if someone does something that you personally perceive as a crime, and they do it in the name of Islam, and they justify and excuse it with Islam, then they've ticked both boxes. Why do you think there's a distinction?
Especially in Amerika where very few vote and all the politicians are bought and paid for to wage wars all over the world to increase profits. Democracy doesn't work.
Could say the same thing about all sects of Christianity as well. Jesus was a schizophrenic. Moses was a schizophrenic, Joseph Smith was a schizophrenic. All crazy lunatics. Let's just put it out there: All religious people are cowards who need comfort in a higher power in order to not face reality and take any personal responsibility.
Unfortunately, some parts of the world just aren't ready for democracy.
This is what has to be remembered. The west, especially those countries descended from England, has a tradition of democracy which is why it sorta works. Other cultures not so much so we have situations where the majority are serf like (in Russia actual serfs), and then suddenly expected to democratically govern themselves. This usually results in failure of one type or another. With luck a benevolent dictator, more likely a nutjob dictator or a totally corrupt pseudo-democracy.
Forcing democracy on cultures that aren't ready seldom works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
And how are these Islamists going to destroy a monument which is, in essence, a 6 million ton pile of stone? A 6 million ton pile of stone guarded by a military force...
Because it's not +1 Informative, it's +5 Personal Agenda
Get a contract for restoration? If that doesn't work, they cold always turn it into a KFC.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
"Islamists" were in power in Egypt for over a year, which pyramids were turned into mosques? What known treasures were looted? When was the Sphinx defaced?
Fighting for something doesn't automatically mean you're committing crimes.
Correct, but that's not the issue. The issue is whether the terrorists who claim to be fighting for Islam could actually be fighting for Islam. OP claimed they are not, they are simply using religion to justify their crimes.
My point is that they are indistinguishable.
And Isis, is of course, the name of a false god and thus anathema to the fundamental tenet of Islam.
I hope you're joking. That's an acronym invented by Westerners. You realize that they use a different alphabet and different words than we do... right? The transliteration of their own acronym is something like "DASH" I believe, not "ISIS."
Your mistake is that it doesn't take "an entire country/culture" to destroy the pyramids, just like destroying the Buddhas of Bamiyan didn't take the concerted effort of every Muslim in Afghanistan.
Your mistake is to fail and reading comprehension and/or have a willingness to bring a strawman to the table.
It would have been MY mistake to assume it must take an entire culture to destroy valuable archaeological sites. But I didn't so fuck you very much.
If we rub a few neurons together till they spark and apply the most basic rules of reading comprehension, we see that my reply was specific to this statement :
Egyptian Muslims have already called for the destruction of the pyramids and the sphinx
That is an ambiguously quantified, poorly worded, if not ignorant and malicious statement. A more appropriate statements of the fact would have included something like "Some Egyptians Muslims" or "Extremist Egyptian Muslims" or "Egyptian Religious Radicals". Those provide a more accurate dimension to the problem as opposed to something that can (and will be passed by idiots) as a blanket generalization.
If I see some White dude with Nazi tats screaming vitriol against minorities, I'm not going to say "White People call for race war". I would quantify and qualify the individual or individuals appropriately so as to not open the door to idiots looking to push the "guilt by association" button. This same rule applies to anyone and anywhere regardless of ethnic/cultural/religious background.
I never stated that it must take an entire culture to destroy the pyramids. What I said had nothing to do with such a claim.
It was not my mistake to make. It was your mistake to attribute that on me. But hey, don't let me get in the way to build strawmen for whatever silly and/or twisted reasons that rock your boat.
Combined with straw that would become the mortar between each stone. In ancient times no resource went unused.
That's not really accurate, while Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood were "in power" in the government, they did not control the military which is the arbiter of force in any country. And of course it's the military that removed Morsi from power. So how can you say they actually had any power in Egypt?
The reason the Buddhist statues in Afghanistan were blown up was that they had a complete Islamist power in the government and the military. IF that were to happen in Egypt, then you'd see similar consequences.
Impressive yes, but ultimately a failed allocation of resources. Had they used the stone and the labor to build better defenses rather than monuments they may had been able to prevent the numerous times the whole region was attack and invaded by outside conquerors.
"Islamists" were in power in Egypt for over a year, which pyramids were turned into mosques? What known treasures were looted? When was the Sphinx defaced?
Here you are.
Improve at backgammon rapidly through addictive quickfire position quizzes: www.bgtrain.com
Yes, baking cake is exactly the same as building a pyramid that includes, not only higher levels of mathematics, but extremely accurate placement of tons of stones. Look around you buddy and tell me, what would the chances be of gathering people that are capable of such mathematics, and the ability to enslave those people.
Maybe you would say that the mathematicians were the ones designing the layout, and slaves were merely doing the physical labor. But the laborers would have also had to have been extremely good at things like carving, at the very least, which would have had to been learned at some point, granting them more respect from these whip-wielding mathematicians. Of course there's also the problem that folks like you have, in explaining how the hell so few would have controlled so many. I mean we're talking 1 slave-beating mathematician to, what, 1,000 - 10,000 slaves? How did he/she do it? No, indeed there was something else that empowered these people to complete such an undertaking, not fear. This was something that took more than an entire generation to complete.
Threats are effective, but they will never ever ever enable this type of work to be completed. I don't know how the pyramids were built, no one does. But there's one thing for sure: It was not a divided people.
I wish I could get people to stop fucking me in the ass, but they seem to think it'll make me bake a better cake. And they want that cake to be perfect. There's no other way. I am powerless because of my fear of getting fucked the ass, I guess?
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
I visited Cairo and Giza in the spring of 2013 and can confirm there were almost no tourists. There are, however, men with machine guns guarding the pyramids and sphynx, as well as the main museum, in addition to metal detectors and visual inspections upon entering these places (though you could enter from the desert and avoid them in the case of Giza). The violence I witnessed wasn't random acts of terror, but civil/political unrest before Morsi got the boot.
Money, including tourism dollars, is very much a motivating factor for the parties involved. I don't have a comprehensive knowledge of the politics, but the locals I talked to reviled Morsi precisely because of his lack of money (and his allegiances). Most visibly, infrastructure and the jobs created in its construction and maintenance, that Mubarak had, was sorely missed.
This reminds me of a documentary I saw at least 20 years ago. It was about how Egypt was throwing out Western restoration experts and putting its own people in to work on some mummies that had been returned from various museums around the word.
One expert was being interviewed while she worked on a sarcophagus. In the middle of her comment about how she and her colleagues were every bit as competent as the "foreigners" who'd been sent packing, she managed to accidentally pry off a big chunk of it, which fell on the floor and broke. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
I see nothing's changed.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
It takes nukes and the certainty of death to bring maturity to nations.
Would Stalin have been happy murdering his own people absent nukes? Thank you Edwin Teller/General Lemay!
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Christians did the same thing to various henges up in England. I'm surprised Stonehenge survived.
Well at least you're not an ignorant descendent of those once great Egyptians ; ). But your hypothesis re:lineage is at least as good as mine so I'll call it a day : ).
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
The fallacy is that we are debating democracy as the reason our system of government doesn't work, the truth is our system of government is unfettered capitalism. The two things are not the same.
In a cybernetic fit of rage she pissed off to another age...
Lol, ot slightly, but you shouldn't be modded down. +5 funny
In a cybernetic fit of rage she pissed off to another age...
In my limited observations, democracy doesn't work when a people first try it. They have to get used to it. I also think that a thriving middle class is necessary for a democracy. It needs a large number of people who get some sort of education, have some free time to pay attention to politics, and have something to lose. The upper classes are never enough for a democracy, and people in an oppressed lower class are going to be easily controlled, and may as well vote extremist as they really have little to lose.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
There have been very many types of slavery over the millennia, not just the exceptionally vicious type we're used to from US history. In most, slaves had some rights. In some cases, slaves were known to have accumulated enough money to purchase their freedom. In ancient Rome, there were a lot of highly educated Greek slaves, which were generally treated very well.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
... How Far Should We Go in 'Restoring' Ancient Monuments?
Boing Boing shared The Daily Grail's article, with a few photo(graph)s, showing "Visions of the Past - How Far Should We Go in 'Restoring' Ancient Monuments?"
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Morsi came to power just as Egypt went from being an oil exporter to an oil importer. Mubark was able to pacify the masses by providing food and fuel subsidies because of Egypt's oil export revenue. In 2013 Egypt's oil imports increased by 39% http://mazamascience.com/OilEx... so those kinds of subsidies are gone forever. So it won't matter much who is in power because they won't be able to provide the cheap bread and the circus anymore. There are a lot of angry young men with not much to do over there. That doesn't bode well for the future. Also see'Export Land Model' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... "The Export Land Model, or Export-Land Model, refers to work done by Dallas geologist Jeffrey Brown, building on the work of others, and discussed widely on The Oil Drum.[1] It models the decline in oil exports that result when an exporting nation experiences both a peak in oil production and an increase in domestic oil consumption. In such cases, exports decline at a far faster rate than the decline in oil production alone. The Export Land Model is important to petroleum importing nations because when the rate of global petroleum production peaks and begins to decline, the petroleum available on the world market will decline much more steeply than the decline in total production." Countries that placed all their bets on finite resources being infinite might find themselves going through a bit of a rough patch from here on out.
Indeed, that's funny / sad weird. The church sodomizing the communities children while upholding themselves as the moral guide for the community is what ? Continuing to follow uphold the church knowing they rape your kids is what ?
Sounds a lot like the "Prime Directive"...
Look up the city of Cahokia. They were not as technologically advanced but they were a thriving civilization.
These sorts of explanations are very interesting. Thanks!
I always assumed the Pyramids, and monuments like them, were early examples of rulers staying in power by making sure unemployment stayed low.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal#Public_works
Modern engineers have commented that even today, certain aspects of the pyramid would be hard to replicate.
The precision of the layout alone is extremely impressive.
But I think more than the engineering, the fascination over the pyramids has a lot more to do with the mystery of why they were built, for what purpose (there has never been a single King's body found in a pyramid... they were not tombs), etc..