Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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]
Yeah! With blackjack! And hookers!
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
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.
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 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
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.
Okay I'm glad you are aware of that. It really wasn't clear from your reply.
A more appropriate statements of the fact would have included something like "Some Egyptians Muslims" or "Extremist Egyptian Muslims" or "Egyptian Religious Radicals".
Adding "some" would not make it more appropriate, it's redundant. Adding "some" to every reference of a group is stupid.
Adding the word "extremist" is problematic. Extremist from whose perspective? From my perspective, even mainstream Muslims are extremely religious compared to what I'm exposed to. Extremist from the perspective of mainstream Muslims? Which Muslims? American Muslims? Egyptian Muslims? Do you actually KNOW the proportion of Egyptian Muslims who support the closure of Western tourist attractions like the pyramids? If you're going to attach the word "extremist" to them then you better have some idea. If it's more than a few percent it's not really extremist.
Leaders of the Salafist and Wahabi parties have called for the destruction of pagan idols and the pyramids, and they won about 25% of the seats in 2012. So calling them "extremists" is totally accurate for me and you (hopefully, I don't know you) but that's not the same as "unpopular" or "non-representative."
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".
That's a stupid analogy. If the KKK won 25% of Congress, it would be totally appropriate to say "white people call for race war" even though many or most white people didn't. It's enough.
If you have deluded yourself into thinking only a handful of Muslims in Egypt have a problem with the glorification of pre-Islamic society, that's your problem. It doesn't make you sound smart though.
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.
You said "A few radicals =/= an entire country/culture" in reply to "Egyptian Muslims have already called for the destruction of the pyramids and the sphinx."
What was the relevance of that rather obvious fact if it has "nothing to do" with what we were TALKING ABOUT... the destruction of the Egyptian pyramids?
Look, I'm guessing you just weren't aware of how much support there was in Egypt to destroy the pyramids. It's not 0.1%. It's a pretty big proportion, and it's largely an urban vs rural issue because cities benefit more from the tourism dollars. People out in the country are like "You are making money by glorifying pagans and selling alcohol to infidels, that should stop."
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.
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