distracted by ancient questions--again
Last night, just as it got dark, an unusual sound from outside: raindrops. By the time we went to bed there was the rush of cooling rain beyond the bedroom blinds. Today no rain, but there was an overcast that dimmed the air, and the earth was still damp as I went for a run. Now, an hour and a half and a few errands later, I'm still damp.
Morning notes: From Eden to Exile.
Still dragging through chapter 17. I opened my Notes document to review what I wrote there on Monday: quite a lot--about two pages in Word, though that includes a few paragraphs I pasted in from Caesar Against Rome, about Caesar's actions at the start of the Alexandrian War. I felt good about what I came up with on Monday, and I still do. I opened the draft and pressed on from where I'd left off.
The flow was OK--not fast, but steady. I eked out three pages, then found I'd hit yet another research question. Leave it? Solve it? The topic: how the ancient Egyptians brought in the new astrological ages when they arrived.
I turned to my floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and pulled Serpent in the Sky down from the top shelf, because that's where I'd first encountered this idea. John Anthony West reports the findings of Schwaller de Lubicz that Egyptian temples were not always demolished, as is usually thought by Egyptologists, but sometimes dismantled, as though according to a plan. Schwaller proposed that these dismantlings--and rebuildings--happened at the turn of astrological ages, notably at the turn from the Age of Gemini to the Age of Taurus in about 4200 BC and from the Age of Taurus to the Age of Aries in about 2100 BC. At the latter change, the symbolism of the bull-god Mentu found in the earlier temples was destroyed and replaced by the imagery of the ram-god Ammon. Needless to say, this would have required a knowledge of the precession of the equinoxes millennia before it is now thought to have been discovered (circa 125 BC by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus).
The historian of science Giorgio de Santillana has long argued that the precession, and many other astronomical phenomena, were discovered in what we call the Stone Age, and that the heritage of world mythology, whatever else it might be, is an encyclopedia of astronomical lore, which can be decoded if we know how to look. This was the thesis behind his culminating work (with Herthe von Dechend), Hamlet's Mill, one of my key sourcebooks for this work. Their argument, to me, is persuasive, especially when taken together with other evidence of sophisticated scientific knowledge that existed in remote times, as embodied in, notably, the Great Pyramid and Sphinx of Giza.
There seems to be a systematic denigration of the knowledge and capabilities of our forebears, which reminds me of a famous line by Mark Twain. I don't have the exact wording, but, paraphrased, it goes: "When I was eighteen, I thought my father was the stupidest man alive. By the time I turned twenty-one, I was amazed at how much he'd learned." I think we're still in the 18-year-old phase of appreciating our ancient predecessors.
Anyway. I pulled down Serpent in the Sky. I pulled out A History of Ancient Egypt by Nicolas Grimal, and Legend and From Eden to Exile by David Rohl. Which pharaohs were around when? And again: does it matter? Who cares? The perennial problem. For better or for worse, I do.
I decided on a reduced portion of information I could use in my chapter, wrote a bit further, but by then it was more than time for lunch.
Morning notes: From Eden to Exile.
Still dragging through chapter 17. I opened my Notes document to review what I wrote there on Monday: quite a lot--about two pages in Word, though that includes a few paragraphs I pasted in from Caesar Against Rome, about Caesar's actions at the start of the Alexandrian War. I felt good about what I came up with on Monday, and I still do. I opened the draft and pressed on from where I'd left off.
The flow was OK--not fast, but steady. I eked out three pages, then found I'd hit yet another research question. Leave it? Solve it? The topic: how the ancient Egyptians brought in the new astrological ages when they arrived.
I turned to my floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and pulled Serpent in the Sky down from the top shelf, because that's where I'd first encountered this idea. John Anthony West reports the findings of Schwaller de Lubicz that Egyptian temples were not always demolished, as is usually thought by Egyptologists, but sometimes dismantled, as though according to a plan. Schwaller proposed that these dismantlings--and rebuildings--happened at the turn of astrological ages, notably at the turn from the Age of Gemini to the Age of Taurus in about 4200 BC and from the Age of Taurus to the Age of Aries in about 2100 BC. At the latter change, the symbolism of the bull-god Mentu found in the earlier temples was destroyed and replaced by the imagery of the ram-god Ammon. Needless to say, this would have required a knowledge of the precession of the equinoxes millennia before it is now thought to have been discovered (circa 125 BC by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus).
The historian of science Giorgio de Santillana has long argued that the precession, and many other astronomical phenomena, were discovered in what we call the Stone Age, and that the heritage of world mythology, whatever else it might be, is an encyclopedia of astronomical lore, which can be decoded if we know how to look. This was the thesis behind his culminating work (with Herthe von Dechend), Hamlet's Mill, one of my key sourcebooks for this work. Their argument, to me, is persuasive, especially when taken together with other evidence of sophisticated scientific knowledge that existed in remote times, as embodied in, notably, the Great Pyramid and Sphinx of Giza.
There seems to be a systematic denigration of the knowledge and capabilities of our forebears, which reminds me of a famous line by Mark Twain. I don't have the exact wording, but, paraphrased, it goes: "When I was eighteen, I thought my father was the stupidest man alive. By the time I turned twenty-one, I was amazed at how much he'd learned." I think we're still in the 18-year-old phase of appreciating our ancient predecessors.
Anyway. I pulled down Serpent in the Sky. I pulled out A History of Ancient Egypt by Nicolas Grimal, and Legend and From Eden to Exile by David Rohl. Which pharaohs were around when? And again: does it matter? Who cares? The perennial problem. For better or for worse, I do.
I decided on a reduced portion of information I could use in my chapter, wrote a bit further, but by then it was more than time for lunch.
posted by paulv at
4:12 PM
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