dr. schoch and his contribution to archaeology

[Minimalist]

1,200,000 hoplites)

9,000 years before Solon they want a million hoplites? A military form which only dates from the 8th century BC?


Seems unlikely.

[Beagle]

Min, you may have missed the exchange about a "fact-based myth". It's not worth discussing IMO.

[marduk]

who said i believed it
you don't have to believe something to know a lot about it, take relgion for instance i know a lot about the origins of YHWH but i dont believe in him
and with atlantis
i know its not Minoa
that would be like thinking the origins of YHWH lay with Ronald Mcdonald
that simple

did you make up your mind whether i'm an orthodox member of the club or a psuedo crackpot ashamed of my own beliefs ?


getting a little difficult to tell ?

in this case i know a lot about Plato and a lot about everyone who's added to what plato said about Atlantis.
considering that every piece of information apart from Platos has no credibility whatsoever its very easy to get to the true facts of the Matter

his claim that Atlantis was at war with Athens for instance
Athens was a matriarchal culture
its named after Athena
so Plato saying that Atlantis was at war with Athens is the same as saying that the paternal kingship of Atlantis was at odds with the maternally led groups everywhere else
this does actually fit the known facts
and then theres that titbit that nobody else knows
for Atlantis to have been made up by Plato he must have been familiar with Sumeria
because the exremely similar word "Atalanis" is a sumerian word that describes a mountain being engulfed by water
and Plato didn't know Sumerian

Seems unlikely.

Hoplite is the greek term applied to heavy infantry

[Cognito]

Min wrote:

9,000 years before Solon they want a million hoplites? A military form which only dates from the 8th century BC?

That's pretty hard to pull off when the total population of the earth at the time was about 4 to 5 million. There must be a loose nut behind the keyboard. Either that, or they mis-translated troglodytes.

[Beagle]

and Plato didn't know Sumerian

Sitchin knows Sumerian - and he's nuts. So what. You don't understand what I meant by a fact based myth. There is no point in pursuing this. And I won't.

[Minimalist]

Hoplites were a recognizable form of heavy infantry wearing body armor, greaves, a helmet and carrying a round shield and armed with a long spear and usually a sword.



Note the difference between that and this depiction of a Roman principes.

[marduk]

Sitchin knows Sumerian - and he's nuts. So what. You don't understand what I meant by a fact based myth. There is no point in pursuing this. And I won't.

one minute you do like psuedo and the next you don't
make up your mind will ya

[Minimalist]

Min wrote:

9,000 years before Solon they want a million hoplites? A military form which only dates from the 8th century BC?

That's pretty hard to pull off when the total population of the earth at the time was about 4 to 5 million. There must be a loose nut behind the keyboard. Either that, or they mis-translated troglodytes.

Ancient stats get a little shaky.

But these people aren't ancient and should know better.

[Beagle]

make up your mind will ya

My mind is not a mystery to me. And you still don't know how to spell pseudo. But...spell it any way you want.

[Guest]

and Plato didn't know Sumerian

does everyone have to know sumerian before they are deemed credible?

Supposedly, Solon of Athens learned the story from Egyptian priests.

thank you. i had forgotton... but cognito's item is interesting with solon dying before even writing the epic. so was plato going off the notes or just heresay evidence?

did you make up your mind whether i'm an orthodox member of the club or a psuedo crackpot ashamed of my own beliefs ?

actually, you are a pseudo-poster who thinks he is an orthodox crackpot. ha,ha.

take relgion for instance i know a lot about the origins of YHWH but i dont believe in him

you do huh? news to me.

atlantis, is a myth that may refer to pre-flood civilization or just another bedtime story written for children to give them hope that they can achieve great things.

[john]

clue me in.

a club is a large, somewhat balanced and heavy tool you use to inflict damage, usually on other people but sometimes on animals.


john

[Frank Harrist]

Clubs are also used to hit balls. As in golf.

[marduk]

atlantis, is a myth that may refer to pre-flood civilization or just another bedtime story written for children to give them hope that they can achieve great things.

nope
thats just the old testament

[Harte]

West believes there are other monuments buried in the desert as well.

This is my first post here.

West is not the only one to hold this belief. If there were not "other monuments buried in the desert..." then all the archaeologists in Egypt could go home.

There is, however, one particular structure waiting to be found (possibly,) and that is the Labyrinth. Greek historians (uncluding the notoriously lousy Herodotus) mention it. It's mentioned in Greek texts from 100 BC through 100 AD.
There has been speculation that the Labyrinth was located at what we now know to be the funerary temple of Amenemhet III, but it doesn't really match, and the structure of the Labyrinth itself has never been found. The speculation is based pretty much solely on the temple of Amenemhet III having been situated in a manner that complies with some of the geographical descriptions of these Greek historians.

For those who have kept abreast of this issue for a long time there are not a lot of surprises. For me there was a pretty large surprise. Reader suggests that not only do the Sphinx and Sphinx Temple predate Khufu but the Khafre causeway does also. I have not seen that suggested before.

One of the arguments against an even more ancient Sphinx is the way the Causeway and Sphinx enclosure are parallel along the Sphinx's south wall. As was noted in an earlier post, where a picture of the south wall of the enclosure was posted, this wall is just as eroded, if not moreso, as the other walls. Yet it has been cut in alignment with the Causeway, and not at a right angle to the rear of the Sphinx enclosure, like the north wall is. This would seem to indicate that these two monuments (Khafre's Pyramid and the Sphinx) are of the same, or at least similar, age. I think it's a little disingenuous to claim that the Causeway predates Khafre's pyramid by thousands of years though. What's a Causeway without a Pyramid for it to lead to?

Regarding Schoch and his theory on the Sphinx, I have endeavored to read this entire thread before commenting as I might be speaking out of turn. But I find myself running out of time here (it is 16 pages, after all,) so I've gotta cut it short and go ahead and say something now. Sorry if this has already been pointed out.

I am surprised to find nobody here actually commenting on the gist of Schoch's theory. Everybody appears to be assuming that Schoch's dating relies on water erosion evident on the Sphinx and Enclosure walls. But Schoch doesn't base his date on this, in fact it would be folly to do so, since this sort of erosion is not the sort of thing that lends itself well to chronology.

Schoch's date for the Sphinx construction rests almost entirely on the limestone which lies in the floor of the Sphinx enclosure. The type of erosion Schoch uses to come up with his age for the Sphinx results from the stone being exposed to air, not water. It is comparable to the stone getting more and more porous due to the various gases in the air and their effect on various minerals found in the limestone. Using this method, he finds the rear floor of the enclosure to be much younger than the floor in the front of the enclosure, based on measurements showing the "porous zone" of the limestone in the front of the monument extending much deeper into the ground than that of the limestone in the rear floor.

This sort of erosion from air exposure is not affected at all by sand covering the stone. But it is also not exactly the most reliable method for dating a monument. The disparity between the erosion measured in the front and rear of the enclosure resulted in Schoch assuming the "usual" date for the Sphinx as the date of the rear of the enclosure, and then making another assumption, that the relationship between the depth of the "porous zone" and the time since exposure would necessarily be linear. This last assumption allowed Schoch to use the date for the rear of the enclosure floor as a baseline (because he assumed it to be the "ordinary" date generally attributed to the Sphinx) and from that measurement, figure out the (assumed) linear relationship between time and porosity based on how much porosity he found there in the rear of the enclosure (since he assumed a known date for the rear floor, all he had to do was divide the depth of the "porous zone" there by the time elapsed since the generally accepted date for Sphinx construction.) This gave him a number (like "centimeters of porosity per hundred years" or something) that he could apply to his measured depth of the "porous zone" in the front of the enclosure. That's where he gets the antiquity from.

I know that was a mouthful, but it's important to understand a couple of things about Schoch's assumptions. The first is that limestone is almost never uniform enough to assume some kind of linear relationship between porosity at two different locations within the same bed and the elapsed time since exposure of those two locations. Schoch acknowledged this fact. It is why he said "...or older..." at the end of his findings. He could, on the other hand and for the same reason, have said "...or younger..." IOW, there is just no reason to believe that the limestone in the rear of the Enclosure floor is all that similar to the limestone found in the front. Meaning that the limestone in the rear could have easily eroded (become more porous due to air exposure) at a vastly different rate that that found in the front of the Enclosure floor.

Also, it's never been shown by any geologist that this sort of erosion proceeds at a linear rate with respect to time. That is, we do not know that the depth of porosity in exposed limestone proceeds at anything like a constant rate even in the same spot. Obviously, the various layers of limestone have to be factored in, I mean one layer is very often much harder than another layer, even one underlying it. But even within one single layer, the rate of progression of porosity due to exposure is just not known to be constant.

I prefer to look at the water erosion myself as some indication of the Sphinx's age. But the truth is, it really tells us nothing at all about the age of this monument. The morphology of eroded limestone has far, far, far more to do with the structure of the stone itself than it has to do with how much water has fallen on it.

However, none of this is to say that Schoch is wrong. I'm just pointing out that Schoch's ideas are not as "rock-solid" (pun intended) as many people appear to believe.

Harte

[Minimalist]

I have to go back and look at Schoch's evidence a little more.

I thought it rested on two main points:

One: The erosion to the Sphinx enclosure wall which was caused by rainwater running over the wall which gives a characteristic pattern of vertical fissures

Two: The fact that datable dynastic mud brick structures at Saqqara show no evidence of erosion from rain.

Obviously, the question for part one is WHEN was there that much rain in Egypt. Schoch's date was 7,000 - 5,000 BC for the neolithic subpluvial. In running a quick search on that term I found that the 7,000 BC date is pretty solid but some sources seem to be stretching it out...down to 2,500 BC in a couple of cases. To no great surprise what name was associated with the 2,500 date?

Zahi Hawass.

I'll go double check my copy of Serpents in the Sky.