"The history of Massachusetts is the history of America" Said William Galvin, Secretary of the Commonwealth before opening the box.
So is the history of Pennsylvania. So is New York. So is Virginia, you presumptuous twit. So is Maryland, North and South Carolina, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations. So is Georgia and so is Delaware. So is New Jersey and so is Connecticut.
So is Florida, for that matter and so is certainly Louisiana. In fact, New Orleans is older than the United States.
But your egoistic presumptions aside, what do you have there? I'm curious.
There is a 1652 Pine tree shilling struck by the colonists in defiance of England. There is a bronze medal of George Washington and a silver plate made by Paul Revere. There are colonial records and newspapers.
They will be on display for awhile then set back beneath the statehouse cornerstone along with a few fresh items of today. Make that ftatehoufe cornerftone.
"This is the most exciting project I've ever worked on...this is what we as conservators live for." -Pam HatchfieldYou don't get out much, do you Pam?
NBC News with photos! Kidding aside, It is interesting. American history always is interesting. I recommend it.
Exciting as all that is for Pam, have you ever watched Antique Roadshow recorded in England? People line up for miles, it seems, and come in holding tea cups older than our country.
But speaking of old junk, there were some really cool discoveries in 2014. News Discovery lists ten of them. Not only has a previously unknown pharaoh been discovered but also a previously unknown wife of another. Notice when they come up the word "nefer" again. Once you see it, you see it everywhere. Remember it means "beautiful" sometimes "perfect" sometimes "true" and sometimes "goodness" because those concepts are inseparable philosophically: truth is beautiful and good, goodness is true and beautiful, beauty is good and true. The symbol looks like a lute, or a banjo but it is actually the esophagus and stomach of a sheep. The sign is found in Gardiner's list of hieroglyphic signs "F: Parts of Mammals, F35, a very useful sign.
The sign will be seen in their names. The pharaoh has five names, it's bound to be in one of them.
1) A tile mosaic from a tomb at Amphipolis, Alexander the Great-era.
2) Secret monuments at Stonehenge. The site isn't just the stone circle. There are some seventeen temples discovered, previously unknown Neolithic shrines.
3) An 18th Century shipwreck discovered at the site of the Twin Towers destruction in NYC.
4) King Richard III's skeleton revealing he suffered adolescent idiopathic scoliosis. Now, you would think that would be evident in his suit of armor. They save all that stuff, you know.
5) Skeletal remains of a teenager in a Yucatan underwater cave, not a cenote, along with the remains of saber-toothed cats, pumas, sloths and bears.
6) Damage to five of Syria's six UNESCO World Heritage sites due to war. (Not actual new discoveries, rather discoveries of new destruction.)
7) An ancient papyrus with Greek writing that says Jesus was married. Most likely faked. I don't know why they are listing this, but it is pretty cool nonetheless, just to see what fakers get up to.
8) Cheese on an old Chinese mummy. On a string around her neck, probably intended as snack in the afterlife. You never can be too careful. She was beautiful in life.
9) King Tut's erection. Okay, that is just being salacious. Embalmers wanted to make it look like Tut had a hard on for the return to old polytheism, like Osiris, after the disruption of monotheism caused by his Tut's dad.
10) Scratches in rocks and on shells in the shame of "M's" that can only be done by man, now revealed to have been done by pre-man Homo-erectus. There's that erection again.
But what happened to the pharaoh?
Oh, that was on another site. Sorry.
Unknown pharaoh's remains identified as King Woseribre Senebkay. He ruled an area between the powerful Northern and Southern kingdoms at a time of upheaval, an intermediary period of disruption. That is, disruption by foreign rulers. There may be as many as twenty other unknown pharaohs. Multiple pharaohs ruling concurrently at different areas of the Nile. To show you how disruptive the period was. Archaeologists were excavating a larger tomb of Sobekhotep when they discovered Senebkay.
Hotep means "Peace" or "Satisfaction" It is a very common sign used often in names. The sign depicts an offering mat with bread offering standing upright on it.
The half circle means "t"
The square means "p"
Imagine carving in all that redundancy. The sign already means "hotep" So the carver is chiseling away, probably not even knowing what the scribe has him chiseling. And the scribe insisted on the redundancy purely for reasons of aesthetics. Instead of being all smushed. In other cases they'll leave out those letters where it suits them, say, inside a cartouche. He wanted the word to fit in a square to be visually appealing. That's all. And now a worker has to carve it all out just to satisfy the scribes. What a bummer.
Sobek means crocodile. I made a pop-up card depicting sobek as an actual crocodile.
Either one will do, anthropomorphized or not. Both mean S-b-k, Sobek.
But that is the larger tomb being excavated. The newly discovered tomb is Woseribre Senebkay.
Back to Senebkay.
We mustn't let these oddly long words scare us. They always do breakdown to simpler known forms, and their forms are highly formulaic.
The name is incomplete. And there is confusion with another ruler at the same time. Egyptologists are still sorting competing ideas.
The royal name:
The first as found, the second a reversed drawing.
Duck with sun means "son of re" name. The name given to the person at birth. The bits inside the cartouche are letters, and word-signs and grammar.
The hook shape is a folded piece of textile, it means the letter "S"
Zig-zag water means "n"
The lower leg with foot means "b"
The two connected upright forearms with hands means "ka" a portion of the human soul with its own unique properties. Unlike our concept of human soul.
The two feathers are sedge fronds, individually they mean "eh" in pairs they mean "plural" of the preceding sign, so, two kas.
The kas of Seneb. Seneb means "health." It is a word used formulaically quite often, rather Spock-like: Ankh, Wedja, Seneb, meaning "life, prosperity (to be whole, or endurance) and health. You see it all the time all over the place.
Hold up your hand with your fingers separated down the center like Spock and say, "Life, prosperity, health." The Egyptians wrote that all the time.
Woseribre,
Woser (sometimes Weser) is the k-9 head on a stick, it means "power"
"ib" means "heart"
"re" means "sun god"
So then, Power, heart of Re
See? Formulaic as can be.
The item on history.com has more information on what the archaeologists found at Woseribre Senebkay's tomb. But nobody is going to tell you all this.
So that was an exciting discovery. Also a previously unknown wife of a known pharaoh.
Come on, doesn't this beat the pants off a 1652 shilling?
Tomb of Queen Khentakawess III discovered in Abusir.
Huffington Post. Bless their hearts, they have the best reporting on this. They do. Credit where it is due. Thank you, Ed Mazza.
Long forgotten, newly rediscovered by Czech archaeologists, her tomb is 4,500 years old, placing her at the time the pyramids were built. It is a small tomb crudely decorated. Inscriptions identify her as wife of a king and mother of a king. Her husband was Neferefre.
At last, "Nefer" I told you it'd show up.
Nefer = perfecton
"f" means "of"
"re" means "sun god" So then, "Perfection of Re," or "Truth of Re," or "Goodness of Re," what have you.
Nice.
But this is just Archaeology. There are excellent discoveries in Astronomy Paleontology, new dinosaur bones discovered, biology, new animal life forms discovered, also numerous incredible science breakthroughs and discoveries. 2014 was an all around excellent year for sciences.
7 comments:
If you buy the idea Exodus took place around the time of the Santorini eruption (which caused the Ten Plagues*), then there's a new explanation for the parting of the Red Sea - tsunami - just like the Indian Ocean 10 years ago.
* And the blacking out of the sun may have been the result of a pyroclastic flow.
Man, it must have taken a month to write one sentence in early Egypt.
"The history of Massachusetts is the history of America," may sound like arrogance to you but from the standpoint of hard left progressives it is a triumphal statement, which, in light of the near complete dominance of progressive governance in DC is also a fact. Massachusetts is the capital of deep blue New England and the New England professoriate, progressive to its core, has imposed its plans for the rest of us lesser beings with great success. In that sense the history of Massachusetts - like it or not - IS the history of America.
Oops, capitol.
"The history of Massachusetts is the history of America"
I did not find that so offensive, other than the obvious question: So how did Massachusetts get so off track?
As for the papers, I would not re-inter them unless they can be safely preserved in that location. And I agree, in Europe, Asia and Africa, things have to be thousands of years old to be considered ancient. Stuff a few hundred years old is just old.
In regards to the Richard III comment, PBS had a very interesting documentary last Fall about his condition, and found a guy who had a similar condition to serve as a body double, making him a suit of armor, teaching him to joust, etc. and so on, all to see if someone with that condition could do what Richard III was said to do.
Very well done and fascinating throughout.
In Pennsylvania before our family moved to Japan we all had to take Pennsylvania history in school. You know, William Penn, Benjamin Franklin, Philadelphia, Liberty Bell, Valley Forge, and all that. When in Japan we all had to take Japanese history. Then after Japan we moved to Louisiana and we all had to take Louisiana History, and I thought, "Well, that's different, what with the Spanish, what with the French and all that. Then after that we moved to Colorado, Dad drove us all around the main streets. He asked us, "So, what do you think?" I said, It doesn't look very old at all. None of the architecture appears to be more than 100 years old. He said, "It isn't." Colorado celebrated its centennial near the same time the country celebrated its bicentennial in 1976. None of us had to take Colorado History because there isn't any. Incidentally, the Colorado History Museum is across the street. It's not all that shabby. Mostly about mining, and that's pretty much it. If you've seen the movie The Unsinkable Molly Brown then you've seen Colorado history, pretty much. Incidentally, Incidentally, Molly Brown's house is four blocks up 12th st. on Pennsylvania St.
(see what I did there?)
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