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Post by bvgdez on Jan 13, 2009 13:57:24 GMT
I admit to knowing next to nothing about history but I was watching Terry Jone's Barbarians on BBC Prime the other night and he said that after the Goths had left Rome (410 AD?) the Romans carried on with their own "barbaric" practices of slavery, fights to the death and dumping of unwanted children. My questions are 1) Is that true? 2) Was Rome at that time completely "christianized" 3) If the answers to 1 and 2 are yes, how can the two be reconciled?
One more unrelated question: on another programme we were told that Champollion was under strict instructions to keep secret any findings he made in Egypt that would show Egyptian civilization to be more than 4300 years old - as this would have cast doubts on the Bible's veracity. Is that true or just a myth?
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Post by humphreyclarke on Jan 13, 2009 15:30:34 GMT
On the Champollion question, it appears to be in the BBC press pack www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/10_october/17/egypt_champ_eps.shtmlThe ealing humanists appear to have watched the show. Another example of Church interference in a valiant effort of discovery cropped up on BBC 1 on 27th November and 4th December in a short two-part documentary simply called 'Egypt'. This dealt with the well known story of deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics with the aid of the Rosetta Stone. The polymath English physicist, Thomas Young, and the brilliant young French linguist, Jean-François Champollion, sought to break the code. But Champollion, in the 1820s, won the prize of discovering that Egyptian hieroglyphs were truly alphabetic/phonetic. The Catholic Church got wind of Champollion’s work and made a shameful effort to put a stop to it. The Church feared a translation might reveal things contrary to its own teaching on such matters as the age of the earth, Noah’s flood, Adam and Eve, and other gems of ‘Biblical truth’. While in Egypt, Champollion realised some of the Egyptian inscriptions pre-dated the biblical flood, on the Church’s chronology. He kept the information to himself because French ecclesiastics had subtly ordered him not to publish any such findings. Scholarship could not be allowed to embarrass the Church. I did a google search and found this except from a book by John Ray called 'The Rosetta Stone'. 'Before Champollion, the only ancient voices from the ancient world that could be heard were Greece, Rome and the Bible. Now the Egyptians were beginning to speak with their own voice. This was a triumph for understanding, but it was clear even in Champollion's own lifetime that parts of the new story would turn out to be divisive. Before the decipherment, Champollion's work on the chronology of ancient Egypt had started to provoke the Catholic Church, which had an uneasy relationship with the revolution in France and those who supported it. As his work progressed, and he found more and more Pharaohs with higher and higher regnal years, it became increasingly clear to Champollion that the traditional time-scale taught by the Church was too short. The thirty dynasties given by the chronicler Manetho could not be reconciled with the received dates for Old Testament figures such as Abraham and Solomon. The Church retaliated by declaring that the advanced dates for Egyptian civilisation which this pipsqueak was proposing were far too close to the period of Noah's flood, which as every one knew was a time of primitive ignorance. In the case of the Dendera zodiac, however, which Champollion had shown to be very late by Egyptian standards, the paradoxical result was that the same pipsqueak was hailed by the Church as a champion of its cause. Here we have a foretaste of the bitter debate about science and religion which was to occupy much of the nineteenth century, and whose echoes are still with us in the twenty-first. Champollion found something of the controversy and opposition which was later to beset Darwin in the realm of evolution. The authority of Holy Writ was a mighty opponent to take on.'This needs looking into
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Post by humphreyclarke on Jan 13, 2009 18:30:19 GMT
There appears to have been a dispute in the 1820s over the dating of the Dendera zodiac which was claimed to have been produced around 2000 BC by Burckhardt and Coraboeuf. This came close to the period assigned to Noah’s flood, namely about 2300 b.c.e, as established by the 17th-century Bishop Usher. It seems that following the concordat with Napoleon a catholic priest called Domenico Testa produced a long screed on Dendera that vigorously refuted the claims for its antiquity. This is probably becuase the dating of the Dendera zodiac was coupled with the antireligious writings of Dupuis which claimed that the zodiac, and astronomy itself, was born near the Nile over 14,000 years ago and that the Greeks were scientific children compared to the Egyptians, whose knowledge and wisdom underlay all of Western science and mathematics. Champollion's contribution was to reveal that the Dendera was actually created in the Roman period thus refuting the extreme age claims. Apparently the pope offered the Champollion a cardinalship, even though he was married with three children.
Where the rest of it comes from I have no idea. There seems to be a claim that the church placed restrictions on Campllion's expedition which is odd considering it was made possible by the support of the grand-duke of Tuscany, Leopold II, and the King of France, Charles X. There was the so called alliance of throne and altar in the post restoration period but I can't see how theological pressure was brought to bear and I cant find any evidence for it. The episode shows the dating of Djedkare's tomb shaking Campllion's confidence in biblical chronology but since there were rival biblical dates to bishop Usher's e.g 2459 BC, its hard to see why this would have challenged any beliefs he had completely (he seems to have been a free-thinker). Again I would like to see some evidence.
I think its a docu-drama so they took the Dendera affair and spread it out over the rest of Campllion's life. Everyone loves a bit of reason vs religion stuff.
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Post by bjorn on Jan 14, 2009 9:32:00 GMT
This story also tastes of the standard Warfare Mythology as
1: Usher was no Catholic and, as you mentioned, there were other dating possibilities 2: The whole Platon-Atlantis dating ("9000 years before") seems to have been accepted as a possibility for a hundred years or so in some circles - without much "Church censoring" 3: There is as usual not named a single source or quotation (AFAIK) 4: It fits too well other debugged stories about The Warfare
I would suggest to ask BBC politely for sources and experts they have used, and then check these out. They have been kind enough to answer me about such before.
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Post by humphreyclarke on Jan 14, 2009 10:25:36 GMT
This story also tastes of the standard Warfare Mythology as 1: Usher was no Catholic and, as you mentioned, there were other dating possibilities 2: The whole Platon-Atlantis dating ("9000 years before") seems to have been accepted as a possibility for a hundred years or so in some circles - without much "Church censoring" 3: There is as usual not named a single source or quotation (AFAIK) 4: It fits too well other debugged stories about The Warfare I would suggest to ask BBC politely for sources and experts they have used, and then check these out. They have been kind enough to answer me about such before. Bjorn Any idea who I direct enquiries to at the BBC?. I am very suspicious about the claim the church placed restrictions of the Franco-Tuscan expedition and I can't find a single source for it anywhere. The most likely source for it would be Champollion's Egyptian diaries for which the first english translation appeared in 2001. www.amazon.co.uk/Egyptian-Diaries-Solved-Mysteries-Nile/dp/1903933021None of the reviews of it mention any 'conflict' stuff. weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/573/bo11.htmAlthough there does appear to be something in this book description. 'Through sheer, driven genius, Champollion was able to outflank his opponents, emerging as the man who deciphered the complicated code of the hieroglyphs. In this lively and passionate first-hand account of perseverance and hardship, he succeeds against the odds to reach Egypt in 1828 during a brief lull in the Turkish wars in the Mediterranean. His adventure was troubled by heat, flooding, robbers, deceitful dealers and spiteful opponents such as the Englishman Thomas Young and the Frenchman Edme Jomard. Yet during this voyage Champollion not only established his unique genius as a scholar, he became the first man to understand the mystical inscriptions of the pharaohs that had remained mute for two thousand years. He unravelled their bizarre imagination in which fathers marry their daughters, and mothers their sons, and the pharaoh is persistently reminded of the fact that he is both all-powerful and his entourage awaits his death. Yet he also uncovers sensitive evidence regarding the age of the world, then still thought to be described exhaustively by the bible. These dispatches of his progress to his brother, a journalist, were impatiently read in Europe at the time, but have never been published in Britain.'I'm sure if it had happened, Dickinson White would have picked it up.
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Post by bjorn on Jan 14, 2009 11:52:55 GMT
I am not sure, I directed my mail about 10 years ago to the relevant BBC channel in the hope that it would be forwarded to the right person. Which it was.
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Post by bjorn on Jan 14, 2009 11:57:36 GMT
BTW, the ADW-test is of course failproof.
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Post by humphreyclarke on Jan 14, 2009 12:40:29 GMT
Thanks for that.
My inkling, based on the reviews and the book summaries is that Champollion noted in his diary that one of the tombs he was examining (Menofre) seemed to date from before one of the dates given for the flood which would have arisen during the Dendera Zodiac controversy. This isn't in itself particularly noteworthy. The more serious charge that the church told Champollion to suppress his discoveries is probably a myth but I would need to look through the diaries (will be republished at the end of this month) to find out.
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Post by bjorn on Jan 14, 2009 14:17:47 GMT
He may even have made a joke about "important to keep this silent from the Church, of course", which someone versed in White would take as another warfare proof.
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