Friday, March 06, 2009

Ancient Tides : A Blog by Gregory LeFever Linking Ancient History to Today : The Turin Canon (Turin Papyrus, Turin Kinglist)

Ancient Tides is a nice blog by Gregory LeFever with the motto "Linking ancient history to today". The blog covers current news on the topic of ancient cultures.

One posting that caught our eye is More Fragments of Ancient List Are Found, which we plan to look into more carefully soon, as the Turin list of kings is an important document for the chronology of Ancient Egypt, upon which the chronology of the Ancient Near East is also principally based.

We provide our decipherment of the Turin Canon (viz. Turin Papyrus, Turin Kinglist) here, here, here and here.

As written at LexiLine:
"As some of you know, I have several times recommended the re-study of the Turin Canon by new thermoluminescence methods, since I am sure some of the pieces of this important historical papyrus have been mis-pasted in the reconstruction process. Thermoluminiscence would easily determine where the pieces should properly be pasted (by grains on the paper, etc.). My suggestions have fallen on deaf ears in Egyptology, for the same reason as given above - the object is "too important" to study - it might be damaged.

And so, erroneous conclusions drawn from a - surely - falsely reconstructed document are used to map the chronology of ancient Egypt, for which the Turin Canon is of eminent importance."
LeFever links us to a Discovery article by Rossella Lorenzi of Discovery News, Fragments of Ancient Egyptian Papyrus Found, in which Lorenzi reports that additional fragments of the Turin Canon (they call it the Turin Kinglist), an ancient Papyrus listing the rulers of Ancient Egypt, have been found. As Lorenzi writes, the fragments were found:
"[S]tored between two sheets of glass in the basement of the Museo Egizio in Turin, the fragments belong to a 3,000-year-old unique document, known as the Turin Kinglist....

Scholars from the British Museum were tipped off to the existence of the additional fragments after reviewing a 1959 analysis of the papyrus by a British archaeologist. In his work, the archaeologist, Alan Gardiner, mentions fragments that were not included in the final reconstruction on display at the museum. After an extensive search, museum researchers found the pieces....

The finding could help more accurately piece together what is considered to be a key item for understanding ancient Egyptian history.

This is one of the most important documents to reconstruct the chronology of Egypt between the 1st and 17th Dynasty," Federico Bottigliengo, Egyptologist at the Turin museum, told Discovery News.

Unlike other lists of kings, it enumerates all rulers, including the minor ones and those considered usurpers. Moreover, it records the length of reigns in years, and in some cases even in months and days....

Some of the finest scholars have worked on the papyrus last century, but disagreement about its reconstruction has remained," Bottigliengo said. "It has been a never-ending puzzle....

We are confident that a new examination with modern scientific techniques will enable a much improved reconstruction to be achieved," Richard Parkinson, curator in the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum, told Discovery News."

Most Popular Posts of All Time

Sky Earth Native America


Sky Earth Native America 1:
American Indian Rock Art Petroglyphs Pictographs
Cave Paintings Earthworks & Mounds as Land Survey & Astronomy
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  • Sky Earth Native America 2:
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    Cave Paintings Earthworks & Mounds as Land Survey & Astronomy
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