Egyptian papyrus boats, the curse of the pharaoh and the flying bird
The civilization in the Nile Delta existed for a colossal long period - about 5 thousand years. We, far from history and living in 2014, find it difficult to imagine such a time interval. It is striking that in one of the burials found in the Egyptian province of Deir al-Bahari, forty mummies of the pharaohs lay: this is tantamount to the coffins of all the rulers of the Slavic lands - Kiev princes, kings and Soviet secretaries general - standing in one place.
Or one more fact. In the vicinity of the famous Valley of the Kings (the traditional burial place of pharaohs in Ancient Egypt) there is a village where several generations of villagers at the beginning of the twentieth century made their living exclusively by looting graves. It is impossible to imagine how much science has lost due to their "efforts". It is not surprising that the history of Egyptian civilization in the Nile Valley became a fertile field for human imagination and the creation of myths. Someone is trying to get to the bottom of the truth, and someone takes advantage of the lack of knowledge to satisfy their own vanity or cynical earnings. We have collected several examples of the most striking stories related to Ancient Egypt, and found out what is true and what is fiction.
Pharaohs: the nonexistent curse of the tombs
During the entire existence of the science of archeology, not a single discovery has received such wide recognition and fame as the find of the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in 1922. The height of the excitement around it occurred in 1926: in just three months, 12.3 thousand tourists visited the tomb, and the laboratory - 270 groups of curious. Newspapers, publishing stories about mysterious tombs, ceased to be content with dry facts and more and more fiction began to appear in publications.
Evil inscription. The real uproar arose after the death of Lord Carnarvon, a companion and associate of the discoverer of Howard Carter's tomb. The lord died from an insect bite. The newspapermen "suddenly" found out that there is an inscription on the wall of the tomb: "Death will overtake the one who will disturb the peace of the Pharaoh with quick steps." In the following years, several participants in the excavation and their relatives died. By 1930, only Howard Carter survived. And when the telegraph spread the news that a certain Mr. Carter had died in America, everyone decided that it was the pharaoh who threatened an archaeologist from the other world. Carter and several other prominent scientists could not resist: they drew the public's attention to the fact that some of the dead were already very old, others were seriously ill with fever in Egypt even before the opening of the tomb, and some of the sad list had nothing to do with this story … AND,Most importantly, there is no curse inscription in the tomb! Carter's German colleague Georg Scheindorf supported his colleague: “In the ancient Egyptian funeral ritual, there is no concept of a curse at all. The ritual requires only to show respect to the departed."
DIDN'T RELAX. It would seem that everything became clear even 90 years ago. However, the story of the curse of the pharaoh comes to life in the media from time to time. Now it occurs to someone that the priests used radioactive substances to protect the graves, then they specially bred a special type of fungus that produces toxins in the burial chambers. And always with a more thorough and unbiased research, the next "curse" is discarded as an idle fiction.
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Discoverer. Carter examines Tutankhamun's sarcophagus
TUTANHAMON-PLANERIST: Sakkar mystery
In 1898, in one of the tombs not far from the Egyptian village of Saqqara (next to it is the oldest necropolis of the capital of the Old Kingdom - Memphis), an object that was inconspicuous at first glance was found - a bird with its wings spread, as if in flight. The wooden figurine, 14 cm long, was worn, and only in some places there were remains of paint. Now it is difficult to say whether the bird was not painted over for some reason, or the paint just peeled off. The find is dated to the II century. BC … - this is the era when Egypt lost its independence and, having been under the rule of the Persians, was conquered by Alexander the Great.
ALMOST A PLANE. The figurine ended up in the Cairo Museum and lay there in the storerooms until 1969, until it came to the eye of a certain Mr. Khalil Messih. In countless publications on the theme of the "Sakkar bird" the definition of "the learned Messiha" is used. But this is not entirely true: the real Khalil Messiha is a doctor by specialty and an Egyptologist at the call of his soul. But his relative, by a happy coincidence, was an aircraft engineer and aeronaut. He drew attention to some of the nuances of the figure. For example, the vertical arrangement of the tail elements, which is typical for airplanes and gliders (birds, as you know, have a horizontal tail). The wooden bird, like the aircraft, had no legs. The wings were alarmed - they had an airplane profile, which is not found in birds. The brothers tested a bird in a wind tunnel - it turned outthat it has all the properties of a good glider. For the purity of the experiment, the researchers built a larger model of the figurine and launched it into the air. She showed good carrying capacity and speed.
PHARAOH-AVIATOR. The publication of the test results caused a furor. What versions did not appear. Khalil Messiha, for example, admitted the possibility that the Egyptians knew how to take off long before Montgolfier, the Wright brothers or Mozhaisky. The enthusiast noted: “The Egyptians often made scaled-down models of what surrounded them in everyday life, and placed them in graves - these are chariots, boats, animal figurines. Why not assume that somewhere under the sands lies the wreckage of a full-size glider from the era of the pharaohs?"
Opponents believed that, most likely, we are talking about a children's toy or weather vane. They could be attached to the ships of the pharaohs to determine the direction of the wind.
The German historian William Deutsch generally stated that Pharaoh Tutankhamun died in … a plane crash. An allegedly detailed study of mummies suggests that Tutankhamun (and other pharaohs) at the time of his death had numerous fractures and injuries, and this is direct evidence of death after falling from a height. The conclusion of the scientist: the pharaoh crashed in an aircraft. The Mater draws a startling conclusion: aeronautics from the Nile Valley spread to Tibet, India, Mexico, Asia Minor, China and Guatemala. True, there is no information about the historian William Deutsch himself - only links to works about the crashed Tutankhamun. In short, the character is dubious.
However, in the history of the "Sakkar bird" there are actually interesting moments. For example, the artifact once exhibited in the Cairo Museum was removed from the exposition: they say, why should he gather dust at the stand if no one is conducting new research on the figurine.
Wonder bird. The legendary thing from Sakkara is endowed with excellent aerodynamics
BOAT "RA": Egyptians - pioneers of America
Today the myth of the pharaohs, who in time immemorial crossed the Atlantic and gave rise to the great civilizations of the local aborigines, is alive only in the yellow press. No confirmation of the Egyptians' stay in the New World has been found. But the attempt to prove such a contact is curious because it entered the "golden fund" of travel along with the voyages of James Cook and the odyssey of Jacques-Yves Cousteau.
FROM ONE POINT. In the second half of the 20th century, such a direction as diffusionism became popular in historical science. The bottom line: civilization originated in one specific place, and then spread throughout the world. Diffusionists believed that the place of origin was the triangle between the Middle East, Egypt and the interfluve of the Tigris and Euphrates.
The Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl was also a diffusionist. He proved the theory simply - he repeated the routes of the ancients. The first attempt that brought him fame was sailing across the Pacific Ocean on the Kon-Tiki raft (an attempt to prove that the Indians once crossed the Pacific Ocean and mastered Polynesia). After that, Heyerdahl intended to test the possibility of contact between the inhabitants of the Nile Valley and the natives of America. The outlines of the boats of the Egyptians suggested the ability to walk on the sea. True, they were built from papyrus - a material clearly unsuitable for navigation.
In 1969-1970, Heyerdahl builds large boats of papyrus and tries to cross the Atlantic, starting from the coast of Morocco. But the boat "Ra" collapsed. True, not because it was made of papyrus, but because of miscalculations in construction: Heyerdahl inaccurately repeated the design depicted on Egyptian papyri and frescoes. But the trip to "Ra-2", during the construction of which all the mistakes were taken into account, was successful - the ship reached Barbados. It turns out that theoretically the Egyptians could reach the shores of America. But, as mentioned above, there is no evidence of the presence of the Egyptians in the New World.
Heyerdahl's experiment also had another goal: by recruiting a team of representatives of different races, nationalities and religious preferences to conduct it, he showed in the era of the Cold War that people can and want to live in peace.
Across the ocean. Papyrus boat "Ra" sailed from Morocco to Barbados
