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Comment by qubex | Hacker News Reader

Imagine if they find an opened chamber, and that it contains artefacts that can be carbon-dated, and they turn out to be thousands of years older than conventional Egyptology expects.

(I expect there will be artefacts, and I expect their dates will coincide with what we already expect, but I’m always holding out for ”new science” that needs to be explained.)

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There are thousands of sumerian cuneiform tablets left to translate, if you're bored ;-) Many of these predate the pyramids by a thousand years or so. Most translated ones contain mundane enough stuff, so its likely that the rest are similar, but if you're looking for something ancient to discover something in, I can't think of a better place to look given their age and that they're already found (ie available to read).

Suprised they're not largely machine readable given the geometric nature of cuneiform. You might have to aggressively guess some combinations as the components of hte symbols aren't always well separated but it seems easier than reading current alphabets/characters.

I did get in to cuneiform at one point in the past but the dictionary to translate was, IIRC, over £1k.

Any good links you can suggest for corpus of works that are likely to yield interesting output, and sources to aid in that?

What software is good for aiding such translation work?

Perhaps it’s just that nobody has tried? I can’t imagine it’s as difficult as, say, Google Street View’s street number recognition.

Unfortunately I don’t have any answers to your question. I’m a rather casual observer with an interest but little experience. I only recently got interested enough to buy some books in the topic (and Sumerian history/mythology in general). It seems that the best source of untranslated cuneiform would be to physically visit the Department of the Middle East at the British Museum (not sure if anybody can make an appointment for the cuneiform study rooms or what though...)

If you or anybody else were to find a collection/library of digitized cuneiform tablets, I would be very much interested myself, more so if there are any notes or commentary.

This looks like it fits the general description: https://cdli.ucla.edu/

It looks like they've got images of tablets from about 30 institutions, organized by time period. I've found a few with transliterations, but information seems fragmentary. There are also a fair number of entries without images.

Thanks

https://cdli-gh.github.io/mtaac/

You are missing my point (which I inadvertently mangled by writing ”opened chamber” in lieu of ”unopened chamber"): the whole Great Pyramid is entirely structural and there have never been artefacts found within it that can be said to have been present at the time of building and that could be definitively carbon-dated. A single sigil of dubious origin on ancient plaster repair-work in the load-baring spaces above the King’s Chamber are the only reference to Kufu in the whole structure. This recently changed when builders’ inscriptions were found behind the sealed door drilled through by the robot in the Queen’s Chamber shaft, but the paint in question has not been carbon-dated yet, because somehow you’d need to engineer a device to scrape a sample off and retrieve it.

So if this hypothetical chamber were found to be intact and unopened, and to contain artefacts made not of stone but of wood or fibre, then finally it would be possible to definitively date the structure and corroborate (or refute) the timeline currently taken for granted.

Ah, ok, so your point was that we really don't know for sure that the pyramids (or, at least, the Kufu one) is as old as we believe, because the dating that has been done is somewhat dubious, and you are hoping it is much older?

My point doesn't really go against this, just that it may be more practical to look at what we already have access to, but is largely not translated.

Also, since we have dated many other Egyptian artefacts, we can assume that the civilisation is that old (but of course, the pyramids could have pre-dated them). If they did find any artefacts with writing in the chamber and it is much older than when we believe the pyramids were built, I wouldn't be surprised if the artefacts contained Akkadian or Sumerian cuneiform anyway ;-)

My point is subtle. We definitely know when the ancient Egyptian civilisation existed, and that has been definitely dated by many coherent methods: carbon dating of artefacts at other sites, historical record, and archeological layers. The issue (which I am perfectly aware merely articulating makes me sound like a kook, but hear me out and know beforehand that I am very skeptical about the likelihood of what I am stating might actually be true) is that we have not got definitive links between the pyramids and the Ancient Egyptian civilisation as we construe it. In most ancient Egyptian texts the pyramids are referred to as being already ancient but claimed to be of their own origin, but in other civilisations (e.g., the ancient Chinese and their claim of the “Yellow Emperor” et al) we have found that civilisations’ own accounts about their origins and claims to being the artificers of grand monuments is not always reliable. What if the pyramids actually predated the ancient Egyptians by millennia, and the ancient Egyptians merely arose later around them, in the same area, and claimed them as their own? There is much pseudoscience in this regard, but certain highly controversial geological observations about the weathering of the Sphinx in particular are particularly telling (in my opinion): it would seem that the prevailing opinion of geologists is that the weathering exhibited on the body of the Sphinx is the product of tens of millennia of water erosion, which is at odds with archeologists’ prevailing opinion is that the erosion “must be” the result of mere millennia of sand erosion, because “we already know” that the Sphinx was built “by the Ancient Egyptians, mere thousands of years before C.E.”. The reasoning is inherently circular, and enrages me. I would very much like to have original artefacts demonstrably linked with the epoch of construction from inside the Pyramids definitely carbon-dated so that this circularity can be once and for all escaped-from. In the end, I fully expect that such independent verification would lead to confirmation that the Pyramids and the Sphinx do indeed date from the early period of the Old Kingdom... but proof would be delightful, and besides, we do other kinds of science (such as running the LHC) in hopes of seeing disagreement with prevailing theories... wouldn't it be amazingly exciting if it turned out that this were not the case? No extraterrestrials... just much deeper human history than we have hitherto fathomed.

I agree, it would be good to prove scientifically instead of relying on fallacious circular reasoning and assumptions, and it would certainly be exciting if it proved that there was more to the story.

My main point was simply that given that the oldest written texts we have are Sumerian cuneiform, it would seem likely that if there were written texts hidden in the pyramids which predates Ancient Egyptian civilisation, it would likely be cuneiform too, although it would be incredible if even older texts were found (and decipherable)! Early-human history is very interesting.

(I am aware that there is older proto-writing than cuneiform, but not complete written texts)

I’d never really entertained the notion that there might be earlier forms of writing, and if they existed, what form they might be expected to take. This is a really fascinating issue. Maybe we’ll find scribbles that resemble Linear-A (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_A) all over the inside of this hidden space. Wouldn’t that be exciting, even if we couldn’t read it?!

I still subscribe to theory that the pyramid was meant as a landing pad for starships.

Been watching too much stargate lately?

Been missing StarGate too much lately. It was a damn good show.

If they find anything - they will hide it and not tell anyone.

Who and why?

While we are imagining unlikely thing, I'm going to imagine there are instructions from aliens (yes, the same ones that actually built the pyramids, don't ya know) on how to build a faster than light drive.

Why is it unlikely? I’m certainly not suggesting aliens. Just the idea that if there is a chamber and it is unopened and contains non-stone artefacts (wood, food, fibres, bone) we could finally carbon-date the structure and corroborate or refute the prevailing wisdom on the timeline.

But those instructions actually involve the assembly of an AI which develops nano technology, disassembles our world and solar system in order to build and dispatch pyramid assembling drones throughout the galaxy.

Edit: I meant to write “unopened”.

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