image: Life-sized statue of Lady Sennuwy; photograph by DWM, 27 August 2021.
I recently had the opportunity to visit the wonderful Museum of Fine Art in Boston, Massachusetts.
As it turns out, the entire floor containing the collections of ceramics and statuary from ancient Greece was closed for renovation, so I was unhappily prevented from re-visiting some of the artwork that I have written about in previous posts such as this one and this one during this particular visit.
However, that simply meant that I was able to devote more time to an exploration of the museum's collections of art and artifacts from ancient Egypt and from the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia and ancient Asia Minor.
Much as I love the MFA for the museum's splendid collections of breathtaking artwork from the ancient world, the placards and descriptions which accompany the artwork do of course reflect the conventional paradigm propagated by orthodox scholars, which is to be expected in just about any museum one might visit today in virtually any part of the world -- although the preponderance of evidence overwhelmingly shows this conventional paradigm to be gravely flawed and in need of radical revision.
A case in point is the display shown below, photographed during my recent visit, of a granite "pounder" and a "copper chisel," accompanied by a placard which is playfully titled, "How to Carve an Egyptian Statue."
image: Ancient pounder and chisel; photograph by DWM, 27 August 2021.
Below is a close-up of the accompanying text, which confidently informs us that the incredible artwork from the land of ancient Egypt was all created using "copper chisels (later, they used bronze), wooden mallets, stone pounders, and powdered stone as an abrasive," with which "they were able to refine and polish even the hardest rock."
image: Detail of conventional description of technology used to produce Egyptian statues; photograph by DWM, 27 August 2021.
Below is one more close-up of the pounder and chisel, with their accompanying description and provenance:
image: Close-up of pounder and chisel supposedly used to produce Egyptian statues; photograph by DWM, 27 August 2021.
That the ancient dynastic Egyptians had such tools and used such tools is beyond doubt: what is very much in doubt is whether artwork such as the statues shown here from my recent visit to the MFA and the statues and other stonework which still remain on-site in Egypt to this day could possibly be produced with hand-tools such as granite pounders and copper chisels.
For example, consider this magnificent head of a king, made from a solid piece of alabaster and conventionally understood to be a representation of Menkaura (to whom the third pyramid at Giza is also conventionally attributed):
image: Head conventionally understood to represent likeness of King Menkaura; photograph by DWM, 27 August 2021.
This amazing piece of artwork is executed in alabaster, which is a relatively soft stone and one that could indeed be worked with a copper chisel -- although there are reasons to suspect that some of the ancient statues found in the land of Egypt exhibit levels of precision which would be completely impossible to achieve using hand tools alone, as author, researcher, and professional engineer Christopher Dunn has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt with arguments and evidence he presents in books such as Lost Technologies of Ancient Egypt: Advanced Engineering in the Temples of the Pharaohs.
Here is the placard which accompanies the above head at the MFA:
image: Placard accompanying head conventionally understood to represent Menkaura; photograph by DWM, 27 August 2021.
Below is another likeness of the same king, this time executed in a solid block of greywacke, an extremely hard stone, typically ranking 6 or 7 on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness (which ranks minerals on a scale of 1 to 10, with diamonds being at the highest hardness rating of 10), and sometimes reaches hardness measurements above 7. In this sculpture, the king is depicted standing beside two deities, with the goddess Hathor seated in the center of the trio and a goddess representing the nome or territorial region of Upper Egypt known as the Hares Land standing on the other side of Hathor from the king:
image: Statue of goddess Hathor flanked by deity representing the Hare nome of Upper Egypt and the king; photograph by DWM, 27 August 2021.
Ask yourself if you think it is likely that such artwork could be carved out of greywacke using wooden mallets, round granite stones, and copper (or even bronze) chisels? Note that in contrast to greywacke, which can rank above 7 on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, copper generally ranks between 2.5 and 3, and bronze ranks about 3 on the same scale.
Below is the placard accompanying the above piece of ancient artwork in the MFA:
image: Placard accompanying triple statue of Hathor, deified Hare nome, and king; photograph by DWM, 27 August 2021.
As the placard notes, the king is depicted wearing the distinctive crown of Upper Egypt, which is known as the Hedjet (the crown of Lower Egypt is known as the Deshret, and the combination crown which incorporates both the White Crown of Upper Egypt and the Red Crown of Lower Egypt is know as the Pschent). Christophe Dunn in the above-mentioned book Lost Technologies of Ancient Egypt spends considerable time exploring the incredible levels of precision exhibited in the granite Hedjet and Pschent crowns found on statues in the region of ancient Thebes in Egypt, at the Karnak and Luxor temples and surrounding artwork -- indeed, his discussion of the precision found in the geometry of these beautiful crowns occupies the entire first chapter of the book.
While he does not comment on the Hedjet found in the statue of the king beside the goddess Hathor in the MFA shown above, and while I am not equipped to say whether this particular crown and the other details in the above trio of figures (such as the solar disc and the horns above the head of the goddess Hathor) exhibit the same precision that he finds in other statues believed to be from the same period of time in ancient Egypt, Chris Dunn has this to say about the Hedjet crowns that he examined in the temples from the region of ancient Thebes:
With the introduction of the ellipsoid, we can now look at the crowns in a different way. By drawing perfect ellipses and superimposing them on the photographs of the crowns, it becomes clear that the ancient Egyptians used this geometry, rather than a simple radius, in their design of the crowns.
The implications of finding such overwhelming evidence of sophisticated geometry can be argued by scholars into the future. Suffice it to say that elliptical geometry is not generally discussed in associated with Egyptian geometry. For the purposes of the discussion here, though, I am more interested in how the geometry was crafted with such exactness in hard granite. This, then, is why I believe the crowns are so important. They do not have the "feel" of products made by hand. They do not have the "feel" or the geometry of products made with simple and primitive machines or tools. If you travel to Luxor you can run your hands over their surfaces of the crowns, you can compare the "feel" of their smooth contours to those of your own car. These objects have the same kind of definitiveness and meticulousness as the dies that formed the body of your car. While you are online purchasing your ticket to Luxor, pick up your computer mouse and notice that it is crafted with compound radial surfaces. Contours that transition from large to small radii are products of precisely machined molds. We take them for granted, but there is an unseen world behind their creation.
And yet supposedly the crowns were crafted more than three thousand years ago. How could this be? How did the ancient Egyptians accomplish this? Why even conceive of such products if there were no tools to accomplish their making? What system of measure did they use? 32 - 35.
Note that similar to the greywacke of which the above-depicted statue trio is composed, granite also typically falls in the 6 to 7 range on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, although sometimes granite can be as high as 8 (particularly when it has high levels of quartz).
At the top of this post is another statue on display at the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, this one a life-sized statue of the beautiful Lady Sennuwy, which is carved from granodiorite, also a very hard mineral which typically ranks 6 on the Mohs hardness scale. Below is another image taken head-on of the same statue:
image: Wikimedia commons, link.
The above image is from Wikimedia commons and was taken in 2012. Below is the placard accompanying the above statue, photographed during my recent trip:
image: Placard accompanying statue of Lady Sennuwy; photograph by DWM, 27 August 2021.
The head-on image of the statue reveals the remarkable level of symmetry apparent in the two sides of the statue, including the two sides of the face of the Lady Sennuwy. Once again, I do not know if Christopher Dunn has ever done a close analysis of this particular statue and its symmetry, but his book Lost Technologies of Ancient Egypt contains extensive and detailed analysis of the symmetry in the faces of other statues from Egypt and finds levels of symmetry that would be difficult or impossible to achieve using the techniques argued by conventional Egyptology.
Discussing the remarkable levels of symmetry exhibited in a statue conventionally understood to represent a likeness of King Ramses II, sitting just outside the Temple of Luxor, Chris Dunn writes:
When I imported my original image of the head into the computer, I struck a horizontal line across the face and rotated the image until the line was barely touching the underside of the bottom eyelid. I then duplicated this image and flipped it horizontally so that the left cheek became the right cheek. I then made a 50 percent transparency of the image and lined it up with the jawline. As shown in figure 2.3, there is no variation between the left jaw and the right jaw.
Thinking about only this correspondence in the geometry of the face made me sit up and take notice. This symmetry means that the face was crafted so that a mirror image of the outline of the face was transposed to the opposite side. It is an incredible accomplishment that this exact line moved in three-dimensional space to create a perfect mirror image when viewed in two dimensions. My mind was racing at this point. What did the ancient Egyptians use to create such perfection? How did they inspect the geometry of the face? The same question I asked when I studied the crowns flashed into my brain -- though with more force and consternation. A human face is by far more complex and sophisticated than an ellipsoid that is blended with another form to form a crown (which we examined in chapter 1).
[. . .] To reproduce the geometry in three dimensions on opposite surfaces with three feet of granite in between these points -- and to control their positions as precisely as these photos indicate -- dispels forever the notion of ancient sculptors chipping away with stone hammers and stone or copper chisels. 43
To see more about the statue that Chris Dunn is describing in the above passage, and to see the amazing symmetry displayed in his reverse-transparency overlay photographs which compare the left side of the "Ramses" head to the right side, readers are encouraged to obtain his outstanding book -- which is filled with detail and evidence which can only be described as conclusive.
If the above discussion is not sufficient to dispel the conventional teaching that the artwork (and massive stonework and architecture) of ancient Egypt was produced using primitive hand-tools such as copper chisels and smooth pounding-stones, check out the amazing videos produced by my friend Ben Van Kerkwyk at UnchartedX -- whose research and work should be considered essential watching by everyone interested in the mystery of humanity's ancient past.
Below are just two of his recent videos, both of which explore the undeniable evidence present in the artifacts and archeological sites which argue for the use of advanced tools including circular saws with blades up to thirty feet in diameter, and indeed for technologies whose purpose we today, even at our present level of technological development, are unable to deduce or determine.
Ben's work is extremely important and I have referenced some of his other videos in a previous post, which I recommend re-visiting as well (or visiting for the first time, if you have not yet seen it). The astonishing conclusion which Ben reaches in his research -- based on the overwhelming amounts of evidence available in the stones of ancient Egypt, but also in other sites around the globe including in the Americas -- is that the dynastic Egyptians may not have been responsible for many of the archaeological artifacts and monuments which we attribute to that civilization, but rather that they may have inherited many of them without being able to reproduce these buildings or statues themselves.
The evidence Ben presents in the videos below (as well as in many other videos) indicates the existence of power tools of some sort which may have belonged to some even earlier and now-forgotten culture -- one which was dimly remembered during the time of dynastic Egypt, but one whose very existence or even the possibility of whose existence is now completely (and emphatically and aggressively and derisively) dismissed by the upholders of the conventional academic paradigm.
Watch the two recent videos below from UnchartedX and see if you don't agree that the available evidence totally demolishes the conventional paradigm and the derisive orthodox dismissal of any possibility of an ancient culture predating the civilizations known to or admitted by conventional academia (here is the link to the first video and here is a link to the second video).
Note that some of the discussion towards the end of the second video supports the conclusion that this forgotten ancient culture (or cultures) which possessed these advanced technological capabilities was (or were) world-wide in scope and scale. The archaeological evidence in the stones themselves is undeniable, abundant, and overwhelming.
Note too that the evidence which I have been exploring for the past decade and more -- evidence from the world's ancient myths -- also points to the very same conclusion: namely, the existence of a very sophisticated culture (or cultures), world-wide in scope and scale, predating even the most ancient cultures known to conventional academia, including the cultures of ancient Egypt, ancient Sumer, ancient India, and ancient China.
The ancient myths show from cultures around the globe display undeniable evidence of being built upon a common system of celestial metaphor -- a system which was already fully developed in the most ancient texts which have been preserved and are known to us today, including the earliest texts of ancient Egypt (such as the Pyramid Texts), and of ancient Mesopotamia (such as the Gilgamesh cycle, as well as other myth-cycles such as the Enuma Elish and the Descent of Inanna), and of ancient India (including the Vedas, as well as other ancient Sanskrit texts such as the Mahabharata and others).
I am convinced that the archaeological evidence is more than sufficient to prove that the conventional paradigm of humanity's ancient history is gravely flawed and in need of radical revision. I am equally convinced that the mythological evidence is more than sufficient to prove the same thing. Together, the two categories of evidence should already have caused a complete reconsideration by conventional scholars -- and yet they continue to doggedly resist even considering any of it as they stubbornly cling to their orthodox narratives.
But, as Ben also says towards the end of the second video linked above and embedded below -- there is hope for the future, and the tide does seem to be ready to turn. Thank you for your interest in these important subjects, and please share them with those who would benefit from this information.
