Many readers will be familiar with E. A. Wallis Budge, perhaps mostly with respect to his books on Egyptology. Much of Budge's work in Egyptian language is today very outdated, as is his other work in Egyptology. Nevertheless, there is still good material to be found...
ancient Egypt
Mummies and Other Dead Ancient Egyptians
As is my practice, I try to post things periodically that aren't paleobabble. Sure, the archeo-bunk is fun and entertaining, but I need to do something useful now and again. I recently came across two online resources for research on Egyptian mummies, courtesy of the...
Free (and Massive) Hieroglyphic Dictionary Recently Updated
I've post a link to the hieroglyphic dictionary produced by Mark Vygus before. Egyptology News posted a heads-up a few days ago that the dictionary had been updated. It's now a breathtaking 2,267 pages long with 40,000 entries. Here is the direct link to the PDF (11.1...
Ron Wyatt and Those Egyptian Chariot Wheels
I've complained before about the poor quality of Ron Wyatt's "research" (loosely defined) before. While he may have been well-intentioned (his aim was to defend the Bible's content), there is no excuse for the kind of paleobabble he has become notorious for. What...
Ancient Egyptians and Race
Some of you may have noticed in the comments that I replied to a commenter that the idea that ancient Egyptians were Negroes is nonsense (er, paleobabble). I thought I'd direct anyone interested in this to some resources. Here is a scholarly article that does a nice...
Archaeology and the Israelite Exodus from Egypt
As Passover approaches, we will get the obligatory articles (usually written by devoted skeptical journalists) about "the real truth" behind Passover (and Easter, of course). The article you'll find at this post over at Todd Bolen's Bible Places blog isn't of that...
Ahmed Osman: No Stranger to Revisionist PaleoBabble
Ahmed Osman has authored a number of books promoting fringe revisionist history with respect to ancient Egypt and the Bible (basically, the intersection of the two). His books have apparently sold well (no surprise there). Here are some titles (I love the one with the...
New Evidence for Concrete Pyramid Blocks
This is pretty cool. At the risk of repeating myself, my view is that there is no *one* theory that accounts for all the pyramid construction methods. I see no reason why Houdin's internal ramp theory cannot be working alongside a counterweight method, alongside a...
Ancient Planes, Rockets, and Helicopters?
I feel a little embarrassed. I can't believe I forgot to blog this, though I probably intended to redo the page and make it look nice. Oh well. The last time I was on Coast to Coast, I threw this page together (in about an hour - I know, it shows) since I knew people...
On the Pointless Demand for Alien-Human DNA Testing
Readers of this blog and those who have listened to various interviews I have done this year know that I think the request by Zecharia Sitchin to have Sumerian Queen Puabi 's remains genetically tested to prove her alien heritage is silly. One of the primary problems...
Genesis 1 and Its ANE Polemic, Part 2
Here's a recent article by John Walton on this issue. it is more up-to-date than Hasel. You'll notice that he cites Tsumura and others in objection to seeing tehom as the primeval opponent. Tsumura favors a Genesis polemic that more or less has Canaanite, not...
New Scholarly Paper on Archaeoastronomy and Pyramid Alignment
Pretty sweet - thanks to the "Talking Pyramids" blog for this one. After you've read the story at the link above, here are the papers: The shorter version The actual journal article. Editor's note: broken links removed.
Egyptomania
Came across a nice (and fairly lengthy) article on Egyptomania today. A nice sketch. For those PaleoBabble faithful who want solid academic material on the wacky things people think and have thought about Egypt (including pyramidiocy and the "true" symbolic meaning of...
Lost Army of Cambyses Noted on Egyptology News Blog
Check out the post here. Time will tell if this is the real deal, but it's already quote interesting. Editor's note: see here for more background information, and Zahi Hawass' claims against; sadly, there doesn't seem to have been scholarly follow up to this report:...
Evidence for the Biblical Joseph Discovered?
This just in from the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), who translated the news release from Al-Ahram. The claim is that archeologists have discovered ancient Egyptian coins bearing the name and image of the Biblical Joseph. You can read excerpts of the...