Thanos5150 Wrote:
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To summarize your claims that I've accused Reisner of engaging in "conspiracy" and "deception":

"You have repeatedly stated or implied Reiser's narrative to be a deliberate attempt to deceive..."
"was not some wilful "deception" as you make it out to be on Reisner's part..."
"...is hardly some form of "deception"."
"You have invented a conspiracy that otherwise does not exist."
[grahamhancock.com]

"...you like to cry some kind of conspiracy regarding Reiser's interpretation..."
"Why you think this is some kind of "conspiracy" is beyond me."
[grahamhancock.com]

"...by no means did Reisner attempt to engage in any deception as you have irresponsibly portrayed it..."
"...there is no conspiracy here..."
[grahamhancock.com]

"Reisner was no more trying to "deceive the world" as Lehner was about the worker's town"
[grahamhancock.com]

"Does Lehner or anyone else ever state or imply Reisner was trying to "deceive" anyone"
"Reisner was not out to "deceive" anyone"
[grahamhancock.com]

These are deflections that do not represent what I said in my posts. Certainly, Reisner can be accused of inventing a conspiracy in which Khufu's team coordinated a secret reburial of Hetepheres from Dashur to Giza. And he might also be accused of inventing a deception in which Khufu's team tried to slip the sealed but empty sarcophagus past Khufu without him knowing it didn't contain the remains of Hetepheres I. But I've never stated or implied that Reisner, himself, engaged in conspiracy or deception. On the contrary, I've stated several times that I thought Reisner's "motives were pure" but that he simply applied an obsolete standard of proof and his peers swallowed it whole.



> As I said: "Reisner offered a theory which was clearly
> based on ample conjecture and it was the fault of
> others it was ever passed off as "fact"."

Thanks, I got it the first time, but that's simply not born out in Reisner's writings on Hetepheres. In fact, he repeats segments of his fictional narrative elsewhere, for example:

"We already knew that the contents of the box had been gathered up from the original tomb, and that the original tomb had been broken into by thieves."

"The chipping of the upper edge of the coffin and the lower edge of the lid had been noted when the tomb was first opened and understood as proving that the coffin had been closed and opened again before deposition in the secret tomb."

"I reached the conclusion that the deposit was a reburial brought here from another tomb..."

As another example, Reisner was not only certain that the sarcophagus originally occupied a different tomb and was relocated to G7000x by command of Khufu, but he was also 100% convinced that the remains of Hetepheres was in the sealed alabaster box:

"In a preliminary statement I set forth the facts as known at that time and outlined the various possibilities arising from the known facts...I never doubted that the mummy was in the coffin...In my preliminary statement I had mentioned every possibility except the one which lay patent before us. There was no mummy in the coffin. It had seemed to me inconceivable that Cheops should have ordered the remains of his mother's burial transferred to Giza and hidden under a hundred feet of masonry unless the body, the most essential part of any burial, had been brought along with the coffin."

Reisner wasn't presenting a hypothesis, he was presenting what he considered to be the facts with strong conviction. If you read Reisner differently, then we must agree to disagree.



> Like I also said:
> "Regardless, it was the norm amongst
> antiquarians of the day, and really expected of
> them, to offer such "hypotheticals", "stories" if
> you will, to create a narrative around such
> discoveries which as we can see still happens in
> the field today."

That's exactly the problem I've been describing. The narratives that were created by a "norm" that loosely portrays "hypotheticals" as facts confirm that what was "really expected of them" was a low standard of proof when presenting their "stories". The fact is, the field did NOT accept his presentation merely as a "hypothetical" but rather, as Lehner pointed out, it was accepted as "historical fact" by peers in the field, for 60 years. And many of those hypotheticals are still accepted as fact today.



> These people are not out to "deceive" anyone but
> rather is a problem systemic to fields that given
> the incomplete nature of the information more
> often than not relies on interpretation.

Again, I didn't accuse Reisner of deception. And while some modern investigators might be able to see through this systemic problem after Lehner published his 1985 alternative explanation, that "systemic problem" has made a long-lasting contribution to strengthening the overall context and structure of the narrative and timeline, nevertheless. The damage is done. The jury is unable to ignore what it heard.

For example, what corroborating evidence do we have to support that Hetepheres I was Khufu's mother other than what Reisner reported in G7000x? Objects were found that included the name "Hetepheres" and "Mother of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt". Those objects don't mention Khufu. And Lehner (p.83) describes a different connotation of "Mother" with respect to traveling into the afterlife.

Also, what corroborating evidence do we have to support that Hetepheres I was Sneferu's wife other than what's in G7000x? Reisner drew the inference from objects which included either the name "Sneferu" or the name of "Hetepheres", but nothing directly linked the two other than the co-residence of the objects within the same G7000x cache. The sealed (when first discovered) but empty alabaster box in G7000x is still considered to be the sarcophagus of Hetepheres despite its lack of markings. Since it has been suggested that Khufu is responsible for installing the contents of G7000x, Münch suggests that the sarcophagus for a woman of Hetepheres I's status should have been made of granite, not alabaster (in G7000x), similar to that of Khufu's daughter, Meresankh II.

And yet, Egyptology in the 21st century still portrays Hetepheres I as Khufu's mother and Sneferu's wife,that G7000x was Hetepheres' tomb, and that it represents a reburial site.



> Just because Reisner's theory did not pan out under
> closer scrutiny or further discovery of evidence
> to support it does not mean therefore everything
> is "all wrong" opening the door to whatever anyone
> can imagine.

I never said that. You keep inflating the issue, not me: first conspiracy, then deception, then "everything is all wrong". Rather, as I've said many times, G7000x is simply yet another clear example among many, committed by early investigators who applied a low standard of proof. I'm sorry if you're getting tired of hearing that, but it's obviously not getting across yet since you still are trying to reframe it into "conspiracy", "deception", etc. I'll say it again, I am not claiming Reisner is guilty of conspiracy or deception.



> You are trying use one meaningless
> example to throw the "baby out with the bathwater"
> which otherwise does not apply at large.


"Meaningless"? I'm not so sure about that. First of all, this Reisner episode is certainly not the only example of low standards applied by earlier investigators that's enjoyed a long-lasting, deap-seated influence. Also, this "meaningless" incident has had long-lasting consequences in Egyptology because of how Reisner framed it to neatly reinforce the self-consistent paradigm of the funerary context and timeline. Despite your insight to see through it, and Lehner's "alternative explanation", I think Reisner's fabrication nevertheless has demonstrated significant staying power by virtue of the great credibility of its luminary source. So in my opinion, maybe not so harmless.




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08-Jun-16 03:50 by Origyptian.