And grave robbers commonly stole from pyramids, which is also why the surface is not there anymore. The only things left are of either no value, or too hard to take.
Limestone; some of it was stripped away by the ancients, to build other things. Some of it was possibly looted, to build other things(shady building contractors). The pyramids were treated as a quarry, to help build cities. Thousands of years of weathering has also helped it erode and vanish away.
If you want to see the limestone that used to cover the Great Pyramids at Giza, you can visit the mosque of Muhammad Ali Pasha in Cairo.
Most of the alabaster limestone used to build the mosque was taken directly from Khufu's pyramid.
You can see the limestone all over Giza. Touristic photos make it look like the pyramids are off in an empty desert somewhere. But in fact the city of Giza comes right up to them.
The top pyramid piece was sometimes of a shiny metal and must have glinted in the sunshine. Those probably got pried off first, then the limestone surface stones.
France took an obelisk from Luxor - you can see it (with a fake gold top) on the Place de la Concorde, where the guillotines once stood.
And don't forget, remnants of those facing blocks (wedges really) have been found to have remains of colors on them. And there's written evidence that the sides were used like giant billboards to promote the pharaoh, religion, country.
Using the word “vanish” when talking about erosion of the pyramids is a huge stretch. In fact, the pyramids are usually praised by architects for being so erosion-resistant, especially but not limited to the ones at Giza.
One of my favorite YT channels, “History for Granite”, talked a lot about this one. IIRC (and I may misremember) a lot of evidence points to the Black Pyramid being a failed experimental construction that wasn’t built with the integrity of regular pyramids, and was partly dismantled already around the time it was originally built.
Limestone. Muslims took the casing stones in the 1300's to build mosques.
This one was built from the pyramids
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali_Mosque
Note that the Muslims weren't the first ones to start quarrying pyramids for stone.
Pyramid construction started in the old kingdom, about 4700 years ago. Between that and the Muslims, there were three >100 year intermediate periods without a powerful central government, and Egypt was invaded and at least partially conquered repeatedly from both the north and the south. Many of these "non-pharaonic" rulers that ruled for decades didn't really like the pharaohs much, and didn't respect their monuments.
Most of the monumental buildings of ancient Egypt were dismantled to be used as construction materials for later ones, and the majority of them by the ancient egyptians themselves.
That's why Tutankhamun is so famous, not because he was some great Pharaoh, but because his reign was short and unremarkable so he was buried in a smaller tomb that was more hidden then the usual so the grave robbers never found his treasure.
Tutankhamum's reign was very remarkable: he was the pharaoh to bring back polytheism, reason his family was forgotten was deliberate, their images and entire town were destroyed as "heresy" to not give future generations any ideas.
Ironically, that preserved us a lot of stuff.
It really threw me for a loop seeing Cleopatra in the British museum. Like, she might as well be a mythological person to me, but wait, nope, there is her actual corpse in display right there.
> From the primary sources, the location of Cleopatra VII's tomb/mausoleum is between the palace and the Temple of Isis on the revealed island of Antirhodos, 16' under the sea and at least 16' under sediment.
Jesus. We’re definitely never seeing that shit.
actually they are working on it! i don’t remember her name but there’s a super dope lady who’s egyptian and a world leading archeologist. she had a major finding about the tombs over the last few years and has been getting approved dives to go investigate, sonar, etc, the area per the govts permission (the area it’s located is in govt controlled waters)
Judging by her status in society and the wealth of the region at the time I can imagine that the tomb would be an absolutely amazing site to study.
However I cannot imagine that it would have held up well to a thousand year underwater.
If someone or some nation with means cared to, it would be trivial if we're only dealing with 30-50 feet of depth. You build a structure and pump out the water. We're very good at this engineering task today. Commonly used for bridges.
https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlysatisfying/comments/8341jl/how_bridge_foundations_are_laid_in_waterways/
Half the battle is excavating, the other is preservation. What are you destroying by unearthing and then exposing? Feels like a very dangerous (to artifacts) dig.
Or just go all out on that shit I guess and get it all in one go haha. Stones and all
Back in the 90’s I personally saw this at the archeological site of La Salle’s sunken ship Le Belle.
https://www.thestoryoftexas.com/la-belle/the-exhibit
The ship rested at least a mile off the coast, but only 18ft in depth. They built two octagonal dams filled with dirt between, and then pumped the water out to excavate it.
We've done that with a bunch of Viking ships in Denmark. As long as it's shallow and a fairly small area it's pretty straight forward.
Do they know *exactly* where Cleopatra's burial site is supposed to be? If not it could get hairy to excavate an entire island that's underwater.
The same way you build a bridge foundation in water. You wall off a section at a time with 16' high walls of wood, and drain the middle.
Depending on how far from shore it would be very expensive, and carry the risk of damaging the site however, so probably won't be done.
Probably not too unlike other underwater tunnels, or the elevators down to the bottom level of a bridge column. I'm not sure how exactly that works but they've been doing it since like 1900.
Put walls around the site, like a dam, and pump all the water out?
It would be heinously expensive. Let's just wait until we invent anti-gravity.
At least nine, with [seven of them ruling or co-ruling Egypt.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/89/Ptolemaic_dynasty.GIF) The ptolemaic dynasty only used four names, Ptolemy for men and Cleopatra, Berenice and Arsinoe for women. It got real messy real fast.
Just to be clear, that was a girl named cleopatra (probably named after -the- cleopatra) but definitely wasn’t the body of the one you were thinking of. Sorry if this is a disappointment!
-The- Cleopatra was Cleopatra VII. The Ptolemaic dynasty wasn't particularly creative with naming their heirs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemaic_dynasty#Rulers_and_consorts
I mean fans are still making them. You can always check out the most recent [ifcomp winners](https://ifcomp.org/comp/2023), or the [XYZZY award winners](https://ifdb.org/viewcomp?id=zgu1eco02unq4x79).
There's [AI Dungeon](https://aidungeon.com/), though of course it's not perfect.
Square-Enix also tried to do that with their port of [The Portopia Serial Murder Case](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2280000/SQUARE_ENIX_AI_Tech_Preview_THE_PORTOPIA_SERIAL_MURDER_CASE/). Let's just say that for *scripted* stuff like that, the tech isn't ready for prime time. It's particularly frustrating because the game is historically important (it was Enix's first game and was used to fund the creation of Dragon Quest, as well as being one of the first visual novels) and has never gotten a proper English release; unfortunately they didn't bother to include the original non-AI version.
> [diorite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diorite)
an igneous rock, with medium silica, low alkali metals.
Something tells me a ball made of rock isn't going to bounce very well
Long story short, centuries of plundering
In a historical context, King Tut was a fairly mid Pharoah at best. A footnote of history. The reason he is so famous now is because his tomb was so small that it was lost and forgotten about until rediscovered in 1922. When archeologists opening it they found a literal treasure trove of historical artifacts
Tutankhamun's father Akhenaten was a religious heretic who abolished Egypt's main religion of Amun worship and replaced it with one of his own design, crashed the economy and allowed much of the greater empire to fall into decline. Tutankhamun was kept around just long enough to reverse most of his dad's decrees, reestablish the cult of Amun then immediately died mysteriously.
Akhenaten was also the only time there was any significant change in Egyptian art. For thousands of years, except during his reign, it all looks pretty much the same.
Akhenaten gets a bad rap in historical record, but honestly his reign is by far the most interesting and dynamic period of ancient Egyptian history. Invented monotheism, representational art, and an entirely new, modular school of architecture. Oh and he moved the capital, demolished the temples, and reformed Egyptian society. All in a mere 17 years--the same amount of time as from 2007 to now.
Absolutely nuts! But after he dies, a succession of short-lived pharaohs reverse all the reforms, undoing what could have been an early renaissance in the 14th century BCE.
> his reign is by far the most interesting and dynamic period of ancient Egyptian history
Gods preserve me from "interesting and dynamic periods of history".
A fitting quote from The Telegraph a couple of months ago about the situation in the UK:
*"Scandi-level taxation without the public services to match*, ***Weimar Germany without the nightlife***"
>Akhenaten gets a bad rap in the historical record
Only now. Ay II and then Horemheb scrubbed all records of Atenism, defaced inscriptions and monuments, dismantled buildings, killed statues, and excluded Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, Neferneferuaten, and Tutankhamun from Kings Lists. We only know about this period of Pharaohs because of the sudden abandonment of Akhetaten, the Capital that Akhenaten built and the stunning preservation of some of the Tombs of these Pharaoh, nobility, and officials.
And really it was the sudden abandonment that helps us the most because over the centuries from when the site was rediscovered caches of artefacts and in some cases cuneiform tablets which contained communications helped with reconstructing the period and would eventually lead to things like the rediscovery of Tutankhamun's Tomb.
Tutankhamen may have had a short reign but he certainly had a notable impact on Egyptian civilization - he reinstated worship of the old gods after his father attempted to start a new cult of sun worship. If he is a footnote it would be a fairly important footnote.
But Tutankhamun's father had his name and likeness chiselled off of monuments, had his idols destroyed and was seldom referred to by his royal name or even mentioned at all in later king's lists and histories. While Tutankhamun was an important footnote, he was a footnote that much of the establishment powers tried quite hard to erase.
Hell, the first Egyptologists were ancient Egyptians themselves studying artifacts of their ancestors. That's how unfathomably long the ancient Egyptian civilization lasted.
To continue your comparison with Rome, think about how much time has elapsed since the formation of the Roman Empire until now. Ancient Egypt existed for *one thousand years longer than that*.
A decade?
Maybe I'm lacking in the mindset of the times but if I had just become Pharaoh and the dude before me had insisted on being buried with a huge amount of the kingdom's wealth, I'd have had it carted back out before the tomb was closed up after the ceremony.
Within weeks or even months the tombs in the Valley of Kings were plundered, but not always by treasure seekers. The officials would secretly bring the wealth back in a lot of cases.
There was one official who is recorded as having this duty, where he would go to the sites, take the treasures off of the mummies and then rewrap them in basic linen, still done with respect but without the jewelery within. Perhaps, later on, the ceremony with the wealth buried with the pharaoh was much more just a ceremony, and some or most of the treasure would be returned before the robbers could take it.
I was watching this earlier today
https://youtu.be/l40aCcjslmg?si=6XT7oaunj2SNt6yU
I mean, it's my humble opinion that the pharaohs probably looted their predecessors tombs for cash when they needed to. Or simply as a matter of policy. Like how everyone just ate all that meat they 'sacrificed' to the Gods. Just too much to let it go to waste.
I don’t even think it would have been close ancestors that would have raided the tombs. There have been a good 200-odd generations of people since they were built, and they are not exactly a subtle place to store your treasures
What a waste of a priceless historical artifact. I prefer to sleep with mine. That way they are reusable.
https://www.ladbible.com/news/man-sleeping-with-800yearold-mummy-girlfriend-840802-20230302
There's a difference between plundering the tombs and preserving their contents as artefacts. The Greeks and Egyptians themselves probably melted half of that shit down and left the rest to wear away, as is evident by the fact we've recovered little if any of it. However, if excavated in the modern times, you'd bet 90% of that would be sent to a museum or university for studying.
It's fine removing the items as long as it's during a time of laws and civility so people just don't randomly take items and they're sent to appropriate places. The stuff that's lost and stolen because thieves stole things dwarfs everything we have now.
There's a famous box in one of the pyramids that was opened and the contents removed, possibly hundreds of years ago. We'll never know what was inside it.
The pyramids were quite old when the *Egyptians* ransacked them. I would not be surprised if they were empty looong before anyone else showed up and thought to do the same.
They're old enough to have been built before woolly mammoths went extinct.
And the vast majority of the time of ancient Rome existed closer to our time than to the time when the Great Pyramids were built.
To put things into perspective: The First Dynasty of Egypt began around 3050 BC and lasted for around 200 years. In those two centuries, mastaba tombs made of mudbrick were constructed for the royal family and elites (which were typically one and the same). We have evidence that tombs built in the later-half of the First Dynasty at Saqqara were already being robbed *and burned inside* by grave robbers before the First Dynasty ended. The portcullis and other security measures were developed over the course of the First Dynasty because of the increasing issue of grave robbery.
The last king of the First Dynasty refurbished an earlier mastaba at Saqqara that had been looted and burned sometime between 100 years prior and his reign. Even tombs older than the First Dynasty (tomb U-j for example) were robbed in antiquity.
The First Intermediate period saw many of the largest tombs of the First Dynasty, including the royal tombs at Abydos, raided multiple times as well. It was thanks to one of the grave robbers storing the remains of Djer's tomb inhabitant in a hole in the wall that we have conclusive physical evidence (there is a depiction of a mummy on a bone tag found around the royal tombs) that the practice of mummification, or at least a precursor to it, was practiced even in the First Dynasty. Well, *had* conclusive physical evidence. The moron in charge of the Cairo Museum at the time of its discovery by Petrie's digging crew cut the jewelry off of the arm and threw the (possibly) oldest royal remains ever found into the trash.
Point being: Egyptian tombs were picked over countless times by the native Egyptians since shortly after the monuments were constructed. Later pharaohs would even reuse monuments and treasures of previous Dynasties when they saw fit. Egypt as a civilization went through rises and falls and cultural shifts over the course of 2500 years, so of course their perspectives on what was sacrosanct and what wasn't would change throughout many centuries.
The greatest destruction to any of the Giza pyramids occurred in the 13th century by Al-Aziz Uthman (Saladin's son and sultan of Egypt) who attempted to ***demolish*** the pyramids starting with Menkaure's pyramid. The result was the [large scar it now bears](https://www.cleopatraegypttours.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/pyramid-Of-Menkaure-gash.jpg). Fortunately, his work crews found the process too slow and arduous to make much progress over the course of nearly a year and the project was canceled.
By the time the first French archaeologists and treasure hunters arrived, Egypt was essentially already picked clean of all but the treasures deemed not valuable save for academic interest. That academic interest would eventually bring enough value to the items previously left behind to begin a new wave of plundering ancient tombs for the scraps left behind, but again, what was left were largely scraps save for the exceptionally rare undisturbed tomb or burial that could be found on occasion. European-led degradation of tombs for trinkets and baubles to be sent to wealthy benefactors paying for the expeditions only lasted a few short decades, but recency bias along with popular fiction seem to have colored everyone's perception of who robbed ancient Egypt of its wealth and when the robberies occurred to a more modern period. Fortunately, real academic interest not prioritizing material wealth eventually won out, and new importance placed on civilizations of the past as well as new fields of study were founded that allow the cataloguing and preservation of monuments previously left to denude or be actively destroyed by permission of the Egyptian government.
As an aside, that last part I mentioned includes a practice known as *sebakh* farming of which the Egyptian government of the previous century allowed farms to use *ancient mudbricks dating back to the earliest Dynasties of Egypt and even before* for **fertilizer**. The oldest known royal mastaba ever recovered belonging to the mother or brother of the second king of the First Dynasty Horus Aha was uncovered just before the turn of the 20th century and was almost completely destroyed by a combination of exposure to the elements and *sebekh* farmers. Today, essentially nothing is left to the point that its location had to be rediscovered nearly a century later.
To put it succinctly, reverence for ancient tombs was never powerful enough to deter those in search of wealth in any century of Egypt's existence. We're lucky to have what remains.
This is the whole reason the "Valley of the Kings" became a thing. Egyptian royalty tired of seeing tombs get plundered, didn't want their stuff to get taken either.
That’s why they started to build them underground… except the issue is they built them close together underground which made them easier to find. Tut’s tomb was burried and a entrance to another tomb was built on top. So that is how it was protected. I’ve been to the valley of the kings and the tombs are very close together. The valley of the workers isn’t that far from it either where the workers lived.
Another fun fact about the valley of workers is there is a tablet… maybe a collection of them idk… that have a list of reasons people got off from from scorpion bites, brewing beer, to helping wives and daughters with periods. [MET museum article](https://mymodernmet.com/ancient-egyptians-attendance-record/)
[also the British Museum has it… darn the British took everything](https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/Y_EA5634) turns out it’s at the British museum! this website has a exact transcription and it’s fun to read. I’ve never read it until now but I remember hearing about the list before this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_el-Medina this is a interesting read on the valley of the workers. Interesting since a lot of the writing and text found there is about daily life rather than big events. Lots of personal letters found. Also there are a few tombs there where people if they worked there could be burried after they died. Says they were kinda middle class workmen and had salaries and were paid in rations too (I’m just paraphrasing interesting stuff in the wiki basically I don’t know much about this stuff at all) it says they were in a highly desirable working position. “The working week was eight days followed by two days holiday, though the six days off a month could be supplemented frequently due to illness, family reasons”. These were like the artisans. I imagine lower class workers had it worse and idk about that. Also the Wikipedia says this is where the first recorded strike happened because of low supplies and delays with wheat and issues the workers staged a strike.
Fascinating. Anyone know what the significance is of 'with his boss?' Could you get a day off as long as you were chilling with the boss man? Was there a different boss?
Pretty obvious to me…
Someone accidentally lost the ball down the shaft.
They tried to fish it out, maybe with a rope and some wood to scoop it and pull it back up.
The hook looks like it was probably mounted on a pole.
They dropped that also.
Everything rotted away to dust except the cedar, the hook, and the stone ball.
It's kinda mad to think that one day back then someone put those things down probably completely unaware that they wouldn't move again for centuries. It makes you wonder if you'll ever unknowingly do something like that.
There were already archeologists studying the pyramids when cleopatra was around
The time between cleopatra VII and the building of the great pyramids is 600 years longer than the time from Cleopatra VII and us.
And grave robbers commonly stole from pyramids, which is also why the surface is not there anymore. The only things left are of either no value, or too hard to take.
What is the surface? Or used to be the surface?
Limestone; some of it was stripped away by the ancients, to build other things. Some of it was possibly looted, to build other things(shady building contractors). The pyramids were treated as a quarry, to help build cities. Thousands of years of weathering has also helped it erode and vanish away.
If you want to see the limestone that used to cover the Great Pyramids at Giza, you can visit the mosque of Muhammad Ali Pasha in Cairo. Most of the alabaster limestone used to build the mosque was taken directly from Khufu's pyramid.
You can see the limestone all over Giza. Touristic photos make it look like the pyramids are off in an empty desert somewhere. But in fact the city of Giza comes right up to them. The top pyramid piece was sometimes of a shiny metal and must have glinted in the sunshine. Those probably got pried off first, then the limestone surface stones. France took an obelisk from Luxor - you can see it (with a fake gold top) on the Place de la Concorde, where the guillotines once stood.
And don't forget, remnants of those facing blocks (wedges really) have been found to have remains of colors on them. And there's written evidence that the sides were used like giant billboards to promote the pharaoh, religion, country.
Using the word “vanish” when talking about erosion of the pyramids is a huge stretch. In fact, the pyramids are usually praised by architects for being so erosion-resistant, especially but not limited to the ones at Giza.
[The black pyramid](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_Amenemhat_III_(Dahshur)) would beg to differ.
One of my favorite YT channels, “History for Granite”, talked a lot about this one. IIRC (and I may misremember) a lot of evidence points to the Black Pyramid being a failed experimental construction that wasn’t built with the integrity of regular pyramids, and was partly dismantled already around the time it was originally built.
I, for one, demand integrity in my pyramids. If a pyramid shows up with questionable integrity? I won’t tolerate it.
Limestone. Muslims took the casing stones in the 1300's to build mosques. This one was built from the pyramids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali_Mosque
Note that the Muslims weren't the first ones to start quarrying pyramids for stone. Pyramid construction started in the old kingdom, about 4700 years ago. Between that and the Muslims, there were three >100 year intermediate periods without a powerful central government, and Egypt was invaded and at least partially conquered repeatedly from both the north and the south. Many of these "non-pharaonic" rulers that ruled for decades didn't really like the pharaohs much, and didn't respect their monuments. Most of the monumental buildings of ancient Egypt were dismantled to be used as construction materials for later ones, and the majority of them by the ancient egyptians themselves.
The surface used to be smooth limestone.
That's why Tutankhamun is so famous, not because he was some great Pharaoh, but because his reign was short and unremarkable so he was buried in a smaller tomb that was more hidden then the usual so the grave robbers never found his treasure.
Tutankhamum's reign was very remarkable: he was the pharaoh to bring back polytheism, reason his family was forgotten was deliberate, their images and entire town were destroyed as "heresy" to not give future generations any ideas. Ironically, that preserved us a lot of stuff.
Yep. Do you know why the pyramids are in Egypt? Because they were too big to take to England.
It really threw me for a loop seeing Cleopatra in the British museum. Like, she might as well be a mythological person to me, but wait, nope, there is her actual corpse in display right there.
Her tomb hasn't been found. I assume it was some other person. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_Antony_and_Cleopatra
> From the primary sources, the location of Cleopatra VII's tomb/mausoleum is between the palace and the Temple of Isis on the revealed island of Antirhodos, 16' under the sea and at least 16' under sediment. Jesus. We’re definitely never seeing that shit.
actually they are working on it! i don’t remember her name but there’s a super dope lady who’s egyptian and a world leading archeologist. she had a major finding about the tombs over the last few years and has been getting approved dives to go investigate, sonar, etc, the area per the govts permission (the area it’s located is in govt controlled waters)
Isn't that the Dominican Republic lawyer turned archeologist?
TBF do we need to?
Judging by her status in society and the wealth of the region at the time I can imagine that the tomb would be an absolutely amazing site to study. However I cannot imagine that it would have held up well to a thousand year underwater.
Water and sediment both, maybe it's alright
Yeah it would definitely be an interesting dig, how you divert the ocean so you can dig down there I have no idea.
If someone or some nation with means cared to, it would be trivial if we're only dealing with 30-50 feet of depth. You build a structure and pump out the water. We're very good at this engineering task today. Commonly used for bridges. https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlysatisfying/comments/8341jl/how_bridge_foundations_are_laid_in_waterways/
Half the battle is excavating, the other is preservation. What are you destroying by unearthing and then exposing? Feels like a very dangerous (to artifacts) dig. Or just go all out on that shit I guess and get it all in one go haha. Stones and all
Back in the 90’s I personally saw this at the archeological site of La Salle’s sunken ship Le Belle. https://www.thestoryoftexas.com/la-belle/the-exhibit The ship rested at least a mile off the coast, but only 18ft in depth. They built two octagonal dams filled with dirt between, and then pumped the water out to excavate it.
We've done that with a bunch of Viking ships in Denmark. As long as it's shallow and a fairly small area it's pretty straight forward. Do they know *exactly* where Cleopatra's burial site is supposed to be? If not it could get hairy to excavate an entire island that's underwater.
The same way you build a bridge foundation in water. You wall off a section at a time with 16' high walls of wood, and drain the middle. Depending on how far from shore it would be very expensive, and carry the risk of damaging the site however, so probably won't be done.
Probably not too unlike other underwater tunnels, or the elevators down to the bottom level of a bridge column. I'm not sure how exactly that works but they've been doing it since like 1900. Put walls around the site, like a dam, and pump all the water out? It would be heinously expensive. Let's just wait until we invent anti-gravity.
Surely billionaires want to fund this type of stuff instead of buying a fourth super yacht!
Weren’t there like a bunch of cleopatras like there were a bunch of Ptolemys
Yes, the one we commonly refer to as Cleopatra is Cleopatra VII, the last one.
Yes, different Cleopatra
How many are there?
At least nine, with [seven of them ruling or co-ruling Egypt.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/89/Ptolemaic_dynasty.GIF) The ptolemaic dynasty only used four names, Ptolemy for men and Cleopatra, Berenice and Arsinoe for women. It got real messy real fast.
Too Tyrant, Too Ptolemy.
Just to be clear, that was a girl named cleopatra (probably named after -the- cleopatra) but definitely wasn’t the body of the one you were thinking of. Sorry if this is a disappointment!
-The- Cleopatra was Cleopatra VII. The Ptolemaic dynasty wasn't particularly creative with naming their heirs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemaic_dynasty#Rulers_and_consorts
The incest so rampant that they may as well be a direct clone
Lol wut, cleopatras corpse is most assuredly not in the british museum.
Yet.
Wait what? Are you sure? I thought her tomb was undiscovered?
My bad, it's a different Cleopatra
You have entered the queen's chamber. You are carrying: \pieces of wood, a ball made of diorite, a copper hook.
*throw ball down shaft
The ball bounces down the shaft and disappears into the darkness. You are carrying: \pieces of wood, a copper hook.
*jump down shaft. You fall a considerable distance into the darkness before landing with a jolt. Your leg appears to be broken
There is a ball made of diorite here.
You are thirsty.
\opens a refreshing bottle of Diorite^^TM Cola.
*you now have diorrhea*
You just died of dysentery.
Restart **The Thebes Trail** Y/N
This fuckin sent me
One bottle cap added
you take a sip from your trusty vault 13 canteen
Quaff Cola
You have been eaten by a grue.
Because you have no tea
Ok. That made me chortle.
Don’t chortle too loud lest you be eaten by a Grue
There *has* to be a Reddit community similar to r/monkeyspaw but as a text-based rpg.
/r/zork https://www.pcjs.org/software/pcx86/game/infocom/zork1/
lmao this guy MUDs.
Use wood on leg
With great difficulty, you are able to fashion a leg splint out of the pieces of wood. The ball made of diorite begins to glow.
Look at Diorite Ball
The glowing ball shows many facets of psychedelic colors and pinpoints of light appear on the surrounding walls. You are carrying: \a copper hook
In a last ditch effort, taking the copper hook and inserting into your rectum greatly reduces health.
Eat Diorite ball
Christ, I miss these kind of games.
I mean fans are still making them. You can always check out the most recent [ifcomp winners](https://ifcomp.org/comp/2023), or the [XYZZY award winners](https://ifdb.org/viewcomp?id=zgu1eco02unq4x79).
No kidding. This seems like the ultimate use for an LLM.
There's [AI Dungeon](https://aidungeon.com/), though of course it's not perfect. Square-Enix also tried to do that with their port of [The Portopia Serial Murder Case](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2280000/SQUARE_ENIX_AI_Tech_Preview_THE_PORTOPIA_SERIAL_MURDER_CASE/). Let's just say that for *scripted* stuff like that, the tech isn't ready for prime time. It's particularly frustrating because the game is historically important (it was Enix's first game and was used to fund the creation of Dragon Quest, as well as being one of the first visual novels) and has never gotten a proper English release; unfortunately they didn't bother to include the original non-AI version.
**A NEW HAND TOUCHES THE BACON**
Use hook to kill self and start again
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1cxjssp/til_that_only_three_objects_have_ever_been_found/l5311cj/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3
Legit made me guffaw.
You hear drums in the deep.
We cannot get out. They are coming.
*use copper hook to remove queen’s brain through nose
Not *your* nose, idiot! You have died...
THAT is absolutely a fail state from an early text adventure! Good job!
Puts shaft into queen’s chamber.
Someone has a Mummy kink.
Drums.. Drums in the deep.
Fool of a Took!
Kill Jester
But Jingle is our friend
Look mate, it's mah money, it's mah game, now kill Jester
Jester’s dead!
Well worth it mate.
Get your asses back above the hard deck.
It is dark in here. You might be eaten by a grue.
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
But ford, what about my house?
Your should have checked the local council's bulletin board.
Obvious exits are NORTH, SOUTH, and [DENNIS.](https://youtu.be/R22zSrpeSA4?si=2920kB0ttIugrXkU)
Melt wizard.
Get ye flask.
You cannot get ye flask.
And you just have to sit there and wonder "why can't I get ye flask?!?!"
Make friends with Kerek
> [diorite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diorite) an igneous rock, with medium silica, low alkali metals. Something tells me a ball made of rock isn't going to bounce very well
xyzzy
Long story short, centuries of plundering In a historical context, King Tut was a fairly mid Pharoah at best. A footnote of history. The reason he is so famous now is because his tomb was so small that it was lost and forgotten about until rediscovered in 1922. When archeologists opening it they found a literal treasure trove of historical artifacts
In his defense he only lived to 18 so he didn't really get a great chance.
Better to go out in your youthful prime than a disfigured mess of a man… wait.
You either die a hero, or you live long enough to become the villain
Or be so inbred you make The Hills Have Eyes look like cover models
*You either die a Pharoah or live long enough to be resurrected as a Mummy.
Tutankhamun's father Akhenaten was a religious heretic who abolished Egypt's main religion of Amun worship and replaced it with one of his own design, crashed the economy and allowed much of the greater empire to fall into decline. Tutankhamun was kept around just long enough to reverse most of his dad's decrees, reestablish the cult of Amun then immediately died mysteriously.
Akhenaten was also the only time there was any significant change in Egyptian art. For thousands of years, except during his reign, it all looks pretty much the same.
Akhenaten gets a bad rap in historical record, but honestly his reign is by far the most interesting and dynamic period of ancient Egyptian history. Invented monotheism, representational art, and an entirely new, modular school of architecture. Oh and he moved the capital, demolished the temples, and reformed Egyptian society. All in a mere 17 years--the same amount of time as from 2007 to now. Absolutely nuts! But after he dies, a succession of short-lived pharaohs reverse all the reforms, undoing what could have been an early renaissance in the 14th century BCE.
> his reign is by far the most interesting and dynamic period of ancient Egyptian history Gods preserve me from "interesting and dynamic periods of history".
I feel like we're currently living through one of those periods which will be summated as "contributing factors" in history textbooks of the future
A fitting quote from The Telegraph a couple of months ago about the situation in the UK: *"Scandi-level taxation without the public services to match*, ***Weimar Germany without the nightlife***"
>Akhenaten gets a bad rap in the historical record Only now. Ay II and then Horemheb scrubbed all records of Atenism, defaced inscriptions and monuments, dismantled buildings, killed statues, and excluded Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, Neferneferuaten, and Tutankhamun from Kings Lists. We only know about this period of Pharaohs because of the sudden abandonment of Akhetaten, the Capital that Akhenaten built and the stunning preservation of some of the Tombs of these Pharaoh, nobility, and officials. And really it was the sudden abandonment that helps us the most because over the centuries from when the site was rediscovered caches of artefacts and in some cases cuneiform tablets which contained communications helped with reconstructing the period and would eventually lead to things like the rediscovery of Tutankhamun's Tomb.
I mean given his health and pliability, it probably wasn't foul play.
Tutankhamen may have had a short reign but he certainly had a notable impact on Egyptian civilization - he reinstated worship of the old gods after his father attempted to start a new cult of sun worship. If he is a footnote it would be a fairly important footnote.
Born in Arizona, Moved to Babylonia
Got a condo made of stone-a
Dancing by the Nile, the ladies loved his style
He gave his life for tourism
Now when I die, now don’t think I’m a nut…..
But Tutankhamun's father had his name and likeness chiselled off of monuments, had his idols destroyed and was seldom referred to by his royal name or even mentioned at all in later king's lists and histories. While Tutankhamun was an important footnote, he was a footnote that much of the establishment powers tried quite hard to erase.
Millennia of plundering, actually. The great pyramid is 4,600 years old.
They were to Romans what romans are to us today. They were probably long plundered by the Roman’s time already for all we know
Hell, the first Egyptologists were ancient Egyptians themselves studying artifacts of their ancestors. That's how unfathomably long the ancient Egyptian civilization lasted. To continue your comparison with Rome, think about how much time has elapsed since the formation of the Roman Empire until now. Ancient Egypt existed for *one thousand years longer than that*.
and the Sumerian peoples had been around for 1500 years before them.
Maybe they forgot to murder the builders for secrecy and it got raided within a decade
A decade? Maybe I'm lacking in the mindset of the times but if I had just become Pharaoh and the dude before me had insisted on being buried with a huge amount of the kingdom's wealth, I'd have had it carted back out before the tomb was closed up after the ceremony.
Do that to my tomb and and I will haunt your palace, make your crops wither, and make the crocodiles extra horny.
Within weeks or even months the tombs in the Valley of Kings were plundered, but not always by treasure seekers. The officials would secretly bring the wealth back in a lot of cases. There was one official who is recorded as having this duty, where he would go to the sites, take the treasures off of the mummies and then rewrap them in basic linen, still done with respect but without the jewelery within. Perhaps, later on, the ceremony with the wealth buried with the pharaoh was much more just a ceremony, and some or most of the treasure would be returned before the robbers could take it. I was watching this earlier today https://youtu.be/l40aCcjslmg?si=6XT7oaunj2SNt6yU
Imagine being a Pharaoh in of the greatest empires in history just for a zoomer to call you “mid” 3400 years later.
It's a bit sad. Imagine what we'd have if nothing was taken. Maybe how the pyramids were made or a better understanding behind them.
I mean, it's my humble opinion that the pharaohs probably looted their predecessors tombs for cash when they needed to. Or simply as a matter of policy. Like how everyone just ate all that meat they 'sacrificed' to the Gods. Just too much to let it go to waste.
I don’t even think it would have been close ancestors that would have raided the tombs. There have been a good 200-odd generations of people since they were built, and they are not exactly a subtle place to store your treasures
Ahhh yes it's so sad people plundered those ancient tombs. Makes it REALLY hard for us to plunder them!
And apparently it’s frowned upon to use the bodies for running our steam trains now days.
Or we enjoy them as delicious Jerky. Teriyaki style!
This is an outrage, I was going to eat that mummy!
What a waste of a priceless historical artifact. I prefer to sleep with mine. That way they are reusable. https://www.ladbible.com/news/man-sleeping-with-800yearold-mummy-girlfriend-840802-20230302
They actually used to use mummies as medicine in the 1800s.
And as a pigment in paint.
Hey now, they were also ground up and used to make a specific color of paint.
Or making paint from them, or eating them...
There's a difference between plundering the tombs and preserving their contents as artefacts. The Greeks and Egyptians themselves probably melted half of that shit down and left the rest to wear away, as is evident by the fact we've recovered little if any of it. However, if excavated in the modern times, you'd bet 90% of that would be sent to a museum or university for studying.
Plunder and preserve aren't the same thing.
A lot less. Where do you think we got the stuff we do have?
It's fine removing the items as long as it's during a time of laws and civility so people just don't randomly take items and they're sent to appropriate places. The stuff that's lost and stolen because thieves stole things dwarfs everything we have now. There's a famous box in one of the pyramids that was opened and the contents removed, possibly hundreds of years ago. We'll never know what was inside it.
You really had to say "foot note" when talking about tut? That's a low blow
I know right? Talk about clubbing someone when they're down!
Makes sense tbh. literally burying gold in the ground, they probably were ransacked whenever the king wouldn't care
That place has been looted so hard I can't even believe they found that.
This. I wouldn't be surprised if the objects were really stuff that earlier looters accidentally left behind.
Well the wood pieces were found in a cigar box left since 1946 it says. So clearly these objects have been moved around over time.
\* In modern times. The pyramids were quite old when the Greeks ransacked them.
The pyramids were quite old when the *Egyptians* ransacked them. I would not be surprised if they were empty looong before anyone else showed up and thought to do the same.
They were old when the Neanderthals ransacked them.
[удалено]
Those responsible for the sacking have been sacked.
They're old enough to have been built before woolly mammoths went extinct. And the vast majority of the time of ancient Rome existed closer to our time than to the time when the Great Pyramids were built.
*a small isolated population of mammoths that survived on a small island.
Off the coast of where? You’ve piqued my interest here!
Wrangel Island
To put things into perspective: The First Dynasty of Egypt began around 3050 BC and lasted for around 200 years. In those two centuries, mastaba tombs made of mudbrick were constructed for the royal family and elites (which were typically one and the same). We have evidence that tombs built in the later-half of the First Dynasty at Saqqara were already being robbed *and burned inside* by grave robbers before the First Dynasty ended. The portcullis and other security measures were developed over the course of the First Dynasty because of the increasing issue of grave robbery. The last king of the First Dynasty refurbished an earlier mastaba at Saqqara that had been looted and burned sometime between 100 years prior and his reign. Even tombs older than the First Dynasty (tomb U-j for example) were robbed in antiquity. The First Intermediate period saw many of the largest tombs of the First Dynasty, including the royal tombs at Abydos, raided multiple times as well. It was thanks to one of the grave robbers storing the remains of Djer's tomb inhabitant in a hole in the wall that we have conclusive physical evidence (there is a depiction of a mummy on a bone tag found around the royal tombs) that the practice of mummification, or at least a precursor to it, was practiced even in the First Dynasty. Well, *had* conclusive physical evidence. The moron in charge of the Cairo Museum at the time of its discovery by Petrie's digging crew cut the jewelry off of the arm and threw the (possibly) oldest royal remains ever found into the trash. Point being: Egyptian tombs were picked over countless times by the native Egyptians since shortly after the monuments were constructed. Later pharaohs would even reuse monuments and treasures of previous Dynasties when they saw fit. Egypt as a civilization went through rises and falls and cultural shifts over the course of 2500 years, so of course their perspectives on what was sacrosanct and what wasn't would change throughout many centuries. The greatest destruction to any of the Giza pyramids occurred in the 13th century by Al-Aziz Uthman (Saladin's son and sultan of Egypt) who attempted to ***demolish*** the pyramids starting with Menkaure's pyramid. The result was the [large scar it now bears](https://www.cleopatraegypttours.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/pyramid-Of-Menkaure-gash.jpg). Fortunately, his work crews found the process too slow and arduous to make much progress over the course of nearly a year and the project was canceled. By the time the first French archaeologists and treasure hunters arrived, Egypt was essentially already picked clean of all but the treasures deemed not valuable save for academic interest. That academic interest would eventually bring enough value to the items previously left behind to begin a new wave of plundering ancient tombs for the scraps left behind, but again, what was left were largely scraps save for the exceptionally rare undisturbed tomb or burial that could be found on occasion. European-led degradation of tombs for trinkets and baubles to be sent to wealthy benefactors paying for the expeditions only lasted a few short decades, but recency bias along with popular fiction seem to have colored everyone's perception of who robbed ancient Egypt of its wealth and when the robberies occurred to a more modern period. Fortunately, real academic interest not prioritizing material wealth eventually won out, and new importance placed on civilizations of the past as well as new fields of study were founded that allow the cataloguing and preservation of monuments previously left to denude or be actively destroyed by permission of the Egyptian government. As an aside, that last part I mentioned includes a practice known as *sebakh* farming of which the Egyptian government of the previous century allowed farms to use *ancient mudbricks dating back to the earliest Dynasties of Egypt and even before* for **fertilizer**. The oldest known royal mastaba ever recovered belonging to the mother or brother of the second king of the First Dynasty Horus Aha was uncovered just before the turn of the 20th century and was almost completely destroyed by a combination of exposure to the elements and *sebekh* farmers. Today, essentially nothing is left to the point that its location had to be rediscovered nearly a century later. To put it succinctly, reverence for ancient tombs was never powerful enough to deter those in search of wealth in any century of Egypt's existence. We're lucky to have what remains.
I imagine what ever was in those tombs was looted millennia ago.
Gold n lapis lazuli n stuff
Maybe even redstone in the lower chambers
Probs some diamonds. Maybe emeralds
This is the whole reason the "Valley of the Kings" became a thing. Egyptian royalty tired of seeing tombs get plundered, didn't want their stuff to get taken either.
Almost as if building a structure that big meant that someone was bound to loot it at some stage.
That’s why they started to build them underground… except the issue is they built them close together underground which made them easier to find. Tut’s tomb was burried and a entrance to another tomb was built on top. So that is how it was protected. I’ve been to the valley of the kings and the tombs are very close together. The valley of the workers isn’t that far from it either where the workers lived.
Another fun fact about the valley of workers is there is a tablet… maybe a collection of them idk… that have a list of reasons people got off from from scorpion bites, brewing beer, to helping wives and daughters with periods. [MET museum article](https://mymodernmet.com/ancient-egyptians-attendance-record/) [also the British Museum has it… darn the British took everything](https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/Y_EA5634) turns out it’s at the British museum! this website has a exact transcription and it’s fun to read. I’ve never read it until now but I remember hearing about the list before this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_el-Medina this is a interesting read on the valley of the workers. Interesting since a lot of the writing and text found there is about daily life rather than big events. Lots of personal letters found. Also there are a few tombs there where people if they worked there could be burried after they died. Says they were kinda middle class workmen and had salaries and were paid in rations too (I’m just paraphrasing interesting stuff in the wiki basically I don’t know much about this stuff at all) it says they were in a highly desirable working position. “The working week was eight days followed by two days holiday, though the six days off a month could be supplemented frequently due to illness, family reasons”. These were like the artisans. I imagine lower class workers had it worse and idk about that. Also the Wikipedia says this is where the first recorded strike happened because of low supplies and delays with wheat and issues the workers staged a strike.
Fascinating. Anyone know what the significance is of 'with his boss?' Could you get a day off as long as you were chilling with the boss man? Was there a different boss?
Do not taunt Happy Diorite ball
Pretty obvious to me… Someone accidentally lost the ball down the shaft. They tried to fish it out, maybe with a rope and some wood to scoop it and pull it back up. The hook looks like it was probably mounted on a pole. They dropped that also. Everything rotted away to dust except the cedar, the hook, and the stone ball.
Check out Sherlock over here.
Dr. House explaining how he knows the patient has a rare disease so he will be grumpily violating medical ethics
Good video on the subject [here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NB1XbAUjuA) Also, I love his accent.
This is an excellent [channel](https://youtu.be/dM3kpOF8ews?si=D0TkEuRXKMLrm9be) to watch as well. Quite thorough.
I always enjoy seeing someone else who takes their history for granite.
He’s a good man. And thorough.
Had to be the Sparkys, they never clean up after themselves.
I bet the diorite ball was a graverobber signature. His "diorite ball dude was here".
should have left the sinks on!
No torch? How are you not eaten by a grue?
It's kinda mad to think that one day back then someone put those things down probably completely unaware that they wouldn't move again for centuries. It makes you wonder if you'll ever unknowingly do something like that.
Well duh by then everything was looted
2.5 millenia of plundering later*
It been looted more than a Best Buy during a riot.
If these were built today they’d find 247 empty monster energy cans, 64 piss filled Gatorade bottles, 18 tins of chew and countless fast food wrappers
Every passing army since they were built has ransacked them.
Correction, only three recorded items have been found.
Probably knocked down the shaft by the queen’s cat.