Un interessante post su un servizio del programma Freedom di Roberto Giacobbo.
Showing posts with label egypt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label egypt. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 3, 2019
Il tempo ha paura delle Piramidi, ma le Piramidi hanno paura di ... Giacobbo
Camere segrete, troni di ferro e proto-geroglifici: i misteri della Piramide di Cheope secondo Freedom (bufale eGGizie*) Pubblicato il gennaio 3, 2019 da mattiamancini
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
On the Karnak Temple and the Sun Hierophany
The Karnak Temple and the Motion of the Earth's Axis
Article published on SSRN Journal.
Abstract: The Karnak Temple complex comprises a vast mix of temples, chapels and other buildings. Its construction began during the reign of Senusret I in the Middle Kingdom and continued during the Ptolemaic period. The temple was the main place of worship the Amun-Ra, the Sun God. Not surprisingly his temple has its axis aligned along the sunrise azimuth on the winter solstice. Here we will discuss how the motion of the Earth’s axis has altered, in four thousand years, this alignment of half a degree.
Sun hierophany at the temple on the winter solstice
Thursday, October 13, 2011
How to measure the stair angle
According to the site of Duradek http://duradekmidatlantic.com/durarailchecklisthelp.html you can
use a protractor (available at most hardware stores) to determine this angle.
use a protractor (available at most hardware stores) to determine this angle.
Lay a straightedge across a minimum of 3 stair nosings. Put your universal protractor on the straightedge and measure the angle. Note that the more stair nosings you have under the straightedge, the more accurate the angle will be. In the case that the run of stairs is very long, measure the stair angle at 2 or 3 places along the run to check that the angle remains constant along the full run.
I am proposing that Kha the architect at Deir El-Medina, Egypt, supervisor of the projects of three kings of the 18th Dynasty used his protractor to check the inclination of stairs for instance. You can see it at the Egyptian Museum of Torino. Read more at http://stretchingtheboundaries.blogspot.com/2011/08/khas-protractor.html
I am proposing that Kha the architect at Deir El-Medina, Egypt, supervisor of the projects of three kings of the 18th Dynasty used his protractor to check the inclination of stairs for instance. You can see it at the Egyptian Museum of Torino. Read more at http://stretchingtheboundaries.blogspot.com/2011/08/khas-protractor.html
A modern universal protractor for building is that shown in the following figure.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Back to Kha's protractor
In the post "Kha's protractor", I have discussed an object found in the tomb of an ancient egyptian architect, Kha. It can be used to measure angles.Plums, levels, protractors , compasses and so on are instruments for surveying. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveying and the table http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Table_of_Surveying,_Cyclopaedia,_Volume_2.jpg
In this table there is the image of a compass rose. We can start from it and go back to the Kha's rose.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Concrete in the Great Pyramids
Did the Great Pyramids' builders use concrete?
This is the question we can find in the article by Colin Nickerson on New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/africa/23iht-pyramid.1.12259608.html
"It is a theory that gives indigestion to mainstream archaeologists. Namely, that some of the immense blocks of the Great Pyramids of Egypt might have been cast from synthetic material - the world's first concrete - not just carved whole from quarries and lugged into place by armies of toilers. Such an innovation would have saved millions of man-hours of grunting and heaving in construction of the enigmatic edifices on the Giza Plateau."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/africa/23iht-pyramid.1.12259608.html
"It is a theory that gives indigestion to mainstream archaeologists. Namely, that some of the immense blocks of the Great Pyramids of Egypt might have been cast from synthetic material - the world's first concrete - not just carved whole from quarries and lugged into place by armies of toilers. Such an innovation would have saved millions of man-hours of grunting and heaving in construction of the enigmatic edifices on the Giza Plateau."
See also:
Revisiting the construction of pyramids
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
The decreasing level of Toshka Lakes seen from space
The decreasing level of Toshka Lakes seen from space
by Amelia Carolina Sparavigna, Dipartimento di Fisica,
Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy
Abstract
Toshka Lakes are lakes recently formed in the Sahara Desert of Egypt, by the water of the Nile, conveyed from the Nasser Lake through a canal in the Toshka Depression. From space, astronauts noticed the growing of a first lake, the easternmost one, in 1998. Then additional lakes grew in succession due west, the westernmost one between 2000 and 2001. In fact, sources of precious information on Toshka Lakes are the pictures takes by the crews of space missions and the satellite imagery. They show that, from 2006, the lakes started shrinking. A set of recent images displays that the surface of the easternmost lake is strongly reduced.
More
http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4430
by Amelia Carolina Sparavigna, Dipartimento di Fisica,
Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy
Abstract
Toshka Lakes are lakes recently formed in the Sahara Desert of Egypt, by the water of the Nile, conveyed from the Nasser Lake through a canal in the Toshka Depression. From space, astronauts noticed the growing of a first lake, the easternmost one, in 1998. Then additional lakes grew in succession due west, the westernmost one between 2000 and 2001. In fact, sources of precious information on Toshka Lakes are the pictures takes by the crews of space missions and the satellite imagery. They show that, from 2006, the lakes started shrinking. A set of recent images displays that the surface of the easternmost lake is strongly reduced.
More
http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4430
The easternmost of the Toshka Lakes in 2005 (NASA imagery)
The same lake in 2011 (NASA imagery, March 31, 2011)
Superposition of the two images. Note the strong decreasing of the surface of the lake.
Read the detailed discussion at Toshka Lakes on this blog.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
The gospel according to Judas
The gospel of Jesus's favourite disciple, Judas, was on show before its return to Egypt where it was found 30 years ago. "The fragile codex -- made up of 13 papyrus leaves -- has been restored with a two-million-dollar fund from the National Geographic Society (NGS) and the Waitt Institute for Historical Discovery. Its most recent owners, the Basel-based Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art (MFAA), will now hand the codex over to the Coptic Museum in Old Cairo. The gospel, written in Coptic in the third or fourth century, is believed to be a translation of an original Greek text belonging to an early Christian sect sometime before AD180. The document offers new insights into the relation between Jesus and Judas, whose betrayal led to his capture and crucifixion. Unlike the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, in which Judas is portrayed as a reviled traitor, the new gospel depicts him as acting on a request by Jesus to hand him over to the Romans."
Friday, June 10, 2011
The bent pyramid
Google Maps is an excellent service for archaeological survey. Let us look at the Bent Pyramid in Egypt.
After a processing by means of AstroFracTool and GIMP, we have
Or using the wavelets of Iris
Interesting for mapping sites! In my opinion, there are many other structures in these images which are connected to the pyramid (for instance, the one that seems a pool near the upper left corner), besides those listed in the following map.
This map is adapted from:
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
The satellite archaeological survey of Egypt
The satellite archaeological survey of Egypt
by Amelia Carolina Sparavigna
References.
1. Egyptian pyramids found by infra-red satellite images, F. Cronin, BBC New, 24 May 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13522957
2. Documentation of the Abandoned Town La Ciudad Perdida in Peru Combining VHR Satellite Data and Terrestrial Measurement, K. Pavelka, M. Bukovinsky, J. Svatuskova, Remote Sensing for Science, Education and Natural and Cultural Heritage, Rainer Reuter Ed., EARSeL, 2010.
3. News broadcast by BBC is inaccurate, says Hawass, N. El-Aref, Ahramonline, 26 May 2011, http://english.ahram.org.eg/
4. Lines under the forest, A.C. Sparavigna, http://www.archaeogate.org/, and http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.5277.
5. SIR-C X-SAR Earth-Imaging Radar for NASA's Mission to Planet Earth, Infopage.
6. The Merowe Dam on the Nile, A.C. Sparavigna, http://www.archaeogate.org/, and, Merowe Dam and the inundation of paleochannels of the Nile, A.C. Sparavigna, http://arxiv.org/abs/arXiv:1011.4911.
7. Enhancing the Google imagery using a wavelet filter, A.C. Sparavigna, http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.1590.
8. The geoglyphs of Titicaca, A.C. Sparavigna, http://www.archaeogate.org/ and Symbolic landforms created by ancient earthworks near Lake Titicaca, A.C. Sparavigna, http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.2231.
9. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1390667/Seventeen-lost-pyramids-thousands-buried-Egyptian-settlements-pinpointed-infrared-satellite-images.html?ito=feeds-newsxml, and also
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/9202577-egyptian-pyramids-found-by-infrared-satellite-images
10. In my opinion, the published images at [9] are not the real infrared images of the Alabama University team, but this is what is published on the web.
11. Some image processing on Amarna, https://sites.google.com/site/amarnasatelliteimagery/
Fig.1: Tanis as can be observed after processing an image from Google Maps. In the upper part, brightness and contrast had been adjusted with GIMP. The lower image was obtained with a wavelet filtering with Iris. It seems that the image is giving quite good details too.
Fig.2. This is the Saqqara area where there is a buried pyramid. The image has been obtained after processing a Google Maps image. According to Refs.[9], in this area there one of the buried pyramid announced by BBC [1]. (SEE PLEASE THE NOTE AT THE END OF THIS POST)
Fig.3: The Great Temple in Amarna, as can be seen after processing a Google Maps image.
---------------------
NOTE 11 November 2018
by Amelia Carolina Sparavigna
A recent announcement from BBC of 17 new pyramids discovered in Egypt arouses the interest on the archaeology aided by satellites imagery [1]. These pyramids, as many other ancient remains in Egypt, are under the sand of the desert. They were discovered by means of a remote sensing with infrared sensors. In fact, the archaeological surveys, usually performed by means of airplanes, are necessary to observing the sites from above and gain a better view of the landforms. In some cases, the survey of a region ends with the discovery of new archaeological sites or with the precise location of an ancient lost town [2].
Satellites give different opportunities, according to their sensorial equipment. BBC announced that Sarah Parcak, of the University of Alabama, used some data from NASA infrared equipped satellites to survey the Egypt. Waiting for a more detailed report on her researches and on the methods the team used, we can just tell that the infrared inspection is based on collecting the radiances in various wavelength bands, in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum. The resulting profiles depend on the methods used to obtain the surface data from radiances. To have a good detection, the surface must be free from clouds.
The Egypt's Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs, Zahi Hawass, seems to be quite interested to the new technologies, but, as he told Ahram Online, the satellite infrared images are only able to locate the remains beneath the sand [3]. It is then necessary, according to Hawass, to identify them with archaeological researches on the spot. From the news on the Web it is not clear how many sites have been analyzed by the team of the University of Alabama. It seems that the amount of data collected by the researchers is huge.
Besides the analysis with infrared imagery, let us consider that there are other remote sensing techniques that can be useful in archaeology: among them we have the LIDAR system, which is, as we discussed in [4], able to see under the canopy of the forests, and the SIR-C/X-SAR imaging radar system, which has waves that can penetrate the clouds, and, under certain conditions, vegetation, ice and dry sand [5]. Of course, these facilities are not freely available and needs financial supports.
We could then ask ourselves if a free satellite service, such as Google Maps, can help in some archaeological researches in Egypt. It is my opinion that the answer is positive. In studying the Merowe Dam and the paleochannels of the Nile we could compare the images from SIR-C/X-SAR imaging radar system, with those of the Google Maps [6]. After a suitable image processing with some freely downloadable programs (GIMP, IRIS, AstroFracTool,[7]), the Google Maps revealed astonishing details of the network of old buried channels of Nile in the Nubian region. The same for the "raised fields" near the Titicaca Lake in Peru: the processing of the images clearly displayed the network of these ancient earthworks and canals [8]. Many of these structures are probably buries under some sediments of the lake.
Let us then try to apply the image processing to the Google Maps of those areas in Egypt, where according to the press, the infrared satellite imagery is giving good results. We see that one of these investigated areas is that of Tanis, a town of the ancient Egypt. In Fig.1, it is shown what we can have after processing the image from Google Maps. The upper part of the figure is obtained using the GIMP image- processing program, to adjust brightness and contrast. The lower part is gained after a processing with the wavelet filtering of Iris. These images seem to contain quite clear information on the buried town too.
Another example is the site where there are buried pyramids, according to the press [9,10]. The site is at Saqqara: Figure 2 shows the area as can be seen after a processing of Google Maps. The reader is invited to compare these images with those published on the Web, copyrighted BBC. I guess that after comparison, the reader can draw some positive conclusions about Google Maps and its use for an archaeological survey of Egypt. I am proposing another example of the use of image processing in Fig.3. This is the Great Temple at Amarna, buried under the sand (more images at [11]).
As Zahi Hawass is telling, it is necessary to understand whether some “anomalies” revealed by the satellite remote sensing are archaeological remains or not. This means that archaeology can only receive benefits for geophysics researches and the related use of remote sensing.
References.
1. Egyptian pyramids found by infra-red satellite images, F. Cronin, BBC New, 24 May 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13522957
2. Documentation of the Abandoned Town La Ciudad Perdida in Peru Combining VHR Satellite Data and Terrestrial Measurement, K. Pavelka, M. Bukovinsky, J. Svatuskova, Remote Sensing for Science, Education and Natural and Cultural Heritage, Rainer Reuter Ed., EARSeL, 2010.
3. News broadcast by BBC is inaccurate, says Hawass, N. El-Aref, Ahramonline, 26 May 2011, http://english.ahram.org.eg/
4. Lines under the forest, A.C. Sparavigna, http://www.archaeogate.org/, and http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.5277.
5. SIR-C X-SAR Earth-Imaging Radar for NASA's Mission to Planet Earth, Infopage.
6. The Merowe Dam on the Nile, A.C. Sparavigna, http://www.archaeogate.org/, and, Merowe Dam and the inundation of paleochannels of the Nile, A.C. Sparavigna, http://arxiv.org/abs/arXiv:1011.4911.
7. Enhancing the Google imagery using a wavelet filter, A.C. Sparavigna, http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.1590.
8. The geoglyphs of Titicaca, A.C. Sparavigna, http://www.archaeogate.org/ and Symbolic landforms created by ancient earthworks near Lake Titicaca, A.C. Sparavigna, http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.2231.
9. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1390667/Seventeen-lost-pyramids-thousands-buried-Egyptian-settlements-pinpointed-infrared-satellite-images.html?ito=feeds-newsxml, and also
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/9202577-egyptian-pyramids-found-by-infrared-satellite-images
10. In my opinion, the published images at [9] are not the real infrared images of the Alabama University team, but this is what is published on the web.
11. Some image processing on Amarna, https://sites.google.com/site/amarnasatelliteimagery/
Fig.1: Tanis as can be observed after processing an image from Google Maps. In the upper part, brightness and contrast had been adjusted with GIMP. The lower image was obtained with a wavelet filtering with Iris. It seems that the image is giving quite good details too.
Fig.2. This is the Saqqara area where there is a buried pyramid. The image has been obtained after processing a Google Maps image. According to Refs.[9], in this area there one of the buried pyramid announced by BBC [1]. (SEE PLEASE THE NOTE AT THE END OF THIS POST)
Fig.3: The Great Temple in Amarna, as can be seen after processing a Google Maps image.
---------------------
NOTE 11 November 2018
For what concerns the Figure 2, here I would like to show you also - in the blue insert of the following image - that published by BBC of the pyramid.
Here the insert is used just for information, to show in an image of Google Maps, after enhancing the contrast, the place where Sarah Parcak told she has evidenced a pyramid. I beg BBC pardon for the use of the insert, but I have seen today, at the following link
that my image was used for a hoax of a human settlement under the ice. Let me thank Maarten Schenk for having evidenced this fact. I am quite upset by the use of an image of mine in this hoax.
I repeat, I am discussing the work by Sarah Parcak and the use of satellites for the archaeology in Egypt. Let me stress that the IMAGE is an image from Egypt, and the article of BBC was on Egypt. Nothing to do with ICE, only SAND!