[travel] Having the best Egyptian tombs to myself

[mattbell]

The most impressive tomb I've seen so far is the Tomb Of Sennefer. Sennefer was the keeper of the Pharaoh's gardens. His tomb walls are filled with lush scenes of Egyptian gardens and feasts.  (Unfortunately the pictures in the link don't quite do it justice)  The tomb is up on a hillside; it's more or less unmarked, and there are no roads or even clear trails to it.* It's surrounded by a ramshackle village - the inhabitants are the keepers of the tombs. Because it's not easily accessible, it's not a good spot for tour groups., and tour groups make up literally 98% of the visitors. Besides, they all want to see Tut's tomb, which is small, not that interesting, and staggeringly expensive at over $30.

I was in Sennefer for over 20 minutes, and I was the only one there.

If you must go for a big royal tomb, go for Ramses VI or Tuthmosis III. Both of them have an interesting “control room” feel – the walls are meticulously laid out with diagrams and writing related to the afterlife and their system of gods and goddesses. It's very interesting seeing their precise approach to religion, a relic of a time when math, physics, meteorology, and other scientific disciplines were deeply intertwined with religion. This mix persisted up until fairly recent times – Newton, co-inventor of calculus, also wrote extensively and methodically on how the Holy Trinity was actually just one God as well as other topics. This was deeply heretical material, and he ended up keeping it unpublished. (You can learn more here: http://www.isaac-newton.org/ )

*(well, there were signs but someone painted over them. Coincidentally, someone offered to guide me there for a significant fee)

Comments

[easwaran.livejournal.com]

It's sort of surprising to me that metaphysical arguments about the substance of god that differ from the official versions are considered heretical - much Catholic theology is specifically about considering alternate versions of these pictures and seeing which make the most sense while still being consonant with the revealed texts. I suppose explicitly denying things that are in the texts is heretical, but coming to different conclusions about the stuff that isn't explicitly in the text should be a natural part of trying to find out the proper metaphysics of god. (Most of the stuff about the trinity isn't directly in there, but is derived from it in various ways.) After all, Gaunillo wasn't considered a heretic for showing that Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of god can't be valid - catholics really do encourage all sorts of real reasoning about these issues, which inevitably must brush up against unsanctioned views of god. But perhaps denying traditional dogma (which is supposedly derived from the texts) and denying the texts on which it's based don't have a clear division.