A couple of years ago Scott Creighton posted this article.
In it, he makes the claim the numerals painted onto the rafters inside Campbell's Chamber look odd and concludes that
In a recent post to Mr Smith I stated the following:
Scott took issue with this statement. He wants to debate. I am not going to hijack Cladking's thread and so here I present the (pseudo-)mystery of the "odd" numerals in Campbell's Chamber. In fact, I am not going to quibble over this with him. The evidence I show speaks for itself. This will be my one and only post on this matter. What Scott does with the new evidence is his problem, not mine. I stand by my statement.
The problem with his logic is that one of Scott's in-going assumption to reach his conclusions is demonstrably false. Hence the conclusion is false. He did not cite this proof in his article and I do not blame him. The evidence is not easy to come by in one of two instances. Now that I made him aware of this, however, there is no two ways about it as far as I am concerned. This claim is falsified by the evidence I will post here now.
Recitation of the claim to be falsified:
The logic of Scott's argument as presented in his article goes as follows:
Assumption: In the Old Kingdom, hieratic numbers such as strokes (1-9) and arcs (10) were not written sideways unless they were ordinal and determined with a symbol marking a date. He bases this assumption on Sir Alan Gardiner's comments on the matter and cites him, as appropriate.
Observation: In Campbell's Chamber, the numerals are written vertically alongside the horizontal signs nfr and w3s. When you turn nfr and w3s upright—as Egyptologists may argue they were originally written at the quarry and the sideways orientation is merely a result of turning the blocks to position them during construction— the strokes and arcs turn sideways. Since there are no date symbols to make them ordinal (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.), this is odd since not customary in this era, especially regarding the arcs, but even the strokes look odd in this early phase of hieratic.
And...
Here, I show you now what Scott speaks off. This is a block from G4000, from the mastaba of Hemiunu in the Westfield next to the Great Pyramid. While the strokes are written vertically here, even though this is a date, the sign for 10, two of them in tandem, are written sideways as per Gardiner's comments.
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Comparing this to his in-going assumption he states:
His Conclusion: The symbols may have been painted by Vyse and his team in an act of forgery along with other marks such as the Khufu cartouche.
Here is the evidence that falsifies his assumption and therefore his conclusion. The first image is from the pyramid of Unas, courtesy of Stephen Brabin's Incomplete Pyramids, comparing a quarry mark written in the identical manner as one found in Campbell's Chamber and among the one's Scott alleges look odd for this era. There is not either a claim, nor evidence that this quarry mark inside Unas is fake.
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The second image is from the pyramid temple of Menkaure, courtesy of George Reisner's Mycerinus. It shows that the same mark could contain strokes written both vertically and horizontally. In other words, it didn't matter. They could be ordinal or cardinal, and yet you can both orientations in the same mark.
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So, was Gardiner wrong? No, I actually don't think so. Someone I know in Egypt, Mohamed Ibrahim, said it best the other day when we were discussing if the markings on the lower northern shaft "door" were hieratic: He said that the workers were not following the rules to a T like the royal scribes and that is why you will see oddities here and there when it comes to casual quarry marks. Is it possible that Gardiner was in fact wrong? Of course it is. But is doesn't matter. What matters is that the quarry mark context left for us from the Old Kingdom does not support what Scott wants to assume. This is a really long-winded way to explain my original statement.
Finally, was there a quarry mark hoax perpetrated inside the Great Pyramid? I am not saying yay or nay. I am saying that this part of this proof, the odd numbers claim, is false.
In it, he makes the claim the numerals painted onto the rafters inside Campbell's Chamber look odd and concludes that
Quote
....genuine hieratic numbers were simply flipped and painted onto these blocks to make them look as though painted onto the block at the quarry, is one simple way of explaining this anomaly (Figure 6).
In a recent post to Mr Smith I stated the following:
Quote
Gotta piece of Mysteries Forum trivia with potential ripple effect for you: I originally found this book a couple of years ago when Scott Creighton made the claim that authentic Old Kingdom hieratic quarry marks would not use horizontal numerals relative to the nfr Sign, that he believed based on Gardiner's comments to be reserved only for dates when marked with the rnpt Sign. He wanted to peg the rafter marks in Campbell's Chamber as fake. Well, Stephen's excellent reproduction of the Pyramid of Unas falsifies Scott's claim. From all page numbers it's on 110 of Incomplete Pyramids.
Scott took issue with this statement. He wants to debate. I am not going to hijack Cladking's thread and so here I present the (pseudo-)mystery of the "odd" numerals in Campbell's Chamber. In fact, I am not going to quibble over this with him. The evidence I show speaks for itself. This will be my one and only post on this matter. What Scott does with the new evidence is his problem, not mine. I stand by my statement.
The problem with his logic is that one of Scott's in-going assumption to reach his conclusions is demonstrably false. Hence the conclusion is false. He did not cite this proof in his article and I do not blame him. The evidence is not easy to come by in one of two instances. Now that I made him aware of this, however, there is no two ways about it as far as I am concerned. This claim is falsified by the evidence I will post here now.
Recitation of the claim to be falsified:
The logic of Scott's argument as presented in his article goes as follows:
Assumption: In the Old Kingdom, hieratic numbers such as strokes (1-9) and arcs (10) were not written sideways unless they were ordinal and determined with a symbol marking a date. He bases this assumption on Sir Alan Gardiner's comments on the matter and cites him, as appropriate.
Observation: In Campbell's Chamber, the numerals are written vertically alongside the horizontal signs nfr and w3s. When you turn nfr and w3s upright—as Egyptologists may argue they were originally written at the quarry and the sideways orientation is merely a result of turning the blocks to position them during construction— the strokes and arcs turn sideways. Since there are no date symbols to make them ordinal (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.), this is odd since not customary in this era, especially regarding the arcs, but even the strokes look odd in this early phase of hieratic.
Quote
Clearly, something here isn’t right. To offer an explanation consistent with the rules of Hieratic script, critics have proposed that these numbers were perhaps written sideways onto these blocks at the quarry (Figure 4), from top to bottom.10
And...
Quote
We also observe, as Gardiner states, that unit number values (1-9) were written sideways/horizontally in later periods. However, on no occasion in the Old Hieratic palaeographic record do we find a cardinal number ∩ rotated 90 degrees from upright that is not a date.15
Here, I show you now what Scott speaks off. This is a block from G4000, from the mastaba of Hemiunu in the Westfield next to the Great Pyramid. While the strokes are written vertically here, even though this is a date, the sign for 10, two of them in tandem, are written sideways as per Gardiner's comments.
Comparing this to his in-going assumption he states:
Quote
However, while the ancient Egyptians did indeed write certain hieratic numbers sideways in a style similar to that presented in Figure 4, this was only ever done when writing the calendar days of the month as observed in Figures 5a, 5b and 5c.
His Conclusion: The symbols may have been painted by Vyse and his team in an act of forgery along with other marks such as the Khufu cartouche.
Here is the evidence that falsifies his assumption and therefore his conclusion. The first image is from the pyramid of Unas, courtesy of Stephen Brabin's Incomplete Pyramids, comparing a quarry mark written in the identical manner as one found in Campbell's Chamber and among the one's Scott alleges look odd for this era. There is not either a claim, nor evidence that this quarry mark inside Unas is fake.
The second image is from the pyramid temple of Menkaure, courtesy of George Reisner's Mycerinus. It shows that the same mark could contain strokes written both vertically and horizontally. In other words, it didn't matter. They could be ordinal or cardinal, and yet you can both orientations in the same mark.
So, was Gardiner wrong? No, I actually don't think so. Someone I know in Egypt, Mohamed Ibrahim, said it best the other day when we were discussing if the markings on the lower northern shaft "door" were hieratic: He said that the workers were not following the rules to a T like the royal scribes and that is why you will see oddities here and there when it comes to casual quarry marks. Is it possible that Gardiner was in fact wrong? Of course it is. But is doesn't matter. What matters is that the quarry mark context left for us from the Old Kingdom does not support what Scott wants to assume. This is a really long-winded way to explain my original statement.
Finally, was there a quarry mark hoax perpetrated inside the Great Pyramid? I am not saying yay or nay. I am saying that this part of this proof, the odd numbers claim, is false.