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31-655: Thom suggested that "There must have been a headquarters from which standard rods were sent out but whether this was in these islands or on the Continent the present investigation cannot determine." Margaret Ponting has suggested that artefacts such as a marked bone found during excavations at Dail Mòr near Callanish , the Patrickholme bone bead from Lanarkshire and Dalgety bone bead from Fife in Scotland have shown some evidence of being measuring rods based on

62-534: A highly accurate unit" and "little justification for the claim that a highly accurate unit was in use". In his book Rings of Stone: The Prehistoric Stone Circles of Britain and Ireland. Aubrey Burl calls the megalithic yard "a chimera, a grotesque statistical misconception." Most researchers have concluded that there is marginal evidence for a standardized measuring unit, but that it was not as uniform as Thom believed. Some commentators upon Thom's megalithic yard (John Ivimy and then Euan Mackie) have noted how such

93-540: A length of 20 digits". A square with side length equal to the diagonal of a square with side length equal to one remen has an area of one square royal cubit, ten thousand (a myriad) of which defined an Egyptian land measure, the setat. John Ivimy noted that "The ratio MY : Rc is SQRT(5) : SQRT(2) to the nearest millimeter, which makes the MY equal to SQRT(5) remens, or the length of a 2 × 1 remen rectangle." see figure at right. The main weakness in this argument

124-461: A measure could relate to geometrical ideas found historically in two Egyptian metrological units; the remen of about 1.2 feet and royal cubit of about 1.72 feet. The remen and royal cubit were used to define land areas in Egypt: "On documentary and other evidence Griffith came to the conclusion that the square on the royal cubit was intended to be twice that on the remen; and Petri identified the remen as

155-587: A period of 3000 years. Thom made a comparison of his megalithic yard with the Spanish vara , the pre-metric measurement of Iberia, whose length was 2.7425 feet (0.8359 m). Archaeologist Euan Mackie noticed similarities between the megalithic yard and a unit of measurement extrapolated from a long, marked shell from Mohenjo Daro and ancient measuring rods used in mining in the Austrian Tyrol . He suggested similarities with other measurements such as

186-706: A statistical analysis of sites would reveal whether they were measured by pacing or not. In an investigation for the Royal Academy Kendall concluded that there was evidence of a uniform unit in Scottish circles but not in English circles, and that further research was needed. Statistician P. R. Freeman reached similar conclusions and found that two other units fit the data as well as the yard. Douglas Heggie casts doubt on Thom's suggestion as well, stating that his careful analysis uncovered "little evidence for

217-537: Is a strong rip current at the north end of the beach. Despite its remoteness, five of the six houses in the village were connected to fibre broadband in November 2012. In August 2016, the Transocean Winner oil rig ran aground, on a headland just off Dalmore beach. The oil rig was being towed from Norway to Malta, when it became detached from the tug boat. Excavations were conducted at Dail Mòr in

248-904: Is in Shieldaig in Wester Ross , at least 100 km away, in a direct line. This has led the archaeologists to surmise that there was a trade network between the Western Isles and the mainland for some quartz materials - there are local quartz materials on Lewis but they are not as fined grained. This article about a location in the Western Isles is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Duat The Duat ( Ancient Egyptian : dwꜣt , Egyptological pronunciation "do-aht"), also called Amenthes ( Ancient Greek : Ἀμένθης , romanized :  Aménthēs ) or Te ( Coptic : Ⲧⲏ , romanized:  Tē ),

279-496: Is probably that, in order to derive their yard, the builders of the megalithic monuments would have needed the remen and royal cubit, upon which this geometrical relationship relies. However, since the megalithic constructs of the British Isles and northern France predate the pyramids by millennia, this supposed counter-argument is anachronistic. Recent work by John Michell ( Ancient Metrology , The Lost Science of Measuring

310-523: Is the underworld in ancient Egyptian mythology . It has been represented in hieroglyphs as a star-in-circle: 𓇽. The god Osiris was believed to be the lord of the underworld. He was the first mummy as depicted in the Osiris myth and he personified rebirth and life after death. The underworld was also the residence of various other gods along with Osiris. The geography of the Duat is similar in outline to

341-501: The Amduat , the underworld consists of twelve regions signifying the twelve hours of the sun god's journey through it, battling Apep in order to bring order back to the earth in the morning; as his rays illuminated the Duat during the journey, they revived the dead who occupied the underworld and let them enjoy life after death during that hour of the night when they were in the presence of

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372-628: The Book of Gates , the Book of Caverns , the Coffin Texts , the Amduat , and the Book of the Dead . Each of these documents fulfilled a different purpose and give a different conception of the Duat , and different texts could be inconsistent with one another. Surviving texts differ in age and origin, and there likely was never a single uniform conception of the Duat , as is the case of many theological concepts in ancient Egypt. The Book of

403-405: The Duat . Each night the sun god Ra travelled through the Duat, bringing revivification to the dead as their main benefit. When in the underworld he was in his ram -headed form. Ra travelled under the world upon his Atet barge from west to east; on the course of the underground journey, he was transformed from his aged Atum form into his young Khepri form – the new dawning sun. The role of

434-561: The Metrological Relief in the Ashmolean Museum , Oxford. Thom's proposals were initially ignored or regarded as unbelievable by mainstream archaeologists. Clive Ruggles, citing astronomer Douglas C. Heggie, has said that both classical and Bayesian statistical reassessments of Thom's data "reached the conclusion that the evidence in favour of the megalithic yard was at best marginal, and that even if it does exist

465-489: The Dead and Coffin Texts were prepared as guidebooks through the Duat ' s dangerous landscape and to a life as an ꜣḫ for people who had recently died. Emphasized in some of these texts are mounds and caverns, inhabited by gods, demons, or supernatural animals , which threatened the deceased along their journey. The purpose of the books is not to lay out a geography, but to describe a succession of rites of passage which

496-503: The Earth ), John Neal ( All Done with Mirrors ), Richard and Robin Heath (various works on British megalithic circles and on Carnac) make a case for the connection of the megalithic yard with a systemic relation of geodetics and the lunation cycle. A fresh proposal demonstrating a correlation between four units of measure (the royal cubit, the remen, the megalithic yard and the foot) examines

527-566: The ancient Indian gaz and the Sumerian šu-du3-a . Along with John Michell , Mackie also noted that it is the diagonal of a rectangle measuring 2 by 1 Egyptian remens . Jay Kappraff has noted similarity between the megalithic yard and the ancient Indus short yard of 33 inches (0.84 m). Anne Macaulay reported that the megalithic rod is equal in length to the Greek fathom of (2.072 metres (6.80 ft)) from studies by Eric Fernie of

558-486: The autumn of 1982 by Gerald and Margaret Ponting when part of the sea wall collapsed near the beach. This was further excavated by Sharples and Curtis. Prehistoric stone structures were found and documented, suggested to be a dwelling, along with various artefacts left in place by Beaker culture with some earlier finds from the neolithic . These included tools made of bone or antler and pottery . A large number of flints and arrowheads found during excavations and on

589-479: The beach nearby suggest the area may have been used for a workshop of their manufacture. One noted artefact recovered was the Dalmore bone; a square-sectioned 34mm with perforation. Zig-zag markings just over 5mm apart on the bone were analysed by P.J. Scott and Margaret Ponting. Later analysis of the stone tools found that majority of the arrowheads were of quartz type not found locally. The nearest known source

620-485: The dead king, worshiped as a god, was also central to the mythology surrounding the concept of Duat, often depicted as being identical with Ra. Along with the sun god the dead king travelled through the Duat, the Kingdom of Osiris, using the special knowledge he was supposed to possess, which was recorded in the Coffin Texts , that served as a guide to the hereafter not just for the king but for all deceased. According to

651-528: The dead soul as it makes its way toward judgement. In spite of the many demon-like inhabitants of the Duat , it is not equivalent to the conceptions of Hell in the Abrahamic religions , in which souls are condemned with fiery torment. The absolute punishment for the wicked, in ancient Egyptian thought, was the denial of an afterlife to the deceased, ceasing to exist in the intellectual form ( Ancient Egyptian : ꜣḫ ; Egypt. Pron. : Akh). The grotesque spirits of

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682-420: The devourer of souls, as these people were denied existence after death in the Duat. The souls that were lighter than the feather would pass this most important test, and would be allowed to travel toward Aaru , the "Field of Rushes", an ideal version of the world they knew of, in which they would plough, sow, and harvest abundant crops. What is known of the Duat derives principally from funerary texts such as

713-776: The megalithic yard in Britain . An oak rod from the Iron Age fortified settlement at Borre Fen measured 53.15 inches (135.0 cm) with marks dividing it up into eight parts of 6.64 inches (16.9 cm). Euan Mackie referred to five-eighths of this rod 33.2 inches (84 cm) as " very close to a megalithic yard ". A hazel measuring rod recovered from a Bronze Age burial mound in Borum Eshøj, East Jutland by P. V. Glob in 1875 measured 30.9 inches (78 cm). Keith Critchlow suggested this may have shrunk 0.63 inches (1.6 cm) from its original length of one megalithic yard over

744-492: The place where people's souls went after death for judgment, though that was not the full extent of the afterlife. Burial chambers formed touching-points between the mundane world and the Duat . As such, the west bank of the Nile was associated with the dead and funeral barges would mimic the sun god Ra's journey through the sky during the day. The Akh (the conscious part of the soul) could use tombs to travel back and forth from

775-540: The royal cubit and the megalithic yard is 1 foot. Dail M%C3%B2r Dail Mòr (or Dalmore ) is a hamlet situated in the Northside of Carloway , a major settlement on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland . The hamlet has a beach and a cemetery. A small well kept car park is available for visitors as are picnic & public BBQ facilities. The beach is a known surf destination mentioned in numerous guidebooks. Note there

806-469: The sun god, after which they resumed their sleep, waiting for the god's return the following night. The rest of the dead journeyed through the various parts of the Duat to be judged, but not to be unified with the sun god like the dead king. If the deceased was successfully able to pass various demons and challenges, then they would reach the Judgment of the dead . In this ritual, the deceased's first task

837-640: The text of Euclidin light of the ancient cosmological implications of the dodecahedron's construction atop a cube. The approach demonstrates that the Egyptian Duat , as an encircled pentagram, is a shorthand glyph for the Platonic quintessence (dodecahedron) and that they both represented the fabric of the celestial canopy covering the earth (cube). In this example, given side AB equals 10 royal cubits (5.236067 meters), then side DB equals 20 remen and line GB equals 1 megalithic yard. The difference between

868-454: The uncertainty in our knowledge of its value is of the order of centimetres, far greater than the 1mm precision claimed by Thom. In other words, the evidence presented by Thom could be adequately explained by, say, monuments being set out by pacing, with the 'unit' reflecting an average length of pace." David George Kendall makes the same argument, and says that pacing would have created a greater difference in measurements between sites, and that

899-407: The underworld were not evil, but rather acted as directed by the gods, to provide the various ordeals that the deceased had to face. The Duat was the region through which the sun god Ra traveled from west to east each night, and it was where he battled Apep , who embodied the primordial chaos which the sun had to defeat in order to rise each morning and bring order back to the earth. It was also

930-586: The world the Egyptians knew: There are realistic features like rivers, islands, fields, lakes, mounds and caverns, but there were also fantastic lakes of fire, walls of iron, and trees of turquoise. In the Book of Two Ways (a Coffin Text ) there is even a map-like image of the Duat . The Duat was also a residence for various gods, including Osiris, Anubis , Thoth , Horus , Hathor , and Maat , who all appear to

961-400: Was to correctly address each of the forty-two Assessors of Maat by name, while reciting the sins they did not commit during their lifetime. After confirming that they were sinless, the heart of the deceased was weighed by Anubis against the feather of Maat , which represents truth and justice. Any heart that is heavier than the feather failed the test, and was rejected and eaten by Ammit ,

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