[HN Gopher] Excavated: 52 Egyptian Mummies. Over a Dozen Had Mys...
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Excavated: 52 Egyptian Mummies. Over a Dozen Had Mysterious Golden
Tongues
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 55 points
Date : 2025-02-03 15:04 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.popularmechanics.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.popularmechanics.com)
| Muromec wrote:
| Charles Stross has a book about it. The time will be right very
| soon again
| momento wrote:
| Looks like Reddit is leaking into HN again.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Stross posts here fairly regularly.
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| What did the book say and what time?
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Why will the time be right very soon again? I'm googling for
| more info and the top result is your comment.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Stross's Laundry Files series covers a government agency
| working to prevent eldritch incursions caused by the rise of
| readily available computation. Lovecraft, with a big touch of
| common tropes parody and early 2000s IT humor.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| What does it have to do with golden mummy tongues though?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyarlathotep shows up in a
| significant role, as do nasty replacement tongues, among
| other things. As do space Nazis, elves, vampires and the
| like.
| neom wrote:
| As a side note, it's crazy how fast HN comments get into
| google search results these days.
| romanhn wrote:
| Not just Google. A couple weeks back I saw pretty strong
| evidence of OpenAI ingesting an HN comment of mine and
| regurgitating it in ChatGPT within 10-15 minutes of
| posting.
|
| This is the thread:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42649774
| neom wrote:
| I asked Deep Research why your comment appeared in it's
| training data, and it said it doesn't generally have near
| real time data in it's responses unless it's conducting a
| real time web search. It thinks it found the answer from
| pulling together and combining these sources: https://www
| .animatsiya.net/films.php?search=%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%... +
| https://ask.metafilter.com/182144/Whats-this-cartoon-
| with-a-... + https://www.city-
| data.com/forum/tv/2017670-dies-anyone-remem... - however
| it also said it has been trained on youtube comments
| generally and it's hard to know how many uploads might
| exist with comments referencing the time stamp, as well
| as forums that have been included in it's training data
| that are not indexed by google, but that it itself didn't
| think it was coming from HN. Who knows. -\\_(tsu)_/-
| romanhn wrote:
| The suspicious part is that ChatGPT did not have any kind
| of answer when the parent poster checked before posting.
| Yet soon after my reply it suddenly not only had the
| answer, but also used many of the same words and had the
| exact same timestamp. A little too close to be a
| coincidence, IMO.
| courseofaction wrote:
| Interesting, but ambivalent if removing them in the name of
| science is any more valid than removing them to sell? I'm not
| sure the occupants would make the distinction .
| drawkward wrote:
| Well, they are dead, so probably the "occupants" have no
| feelings about it. Should we be concerned with how rocks feel
| too?
| tempodox wrote:
| Once the tombs have been discovered, how long until regular
| grave robbers make their appearance to "take care" of them? At
| least this way the finds are open to scientific examination
| instead of being molten down and sold for profit.
| halosghost wrote:
| I've never quite understood how it is so easy for people to
| rationalize this thought-process: "<X := some motivation
| assumed to be widely shared like greed> means that someone
| _will_ <Y := do some morally-questionable to morally-
| unacceptable act>;" therefore, if the speaker's motivation is
| even arguably less bad than X, it somehow justifies the
| speaker doing exactly Y _first_.
|
| Recovering artifacts "for science" almost never benefits
| humanity in the short-term (and it's questionable if the
| average case fares better over the long-term). More often
| than not over our history, it has involved desecration and
| has enabled essentialism, and serves to benefit private
| collectors more than any other party (frequently to the
| exclusion of scientists).
|
| Maybe the energy used to "get there first" would be better
| put towards making sure the burial remains are respected, or
| at least ensuring that whatever descendants remain are given
| legal stewardship.
|
| All the best,
| Cpoll wrote:
| > Whatever descendants remain are given legal stewardship.
|
| After 2000 years, those mummies either have too many
| descendants to count, or none at all.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Early egyptology wasnt about science. Ancient egypt was
| backdrop to many stories from the bible. Historians were
| looking to learn more about those events from a literate
| culture that lived alongside them. They were hoping to
| confirm or elaborate upon christianity. Only later, after
| almost zero mention was found, did egyptology evolve away
| from being a religious mission.
| spiderice wrote:
| > it somehow justifies the speaker doing exactly Y first.
|
| I think you have a difficult time understanding it because
| you're equating two things that aren't equal. They aren't
| doing "exactly Y" if Y is "robbing a grave purely for
| personal profit without consulting with anyone else first".
| There is a difference between grave robbing and getting
| permits from governments, researching, displaying findings
| in a way that benefits others, etc.. The fact that there is
| an article in popular mechanics about this means that it
| isn't "exactly Y".
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Mummies scientifically preserved in museums and visited by
| hordes of people from all over the world. Scientists and
| historians trying to learn about thier lives, even trying to
| rediscover thier words. The pharaohs might appreciate the
| effort. They didnt biuld such elaborate funeral structures to
| be forgotten.
| dole wrote:
| Growing up in a mid-sized midwestern city with an art museum
| and resident mummy, the mummy and room of Egyptian artifacts
| was honestly one of the most exciting and main reasons for
| going to the museum besides the rest of the art. Hopefully
| they would see the Memphis Bass Pro as tribute.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| "Creation was first a spiritual and intellectual activity,
| facilitated by the divine heart (thought) and tongue
| (speech/word) of Ptah"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabaka_Stone
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Ptah is the Egyptian god of creation and design, for any
| creatives or designers out there looking for a deity
| sircastor wrote:
| My wife and I have had conversations about exhuming human remains
| in pursuit of science a number of times, and I haven't quite been
| able to settle on when or why it is or is not appropriate. In a
| personal context - it seems a violation of one's own choices
| (granted that those choices might not be one's own). But the
| scientific community doesn't seem overly concerned with that -
| and the learning opportunities are significant to me.
|
| Does anyone else have these ambiguous uncertainties about this
| kind of stuff?
| bitcurious wrote:
| Some ways one could approach it:
|
| Religious: the body is connected to a spirit and should be
| protected.
|
| Familial: the body is scared to individuals who knew the
| person.
|
| Cultural:; the body represents a current people, and to exhume
| it makes them feel dehumanized.
|
| Legal: the body is property and property rights are to be
| respected.
|
| Seems like with ancient Egyptian mummies none of those are
| relevant. The modern Egyptians have moved on from the old
| faiths, none trace their lineage to those mummies, culturally
| they are proud of them, legally there has been too much churn
| for the old claims to be relevant.
| drooby wrote:
| I think you might be talking about a "body farm"
|
| There are many organizations and universities that perform
| similar research. I.e forensic anthropology
| jl6 wrote:
| It might be that thousands of years is enough time that your
| body and everything about you has fully passed beyond any claim
| you ever had on it and now belongs to the world at large.
| andai wrote:
| "When there's a literal curse protecting the body" might be a
| good start.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| A more-general question is whether archaeology should be done
| at all. Some have argued that future imaging technologies will
| render it completely unnecessary to dig and displace artifacts,
| and that future archaeologists and anthropologists will curse
| us for trashing untold volumes of evidence because we couldn't
| stand to wait.
|
| I don't really buy that, especially in the absence of any clues
| regarding what these magical 'future imaging technologies'
| might turn out to be, but it's an interesting argument to
| consider. It would certainly have applied many decades ago, and
| if we say it doesn't apply now, then where was the cutoff?
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| hey at least people aren't eating them anymore...
|
| https://www.chefsresource.com/why-did-victorians-eat-mummies...
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(page generated 2025-02-06 23:01 UTC)