Harvard University and Dassault Systems has created a virtual tour of the Giza pyramids. Pretty cool – check it out!
Too bad it’s not a video game where we can shoot aliens!
3-D Virtual Tour of the Giza Pyramids
Reply
Category Archives: Announcement
Ancient Aliens Debunked: The Official Trailer
I’m guessing all PaleoBabble readers know about the Ancient Aliens series put out by the Fantasy Channel (still though of by many as the History Channel). I’m thrilled to announce that I’ll be interviewed later this summer for the documentary film response, Ancient Aliens Debunked. If you visit the link you can sign up for email notification when the documentary is released. It will be FREE and viewable online. The trailer is below. The film is being produced by Chris White. Since the documentary will be free, all of the expense incurred by Chris is his own. This has been true of his online and YouTube ministry since its inception. Please visit his site to donate and help support this project!
Free (and Massive) Hieroglyphic Dictionary Recently Updated
I’ve post a link to the hieroglyphic dictionary produced by Mark Vygus before. Egyptology News posted a heads-up a few days ago that the dictionary had been updated. It’s now a breathtaking 2,267 pages long with 40,000 entries. Here is the direct link to the PDF (11.1 MB, so let it load) on the Pyramid Texts Online site.
Some Online Digital Resources of Interest
In recent days several valuable online resources have been posted on the web that will no doubt be of interest to readers. One is temporary (the month of April only) but the other two are permanent.
Temporary
Some time ago over at my Naked Bible blog I blogged on the importance of scholarly journals for biblical research. I also lamented the fact that digital access to these materials is restricted. But now some good news — The American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) is making digital access to their scholarly journals available for free for a limited time. Granted, there are only a few journals, and the access is only for the last four years, but you may still find something you’d like to download. The available journals are:
- Near Eastern Archaeology
- Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
- Journal of Cuneiform Studies
Permanent
The Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago has a number of volumes available in PDF. Readers who are familiar with my website devoted to debunking Zecharia Sitchin’s ancient astronaut theory will recall that the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary is on that site. The Institute recently posted a note that the file for the valuable book, Religion and Power: Divine Kingship in the Ancient World and Beyond had been updated. I recommend that book for serious students and researchers, as well as many of the other titles on the Oriental Institute Publications page.
Volume 5 of Egyptological (a new online Egyptology magazine) has just hit the web. The more of the material I read in these volumes, the more appreciative I am that Kate Phizackerley and Andrea Byrnes initiated the endeavor and have maintained the effort. I especially recommend the series (continued in vol. 5) on Egyptian religion. I suspect many readers will also want to read about the online Certificate in Egyptology now being offered by the University of Manchester. It’s a three-year program headed by Dr. Joyce Tyldesley, who is interviewed in this issue.
New PaleoBabble “Recommended Books” Widget
I came across a cool site a couple days ago and love it — Shelfari. On one hand, there are other such library tools on the web, but I really like the graphic look of this one, as well as what you can see when you click through. I’ve put nearly 150 books on my shelf for readers to browse. The titles aren’t paleobabble; they are cures for paleobabble — ancient history, religion, languages, etc. Have a look!
New Look for PaleoBabble
I was having some formatting trouble on the blog so I changed the WordPress theme. I like the look better, to be honest.
Paleo-Twitter
Just a quick note.
I’ve created a Twitter account so that when I post on any of my blogs, notification will appear there. (And it worked on another blog, so it should for this post as well). I needed to post the information here as well.
I don’t know much about Twitter. I think that if you click here you will go to my Twitter page and can decide to follow me or not. It might be a good way to be alerted right away when I post something (at least that’s what I’m thinking — don’t worry, I won’t be alerting you to what I had for breakfast or when I’m taking the dog out). As noted above, we’ll see if it’s working.
In case you’re wondering why I don’t send posts to Facebook, I tried setting up the Plugin and creating the necessary Facebook App for automatically posting notifications, but killed the idea as soon as Facebook wanted my credit card number for account “verification” (hey, how about the fact that I’m in your website, which required a password get there?). It will be a cold day in Sheol before I give the Facebook troll my credit card information. The site would also accept a mobile device but I don’t have one. So that died a quick death.
Archaeology and the Queen of Sheba
I’ve seen a couple news items in the last several days about the possible discovery of a gold mine that archaeologists suspect may be associated with the biblical story of the Queen of Sheba. Examples include this story and this post from the Bible Places blog.
This doesn’t look like paleobabble. That said, it looks like it will be some time before the true nature of the discovery is known. The presence of a Sabean inscription is certainly promising. If the site turns out to produce more textual material it would be especially interesting. I’m not expecting anything that would shed any light on the Ethiopian legend of Menelik I (the presumed child of a presumed liason between Solomon and the queen). That would be beyond cool.
Useful Archaeology Web Page
Just a heads up for those of you who enjoy reading and researching in archaeology. The American Journal of Archaeology has set up a student web page that leads to layers of very useful links (e.g., check out the “archaeological blogs” link).
Mike on Coast to Coast AM Thursday Night
Many readers are familiar with Coast to Coast AM, the most-listened to late night talk show in the world. I’ll be on the evening of Feb 2. I’ve been on Coast over twenty times, and it’s always fun and unpredictable. The topics tend to be fairly wide-ranging when I’m on, but no doubt things like ancient astronauts and other PaleoBabble fodder will come up for discussion. One new item I am offering listeners is English translations to the only three scholarly articles on the Anunnaki that I know of. They are all in German, and over the past two years I have had them translated into English. Hopefully Coast listeners will want to actually engage the original sources in regard to the Anunnaki, which are a favorite candidate for ancient astronaut mythology.