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Accuracy in egiptologicheski

famous statement "Science can be divided into natural and unnatural, alternately attributed to Lev Landau, the Abram Ioffe, something else to some great Soviet physicist. In fact, this phrase uttered vice president of the Academy of Sciences Vladimir Steklov, founder of the Institute of Physics and Mathematics. For some reason, much less remember the answer to this remark of the historian Sergei Platonov: "No, sir, to the public and antisocial."

This swordplay two great scientists soon a hundred years. Post factum, we may assume that won her Steklov, at least in regard to public attitudes toward science. During this time the humanities now and then had to prove that what they are doing - this is also a science, even though they do not build giant reactors and colliders, do not send people into space, not create new materials and weapons of the future and do not cure the deadly disease.

Modern social sciences owe the natural sciences and mathematics. Without mathematics nowadays unthinkable nor economics, nor sociology, nor even many philological methods. Physicists, chemists, biologists, historians, astronomers have learned new ways of dating, especially dendrochronology and radiocarbon analysis. Classical humanities these methods are considered by the subsidiary, as they can determine only the outer "binding" events, not their essence - the main subject of interest in humanities.

A recent joint study by Cambridge and Oxford scientists who undertook to re-examine key dating the history of ancient Egypt with the help of radiocarbon analysis and mathematical modeling can be considered as an example of such an auxiliary function of natural science methods in the humanities.

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Egyptologists are three great periods in the history of civilization in the Nile valley: Predynastic (IV millennium BC) dynastic (XXX-IV century BC) and Hellenistic (IV-I century BC). First period - a primitive culture and the beginning of the formation of something resembling the state, and the last - time from the Macedonian to Roman conquest, when Egypt was gradually lost their cultural identity. Ancient Egypt in the narrow sense of the dynastic period of Egypt is considered, in which, in turn, divided into three eras: Ancient, Middle and New Kingdom. The dates of each of these periods shall be established on the basis of comparative analysis of the surviving written evidence (ie, stick to the historical and philological criticism), with emphasis on astronomical phenomena described - eclipses, comets and other observations of phenomena that modern astronomers good at whatever date.

Start the Old Kingdom is associated with the reign of Pharaoh Djoser, builder of the first known pyramid. The beginning of his reign, historians have put in quite a broad chronological framework - 2667-2592 BC. However, in 2000, Cambridge Egyptologist Kate Spence (Kate Spence) published in the journal Nature article, which argued that Djoser ascended the throne some 75 years later, arguing that the astronomical data on the position of stars for which the Egyptians of the Old Kingdom have targeted the pyramid . At the same time Spence declared that the radiocarbon method is powerless to clarify this date, since its error is 100 years and more.

A team of researchers led by Christopher Bronk Ramsey (Christopher Bronk Ramsey), head of the Oxford radiocarbon laboratory analysis, decided to still try. To help the physics and chemistry, mathematics called - namely, Bayes theorem, the classical formula of probability theory, which allows to estimate the probability of one event under a certain probable conditions (as such terms were the results of radiocarbon dating, by definition, controversial).

Obtained thus marking the beginning of the Board Djoser was not too much biased on the chronological scale, and also with a large "fork": 2691-2625 BC. In the same way Ramsey and colleagues peredatirovali beginning of the New Kingdom (get "fork" from 1570 to 1544 BC), the reign of Pharaoh Ramses II (1297-1273 BC instead of the traditional 1279-1212) and the Tutankhamun (1353-1331 instead of 1333 -1323).

When Kate Spence reported on the results of Ramsey, she said: "I am more than happy to agree with them. The ancient kingdom - a crucial period because it is the earliest historical period in which to get stricter dating to count them on the historical chronology" .
 
All this makes little difference in our knowledge of ancient Egypt: significance for the history of world civilization, Imhotep as the first architect of the pyramid and Zoser as a customer for its construction, Ramses II as a conqueror, and the tomb of Tutankhamun as a unique specimen preserved burial of the pharaoh does not depend on whether they lived half a century earlier or later.

By the way, an archaeologist Bryuins Hendrik (Hendrik Bruins) from the Israeli Ben Gurion University, commenting on the results obtained by Ramsey and colleagues, complained that they were unable to clarify the dating of the most famous in the history of a volcanic eruption (not counting, of course, Eyyafyatlayokudlya ... just kidding) - the so-called Minoan. This grand cataclysm was one of the most important milestones in the history of the Mediterranean, destroying or predetermining the decline of civilizations Aegean Sea island (including Crete). To him, every now and then trying to tie the birth of a wide variety of ancient myths and legends - from the destruction of Atlantis (which in this version, is associated with the Minoan civilization or civilization Cycladic islands) to the Biblical legend of the ten plagues and how the Red Sea opened before Moses. Because of insecurity and mutual antagonism of written and astronomical data, the results of radiocarbon analysis and other data, this event is placed into a temporary "plug" in two or even three centuries (from the XVII to the XV century BC).

So, the plagues. Analysis of the Biblical tradition, a recent group of German biologists and climate scientists - is another example of how natural scientists helping (or trying to help) historians. Their approach is clear: everything has a scientific explanation, and the myths were created because the ancient people, unable to find him, came up with a supernatural explanation. In this case, the scientists explained the 10 struck Egypt disasters described in the book of Exodus, only two natural phenomena: drought and volcanic eruption (thus Minoan).

No doubt, such an explanation - an entertaining intellectual exercise. Very often "naturalists" throw themselves with such explanations for the widespread myth of the Deluge. However, they usually do not realize the limits of their theories, taking more or less ingenious conjecture about an event that could give impetus to the birth of the myth, for an explanation of the myth. Meanwhile, the myth - is more than just fairy tales, excuses that come up with adults on the move in response to countless children "why?" And the mythological consciousness does not necessarily need any external stimuli, to produce the myths - look at least for Scientologists, even for a conspiracy. The internal logic of mythology can not be explained in such a "square-hill" way.

All this does not diminish the value of a new independent scientific dating of ancient Egyptian history, the multi-Ramsey, or the Germans guessing about the primary source of the myth of the ten plagues. It would be worthwhile only to understand their limitations. After all, if history is to history, we still would have been satisfied annals. And if to explain the myth was plausible enough to find it "natural" explanation, then no religion for a long time would not exist.
 
What is radiocarbon analysis

The method of radiocarbon dating is based on the analysis of radioactive carbon in organic materials (bones, tissues, papyrus, parchment, and the like). During the life of the organism it accumulates radioactive isotope of carbon C-14. After the death of the carbon exchange stops. C-14 decays, and the stable isotopes of carbon saved. Knowing the ratio of stable and radioactive carbon in the material, as well as the decay rate of the last (number of C-14 is reduced by half over 5730 years), we can determine the age of the material. To do this, however, have to burn to coals fragment studied material. By this method, an American, Willard Libby, who got him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1960. Recently proposed a gentle method of radiocarbon analysis, which does not require the destruction of the sample material.

Artem Efimovhttp://www.lenta.ru/articles/2010/06/19/dating/