Jim Corsetti claiming on Joe Rogan that there is no evidence in the Giza pyramids that they were built as tombs:
Jim Corsetti's claims:
(1) The Egyptians believed in a people called the Kemet/ Khemit, the people who came before the Egyptians.
(2) "Even the locals didn't believe that" [that the pyramids were pharaonic tombs]
(3) No glyph was ever found in an Egyptian pyramid
(4) No mummy (mummified corpse) was found in an Egyptian pyramid.
Plausible responses to Jim Corsetti's claims:
(1)
Khemit/ Kemet was the local name for ancient Egypt.
IIRC it is normally translated as something like "black land" or "black earth", broadly accepted to be a reference to the rich dark soil along the course of the Nile and around the Nile Delta.
I read or heard that the adjective of Kemet- which I forget- was applied by the Egyptians to themselves, not to other peoples outside of the Kingdom's political boundaries.
Not to be confused with Kermit, a frog-headed cult figure of later provenance; possibly as late as the Nixon administration.
(2)
There is little political or religious continuity from ancient Egypt to the 1800's. Knowledge of the ancient culture largely evaporated, with waves of invasion and foreign occupation, and/ or cultural imposition, from about 400 BC onwards.
The "locals" hadn't used (or understood) hieroglyphs since perhaps 400 AD.
From around 650 AD Egypt was part of the Arab (and Islamic) world. Egyptians adopted the Arabic language.
Muslim scholars catalogued and described many ancient Egyptian structures, but they also didn't understand hieroglyphs.
It is unlikely that serious study of earlier Egyptian religious and funerary practices was encouraged.
Most of our knowledge of ancient Egypt has been gained since the de-cyphering of the Rosetta Stone in the early 19th century, not from local lore. The inhabitants of Giza and Cairo in the early 19th century almost certainly had less knowledge about ancient Egypt than we do.
(3)
As NorCal Dave has said, mason's glyphs have been found on blocks which are part of Khufu's pyramid,
Here is a bit from the Wiki on the Great Pyramid, I'm using it for brevity and because some of the source material is in French or German:
The chambers, previously inaccessible, were covered in hieroglyphs of red paint. The workers who were building the pyramid had marked the blocks with the names of their gangs, which included the pharaoh's name (e.g.: “The gang, The
white crown of Khnum-Khufu is powerful”). The names of Khufu were spelled out on the walls over a dozen times
and as Deirdre has pointed out, there were extensive bodies of text (composed of glyphs, obviously) from the 5th Dynasty onward.
i took "mason inscriptions" to mean ex:
(My example), from the burial chamber of the pyramid of Teti, 6th Dynasty c. 23rd century BC, from Wikipedia "Pyramid of Teti",
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_Teti accessed 10/04/23.
Lots of glyphs, not only inside a pyramid but from inside the burial chamber.
So Corsetti's claim is wrong.
Corsetti inspired me to look some stuff up and apparently the inscriptions were only in younger pyramids. ie after 4th dynasty
The stuff I read said much the same.
If Corsetti had limited his claim to saying that there were no texts (as opposed to individual glyphs) in 4th Dynasty pyramids (e.g. the Red Pyramid, pyramids of Khufu, Khefren and Menkaure) he might have had a point- but he didn't qualify his claim.
And the absence of text doesn't mean a structure isn't a tomb.
This is what a professional Egyptologist says- I'm attaching the relevant pdf below; I get the impression this guy knows his stuff.
Kanawati, N.,
Decoration of Burial Chambers, Sarcophagi and Coffins in the Old Kingdom, Ch.6 of
Studies in Honor of Ali Radwan, Vol. 2, Eds. Daoud, K., Shafia, B., El-Fatah, S.A.,
Publications De Conseil Supreme Des Antiquites De L'Egypte, Cairo, 2005,
Link:
https://gizamedia.rc.fas.harvard.ed...ge/full/library/kanawati_fs_radwan_55to71.pdf
Mr Kanawati writes, [separate quotes in consecutive order]
Until late in the Fifth Dynasty reign of Djedkare/Isesi, walls of burial chambers were bare of any decoration.
The 'unfinished' appearance of the surfaces of many burial chambers may well have been intentional.
Theoretically, the burial chamber was not considered as a place where the deceased would spend most of his/her time; it was merely a safe place for the protection of the corpse.
In accordance with the above discussion the smoothness and decoration of the walls of the burial chamber were unnecessary...
(4)
Very little of
anything has been found inside pyramids explored in the last two or three centuries, as they'd been broken into before. Some break-ins have been historically recorded, but there have been many times- notably ancient Egypt's three "intermediate periods"- when there may have been opportunities for undocumented looting.
There have been other periods of tumult, and long periods of control by foreign dynasties or states, in Egypt's long history.
However, in Teti's pyramid (Wikipedia link above) looters had left a sarcophagus and
...one of the canopic jars containing the
viscera of the king.
The ancient Egyptians had complex funerary rites, but having your bits interred in different places wasn't one of them.
And, in the pyramid of Merenre Nemtyemsaf I (Wikipedia, "Merenre Nemtyemsaf I", accessed 10/04/23)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merenre_Nemtyemsaf_I
A mummy was uncovered in the burial chamber.
NorCal Dave gave us a picture of Khufu's sarcophagus, Khafre's pyramid also contained a sarcophagus, broken lid on the floor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_Khafre Wikipedia, "Pyramid of Khafre", accessed 10/04/23.
There is also a funerary complex near the Pyramid
Not only that, all three main pyramids at Giza have funerary temples. A number of mastabas and rock-cut tombs are associated with "Khufu" and "Khafre", "Menkaure" has three small "queen's" pyramids.
The whole Giza complex is clearly a place of elite burials.
Some other pyramids in Egypt also have funerary temples and associated lesser tombs (for wives, other family, courtiers).
Corsetti might think that, having built extraordinary pyramids, each containing a sarcophagus, and elaborate tombs for their wives and favoured others nearby, Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure
all overlooked the need to build a tomb for themselves, or decided to be anonymous in death.
I don't think the evidence supports this.
The problem of misinformation being more entertaining and more popular than science, though, is not a new phenomenon, and has probably been true throughout human history. It's worse now only because we live at a time when information is at everyone's fingertips 24/7, and that's been weaponized by everyone from politicians to advertisers.
