Carving Diorite Stele

[peterfc]

Chapter 7 of Charles Ginenthal’s, Pillars of the Past, Velikovskian, 2003, titled - Iron, Diorite and other Hard Rock, says that texts could not be carved on hard rock stele using copper tools. With this in mind, I am, in particular, interested in the carving of the diorite stele on which the Code of Hammurabi was recorded. This almost 71/2 ft tall stele, has a carved relief image of Hammurabi and over 4,000 lines of cuneiform text. Conventionally, the reign of the Babylonian king, Hammurabi, is dated as 1,792 to 1,750 BC, but if Ginenthal is right about it needing hardened iron (steel) to carve this diorite stele, this dating cannot be right; even conventional dating of the Iron Age does not place the start of the production of hardened iron instruments this early. Arsenic bronze tools were probably in use before 1,000 BC, but these would not have had the cutting points needed to carve texts on a diorite stele.

While Hammurabi is best known for this stele with its “Code of Hammurabi” laws, quite a number of contract tablets dated to his reign have also been found as have over 50 of his letters. Interestingly, the contract notes show that during the reign of Hammurabi, new mandates were issued for dealing with a flawed calendar; new agricultural contracts were issued because of changes in the time of the harvest. According to Lynn Rose (see Rose, Sun, Moon and Sothis, Kronos Press, 1999, Agricultural Contracts under Hammurabi), the tablets show that changes were also needed in the intercalary month system used to keep the Solar and Lunar calendars in sequence. This need for calendar changes suggests that Hammurabi lived through a cosmic event that caused an increase in the length of the year; why else would he have needed to make the calendar changes?

In my World Age chronology (see SIS C & C Review, 2017:3. An Inverted Earth and C & C Review 2020:3, The Heliacal Rising of Sirius and Ancient History), if intercalary months were needed both before and after the calendar change, as they seem to have been, Hammurabi has to have been ruling Babylon at the time of the Halloween inversion that I date to 623 BC, because intercalary months were not needed prior to the 674 BC inversion catastrophe. Before this, the year length was 360 days made up of 12 months of 30 days each.

If Hammurabi was ruling Babylon in 623 BC, Hammurabi has to have been a Babylonian rendering of the west-Semitic name, Nabopolassar; Hammu almost certainly being a Babylonian name for the Phoenician God, Ba’al Hammon, whose name was written as Ammu and Nabu in other Sematic texts and as Hattu in the language that has been miss-named, Hittite. Hardened iron chisels were certainly in use in the reign of Nabopolassar.

Another ancient text that needs redating if Ginenthal is right, as he almost certainly is, about needing hardened iron to carve hard rock, is the supposed Egyptian Old Kingdom, Palermo Stone whose carving is conventionally dated to around 2,450 BC. The largest fragment of this stele is only 43.5 cm high, but holds 6 lines of hieroglyphic texts that have to have been carved using a hardened iron (steel), precision instrument.

Ginenthal would appear to be correct in suggesting that, because of the clear need for the use of hardened iron tools in their construction and decoration, many of the Egyptian temples, pyramids and tombs that are conventionally identified as Egyptian Old and Middle Kingdom must be re-dated as 1st millennium BC structures contemporary with, or in the case of the Giant Pyramids in particular, later than the temples, pyramids and tombs dated to the New Kingdom. There are clearly many Egyptian 2nd millennium sites including the rain eroded Sphinx and its associated temples, which may well be genuine 12th Dynesty monuments, carved and built within 50 years of the beginning of the New Kingdom. Despite it being clear that many supposed Old and Middle Kingdom temples, pyramids and tombs should be re-dated as 1st millennium, this does not mean that the history revision ideas set out in Pillars of the Past are correct.