Timeline for What is the meaning of "humbler walls"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
24 events
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| Oct 13, 2015 at 10:54 | comment | added | JHCL | The comparison isn't with where P & p came from historically. It's with their current status in our wider cultural understanding. But even if it weren't, it's an argument of 'degree of humility', then, surely? Not logic. | |
| Oct 13, 2015 at 10:44 | comment | added | chasly - supports Monica | @JHCL - You say, "may have originated somewhere more humble that those two phenomena". There is a problem of logic there. Pharaohs and pyramids also originated from humble beginnings. | |
| Oct 13, 2015 at 10:30 | comment | added | JHCL | Blimey, I'm reluctant to pipe up here... The OP quote does not suggest that 'pyramids' and 'Pharoahs' were advances, only that they were significant. I think we can agree that neither are humble. It's perfectly reasonable to claim that other things, for example 'advances', may have been just as significant. Likewise, that those things may have originated somewhere more humble that those two phenomena. That's all. Sorry if this has all been examined elsewhere, but it's a convoluted thread... | |
| Oct 13, 2015 at 10:22 | history | edited | chasly - supports Monica | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Oct 13, 2015 at 10:17 | history | edited | chasly - supports Monica | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Oct 13, 2015 at 10:11 | history | edited | chasly - supports Monica | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Oct 13, 2015 at 10:04 | history | edited | chasly - supports Monica | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Oct 13, 2015 at 9:55 | comment | added | chasly - supports Monica | @Mari-LouA - Thanks for that reminder -- and for adding the relevant information to the question. I'll look again and see if it causes me to amend my answer :-) | |
| Oct 13, 2015 at 6:11 | comment | added | Mari-Lou A | It is always a good idea, (talking from personal experience) to look for the original source to check whether the OP has correctly transcribed a script and its punctuation. It's also helpful to see whether the author of the piece is a native speaker, a professional writer etc. | |
| Oct 12, 2015 at 2:59 | comment | added | chasly - supports Monica | Okay, that's bordering on the acceptable now. However I still see two problems. It wouldn't have been so good with, "We all remember the White House and President Bush, but the decision to torture prisoners of war was made in less-lofty offices." Also the presence of 'but' is a mystery. Example: "We all remember the White House but we don't remember less-lofty offices." That's fine but, "We all remember the White House but the decision to torture was made elsewhere." Those are two unrelated facts (1) we remember and (2) a decision was made. There is no'but' about it. | |
| Oct 12, 2015 at 2:43 | comment | added | deadrat | @chaslyfromUK Thanks for indulging me. I hope barbecue returns in the conviction that no one can force him to leave. I don't know how the burial chambers were constructed, after the blocks are laid or before. In either case, a considerable feat of engineering. Allow me to change your example somewhat: "We all remember President Bush and his White House, but the decision to torture prisoners of war was made in less-lofty offices." I don't think it's a stretch to link Pharaohs and accomplishments any more than it is to link W with failed policies. | |
| Oct 12, 2015 at 2:09 | comment | added | chasly - supports Monica | @deadrat - I don't think this will ever be resolved but I'll have one last go. The sentence says in part (I'll be selective for my own purposes but I won't change any words or their order), "We all remember the ... pharaohs, but advances ... were being made behind humbler walls." This is a non-sequitur. It's a little like saying, "We all remember President Bush but queues were forming outside other cinemas." At which point I ask why you use the word 'other' when no cinemas have previously been mentioned. Also I wonder what function the word 'but' serves. Is President Bush a cinema? | |
| Oct 12, 2015 at 1:58 | comment | added | deadrat | @SvenYargs I don't understand. What would lead a reader, fair- or bloody-minded, to infer that pyramids and pharaohs were made behind less humble walls? Even the literal-minded would infer (courtesy of the conjunction but) that p's and p's were made behind unhumble walls? Wouldn't the not-so-literal-minded conclude that the admonition to remember concerns the advances of pyramid builders and their rulers? | |
| Oct 12, 2015 at 1:54 | comment | added | chasly - supports Monica | Okay, deleted. It was intended as a riposte rather than a gloat but point taken. That diagram doesn't show anything about the order in which things were built. Are you saying that the pyramids were built first and that the burial chambers were excavated afterwards? That seems to indicate a big oversight. | |
| Oct 12, 2015 at 1:51 | comment | added | deadrat | @chaslyfromUK You have managed to offend someone. I think barbecue has taken offense rather than your giving it. (Certainly, I'm not offended by anything you've written to me.) But it's not an achievement, and it's nothing to gloat about. I hope you'll consider deleting your "Thanks" comment, if only to keep my comments about you true. | |
| Oct 12, 2015 at 1:48 | comment | added | deadrat | @barbecue You are the master of your own time and attention. No one can drive you from a cyberforum. It's a simple matter to ignore that which you find unworthy. I think chasly is being somewhat obtuse about the meaning of the passage, but I don't think anything he's written is nasty. | |
| Oct 12, 2015 at 1:42 | comment | added | deadrat | @chaslyfromUK Um, yes the burial chambers were constructed within the pyramids, which is to say behind their "walls." Go here for a diagram: s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/e4/33/75/… These were ingeniously made to foil grave robbers. Is the metaphorical meaning of "humbler walls" really so unclear to you? | |
| Oct 12, 2015 at 1:20 | comment | added | chasly - supports Monica | @deadrat - Um... The burial chambers were not constructed behind the walls. That would have required hollow pyramids - a feat that would have been beyond even the ingenious Egyptians. The burial chambers were built in the open and the walls were later constructed around them. I'm aware of no evidence that the embalming was done inside the pyramids. The hieroglyphics and decorations were executed inside the pyramids but both technologies were invented well before that so they weren't advances that were made behind pyramid walls. | |
| Oct 12, 2015 at 1:01 | comment | added | Sven Yargs | +1 In my opinion the pairing of pyramids and pharaohs as advances is problematic, even if you don't infer (as a fair-minded reader reasonably might) from the sentence's structure that pyramids and pharaohs were made behind less humble walls than the ones behind which equally significant advances were being made. | |
| Oct 11, 2015 at 21:14 | comment | added | deadrat | @chaslyfromUK The walls are the ones humbler than the funerary monuments that pharaohs have. We call them pyramids. There were most certainly achievements made behind pyramid walls, including the engineering of concealed burial chambers, the artistic decorations of the tombs, the medical processes of ancient embalming, and the literary lithoglyphics. | |
| Oct 11, 2015 at 17:23 | comment | added | chasly - supports Monica | @barbecue - I'm sorry but your logic is faulty. The writer does not say that the walls themselves are advances but that the advances are made within the walls. These walls (within which the advances were made) are humbler than something -- but what is the something? Is it other walls? If not, then what can it be? You have not explained that and neither has the author. Please can you do so, then maybe I'll concede the point. | |
| Oct 11, 2015 at 15:09 | comment | added | barbecue | It doesn't imply that pharaohs have or are walls, or that advances happened inside pyramids. The pyramids and pharaohs are themselves examples of cultural achievements. Other achievements happened too, which were less spectacular, but just as important in the long term. | |
| Oct 11, 2015 at 14:24 | history | edited | chasly - supports Monica | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Oct 11, 2015 at 13:13 | history | answered | chasly - supports Monica | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
