Following notes written by an English traveler
in the early 19th century and two French pilots in the 1950s, Pierre Tallet
made a stunning discovery: a set of 30 caves honeycombed into limestone hills
but sealed up and hidden from view in a remote part of the Egyptian desert, a
few miles inland from the Red Sea, far from any city, ancient or modern. During
his first digging season, in 2011, he established that the caves had served as
a kind of boat storage depot during the fourth dynasty of the Old Kingdom,
about 4,600 years ago. Then, in 2013, during his third digging season, he came
upon something quite unexpected: entire rolls of papyrus, some a few feet long
and still relatively intact, written in hieroglyphics as well as hieratic, the
cursive script the ancient Egyptians used for everyday communication. Tallet
realized that he was dealing with the oldest known papyri in the world. Astonishingly,
the papyri were written by men who participated in the building of the Great
Pyramid, the tomb of the Pharaoh Khufu, the first and largest of the three
colossal pyramids at Giza just outside modern Cairo. See pictures and read
article at -- http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ancient-egypt-shipping-mining-farming-economy-pyramids-180956619/
The witnesses, laying their coats at the feet of Saul, were the men that would cast the first stones at Stephen in Acts 7. Why did they all lay their coats at Saul’s feet? The Talmud contains a very interesting account of the act of stoning that may provide the answer. “When the trial was over, they take him [the condemned person] out to be stoned. The place of stoning was at a distance from the court, as it is said, ‘Take out the one who has cursed.’ [i] A man stands at the entrance of the court; in his hand is a signaling flag [Hebrew sudarin = sudar , ‘scarf, sweater’]. A horseman was stationed far away but within sight of him. If one [of the judges] says, ‘I have something [more] to say in his favor,’ he [the signaler] waves the sudarin , and the horseman runs and stops them [from stoning him]. Even if [the condemned person] himself says, ‘I have something to say in my favor,’ they bring him back, even four of five times, only provided that there is some substance to...
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