Hello world,
Inspired by the video by CaptainDisguise on Egypt and a
Pharaoh, I pulled out a project which I had shelved for a year or so, as it
stems from a translation cooperation with 80Koe, who thus deserves all credit due.
Creating the video is quite tricky, multi level and requires a lot of leg-work.
I will look into the claims made in the Koran and the subsequent justifications
made by Muslims and one of my favourite frauds: Dr. Maurice Bucaille,
surrounding a name in the Koran: Haman.
What most people here have probably seen is the video from
the miracle factory "Harun Yahya".
The claim is that a Haman was commissioned in his capacity
as close advisor to "Pharaoh" [sic] or even being part of The Court
of a Pharaoh, to build a tower reaching "heavens". This Haman is
mentioned six times in the Koran (surah 28:6, 8, 38; surah 29:39 and surah
40:24 and 36). CaptainDisguise does an outstanding job of identifying the
inconsistencies around a Pharaoh, the Pharaoh or just Pharaoh as is mentioned
in the Koran, where he is called Firoun (Fir`awn).
From the video of CaptainDisguise we know the attributes of
the Pharaoh of the Bibles and the Koran is just as fictitious as is Moses
himself. But what about Haman? The only Haman I have come across is in the
Biblical book of Esther, where he is placed into Babylon and roughly 1000 years
after the Pharaoh associated with Moses to build - a tower. It seems the
authors of the Koran once again mixed up stories - unless Bucaille is right, of
course. The video and the various Muslim Dawah sites all copy the same nonsense
and parrot the lies of Bucaille. I will try here to show why I call this
nonsense and outright lies.
And just when I thought I was incredibly clever, when
researching some background, I came across a site (answering-islam.org), where
a Jochen Katz debunks the entire story in great detail and with more knowledge
than I have. But I was already halfway through this, so I took some of his
findings, included them here and decided to finalise this in video format. I
don't agree in every detail with their findings, especially the conclusion.
In his 1995 book "Moses and Pharaoh: The Hebrews In
Egypt", Bucaille claims that he has unravelled the mystery and he can
prove that Haman existed as a close advisor to the Pharaoh. And this is what
Muslims consider to be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
They go and spend a lot of time disassembling the Biblical account in Esther,
showing how it can't be trusted and that this makes their own version the
correct one. Then they show in great detail how the Rosetta stone has enabled
us to decipher hieroglyphs, unfortunately overshooting the mark by claiming
that all hieroglyphic orthography is known today, which is not true. They
follow Bucaille's story, without really adapting to reality, which, as some
research shows, they are fully aware of.
As I don't have access to the book itself, I will use the
excerpts as found on the page by Jochen Katz and www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Contrad/External/haman.html,
where they cite the book and try to prove the claims as being correct. So let's
go to the beginning.
What Bucaille claims:
We will show that the name, as
it is written in Arabic in the Qur’an, is the exact transliteration of the name
of a person whose hieroglyphic orthography is perfectly known today.
Well, if you look in the Koran it is written as
هامان
which is haa alif mim alif nun. Door-post: ح ḥ, Koran : ه h
So we have the consonants haa, a mim and a nun plus 2
vowels. The haa in Arabic is pronounced similar to the English h in hat. The
Egyptian hieroglyph however, is pronounced more like the Arabic version of gh.
So it is not a perfect transliteration. A perfect transliteration does not
exist anyway. Similarly, the Egyptian hieroglyphs do not show any vowels, so we
have hmn, which could mean anything from haman or himon to homuni. The hieroglyphic
orthography is NOT perfectly known today as there are some letter combinations
which still elude us.
So, all we have so far is a match consisting of 2 letters,
the m and the n.
One of the most prominent
French Egyptologists, fulfilling these conditions, was kind enough to answer
the question. (The conditions being: Egyptologist and specialist in classical
Arabic)
I find this statement extremely weird, given that Muslims
love name dropping. Here, Bucaille magically comes up with an unknown expert of
everything, without naming her or him, without showing what exactly makes this
expert an expert and in what field. No references to papers or credentials,
just: a prominent Egyptologist.
This is the second expert Bucaille claims to have consulted,
but I would imagine that no renowned expert would associate herself or himself
to an endeavour such as this. I also think that Bucaille simply invented these
experts to boost his credibility. And reading up on the topic will show that I
am not alone with this impression.
I showed him the word “Haman”
that I had copied exactly like it is written in the Qur'an
If you have an expert in classical or ancient Arabic she or
he should not really be surprised to see a page from the Koran.
he advised me to consult the
Dictionary of Personal Names of the New Kingdom by Ranke
In every field you have standard or reference works. Hermann
Ranke is one of them. If someone claims to be an Egyptologist and needs to be
pointed to Ranke, it immediately disqualifies him from knowing anything about
the topic. Anyone even remotely interested in Egyptology knows Ranke. In
addition, the book he quotes does not exist. Ooops. Bucaille is so desperate to
get Haman into the era of Ramesses and Merenptah of the 19 Dynasty, the New
Kingdom period of Egyptian history, which ended ~1200 BCE, commonly associated
with Moses that he invents a title.
The title he presumably refers to is a book by Hermann Ranke
called “Die Ägyptischen
Personennamen” (Egyptian Names, covering roughly 3000 years of Egyptian
history), which consists of several volumes, but none with any suffix
resembling New Kingdom.
What is actually comical is what happens when this is copied
to websites such as IslamicAwareness and Harun Yahya, where a spelling error is
copied along with everything else. The same applies when Hermann is suddenly
spelt with an e at the end as Hermanne.
Now this could be coincidence that 2 people put an e or a space in
exactly the same place independently of each other, but.....
and the transliteration in
German
A French expert referring to German transliteration as
opposed to a French transliteration? Hm. But as anyone with only cursory
knowledge of hieroglyphic transliteration knows, there is no language based
transliteration. They are standardised, as anyone can see in the attached
references.
I was stupefied to read the
profession of Haman: “Chief of the workers in stone-quarries,”
As we will see later, Bucaille had every reason to be
stupefied as he could not possibly read the profession there. Ranke writes no
such thing. There is no mention of any profession, just the name and the
description, hetep.
the name of “Haman” had been
engraved on a stela kept at the Hof-Museum of Vienna (Austria). Several years
later, when I was able to read the profession written in hieroglyphs on the
stela, I observed that the determinative joined to the name had emphasised the
importance of the intimate of Pharaoh.
Bucaille claims the inscription is on a stele. It is not. It
is on a piece of a door-post.
Bucaille claims the inscription is in the
“Kaiserlich-Königliches Hofmuseum” in Vienna. It is not. It is found in the
“Kunsthistorisches Museum” in Vienna. It changed its name decades ago - after
Austria lost its monarchy in 1918, something he would have obviously seen, had
he been there.
Ranke did NOT consider these signs to be determinatives,
because he transcribed them.
The Curator of the Egyptian-Oriental Collection, Michaela
Hüttner, checked the records and found no visitor or correspondence with any
Bucaille enquiring to see the door-post before it went on public display in
1996, after Bucaille's book came out. Before that it was kept in the Museum
storage.
Bucaille claims the inscription emphasises an intimate of a
Pharaoh. It does not. The description refers to a god. The gracious falcon god
Hemen.
Harun Yahya and his fairytale factory have changed their
pages on Haman over the years, toning down the claims, but keeps some hilarious
ones. A single inscription on a doorpost magically evolves into "inscriptions"
and a fragment of a door-post becomes a monument to Haman and they copy the
error in the museum's name. On another page Yahya claims that Haman is
mentioned in the Gospels. Really? Where? They also say that the name in the Old
Testament refers to a Babylonian King who lived 1100 years after Moses. The
real difference is more like half that and they confuse the contents with when
the Book of Esther (in the Ketuvim) was written. Sloppy.
In another section the collective brainpower of Harun Yahya
dreamworks come up with yet another claim: the single inscription now grows
into an entire collection of inscriptions and this - as well as the job
description - is based on the book "People in the New Kingdom".
it is a fact that the
hieroglyphs had been totally forgotten at the time of the Qur'anic
"Revelation"
That the meaning of hieroglyphs was forgotten does not
automatically mean that the stories went missing as well. They could well have
been handed down orally: there once was a guy who was commissioned to build a
gigantic tower all the way to the stars for a big king.
My version of the story:
Bucaille and al Zindani have set themselves the task of
proving that a Haman, as mentioned in the Koran, existed. They contact some
Egyptologists to ask if anyone knows a Haman. They don't. Someone guides them
to Ranke. They look for a name resembling Haman in the books by Ranke and don't
find any Haman. The only name Bucaille manages to identify is a hmn-h, which,
in his ignorance is as close as he wishes. In addition, the last h is marked
with a question mark. What Bucaille, Yayha and IslamicAwareness are saying:
surely, even if Ranke says it is an abbreviation of something, you can just
drop the h and voila, you have hmn, as desired. Now you just add the vowels you
require, ignore the diacritical marks and you get the required result: Haman.
As the entry also refers to a Wreszinski, he goes off and
finds Wreszinski's book "Aegyptische
Inschriften aus dem K.K. Hof Museum in Wien". Here he finds a lot
of information, which should actually have stopped any further investigation in
this direction, but he chooses to ignore this and build a false construction
based on what he finds. Well, he is, after all, now clutching at straws, as he
has nothing else to go on.
If we go back to the Ranke entry, we see that he draws the
hieroglyphs, consisting of
1. V28
sound sign for alas
2. Y5
senet board
3. N35
sound sign for n. water line
4. F18
sound sign for stream
5. Y1
Papyrus scroll
You can get the pronunciation from the Gardiner-List in the
link.
Ranke quite rightly points out that the pronunciation of the
h is a so-called emphatic h, which corresponds neatly with the Gardiner list.
He therefore marks the h with a dot underneath it.
In the Koran, we have
- normal
H
- an
Alif
- the
Mim
- another
Alif
- the
final Nun
So how does this correspond to the hieroglyphs? Well, only
the Mim and the Nun are comparable, the rest is not. The one of the three
possible h sounds in Arabic is different.
So much for the perfect transliteration.
But now we come to the second part of the name inscribed on
the door-post:
Ranke writes that hmn-h originates from an artefact in
Vienna, refers to Wreszinski and adds in footnote 2 that this could be an
abbreviation, very common in hieroglyphs hewn out of stones. Just underneath
that entry he shows what the abbreviated inscription could mean: Hemen is
merciful, Hemen being the Egyptian falcon god. Just above the entry he also
refers to the god Hemen, who is great.
So all three entries on this page refer to a god and his
attributes, marked as a hyphen and the description, not a determinative which
can be dropped.
No mentioning of any Haman, Pharaoh's Vizier, who is the
chief builder. None of that can be found here.
We have so far an entry in a book which was unknown to a
claimed Egyptologist, is being relabelled by Muslims, confirmed by an unnamed
French expert, with a name that hardly resembles the name in the Koran and
refers to a god.
It's not looking good so far.
Let's resume with Wreszinski.
His entry I.34 is a
"Pfeiler einer Grabtuer", a pillar of a doorpost from inside a grave,
not a stele or a tablet.
He can't allocate a time or era to it and gives the name and
profession in hieroglyphs and a remark: "Vorsteher der
Steinbrucharbeiter", or chief/ foreman of quarry workers.
Looking at the details we see that there are 3 parts in the
inscription regarding the name and title.
is a
name, transcribed as hmn-h by Ranke.
“of
Amun”.
“chief of the quarry workers”
The 1st and 3rd part are used and translated by
Bucaille, but the middle part is omitted. Is it because it would disqualify our
foreman from being close to the ruling Pharaoh and some 500km away from Cairo?
Wreszinski is highly experienced and does not even
find it necessary to mention the fact that the -h is indeed an abbreviation for
hetep.
He also does not see the necessity of translating the
rest of the inscription, as they are standard offering formulas for the dead
person.
This is the translation of the entire text:
(1) An offering, which the king
gives to Osiris, Foremost of the Westerners, Lord of
Infinity, Ruler of Eternity, so that he may give everything that is offered on
his food table; the sweet breath of the northern wind; a goodly funeral for his
old age, for the Ka of the overseer of the stonemasons of Amun Hemen-hetep, true of voice.
(2) An offering, which the king
gives to the Western Desert and Amaunet, the Lady of Heaven, so that she may give food and
sustenance and all kinds of offerings, all things good and pure, for the Ka of
the overseer of the stonemasons of Amun Hemen-hetep, true of voice. (3) His son
Pu-hetep.
(4) The mistress of the house
Nefret-nub.
Is there anything in here indicative of a relationship
of any kind with a Pharaoh? Nope.
Bucaille simply makes this up and Yahya and
IslamicAwareness simply copy it.
For further references, you can read about these
offerings here: Ramesside inscriptions: Translated and annotated, by Kenneth
Anderson Kitchen.
Finally, the claim regarding building using baked
bricks, reading Spencer's "Brick Architecture in Ancient Egypt", we
see that bricks were usually used to build smaller buildings and using mud
bricks and that during the Ramesside era, buildings made from BAKED
bricks were an absolute rarity, let alone in huge monuments. Also, no evidence
for the construction of a monumental tower has ever been found, even though the
Koran suggests that building actually started.
Conclusion:
No name matching Haman has been found in Egyptian
inscriptions or other materials.
The grave of a foreman of a quarry hundreds of miles
from Cairo, who was buried with good wishes for his personally preferred god,
the falcon god Hemen, was used as an excuse to falsify evidence to make it the
stele in memory of Haman, the chief builder and close ally of an unnamed
Pharaoh.
Reality shows that the name does not match. The title
does not match. The profession does not match. The book cited as proof does not
exist. The museum cited as proof does not exist. An unnamed expert has to
provide basic information.
Hardly anything in this claim resembles the truth.
Both, IslamicAwareness and Harun Yahya have toned down their claims over the
years, using the Mafia method of only accepting and admitting what is an
absolute must and unavoidable. You can see some of the versions in Appendix 4 on
the pages of AnsweringIslam.
In addition, there are indications in the form of
e-mails sent by IslamicAwareness to various people, begging them to confirm
their assumptions, which never happened. On the contrary: when one of their
cited experts on the pronunciation of the h's in the inscription, Prof. Jürgen
Osing, found out about their attempts to falsify his texts also, he wrote an
open letter to them, chastising their dishonesty and ripping their claims
apart. The German text for this is also in the description box. This means that
in spite of their knowing full well that the entire construction by Bucaille is
false, they still keep other Muslims misinformed and misled. Is this what an
honest Muslim should do to other Muslims?
Thank you for your time and patience!
Sources:
Peust
Hermann Ranke,
Die Ägyptischen Personennamen, Verzeichnis der Namen, Verlag Von J J Augustin
in Glückstadt, Band I (1935)
Walter Wrszinski,
Aegyptische Inschriften aus dem K.K. Hof Museum in Wien: J C Hinrichs'sche
Buchhandlung, Leipzig, 1906
Dr. M. Bucaille, Moses and Pharaoh: The Hebrews in Egypt:
1995, NTT Mediascope Inc., Tokyo.
C. Peust, Egyptian phonology: an introduction to the
phonology of a dead language, S. 54ff.
J. Osing, die Nominalbildung des
Ägyptischen, S. 367f.
A. J. Spencer, Brick Architecture In Ancient Egypt, 1979,
op. cit., p. 140; B.
The clip using material from Harun Yahya is used under the
Fair Use Provision and by permission from Harun Yahya, stating that
Indeed, you can copy these works and distribute them as much
and how you choose.
You can help further disseminate press conferences,
interviews and documentaries by Harun Yahya by uploading them onto video sites
such as YouTube and GoogleVideo.
These materials may be freely copied, printed and distributed,
with credit given to this site. (http://www.harunyahya.com/m_supportus.php)
Aqua - original song, Mente Zsolt, instrumental song,saját
zene from:
http://www.youtube.com/user/mentezsolt
28:6 show Pharaoh, Haman and their armies
28:8 Pharaoh, Haman and their armies were mistaken
28:38 So kindle for me, O Haman, a fire on the clay and build for me a
tower
29:39 And Korah, Pharaoh and Haman! Moses came unto them with clear
proofs
40:24 Unto Pharaoh and Haman and Korah, but they said: A lying
sorcerer!
40:36 And Pharaoh said: O Haman! Build for me a tower that haply I may
reach the roads
From the book:
In the book
Reflections on the Qur'an (Réflexions sur le Coran), I have related the result
of such a consultation that dates back to a dozen years ago and led me to
question a specialist who, in addition, knew well the classical Arabic
language. One of the most prominent French Egyptologists, fulfilling these
conditions, was kind enough to answer the question.
I showed him the
word "Haman" that I had copied exactly like it is written in the
Qur'an, and told him that it had been extracted from a sentence of a document
dating back to the 7th century AD, the sentence being related to somebody
connected with Egyptian history.
He said to me
that, in such a case, he would see in this word the transliteration of a
hieroglyphic name but, for him, undoubtedly it could not be possible that a
written document of the 7th century had contained a hieroglyphic name - unknown
until that time - since, in that time, the hieroglyphs had been totally
forgotten.
In order to
confirm his deduction about the name, he advised me to consult the Dictionary
of Personal Names of the New Kingdom by Ranke, where I might find the name
written in hieroglyphs, as he had written before me, and the transliteration in
German.
I discovered all
that had been presumed by the expert, and, moreover, I was stupefied to read
the profession of Haman: "The Chief of the workers in the
stone-quarries," exactly what could be deduced from the Qur'an, though the
words of the Pharaoh suggest a master of construction.
When I came again
to the expert with a photocopy of the page of the Dictionary concerning
"Haman" and showed him one of the pages of the Qur'an where he could
read the name, he was speechless...
Moreover, Ranke
had noted, as a reference, a book published in 1906 by the Egyptologist Walter
Wreszinski: the latter had mentioned that the name of "Haman" had
been engraved on a stela kept at the Hof-Museum of Vienna (Austria). Several
years later, when I was able to read the profession written in hieroglyphs on
the stela, I observed that the determinative joined to the name had emphasised
the importance of the intimate of Pharaoh.
Had the Bible or
any other literary work, composed during a period when the hieroglyphs could
still be deciphered, quoted "Haman," the presence in the Qur'an of
this word might have not drawn special attention. But, it is a fact that the
hieroglyphs had been totally forgotten at the time of the Qur'anic Revelation
and that no one could not read them until the 19th century AD. Since matters
stood like that in ancient times, the existence of the word "Haman"
in the Qur'an suggests a special reflection.
Those who keep themselves occupied by looking for
inconsistencies in the Qur'an refer to a man named "Haman" who is
mentioned in the Qur'anic verses as one of Pharaoh's men.
In the Torah, the name Haman is not used when the life of
the Prophet Moses (as) is quoted. On the other hand, it is mentioned in the
Gospel to refer to a helper of the Babylonian king who lived 1,100 years after
the Prophet Moses (as) and persecuted the Jews.
Moses Exodus 1450 BCE and Xerxes, the King of Haman 450 BCE,
max 1000 years later.
HYahya does not understand this and blindly copies the
CREATION date of Esther instead of the life date and comes up with 1100 years
after Pharaoh.
Rosetta Stone discovered in 1799, first deciphered 1822, 23
years later
Bucaille "discovered" Haman in 1994
Egypt fired baked bricks
Baked bricks were not used to build large buildings at the
time, so that's another mistake. Several Egyptologists have been asked to
comment Bucaille's version and have all stated the same thing: fabrication. You
can check this here, just a few examples:
Hermann Ranke,
Die Ägyptischen Personennamen, Verzeichnis der Namen, Verlag Von J J Augustin
in Glückstadt, Band I (1935)
Walter Wrszinski,
Aegyptische Inschriften aus dem K.K. Hof Museum in Wien: J C Hinrichs'sche
Buchhandlung, Leipzig, 1906
C. Peust, Egyptian phonology: an introduction to the
phonology of a dead language, S. 54ff.
J. Osing, die
Nominalbildung des Ägyptischen, S. 367f.
A. J. Spencer, Brick Architecture In Ancient Egypt, 1979,
op. cit., p. 140; B.
Professor Dr.
Erhart Graefe, Direktor des renommierten Institutes für Ägyptologie und
Koptologie der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität in Münster
Dr. Katharina
Stegbauer vom ägyptologischen Institut der Universität Leipzig
Everything Bucaille writes is wrong and what is then copied
by Harun Yahya or IslamicAwareness.com is just a re-distribution of absurd
lies.
Prof. Graefes
ernüchterndes Fazit lautet: „Bei all diesen Einwänden ist eine Gleichsetzung
mit dem koranischen Haman kaum mehr als lärmender Unsinn.“
Baked brick is found throughout
all of Egypt but it was never used in great quantity because of the large
amounts of wood required to fire it.
P368 Paola Davoli, A Companion to
Ancient Egypt, Alan B. Lloyd – 2010
the use of crude brick, baked in
the sun, was universal in Upper and Lower Egypt, both for public and private
buildings.
The two principal building
materials used in ancient Egypt were unbaked mud brick and stone. Mud brick was
used even for royal palaces, fortresses, the great walls of temple precincts
and towns. ... In a dry climate, where fuel for baking bricks is scarce, bricks
were and are commonly sun dried only.
fired bricks are rare in pharaonic
architecture. Bricks are usually laid on the base of Nile sand or dry sand. The
use of mortar is uncommon.
The Encyclopedia of Ancient
Egyptian Architecture, Dieter Arnold, I.B.Tauris, 2003
Made from a mixture of silt, clay,
sand, and straw formed into regular molded units, unfired mud-bricks were the
primary construction material employed in ancient Egypt—being quite literally
the most basic of building blocks for all levels of domestic structures, from
simple one-room buildings to lavishly decorated palace complexes, as well as
administrative and storage structures, and even early phases of temples. Modern
methods of mud-brick fabrication accord with ancient evidence, suggesting that
the production of unfired mud-brick has remained a stable technology through
the millennia.
Most ancient Egyptian
constructions employed unfired mud-brick as the primary building material. At
the beginning of the famous biblical story of the Exodus, the enslaved
Israelites were forced to make mud- bricks for the Egyptians (Exodus 1:11 -
14), a task made even more arduous when pharaoh rescinded their supplied straw
source (Exodus 5:1 - 21), insisting that they gather their own or (famously)
make bricks without straw, which subsequently came to be a metaphor for
accomplishing the impossible (for the question of bricks made without straw in
ancient Egypt, see Nims 1950: 21 - 28). Unfired mud-brick was the most common
building material used in ancient Egypt. Even though standing stone monuments
are the stereotype for ancient Egyptian building endeavors, the vast majority
of buildings in Egypt, including subsidiary temple buildings (and sometimes
early phases of temples themselves), royal palaces, and funerary monuments,
employed mud-brick construction. Due to its prevalent use, unfired brick has the
potential to inform upon the cultural customs and organization of the ancient
Egyptians, though it is currently a little-used archaeological resource, both
culturally and scientifically.
Based on the recorded
archaeological evidence, for ancient Egypt, there is a general trend for
smaller bricks in the earlier periods, with average brick size increasing
through the Middle Kingdom, New Kingdom, and Late Period, and a subsequent size
reduction in the Ptolemaic, Roman, and Coptic Periods (Spencer 1979: 147 - 148
and pls. 41 – 43)
Mud Bricks Ancient Egypt, Virginia
L. Emery, University of Chicago, 2009
We have no idea which of the 332
Pharaohs the Koran is talking about. It uses the word Pharaoh like a name and
not like a title, which indicates the wrong usage stems from external stories,
not knowledge. Because we don’t know which Pharaoh we are looking for, we also
don’t know which vizier of High Priest we are supposed to consider. None is
called Haman.
We have names, such as Aye
(Kheperkheperure) who lived during the 18th dynasty. So where is
Haman? The Jews mention Yisro, Iyov
and Bilaam (Jethro, Job and Balaam), but no Haman.
Pharaohs had a general in charge
of the military, reporting directly to them. None is called Haman.
Is there any archaeological
evidence for the existence of a lofty tower? No!
Is there any archaeological
evidence for the existence of extensive brickworks for materials for a lofty
tower? No!
So because we have no Pharaoh, no
vizier, no indication of a time span or era, we can’t verify anything.
Is there any evidence for
anything? No, all we have is the statement that some minor amounts of fired or
baked bricks were found because some smaller constructions such as altars were
made from baked bricks. We know that bricks, mud bricks, dried mud bricks and
even fired bricks were known and used in ancient Egypt, just no fired bricks
have ever been found in ancient Egypt to construct a larger complex or a lofty
tower.
This means there is no
verification for the existence of a person called Haman in ancient Egypt.
In ancient Egypt Pharaohs were considered
gods or direct descendants of gods. Having a Pharaoh climb up some tower (to
meet himself?)
in
public view is unimaginable.
The ancient Mesopotamians, on the
other hand, did build staircase-like towers called ziggurats on which a god
(usually the local god of the city) could dwell and high priests could ascend
to "talk" to the gods.
