Reply #174: No, but you can use your magical Google powers...

[onager]

To search for "Myth of the Green Jewel," which is another name for the Sneferu story. Like most good myths, there are different versions. I heard some from Actual Egyptians when I lived there.

BTW, two things are guaranteed to piss off an Actual Egyptian, especially if they are grad students in Egyptian history or archeology - saying that aliens built the Giza Pyramids, or saying that Hebrew slaves worked on the same construction project. Americans do that all the time. One of my Egyptian friends called the latter "the gospel according to Cecil B. DeMille."

Using 14 computer models, they found that 63mph winds, lasting for 12 hours...

Oh please. This is nothing but the tired old believer's game of trying to have the cake and eat it too. "It was a miracle and we don't need science to prove it. But by the way, here's a scientific experiment that proves it."

Or it would prove it, as soon as we find someplace where the wind blows at 63 mph for 12 hours. Which I think would not only remove some water, but also any wandering nomads, their livestock and just about anything else not firmly nailed down.

I've lived in two places in the Middle East with bizarre and freakish weather conditions: Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which is between the Red Sea and the desert. And Alexandria, Egypt, between the Mediterranean, a huge freshwater lake and the desert. But I've never heard of any winds like those.