Although the earliest versions of the Book of the Dead date only from about 1700BC, more than a millennium after the founding of the pharaonic state, many of the presumptions about death that they express were far older than that.
After all, ever since excavations of the buried city began in the mid-18th century, it has provided us with the nearest thing we are ever likely to have to a freeze-frame from the ancient past - and yet many of our presumptions about what it can teach us turn out, on closer inspection, to crumble to dust.
Some critics (e.g., Asch 2000; Saxton 2000; Sparrow 2005), for instance, suggest that it fails to recognize that many of the presumptions about social prejudice could be extended to prejudice against people with disabilities, many of whom live relatively well with traits or characteristics that genetic enhancers may well desire to eliminate or attempt to improve upon.
Yet because inclusivity frees logic from one more existential presumption, many free logicians favor it.
James Hildreth, dean of the college of biological sciences at the University of California, Davis, says that at historically black universities, there's already "an intimidation factor" about submitting research proposals to NIH. "Many have the presumption that it won't be evaluated objectively or fairly".
In an essay published on his website, he writes that the separate mention of evisceration is a relatively modern device, and that while it certainly took place on many occasions, the presumption that drawing means to disembowel is spurious.
A revised version, "Symbiosis in Cell Evolution," followed in 1981, and though it challenged the presumptions of many prominent scientists, it has since become accepted evolutionary doctrine.
It is a presumption that many Chinese find particularly galling.
Doing so would lay him open to charges of presumption, and many of his decisions will in any event concern unforeseeable events.
