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by Andrew Collins
from
NewDawnMagazine Website
PART ONE
New Dawn No. 49
(July-August 1998)
The
Great Pyramid is humanity's greatest architectural
achievement. Two and a half million blocks, ranging in size from two
to seventy tons a piece, were used in the construction of this
silent sentinel of the past, the largest and perhaps the most
enigmatic of the three matching structures on the Giza plateau.
It covers an area of 13 acres and weighs
an incredible six million tons, and up until the construction of the
Eiffel Tower, it was the tallest structure in the world. There is
more stone in the Great Pyramid than in all the churches, chapels
and cathedrals built in England.
Yet this wonder of the past is more than just an architectural
curiosity, for it embodies a level of sophistication far superior to
anything the world has produced at any time since this age. Over the
past 200 years many hundreds of books have been written about the
mysteries of the Great Pyramid, most of them more fantasy than
fact. Yet shining through all of them is a hardcore of evidence
which shows that the pyramid builders were privy to universal
knowledge far beyond that accredited to the ancient Egyptians who
lived around 4500 years ago, the time-frame in which the pyramids
are said to have been built.
Let me provide a few examples. The Great Pyramid is
considered to have been built as an exact geodesic representation
of the earth's northern hemisphere.
Precision geometry incorporating
harmonics, proportions and sound acoustics was incorporated into its
exterior and interior design. Its four sides are aligned to the
cardinal points with such precision that modern-day surveyors would
have trouble replicating this laser-like accuracy, while in relation
to the earth the Great Pyramid is situated in the dead centre of its
largest land-mass.
To the Sound
of a Trumpet
More extraordinary still is the knowledge that the pyramid builders
could well have possessed a form of sonic technology that included
the ability to raise stone blocks into the air and pierce through
granite at a feed-rate unmatched even today.
It has long been known that many of the
temples and monuments of Pharaonic Egypt incorporate an intimate
knowledge of sound acoustics, while one specific legend preserved by
an Arab writer of the tenth-century AD named al-Masudi
records how the builders of the pyramids were able to move stone
blocks a distance of "one bow-shot" through an avenue of metal
poles, simply by hitting them with a rod.
Furthermore, there exist age-old legends
from places such as Bolivia, Mexico and Greece which tell of the
first cities being built by mythical figures who could make stones
raise into the air by using sound alone. At the site of the ancient
city of
Tiahuanaco high up on the Bolivian
Altiplano, for instance, local Indian legends speak of the city's
first inhabitants as able to move stones from the local quarry to
their places of destination to "the sound of a trumpet".
Precision Impossible
During an in-depth study of the temples and monuments of Giza in the
1880s, respected Egyptologist W.M. Flinders Petrie uncovered
clear evidence of a precision stone-ware technology that surpassed
anything else achieved in the ancient world. It included the use of
nine-feet long, jewel tipped saws to cut and fashion objects such as
the sarcophagus inside the King's Chamber of the Great
Pyramid.
He also found that the pyramid builders
used highly specialized drilling techniques to bore perfect holes in
hard granite, lathe-finish beautiful bowls in tough diorite and
fashion exquisite stone vases with openings no larger than a little
finger. American technologist Christopher Dunn has recently
completed an in-depth study of the ancient Egyptians' incredible
stone-ware industry and has convincingly demonstrated that they used
ultrasound-induced vibration to enhance their drilling capabilities.
Such a conclusion might seem beyond comprehension, but this present
author has uncovered hard evidence to demonstrate that Tibetan
monastic communities as late as the present century were in
possession of a sonic technology that included the creation of
weightlessness in stone blocks and the destruction of physical
matter using ultrasound vibration.
Furthermore, it has now come to light
that a nineteenth-century maverick scientist named John Ernst
Worrell Keely quite independently found a way of raising
heavy objects into the air and disintegrating lumps of
granite using sympathetic vibratory apparatus.
-
How did the pyramid builders of 4500
years ago gain such an extraordinary insight into a science and
technology little understood even today?
-
What became of this lost technology,
and why has much of it only been rediscovered in our present
age?
In order to suitably answer these
questions, we must embark on a journey that will reveal a virtually
alien world, inhabited by a forgotten culture composed of a priestly
elite who lived in Egypt's fertile Nile valley during a distant
epoch long before the accepted genesis of civilization. It will
reveal the existence at Giza of buildings and monuments seemingly
left by this Elder race, as well as the firm presence beneath
the Great Sphinx of an underworld complex known today as
the Hall of Records.
To attempt to understand this mystery more fully we must return to
the Giza plateau and examine its strange megalithic temples, for
these suggest a construction date long before the pyramid age.
Temples of the
Gods
Egyptologists assert that the Valley Temple, which sits on the edge
of the plateau, was built at the time of the Pharaoh Khafre, around
2550 BC. Certainly, it is linked via a stone causeway to another
ancient temple on the eastern side of the Second Pyramid which is
also accredited to Khafre.
Further evidence of this conclusion,
they say, is the Valley Temple's similarity in design to other
temples on the Giza plateau, as well as its proximity to the
Great Sphinx and the fact that statues of Khafre were found
abandoned in a well located beneath its floor.
This would appear to be incorrect, for recent geological surveys of
the Great Sphinx have revealed that the weathering effects visible
on its body, and on the nearby enclosure wall, were caused not by
wind, as the Egyptologists believe, but by water precipitation - in
other words, rain. Lots of it, over a very, very long period of
time. Such a supposition creates insurmountable problems for the
academics as it is known that the last time Egypt produced enough
rain to have created such raging torrents of water was during the
3000-year stretch between 8000 and 5000 BC.
More damning still to the orthodox views of the Egyptologists is the
knowledge that recent astronomical research in respect to the
orientation and placement of the monuments on the Giza plateau,
clearly point towards a foundation date sometime between 11,000 and
9000 BC - several thousand years before the age of the Pharaohs.
How can this be possible?
Scholars argue that in the time-frame
under question, the eleventh and tenth millennia BC, the Nile valley
was inhabited only by,
"bands of people who lived in small
huts or shelters and sustained themselves by hunting and
gathering".
They also state that these early
Nilotic (i.e. those living by the Nile) communities,
"erected no large stone structures
of any kind" and had not "taken even the first steps towards the
domestication of plants and animals".
This is simply not true.
There is much evidence of prehistoric
man along the Nile during this very age, and it clearly shows that
between 12,500 and 9500 BC certain communities not only
possessed an advanced tool-making industry, but also domesticated
animals and developed the earliest agriculture anywhere in the
world.
Moreover, just 300 miles away from Giza
in what is today Jericho, its inhabitants of 8000 BC were
constructing enormous fortification walls, gouging out vast trenches
in the hard bedrock and erecting a gigantic stone tower in defense
against an unknown enemy. Engineering projects on this scale would
have required a high level of social structure and coordinated
operations.
No one can say that humanity in this distant age did not have the
ability to carve the image of a 240-feet long recumbent lion, and
yet accepting this hypothesis brings with it an even greater
problem.
Since the core limestone blocks - many
up to 100 ton a piece - used in the construction of the Valley
Temple, the Sphinx Temple, as well as at least one other similar
structure on the Giza plateau, were extracted from the Sphinx
enclosure, we must concede that these too date to this same distant
epoch.
If this is the case, then the Pharaohs
of the pyramid age merely restored these enormous temple structures,
which begs the question of who exactly did build them?
Epoch of the
Elder Gods
The ancient Egyptians saw their culture and religion as having been
inherited directly from a divine race that existed thousands of
years before the coming of the Pharaohs. For example, the fragmented
Royal Papyrus of Turin, dating to the Nineteenth Dynasty, c.
1300 BC, contains a list of ten netjeru (Ptah, Ra, Shu,
Geb, Asar, Set, Heru, Tehuti, Maat, and Heru) - a word simply
meaning 'divinities' or gods - who reigned prior to the first
kings of Egypt.
The ancient Egyptians also viewed the
Giza necropolis as the 'Splendid Place of the First Time', quite
literally the abode of the gods who had ruled their land during this
misty epoch. More significantly, the hieroglyphic 'building' texts
found on the walls at the Temple of Horus at Edfu (below
images), in
southern Egypt, tell us much about the activities of
the Elder
gods, the divine inhabitants, who inhabited the Nile Valley
during the epoch of the First Time.
Island of the
Gods
Looking at the plateau today, with its desert back-drop and its
striking sentinel-like pyramids, that cannot help but exude a stark
sense of permanence, it is hard to imagine Giza any different. Yet
the Edfu account, which was compiled from a series of now lost books
attributed to the moon-god Thoth, enables us to construct a
quite remarkable picture of how the Giza plateau might have looked
over 11,000 years ago.
If we were to find ourselves a time-machine and travel back to this
distant epoch the chances are that we would enter a hot, humid
environment alive with lush green vegetation or the type you might
find today in equatorial Africa. If the texts are to be believed,
Giza apparently possessed a shallow lake, fed directly from the Nile
itself.
Such a supposition is not mere fantasy,
for it is known that in past ages the river flowed much closer to
the edge of the plateau, while evidence of a sacred lake and dock
dated to Old Kingdom times have been found beyond the plateau's
western limits. To the Elder gods this would have signified the
primeval sea of chaos out of which the first land emerged at the
beginning of time.
On the edge of this sacred lake were, it seems, tall djed-pillars,
carved perhaps in dark stone, while standing close to the banks was
an enclosure wall beyond which was a gleaming white temple known as
the Mansion of Wetjeset-Neter, the 'place of reeds'.
In the shallow waters was a small
island, symbolizing the Point of First Creation, crowned with
a simple stone structure that proclaimed its immense sanctity. This
island is referred to in the Edfu documents as the Island of the
Egg or the Island of Trampling, while the stone structure
is recalled in the name Place of the Well.
Locally we might have found indigenous peoples of the late
Paleolithic age tending cultivated lands, herding domesticated wild
animals, making beautiful flint tools and using wooden spears to
harpoon fish in the nearby river Nile. Yet behind the tall, imposing
walls of the sacred enclosure the texts speak of an altogether
different kind of person - commanding figures referred to variously
as the Shebtiu, the Sages, the Elders and the
Falcons.
These mythical individuals take the
guise of birds, implying perhaps that they were priest-shamans who
adorned themselves in bird feathers. They are also said to have had
radiant faces that must have made them quite striking in appearance.
This strange menagerie of divine beings, who were said to number
sixty, are spoken of as netjeru, or divinities.
This then is the curious picture emerging from the writings of the
Egyptians themselves.
-
Yet who exactly were these shamanic
individuals who are said to have built the first monuments and
temples?
-
Were they the ones responsible for
the carving of not just the Great Sphinx, but also the earliest
megalithic monuments found to this day at places such as Giza
and Abydos?
-
If this is the case, then what
happened to this forgotten culture, and what else might they
have left as a legacy to the world?
The Hall of
Records
As we enter the next millennium, many great discoveries are being
made on the Giza plateau. None can be more extraordinary than the
detection beneath the Sphinx's wedge-shaped enclosure of a series of
nine concealed chambers of unnatural origin.
These were first noticed during seismic
soundings of the hard bedrock by two research programmes, one led by
seismologist Thomas Dobecki in 1991 and the other coordinated
in 1996 by the University of Florida in association with millionaire
Joseph Schor, a life-long member of the Edgar Cayce
Foundation (see below).
Myths and legends that date back to Pharaonic times speak of a
subterranean world existing beneath the Giza plateau. Modern-day
psychics, occult societies and new-age mystics all firmly believe
that an underground complex made up of concealed corridors and
unknown chambers will eventually be found at Giza.
They refer to this underworld complex as
the 'Hall of Records', the 'Crystal Chambers' or the 'Chambers of
Initiation', and suggest that it contains arcane wisdom and
knowledge hidden from the world by Egypt's Elder culture prior to
the Great Flood. During the 1930s one American psychic named
Edgar Cayce stated that the Hall of Records
would be found and opened in secret during 1998.
Working on this indication, a British
consortium of surveyors and geophysicists, backed by Egypt's
Supreme Council of Antiquities, is going to conduct a wide-scale
search for the entrance to the Hall of Records in July this year.
What might they expect to find? What really does await discovery
beneath the Giza bed-rock?
Ever since Roman times rumors have existed concerning the existence
beneath the Giza plateau of a series of under-ground chambers and
tunnels. For example, the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus
(fl. AD 360-390) spoke of "subterranean fissures and winding
passages called syringes" present beneath the Giza pyramid field.
These were constructed, he said, by,
"those acquainted with the
ancient rites, since they had foreknowledge that a deluge
was coming, and feared that the memory of the ceremonies
might be destroyed".
-
What exactly were these "ancient
rites" that needed to be preserved from being lost in "a
deluge"?
-
Have the geophysicists working on
the recent Giza projects really registered the echoes of Elder
gods whose collective memory still lies slumbering beneath its
limestone bedrock?
Underworld of the
Soul
The Edfu Building Texts speak at length about the presence of
this subterranean domain beneath the island of creation once located
on the edge of the Giza plateau. Referred to as the Underworld of
the Soul, this structure was used by the divine individuals known as
the Shebtiu to conduct strange ceremonies, described as acts
of creation, using hand-held power objects.
They are said to have gained their
radiance from another much greater object described variously as the
embryo, the seed, the egg, the lotus or even the benben, or
phallus stone. This was seen to be the creative source of the
island, embodying both the male and female regenerative powers.
It is not stated exactly what this
object might have been, although the indications are that, similar
to the hand-held power objects used by the Shebtiu, it could
have been a conical-shaped stone resembling the so-called lingams
placed in underground shrines inside some Hindu temples. These too
are seen to embody the dualistic regenerative powers of first
creation.
-
Could this be what awaits discovery
in Giza's underworld domain - powerful lingam stones that were
once used in bizarre rites by the precursors of dynastic Egypt?
-
Is this what will be found inside
the Chambers of Creation, the so-called Hall of Records, if it
is indeed discovered over the coming year?
That the ancient Egyptians believed that
a physical object of immense creative power lie beneath the sands of
Giza does not seem in doubt. Among the body of magical literature
known as the Coffin Texts it speaks of something described as
"the sealed thing, which is in darkness, with fire about it."
(Note: The so-called Pyramid Texts were later adopted
by the commoners and painted on their wooden coffins. They thus
came to be called the Coffin Texts, and eventually they were transcribed
to papyrus becoming known as the Book of the Dead. Collectively,
the three sets of texts are usually referred to as the
Book of
the Dead)
It is said to contain "the efflux of
Osiris", the god of the underworld, and was "put in Rostau", the
name given by the ancient Egyptians to the Giza pyramid field. The
text in question goes on to state that this "sealed thing" has been
"hidden since it fell from him (Osiris), and it is what came down
from him onto the desert of sand".
The burial place of the body of Osiris is integrally linked
with the Egyptian concept of the Underworld of the Soul as
well as Giza itself. Indeed, the Valley Temple of Khafre is actually
referred to in ancient inscriptions as the "House of Osiris". It
seems certain that the "sealed thing" of the Coffin Texts is
therefore another allusion to the nucleus of the sacred island - the
so-called seed, embryo, lotus, egg or phallus found at the heart of
Giza-Rostau's Chambers of Creation.
Illustrations that accompany Egyptian
texts that detail what will be found inside the hidden chambers show
at its heart a strange fiery-orange bell-shaped object over which is
the hieroglyph for "night" or "darkness", implying that this
powerful object remains in darkness awaiting discovery.
So much for the contents of this lost world, but where might it have
been situated, and can it be found today?
The Sphinx and
the River
During the epoch of the First Time (Zep Tepi) the Shebtiu initiates
would perhaps have emerged from the Chambers of Creation, the
so-called Hall of Records, to stand upon the sacred island,
surrounded by the primeval waters of Nun. Yet with the desiccation
of the eastern Sahara and the rise of Pharaonic Egypt around 3100
BC, the setting has changed quite dramatically.
No longer are we able to look out over
the shallow lake, created by the waters of the nearby river Nile,
and see beyond it to the first temples of the gods. Gone too is the
sacred island, with its structured enclosure and subterranean
entrance to Giza's underworld complex. Instead, we find ourselves
somewhere in the vicinity of the Giza pyramid field. Yet where
exactly?
It is my conclusion that the sacred lake must have lain to the east
or north-east of the Great Sphinx and Valley Temple, on the
eastern edge of the plateau. In no way can it have been located on
the plateau itself, for it rises up too steeply beyond the third
pyramid of Menkeure on its western side.
Only on its eastern side can we find a
low-lying area sufficient in size to have created either a
temporary, or more permanent, lake or reservoir. This observation is
supported by the recent discovery of a stone quay on the eastern
side of the Valley Temple, which may itself be the last remains of
the first temple constructed by the Elder gods on the edge of the
sacred lake.
If I am correct in these assumptions, then it could well mean that
the entrance to the Hall of Records now lies beneath the
streets of the Nazlet el-Samman village, placed beyond the
eastern edge of the plateau.
In many ways I hope I am wrong in this assessment of the evidence
available to us at the present time. Despite this, these findings
appear to concur precisely with the inspired readings of American
psychic Edgar Cayce.
In 1933 he revealed the whereabouts of
the subterranean complex with the following words:
In position, this lies - as the sun
rises from the waters - as the line of the shadows [or light]
falls between the paws of the Sphinx; that was set later as the
sentinel or guard and which may not be entered from the
connecting chambers from the Sphinx's right paw until the time
has been fulfilled when the changes must be active in this
sphere of man's experience. Then [it lies] between the Sphinx
and the river.
Between the Sphinx and the river - in
other words to the east of the Sphinx and Valley Temple. If
he was right in this respect, then let us also hope that he was
correct in his belief that connecting chambers led from the
underground complex to a position coincident to the right paw of the
Sphinx monument. If this is so, we still stand a reasonable chance
of locating a second entry point using modern-day sounding
equipment.
Whether or not the nine chambers
discovered in 1996 beneath the Sphinx enclosure by the team put
together by the University of Florida are actually connected with
Giza's underworld complex remains to be seen. It may well be that,
although of man-made construction, and therefore of profound
interest to our knowledge of Egyptian history, they lie too near the
surface to be connected with the Chambers of Creation.
On the other hand they might well
contain the ultimate proof of the former existence in Egypt of a
high culture of almost alien mentality whose knowledge of ancient
technology and natural sciences will change the entire way we
perceive human evolution.
PART TWO
New Dawn No. 50
(September-October 1998)
What was the fate of Egypt’s Sphinx-building Elder culture?
The Edfu Building Texts are specific on
what became of at least some of the divine inhabitants of Wetjeset-Neter and its sacred domain. They say that, at the end of
their time, the Shebtiu "sailed" away to "another part of the
primeval world" where they could "continue their creative task"
undisturbed. Further evidence that these mythical beings were
mariners or navigators comes from the fact that one Shebtiu is named
as "the sailor", while, collectively, the followers of an individual
known as the Falcon are referred to as "the crew".
Yet where might they have gone? For where did they set sail at the
end of their time in Egypt? What we know is that the earliest known
evidence for primitive agriculture anywhere in the world comes from
the Nile valley communities between the thirteenth millennia BC and
sometime around 9500 BC. It is then that it disappears from Egypt
altogether, and does not reappear until around 5500 BC, some 4000
years later.
Why did it suddenly cease and, more
pressingly, what became of the prime movers behind this enormous
change from simple hunter-gatherer to domesticated farmer?
We know from the research of respected Egyptologists such as Fekri
Hassan of University College, London, that between 10,500 and 9500
BC the Nile Valley suffered repeatedly from extreme flooding on a
massive scale. This alone might have forced its inhabitants to seek
new territories in which to continue their agricultural lifestyle.
Yet if they did start anew elsewhere, is it possible to trace their
destination?
Gateway to
Eden
The emergence of the so-called Neolithic age marked the transition
of the Paleolithic hunter-gatherer into a more settled way of life
where instead of moving from place to place, human kind began
working in co-operation with nature. The key element of this major
change in lifestyle was, of course, the development of agriculture
and animal domestication, which necessitated the establishment of
more permanent settlements where a community could work together to
produce enough food and livestock to sustain itself through the
winter months.
Removing the element of uncertainty from
the daily lives of the inhabitants enabled the Neolithic peoples to
start developing technical capabilities and regulate their lives for
the first time.
This, at least, is the orthodox view of how the gradual change from
Paleolithic to Neolithic began in a humble manner, sometime after
the end of the last Ice Age. Yet there are major flaws in this
supposition, for it is clear that the transition from
hunter-gatherer to settled farmer did not occur everywhere at the
same time. Indeed, it would seem to have emerged first in one region
alone, and to have remained in virtual isolation here for at least
1000 years before spreading very slowly outwards.
The genesis point of the so-called Neolithic revolution is the
fertile river-valleys of the Upper Euphrates of northern Syria and
eastern Anatolia, modern-day Turkey. Here from around 9500 BC
onwards, evidence for the cultivation of wild cereals, as well as
animal husbandry, starts to appear at important sites such as the
extensive "farmers’ village" at Tell Abu Hureyra on the Upper
Euphrates in northern Syria.
Similar to the Nilotic communities of
Egypt, evidence of cereal cultivation has come from the discovery
here of stone pestles, rubbing stones and milling stones. In
addition to this archaeologists also found an abundance of seeds
from three different types of cereal grains — two of which had
previously been grown by the Nilotic communities of Paleolithic
Egypt.
The clear fact that agriculture appears in the Near East around the
very same time that it vanishes from the Nile valley is striking and
cannot be overlooked. In my opinion, there seems to be a direct link
between these two quite different farming regions separated by
several hundred miles, and the most obvious solution is the
transmission of agricultural knowledge and skills through the
migration of individuals from Egypt to the Near East.
So is it possible that some of the remaining Elders departed Giza
for the fertile valleys of the Upper Euphrates carrying with them
their technological capabilities, sometime around 9500 BC? Let us
look a little more closely at the emergence of civilized society in
the Near East.
In the 4000 years following the emergence of the Neolithic age in
the Near East around 9500 BC, so many advances were made in this
region, long held to be the cradle of civilization and the biblical
land of Eden (also known as Dilmun in ancient Mesopotamian, i.e.
ancient Iraqi tradition), that something rather unique seems to have
occurred.
This isolated region has produced the oldest evidence for the use of
beaten and smelted metal, the fashioning of linen cloth, the use of
fired pottery, the domestication of fruits and vegetables, the
production of alcohol in the form of a type of retsina wine, the
introduction of writing and the use of bartering tokens. All these
advancements were made first in the fertile valleys of northern
Syria, south-eastern Turkey and northern Iraq — a vast and very
desolate area known today as Kurdistan, home to the much-troubled
Kurdish peoples.
More particularly, the first Neolithic communities of the Upper
Euphrates were able to fashion and drill necklaces of agate beads up
to 5 centimeters in length as early as 7000 BC. The level of
technical sophistication necessary to drill holes less than 5 mm in
diameter, and up to one inch (2.5 cm) in depth at either end of a
long slim agate bead no more than 7 or 8 mm in thickness, is almost
beyond comprehension.
To drill similar holes in agate today
requires the use of a highly specialized diamond-tipped, tungsten
carbide drill, and even this has to be constantly cooled by running
water. Yet despite this, these beads have been found at a number of
sites in the Near East.
No one has satisfactorily accounted for why the Neolithic revolution
began where it did — a puzzle that prompted Mehrdad R. Izady, the
Professor of Near Eastern studies at New York University, to speak
of the Neolithic explosion in the Near East as a "stage of
accelerated technological evolution", prompted by "yet uncertain
forces".
What kind of "uncertain forces" had Professor Izady been alluding to
here? Were they changes in regional flora and fauna, brought on by
post-ice age climate changes conducive to the gradual emergence of a
cultural revolution, or was it the sudden appearance in the region
of highly organized individuals who brought with them an entirely
new style of living? Professor Izady is happy to accept the latter
solution as a very real possibility.
Might these talented individuals have
been the final remnants of Egypt’s Elder culture,
-
Who are likely to have been
responsible for the emergence of agriculture and technology
along the Nile valley?
-
Was it them who helped catalyze the
Neolithic revolution — an event which eventually led to the
genesis of civilization among the foothills and plains of
ancient Iraq some 5500 years later?
-
Could we find any real evidence to
suggest that the earliest peoples of the Near East were
descendants of those who supposedly built the Sphinx sometime
between 10,500 and 9220 BC?
Worshippers of the
Stars
Searching through the religious traditions of the Mandaeans, a
neo-Babylonian tribal-based religion found mostly among the Marsh
Arabs of southern Iraq, I discovered something of immense value to
this debate. The Mandaeans believe that their distant ancestors came
originally from a mythical location known as the Mountain of the Madai, located to the north or north-east of the city of Harran.
As modern Altinbasak, this ancient
religious centre of great learning lies just over the Syrian border
in south-eastern Turkey on a tributary of the Euphrates river, some
78 miles (125 km) distance from Abu Hureyra, where the earliest
evidence of agriculture in the Near East was found.
The Mandaeans also claim that the Mountain of the Madai is not the
true place of origin of their race. They say that their most distant
ancestors came originally from Egypt. One Mandaean manuscript even
speaks of "the interior of Haran (i.e. Harran) admitting them" upon
their arrival in this land, shortly after which they "entered the
mountain of the Madai, a place where they were free from domination
of all races".
More significantly, various words found in the language of the
Mandaeans have clear Egyptian roots. They include the name of a
creator god named Pthahil. He is simply a rendition of the Egyptian
god Ptah, who was said to have fashioned the first humans on a
potter’s wheel at the beginning of time. Another word is the root
ntr, which in Mandaean means "to watch", "watch-houses" or
"watcher", a term used to express supernatural beings who live in
their conception of heaven. This same root word is Egyptian where it
is used to denote a divinity or god.
The Mandaeans were an offshoot of star-worshipping peoples who
inhabited Harran in south-eastern Turkey from the earliest times
through to the Middle Ages. They too placed a great importance on
Egypt, and it is known that from the early second millennium BC they
would make pilgrimages to the Great Sphinx at Giza, where they would
leave votive stones in honor of the leonine monument.
This practice continued through till
medieval times, for the eleventh-century Arab geographer Yakut el-Hamawi
tells us that in his own day the Sabians made pilgrimages to both
the Great and Second Pyramids of Giza.
To the Mandaeans and their cousins the Sabians, Egypt appears to
have been seen as some kind of ancestral homeland where their
earliest forebears lived before their arrival in the Near East. Such
assumptions were, however, pure speculation. What was really needed
was much firmer evidence for the existence in the fertile valleys of
the Upper Euphrates of a high culture that rose to prominence soon
after 9000 BC and whose style of architecture matched that found
along the Nile valley.
Only then could it be said that the
original gods of Eden had been found.
Birds to Men
Such evidence came to my attention in late 1996, when I was notified
of the recent discovery at an archaeological site known as Nevali
Çori, situated near Hilvan in south-eastern Turkey. Here had been
discovered an extraordinary temple dated to 8000 BC.
This so-called "cult building", as
German excavator Harald Hauptmann of Heidelberg University named it,
featured beautifully carved megalithic blocks that once supported a
wooden roof, as well as a perfectly-levelled floor made of
"terrazzo", a mixture of lime and mortar, and a huge gateway
composed of two 3-metre high megalithic pillars.
On these in low relief were human forms
with long flowing hair and five-fingered hands resembling the belly
flippers of an amphibian (Nevali Çori was lost in 1992 when the
recent completion of the Ataturk Dam caused the rising waters of the
nearby Euphrates river to flood the site).
A very similar temple complex is to be found just 60 miles (100 km)
away to the north-east at a neolithic site known as Çayönü. A cult
building there also has a terrazzo floor, while another contains
upright megaliths and a flag-stone floor similar in style to the
Valley Temple of Khafre at Giza. On a more disturbing note, clear
evidence of macabre blood rites and human sacrifice have been
unearthed both at Çayönü and Nevali Çori, making it clear that its
ruling elite were not simply benign wisdom bringers.
Similar to Giza’s sacred domain during the epoch of the First Time, Nevali Çori’s elite group of priest-shamans adorned themselves in
garments of bird feathers,
in particular the vulture — the symbol of
the cult of the dead in Neolithic times.
An extraordinary number of statues and
carvings depicting bird-men, or figures adorned with feathers, have
been found in association with the cult building from its very
earliest phase, which Carbon-14 testing has revealed was as early as
8400 BC. There is every indication that these individuals were the
ruling body behind many of the Neolithic communities, and that they
were indeed the direct descendants of Egypt’s Elder culture.
More significantly, Nevali Çori’s cult building — constructed at a
time when stone age man is thought to have only just emerged from
his primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyle — is precision aligned to
the south-west. This in itself should set alarm bells ringing among
the archaeological community. Yet this south-westerly orientation
seems more than simply an aesthetic effect to line it up with the
distant Euphrates river, as has been suggested.
The primary chaos out of which the Near Eastern cultures of the
foothills and plains first emerged was viewed mythologically as a
huge sea-monster or primeval dragon called Tiamat or Kumarbi. Legend
spoke of the physical world being fashioned from the body of this
mythical creature, while the tears that flowed from its eyes went to
form the water-courses of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.
Both Tiamat and Kumarbi bore a celestial
counterpart seen as forming the stars of the constellation known as Cetus — the great whale or sea-monster — which swam in the celestial
form of the Euphrates river. In astronomical terms, this string of
34 stars, stretching between the front paws of Cetus and the
left-foot of the giant Orion, is known as the starry stream of
Eridanus and the River of the Night.
The whole area of south-western sky in
which these constellations are placed was known in Babylonian times
as the Gate of the Deep, beyond which lurked the dark primeval
waters of chaos with which Tiamat had threatened to drown the world
before the current world age.
By using computer calculations, it can be established that at dawn
on the spring equinox in 8000 BC, Nevali Çori’s cult building would
have been aligned precisely towards the stars of Cetus which would
have hung low in the south-western sky.
Furthermore, it can be ascertained that
the Euphrates river would have aligned with its own celestial
counterpart, the Eridanus, at the same moment. Did these primitive
constellations have some kind of special meaning to the inhabitants
of Nevali Çori? Let us look again at its quite specific orientation
precisely towards the south-west.
Turning to
Home
Places of worship in the Jewish and Moslem faiths are orientated
towards their greatest religious centers — synagogues face Jerusalem
while mosques face towards Mecca. Could it be possible that the
designers of Nevali Çori’s cult building orientated it towards not
just the direction most associated with their own myths and legends,
but also the homeland of their earliest ancestors — in other words
Giza in Egypt?
Further computer calculations, taking
into account the curvature of the earth, showed that the bearing of
Giza from the position of Nevali Çori is 221.8º, a full 1.8º out
from the 223.6º orientation of the standing monolith and a massive
3.1º if we take into consideration the orientation of the cult
building itself.
If the alignment linking Nevali Çori with Giza is valid, then it
suggested that its priest-shamans really did see the south-west as
the direction most associated with the creation of their world. The
fact that this imaginary line stretches across the waters of the
eastern Mediterranean Sea is also perhaps significant.
With Egypt as their ancestral homeland,
this journey across the waters through the Gate of the Deep could
have been compared with the emergence of cosmic order out of the
primeval waters that had threatened to engulf the world at the
beginning of time.
Having conquered the face of the deep,
in other words the Mediterranean Sea, to arrive in the Levant, the
surviving
Elders, as the first gods of Mesopotamia (i.e. ancient
Iraq), would have been seen as initiating a new world age. In this
mythical epoch, mortal kind were seen to have lived alongside their
immortal teachers — utopic memories that led to much later legends
concerning this paradisiacal realm, known in Hebrew as Eden and in
ancient Mesopotamian as Dilmun, both connected with the territories
located between the headwaters of the two great rivers — the Tigris
and Euphrates.
There is, however, one further link with
Egypt.
The Dusky
Monster
In an important work on ancient Euphratean star-lore written by
Aratus, a noted Greek astronomer and poet who lived around 270 BC,
the sea-monster Cetus is referred to as "the dusky Monster" — a name
that was said to express "the blue-black of the nocturnal sky". To
the Sumerians it was known as kumar, "dusky", from which derives the
name Kumarbi.
In Aramaic Hebrew, which is a Semitic
language linked closely to Akkadian, the same word root becomes akem,
"to be black" and "sunburnt". In the Egyptian language, this becomes
kem, "black", or kemet, meaning "black land" — the name given to
ancient Egypt by its own people.
Mythological legend asserts that this name refers to the black silt
left covering the first land, i.e. Egypt, after the waters of Nun
receded from the primeval mound at the beginning of time, reflected
in the very real alluvial deposits left covering the Nile valley
after the yearly inundation.
More curiously, the word kem was used to denote "the end of a
period, completion, a finish", while kemet can also mean "to end, to
bring to an end". These definitions imply a completion to a period
or cycle of time.
-
Is it possible that kemet was the
name originally given to Egypt as the primeval homeland by the
descendants of the Elder gods who entered the Near East around
9500 BC?
-
Was the name an abstract memory of
the muddy deposits that were left covering large parts of the
Nile valley following the constant series of high floods during
the eleventh to tenth millennia BC?
-
Did it also preserve a memory of the
culmination, or conclusion, of this chaotic period of floods and
destruction?
If these thoughts are correct, then it
is likely that these memories were carried into the Upper Euphrates
region by the last Elder gods and kept alive by the priest-shamans
of the Neolithic communities.
Even down to the second millennium BC,
the Semitic peoples living in the ancient city of Harran in south
eastern Turkey recalled a more direct relationship between their
most distant ancestors and kemet, the black land beyond the
Mediterranean Sea.
The Birth of
Sumer
In the opinion of archaeologists and historians alike, the
city-states of Sumer constitute the earliest known civilization of
the Old World. Yet their first beginnings were among the mountain
communities of the Zagros and eastern Taurus, where the Neolithic
revolution had begun 5000 years beforehand.
From its first beginnings in the
foothills and plains of northern Syria and Iraq, as well as
south-eastern Turkey, the civilization of Sumer and Akkad grew over
a 2000-year period to become the most sophisticated society on
earth. The number of ‘firsts’ attributed to the Sumerians is
virtually endless.
-
They designed the first colored pottery.
-
They
conducted the first medical operations.
-
They made the first musical
instruments.
-
They introduced the first veterinary
skills and developed the first written language.
-
They also became
highly accomplished engineers, mathematicians, librarians, authors,
archivists, judges and priests.
Yet despite all this no one is quite
sure
who the Sumerians were or why they would appear to have evolved
so much faster than any other race.
There is ample evidence to show that the innovative capabilities of
the Sumerians derived from what they inherited from their mountain
forebears, such as the ruling elite of the so-called Halaf and Ubaid
cultures. These were a priestly caste identified from among the
anatomical remains discovered at various sites across the Near East.
Not only did they bear genetic
similarities, in that they were an elite family group, but they
distinguished themselves from others of the different communities by
elongating their heads through deliberate skull deformation during
infancy, causing the eyes to appear slanted and giving them an
overall striking appearance. These individuals are represented in
abstract form in religious art, and were clearly seen as having long
serpent-like faces.
Furthermore, in similar with the
priest-shamans of Nevali Çori and the divine inhabitants of
Wetjeset-Neter in the Edfu Building Texts, these individuals adorned
themselves in ceremonial garments made of feathers. It was from this
elite group of priest-shamans, very possibly the direct descendants
of Egypt’s
Elder gods, that the old world gained its knowledge or
civilization.
Return to the
Source
Completing the cycle is the fact that the forerunners of the
earliest Mesopotamian peoples would seem to have entered Egypt from
the Levant during predynastic times, sometime between 4500 and 3500
BC. They helped initiate the Pharaonic age which began with the
institution of the First Dynasty of a united Egypt around 3100 BC.
In many respects, this migration to Egypt seems to have been like
some sort of return to the source — a return to an ancestral
homeland left behind as much as 5000 years beforehand.
In Pharaonic Egypt all the ideas of those who had preserved the seed
of the Elder culture were finally realized and put into effect.
Although the indigenous peoples of the Nile valley might have been
the direct inheritors of the Elder gods’ ancient legacy, which seems
to have included the art of sonic technology, these individuals were
most probably just small religious groups who kept alive archaic
traditions at cult centers such as Giza.
Alone they could do very little. They
had no real influence over the ruling tribal dynasties and were not
in a position to re-ignite the splendor of their divine ancestors.
Yet with the aid of incoming architects, craftsmen, designers,
religious leaders, as well as a new ruling elite, they were now able
to begin the process of continuing the glories of the Elder culture,
which had dispersed to various parts of the globe many thousand of
years beforehand.
Imhotep was the architect of the first ever stone pyramid built at
Saqqara during the Third Dynasty for his king, the mighty Djoser.
Its stepped design is very reminiscent of the seven-tiered ziggurat
structures of Mesopotamia, while the façades of the temenos walls
that surround the pyramid complex are strikingly similar to the
exterior walls of cult buildings in ancient Iraq — the temple of
Enki at Eridu being a prime example.
Yet the greatest significance of this external influence on the
architecture of ancient Egypt is the sheer fact that within just 150
years of Djoser’s reign, it had led to the Elder culture’s surviving
technological capability being combined with local building skills
to produce what is arguably the world’s greatest architectural
achievement, the Great Pyramid.
This monument was the crowning glory not
only of Egypt but of everything that had been secretly kept alive
since the age of the netjeru-gods, the epoch of the First Time
(Zep Tepi). The
precision science, geometry, orientation, stone cutting, hole
drilling and architectural planning of the Great Pyramid was the
result of a legacy preserved not simply by the wise old priests of
Egypt, but by a number of diverse cultures across the Near East.
Their most distant ancestors were the
Neolithic gods of Eden, whose own forebears had left Egypt for the
fertile valleys of eastern Anatolia during the wide-scale floods
that engulfed Egypt between 10,500 and 9500 BC. It is to these
unique individuals, the living descendants of a divine race with a
lifestyle that would seem almost alien today, that we owe the
genesis of civilization.
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