PIRI REIS MAPS (PYRAMID MEASUREMENTS)
JOB 38:4 Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding
JOB 38:5 Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?
JOB 38:6 Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof
JOB 38:7 When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
JOB 38:8 Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb?
JOB 38:9 When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddlingband for it,
JOB 38:10 And brake up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors,
JOB 38:11 And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed?
JOB 38:12 Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; and caused the dayspring to know his place;
JOB 38:13 That it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it?
Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?
-
When Moses came down from the mountain with the 10 commandments and found the people worshipping the bull, which was the symbolic meaning for the age of Taurus, they were told to kill themselves. They would not leave the age that was meant to pass while the age of Pisces, the age of darkness (which is the time the same tribes were to be persecuted in their own lands until the end of days when they would fulfill the covenant between God and Abraham, returning to reclaim their lands to the north, south, east and west... The age of Pisces is now coming to an end. Aren't the masses to witness a rebealing? If the masses would have known the truth and had it throughout the Piscean age, what would there be left to reveal? Why is the Catholic Church and the esoteric groups of secret societies so secretive? What are they hiding? and why is the Lord called a constellation in the Bible?
AMOS 5:8
Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name:
JOB 38:31 Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?
ROMANS 4:17 (As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were
ROMANS 4:18 Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations; according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be.
ROMANS 4:19
see blog on human origins 001 here
TITAN:
[tt'n]
(plural Ti·tans) n
1. pre-Olympian god: in Greek mythology, one of the twelve children of Uranus and Gaia, supreme rulers of the universe until they were overthrown by Zeus
2. largest moon of Saturn: a large natural satellite of Saturn
[15th century. Via Latin < Greek ] Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
TITAN: SATURN'S MOON.. FUNNY HOW SATURN HAS THE RINGS AND THE STORY OF ATLANTIS DEPICTS ATLANTIS HAVING BEEN BUILT AS RINGS:
MAPPING THE EARTH... ATLANIS RISES AGAIN!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dje47HG7c90
Chapter 48 - Earth Measurers
Follow these instructions carefully:
Draw two parallel straight lines vertically down a sheet of paper, about seven inches long and a bit under three inches apart. Draw a third line, also vertical, also parallel and of equal length, exactly mid-way between the first two. Write the letter ‘S’—for ‘South’—at the top end of your diagram (the end farthest away from you), and the letter ‘N’ for ‘North’ at the bottom end. Add the letters ‘E’ for ‘East’ and ‘W for ‘West’ in their appropriate positions at either side of the diagram, to your left for East and to your right for West.
What you are looking at are the outlines of a geometrical map of Egypt incorporating a perspective very different from our own (where ‘North’ is always equated with ‘Up’). This map where ‘Up’ is ‘South’ seems to have been worked out an enormously long time ago by cartographers with a scientific understanding of the shape and size of our planet.
To complete the map you should now mark a dot on the central of the three parallel lines about an inch to the south of (‘up’ from) the northern end of the diagram. Then draw two more lines diagonally down from this point, respectively to the north-east and north-west, until they reach the northern ends of the two outermost parallel lines. Finally link those parallel lines directly with horizontal lines running east to west at the northern and southern ends of the diagram.
The shape produced is a meridional rectangle (oriented north-south). This rectangle is seven inches long by just under three inches wide and has a triangle demarcated at its northern (lower) end. The triangle represents the Nile Delta and the dot at the apex of the triangle represents the apex of the Delta—a point on the ground at 30° 06’ north and 31° 14’ east, very close to the location of the Great Pyramid
Map showing the geometric conception of Egypt, with the Great Pyramid at the apex of the Nile delta.
The Egyptians traditionally thought of south as ‘up’.
Geodetic marker
Whatever else it may be, it has long been understood by mathematicians and geographers that the Great Pyramid serves the function of a geodetic marker (geodetics being the branch of science concerned with determining the exact position of geographical points and the shape and size of the earth1).
This realization first dawned in the late eighteenth century when the armies of revolutionary France, led by Napoleon Bonaparte, invaded Egypt.
Bonaparte, who had cultivated a deep interest in the enigmas of the pyramids, brought with him a large number of scholars, 175 in all, including several ‘greybeards’ gathered from various universities who were reputed to have acquired ‘a profound knowledge of Egyptian antiquities’, and, more usefully, a group of mathematicians, cartographers and surveyors.2
One of the tasks the savants were set, after the conquest was completed, was to draw up detailed maps of Egypt. In the process of doing this they discovered that the Great Pyramid was perfectly aligned to true north—and of course to the south, east and west as well, as we saw in Part VI. This meant that the mysterious structure made an excellent reference and triangulation point, and a decision was therefore taken to use the meridian passing through its apex as the base-line for all other measurements and orientations.
The team then proceeded to produce the first accurate maps of Egypt drawn up in the modern age. When they had finished, they were intrigued to note that the Great Pyramid’s meridian sliced the Nile Delta region into two equal halves. They also found that if the diagonals running from the pyramid’s apex to its north-eastern and north-western corners were extended (forming lines on the map running north-east and northwest until they reached the Mediterranean), the triangle thus formed would neatly encapsulate the entire Delta area.3
Let us now return to our map, which also incorporates a triangle representing the Delta. Its other main components are the three parallel meridians. The eastern meridian is at longitude 32° 38’ east—the official eastern border of Ancient Egypt from the beginning of dynastic times. The western meridian is at longitude 29° 50’ east, the official western border of ancient Egypt. The central meridian is at longitude 31° 14’ east, exactly midway between the other two (1° 24’ away from each).4
What we now have is a representation of a strip on the surface of planet earth that is exactly 2° 48’ wide. How long is this strip? Ancient Egypt’s ‘official’ northern and southern borders (which bore no more relationship to settlement patterns than the official eastern and western boundaries) are marked by the horizontal lines at the top and bottom of the map and are located respectively at 31° 06’ north and 24° 06’ north.5 The northern border, 31° 06’ north, joins the two outer ends of the estuary of the Nile.
1 Collins English Dictionary, p. 608.
2 Secrets of the Great Pyramid, p. 38. Much of the material in this chapter is based directly on the work of Peter Tompkins and of Professor Livio Catullo Stecchini.
3 Ibid., p. 46.
4 Ibid., p. 181.
5 Ibid., p. 299.
6 Ibid., pp. 179-81.
The southern border, 24° 06’ N, marks the precise latitude of the island of Elephantine at Aswan (Seyne) where an important astronomical and solar observatory was located throughout known Egyptian history.6 It seems, that this archaic land, sacred since time began—the creation and habitation of the gods—was originally conceived of as a geometric construct exactly seven terrestrial degrees in length.
Within this construct, the Great Pyramid appears to have been carefully sited as a geodetic marker for the apex of the Delta. The latter, which we have indicated on our map, is located at 30° 06’ N 31° 14’ E—a point in the middle of the Nile at the northern edge of modern Cairo. Meanwhile the pyramid stands at latitude of 30°N (corrected for atmospheric refraction) and at longitude 31° 09’ E, an error of just a few minutes of terrestrial arc to the south and west. This ‘error’, however, does not appear to have resulted from sloppiness or inaccuracy on the part of the pyramid builders.
On the contrary, a close look at the topography of the area suggests that the explanation should be sought in the need to find a site suitable for all the astronomical observations that had to be taken for accurate setting-out, and with a sufficiently stable geological structure on which to park, for ever, a six-million-ton monument almost 500 feet high with a footprint of over thirteen acres.
The Giza plateau fits the bill on all counts: close to the apex of the Delta, elevated above the Valley of the Nile, and equipped with an excellent foundation of solid limestone bedrock.
Doing things by degrees
We were driving north from Luxor to Giza in the back of Mohamed Walilli’s Peugeot 504—a journey of just over 4 degrees of longitude, i.e., from 25° 42’ N, to the 30th parallel. Between Asiut and El Minya, a corridor of conflict in recent months between Islamic extremists and Egyptian government forces, we were provided with an armed escort of soldiers, one of whom wore plain clothes and sat in the passenger seat beside Mohamed fondling an automatic pistol.
The others, about a dozen men armed with AK47 assault rifles, were distributed equally between two pick-up trucks which sandwiched us front and rear.
‘Dangerous people live here,’ Mohamed had confided out of the corner of his mouth when we had been stopped at a road-block in Asiut and ordered to wait for our escort. Now, although obviously rattled at being obliged to match the high speed of the escorting vehicles, he seemed to relish the kudos of being part of an impressive convoy, lights flashing and sirens wailing, weaving in and out of the slower traffic on the main highway from upper to lower Egypt.
I looked out of the car window for a while at the unchanging spectacle of the Nile, at its fertile green banks and the red haze of the deserts a few miles away to east and west. This was Egypt, the real organic Egypt of today and yesterday, which overlapped (but spread out far beyond) the strange ‘official’ Egypt of the map described, a rectangular fiction exactly seven terrestrial degrees in length.
In the nineteenth century the renowned Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt expressed what is still the conventional wisdom of his colleagues when he remarked, ‘One must absolutely exclude the possibility that the ancients may have measured by degrees.’7
This was a judgment that seemed increasingly unlikely to be tenable. Whoever they may have been, it was obvious that the original planners and architects of the Giza necropolis had belonged to a civilization which knew the earth to be a sphere, knew its dimensions almost as well as we do ourselves, and had divided it into 360 degrees, just as we do today.
The proof of this lay in the creation of a symbolic official ‘country’ exactly seven terrestrial degrees in length, and in the admirably geodetic location and orientation to the cardinal points of the Great Pyramid. Equally persuasive was the fact, already touched on in Chapter Twenty-three, that the perimeter of the pyramid’s base stood in the relationship 2pi to its height and that the entire monument seemed to have been designed to serve as a map-projection—on a scale of 1:43,200—of the northern hemisphere of our planet:
The Great Pyramid was a projection on four triangular surfaces. The apex represented the pole and the perimeter represented the equator. This is the reason why the perimeter is in relation 2pi to the height.8
7 Cited in Ibid., p. 333.
8 See Chapter Twenty-three, and Stecchini in Secrets of the Great Pyramid, p. 378.
The Pyramid/Earth ratio
We have demonstrated the use of pi in the Pyramid9 and need not go into this matter again; besides, the existence of the pi relationship, though interpreted as accidental by orthodox scholars, is not contested by them.10 But are we seriously supposed to accept that the monument could also be a representation of the northern hemisphere of the earth projected on flat surfaces at a scale of 1:43,200?
Let us remind ourselves of the figures.
According to the best modern estimates, based on satellite observations, the equatorial circumference of the earth is 24,902.45 miles and its polar radius is 3949.921 miles.11 The perimeter of the Great Pyramid’s base is 3023.16 feet and its height is 481.3949 feet.12
9 See Chapter Twenty-three.
10 Accepted, for example, by Edwards, Petrie, Baines and Malek, and so on.
11 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1991, 27:530.
12 The Pyramids of Egypt, p. 87.
The scaling-down, as it turns out, is not absolutely exact, but it is very near. Moreover, when we remember the bulge at the earth’s equator (our planet being an oblate spheroid rather than a perfect sphere), the results achieved by the pyramid builders seem even closer to 1:43,200.
How close?
If we take the earth’s equatorial circumference, 24,902.45 miles, and scale it down (divide it) by 43,200 we get a result of 0.5764 of a mile. There are 5280 feet in a mile. The next step, therefore, is to multiply 0.5764 by 5280, which produces a figure of 3043.39 feet. The earth’s equatorial circumference scaled down 43,200 times is therefore 3,043.39 feet. By comparison, as we have seen, the perimeter of the Great Pyramid’s base is 3,023.16 feet. This represents an ‘error’ of only 20 feet—or about three-quarters of 1 per cent.
Given the razor-sharp accuracy of the pyramid builders, however (who normally worked to even finer tolerances), the error is less likely to have resulted from mistakes in the construction of the giant monument than in an underestimation of our planet’s true circumference by just 163 miles, probably caused in part by failure to take account of the equatorial bulge.
Let us now consider the earth’s polar radius of 3949.921 miles. If we scale it down 43,200 times we get 0.0914 of a mile: 482.59 feet. The earth’s polar radius scaled down 43,200 times is therefore 482.59 feet. By comparison the Great Pyramid’s height is 481.3949 feet—just a foot less than the ideal figure, an error of barely one-fifth of one per cent.
As near as makes no difference, therefore, the perimeter of the Great Pyramid’s base is indeed 1:43,200 of the equatorial circumference of the earth. And as near as makes no difference, the height of the Great Pyramid above that base is indeed 1:43,200 of the polar radius of the earth.
In other words, during all the centuries of darkness experienced by Western civilization when knowledge of our planet’s dimensions was lost to us, all we ever needed to do to rediscover that knowledge was to measure the height and base perimeter of the Great Pyramid and multiply by 43,200!
How likely is this to be an ‘accident’?
The commonsense answer is ‘not very likely at all,’ since it should be obvious to any reasonable person that what we are looking at could only be the result of a deliberate and carefully calculated planning decision. Commonsense, however, has never been a faculty held in high esteem by Egyptologists, and it is therefore necessary to ask whether there is anything else in the data which might confirm that the ratio of 143,200 is a purposeful expression of intelligence and knowledge, rather than some numerical fluke.
The ratio itself seems to provide that confirmation, for the simple reason that 43,200 is not a random number (like, say, 45,000 or 47,000, or 50,500, or 38,800). On the contrary it is one of a series of numbers, and multiples of those numbers, which relate to the phenomenon of precession of the equinoxes, and which have become embedded in archaic myths all around the world.
As the reader can confirm by glancing back at Part V the basic numerals of the Pyramid/Earth ratio crop up again and again in those myths, sometimes directly as 43,200 sometimes as 432, as 4320, as 432,000, as 4,320,000, and so on.
What we appear to be confronted by are two remarkable propositions, back-to-back, as though designed to reinforce one another. It is surely remarkable enough that the Great Pyramid should be able to function as an accurate scale-model of the northern hemisphere of planet earth. But it is even more remarkable that the scale involved should incorporate numbers relating precisely to one of the key planetary mechanisms of the earth.
This is the fixed and apparently eternal precession of its axis of rotation around the pole of the ecliptic, a phenomenon which causes the vernal point to migrate around the band of the zodiac at the rate of one degree every 72 years, and 30 degrees (one complete zodiacal constellation) every 2160 years. Precession through two zodiacal constellations, or 60 degrees along the ecliptic, takes 4320 years.13
13 See Part V.
The constant repetition of these precessional numbers in ancient myths could, perhaps, be a coincidence. Viewed in isolation, the appearance of the precessional number 43,200 in the pyramid/earth ratio might also be a coincidence (although the odds against this must be astronomical). But when we find precessional numbers in both these very different media— the ancient myths and the ancient monument—it really does strain credulity to suppose that coincidence is all that is involved here.
Moreover, just as the Teutonic myth of Valhalla’s walls leads us to the precessional number 432,000 by inviting us to calculate the warriors who ‘go to war with the Wolf (500 plus 40 multiplied by 800, as saw in Chapter Thirty-three), so the Great Pyramid leads us to the precessional number 43,200 by demonstrating through the pi relationship that it might be a scale-model part of the earth and then by inviting us to calculate that scale.
Matching fingerprints?
At El Minya our escort vehicles left us, though the plain-clothes soldier in the front seat stayed with us until Cairo. We paused for a late lunch of bread and felafel in a boisterous, noisy village, then motored north again.
Throughout all this, my thoughts remained focused on the Great Pyramid. Obviously it was not an accident that so immense and conspicuous a structure should occupy a key geographic and geodetic location in a part of the world that appeared, bizarrely, to have been conceived of and ‘geometrized’ as a rectangular, symbolic construct exactly seven terrestrial degrees in length. But it was the pyramid’s other function as a three-dimensional map projection of the northern hemisphere that particularly interested me because it suggested a ‘match’ with the ancient but advanced maps of the world described in Part I.
Those maps, which made use of spherical trigonometry and a range of sophisticated projections, had been claimed by Professor Charles Hapgood to provide tangible, documentary evidence that an advanced civilization with a comprehensive knowledge of the globe must have flourished during the last Ice Age. Now here was the Great Pyramid proving to have a cartographic function vis-à-vis the northern hemisphere and also incorporating a sophisticated projection. As one expert explained:
Each flat face of the Pyramid was designed to represent one curved quarter of the northern hemisphere, or spherical quadrant of 90 degrees. To project a spherical quadrant on to a flat triangle correctly, the arc, or base, of the quadrant must be the same length as the base of the triangle, and both must have the same height. This happens to be the case only with a cross-section or meridian bisection of the Great Pyramid, whose slope angle gives the pi relation between height and base 14 ...
Was it possible that surviving copies and compilations of ancient maps— like the Piri Reis Map, for example—might in some cases go back to source documents produced by the same culture that skillfully incorporated its knowledge of the globe into the dimensions of the Great Pyramid (and indeed into the carefully geometrized dimensions of Ancient Egypt itself)?
I could hardly forget that Charles Hapgood and his team had spent months trying to work out where the original projection of the Piri Reis Map had been centered. The answer they finally obtained was Egypt and specifically Seyne (Aswan) in upper Egypt15—where, as we have seen, an important astronomical observatory was situated at latitude 24° 06’ N, the official southern border.
14 Secrets of the Great Pyramid, p. 189.
15 Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, p. 17ff.
16 See, for example, The Shape of the World, p. 23.
Needless to say, precise astronomical observations would have been essential for calculations of the circumference of the earth and of latitude positions.16 But for how long before the historical period had the Ancient Egyptians and their ancestors been making such observations? And had they indeed learned this skill, as they stated forthrightly in their traditions, from the gods who had once walked among them?
Navigators in the Boat of Millions of Years
The god believed by the Ancient Egyptians to have taught the principles of astronomy to their ancestors was Thoth:
‘He who reckons in heaven, the counter of the stars, the enumerator of the earth and of what is therein, and the measurer of the earth.’17
Normally depicted as a man wearing an ibis mask, Thoth was a leading member of the elite company of First Time deities who dominated religious life in Ancient Egypt from the beginning to the end of its civilization. These were the great gods, the Neteru. Although they were believed in one sense to be self-created, it was also openly acknowledged and understood that they had a special connection of some kind with another land—a fabulous and far-off country referred to in the ancient texts as Ta-Neteru, the ‘land of the gods’.18
Ta-Neteru was thought to have had a definite earthly location a very long way south of Ancient Egypt—seas and oceans away—farther even than the spice country of Punt (which probably lay along East Africa’s Somali coast).19 To confuse matters, however, Punt was also spoken of sometimes as the ‘Divine Land’, or ‘God’s Land’, and was the source of the sweet-smelling frankincense and myrrh especially favoured by the gods.20
Another mythical paradise was also linked to the Neteru—an ‘abode of the blessed’, where the best of humans were sometimes taken—which was believed to be ‘situated away beyond a large expanse of water’. As Wallis Budge observed in his important study, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection,
‘the Egyptians believed that this land could only be reached by means of a boat, or by the personal help of the gods who were thought to transport their favourites thither ...’21
Those lucky enough to gain entry would find themselves in a magical garden consisting of ‘islands, interconnected by canals filled with running water which caused them to be always green and fertile’.22 On the islands in this garden,
‘the wheat grew to a height of five cubits, the ears being two cubits long and the stalks three, and the barley grew to a height of seven cubits, the ears being three cubits long and the stalks four.’23
17 The Gods of the Egyptians, volume I, p. 400.
18 Ibid., volume I, p. 443; volume II, pp. 7, 287.
19 Ibid., volume II, p. 7, where the deity Amen-Ra is addressed in a hymn: ‘The gods love the smell of thee when thou comest from Punt, thou eldest-born of the dew, who comest from the Divine Land (Ta-Neteru).’ See also volume II, p. 287. Punt is thought by many scholars to have been located on the Somali coast of East Africa where the trees that produce frankincense and myrrh (‘the food of the gods’) are still grown today.
20 Ibid.
21 Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, volume I, p. 98; Pyramid Texts of Pepi I, Mer-en-Rah and Pepi II, translated in Ibid., volume II, p. 316, where the maritime connections of the land of the blessed are made clear.
22 Ibid., volume I, p. 97.
23 Ibid., pp. 97-8.
24 Ibid., volume II, p. 307.
Was it from a land such as this,, superbly irrigated and scientifically farmed, that the agriculture bringer Osiris, whose title was ‘President of the Land of the South’,24 had voyaged to Egypt at the dawn of the First Time?
And was it from a land such as this, accessible only by boat, that ibis-masked Thoth had also made his way, crossing seas and oceans to deliver the priceless gifts of astronomy and earth-measurement to the primitive inhabitants of the prehistoric Nile Valley?
Whatever the truth behind the tradition, Thoth was remembered and revered by the Ancient Egyptians as the inventor of mathematics, astronomy and engineering.25
‘It was his will and power’, according to Wallis Budge, ‘that were believed to keep the forces of heaven and earth in equilibrium. It was his great skill in celestial mathematics which made proper use of the laws upon which the foundation and maintenance of the universe rested.’26
Thoth was also credited with teaching the ancestral Egyptians the skills of geometry and land-surveying, medicine and botany. He was believed to have been the inventor ‘of figures, of the letters of the alphabet, and of the arts of reading and writing’.27 He was the Great Lord of Magic’28 who could move objects with the power of his voice, ‘the author of every work on every branch of knowledge, both human and divine’.29
It was to the teachings of Thoth—which they guarded jealously in their temples and claimed to have been handed down from generation to generation in the form of forty-two books of instruction30—that the Ancient Egyptians ascribed their world-renowned wisdom and knowledge of the skies. This knowledge was spoken of almost in awe, by the classical commentators who visited Egypt from the fifth century BC onwards.
Herodotus, the earliest of these travellers, noted:
The Egyptians were the first to discover the solar year, and to portion out its course into twelve parts ... It was observation of the course of the stars which led them to adopt this division ...31
Plato (fourth century BC) reported that the Egyptians had observed the stars ‘for ten thousand years’.32
And later, in the first century BC, Diodorus Siculus left this more detailed account:
The positions and arrangements of the stars as well as their motions have always been the subject of careful observation among the Egyptians ... From ancient times to this day they have preserved the records concerning each of these stars over an incredible number of years ...33
25 Veronica Ions, Egyptian Mythology, Newnes Books, London, 1986, p. 84.
26 The Gods of the Egyptians, volume I, pp. 407-8.
27 Ibid., volume I, p. 414.
28 Egyptian Mythology, p. 85.
29 The Gods of the Egyptians, volume I, p. 414.
30 Ibid., pp 414-15.
31 The History, 2:4.
32 Reported in E. M. Antoniadi, L’Astronomie egyptienne, Paris, 1934, pp. 3-4; see also Schwaller, p. 279.
33 Diodorus Siculus, volume I, pp. 279-80.
Why should the Ancient Egyptians have cultivated an almost obsessional interest in the long-term observation of the stars, and why in particular should they have kept records of their movements ‘over an incredible number of years’? Such detailed observations would not have been necessary if their only interest, as a number of scholars have seriously suggested, had been agricultural (the need to predict the seasons, which any country-born person can do). There must have been some other purpose.
Moreover, how did the Ancient Egyptians get started on astronomy in the first place? It is not an obvious hobby for a valley-dwelling landlocked people to develop on their own initiative. Perhaps we should take more seriously the explanation they themselves offer: that their ancestors were taught the study of the stars by a god. We might also pay closer attention to the many unmistakably maritime references in the Pyramid Texts.34
And there could be important new inferences to draw from ancient Egyptian religious art in which the gods are shown travelling in beautiful, high-prowed, streamlined boats, built to the same advanced ocean-going specifications as the pyramid boats at Giza and the mysterious fleet moored in the desert sands at Abydos.
34 The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, for example pp. 78, 170, 171, 290.
Landlocked people do not as rule become astronomers; seafaring people do. Is it not possible that the maritime iconography of the Ancient Egyptians, the design of their ships, and also their splendid obsession with observing the stars, could have been part of an inheritance passed on to their ancestors by an unidentified seafaring, navigating race, in remote prehistory? It is really only such an archaic race, such a forgotten maritime civilization, that could have left its fingerprints behind in the form of maps which accurately depict the world as it looked before the end of the last Ice Age.
It is really only such a civilization, steering its course by the stars ‘for ten thousand years’ that could have observed and accurately timed the phenomenon of equinoctial precession with the exactitude attested in the ancient myths. And, although hypothetical, it is only such a civilization that could have measured the earth with sufficient precision to have arrived at the dimensions scaled down in the Great Pyramid.
The signature of a distant date
It was almost midnight by the time that we reached Giza. We checked into the Siag, a hotel with an excellent pyramid view, and sat out on our balcony as the three stars of Orion’s belt tracked slowly across the southern heavens.
It was the disposition of these three stars, as archaeo-astronomer Robert Bauval had recently demonstrated, that served as the celestial template for the site-plan of the three Giza pyramids. This, in itself, was a remarkable discovery, suggesting a far higher level of observational astronomy, and of surveying and setting-out skills, than scholars had attributed to the Ancient Egyptians.
Even more remarkable, however—and the reason that I had arranged to meet him at Giza the next morning— was Bauval’s contention that the pattern traced out on the ground (in almost fifteen million tons of perfectly dressed stone) matched exactly the pattern in the sky during the epoch of 10,450 BC.
If Bauval was correct, the pyramids had been devised, using the changes precession effects in the positions of the stars, as the permanent architectural signature of the eleventh millennium BC.
THIS IS THE END.... RETURN TO CHAPTER 49 AND THE ORION MYSTERY
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/egipto/fingerprintgods/fingerprintgods14.htm#Chapter 49
NOTE FOR ALEARIA:
GO TO BLOG "JOB 38:32"
JOB 38:5 Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?
JOB 38:6 Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof
JOB 38:7 When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
JOB 38:8 Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb?
JOB 38:9 When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddlingband for it,
JOB 38:10 And brake up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors,
JOB 38:11 And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed?
JOB 38:12 Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; and caused the dayspring to know his place;
JOB 38:13 That it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it?
-
When Moses came down from the mountain with the 10 commandments and found the people worshipping the bull, which was the symbolic meaning for the age of Taurus, they were told to kill themselves. They would not leave the age that was meant to pass while the age of Pisces, the age of darkness (which is the time the same tribes were to be persecuted in their own lands until the end of days when they would fulfill the covenant between God and Abraham, returning to reclaim their lands to the north, south, east and west... The age of Pisces is now coming to an end. Aren't the masses to witness a rebealing? If the masses would have known the truth and had it throughout the Piscean age, what would there be left to reveal? Why is the Catholic Church and the esoteric groups of secret societies so secretive? What are they hiding? and why is the Lord called a constellation in the Bible?
AMOS 5:8
Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name:
JOB 38:31 Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?
ROMANS 4:17 (As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were
ROMANS 4:18 Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations; according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be.
ROMANS 4:19
see blog on human origins 001 here
TITAN:
[tt'n]
(plural Ti·tans) n
1. pre-Olympian god: in Greek mythology, one of the twelve children of Uranus and Gaia, supreme rulers of the universe until they were overthrown by Zeus
2. largest moon of Saturn: a large natural satellite of Saturn
[15th century. Via Latin < Greek ] Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
TITAN: SATURN'S MOON.. FUNNY HOW SATURN HAS THE RINGS AND THE STORY OF ATLANTIS DEPICTS ATLANTIS HAVING BEEN BUILT AS RINGS:
ATLANTIS:
MAPPING THE EARTH... ATLANIS RISES AGAIN!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dje47HG7c90
Chapter 48 - Earth Measurers
Follow these instructions carefully:
Draw two parallel straight lines vertically down a sheet of paper, about seven inches long and a bit under three inches apart. Draw a third line, also vertical, also parallel and of equal length, exactly mid-way between the first two. Write the letter ‘S’—for ‘South’—at the top end of your diagram (the end farthest away from you), and the letter ‘N’ for ‘North’ at the bottom end. Add the letters ‘E’ for ‘East’ and ‘W for ‘West’ in their appropriate positions at either side of the diagram, to your left for East and to your right for West.
What you are looking at are the outlines of a geometrical map of Egypt incorporating a perspective very different from our own (where ‘North’ is always equated with ‘Up’). This map where ‘Up’ is ‘South’ seems to have been worked out an enormously long time ago by cartographers with a scientific understanding of the shape and size of our planet.
To complete the map you should now mark a dot on the central of the three parallel lines about an inch to the south of (‘up’ from) the northern end of the diagram. Then draw two more lines diagonally down from this point, respectively to the north-east and north-west, until they reach the northern ends of the two outermost parallel lines. Finally link those parallel lines directly with horizontal lines running east to west at the northern and southern ends of the diagram.
The shape produced is a meridional rectangle (oriented north-south). This rectangle is seven inches long by just under three inches wide and has a triangle demarcated at its northern (lower) end. The triangle represents the Nile Delta and the dot at the apex of the triangle represents the apex of the Delta—a point on the ground at 30° 06’ north and 31° 14’ east, very close to the location of the Great Pyramid
Map showing the geometric conception of Egypt, with the Great Pyramid at the apex of the Nile delta.
The Egyptians traditionally thought of south as ‘up’.
Geodetic marker
Whatever else it may be, it has long been understood by mathematicians and geographers that the Great Pyramid serves the function of a geodetic marker (geodetics being the branch of science concerned with determining the exact position of geographical points and the shape and size of the earth1).
This realization first dawned in the late eighteenth century when the armies of revolutionary France, led by Napoleon Bonaparte, invaded Egypt.
Bonaparte, who had cultivated a deep interest in the enigmas of the pyramids, brought with him a large number of scholars, 175 in all, including several ‘greybeards’ gathered from various universities who were reputed to have acquired ‘a profound knowledge of Egyptian antiquities’, and, more usefully, a group of mathematicians, cartographers and surveyors.2
One of the tasks the savants were set, after the conquest was completed, was to draw up detailed maps of Egypt. In the process of doing this they discovered that the Great Pyramid was perfectly aligned to true north—and of course to the south, east and west as well, as we saw in Part VI. This meant that the mysterious structure made an excellent reference and triangulation point, and a decision was therefore taken to use the meridian passing through its apex as the base-line for all other measurements and orientations.
The team then proceeded to produce the first accurate maps of Egypt drawn up in the modern age. When they had finished, they were intrigued to note that the Great Pyramid’s meridian sliced the Nile Delta region into two equal halves. They also found that if the diagonals running from the pyramid’s apex to its north-eastern and north-western corners were extended (forming lines on the map running north-east and northwest until they reached the Mediterranean), the triangle thus formed would neatly encapsulate the entire Delta area.3
Let us now return to our map, which also incorporates a triangle representing the Delta. Its other main components are the three parallel meridians. The eastern meridian is at longitude 32° 38’ east—the official eastern border of Ancient Egypt from the beginning of dynastic times. The western meridian is at longitude 29° 50’ east, the official western border of ancient Egypt. The central meridian is at longitude 31° 14’ east, exactly midway between the other two (1° 24’ away from each).4
What we now have is a representation of a strip on the surface of planet earth that is exactly 2° 48’ wide. How long is this strip? Ancient Egypt’s ‘official’ northern and southern borders (which bore no more relationship to settlement patterns than the official eastern and western boundaries) are marked by the horizontal lines at the top and bottom of the map and are located respectively at 31° 06’ north and 24° 06’ north.5 The northern border, 31° 06’ north, joins the two outer ends of the estuary of the Nile.
1 Collins English Dictionary, p. 608.
2 Secrets of the Great Pyramid, p. 38. Much of the material in this chapter is based directly on the work of Peter Tompkins and of Professor Livio Catullo Stecchini.
3 Ibid., p. 46.
4 Ibid., p. 181.
5 Ibid., p. 299.
6 Ibid., pp. 179-81.
The southern border, 24° 06’ N, marks the precise latitude of the island of Elephantine at Aswan (Seyne) where an important astronomical and solar observatory was located throughout known Egyptian history.6 It seems, that this archaic land, sacred since time began—the creation and habitation of the gods—was originally conceived of as a geometric construct exactly seven terrestrial degrees in length.
Within this construct, the Great Pyramid appears to have been carefully sited as a geodetic marker for the apex of the Delta. The latter, which we have indicated on our map, is located at 30° 06’ N 31° 14’ E—a point in the middle of the Nile at the northern edge of modern Cairo. Meanwhile the pyramid stands at latitude of 30°N (corrected for atmospheric refraction) and at longitude 31° 09’ E, an error of just a few minutes of terrestrial arc to the south and west. This ‘error’, however, does not appear to have resulted from sloppiness or inaccuracy on the part of the pyramid builders.
On the contrary, a close look at the topography of the area suggests that the explanation should be sought in the need to find a site suitable for all the astronomical observations that had to be taken for accurate setting-out, and with a sufficiently stable geological structure on which to park, for ever, a six-million-ton monument almost 500 feet high with a footprint of over thirteen acres.
The Giza plateau fits the bill on all counts: close to the apex of the Delta, elevated above the Valley of the Nile, and equipped with an excellent foundation of solid limestone bedrock.
Doing things by degrees
We were driving north from Luxor to Giza in the back of Mohamed Walilli’s Peugeot 504—a journey of just over 4 degrees of longitude, i.e., from 25° 42’ N, to the 30th parallel. Between Asiut and El Minya, a corridor of conflict in recent months between Islamic extremists and Egyptian government forces, we were provided with an armed escort of soldiers, one of whom wore plain clothes and sat in the passenger seat beside Mohamed fondling an automatic pistol.
The others, about a dozen men armed with AK47 assault rifles, were distributed equally between two pick-up trucks which sandwiched us front and rear.
‘Dangerous people live here,’ Mohamed had confided out of the corner of his mouth when we had been stopped at a road-block in Asiut and ordered to wait for our escort. Now, although obviously rattled at being obliged to match the high speed of the escorting vehicles, he seemed to relish the kudos of being part of an impressive convoy, lights flashing and sirens wailing, weaving in and out of the slower traffic on the main highway from upper to lower Egypt.
I looked out of the car window for a while at the unchanging spectacle of the Nile, at its fertile green banks and the red haze of the deserts a few miles away to east and west. This was Egypt, the real organic Egypt of today and yesterday, which overlapped (but spread out far beyond) the strange ‘official’ Egypt of the map described, a rectangular fiction exactly seven terrestrial degrees in length.
In the nineteenth century the renowned Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt expressed what is still the conventional wisdom of his colleagues when he remarked, ‘One must absolutely exclude the possibility that the ancients may have measured by degrees.’7
This was a judgment that seemed increasingly unlikely to be tenable. Whoever they may have been, it was obvious that the original planners and architects of the Giza necropolis had belonged to a civilization which knew the earth to be a sphere, knew its dimensions almost as well as we do ourselves, and had divided it into 360 degrees, just as we do today.
The proof of this lay in the creation of a symbolic official ‘country’ exactly seven terrestrial degrees in length, and in the admirably geodetic location and orientation to the cardinal points of the Great Pyramid. Equally persuasive was the fact, already touched on in Chapter Twenty-three, that the perimeter of the pyramid’s base stood in the relationship 2pi to its height and that the entire monument seemed to have been designed to serve as a map-projection—on a scale of 1:43,200—of the northern hemisphere of our planet:
The Great Pyramid was a projection on four triangular surfaces. The apex represented the pole and the perimeter represented the equator. This is the reason why the perimeter is in relation 2pi to the height.8
7 Cited in Ibid., p. 333.
8 See Chapter Twenty-three, and Stecchini in Secrets of the Great Pyramid, p. 378.
The Pyramid/Earth ratio
We have demonstrated the use of pi in the Pyramid9 and need not go into this matter again; besides, the existence of the pi relationship, though interpreted as accidental by orthodox scholars, is not contested by them.10 But are we seriously supposed to accept that the monument could also be a representation of the northern hemisphere of the earth projected on flat surfaces at a scale of 1:43,200?
Let us remind ourselves of the figures.
According to the best modern estimates, based on satellite observations, the equatorial circumference of the earth is 24,902.45 miles and its polar radius is 3949.921 miles.11 The perimeter of the Great Pyramid’s base is 3023.16 feet and its height is 481.3949 feet.12
9 See Chapter Twenty-three.
10 Accepted, for example, by Edwards, Petrie, Baines and Malek, and so on.
11 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1991, 27:530.
12 The Pyramids of Egypt, p. 87.
The scaling-down, as it turns out, is not absolutely exact, but it is very near. Moreover, when we remember the bulge at the earth’s equator (our planet being an oblate spheroid rather than a perfect sphere), the results achieved by the pyramid builders seem even closer to 1:43,200.
How close?
If we take the earth’s equatorial circumference, 24,902.45 miles, and scale it down (divide it) by 43,200 we get a result of 0.5764 of a mile. There are 5280 feet in a mile. The next step, therefore, is to multiply 0.5764 by 5280, which produces a figure of 3043.39 feet. The earth’s equatorial circumference scaled down 43,200 times is therefore 3,043.39 feet. By comparison, as we have seen, the perimeter of the Great Pyramid’s base is 3,023.16 feet. This represents an ‘error’ of only 20 feet—or about three-quarters of 1 per cent.
Given the razor-sharp accuracy of the pyramid builders, however (who normally worked to even finer tolerances), the error is less likely to have resulted from mistakes in the construction of the giant monument than in an underestimation of our planet’s true circumference by just 163 miles, probably caused in part by failure to take account of the equatorial bulge.
Let us now consider the earth’s polar radius of 3949.921 miles. If we scale it down 43,200 times we get 0.0914 of a mile: 482.59 feet. The earth’s polar radius scaled down 43,200 times is therefore 482.59 feet. By comparison the Great Pyramid’s height is 481.3949 feet—just a foot less than the ideal figure, an error of barely one-fifth of one per cent.
As near as makes no difference, therefore, the perimeter of the Great Pyramid’s base is indeed 1:43,200 of the equatorial circumference of the earth. And as near as makes no difference, the height of the Great Pyramid above that base is indeed 1:43,200 of the polar radius of the earth.
In other words, during all the centuries of darkness experienced by Western civilization when knowledge of our planet’s dimensions was lost to us, all we ever needed to do to rediscover that knowledge was to measure the height and base perimeter of the Great Pyramid and multiply by 43,200!
How likely is this to be an ‘accident’?
The commonsense answer is ‘not very likely at all,’ since it should be obvious to any reasonable person that what we are looking at could only be the result of a deliberate and carefully calculated planning decision. Commonsense, however, has never been a faculty held in high esteem by Egyptologists, and it is therefore necessary to ask whether there is anything else in the data which might confirm that the ratio of 143,200 is a purposeful expression of intelligence and knowledge, rather than some numerical fluke.
The ratio itself seems to provide that confirmation, for the simple reason that 43,200 is not a random number (like, say, 45,000 or 47,000, or 50,500, or 38,800). On the contrary it is one of a series of numbers, and multiples of those numbers, which relate to the phenomenon of precession of the equinoxes, and which have become embedded in archaic myths all around the world.
As the reader can confirm by glancing back at Part V the basic numerals of the Pyramid/Earth ratio crop up again and again in those myths, sometimes directly as 43,200 sometimes as 432, as 4320, as 432,000, as 4,320,000, and so on.
What we appear to be confronted by are two remarkable propositions, back-to-back, as though designed to reinforce one another. It is surely remarkable enough that the Great Pyramid should be able to function as an accurate scale-model of the northern hemisphere of planet earth. But it is even more remarkable that the scale involved should incorporate numbers relating precisely to one of the key planetary mechanisms of the earth.
This is the fixed and apparently eternal precession of its axis of rotation around the pole of the ecliptic, a phenomenon which causes the vernal point to migrate around the band of the zodiac at the rate of one degree every 72 years, and 30 degrees (one complete zodiacal constellation) every 2160 years. Precession through two zodiacal constellations, or 60 degrees along the ecliptic, takes 4320 years.13
13 See Part V.
The constant repetition of these precessional numbers in ancient myths could, perhaps, be a coincidence. Viewed in isolation, the appearance of the precessional number 43,200 in the pyramid/earth ratio might also be a coincidence (although the odds against this must be astronomical). But when we find precessional numbers in both these very different media— the ancient myths and the ancient monument—it really does strain credulity to suppose that coincidence is all that is involved here.
Moreover, just as the Teutonic myth of Valhalla’s walls leads us to the precessional number 432,000 by inviting us to calculate the warriors who ‘go to war with the Wolf (500 plus 40 multiplied by 800, as saw in Chapter Thirty-three), so the Great Pyramid leads us to the precessional number 43,200 by demonstrating through the pi relationship that it might be a scale-model part of the earth and then by inviting us to calculate that scale.
Matching fingerprints?
At El Minya our escort vehicles left us, though the plain-clothes soldier in the front seat stayed with us until Cairo. We paused for a late lunch of bread and felafel in a boisterous, noisy village, then motored north again.
Throughout all this, my thoughts remained focused on the Great Pyramid. Obviously it was not an accident that so immense and conspicuous a structure should occupy a key geographic and geodetic location in a part of the world that appeared, bizarrely, to have been conceived of and ‘geometrized’ as a rectangular, symbolic construct exactly seven terrestrial degrees in length. But it was the pyramid’s other function as a three-dimensional map projection of the northern hemisphere that particularly interested me because it suggested a ‘match’ with the ancient but advanced maps of the world described in Part I.
Those maps, which made use of spherical trigonometry and a range of sophisticated projections, had been claimed by Professor Charles Hapgood to provide tangible, documentary evidence that an advanced civilization with a comprehensive knowledge of the globe must have flourished during the last Ice Age. Now here was the Great Pyramid proving to have a cartographic function vis-à-vis the northern hemisphere and also incorporating a sophisticated projection. As one expert explained:
Each flat face of the Pyramid was designed to represent one curved quarter of the northern hemisphere, or spherical quadrant of 90 degrees. To project a spherical quadrant on to a flat triangle correctly, the arc, or base, of the quadrant must be the same length as the base of the triangle, and both must have the same height. This happens to be the case only with a cross-section or meridian bisection of the Great Pyramid, whose slope angle gives the pi relation between height and base 14 ...
Was it possible that surviving copies and compilations of ancient maps— like the Piri Reis Map, for example—might in some cases go back to source documents produced by the same culture that skillfully incorporated its knowledge of the globe into the dimensions of the Great Pyramid (and indeed into the carefully geometrized dimensions of Ancient Egypt itself)?
I could hardly forget that Charles Hapgood and his team had spent months trying to work out where the original projection of the Piri Reis Map had been centered. The answer they finally obtained was Egypt and specifically Seyne (Aswan) in upper Egypt15—where, as we have seen, an important astronomical observatory was situated at latitude 24° 06’ N, the official southern border.
14 Secrets of the Great Pyramid, p. 189.
15 Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, p. 17ff.
16 See, for example, The Shape of the World, p. 23.
Needless to say, precise astronomical observations would have been essential for calculations of the circumference of the earth and of latitude positions.16 But for how long before the historical period had the Ancient Egyptians and their ancestors been making such observations? And had they indeed learned this skill, as they stated forthrightly in their traditions, from the gods who had once walked among them?
Navigators in the Boat of Millions of Years
The god believed by the Ancient Egyptians to have taught the principles of astronomy to their ancestors was Thoth:
‘He who reckons in heaven, the counter of the stars, the enumerator of the earth and of what is therein, and the measurer of the earth.’17
Normally depicted as a man wearing an ibis mask, Thoth was a leading member of the elite company of First Time deities who dominated religious life in Ancient Egypt from the beginning to the end of its civilization. These were the great gods, the Neteru. Although they were believed in one sense to be self-created, it was also openly acknowledged and understood that they had a special connection of some kind with another land—a fabulous and far-off country referred to in the ancient texts as Ta-Neteru, the ‘land of the gods’.18
Ta-Neteru was thought to have had a definite earthly location a very long way south of Ancient Egypt—seas and oceans away—farther even than the spice country of Punt (which probably lay along East Africa’s Somali coast).19 To confuse matters, however, Punt was also spoken of sometimes as the ‘Divine Land’, or ‘God’s Land’, and was the source of the sweet-smelling frankincense and myrrh especially favoured by the gods.20
Another mythical paradise was also linked to the Neteru—an ‘abode of the blessed’, where the best of humans were sometimes taken—which was believed to be ‘situated away beyond a large expanse of water’. As Wallis Budge observed in his important study, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection,
‘the Egyptians believed that this land could only be reached by means of a boat, or by the personal help of the gods who were thought to transport their favourites thither ...’21
Those lucky enough to gain entry would find themselves in a magical garden consisting of ‘islands, interconnected by canals filled with running water which caused them to be always green and fertile’.22 On the islands in this garden,
‘the wheat grew to a height of five cubits, the ears being two cubits long and the stalks three, and the barley grew to a height of seven cubits, the ears being three cubits long and the stalks four.’23
17 The Gods of the Egyptians, volume I, p. 400.
18 Ibid., volume I, p. 443; volume II, pp. 7, 287.
19 Ibid., volume II, p. 7, where the deity Amen-Ra is addressed in a hymn: ‘The gods love the smell of thee when thou comest from Punt, thou eldest-born of the dew, who comest from the Divine Land (Ta-Neteru).’ See also volume II, p. 287. Punt is thought by many scholars to have been located on the Somali coast of East Africa where the trees that produce frankincense and myrrh (‘the food of the gods’) are still grown today.
20 Ibid.
21 Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, volume I, p. 98; Pyramid Texts of Pepi I, Mer-en-Rah and Pepi II, translated in Ibid., volume II, p. 316, where the maritime connections of the land of the blessed are made clear.
22 Ibid., volume I, p. 97.
23 Ibid., pp. 97-8.
24 Ibid., volume II, p. 307.
Was it from a land such as this,, superbly irrigated and scientifically farmed, that the agriculture bringer Osiris, whose title was ‘President of the Land of the South’,24 had voyaged to Egypt at the dawn of the First Time?
And was it from a land such as this, accessible only by boat, that ibis-masked Thoth had also made his way, crossing seas and oceans to deliver the priceless gifts of astronomy and earth-measurement to the primitive inhabitants of the prehistoric Nile Valley?
Whatever the truth behind the tradition, Thoth was remembered and revered by the Ancient Egyptians as the inventor of mathematics, astronomy and engineering.25
‘It was his will and power’, according to Wallis Budge, ‘that were believed to keep the forces of heaven and earth in equilibrium. It was his great skill in celestial mathematics which made proper use of the laws upon which the foundation and maintenance of the universe rested.’26
Thoth was also credited with teaching the ancestral Egyptians the skills of geometry and land-surveying, medicine and botany. He was believed to have been the inventor ‘of figures, of the letters of the alphabet, and of the arts of reading and writing’.27 He was the Great Lord of Magic’28 who could move objects with the power of his voice, ‘the author of every work on every branch of knowledge, both human and divine’.29
It was to the teachings of Thoth—which they guarded jealously in their temples and claimed to have been handed down from generation to generation in the form of forty-two books of instruction30—that the Ancient Egyptians ascribed their world-renowned wisdom and knowledge of the skies. This knowledge was spoken of almost in awe, by the classical commentators who visited Egypt from the fifth century BC onwards.
Herodotus, the earliest of these travellers, noted:
The Egyptians were the first to discover the solar year, and to portion out its course into twelve parts ... It was observation of the course of the stars which led them to adopt this division ...31
Plato (fourth century BC) reported that the Egyptians had observed the stars ‘for ten thousand years’.32
And later, in the first century BC, Diodorus Siculus left this more detailed account:
The positions and arrangements of the stars as well as their motions have always been the subject of careful observation among the Egyptians ... From ancient times to this day they have preserved the records concerning each of these stars over an incredible number of years ...33
25 Veronica Ions, Egyptian Mythology, Newnes Books, London, 1986, p. 84.
26 The Gods of the Egyptians, volume I, pp. 407-8.
27 Ibid., volume I, p. 414.
28 Egyptian Mythology, p. 85.
29 The Gods of the Egyptians, volume I, p. 414.
30 Ibid., pp 414-15.
31 The History, 2:4.
32 Reported in E. M. Antoniadi, L’Astronomie egyptienne, Paris, 1934, pp. 3-4; see also Schwaller, p. 279.
33 Diodorus Siculus, volume I, pp. 279-80.
Why should the Ancient Egyptians have cultivated an almost obsessional interest in the long-term observation of the stars, and why in particular should they have kept records of their movements ‘over an incredible number of years’? Such detailed observations would not have been necessary if their only interest, as a number of scholars have seriously suggested, had been agricultural (the need to predict the seasons, which any country-born person can do). There must have been some other purpose.
Moreover, how did the Ancient Egyptians get started on astronomy in the first place? It is not an obvious hobby for a valley-dwelling landlocked people to develop on their own initiative. Perhaps we should take more seriously the explanation they themselves offer: that their ancestors were taught the study of the stars by a god. We might also pay closer attention to the many unmistakably maritime references in the Pyramid Texts.34
And there could be important new inferences to draw from ancient Egyptian religious art in which the gods are shown travelling in beautiful, high-prowed, streamlined boats, built to the same advanced ocean-going specifications as the pyramid boats at Giza and the mysterious fleet moored in the desert sands at Abydos.
34 The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, for example pp. 78, 170, 171, 290.
Landlocked people do not as rule become astronomers; seafaring people do. Is it not possible that the maritime iconography of the Ancient Egyptians, the design of their ships, and also their splendid obsession with observing the stars, could have been part of an inheritance passed on to their ancestors by an unidentified seafaring, navigating race, in remote prehistory? It is really only such an archaic race, such a forgotten maritime civilization, that could have left its fingerprints behind in the form of maps which accurately depict the world as it looked before the end of the last Ice Age.
It is really only such a civilization, steering its course by the stars ‘for ten thousand years’ that could have observed and accurately timed the phenomenon of equinoctial precession with the exactitude attested in the ancient myths. And, although hypothetical, it is only such a civilization that could have measured the earth with sufficient precision to have arrived at the dimensions scaled down in the Great Pyramid.
The signature of a distant date
It was almost midnight by the time that we reached Giza. We checked into the Siag, a hotel with an excellent pyramid view, and sat out on our balcony as the three stars of Orion’s belt tracked slowly across the southern heavens.
It was the disposition of these three stars, as archaeo-astronomer Robert Bauval had recently demonstrated, that served as the celestial template for the site-plan of the three Giza pyramids. This, in itself, was a remarkable discovery, suggesting a far higher level of observational astronomy, and of surveying and setting-out skills, than scholars had attributed to the Ancient Egyptians.
Even more remarkable, however—and the reason that I had arranged to meet him at Giza the next morning— was Bauval’s contention that the pattern traced out on the ground (in almost fifteen million tons of perfectly dressed stone) matched exactly the pattern in the sky during the epoch of 10,450 BC.
If Bauval was correct, the pyramids had been devised, using the changes precession effects in the positions of the stars, as the permanent architectural signature of the eleventh millennium BC.
THIS IS THE END.... RETURN TO CHAPTER 49 AND THE ORION MYSTERY
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/egipto/fingerprintgods/fingerprintgods14.htm#Chapter 49
NOTE FOR ALEARIA:
GO TO BLOG "JOB 38:32"
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