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Know_files/FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS.pdf - D Ank Unlimited

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Graham Hancock – <strong>FINGERPRINTS</strong> <strong>OF</strong> <strong>THE</strong> <strong>GODS</strong><br />

scholars have tended to ignore the possibility of immigration to both regions from<br />

some hypothetical and as yet undiscovered area. [However] a third party whose<br />

cultural achievements were passed on independently to Egypt and Mesopotamia<br />

would best explain the common features and fundamental differences between<br />

the two civilizations. 11<br />

Among other things, this theory sheds light on the mysterious fact that<br />

the Egyptians and Sumerian people of Mesopotamia appear to have<br />

worshipped virtually identical lunar deities who were among the oldest in<br />

their respective pantheons (Thoth in the case of the Egyptians, Sin in the<br />

case of the Sumerians). 12 According to the eminent Egyptologist Sir E.A.<br />

Wallis Budge, ‘The similarity between the two gods is too close to be<br />

accidental ... It would be wrong to say that the Egyptians borrowed from<br />

the Sumerians or the Sumerians from the Egyptians, but it may be<br />

submitted that the literati of both peoples borrowed their theological<br />

systems from some common but exceedingly ancient source.’ 13<br />

The question, therefore, is this: what was that ‘common but<br />

exceedingly ancient source’, that ‘hypothetical and as yet undiscovered<br />

area’, that advanced ‘third party’ to which both Budge and Emery refer?<br />

And if it left a legacy of high culture in Egypt and in Mesopotamia, why<br />

shouldn’t it have done so in Central America?<br />

It’s not good enough to argue that civilization ‘took off’ much later in<br />

Mexico than it had in the Middle East. It is possible that the initial<br />

impulse could have been felt at the same time in both places but that the<br />

subsequent outcome could have been completely different.<br />

On this scenario, the civilizers would have succeeded brilliantly in Egypt<br />

and in Sumer, creating lasting and remarkable cultures there. In Mexico,<br />

on the other hand (as also seems to have been the case in Peru), they<br />

suffered some serious setback—perhaps getting off to a good start, when<br />

the gigantic stone heads and reliefs of bearded men were made, but<br />

going rapidly downhill. The light of civilization would never quite have<br />

been lost, but perhaps things didn’t pick up again until around 1500 BC,<br />

the so-called ‘Olmec horizon’. By then the great sculptures would have<br />

been hoary with age, ancient relics of immense spiritual power, their allbut-forgotten<br />

origins wrapped in myths of giants and bearded civilizers.<br />

If so, we may be gazing at faces from a much more remote past than<br />

we imagine when we stare into the almond eyes of one of the negro<br />

heads or into the angular, chiselled Caucasian features of ‘Uncle Sam’. It<br />

is by no means impossible that these great works preserve the images of<br />

peoples from a vanished civilization which embraced several different<br />

ethnic groups.<br />

That, in a nutshell, is the ‘hypothetical third party’ theory as applied to<br />

11<br />

Ibid., pp. 31, 177.<br />

12<br />

Ibid., p. 126.<br />

13<br />

E. A. Wallis Budge, From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt, Oxford University Press, 1934,<br />

p. 155.<br />

140

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