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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 />

feature—the river Nile—which was exactly where it should be had it been<br />

designed to represent the Milky Way. 15<br />

The incorporation of a ‘celestial plan’ into key sites in Egypt and Mexico<br />

did not by any means exclude religious functions. On the contrary,<br />

whatever else they may have been intended for it is certain that the<br />

monuments of Teotihuacan, like those of the Giza plateau, played<br />

important religious roles in the lives of the communities they served.<br />

Thus Central American traditions collected in the sixteenth century by<br />

Father Bernardino de Sahagun gave eloquent expression to a widespread<br />

belief that Teotihuacan had fulfilled at least one specific and important<br />

religious function in ancient times. According to these legends the City of<br />

the Gods was so known because ‘the Lords therein buried, after their<br />

deaths, did not perish but turned into gods ...’ 16 In other words, it was<br />

‘the place where men became gods’. 17 It was additionally known as ‘the<br />

place of those who had the road of the gods’, 18 and ‘the place where gods<br />

were made’. 19<br />

Was it a coincidence, I wondered, that this seemed to have been the<br />

religious purpose of the three pyramids at Giza? The archaic hieroglyphs<br />

of the Pyramid Texts, the oldest coherent body of writing in the world,<br />

left little room for doubt that the ultimate objective of the rituals carried<br />

out within those colossal structures was to bring about the deceased<br />

pharaoh’s transfiguration—to ‘throw open the doors of the firmament<br />

and to make a road’ so that he might ‘ascend into the company of the<br />

gods’. 20<br />

The notion of pyramids as devices designed (presumably in some<br />

metaphysical sense) ‘to turn men into gods’ was, it seemed to me, too<br />

idiosyncratic and peculiar to have been arrived at independently in both<br />

Ancient Egypt and Mexico. So, too, was the idea of using the layout of<br />

sacred sites to incorporate a celestial plan.<br />

Moreover, there were other strange similarities that deserved to be<br />

considered.<br />

Just as at Giza, three principal pyramids had been built at Teotihuacan:<br />

the Pyramid/Temple of Quetzalcoatl, the Pyramid of the Sun and the<br />

Pyramid of the Moon. Just as at Giza, the site plan was not symmetrical,<br />

as one might have expected, but involved two structures in direct<br />

alignment with each other while the third appeared to have been<br />

deliberately offset to one side. Finally, at Giza, the summits of the Great<br />

Pyramid and the Pyramid of Khafre were level, even though the former<br />

was a taller building than the latter. Likewise, at Teotihuacan, the<br />

15<br />

Ibid.<br />

16<br />

Bernardino de Sahagun, cited in Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids, p. 23.<br />

17<br />

Mexico: Rough Guide, p. 216.<br />

18<br />

The Atlas of Mysterious Places, p. 158.<br />

19<br />

Pre-Hispanic Gods of Mexico, p. 24.<br />

20<br />

The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, Utt. 667A, p. 281.<br />

169

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