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

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 />

examination revealed that it incorporated several characteristics quite<br />

alien and inexplicable to the modern eye, which that must have seemed<br />

almost as alien and inexplicable to the Ancient Egyptians. For a start,<br />

there was the stark absence, both inside and out, of inscriptions and<br />

other identifying marks. In this respect, as the reader will appreciate, the<br />

Valley Temple could be compared with a few of the other anonymous and<br />

frankly undatable monuments on the Giza plateau, including the great<br />

pyramids (and also with a mysterious structure at Abydos known as the<br />

Osireion, which we consider in detail in a later chapter) but otherwise<br />

bore no resemblance to the typical and well-known products of Ancient<br />

Egyptian art and architecture—all copiously decorated, embellished and<br />

inscribed. 10<br />

Another important and unusual feature of the Valley Temple was that<br />

its core structure was built entirely, entirely, of gigantic limestone<br />

megaliths. The majority of these measured about 18 feet long x 10 feet<br />

wide x 8 feet high and some were as large as 30 feet long x 12 feet wide<br />

x 10 feet high. 11 Routinely exceeding 200 tons in weight, each was<br />

heavier than a modern diesel locomotive—and there were hundreds of<br />

blocks. 12<br />

Was this in any way mysterious?<br />

Egyptologists did not seem to think so; indeed few of them had<br />

bothered to comment, except in the most superficial manner—either on<br />

the staggering size of these blocks or the mind-bending logistics of how<br />

they might have been put in place. As we have seen, monoliths of up to<br />

70 tons, each about as heavy as 100 family-sized cars, had been lifted to<br />

the level of the King’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid—again without<br />

provoking much comment from the Egyptological fraternity—so the lack<br />

of curiosity about the Valley Temple was perhaps no surprise.<br />

Nevertheless, the block size was truly extraordinary, seeming to belong<br />

not just to another epoch but to another ethic altogether—one that<br />

reflected incomprehensible aesthetic and structural concerns and<br />

suggested a scale of priorities utterly different from our own. Why, for<br />

example, insist on using these cumbersome 200-ton monoliths when you<br />

could simply slice each of them up into 10 or 20 or 40 or 80 smaller and<br />

more manoeuvrable blocks? Why make things so difficult for yourself<br />

when you could achieve much the same visual effect with much less<br />

effort?<br />

And how had the builders of the Valley Temple lifted these colossal<br />

megaliths to heights of more than 40 feet?<br />

10 In addition to the three Giza pyramids, the Mortuary Temples of Khafre and Menkaure<br />

can be compared with the Valley Temple in terms of their absence of adornment and use<br />

of megaliths weighing 200 tons or more.<br />

11 Serpent in the Sky, p. 211; also Mystery of the Sphinx, NBC-TV, 1993.<br />

12 For block weights see The Pyramids of Egypt, p. 215; Serpent in the Sky, p. 242; The<br />

Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt, p. 144; The Pyramids: An Enigma Solved, p. 51;<br />

Mystery of the Sphinx, NBC-TV, 1993.<br />

330

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