Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

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world, including those in ancient Egypt, have been built and rebuilt on locations of earlier constructions, often over millennia. Many people have suggested that the Giza plateau complex itself is one such site. Probably, the most stunning evidence for this has come from Boston University geologist Robert Schoch, who, together with inspiration from independent Egyptologist John Anthony West, measured the weathering of the Great Sphinx and the Sphinx enclosure. Schoch essentially proved that from a geophysical standpoint the Sphinx was weathered by long-term heavy rainfall and thus predates 5000 BCE. Schoch notes that we cannot determine precisely when the Sphinx was carved into the living bedrock, but rigorous geophysical analysis gives the epoch circa 5000 BCE as a minimum age. 9 Like all things that challenge a reigning dogma in an academic field, Schoch’s dating of the Sphinx has generated voluminous polemical argumentation, but he is well supported by the geophysical evidence. In the Sphinx, then, there is monumental architecture on the Giza plateau that predates the fourth dynasty by more than two millennia. Our study of the Vega and Sirius signatures suggests there was some symbolic architecture on the Giza plateau as far back as the actual Zep Tepi and that Giza is the place of Zep Tepi. It has long been suggested that the subterranean chamber at the end of the subterranean passage of the Great Pyramid appears to be much more ancient than the fourth dynasty. Schoch has also suggested that the central subterranean chamber of the Red Pyramid of fourth-dynasty founder Pharaoh Sneferu at Dashur shows geological weathering that is evidence of a much more ancient date. 10 It’s possible that the symbolic architecture existent at Zep Tepi included the subterranean passage down to the subterranean chamber, beneath a mound topped by a flat platform, possibly to the level where the Queen’s Chamber exists today. Indeed the Great Pyramid is known to be built over a bedrock mound platform that is, in its interior, about 8 meters (26 feet) high and extends to approximately where the subterranean passage emerges from the bedrock. 11 In this view, the Great Pyramid was completed in the fourth dynasty on top of the then ancient subterranean passage and platform. The Zep Tepi platform was symbolically preserved in the completed architecture of the pyramid by the horizontal passage that leads to the Queen’s Chamber. The horizontal passage basically has the same dimensions (1.2 meters—3.9 feet—in height) as the subterranean passage, and conceptually, the horizontal passage is another star shaft directed exactly along the horizon—symbolically preserving the much more ancient horizontal platform used to represent and probably to view Sirius at the First Time, Zep Tepi, and preserving the place on Earth that demarcates the parts of Earth from where Sirius never disappears and the parts of Earth where Sirius does disappear. Further suggestive of symbolic unity is the ascending passage that now connects the subterranean passage and the horizontal passage of the Queen’s Chamber. It is of the same dimensions (1.2 meters—3.9 feet—in height), and it is sloped upward at an almost identical angle to the downslope of the subterranean passage—much like a reflection off the horizon plane. If there was a Sirius platform at Zep Tepi and if the subterranean passage did exist, then it would have been possible for a single priest or priestess to view by employing a simple flat reflector or still pool of water where the subterranean passage enters the earth and connect the light of Vega from the north shining down the passage at the same time as the light of Sirius from the south just skimmed the horizon. Thus two great rulers of the starry sky—Sirius, the crown jewel of the night, and Vega, the ruler of all the circumpolar stars—were viewed and symbolized simultaneously at both of their twenty-six-thousand-year precessional culminations (with Sirius culminating south and Vega culminating north). Their precise culminations were 180 years apart, but for centuries they demonstrated simultaneous shining along the horizon platform and into the subterranean passage, and around 12,020 BCE their lights shone simultaneously and directly from the south and the north onto the place of the First Time. Significantly, this starry drama occurred around midnight, when the sky was dark, only on the days of the year around summer solstice. Further, the Great Pyramid and subterranean passage are located on the Giza plateau in such a way that the plateau slopes down and away to the southeast, giving an unobstructed view of the southern horizon in order to accommodate viewing the starry show. Throughout ancient Egyptian history, the heliacal reappearance of Sirius marked the New Year as well as the imminent arrival of the Nile floods, much as the appearance of Sirius marked the New Year and the playa-filling monsoons at Nabta Playa. Monuments simultaneously marking the rising Sirius and the circumpolar stars represented the bounteous measure of the New Year cycle. We can see that at the place of the First Time, Zep Tepi, the start of the new Great Year of precessional motion of Sirius, ruler of the heavens, is monumentally indicated, together with the Great Year cycle of the celestial pole around the invariant point ruled by the greatest pole star of all, Vega. There is an elegant similarity in this use of stellar symbology (Sirius rising simultaneous with the circumpolar star) to mark both the annual cycle of the seasons and the Great Year cycle of the Ages. At this point, traditional-minded archaeoastronomers would raise an objection that the Vega-to-subterranean passage alignment is only one star in one alignment and therefore is not significant. Yet we can now see that this single
alignment is part of a symbolic system repeated again and again, and that it occurs not simply in any time in the star’s cycle, but at the special time of culmination. Still, objectors would say that other examples of the same alignment are needed for verification. To honor this, we can examine other subterranean passages. Actually there are only two extensive subterranean passages associated with the six giant pyramids: 12 third-dynasty Djoser’s step pyramid at Saqqara, fourth-dynastry founder Sneferu’s Bent Pyramid and Red Pyramid at Dashur, the great pyramids of Khufu and Khafre at Giza, and the fourth-dynasty Unfinished Pyramid at Zawiyet el-Aryan. Besides Khufu’s Great Pyramid, the other subterranean passage is beneath Sneferu’s Bent Pyramid at Dashur. Located 21 kilometers (13 miles) south of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the giant Bent Pyramid of Sneferu is at latitude 29.79 degrees. We learn from Egyptologist I. E. S. Edwards 13 that the subterranean passage of the Bent Pyramid starts at the entrance to the pyramid on its north face, about 12 meters (39 feet) above ground. It continues down through the masonry for 25 meters (82 feet), first at an angle of 28.36 degrees, and then shifts to an angle of 26.33 degrees before moving from the masonry down into the bedrock after another 48 meters (157 feet). The passage continues, precisely directed at a constant angle through the bedrock to a chamber under the center of the pyramid, and the entire subterranean length of the passage into the bedrock is at a constant angle of 26.33 degrees. This angle, combined with the latitude of the Bent Pyramid, points to a location in the sky with a precise declination of 86.54 degrees—identical to the subterranean passage of the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza. So if the subterranean passage that is now under the Bent Pyramid existed at Zep Tepi, plunging into the bedrock beneath a horizon-viewing platform on the surface, essentially the same starry drama as at Giza could have been observed at Dashur—with the only difference being that at Dashur, Sirius would rise to a slightly higher altitude by about 20 arc minutes. The ancient name of the Bent Pyramid was the Southern Shining Pyramid. 14 Perhaps, when Sneferu marshaled his kingdom to build the Bent Pyramid, the location was already known and revered as the Southern Shining—the place on Earth, and especially south, where the ruler of the heavens, Sirius, shines eternally and never disappears beneath the horizon. Sneferu built three large pyramids. The first, at Meidum, bears an exalted personal ancient name: Sneferu Endures. The last, about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) north of the Southern Shining Pyramid, had the ancient name of the Shining Pyramid. Sneferu’s son, Khufu, built the pyramid called the Horizon of Khufu. The Bent Pyramid and its subterranean passage are also located topographically so that the distant southern horizon was nearly perfectly flat and unobscured. The subterranean passage under the Bent Pyramid has not been surveyed as extensively and repeatedly as has the subterranean passage under the Khufu Great Pyramid, thus we don’t know whether the Bent Pyramid passage may also be as precisely wrought as the Khufu Pyramid passage. *75 We do know, however, from measuring the structures that the builders of both of these giant pyramid complexes were capable of and in fact implemented great precision over long distances. If it can be shown, then, that the only two subterranean passages under the two key true giant pyramids were oriented to the same declination in the sky with the same high precision, then that alone would contribute evidence that the builders indeed had astronomical intent—whether or not that intent was Vega. In light of these findings, perhaps another survey of this aspect of the Bent Pyramid could further illuminate the origins of these two subterranean passages. We also note that the two other great pyramids on the Giza plateau, the Menkaure and Khafre pyramids, have shorter, less surgically precise subterranean passages that don’t extend down all the way under the center of their structures. Menkaure’s bedrock passage descends 31 meters (102 feet), about half of that length through the lower courses of masonry and the rest down into the bedrock at an angle of 26.03 degrees, and Khafre’s passage descends a much shorter distance at an angle of 25.92 degrees. These yield declinations to the sky of about half of one degree lower than their Great Pyramid partner, and the broader angular spread of their openings means that they would have captured the light of the culminating Vega during the same times as did the passage under Khufu’s pyramid. *76 Finally we must look at the dual nature of many aspects of the Bent Pyramid. First there is the bend in the slope of the pyramid itself. Further, the north descending entrance passage is bent, within the masonry of the lower part of the pyramid that is not bent, and the west entry passage is bent (from 30.15 degrees to 24.28 degrees), 15 also entirely within the lower courses of masonry that are not bent. Many Egyptologists believe that the Bent Pyramid was bent due to a series of accidents and poor planning of the construction, but there seems to be ample evidence that it was planned in its structure. As Schoch puts it: I suspect strongly that the Bent Pyramid was meant to be bent from the beginning. Unlike any other Egyptian pyramid, it expresses duality—two angles, two geometries, two tunnel and chamber complexes. There is something
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For my daughter, Candice, and my so
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book was not a
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More Mysteries at Nabta Playa The S
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INTRODUCTION ANCIENT EGYPT REBORN N
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1 STRANGE STONES In Nabta there are
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desert” emerge from the surroundi
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stage the CPE anthropologists were
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arguments—and especially on the B
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This time, some archaeologists took
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who’s who of famous men: it inclu
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huge rocky massif sprouting out of
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Almasy planned an expedition to Gil
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of Setu and Irtet after having expl
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Sahara, and their bones were brough
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Djedefre Water Mountain, as Bergama
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Figure 2.5. Abu Ballas Pottery Hill
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can imagine how these scholars felt
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followed by the same determinative
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The surface of the now-covered bedr
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indeed, one of the main objectives
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In addition to tumuli tombs of catt
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since fallen. The largest ones were
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ALIGNMENTS TOWARD THE STARS: WHEN A
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elated not only to the gates of the
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dates within thousands of years of
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the largest stone. Again, the dista
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thus sent in an order to Quickbird
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Finally, to our relief, the light f
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degrees and azimuth 22.5 degrees an
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associated with the heleical rising
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ight angle. After that date, Nabta
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also note that several megalithic a
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ceremonial complex of Nabta Playa.
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Figure 4.14. Bagnold Circle in, top
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have been placed by humans, possibl
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5 THE BIBLE, THE HAMITES, AND THE B
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Even allowing that scholars tend to
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May 11, 2001, vol. 292, no. 5519, p
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egions: the Nile Valley and the vas
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At any rate, suffice it to say that
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Page 85 and 86: Plate 2. Djedefre Water Mountain, c
Page 87 and 88: Plate 8. Robert Bauval with herder
Page 89 and 90: Plate 15. Models of cows, Eleventh
Page 91 and 92: Plate 22. The rock-cut tomb of Hark
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Page 99 and 100: Figure 5.3. Numerous prehistoric ha
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Page 107 and 108: pointed star, which represents Siri
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Page 113 and 114: Like the Nabta Playa prehistoric st
Page 115 and 116: y the astronomer Sir Norman Lockyer
Page 117 and 118: In appendix 1 we look in detail at
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Page 129 and 130: POSTSCRIPT DISCOVERY OF THE KIFAH C
Page 131 and 132: APPENDIX 1 BACK TO THE FIRST TIME V
Page 133: TAKE A WALK AT THE FIRST TIME WITH
Page 137 and 138: Pyramid at Zawiyet el-Aryan) is ass
Page 139 and 140: APPENDIX 2 SOTHIC CYCLES AND IMHOTE
Page 142 and 143: APPENDIX 3 SAVING NABTA PLAYA Will
Page 144 and 145: Figure A2. Rubbish dumps in the cen
Page 146 and 147: a huge pumping station (the Mubarak
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Page 154 and 155: Endnotes CHAPTER 1. STRANGE STONES
Page 156 and 157: Mentioning Yam and Tekhebet,” Sah
Page 158 and 159: 13. J. M. Malville, R. Schild, F. W
Page 160 and 161: 41. Thomas Brophy, The Mechanism De
Page 162 and 163: 34. G. A. Wainwright, “Seshat and
Page 164 and 165: 100. The story is told in the Westc
Page 166 and 167: Bibliography Abed, Wael T. The Othe
Page 168 and 169: Genzlinger, Neil. “Chasing Mummie
Page 170 and 171: Millennium: A Reassessment.” Jour
Page 172 and 173: About the Authors Egyptian-born Rob
Page 174 and 175: BOOKS OF RELATED INTEREST Lost Know
Page 176: Electronic edition produced by ePub
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