Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

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Figure A2. Rubbish dumps in the central area of Nabta Playa, 2008. Figure A3. Top: Calendar Circle, November 2007. Bottom: Calendar Circle, April 2008. The arrangement has been altered yet again and has been partially reconstructed. Bauval decided to return to Nabta Playa on May 8, 2008, to assess the situation. He was thus able to confirm that the Calendar Circle had, indeed, been much tampered with and that there were signs of other disruption on the site. A prehistoric stone sundial that he had photographed in November 2007 was badly ravaged. In addition there were heavy vehicle tracks around the megaliths and several open rubbish dumps near the sand dunes. Elsewhere a prehistoric grinding block was missing and another was broken in two. Bauval decided to go to the Nubian Museum at Aswan the next day to ask the director what had happened at Nabta Playa between November 2007 and April 2008. In the afternoon of May 9, 2008, Bauval met Deputy Director Dr. Ragheb of the Nubian Museum. He informed Bauval that, upon instructions from Dr. Schild, three large megaliths from Nabta Playa had been brought to the Nubian Museum in February 2008. Dr. Ragheb showed Bauval the three megaliths, which were in the yard of the museum. Dr. Ragheb also showed Bauval a large megalith known as the cow stone, which had been brought from Nabta Playa several years before. This cow stone, which had been buried several meters beneath CSA, had unfortunately been damaged (broken into two parts). When Bauval inquired about the Calendar Circle, Dr. Ragheb insisted that the stones had not been removed and were still in their original position on site. Dr. Ragheb knew nothing of the rubbish dumps. Soon after, Bauval contacted Romuald Schild. In a series of e-mails received from Dr. Schild between May 15 and June 12, 2008, Bauval was informed that the CPE had been aware that unauthorized visits to Nabta Playa by tourists had taken place over the years. According to Schild, an estimated one thousand unauthorized tourists had come to Nabta Playa in the past decade, and there was evidence that they had tampered with the Calendar Circle several times and had even made a reconstruction and built a New Age stone circle around an upright prehistoric marker near C-group house. Schild added that the original Calendar Circle was removed from its place in February 2008 to be reconstructed in the Nubian Museum. In its place the CPE had added a modern reconstruction of this monument. Apart from this, Schild stated that he did not know of any very recent, serious damages except for some bulldozer work around the stele that were removed in February to be re-erected at the Nubian Museum in Aswan. As to why Dr. Ragheb denied that the
Calendar Circle had been moved to the Nubian Museum, Schild offered that either Dr. Ragheb did not want to disclose the information to Bauval or that he had misunderstood Bauval’s question. Schild insisted that “the calendar, and other selected Nabta monuments, had been removed from their original place on February 18, 2008, in my presence as well as in the presence of a number of the members of the Expedition and a Special High Committee of the Supreme Council of Antiquities headed by an Undersecretary of State. The entire removal was filmed and intensively photographed. The antiquities were immediately taken to the Nubian Museum in Aswan in a separate convoy escorted by the police. Dr. Osama, Director of the Museum, received the convoy and its load at the Museum.” 1 Figure A4. Top: Robert Bauval and the director of the Nubian Museum with the broken cow stone scupture, April 2008. Bottom: Bauval and John Anthony West examine a piece of the broken cow stone at the Nubian Museum in 2003. Figure A5. Left: Prehistoric grinding block seen near Nabta Playa in 2007. Right: A similar grinding block used as an ashtray at a hotel. As for the rubbish on the site, Schild at first offered that it had been left by tourists. When Bauval, however, said that the evidence pointed to the rubbish being from the CPE, Schild offered that perhaps it had been interred in a pit and now, for some unknown reason, someone had excavated the pits and exposed the rubbish. On June 12, Bauval received an email from Dr. Schild in which Schild stated that “since May 2007 I am not heading the CPE any more, although, I have been responsible for some of the projects carried out by the CPE, like the archaeological operations undertaken in conjunction with the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, i.e., salvage of Nabta monuments.” It was also at this stage that Dr. Schild informed Bauval, “Nabta has been earmarked for an extensive reclamation, i.e., total destruction, as a part of the Tushka project.” Since 1997, the Egyptian government has launched a series of large civil engineering projects to reclaim the arid Western Desert and turn 1.5 million acres into agricultural land. The projects are broadly divided into two parts: (1) to build a canal fed by Lake Nasser that will deliver billions of cubic meters of water to irrigate various regions of the desert as far north as the Qattara Depression, and (2) to extract groundwater from natural aquifers, mostly from the east Uwainat region, a few hundred kilometers west of Abu Simbel. To date the first phase of the canal project, known as the Sheikh Zayed Canal, has been completed. It involves a 70-meter-wide (230-feet-wide) concrete-lined canal that is fed by
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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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perspective. We must also acknowled
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Plate 2. Djedefre Water Mountain, c
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Plate 8. Robert Bauval with herder
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Plate 15. Models of cows, Eleventh
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Plate 22. The rock-cut tomb of Hark
Page 93 and 94: wagging tail. We found them on the
Page 95 and 96: BCE to 2500 BCE. What she found odd
Page 97 and 98: eassure us that all is not lost, af
Page 99 and 100: Figure 5.3. Numerous prehistoric ha
Page 101 and 102: themselves, our drivers uttered a b
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Page 107 and 108: pointed star, which represents Siri
Page 109 and 110: In the first century, some half-cen
Page 111 and 112: Egyptologists have established that
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
Page 119 and 120: esynchronized every 1,460 years—t
Page 121 and 122: ÷ 10 = 3.9 years for the calendar
Page 123 and 124: ole, he was known as Hor-Akhti, Hor
Page 125 and 126: The rounded planisphere that is see
Page 127 and 128: topped mound whose midpoint and end
Page 129 and 130: POSTSCRIPT DISCOVERY OF THE KIFAH C
Page 131 and 132: APPENDIX 1 BACK TO THE FIRST TIME V
Page 133 and 134: TAKE A WALK AT THE FIRST TIME WITH
Page 135 and 136: alignment is part of a symbolic sys
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 146 and 147: a huge pumping station (the Mubarak
Page 148 and 149: In actual practice, though, the dev
Page 150 and 151: are not now capable of this percept
Page 152 and 153: *53. Actually, it is 365.242 days,
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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