Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

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As the author John Anthony West once remarked, archaeologists can have blindered views and miss the obvious: “[I]f you are bent on looking only for potatoes in a field of diamonds, you will miss seeing the diamonds!” 4 To be fair to the CPE, though, the anthropo logical and archaeological evidence so far was in itself exciting stuff. Carbon-14 dating resulted in dates as far back as 7000 BCE and as recent as 3400 BCE, showing an on-and-off presence at Nabta Playa over an incredible span of years: more than three and a half millennia. The evidence at Nabta Playa also showed that at first, people came seasonally, when the lake was filled by the monsoon summer rains, arriving probably in July and staying until January, when the lake dried up again. Eventually, sometime around 6500 BCE, they figured out how to stay at Nabta Playa permanently by digging deep wells. Around 3300 BCE, however, the changes in climate made the region extremely arid, and Nabta Playa had to be abandoned. The mysterious people simply vanished, leaving behind their ceremonial complex that the CPE had discovered more than five millennia later. Its members were now at odds to understand the function and meaning of the complex. First the CPE was baffled by the dozen or so oval-shaped tumuli at the north side of Nabta Playa. These looked like flattened igloos made of rock debris and covered with flat slabs of stones. More baffling still was when one of these tumuli was excavated by the CPE. It was found to contain the complete skeletal remains of a young cow, and other tumuli also contained scattered bones of cattle. Wendorf christened the area “the wadi of sacrifices” and concluded that these cattle burials and offerings appear to indicate the presence of a cattle cult. Radiocarbon dating placed these cow burials at around 5500 BCE, thus at least two thousand years before the emergence of the well-known cattle cults of ancient Egypt, such as those of the cow-faced goddess Hathor, the universally known goddess Isis, and the sky goddess Nut. 5 There were also strange clusters of large stones at the western part of Nabta Playa—about thirty of them, which the CPE called complex structures. When some of these were excavated the CPE found, to its great astonishment, that these structures had been deliberately placed over natural rock outcrops that were 3 to 5 meters (about 10 to 16 feet) below the surface of the earth. Furthermore, it seemed that these strange rock outcrops had actually been smoothed to “mushroomlike” shapes by human hands! The largest of these so-called complex structures was named Complex Structure A (CSA). When excavated it was found to contain, at a depth of 3 meters, a large, rough stone sculpture carved to look something like a cow and placed above the sculpted rock outcrop. Moreover, emanating from Complex Structure A were a series of stone alignments that shot out like spokes from a bicycle wheel for several hundred meters, with some projecting toward the north and others toward the east. Figure 1.1. Prehistoric palette found at Gerzeh, ca. 4000–3000 BCE, thought to represent the goddess Hathor. There was more, however. The now-famous part of Nabta Playa, its pièce de résistance, was a small stone circle at the northwest part of the site, which looked a bit like a mini Stonehenge. The standing stones—twenty-nine of them—that formed the circle contained four gates, which created lines of sight that ran east–west and north–south. Placed in the center of the circle were two rows of three upright stones each (six stones in total), which gave the whole arrangement the appearance of the dial of a giant clock. Some of the stones had clearly been displaced, perhaps by vandals, and so the CPE invited a young and gifted anthropologist from the University of Arizona, Dr. Nieves Zedeño, to help them reconstruct the circle to its original form of millennia ago. Clearly this was no ordinary prehistoric structure. At this
stage the CPE anthropologists were completely baffled as to what purpose it might have served. Wendorf and Schild were now beginning to suspect that the whole of Nabta Playa might have less to do with anthropology and more to do with astronomy. So, in 1997, they finally sought the help of an astronomer from the University of Colorado in Boulder, Dr. Kim Malville, who was known for his specialized studies on the astronomy of prehistoric sites. They were in for a big surprise. Figure 1.2. Schild with Calendar Circle, Nabta Playa, winter 1999 Figure 1.3. Artist’s graphic depiction of the Calendar Circle, based on the archaelogical reconstruction map of Applegate and Zedeño. Graphics by Doug Thompson for Carmen Boulter. Reconstructing the Calendar Circle There has been a certain amount of controversy as to what exactly happened during and after the reconstruction of the circle (called the Calendar Circle) at Nabta Playa. In June 2008 the authors contacted Dr. Zedeño and asked her if, because there appeared to have been much tampering with the Calendar Circle (especially in 2007–2008), she might help work out what happened from the time the circle was discovered (in 1974) to the publication of Malville‘s article in Nature in 1998. it was noted to Dr. Zedeño that in February 2008 the Calendar Circle was removed from its original place at Nabta Playa and transported to the Nubian Museum in Aswan. Dr. Zedeño replied in a personal corresponence to Robert Bauval: “I mapped the calendar in the winter of 1991– 1992. I never saw it again, or before that date for that matter, so I don’t know what happened to it. No idea what the cow
Page 3 and 4: For my daughter, Candice, and my so
Page 5 and 6: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book was not a
Page 7 and 8: More Mysteries at Nabta Playa The S
Page 9 and 10: INTRODUCTION ANCIENT EGYPT REBORN N
Page 11 and 12: 1 STRANGE STONES In Nabta there are
Page 13: desert” emerge from the surroundi
Page 17 and 18: arguments—and especially on the B
Page 19 and 20: This time, some archaeologists took
Page 21 and 22: who’s who of famous men: it inclu
Page 23 and 24: huge rocky massif sprouting out of
Page 25 and 26: Almasy planned an expedition to Gil
Page 27 and 28: of Setu and Irtet after having expl
Page 29 and 30: Sahara, and their bones were brough
Page 31 and 32: Djedefre Water Mountain, as Bergama
Page 33 and 34: Figure 2.5. Abu Ballas Pottery Hill
Page 35 and 36: can imagine how these scholars felt
Page 37 and 38: followed by the same determinative
Page 39 and 40: The surface of the now-covered bedr
Page 41 and 42: indeed, one of the main objectives
Page 43 and 44: In addition to tumuli tombs of catt
Page 45 and 46: since fallen. The largest ones were
Page 47 and 48: ALIGNMENTS TOWARD THE STARS: WHEN A
Page 49 and 50: elated not only to the gates of the
Page 51 and 52: dates within thousands of years of
Page 53 and 54: the largest stone. Again, the dista
Page 55 and 56: thus sent in an order to Quickbird
Page 57 and 58: Finally, to our relief, the light f
Page 59 and 60: degrees and azimuth 22.5 degrees an
Page 61 and 62: associated with the heleical rising
Page 63 and 64: 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
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wagging tail. We found them on the
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BCE to 2500 BCE. What she found odd
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eassure us that all is not lost, af
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Figure 5.3. Numerous prehistoric ha
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themselves, our drivers uttered a b
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arely kill their cattle for food ex
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to study the stars, perhaps even na
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pointed star, which represents Siri
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In the first century, some half-cen
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Egyptologists have established that
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Like the Nabta Playa prehistoric st
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y the astronomer Sir Norman Lockyer
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In appendix 1 we look in detail at
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esynchronized every 1,460 years—t
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÷ 10 = 3.9 years for the calendar
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ole, he was known as Hor-Akhti, Hor
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The rounded planisphere that is see
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topped mound whose midpoint and end
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POSTSCRIPT DISCOVERY OF THE KIFAH C
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APPENDIX 1 BACK TO THE FIRST TIME V
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TAKE A WALK AT THE FIRST TIME WITH
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alignment is part of a symbolic sys
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Pyramid at Zawiyet el-Aryan) is ass
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APPENDIX 2 SOTHIC CYCLES AND IMHOTE
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APPENDIX 3 SAVING NABTA PLAYA Will
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Figure A2. Rubbish dumps in the cen
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a huge pumping station (the Mubarak
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In actual practice, though, the dev
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are not now capable of this percept
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*53. Actually, it is 365.242 days,
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Endnotes CHAPTER 1. STRANGE STONES
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Mentioning Yam and Tekhebet,” Sah
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13. J. M. Malville, R. Schild, F. W
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41. Thomas Brophy, The Mechanism De
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34. G. A. Wainwright, “Seshat and
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100. The story is told in the Westc
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Bibliography Abed, Wael T. The Othe
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Genzlinger, Neil. “Chasing Mummie
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Millennium: A Reassessment.” Jour
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About the Authors Egyptian-born Rob
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BOOKS OF RELATED INTEREST Lost Know
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