Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

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additon, according to Malville and the other authors, “The circle is too small to have functioned as a precise sighting device. The centre lines of the two windows have azimuths of 358Â° and 62Â°. Taking into account refraction, we estimate the azimuth of the first gleam of the summer solstice Sun 6,000 years before the present to have been 63.2Â°, which would have been visible through the slots of the circle.” 17 Figure 3.1. Approximate map of Calendar Circle showing the solstice gates and the meridian gates. Upper image is the Calendar Circle in its ruined state in 2008. Although we can say that the ancient builders intended the circle’s southeast gate to point to the rising sun on the longest day of the year, it is nonetheless an approximate alignment; the width of the gate varies 2 degrees in either direction and thus cannot be used for dating purposes with the sunrise because the changes in Earth obliquity over the past six thousand years is much less than 2 degrees. As a matter of fact, the approximate solstice alignment of the Calendar Circle is as valid today as it was six thousand years ago. It is also an exaggeration to call the stone circle a calendar simply because it has an alignment to the summer solstice. Indeed, neither the solstice gate nor the stone circle as a whole can be used as a calendar in the modern sense of the word. Further, although we, too, call it a Calendar Circle here, it seems that Malville’s Nabta Playa tag of “six-thousand-year-old calendar” was more influenced by the nearby excavations that contained artifacts that could be radiocarbon analyzed and were dated to this epoch than by the astronomical alignments of the stones. Actually, the only real astronomy that can be derived from the 1998 Nature letter is that Nabta Playa is located near the Tropic of Cancer, implying that the standing stones would cast no shadows at noon on the summer solstice (June 21), a feature that modern achaeoastronomers often considered as significant to ancient cultures. 18 Thus according to Malville and colleagues, “At this latitude, the Sun crosses the zenith on two days, approximately three weeks before and after the summer solstice. Vertical structures cast no shadows under the zenith Sun, and within the tropics the day of the zenith Sun is often regarded as a significant event.” 19 Truthfully, the only actual astronomy reported in the Nature letter was that a small stone circle had an approximate solstice alignment and stood near the Tropic of Cancer. This fact, on its own, was not extremely impressive. As one prize-winning archaeoastronomer put it recently at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society, “you can be a primitive ape man and make a solstice alignment!” implying that scholars should start with the assumption that the people of Nabta Playa were simply primitive brutes. Yet all paleoanthropologists agree that the human brain ten thousand or more years ago was essentially identical to our own brain, and, as professor emeritus Archibald Roy of Glasgow University often remarks, “there were Einsteins and Newtons then,” geniuses who were just as quick-thinking and astute as we are today but who had to apply their intelligence without the science and technology that we have. It is true that setting a few stones in rough alignment to the summer solstice did not require the power of an Enstein or a Newton, so what were the anthropologists of Nabta Playa really so excited about—as the 1998 Nature letter clearly implied? Apart from being perhaps the oldest astronomical site in the world, is it possible that something else at Nabta Playa had hinted to them that at the site there was much more there than meets the eye—which they were not yet ready to disclose? INEXPLICABLE CONSTRUCTIONS
In addition to tumuli tombs of cattle (see chapter 1), the CPE anthropologists also found collections of large, ovalshaped megaliths on top of the playa sediments, which they called complex structures (also see chapter 1). They had hoped that these were the top parts of tombs belonging to high-status individuals or even kings, but when they excavated beneath these complex structures, they were surprised to find not human or animal remains, as they had hoped, but strange sculpted lumps of bedrock some 4 meters (about 13 feet) below the ground. The largest of these complex structures, which the CPE had labeled Complex Structure A, or simply CSA, also contained buried underneath it a huge human-sculpted megalith, which was placed over the sculpted lump of bedrock that lay 4 meters (about 13 feet) under the surface! According to Fred Wendorf and colleagues, in CSA, “. . . [W]e found a sculptured rock, which has some resemblance to a cow. It was standing upright with its base 2 m [about 7 feet] below the surface, and its long axis was oriented a few degrees west of north. The rock had been blocked into place by two smaller slabs. Further beneath it, at a depth of 4 m [about 13 feet], the shaped table (bed) rock had a similar northward orientation.” 20 CSA consisted of a group of megalithic stones laid in oval formation on the surface of the ground. Below this oval structure, some 3 meters (about 10 feet) down, was buried the oddly shaped megalithic sculpture labeled the cow stone by the CPE. Directly beneath this cow stone sculpture there was a large, sculpted lump of bedrock that was still attached to the natural table rock strata that lay under the playa sediment. CSA was clearly the main feature of the whole ceremonial complex, for not only was it the largest megalithic structure at Nabta Playa, but it was also the focal point of several other megalithic stones alignments that had been placed upright in the playa sediments (but most of which people have toppled since). These aligned megaliths averaged 2 by 3 meters (7 by 10 feet) and were placed in rows running more than a kilometer (about 0.6 mile) toward the east and north horizons. They all radiated out of CSA like spokes of a bicycle wheel. The 1998 Nature letter gave the precise azimuths of five megalith lines, which seemed to imply some important symbolic meaning, although the CPE offered no suggestion as to what this might be. The only interpretation by Malville and colleagues was that “the megalithic complex may have been an expression of interconnections between the Sun, water, death, and the fertile Earth. . . .” 21 The Nature letter also pointed out that “no star was visible at the north celestial pole during most of the occupation at Nabta” 22 and made no mention of possible stellar orientation for the megalithic alignments. One of the megalithic alignments was reported to have an azimuth of 90.02 degrees, suggesting an incredibly high level of accuracy and knowledge of the cardinal direction east for observations without fine optical instruments. *5 Figure 3.2. Excavation of the cow stone central sculpture from Complex Structure A at Nabta Playa
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 and 14: desert” emerge from the surroundi
Page 15 and 16: stage the CPE anthropologists were
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: indeed, one of the main objectives
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
Page 65 and 66: also note that several megalithic a
Page 67 and 68: ceremonial complex of Nabta Playa.
Page 69 and 70: Figure 4.14. Bagnold Circle in, top
Page 71 and 72: have been placed by humans, possibl
Page 73 and 74: 5 THE BIBLE, THE HAMITES, AND THE B
Page 75 and 76: Even allowing that scholars tend to
Page 77 and 78: May 11, 2001, vol. 292, no. 5519, p
Page 79 and 80: egions: the Nile Valley and the vas
Page 81 and 82: At any rate, suffice it to say that
Page 83 and 84: perspective. We must also acknowled
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
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
Page 103 and 104:
arely kill their cattle for food ex
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to study the stars, perhaps even na
Page 107 and 108:
pointed star, which represents Siri
Page 109 and 110:
In the first century, some half-cen
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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
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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
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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
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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
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:
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