Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

Figure 3.3. Upper left: Thomas Brophy with one of the megaliths that composed the surface of Complex Structure A
(CSA). Upper right: Artist’s depiction of a Complex Structure surface arrangement of megaliths. Middle left: Artist’s
depiction of CSA as it was before excavation, looking west, as if seeing through the sediments. The cow stone
sculpture is suspended in the sediments between the surface of the ground (top of image) and the bedrock sculpture
(bottom of image). Middle right: CSA viewed looking north. Bottom: Excavators’ line drawing of CSA, cow stone
sculpture, and bedrock sculpture, looking west (at left) and looking north (at right). (Artist depictions by Doug Thompson
for Carmen Boulter. Line drawings courtesy of the CPE, adapted from Wendorf and Schild eds., Holocene Settlement
of the Egyptian Sahara, vol. 1, “The Complex Structures or Shrines” by Fred Wendorf and Halina Krolik, p. 509.)
We were a bit apprehensive of the many inconsistencies in the 1998 Nature letter and also wondered why no
suggestion was made for any possible alignments to stars. As it turned out, however, this was to come a few years later
from the CPE. 23
THE 2001 OFFICIAL SITE REPORT: RELUCTANT INTRODUCTION OF THE
STARS
In 2001, two years after the Nature letter and twenty-five years after the discovery of Nabta Playa itself, the CPE finally
published an extensive report of their excavations in book format edited by Fred Wendorf and Romuald Schild. It
included the contributions of twenty-two articles by various participants in the archaeological work at Nabta Playa since
its discovery.
One article in the book, titled “The Megalithic Alignments,” was coauthored by Wendorf and Malville and gave a
description of the various megalithic structures—and discussed stellar alignments at Nabta Playa. Indeed, the megalithic
alignments that were now declared to have such stellar alignments were all those that radiated from CSA. Seen as a
whole, CSA itself was the most elaborate member of a group of about thirty complex structures built in the playa silts
and covering an area of about two football fields. This area was located some 2 kilometers (about 1 mile) south of the
Calendar Circle and included the rows of megalithic alignments that emanated 2 kilometers from CSA to the northeast
and southwest. With stellar alignments now identified at Nabta Playa, the site took on a completely new meaning and
importance, which, even at this early stage, suggested there was some deep message—symbolic or practical—that had to
be understood and interpreted. Before we investigate this message further, we must first familiarize ourselves in more
detail with the thirty or so complex structures at Nabta Playa, which were the subject of another article in the CPE book
written by Wendorf and Krolik. 24
According to this article, each complex structure consisted of a cluster of megaliths arranged in an oval shape that
measured some 5 to 7 meters (16 to 23 feet) long and 4 to 6 meters (13 to 20 feet) wide, with the longer axis oriented to
a position slightly offset from the north-south meridian. The megaliths in each cluster were either placed on top of the
playa silts or had been embedded in it. Some of the stones were still standing at the time of the article, but many have