Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

elated not only to the gates of the Calendar Circle but also, perhaps, to the whole ceremonial complex at Nabta Playa.
Yet we did not know how best to approach the meaning of these stones. We knew that one of the pitfalls of
investigations of ancient cultures is first to entertain preconceived ideas about what their capabilities and knowledge
were. We saw in chapter 3 how the CPE made this mistake ragarding the megalithic constructions at Nabta Playa, which
they saw as natural outcrops of rock, because they had assumed that “building large stone monuments was not expected
among such groups.” 2 Further, although the CPE anthropologists did eventually realize their mistake and understood that
these megaliths were constructions that had been created by the prehistoric people of Nabta Playa, their preconceived
ideas resulted in the delay of the advancement of knowledge by several decades.
How many times has this sort of obstinate blockage occurred in archaeology? Perhaps the most bald-faced one was
when, in 1993, Rudolf Gantenbrink, an independent robotics engineer, explored one of the star shafts in the Great
Pyramid and discovered at its end a small trap door with handles. “There is nothing behind this door!” cried German
Egyptologist Rainer Stadelmann, who was in charge of the exploration. More than seventeen years later, the world is still
waiting to know what might be hidden at the end of the star shaft. We were determined not to make the same blunder
ourselves.
The Nature letter concluded that the Calendar Circle had an astronomical function of some sort. Thus we
approached those six stones in its center as a straightforward astronomy puzzle—that is, we determined not to presume to
know in advance what the Neolithic people who built it could have been aware of or what they were thinking or why they
were arranging the stones as they were. For the purpose of solving the puzzle of the Calendar Circle, we determined
simply to consider human-made stones on the ground and astronomy in the sky. *7
We decided that if we found a solution to the astronomy puzzle, then we could consider whether it fit in with the
rest of the archaeological and anthropological evidence. It occurred to us that the first step toward solving the astronomy
puzzle would be to assume that the six upright stones inside the Calendar Circle had been placed in position to work with
the astronomical alignments of the gates. In other words, the two rows of central upright stones should somehow have
been connected to the summer solstice sunrise and the north-south meridian directions when the Calendar Circle was
built. Yet why would the ancient builders place six upright stones inside a circle that marked time with the summer
solstice and that marked place with the meridian?
When we look at the Calendar Circle from directly above, the two sets of upright stones inside it appear analogous
to the dials of a petrified giant clock. In the same way a police detective may examine the dials of a broken wristwatch or
the pointers of a broken compass to determine the time and place of the crime, we decided to examine the two rows of
upright stones in the frozen Calendar Circle to determine when and where in the sky the ancient astronomer-priests may
have looked when they designed this astronomical stone instrument. What could they have seen on the meridian of the
sky during the summer solstice that could be represented by these upright stones? We knew from our previous studies
that much later the ancient Egyptians of the nearby Nile Valley paid particular attention to the summer solstice, because it
was during this time of year that the annual flooding of the Nile irrigated the land and brought sustenance to the crops.
We also knew that this yearly hydraulic miracle was marked by the appearance of three prominent stars at dawn—those
we today call Orion’s belt. We can recall how the monsoon rains that drenched the Sahara and refilled the dry lakes in
midsummer were of vital importance to the prehistoric people of Nabta Playa. In fact the very same monsoon rains also
filled the great lakes of central Africa, which were the source of the Nile, and brought the annual flood to Egypt. Could
the prehistoric people of Nabta Playa have seen the dawn appearance of Orion’s belt as a marker of the annual rains, as
did the ancient Egyptians later with the annual Nile’s flood? More specifically, could the three stars of Orion’s belt be
correlated to one of the sets of three stones in the Calendar Circle? The three stars of Orion’s belt were equidistance from
each other, as were the three upright stones inside the Calendar Circle. *8
This was, to say the very least, a tantalizing invitation to see a deliberate correlation between stars and stones. As we
began to analyze the possibility, the puzzle of the Calendar Circle astronomy immediately began to yield.
We imagined using the Calendar Circle as an astronomical instrument, and we set our astronomical software to the
earliest date possible for it: 4712 BCE, at the latitude of Nabta Playa. This was close to the date that the CPE had
allocated to the Calendar Circle by radiocarbon analysis. We then looked at our computer simulation of the ancient sky.
We imagined ourselves kneeling on the outside of the Calendar Circle and looking at the summer solstice sunrise
through the set of gates that were directed northeast. We then imagined ourselves moving around the Calendar Circle and
looking through the other set of gates toward the meridian in the sky. We set our computer screen to look at the south
meridian—and there it was, close to the meridian: Orion’s belt!