Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

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Figure 4.6. The excavation debris from CSA, in satellite image, with one of the megaliths as seen on the ground in April 2008 Wondering what the ancient people who had once lived there would have thought of us, on a chilly dawn carrying a handheld GPS, we set out on foot from our campsite to the world’s oldest astronomical site. It seemed to us that the ancients would have been totally at ease moving around in the dark, using the stars for navigation, while we, with all our technological know-how, moved clumsily in the dark, clinging to our GPS tracking device in order not to get lost in this no-man’s-land of empty desert. Five kilometers (about 3 miles) can seem a very long way to those trekking on foot and in the dark in one of the most vast and hostile environments on Earth. After a while, when we lost complete sight of our camp, and as we surveyed the horizon as a backup to our GPS navigation, the Egyptian inspector began to get somewhat nervous. He wrongly interpreted that we were totally lost, but we quickly reassured him that, with our GPS navigation, we knew exactly where we were. As we continued to trek in the dark, however, our reassurances failed to calm the inspector, and he began insisting that we should walk in a different direction. A serious dispute ensued. We stopped listening to the inspector’s lament and decided to focus on our GPS indicator. We told him that he could go in a different direction if he wanted to or follow us with our GPS. After some deliberation, he decided to follow us, but with the caveat that his protest had been duly registered. Figure 4.7. Satellite image of the area of Nabta Playa containing the megalith alignments. Left, satellite image with black gridlines for measuring; right, the megalith alignments and the Calendar Circle appear labeled, but the circle stones are too small to be seen in the satellite image.
Finally, to our relief, the light from the growing dawn was strong enough for us to spot in the distance the first megaliths of Complex Structure A. The inspector beamed at us, and with a broad gesture of his hand to express his excitement and approval, he seemed to tell us that all the previous animosity toward us was quickly forgotten. We had at long last arrived at Nabta Playa, but our work was only just beginning. We estimated it would take all morning and several more kilometers of fast walking in this vast complex to get all the GPS readings and photographs needed for our purpose. Slowly and diligently, we recorded the GPS of all the megaliths, and we also had enough time before noon to investigate a mysterious feature beneath the largest megalith at Nabta Playa—labeled X-1—that had shown up on the Quickbird satellite image. The day was now becoming seriously hot, but we pressed on to visit the Calendar Circle and took some photographs for our own use. When we were satisfied that we had all the information and photographs we wanted, we rendezvoused with the jeeps, and after a quick sandwich break and refreshments, we headed south to connect with the new tarmac road that would take us to the city of Aswan on the Nile. Back home in California, we carefully analyzed our GPS field measurements and compared the results to those obtained from the Quickbird image and found them to be in agreement (although we had to make a small correction for the very slight error in the satellite’s pointing vector from space). We now had multiple corroborating coordinate readings for all the megaliths, and, armed with this data, we were able to determine their exact alignments, satisfied that at last we could do this with certainty. We found that the 2001 CPE report included raw GPS coordinates for the megaliths that were fairly accurate, but azimuth calculations derived from them were incorrect. Correcting this error yielded a completely new set of dates for the stellar alignments of the six rows of megaliths. Most significant was the alignment to the rising of Sirius. Malville and Wendorf had proposed that one of the megalith lines, C1, was directed toward the rising of Sirius in about 4820 BCE, but our calculations showed a much earlier date of around 6090 BCE. At this point we sought the support from a close colleague, Paul Rosen, from our previous interplanetary robotic space mission work, who was now a leader in spacecraft radar remote sensing technology. Together in June 2005 we published the new results for the Nabta Playa megalith alignments in a peer-reviewed academic journal. 10 Because our results showed that the megalith alignments given by Malville and Wendorf were substantially in error, we proposed a new set of dates for around 6200 BCE for the stellar targets that fit the corrected data. *14 Although we were pleased to see that in 2007 Wendorf and Malville (with Schild and Brenmer of the CPE) formally acknowledged their errors and accepted our corrected calculations for the azimuths of the six lines of megaliths, they nonetheless rejected our earlier date of circa 6200 BCE, because, they point out, some of the megaliths in the alignments were on top of playa sediment that was dated to approximately 5100 BCE, and also 6200 BCE is “about 1500 years earlier than our best estimates for the Terminal Neolithic.” *15 Even though we do accept that some of the megaliths were placed after the sedimentation of the playa’s basin, we also note that in their 2007 article Wendorf, Malville, and their coauthors suggested (as we also did earlier) that the original part of Complex Structure A, which is the center of all the megalith alignments and is part of the bedrock beneath the playa sediments, was “part of the symbolic landscape of the Middle Neolithic and became significant before the establishment of the complex ceremonial centre. Perhaps their locations had been marked by rock cairns before gradual burial by playa sediments.” 11 This indicates that there was much activity at Nabta Playa during earlier epochs, which is in any case confirmed by many radiocarbon dates, with most clustered around 6000 BCE. 12 On this basis, and also on the dating of circa 6200 BCE obtained from the corrected calculations, we reject the notion that none of the megaliths at Nabta Playa could have predated terminal Neolithic time, because most of the field evidence shows that parts of the ceremonial complex were indeed created before the terminal Neolithic. SIRIUS, THE CIRCUMPOLAR STARS, AND ORION We now felt that we were in a good position to integrate our and the CPE’s field findings and derive from them the most robust interpretation that fits the context of Nabta Playa. The findings that emerge from this integrated analysis are: 1. There are at least nine megaliths that form the three lines—A1, A2, and A3—that point north. These track the star Dubhe in the Big Dipper over a considerable period of time. 2. There are at least six megaliths that form lines B1 and B2 pointing southeast. These track the bright star Sirius at two epochs.
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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 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: thus sent in an order to Quickbird
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
Page 105 and 106: 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
Page 162 and 163:
34. G. A. Wainwright, “Seshat and
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100. The story is told in the Westc
Page 166 and 167:
Bibliography Abed, Wael T. The Othe
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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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