Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

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The vernal equinox heliacal rising of a star is also essentially the halfway mark between the star’s northern culmination when it is seen farthest north on Earth and the star’s southern culmination about thirteen thousand years later, when it is seen farthest south on Earth. As the people of Nabta Playa used and constructed the playa basin to teach about, study, and employ in ritual ceremony the starry sky and heavens, there were certainly smaller, temporary stone constructions there all the time. When the primary asterism they used to conceptualize how the sky moves, Orion’s belt, passed that special time in its cycle—vernal equinox heliacal rising—the time was best to create monumental megalithic alignments that would last through the ages. At the time of the height of the Calendar Circle at Nabta Playa, Orion’s belt and Sirius were separated in declination, and so rising azimuth, by an angle of less than 2 degrees. Consequently, they passed horizon alignments separated by only a couple of hundred years. Figure 4.9. Left, the Sirius plus Alkaid alignment ca. 6100 BCE; right, the Orion stars and Vega depicted at one date ca. 6270 BCE. From that epoch, the Orion stars all move through vernal equinox heliacal risings, as the Vega rising line moves southeast over the megalith alignments. Another association with the date of 6100 BCE is that the rising of the bright circumpolar star Vega was in line with the A2 megaliths as Orion’s belt began rising over the C1 line. *20 Figure 4.10. The star-studded ceiling in Tepi I pyramid at Saqqara (Sixth Dynasty) In summary, at Nabta Playa in 4500 BCE and 3500 BCE there were megalith alignments (B1 and B2) oriented to the rising of Sirius that ran eastward (as suggested by Malville and his coauthors in 2007), and we have shown that these alignments were used simultaneously with—and formed right angles with—megalith alignments (A1 and A3) to the star Dubhe, which ran northward. It also seems that in 6100 BCE megalith alignment C1 was directed to the rising of Sirius, which was used simultaneously with the star Alkaid in the north. In addition, in 6200 BCE line C1 may also have been
associated with the heleical rising of Orion’s belt at the spring (vernal) equinox. We have seen that these Orion’s-belt alignments for C1 were consistent with the use of this stellar asterism in the Calendar Circle at that same epoch. It seems, then, that the C1 megaliths were either off the playa and thus not affected by the heavy playa sedimentation period or were remnants of much earlier ceremonial structures (as was Complex Structure A). *21 These findings and conclusions are perhaps better visualized in the table format below. MEGALITH MALVILLE AND LINE WENDORF ET AL (2007) MEGALITH ALIGNMENTS AT NABTA PLAYA OUR MEASUREMENTS ASSOCIATION (2005) A1 30.6 degrees 30.00 degrees Dubhe simultaneous to Sirius rising ca. 4500 BCE Alkaid simultaneous to Sirius rising ca. 6100 BCE; also, Vega ca. 5840 A2 28.1 degrees 27.68 degrees BCE autumnal equinox heliacal rising; also, Dubhe simultaneous with Sirius rising ca. 4000 BCE A3 26.3 degrees 25.86 degrees Dubhe simultaneous to Sirius rising ca. 3500 BCE B1 120.1 degrees 121.11 degrees Sirius rising ca. 4500 BCE, with Dubhe at line A1 B2 116.6 degrees 117.49 degrees Sirius rising circa 3500 BCE, with Dubhe at line A3 C1 125.4 degrees (2001) 130.1 degrees Sirius rising ca. 6100 BCE, with Alkaid at line A2; also, Orion’s belt at vernal equinox heliacal rising ca. same epoch We can see from this table that the megalithic alignments at Nabta Playa represent a coherent and consistent ensemble that has meaning when it is deciphered with astronomy. Clearly the alignments, instead of being random, are carefully made to target the rising of stars that were important ritualistically and also practically to the ancient people of Nabta Playa. The anthropologists of the CPE as well as other archaeoastronomers who have carefully studied this site are all in agreement: Nabta Playa was an important ceremonial center that required considerable complex social organization, physical effort, and resources to construct and maintain over a long period of time. It thus is sensible to conclude that embodied in the design of the ceremonial complex is some very high meaning that can be read with astronomy. As we will see later this system of knowledge—we can perhaps call it star knowledge—at Nabta Playa was carried forward in time and space to the pharaonic civilization of the Nile Valley. Meanwhile we’ll take an initial look at a well-known star ritual from ancient Egypt that shows how and why Sirius and a star in the Big Dipper, Dubhe, were used simultaneously to align sacred megalithic monuments from earliest times harking back to 3200 BCE and perhaps even earlier . . . just as they were used at Nabta Playa. A RIGHT ANGLE AND TWO STARS The simultaneous observation of Sirius rising in the east and a star of the Big Dipper in the northern sky is a strong, nontangible piece of evidence that shows a direct link between the prehistory of the Sahara and the archaic period of ancient Egypt and the great civilization that ensued from it. At one end of this link is the ceremonial complex of Nabta Playa and at the other end is the earliest ceremonial complex in the Nile Valley on the Island of Elephantine near Aswan. In chapter 6 we will look directly at this link, but for now we will look at an important early Egyptian ritual known as stretching the cord, because it is likely that in this lies the very source of why and how the simultaneous observation of two stars was used by the Egyptians and, earlier, by the people of Nabta Playa in association with the astronomical alignment of megalithic structures. The ancient Egyptian texts and temple reliefs explain that stretching the cord was carried out by a priestess, who represented a deity associated with the stars, and the pharaoh. Both the priestess and pharaoh held a rod and a mallet, and a rope or cord was looped between the rods. The priestess stood with her back to the northern sky and faced the pharaoh. This scene is depicted on many temples, and the texts alongside it tell us that the pharaoh observed the trajectory of the stars with his eye in order to establish the temple in the manner of ancient times. In the texts we are unequivocally told that the king looked at a star in the Big Dipper (called Mesekhtiu, the Bull’s Thigh). Some of the texts, however, mention the star Sirius and imply that it also was somehow involved in the ritual. Exactly how was this stellar alignment ritual performed? Was the king aiming his gaze at a star in the Big Dipper
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For my daughter, Candice, and my so
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book was not a
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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
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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: degrees and azimuth 22.5 degrees an
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
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Page 99 and 100: Figure 5.3. Numerous prehistoric ha
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Page 107 and 108: pointed star, which represents Siri
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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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