Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

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while, simultaneously, the priestess announced the moment of the rising of Sirius, after which the cord between them was stretched and the rods were hammered into the soil, thus fixing the axis of the future temple? A further clue to the ritual is that the pharaoh observed carefully the motion of a star in real time. Inscriptions on the Temple of Horus at Edfu, accompanying portrayals of the ritual, quote the pharaoh: “I take the measuring cord in the company of Seshat. I consider the progressive movement of the stars. My eye is fixed on the Bull’s Thigh constellation. I count off time, scrutinizing the clock . . .” 15 This is also what might have happened at the ceremonial center of Nabta Playa thousands of years earlier. An observer who was standing at Complex Structure A held a rod with a rope attached to it. Another observer, also holding a rod, stood some twenty paces north of the first observer with his or her back to the Big Dipper. This second observer then waited for Sirius to rise, and, at that precise moment, he or she gave the signal to the first observer to stretch the cord and aim it toward a star in the Big Dipper. Then, when the alignment was achieved, the first observer was to fix the rod in the soil. Later, a row of megaliths would be set along this alignment. On another day, this ritual was repeated to set an alignment toward the rising spot of Sirius on the horizon as seen from CSA. Thus the two lines of stone work together, one going north (line A) and the other southeast (line B). This interpretation is consistent with the ancient texts that describe that the Dubhe alignment required real-time observing of the star in the sky, whereas Sirius rising on the horizon is more easily set. These two lines also form a rough right angle, a feature that surely would have been noticed and intriguing. The relation of Dubhe and Sirius We can go back in time to approximately 9000 BCE , when the north celestial pole is near the shoulders of the constellation Hercules. Dubhe rises many hours before Sirius and is very high in the sky when Sirius rises, and Dubhe’s declination is so far from north that Dubhe and the whole Bull’s Thigh constellation are far from being circumpolar stars. If we turn the clock forward to around 4500 BCE , the celestial pole has moved so that it is close to the Bull’s Thigh constellation, Dubhe has moved north in declination to become a circumpolar star, and Dubhe is decreasing in altitude so that it is at only 33 degrees altitude when Sirius rises, as seen at Nabta. The low altitude of Dubhe when Sirius is on the horizon means that the angular separation of the two stars in the sky is essentially preserved in the angle of their alignments on the ground. Figure 4.11. The right-angled megalith alignments of Sirius and Dubhe at 4500 BCE and at 3500 BCE as the stars moved through precession Indeed, any architect or designer will readily agree that right angles are universally recognized by humans not least because they define, among many other things, the four cardinal directions of Earth. Sirius rising may have been marked by the star Alkaid in the Big Dipper from the seventh millennium BCE to about 4800 BCE, but after that date and until 3500 BCE the star Dubhe in the Big Dipper replaced Alkaid, and it was noticed that Dubhe and Sirius always formed a
ight angle. After that date, Nabta Playa and the ceremonial complex were abandoned. *22 ONE YEAR OF ASTRONOMY AT NABTA PLAYA Now suppose you are viewing the various astronomical events during one year at Nabta Playa—say, 4500 BCE. You begin your observing year on the afternoon of the winter solstice. You intend to use the Calendar Circle that night, and so you observe that the winter solstice sun sets into the solstice gates of the circle and the sky begins to darken. You move to the north end of the circle to use the meridian gates as your sky-viewing guide, and over the next forty-five minutes the sky becomes dark enough that the stars seem to pop out around you. Then, fifty-five minutes after sunset, directly on the meridian, you see the belt of Orion shining into the deepening dark, oriented very much like the three southerly stones inside the circle. Trailing Orion is the brilliant Sirius, which crosses the meridian an hour and forty minutes later. Two hours after that the very bright star Canopus crosses the meridian, skimming low above the horizon. Perhaps, if you’ve learned your sky lessons, you know that when you travel north, Canopus drops even lower to the horizon. The starry show continues for eight more hours; then the sky begins to brighten, and the sun rises to make its low winter arc across the sky. One month later the nightly show is similar, except that the sun sets a bit north of the solstice gates of the circle, and when the sky darkens, you see that Orion has already passed the meridian and Sirius is already there. Two more months pass, and the sun rises due east and sets due west. It is the spring equinox, and now when the sky darkens after sunset, Orion’s belt is gone—already set below the horizon—but Sirius is still visible low to the southwest for about forty-five minutes before it too sets. About ten days later Sirius also disappears. *23 Another twenty-eight days later, just before dawn, Orion’s belt reappears in the southeast. †24 After another twenty-nine days, Sirius also reappears in the southeast, when you can glimpse it momentarily before dawn. *25 At Nabta Playa you have moved south of the Calendar Circle to view this heliacal rising of Sirius from Complex Structure A, the central megalithic construction that your society built to view stars rising over lines of megaliths. There, just before dawn, you see Sirius rise above a distant line of megaliths to the southeast, and when you look to the northeast you see hovering there, above another line of megaliths, Dubhe of the Bull’s Thigh constellation. Of course, these alignments are just as you have expected, because this is in fact a year of heavy construction, when you are completing the building of those two lines of megaliths. It is now just four weeks before summer solstice, and in seven more days, it will be exactly three weeks before summer solstice, the time when, at noon, the sun passes directly overhead and the standing stones cast no shadow, which occurs only twice per year. Now the annual rains have come, and if they are plentiful, the playa basin fills with shallow water. The Calendar Circle is located on a low mound just off the edge of the playa, so you can continue your star viewing from there even while the playa is full of water. On the night before summer solstice you watch Orion’s belt rising about an hour after midnight, followed, as always, by Sirius an hour and forty-five minutes later. Orion’s belt moves toward the meridian and fades out of view about an hour before it reaches it, as the sky brightens and the sun rises in the solstice gates of the Calendar Circle. Three weeks after summer solstice the noon sun again passes directly overhead and the standing stones cast no shadow, and the nightly show repeats. This time you can see Orion’s belt just approaching the meridian as the sky brightens with the sunrise. The sun now rises a bit south of the solstice gate, as the sunrise location moves toward winter, and the whole annual show will repeat.
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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
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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 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: associated with the heleical rising
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
Page 107 and 108: pointed star, which represents Siri
Page 109 and 110: In the first century, some half-cen
Page 111 and 112: 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
Page 170 and 171:
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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