The message of the Sphinx: a quest for the hidden legacy of mankind (45 page)

[627]
Carl Sagan,
Cosmos,
Book Club Associates, London, 1980, p. 296.

[628]
Ibid.

[629]
Indeed, what we appear to be looking at here is a veritable ‘Hermetic language’ making use of architecture and astronomy.

[630]
Of which the earliest surviving are the Pyramid Texts
circa
2300 BC. Egyptologists accept, however that these texts are themselves transcripts (or translations?) of even earlier texts that are now lost to history, and that the scribes who initially wrote them down in Egyptian hieroglyphs often did not understand the words they were copying. According to E. A. Wallis Budge, for example: ‘Several passages bear evidence that the scribes—who drafted the copies from which the cutters of the inscriptions worked did not understand what they were writing ... The general impression is that the priests who drafted the copies made extracts from several compositions of different ages and having different contents ...’ In consequence, Budge concludes: ‘The Pyramid Texts are full of difficulties of every kind. The exact meanings of a large number of words found in them are unknown ... the construction of the sentence often baffles all attempts to translate it, and when it contains wholly unknown words it becomes an unsolved riddle.’ See E. A. Wallis Budge,
From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt,
Dover Publications, New York, 1988, pp. 321-2.

[631]
Hamlet’s Mill,
op. cit., p. 312.

[632]
Proclus was a Neoplatonist who studied at Alexandria. His keen interest in the astronomy of the Great Pyramid, described in his
Commentaries on the Timaeus,
shows that scholars of the time, many of whom were Neoplatonists, understood the monument to be related to the stars. Proclus’s ideas formed the basis of the nineteenth-century astronomer Richard Proctor’s thesis,
The Great Pyramid: Observatory, Tomb and Temple
(published by Chatto & Windus, London, 1883), who argued that the Grand Gallery was used as a sighting device for the stars.

[633]
James Bonwick,
Pyramids: Facts and Fancies,
Kegan Paul, 1877, p. 169.

[634]
William R. Fix,
Pyramid Odyssey,
Mercury Media Inc., Urbana, Va., 1978, pp. 52-3. The Copts apparently took the ‘traditional’ date for the Biblical Flood as 10,000 BC.

[635]
In the geographical dictionary
Mo’gam-el-Buldan,
cited in Hassan,
Excavations at Giza,
op. cit., p. 45.

[636]
Ibid.

[637]
Ibid., p. 34. Hassan notes that an alternative name for the Sphinx, apparently bestowed upon it by these incomers, was
Hwron.

[638]
See Peter Tompkins,
Secrets of the Great Pyramid,
op. cit., pp. 30-1.

[639]
Piazzi Smyth,
The Great Pyramid,
op. cit., page 368ff.

[640]
Alexander Badawy, ‘The Stellar Destiny of the Pharaoh’, op. cit.; Virginia Trimble, ‘Astronomical Investigations concerning the so-called Air Shafts of Cheops Pyramid’, in
Mitt. Inst. Orient, zu Berlin
Band 10, pp. 183-7.

[641]
And see
The Orion Mystery,
op. cit.

[642]
Interviewed on Arts and Entertainment Channel, 8 January 1995.

[643]
Mary Bruck, ‘Can the Great Pyramid be Astronomically Dated?’, op. cit., pp. 164 and 162.

[644]
Skyglobe 3.6.

[645]
Pyramid Texts,
op. cit., line 932, p. 161.

[646]
R. T. Rundle Clark,
Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt,
op. cit., p. 264.

[647]
Robin Cook,
The Pyramids of Giza,
op. cit., p. 60.

[648]
Plus or minus 1 degree.

[649]
Plus or minus 1 degree.

[650]
Derived geometrically from scaled plan of Giza.

[651]
Sirius has a proper motion of 1.21 arc seconds per year. For 13,000 years this would give 4.36 degrees of motion. But the motion is oblique to the meridian, giving some 3 degrees decrease in declination.

[652]
Calculations using the rigorous formula for precession corrected for nutation, aberration of starlight, proper motion (from the most recent Yale Bright Star Catalogue) and parallax was done by astronomer Adrian Ashford in August 1995. In
circa
11,850 BC Sirius would theoretically be at the lowest point in its cycle, with a declination of -60 degrees, thus just on the south horizon. In 10,500 BC it would have had a declination of nearly -59 degrees, thus shining brightly approximately 1 degree over the south horizon as seen from Giza.

[653]
Ibid.

[654]
See Part II of the present work for a discussion.

[655]
Herodotus,
The History,
op. cit., II:124, p. 185. See also I. E. S. Edwards,
The Pyramids of Egypt,
op. cit., 1982 edition, p. 147.

[656]
Surviving examples of star-spangled causeway ceilings can be seen at the Pyramid of Unas (Fifth Dynasty) at Saqqara.

[657]
Many passages in the
Pyramid Texts,
op. cit., speak of ‘roads’ to the stars and to the sky where the deceased will become a god. For example, Utterance 6673, line 1943: ‘You have your tomb O King, which belongs to [Osiris] ... He opens for you the doors of the sky, he throws open for you the doors of the firmament, he makes a road for you that you may ascend by means of it into the company of the gods ...’

[658]
John Legon, ‘The Giza Ground Plan and Sphinx’ in
Discussions in Egyptology
14, 1989, p. 55.

[659]
Ibid. Although the bearing of the Khafre causeway at 14 degrees south of east is not in dispute, there has been some disagreement amongst scholars over the direction of the Khufu causeway—most traces of which have been long ago obliterated. Some authorities believe it proceeded straight on the 14-degree bearing it takes from the Mortuary Temple of the Great Pyramid, others believe that it started with this bearing and then changed direction, before reaching the Valley Temple of the Great Pyramid. To give some indication of the range of opinion on this matter see George Goyon,
Le Secret des Batisseurs des Grandes Pyramides: Kheops,
Pygmalion, Gerard Watelet, Paris, 1990, p. 140: ‘contrary to what some have long believed, the direction [of the Khufu causeway] stays uniform and does not change direction in the valley below.’ Zahi Hawass in
The Pyramids of Ancient Egypt,
The Carnegie Series on Egypt, Pennsylvania, 1990, p. 22, also shows a straight causeway on the 14-degree bearing, but points out on page 18: ‘scholars disagree over the exact course of the causeway, but it led to Khufu’s Valley Temple, the ruins of which lie under the present-day village of Nazlet-el-Sammam.’

[660]
John Legon,
The Giza Ground Plan,
op. cit., p. 60.

[661]
For a general discussion, see Richard Heinberg,
Celebrate the Solstice,
Quest Books, Wheaton, 111, 1993, pp. 11-14.

[662]
We note with interest that this ‘cross-quarter’ alignment appears to have been of major importance at Heliopolis. In
The Dawn of Astronomy,
op. cit., p. 77, the British astronomer J. Norman Lockyer, who was able to survey the site of ancient Heliopolis before it was obscured by the modern suburb that now covers it, noted in passing that the principal mound on the site had a bearing of 14 degrees south of east—i.e. the identical bearing to the Khafre causeway. Lockyer also reminds us of ancient Egyptian traditions that Heliopolis was founded by the
Shemsu Hor,
the ‘Followers of Horus’, long before the beginning of Dynastic history (ibid., p. 74).

[663]
Pyramid Texts,
op. cit., Utterances 471-3, pp. 160-2.

[664]
Coffin Texts,
op. cit., Spell 1080, Vol. III, p. 147.

[665]
From the Eleventh Division of the
Duat,
‘
The Book of What is in the Duat’
, E. A. Wallis Budge trans., in
The Egyptian Heaven and Hell,
op. cit., p. 240.

[666]
Translated as ‘The Virgin of the World’ by G. R. S. Mead in
Thrice Great Hermes: Studies in Hellenistic Theosophy and Gnosis,
op. cit., Book III, p. 59ff. Translated by Sir Walter Scott as the
Kore Kosmu
in
Hermetica,
op. cit., p. 457ff.

[667]
‘The Virgin of the World’, G. R. S. Mead trans., pp. 60-1.

[668]
Ibid., p. 61.

[669]
See Part I of the present work.

[670]
The quotation is from the Normandi Ellis’s translation of the
Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, Awakening Osiris,
Phanes Press, Grand Rapids, MI, 1988, p. 43, and is drawn from Chapter XV of the
Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead,
Papyrus of Ani.

[671]
J. B. Sellers,
The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt,
op. cit., p. 157-9.

[672]
R. O. Faulkner,
The Book of the Dead,
op. cit., p. 49.

[673]
Ibid.

[674]
J. B. Sellers,
The Death of Gods,
op. cit., p. 97.

[675]
Ibid., p. 159.

[676]
Ibid., p. 97.

[677]
The M1 Crab Nebula is the remnant of a great supernova explosion which occurred in
c.
4500 BC, roughly when the vernal point occupied this specific place in the sky. However, the supernova was about 5500 light-years away and its light only started reaching our planet in
c.
AD 1000. It was recorded by the Chinese and, apparently, by the North American Indians. No one seems to have recorded it in Europe or the Middle East, which is very odd, since Christians, at that time, fervently awaited a ‘sign’ from heaven to announce the ‘Second Coming’ of Christ.

[678]
The Orion Mystery,
op. cit., p. 200. See also Robert G. Bauval ‘Investigation on the origin of the Benben Stone: was it an iron meteorite?’ in
Discussions in Egyptology,
Vol. XIV, 1989, pp. 5-17.

[679]
R. T. Rundle Clark,
Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt,
op. cit., p. 235.

[680]
R. O. Faulkner,
The Book of the Dead,
op. cit., Spell 17.

[681]
Ibid.

[682]
See also Miriam Lichtheim,
Ancient Egyptian Literature;
op. cit., Vol. I, p. 53.

[683]
Ibid.

[684]
Ibid. The ‘White Wall’ probably refers to the Tura limestone walls of the royal palace and the boundary wall of Memphis.

[685]
Ibid., p. 54.

[686]
Most Egyptologists would contest this point, but we feel that the evidence is overwhelming in favour of a direct cultic connection between Osiris and the Great Pyramid. An interesting article touching upon this idea can be read in Steuart Campbell, ‘The Origin and Purpose of the Pyramids’ in the
New Humanist,
December 1990 issue, pp. 3-4, who wrote that ‘the Great Pyramid might have been intended as a dwelling place for the spirit of Osiris’. The French Antiquarian and Freemason, Alexandre Lenoir (see ‘A dissertation on the Pyramids of Egypt’ in FMR No. 39, 1989) was also to claim that ‘all considered it [the Great Pyramid] may be the tomb of Osiris’.

[687]
E. A. Wallis Budge,
An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary,
op. cit., Vol. I, p. 285b.

[688]
Ibid.

[689]
Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 6i4b, 6223, 688a.

[690]
Ibid., p. 6143.

[691]
Charles Piazzi Smyth,
Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid,
Bell edition, 1990, p. 429.

[692]
Nature,
31 July 1873.

[693]
The reader will also recall that 43,200 is 20 x 2160, the ‘special’ number denoting a precessional or zodiacal age. See Chapter 3 of the present work.

[694]
This pertinent point was raised very recently by the eminent astronomer, Dr. Mary Bruck: ‘Can the Great Pyramid be astronomically dated?’ in
The Journal of the British Astronomical Society,
105,  4, 1995, pp. 161-4.

[695]
25 See J. Legon, ‘The air-shafts in the Great Pyramid’ in
Discussions in Egyptology
27, 1993, pp. 33-44. See Robin Cook, ‘The stellar geometry of the Great Pyramid’ in
Discussions in Egyptology
29, 1994, pp. 29-36. Rudolf Gantenbrink, who remeasured the angles of the shafts recently, gave a higher ‘adjusted’ value of 39.6 degrees for the southern shaft of the Queen’s Chamber. None the less, the ‘designed’ intention to have the shafts come out at the same level very much seems to be the case for the Great Pyramid.

[696]
The Orion Mystery,
op. cit., pp. 222-3.

[697]
Ibid., p. 34.

[698]
Hence the ‘Fish’ symbol amongst the early Christians, denoting the ‘new age’ of Christianity marked by the vernal equinox in Pisces. The vernal point is now poised to enter the new age of Aquarius.

[699]
When Alexander the Great liberated Egypt from Persian rule, he was hailed by the Egyptian priests as a divine hero and the returned ‘son of Ammon’—and by his Macedonian followers as ‘son of Zeus’. Both titles stand, of course, for ‘son of god’. After his death a ‘cult of Alexander’ was established in Alexandria which spread with almost messianic fervour across the Fertile Crescent. For the three centuries preluding the Christian era, Alexander (who had died at the age of thirty-three in 323 BC) was the archetype of the conquering martyred ‘hero-king’ and ‘son of god’ of quasi-solar pedigree who had unified the known world on the basis of a divine blueprint or mission. It was thus that, in the closing years of the last century BC, the whole Roman world, sickened by the endless civil and foreign wars, placed much hope for the return of a ‘saviour-king’ modelled on Alexander who would unite the empire and usher in a new golden age. This hope was very much pinned on Augustus Caesar (Octavian) by the Roman poet Virgil in
c.
42 BC in his famous
Eclogues
(‘see how Olympian Caesar’s star has climbed the sky, the star to gladden all our corn with grain ... your children’s children will enjoy the fruits ...’). In 12 BC Augustus Caesar was declared head of the Roman (thus ‘world’) religion and given the title of Pontifex Maximus—a title later to denote the Catholic pontiffs or ‘Popes’ of Rome. Ironically, in 4 BC—the assumed year that Christ was born—Augustus adopted Tiberius (second Emperor of Rome who ruled from AD 14 to AD 37, thus in the ministry of Jesus) and declared him his heir. Yet by the most unexpected twist of fate Virgil’s prophecy was eventually to be fulfilled not by ‘Divine Augustus’ but by a Jewish ‘saviour-king’, the Christos or Christ, fostered four centuries later by Rome itself under the rule of Constantine the Great (see Ian Wilson,
Jesus, the Evidence,
Pan Books, London, 1984, pp. 134-44). It may well be that Virgil’s ‘star of Caesar’ influenced the unknown author of the gospel of Matthew (‘We have seen his star and come to pay him homage ...’ Matthew 2:1-9) who used the astral prophesy for the birth of Jesus. Not unexpectedly, many of the great Italian Hermetic philosophers of the late Renaissance (Bruno, Pico della Mirandola, Campanella, etc.) often presented Virgil as a ‘Gentile prophet’ of Christianity and the ‘Egyptian’ Hermes Trismegistos (i.e. the Egyptian god Thoth) in par with the Old Testament prophet Moses (see Frances A. Yates,
Giordano Bruno,
op. cit.). Many of these Hermetic ‘Cabala’ philosophers adamantly believed that the ‘Egyptian’ astral magic as found in the ancient texts was the agency or ‘device’ for great world-changing events (ibid, et al.). It can be thus argued that in the first century of our era the scene was set in the collective subconscious by astrologer-prophets of old to bring about a messianic event. In our next book, we will explore how such powerful ‘Hermetic devices’ were activated throughout the ages and also, as the case may be, may be about to be galvanized in present times.