Author: bretwalters6969

Gods of Eden

The Black Death

by William Bramley

Europe in the 13th century was beginning so recover from the economic and social disruption caused by the Crusades. Signs of a European renaissance were visible in the widening of intellectual and artistic horizons. Trade with other parts of the world did much to enrich European life. Europe was entering an era in which chivalry, music, art, and spiritual values were playing greater roles. Hardly a century of this progress had passed, however, before a disastrous event abruptly brought it to a temporary halt That event was the Bubonic Plague, also known as the Black Death.

The Black Death began in Asia and soon spread to Europe where it killed well over 25 million people (about one third of Europe’s total population) in less than four years. Some historians put the casualty figure closer to 35 to 40 million people, or about half of all Europeans.

The epidemic first spread through Europe between 1347 and 1350. The Bubonic Plague continued to strike Europe with decreasing fatality every ten to twenty years in short-lived outbreaks all the way up until the 1700’s. Although it is difficult to calculate the total number of deaths from that 400-year period, it is believed that over 100 million people may have died from the Plague. Two types of plague are believed to have caused the Black Death. The first is the “bubonic” type, which was the most common. The bubonic fern of plague is characterized by swellings of the lymph nodes; the swellings are called “buboes.” The buboes are accompanied by vomiting, fever, and death within several days if not created. This form of plague is not contagious between human beings: it requires an active carrier, such as a flea. For this reason. many historians believe that flea-infested rodents caused the Bubonic Plague. Rodents are known to carry the disease even today. A number of records from between 1347 and the late 1600’s speak of rodent infestations prior to several outbreaks of the Black Death, lending credence to the rodent theory.

The second form of plague contributing to the Black Death is a highly contagious type known as “pneumonic” plague. It is marked by shivering, rapid breathing, and the coughing up of blood. Body temperatures are high and death nom ally follows three to four days after the disease has been contracted. This second type of plague is nearly always fatal and transmits best in cold weather and in poor ventilation. Some physicians today believe it was this second form, the “pneumonic” plague, which was responsible for most of the

casualties of the Black Death because of the crowding and poor hygienic conditions then prevalent in Europe. We would normally shake our heads at this tragic period of human history and be thankful that modern medicine has developed cures for these dread diseases. However, troubling enigmas about the Black Death still linger. Many outbreaks occurred in summer during warm weather in uncrowded regions. Not all outbreaks of bubonic plague were preceded by rodent infestation; in fact, only a minority of cases seemed to be related to an increase in the presence of vermin. The greatest puzzle about the Black Death is how it was able to strike isolated human populations which had no contact with earlier infected areas. The epidemics also tended to end abruptly.

To solve these puzzles, an historian would normally look to records from the Plague years to see what people were reporting. When he does so, he encounters stories so stunning and unbelievable that he is likely to reject them as the fantasies and superstitions of badly frightened minds. A great many people throughout Europe and other Plague stricken regions of the world were reporting that outbreaks of the Plague were caused by foul-smelling “mists.” Those mists frequently appeared after unusually bright lights in the sky. The historian quickly discovers that “mists” and bright lights were reported far more frequently and in many more locations than were rodent infestations. The Plague years were, in fact, a period of heavy UFO activity.

What, then, were the mysterious mists?

There is another very important way in which plague germs can be transmitted: through gem weapons. The United States and the Soviet Union today have stockpiles of biological weapons containing bubonic plague and other epidemic diseases. The germs are kept alive in canisters which spray the diseases into the air on thick, often visible, artificial mists. Anyone breathing in the mist will inhale the disease. There are enough such germ weapons today to wipe out a good portion of humanity. Reports of identical disease-inducing mists from the Plague years strongly suggest that the Black Death was caused by germ warfare. Let us take a look at the incredible reports which lead to that conclusion.

The first outbreak of the Plague in Europe followed an unusual series of events. Between 1298 and 1314, seven large “comets” were seen over Europe; one was of “awe-inspiring blackness.”‘ One year before the first outbreak of the epidemic in Europe, a “column of fire” was reported over the Pope’s palace at Avignon, France. Earlier that year, a “ball of fire” was observed over Paris; it reportedly remained visible to observers for some time. To the people of Europe, these sightings were considered omens of the Plague which soon followed.

It is true that some reported “comets” were probably just that: comets. Some may also have been small meteors or fireballs (large blazing meteors). Centuries ago, people were generally far more superstitious than they are today and so natural meteors and similar prosaic phenomena were often reported as precursors to later disasters even though

there was no real-life connection. On the other hand, it is important to note that almost amy unusual object in the sky was called a “comet.” A good example is found in a best-selling book published in 1557: A Chronicle of Prodigies and Portents. . .-‘ by Conrad Lycosthenes. On page 494 of Lycosthenes’ book we read of a “comet” observed in the year 1479: “A comet was seen in Arabia in the manner of a sharply pointed wooden beam . . .” The accompanying illustration, which was based on eyewitness descriptions, shows what clearly looks like the front half of a rocket ship among some clouds. The object appears to have many portholes. Today we would call the object a UFO, not a comet. This leads us to wonder how many other ancient “comets” were actually similar rocket like objects. When we are confronted with an old report of a comet, we therefore do not really know what kind of thing we are dealing with unless there is a fuller description. A report of a sudden increase in “comets” or similar celestial phenomena may, in fact, mean an increase in UFO activity.

The link between unusual aerial phenomena and the Black Death was established immediately during the first outbreaks of the Plague in Asia. As one historian tells us:

The first reports [of the Plague] came out of the East. They were confused, exaggerated, frightening, as reports from that quarter of the world so often are: descriptions of storms and earthquakes: of meteors and comets trailing noxious gases that killed trees and destroyed the fertility of the land.

The above passage indicates that strange flying objects were doing more than just spreading disease: they were also apparently spraying chemical or biological defoliants from the air. The above passage echoes the ancient Mesopotamian tablets which described defoliation of the landscape by ancient Custodial “gods.” Many human casualties from the Black Death may have been caused by such defoliants.

The connection between aerial phenomena and plague had begun centuries before the Black Death. We saw examples in our earlier discussion of Justinian’s Plague. We read from another source about a large plague that had reportedly broken out in the year 1117Dalmost 250 years before the Black Death. That plague was also preceded by unusual celestial phenomena:

In 1117, in January, a comet passed like a fiery army from the North towards the Orient, the moon was overcast blood-red in an eclipse, a year later a light appeared more brilliant than the sun. This was followed by great cold, famine, and plague, of which one-third of humanity is said to have perished.

Once the medieval Black Death got started, noteworthy aerial phenomena continued to accompany the dread epidemic. Reports of many of these phenomena were assembled by Johannes Nohl and published in his hook, The Black Death, A Chronicle of the Plague (1926). According to Mr. Nohl, at least 26 “comets” were reported between 1500 and 1543. Fifteen or sixteen were seen between 1556 and 1597 In the year 1618, eight or nine were observed. Mr. Nohi emphasizes the connection which people perceived between the comets and subsequent epidemics:

In the year 1606 a comet was seen, after which a general plague traversed the world. In 1582 a comet brought so violent a plague upon Majo, Prague, Thuringia, the Netherlands, and other places that in Thuringia it carried off 37,000 and in the Netherlands 46,415.

From Vienna, Austria, we get the following description of an event which happened in 1568. Here we see a connection between an outbreak of Plague and an object described in a manner remarkably similar to a modem cigar or beam shaped UFO:

When in sun and moonlight a beautiful rainbow and a fiery beam were seen hovering above the church of St. Stephanie, which was followed by a violent epidemic in Austria, Swabia, Augsburg, Wuennenberg, Nuremburg, and other places, carrying off human beings and cattle.

Sightings of unusual aerial phenomena usually occurred from several minutes to a year before an outbreak of Plague. Where there was a gap between such a sighting and the arrival of the Plague, a second phenomenon was sometimes reported: the appearance of frightening humanlike figures dressed in black. Those figures were often seen on the outskirts of a town or village and their presence would signal the outbreak of an epidemic almost immediately. A summary written in 1682 tells of one such visit a century earlier:

In Brandenburg [in Germany] there appeared in 1559 humble men, of whom at first fifteen and later on twelve were seen. The foremost had beside their posteriors little heads, the others fearful faces and long scythes, with which they cut at the oats, so that the swish could be heard at a great distance, but the oats remained standing. When a quantity of people came running out to see them, they went on with their mowing.

The visit of the strange men to the oat fields was followed immediately by a severe outbreak of the Plague in Brandenburg.

This incident raises intriguing questions: who were the mysterious figures? What were the long scythe-like instruments they held that emitted a loud swishing sound? It appears that the “scythes” may have been long instruments designed to spray poison or germ-laden gas. This would mean that the townspeople misinterpreted the movement of the “scythes” as an attempt to cut oats when, in fact, the movements were the act of spraying aerosols on the town. Similar men dressed in black were reported in Hungary:

… in the year of Christ 1571 was seen at Cremnitz in the mountain towns of Hungary on Ascension Day in the evening to the great perturbation [disturbance] of all, when on the Scheersberg there appeared so many black riders that the opinion was prevalent that the Turks were making a secret mid, but who rapidly disappeared again, and thereupon a raging plague broke out in the neighborhood.’

Strange men dressed in black, “demons,” and other terrifying figures were observed in other European communities The frightening creatures were often observed carrying long “brooms,” “scythes,” or “swords” that were used to “sweep” or “knock at” the doors of people’s homes. The inhabitants of those homes fell ill with plague afterwards. It is from these reports that people created the popular image of “Death” as a skeleton or demon carrying a scythe. The scythe came to symbolize the act of Death mowing down people like stalks of grain. In looking at this haunting image of death, we may, in fact, be staring into the face of the UFO. Of all the phenomena connected to the Black Death, by far the most frequently reported were the strange, noxious “mists.” The vapors were often observed even when the other phenomena were not. Mr. Nohl points out that moist pestilential fogs were “a feature which preceded the epidemic throughout its whole course’s A great many physicians of the time took it for granted that the strange mists caused the Plague. This connection was established at the very beginning of the Black Death, as Mr. Nohl tells us:

The origin of the plague lay in China, there it is said to have commenced to rage already in the year 1333, after a terrible mist emitting a fearful stench and infecting the air.

Another account stresses that the Plague did not spread from person to person, but was contracted by breathing the deadly stinking air:

During the whole of the year 1382 there was no wind, consequence of which the air grew putrid, so that an epidemic broke out, and the plague did not pass from one man to another, but everyone who was killed by it got it straight from the air.

Reports of deadly “mists” and “pestilential fogs.’ came from all Plague-infested parts of the world:

A Prague chronicle describes the epidemic in China, India and Persia; and the Florentine historian Matteo Villani, who took up the work of his brother Giovanni after he had died of the plague in Florence, relays the account of earthquakes and pestilential fogs from a traveler in Asia;. . .”

The same historian continues:

A similar incident of earthquake and pestilential fog was reported from Cyprus, and it was believed that the wind had been so poisonous that men were struck down and died from it .2

He adds:

German accounts speak of a heavy vile-smelling mist which advanced from the East and spread itself over Italy.

That author states that in other countries:

. . . people were convinced that they could contract the disease from the stench, or even, as is sometimes described, actually see the plague coming through the streets as a pale fog.’4

He summarizes, rather dramatically:

The earth itself seemed in a state of convulsion, shuddering and spitting, putting forth heavy poisonous winds that destroyed animals and plants and called swarms of insects to life to complete the destruction.

Similar happenings are echoed by other writers. A journal from 1680 reported this odd incident:

That between Eisenberg and Domberg thirty funeral biers 1casket stands] all covered with black cloth were seen in broad daylight, among them on a bier a black man was standing with a white cross. When these had disappeared a great heat set in so that the people in this place could hardly stand it. But when the sun had set they perceived so sweet a perfume as if they were in a garden of roses. By this time they were all plunged in perturbation. Whereupon the epidemic set in in Thuringia in many places.

Further south, in Vienna:

. . . evil smelling mists are blamed, as indicative of the plague. and of these, indeed, several were observed last autumn.’ 7

Direct from the plague-ravaged town of Eisleben, we get this amusing and perhaps exaggerated newspaper account published on September 1, 1682:

In the cemetery of Eisleben on the 6th inst. [?] at night the following incident was noticed: When during the night the gravediggers were hard at work digging trenches, for on many days between eighty and ninety have died, they suddenly observed that the cemetery church, more especially the pulpit, was lighted up by bright sunshine. But on their going up to it so deep a darkness and black, thick fog came over the graveyard that they could hardly see one another, and which they took to be an evil omen. Thus day and night gruesome evil spirits are seen frightening the people goblins grinning at them and pelting them, but also many white ghosts and specters.

The same newspaper story later adds:

When Magister Hardte expired in his agony a blue smoke was seen to rise from his throat, and this in the presence of the dean; the same has been observed in the case of others expiring. In the same manner blue smoke has been observed to rise from the gables of houses at Eisleben all the inhabitants of which have died. In the church of St. Peter blue smoke has been observed high up near the ceiling; on this account the church is shunned,, particularly as the parish has been exterminated.

The “mists” or Plague poisons were thick enough to mix with normal air moisture and become part of the morning dew. People were warned to take the following precautions:

If newly baked bread is placed for the night at the end of a pole and in the morning is found to be mildewed and internally grown green, yellow and uneatable, and when thrown to fowls and dogs causes them to die from eating it, in a similar manner if fowls drink the morning dew and die in consequence, then the plague poison is near at hand.

As noted earlier, lethal “mists” were directly associated with bright moving lights in the sky. Other sources for the stenches were also reported. For example, Forestus Alemarianos wrote of a monstrous “whale” he had encountered which was:

28 ells [105 feet] in length and 14 ells [33 feet] broad which, coming from the western sea, was thrown upon the shore of Egemont by great waves and was unable to reach the open again; it produced so great a foulness and malignity of the air that very soon a great epidemic broke out in Edgemont and neighborhoods.

It is a shame that Mr. Alcmarianos did not provide a more detailed description of the deadly whale because it may have been a craft similar to modem UFOs which have been observed entering and leaving bodies of water. On the other hand, Mr. Alcmarianos’ whale may have been just that: a dead rotting whale which happened to wash up on shore just before a nearby outbreak of the Plague.

It is significant that foul mists and bad air were blamed for many other epidemics in history. During a plague in ancient Rome, the famous physician Hippocrates (ca. 460337 B.C.) stated that the disease was caused by body disturbances brought on by changes in the atmosphere. To remedy this, Hippocrates had people build large public bonfires. He believed that large fires would set the air aright. Hippocrates’ advice was followed centuries later by physicians during the medieval Plague. Modem doctors take a dim view of Hippocrates’ advice on this matter, however, in the belief that Hippocrates was ignorant about the true causes of plague. In reality, huge outdoor bonfires were the only conceivable defense against the Plague if it was indeed caused by gem -saturated aerosols. Vaccines to combat the | Plague had not been invented and so the people’s only hope I was to bum away the deadly “mists” with fire. Hippocrates and those who followed his advice may have actually saved some lives.

Significantly, bubonic and pneumonic plagues were not the only infectious diseases in history to be spread on strange lethal fogs. The deadly intestinal disease, cholera, was another:

When cholera broke out on board Her Majesty’s ship Britannia in the Black Sea in 1854, several officers and men asserted positively that, immediately prior to the outbreak, a curious dark mist swept up from the sea and passed over the ship. The mist had barely cleared the vessel when the first case of disease was announced.

Blue mists were also reported in connection with the cholera outbreaks of 1832 and 1848-1849 in England.

As mentioned earlier, plagues had a very strong religious significance. In the Bible, plagues were said to be Jehovah’s method of punishing people for evil. “Omens” preceding outbreaks of the Black Death resembled many of the “omens” reported in the Bible:

Men confronted with the terror of the Black Death were impressed by the chain of events leading up to the final plague, and accounts of the coming of the 14th-century pestilence selected from among all the ominous events that must have occurred in the years preceding the outbreak of 1348 those which closely resemble the ten plagues of Pharaoh: disruptions in the atmosphere, storms, unusual invasions of insects, celestial phenomena.

In addition, the Bubonic form of plague was very similar, if not identical, to some of the punishments inflicted by “God” in the Old Testament:

But the hand of the Lord was heavy upon the people of Ashdod (a Philistine city), and he destroyed them, and killed them with emerods {painful swellings)

I SAMUEL 5:6

. . . the hand of the Lord was against the city (Gath, another Philistine city) with a very great destruction:

and he killed the men of the city, both young and old, and they had emerods in their secret parts.

I SAMUEL 5:9

. . . there was a deadly destruction throughout all the city; the hand of God was very heavy there.

And the men that survived were afflicted with the emerods: and the crying of the city went up to heaven.

I SAMUEL 5:11-12

The religious aspect of the medieval Black Death was enhanced by reports of thundering sounds in connection with outbreaks of the Plague. The sounds were similar to those described in the Bible as accompanying the appearance of Jehovah. Interestingly, they are also sounds common to some UFO sightings:

During the plague of 1565 i Italy rumblings of thunder were heard day and night, as in a war, together with the turmoil and noise as of a mighty army. In Gem any in many places a noise was heard as if a hearse were passing through the streets of its own accord.

Similar noises accompanied strange aerial phenomena in remarkable Plague-related sightings from England. The object described in the quote below remained visible for over a week and does appear to be a true comet or planet (such as Venus); however, some of the other objects cam only be labeled “unidentified.” Historian Walter George Bell, drawing on writings from the period, summarized:

Late into dark December nights of the year 1664 London citizens sat up to watch a new blazing star, with mighty talk” thereupon. King Charles 11 and his Queen gazed out of the windows at Whitehall. About east it rose, reaching no great altitude, and sank below the south-west horizon between two and three o’clock In a week or two it was gone, then letters came from Vienua notifying the like sight of a brilliant comet. and m the ayr [air] the appearance of a Coffin, which causes great anxiety of thought amongst the people.” Erfun saw with it other terrible apparitions, and listeners detected noises in the air, as of fires, and sounds of cannon and musket-shot. The report ran that one night m the February following hundreds of persons had seen flames of fire for an hour together, which seemed to be thrown from Whitehall to St. James and then back again to Whitehall, where after they disappeared.

In March there came into the heavens a yet brighter comet visible two hours after midnight, and so continuing till daylight. With such ominous portents the Great Plague in London was ushered in.

Other less frequent “omens” were also reported in connection with the Black Death. Some of those phenomena were obvious fictions. Significantly, the fictions were not widespread and were rarely reported outside of the communities in which they originated.

The preceding quotes provide evidence that UFOs (i.e. the Custodial society) have bombarded the human race with deadly diseases. This evidence is particularly intriguing when we consider claims made by a number of modem UFO contactees who say that they are relaying messages to mankind from the UFO society. Some of them claim that UFOs are here to help mankind and that UFOs will eradicate disease on Earth. The UFO civilization reportedly has no disease. If the Custodial civilization is indeed so healthy, perhaps it is only because it is not bombarding itself with germ weapons. If UFOs truly intended to bring health to the human race, maybe all they needed to do was to stop spraying infectious biological agents into the air.

The Black Death not only killed a great many people. it also caused deep psychological and social wounds. People in the past were convinced that the epidemics were God’s punishment for sin, and this caused deep introversion. It was natural for people to accuse themselves and their neighbors of wickedness and to wonder what they had done to “deserve” their punishment. It rarely occurred to the victims that plagues, even if deliberately inflicted, had nothing to do with trying to make human beings more virtuous. After all, the social and psychological effects of the Plague produced the opposite result. The misery and despair generated by the massive death tolls brought about widespread ethical decay. In a dying environment. many people will no longer care about whether their actions are right or wrong; they are going to die anyway. In the fearful climate of the medieval Plague, spiritual values noticeably declined and mental aberration sharply increased. The same results are observed during war. Although the Bible and other religious works may preach that plagues and wars are created by “God” to ultimately make the human race more virtuous and spiritually advanced, the effect is always the opposite.

The cataclysmic nature of the Black Death overshadowed another disastrous occurrence of the Plague years: a renewed attempt by Christians to exterminate the Jews. False accusations circulated that Jews were causing the Plague by poisoning wells. These rumors stirred up a fearsome hatred of the Jews inside those Christian communities being devastated by the epidemic. Many Christians participated in the genocides, which may have claimed as many lives, if not more, than the slaughter of Jews by the Nazis in the 20th century. According to Collier’s Encyclopedia:

That country [Germany] figured . . . as the site of brutal massacres on the widest possible scale, which periodically swept the country from end to end. These culminated at the time of the terrible plague of 13481349, known as the Black Death. Perhaps because their medical knowledge and hygienic way of life rendered them somewhat less susceptible than others, the Jews were preposterously accused of having deliberately propagated the plague, and hundreds of Jewish communities, large and small were blotted out of existence or reduced to insignificance. After this, only a broken remnant remained in the country, mainly in the petty lordships which protected and even encouraged them for the sake of financial advantages which they brought. Only a few large German Jewish communities, such as Frankfurt-am-Main or Worms, managed to maintain an unbroken existence from Medieval times onward.

The genocides were often instigated by German trade guilds, which excluded Jews from membership. Many of those guilds were direct offshoots of the ancient Brotherhood guilds. In fact, membership in Brotherhood organizations

and European trade guilds still overlapped heavily in the 14th century with leadership in the guilds often being held by men who were members of other Brotherhood organizations. Here again was an instance in which the corrupted Brotherhood network was a significant contributor, if not the primary source, of a major historical genocide.

Germany was not the only nation to host Jewish slaughters. The same occurred in Spain. In 1391, a massacre of Jews was perpetrated throughout much of the Spanish peninsula.

Although frightened Christians supplied the manpower for these terrible genocides, their activities were not always endorsed by the Papacy. To the credit of Clement Vl, who served as Pope from 1342 until 1352, he tried almost immediately to protect the Jews from massacre. Clement Vl issued two Papal bulls declaring the Jews to be innocent of the charges against them. The bulls called upon all Christians to cease their persecutions. Clement Vl did not fully succeed, however, because by that time many of the secretive trade guilds had become a united faction engaged in and-Papal activity. Pope Clement also did not dismantle the inquisition, and the inquisition did much to create the generally oppressive social climate in which such massacres could occur.

The combination of Plague, inquisition, and genocide provided all of the elements needed to fulfill apocalyptic prophecy. The Catholic Church was on the brink of collapse due to the many clergymen lost to the Plague and from the loss of popular faith in the Church caused by the Church’s inability to bring an end to “God’s Disease. A great many people were proclaiming that the “End Days” were at hand. True to prophecy, out of this tumult emerged new messengers from God” with promises of an imminent utopia. The teachings and proclamations of those new messiahs had an electrifying effect on the ravaged Europeans and brought about an event of major importance: the Protestant Reformation.

October 11, 2025
Cataclysm of the Ancients: The Day That Shook The Earth

Scholars and thinkers have long pondered over the riddles of supposed lost cities, and chiefly among them, the possibility that an advanced civilization the likes of the fabled Atlantis had once existed somewhere in the ancient world.

The distance modern man is held from ultimate realization of what the world that once existed was truly capable of, that is, among the minds and ingenuities of the ancient dwellers of this planet, is troublesome indeed. Part of the problem is that in these ancient prehistoric societies, the use of language to record their histories either did not exist, or in the event that they did, certain ancient languages may remain undeciphered. Then there are the cataclysms of the ancient world; the apocalyptic destroyers of civilizations that wiped clean the remnants of parts of this world that will never be recovered.

In more recent times, there have been similar natural phenomenon that have presented earth changing events, or those that were at least dangerously close to it. In 1908, what is believed to have been an asteroid exploded before colliding with the Earth, creating massive destruction over modern day Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. The blast, known today as the Tunguska event, was said to have produced an eerie glow in the sky that could be seen as far away as Europe. A little further back in 1883, the volcanic island of Krakatoa between Java and Sumatra erupted in an explosion that could be heard as far away as Japan and Australia. The volcanic force of the eruption thrust stone and debris as high as seventeen miles into the air, and the skies within 100 miles of the Sunda Strait was darkened as though day had turned to night for a period afterward.

Neither of these incidents quite compare with one natural disaster that transpired in the ancient world, to which no other modern natural cataclysm would compare. The volcanic island of Santorin, known in ancient times as Thera, had been one among the handful of islands settled by Cretan colonists. It was located some seventy miles north of Crete, and though riddled by earthquakes, there had not been any direct indication that the volcano of Santorin was active until early in the fifteenth century, when a volcanic eruption consumed most of the island?s Cretan colonies.

Archaeological evidence suggests that the colonists had advance warning of this early disaster, likely as a result of one of the greater earthquakes that may have coincided with it. Thus, it appears the majority of the colonists had managed to escape. Furthermore, despite the numerous earthquakes and volcanic eruption that consumed their first established settlements there, the colonists?some of them, at least?appear to have returned, as evidence of new settlements above the volcanic debris were unearthed during excavations there. However, the greatest disaster was still yet to come, in a third and final act that geological evidence suggests would have literally shaken the ancient Earth.

When the largest eruption on Santorin occurred, the resulting blast was of epic proportions?estimated to have been far greater than the Krakatoa blast of 1883. Settlements on Crete?s northern coast, some seventy miles away, were destroyed by the blast. The inferno was of such magnitude that, like Krakatoa, the core of the blast collapsed inward on itself some time afterward, producing a gulf into which the sea poured, upsetting the surrounding ocean and producing tidal waves as much as 150 feet high that further pounded Crete?s northern coast. The impressive destruction leveled a large swathe of the Cretan colonies, which archaeologists believe had been in political and cultural decline already for some time, even before the hell that spewed forth from Santorin island.

In fact, radiocarbon dating from the period seems to show that there were indeed massive changes occurring on this planet that nearly coincided with the eruption at Santorin. Around the time that RC dating methods indicate that the blast took place, some variety of climactic event had occurred in the Northern Hemisphere that appeared to be linked with famine in parts of Asia, as well as dendrochronological (tree ring) data evidenced from parts of Europe, which indicate a massive climactic event that occurred in around 1628 BC.

Could this be the source of the decline that had begun prior to the destruction that followed the blast at Santorin Island? Despite the changes occurring there in the 1620s BC, technological developments that include the earliest use of running water piped into homes anywhere in Europe were discovered amidst the Cretan colonies here, including hot water that was likely heated by geothermal energies related to the volcano that would eventually consume the island?s inhabitants.

In relative terms, these kinds of advancements seen in the Cretan colonies helped them rank among some of the greatest in the ancient world. It?s easy to see why some scholars have put forth the notion that the Atlantean legends themselves might have stemmed from the advancement, and subsequent destruction, of the Cretan colonies at Santorin.

October 11, 2025
Time Travel: Merely Possible, or Entirely Probable?

Doc Brown did it with a DeLorean, and The Doctor does it with a blue Police Box; and if it weren’t for the imagination, neither film, nor even the printed page would be useful enough in helping humans succeed with time travel.

According to many, that’s where time travel is destined to remain: within the realms of science fiction, rather than anything remotely based in fact. One should ask, however, whether this is really the most fair assessment of time travel. Even Einstein had perspectives on the nature of time that seemed counter-intuitive; thinkers and philosophers who have come and gone have thus argued and disputed Einstein on the matter, particularly in the absence of an understanding of the mathematics needed to express any actual mechanics that might underly it.

Hence, the notion of time and temporality as it might actually exist, rather than merely how we perceive it generally, often becomes discarded, especially when the analytical mind attempts to reconcile with the seeming impossibilities that our universe worthily tosses our way from time to time.

Einstein’s primary beef with our perception of time had been the notion that it exists apart from space itself, and that much like an old carriage barreling down a dusty road, time plunders on in a linear fashion; ever onward, and forward, forever escaping humanity as every passing moment we strive to call “now” actually becomes then, and fades away into memory.

However, contrary to this linear interpretation that had accompanied time since its emergence in human thought, Einstein considered time as being constant; and thus the past, present, and future, in addition to becoming illusory, are revealed to actually exist simultaneously:

“Since there exists in this four dimensional structure [space-time] no longer any sections which represent “now” objectively, the concepts of happening and becoming are indeed not completely suspended, but yet complicated. It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three dimensional existence.”

In other words, many of our intellectual struggles with the idea of stepping out-of-place with our conventional temporality are just that: perceptual hinderances that are fitted to the limitations of the human senses, through which all things perceivable must be filtered. Arguably, this manner of thinking in terms of what can be only defined by our senses (example: “I perceive this as being that, and thus, ‘it’ must be!”) may seem logical relative to the human way of seeing things. But it is also inherently biased; maybe one day, perhaps with the help of intelligent machines, those kinds of human biases favoring sensory views toward materiality will broaden… but I get ahead of myself.

On a personal note, I too have struggled with trying to express the seemingly non-logical or counter-intuitive aspects regarding time and temporality in the past, some of which were included in my book The UFO Singularity. Rather than being a UFO-centric work, this book actually dealt more with ideas pertaining to the speculative realm of “technological singularity” that some think may await us as a civilization; in addition to providing commentary on this juxtaposed against UFO belief over the last few decades, there is also a healthy peppering of time-travel talk that I get into as well.

Some of the reviews (as we will soon see mirrored in thinking applied in opposition with Einstein’s theories of relativity and time travel) seemed to argue against what I had written based on a limited knowledge of the subjects themselves. For instance, one skeptical blogger who, in his defense, had apparently not actually read the book, nevertheless summarized it as being about “aliens coming to visit Earth from the future, and other made-up ideas”; a humorous statement, nonetheless, since it is actually contrary to the ideas I tried to outline. Of greater interest here, however, and one at the heart of the time travel debate, had been the views of one proponent of “high-strangeness”, John Harney, at the Magonia blog, who felt that any discussion of the possibility of time travel was tantamount to nonsense:

“Mathematician and physicist John D. Barrow has remarked: “Time travel is the thinking man’s UFO”. However, Hanks’s ideas on the subject don’t show much coherent thinking, as his awareness of some of the time travel paradoxes should make him realise that the notion of UFOs as manifestations of of time travellers is nonsense.”

Which brings us back around to the seemingly-logical illogic of expecting “paradoxes” to be the death-nail of time travel. In fairness, a more general opposition to the kinds of ideas expressed by Einstein in his theory of relativity were commonplace around the time it was first presented to the scientific community. Martin Gardner, a writer for Scientific American and author of the book The Relativity Explosion, once noted the criticisms Einstein had managed to entertain among his peers:

“How did the world’s leading scientists and philosophers react when they caught their first glimpse of the strange new world of relativity? The reaction was mixed. Most physicists and astronomers, confused by the violations of common sense and the difficult mathematics of the general theory, maintained a discrete silence. But scientists and philosophers capable of understanding relativity were inclined to accept it with exhilaration… Here and there scientists were unable to shake themselves loose from old Newtonian habits of thought. In many ways they resembled the scientists back in the days of Galileo who could not bring themselves to admit that Aristotle might have been mistaken. [Albert] Mitchelson himself, a limited mathematician, never excepted relativity even though his great experiment smoothed the way for the special theory.”

Gardner devoted an entire chapter in his book to Einstein’s discussion of the so-called “Twin Paradox,” which was used to illustrate the broader concept of time dilation. “Henri Bergson, the famous French philosopher,” Gardner wrote, “was the most imminent thinker to crosswords with Einstein over the twin paradox. He wrote about it at some length, po fun at what he thought were its logical absurdities. Unfortunately, what he wrote only proves that it is possible to be a great philosopher without knowing much about mathematics.” Sadly, these sorts of arguments against things that often include subjects like time travel are still based on a fundamental close-mindedness toward the deeper complexities underlying the principles being expressed.

There are, however, more famous paradoxes associated with the concept of time travel that have aroused controversy. Most famous among these, perhaps, is the so-called “Grandfather paradox,” which entails a hypothetical situation where one would conceivably be incapable of traveling back in time to destroy an ancestor, since the act of killing this individual would negate the killer’s own future existence. In September, Scientific American featured this article which describes a new scientific model that was discussed previously in the journal Nature Communications, formulated by scientists who claim it can successfully resolve the long-questioned Grandfather paradox:

“Instead of a human being traversing a CTC to kill her ancestor, imagine that a fundamental particle goes back in time to flip a switch on the particle-generating machine that created it… If the particle were a person, she would be born with a one-half probability of killing her grandfather, giving her grandfather a one-half probability of escaping death at her hands—good enough in probabilistic terms to close the causative loop and escape the paradox. Strange though it may be, this solution is in keeping with the known laws of quantum mechanics.”

Though the scenario above is still hypothetical, it stands to reason that it could be achieved if consideration is given to such things as “dimensional splits” that may occur as a result of what we now recognize as a many-worlds hypothesis of space-time. Here, changes in one timeline involving you or I might not affect another, particularly if the process of traveling through time is done so in a manner that also affects these hypothetical “multiple timelines,” or perhaps even creates all-new “splinters” in the temporal fabric of reality, of which there might exist infinite numbers.

More and more, we are finding with time that old ideas that seemed to limit the possibilities of such things as a time travel are having to be revised, and slowly we are learning that things once deemed “imaginary” are perhaps worthy of consideration, after all. Much more could be said of the subject, but in it’s finest essence, it would seem that if the notion of time travel can be conceived within the mind, it then may indeed be possible, so long as it is not irrevocably ousted by the imposition of more firmly-understood scientific laws: to date, the idea remains far from being disproven.

A few final resources and thoughtful rumination worthy of any prospective time traveler’s… well, time, are the following articles on the subject: Albert Einstein and the Fabric of Time, featured at the website of Gevin Giorbran, as well as Michio Kaku’s “The Physics of Time Travel“, featured at his website. Then again, some might argue, as seen below, that we’re already time travelers; maybe, in the end it all has more to do with simply changing the way we think about things:

October 11, 2025
Consume, Consume, Consume With The False Promise Of Happiness!

Victor Lebow an economist, retail analyst and author, wrote a very pertinent account of modern consumerism in his 1955 paper, “Price Competition in 1955,” which was published in the Spring issue of the “Journal of Retailing.”

“Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption. The measure of social status, of social acceptance, of prestige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns. The very meaning and significance of our lives today expressed in consumptive terms. The greater the pressures upon the individual to conform to safe and accepted social standards, the more does he tend to express his aspirations and his individuality in terms of what he wears, drives, eats, his home, his car, his pattern of food serving, his hobbies.

These commodities and services must be offered to the consumer with a special urgency. We require not only “forced draft” consumption, but “expensive” consumption as well. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever increasing pace. We need to have people eat, drink, dress, ride, live, with ever more complicated and, therefore, constantly more expensive consumption. The home power tools and the whole “do-it-yourself” movement are excellent examples of “expensive” consumption.”

Consumerism Is Not Sustainable

We have let ourselves to be led down the path of consumption, we have been manipulated into a society of ‘battery hen humans’ where governments, marketers, corporations and interest groups have been feeding us a steady diet of consumerism, laced with deceit, false hopes and non-sustainability. It all started after the Second World War when economies and much of the Western population were in a state of stability and there were abundant energy resources in the form of coal and oil. What better way to control the masses to promote growth and prosperity than to condition consumers, voters and citizens to consume, consume, consume, everything else is irrelevant.

People talk about ‘the economy’ as if it were a living being. Interest groups such as the financial services sector, government, corporations and politicians discuss confidence, growth, investment, demand, spending, stimulus and consumption as a means to satisfying and appeasing the manic depressive economy. Slowly we are starting to see fragments of change. We have let ourselves become attached to something that offers little real evidence of being able to truly make us happy in the long term. In Buddhism, attachment is one of the key hindrances that causes suffering among humans. The Buddha taught that attachment generates craving, wanting and insecurity. Attachment is the wanting to hold onto and keep a permanent state and not be separated from a thing or person. The general principle behind non-attachment is to cultivate a mind of detachment. Once we do this we can then move towards a mind of oneness which involves compassion, an understanding of impermanence and seeing experiences for what they are.

We’re Attached To Physical Objects

Not only have humans become attached to physical objects or things, but also to relationships, ideas and opinions. We anchor or associate happiness, success and fulfillment with these external objects in the hope that we will find lasting happiness. So what do we do? Like the mouse on the treadmill we hope we will eventually get to where we want to be. We are always trying to achieve, in a never ending cycle of wanting and having, thinking this will lead us to lasting happiness. The current Western economic system with the mantra of growth and prosperity has let us be seduced into a pattern of wanting and external gratification. Most of us have been herded onto the plains of consumerism with the promise this will bring us closer to fulfillment. While on the forest fringes, we see a small group of enlightened beings that realize happiness and contentment comes only from within and cannot be bought, sold, acquired or accumulated.

Non-attachment gives us the freedom, space and time to contemplate the true meaning of life. Attachment distracts us from reality. It influences how we perceive and react to our immediate world. A world of excess leads to a roller coaster of highs and lows. This in turn motivates us to seek out more of those high moments of pleasure. We enter into a hedonistic world of want-fulfillment which creates further wanting in an attempt to bring lasting happiness.

Article by Andrew Martin editor of onenesspublishing and author of One ~ A Survival Guide for the Future…

October 11, 2025
The Baghdad Battery

The Baghdad Battery, sometimes referred to as the Parthian Battery, is the common name for a number of artifacts created in Mesopotamia, in during the Iranian dynasties of Parthian or Sassanid period (the early centuries AD), and probably discovered in 1936 in the village of Khuyut Rabbou’a, near Baghdad, Iraq.

These artifacts came to wider attention in 1938 when Wilhelm König, the German director of the National Museum of Iraq, found the objects in the museum’s collections. In 1940, König published a paper speculating that they may have been galvanic cells, perhaps used for electroplating gold onto silver objects.This interpretation continues to be considered as at least a hypothetical possibility. If correct, the artifacts would predate Alessandro Volta‘s 1800 invention of the electrochemical cell by more than a millennium. Description and datingThe artifacts consist of terracotta jars approximately 130 mm (5 in) tall (with a one and a half inch mouth) containing a copper cylinder made of a rolled-up copper sheet, which houses a single iron rod. At the top, the iron rod is isolated from the copper by bitumen plugs or stoppers, and both rod and cylinder fit snugly inside the opening of the jar, which bulges outward towards the middle.

The copper cylinder is not watertight, so if the jar was filled with a liquid containing citric acid, this would surround the iron rod as well. The artifact had been exposed to the weather and had suffered corrosion, although mild given the presence of an electrochemical couple. This has led some scholars to believe lemon juice, grape juice, or vinegar was used[citation needed] as an acidic electrolyte solution to generate an electric current from the difference between the electrochemical potentials of the copper and iron electrodes.

König thought the objects might date to the Parthian period (between 250 BC and AD 224). However, according to Dr St John Simpson of the Near Eastern department of the British Museum, their original excavation and context were not well recorded (see stratigraphy), so evidence for this date range is very weak. Furthermore, the style of the pottery (see typology) is Sassanid (224-640).

Most of the components of the objects are not particularly amenable to advanced dating methods. The ceramic pots could be analysed by thermoluminescence dating, but this has apparently not yet been done; in any case, it would only date the firing of the pots, which is not necessarily the same as when the complete artifact was assembled.

Another possibility would be ion diffusion analysis, which could indicate how long the objects were buried.Electrical Copper and iron form an electrochemical couple, so that in the presence of any electrolyte, an electric potential (voltage) will be produced. König had observed a number of very fine silver objects from ancient Iraq which were plated with very thin layers of gold, and speculated that they were electroplated using batteries with these being the cells.

After the Second World War, Willard Gray demonstrated current production by a reconstruction of the inferred battery design when filled with grape juice. W. Jansen experimented with benzoquinone (some beetles produce quinones) and vinegar in a cell and got satisfactory performance.

However, even among those who believe the artifacts were electrical devices, electroplating as a use is not well regarded today. Paul Craddock of the British Museum said “The examples we see from this region and era are conventional gold plating and mercury gilding. There?s never been any untouchable evidence to support the electroplating theory.”

The gilded objects which König thought might be electroplated are now believed to have been fire-gilded (with mercury). Reproduction experiments of electroplating by Dr Arne Eggebrecht consumed “many” reproduction cells to achieve a plated layer just one micrometre thick. Other scientists noted that Dr Eggebrecht used a more efficient, modern electrolyte; using only vinegar, the battery is very feeble.

An alternative, but still electrical explanation was offered by Paul Keyser. It was suggested that a priest or healer, using an iron spatula to compound a vinegar based potion in a copper vessel, may have felt an electrical tingle, and used the phenomenon either for electro-acupuncture, or to amaze supplicants by electrifying a metal statue. However, this is dubious, since a “tingle” requires a far higher voltage than can be generated by an iron/copper cell.

October 11, 2025
2013: Mankind’s Cradle of Civilisation Found in Java?

February 3, 2013

By FRANK JOSEPH

Men fear time, the old saying used to go, ‘but time fears the Sphinx.’ That famous statue and Egypt’s Great Pyramid before which it has reclined for thousands of years have been long regarded as the most ancient monumental structures on Earth. Indeed, their late 20^th century reappraisals indicated that they were even older than suspected.

Beginning in 1974, a medical physicist and colleague of Albert Einstein, Kurt Mendelssohn, showed that the Great Pyramid was not the 2560 BCE tomb of some vainglorious king described by mainstream scholars.¹ Instead, the ‘Mountain of Ra’ was raised nearly six centuries earlier, at the very outset of Pharaonic Civilisation, as a massive public works project to unify the numerous, divisive tribes of the Nile Delta in the common cause of its construction.

So too, the Great Sphinx ‘ roughly contemporaneous, according to Egyptologists, with the Great Pyramid ‘ has been back-dated to at least 5000 BCE ‘ two millennia before the first Egyptian dynasty ‘ by an American geologist at Boston University. During the early 1990s, Robert M. Schoch found that erosion on the Sphinx was not caused by the effects of wind-driven sand, as consensus opinion held, but by moving water, when conditions at the Nile Valley were far more rainy, long prior to the 26^th century BCE.²

As recently as 2009, these extreme chronological disclosures were radically eclipsed by radiocarbon testing of a monumental ceremonial centre in southern Turkey. Its T-shaped pillars, arranged in concentric, stone circles emblazoned with anthropomorphic, zoomorphic and geometric bas-relief images, pushed the start of civilisation back to eleven thousand years ago. But now, even Gobekli Tepe’s primacy has been overtaken by the announcement last autumn of a much larger megalithic complex, half a world away from Anatolia, two thousand or more years older.

The paradigm-shattering ruins were found in western Java, fifty kilometres southwest of Cianjur, a city with more than two million residents; Jakarta lies one hundred twenty kilometres to the northwest. A half-hour drive over asphalt and unpaved roads to the village of Karyamukti passes through mountainous landscape dotted with rice paddies and farms flourishing in the volcanic soil with chillies, peanuts, pineapple and corn, then skirts an immense tea plantation. At Mount Padang, hardy visitors need about twenty minutes to climb some 370 stone steps, rising at almost a forty-degree angle, ninety-five metres to the summit, which is crowned with the largest megalithic site in southeastern Asia. It encompasses more than twenty-five hectares, including nine hundred square metres of five, rectangular, stone courtyards ascending northwest to southeast, precisely laid out on a series of landscaped terraces, and neatly organised into low walls, inner partitions, and outward gateways, all of them connected by flights of stairs.

Within and without the enclosures are dozens of standing monoliths, but many more lie scattered about. The entire complex comprises an estimated 3,703,700 black, andesite blocks ranging from one to two metres in length, and formed by geological processes into polygonal structures of five-, six- or eight-sided columns. (Andesite is an extrusive, igneous rock, a type of basalt formed by volcanic action.) Average dimensions for the columns are 0.3-by-0.3-by-1.5 metres. These smooth-sided blocks weigh from ninety to six hundred kilograms, with an average, individual weight of about three hundred kilograms. In other words, the site’s prehistoric workers transported approximately 1,111,110,000 kilograms (1,224,790 short tons) of building materials 885 metres above sea level, up the precipitous slopes of Mount Padang. Added to their burden was a non-local source for their andesite, which had to be brought in from some distant quarry unknown to academic scholars.

Archaeologists were further surprised to find traces of a kind of adhesive, glue or perhaps cement that bound some of the top courses of the walls. Beneath, investigators were perplexed by the presence of several layers of sand that had been deliberately incorporated into the original stonework by the prehistoric engineers, perhaps allowing the blocks to move and slide against each other with the motion of seismic disturbances, instead of rigidly resisting such geologic upheavals and breaking under tension. Here was possible evidence for ancient earthquake-proof construction. Java is notorious for its tectonic violence, which claimed the lives of about eighty victims as recently as 2 September 2009. But it seemed utterly inconceivable that some pre-industrial people living in a remote, Indonesian backwater could have actually applied a form of technology our modern world has only recently begun to grasp.

‘Musical’ Rocks

Contributing to the stones’ high strangeness, most of them possess an unusual quality that may have additionally warranted their distant importation by the ancient builders to the top of Mount Padang. Most of its andesite blocks and columns resonate with a bell-like tone when struck with another hard object. They belong to a rare, geological occurrence known as lithophony, the property of some rocks to emit musical sounds under percussive stress. Although only slightly more than one dozen lithophonic boulder fields have been identified in the world, most are found on private property, or have been obliterated by urban development.

Two, separate sites identically named ‘Ringing Rocks Park’ may be visited in the United States at Upper Black Eddy and Lower Pottsgrove Township, or Stony Garden on the northern slope of Haycock Mountain, all in Pennsylvania. Yet another American ‘Ringing Rocks’ field is found in Montana’s Deerlodge National Forest, on the southwestern flank of Dry Mountain, in Jefferson County, southeast of Butte. Australia has its own ‘Ringing Rocks’ in northwest Queensland, and Mexico’s Cerro de las Campanas, or ‘Hill of the Bells,’ is located on a hill in the city of Querétaro. There are the Musical Stones of Skiddaw in Cumbria, England, but Scotland’s Clach a’ Choire is more cogent to our investigation, because this ‘Ringing Stone Of Tiree’ bears fifty-three circular ‘cup marks’ made by New Stone Age musicians, 4,500 years ago. They, like the builders at far-off Java’s Mount Padang, discovered something unusually mystical in the bell-like sounds. Remarkably, all these various sites produce very different tones from one another; no two locations sound exactly alike.³

During laboratory testing of several lithophonic rocks in 1965, Pennsylvania geologist Richard Faas found that they created a series of tones at frequencies lower than the range of human hearing, and only became audible when they interacted with each other. Although lithophonic rocks sound metallic, their somewhat higher iron content is not responsible for such music, but rather a combination of the density of the stone and high degree of internal stress. Or so geologists speculate. In truth, beyond the cursory examinations undertaken by Faas, no actual studies to identify the source of lithophony have been made. Why some rocks produce ringing tones remains a scientific riddle.

Their anomalous appearance among the ruins of Mount Padang is another dimension of their ancient mystery. No doubt, they were used by the prehistoric inhabitants as part of their ceremonial and spiritual activities. A concentration of lithophonic rocks on the site’s first terrace is referred to as ‘the gamelan stones’ for their suggestive arrangement and the variety of musical sounds they make. Notes they produce have been identified as F, G, D and A by Hokky Situngkir from the Bandung Fe Institute, an Indonesian research organisation.⁴

Alignments at Gunung Padang

Archaeo-astronomers have determined that at least several of Mount Padang’s larger standing stones point to very definite celestial phenomena, such as sunrise and sunset on the summer and winter solstices, together with those of the spring and vernal equinoxes. The ceremonial centre’s name may, in fact, have actually derived from these prehistoric solar orientations. For example, the word padang, in the language of the Sundanese people of West Java Province, translates as ‘bright.’ Gunung Padang, the archaeological zone itself, is commonly referred to by native residents as Sundapura, or ‘the Shrine of the Sun,’ while the hill on which the ruins are located (‘Mount Padang’) is traditionally called Parahyang Padang: ‘Where The Sun Ancestors Dwell,’ or ‘Place Of The Ancestors Of The Sun.’ These names or titles imply that the original inhabitants were astronomer-priests and/or priestesses, who aligned some of their monoliths with important solar positions. As such, these ‘Sun Ancestors’ were light-worshippers, not unlike the European megalith-builders, who often oriented their own standing stones in western France and the British Isles with identical solar coordinates. Today, Gunung Padang is still sought out as a holy place by the two hundred to seven hundred visitors, most of them religious pilgrims, who visit every month.

Geomantic alignments are also in evidence. Terrace I is deliberately aligned with nearby Mount Gede, where Karuhun cemetery has been revered for untold generations as the country’s oldest ancestral burial ground. Five, crudely sculpted, andesite thrones stand in Terrace II; six more are found in Terrace V. Although overshadowed by their massive courtyards, Mount Padang’s hundreds of stone terraces are themselves engineering marvels, two metres in height and diameter, with an uncanny resemblance to their far better known agricultural counterparts at another mountainous location on the other side of the world, in the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu, among the Peruvian Andes.

The Mysterious Nan Madol

But this South American parallel is not Gunung Padang’s only overseas’ comparison. No less great is an astounding, perhaps kindred mystery 4,345 kilometres northeast from Java, in a remote corner of the western Pacific Ocean. Off the coast of the Micronesian island of Pohnpei ‘ ‘Built Upon An Altar’ ‘ stand the massive ruins of a long-dead archaeological site. Incongruously built on a coral reef less than two metres above sea level, Nan Madol ‘ ‘Spaces In Between’ ‘ is a series of rectangular islands and colossal towers choked by draping vegetation. Ninety-two man-made islands are enclosed within the ‘downtown’ area’s 2.6 square kilometres. All are inter-connected by an extensive network of what appear to be massive canals, each nine metres across and more than one metre deep at high tide.

An estimated two hundred fifty million tons of prismatic basalt ‘ related to Gunung Padang’s andesite ‘ went into the construction of Nan Madol. Its stone girders rise in a cribwork configuration to eight metres. Between four and five million stone columns went into the construction of this prehistoric megalopolis. These prismatic columns range in length from one to four metres, although many reach six metres. Their average weight is around five tons each, but the larger examples weigh twenty or twenty-five tons apiece. An estimated four to five million basalt pillars, girders and logs went into building Nan Madol. It is, in effect, a double-walled enclosure comprising thirteen thousand, five hundred cubic metres of coral, with an additional four thousand, five hundred cubic metres of basalt. Remove all concealing vegetation, and visitors would behold crudely worked masses of basalt contrasting with orderly courses of stone rising in massive towers and overpowering walls amid a complex of smaller, rectangular buildings and man-made lakes interconnected by dozens of canals and numerous steps, sometimes formed into grand staircases, and spread out over eighteen square kilometres.

Construction migrated to the main island of Pohnpei, where a rectangular enclosure fifteen metres long by eleven metres wide, with bisecting, one-metre-high interior wall, was discovered in a remote, swampy meadow high in the mountains; its configuration and mountaintop setting are particularly reminiscent of Gunung Padang. Although the Micronesian island’s twin courtyards contain a five hundred square-metre area, a pair of inner platforms are only a third of a metre high. As at Nan Madol, roughly cut basalt boulders and basalt ‘logs’ were stacked to form the enclosure. Several others stand on Pohnpei’s southwest coast, with the largest example atop a two hundred forty-metre-high mountain. The summit is entirely surrounded by walls about two metres high connected via paved walkways to several terraced platforms.

No one knows who raised them, when or why. Micronesian myth recounts only that exceptionally tall, twin-brother sorcerers, named Olisihpa and Olsohpa, arrived sometime during the ancient past in a ‘large canoe’ from their distant homeland. It was a great kingdom of glittering splendour, until falling stars and earthquakes eventually destroyed Kanamwayso, which sank to the bottom of the sea. This native oral tradition seems like a variation on the more famous story of Mu, or Lemuria, a deeply ancient and supposedly sophisticated, pan-Pacific civilisation that exerted lasting influence on both Asia and America prior to its destruction by a natural catastrophe similar to the tsunami that ravaged northern Japan, in 2010. Before the analogous loss of Kanamwayso, Olisihpa and Olsohpa allegedly built the basalt enclosures and staircases that continue to grace Nan Madol and Pohnpei. Despite more than one hundred years of scientific investigations, however, no known culture has been associated with these places. Meanwhile, the moist, tropical climate skewers accurate carbon-dating at both locations.

Nor is their original purpose entirely clear. Nothing about either location suggests real urban centres, lacking as they do any provision for food production or storage. No human burials have been found there, save a few, individual skeletons of above-average stature ‘ calling to mind local myths of the founding-fathers, Olisihpa and Olsohpa ‘ unearthed by Japanese archaeologists during the 1930s. The rectangular arrangement of walls with regularly spaced openings and partitions suggest a ceremonial function. But for what people, and why in this extremely remote, obscure corner of the vast Pacific’ Nevertheless, Nan Madol’s and Pohnpei’s fundamental resemblances to Gunung Padang imply, at the very least, a relationship of some kind, however inconceivable.

14,000 BCE’

Yet more extraordinary than even these comparisons and the monumental greatness of the Indonesian site itself is its uniquely profound age. The first archaeological survey of Gunung Padang appears in a ‘Report, the Department of Antiquities’ (Rapporten van de Oudheidkundige Dienst) for Holland’s colonial office, whose anonymous author posited during 1914 that the ruins could not predate the official beginning of Java’s history in the early 5^th century CE, although they appeared much older. For the rest of the 20^th century, the site went unrecognised by the outside world, even after it was briefly mentioned by the prolific Dutch archaeological author, Dr. N.J. Krom, in 1946’s Under Palm And Banyan Trees.⁵

Thirty-three years later, a Canberra team from the Australian National University’s Centre for Archaeological Research ‘ ‘dedicated to investigating and learning with and about the people, languages, and land of Asia and the Pacific region’ ‘ returned for the site’s first, scientific examination.⁶In doing so, they determined that Gunung Padang was far older than previously imagined. Lichen growth alone covering many of the megaliths bespoke an antiquity going back millennia before Java’s earliest known culture. Not until February 2012, however, was a State-sponsored evaluation of the site carried out, when thorough radiocarbon testing revealed it was built and first occupied about 4,800 years ago. This surprisingly early Third Millennium BCE date placed Gunung Padang squarely within Western Europe’s Megalithic Age, with implications for transoceanic contact, however heretical such considerations struck conventional scholars.

But as the researchers were carrying out their investigations, they noticed traces on Mount Padang’s surface of what might be other, underground structures. No less a supporter of science than the President of Indonesia himself, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, lavished the archaeologists with costly GSSI and Multi-Channel SuperSting R-8 ground-penetrating radar units, plus GEM-Ovenhausser geo-magnetometers. These state-of-the-art instruments readily found and accurately confirmed the existence of large and small chambers, walls, gates and staircases buried deep beneath the often-visited, open-air ruins in a virtual subterranean mirror image of Gunung Padang.

According to team leader and geologist, Dr. Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, ‘3-D geo-electric and geo-radar [procedures] discovered two doors in the hallway’ of a chamber measuring ten-by-ten-by-ten metres at a depth of twenty-five metres.⁷ Throughout last summer and into early fall, he and his twenty colleagues ‘ leading seismologists, philologists, archaeologists, anthropologists, and petrographers ‘ carefully dredged up organic materials, which were sent for laboratory testing in the United States, because the Indonesians were determined to avoid any appearance of politically motivated results.

‘US lab validates Cianjur ‘ancient structure’ theory,’ The Jakarta Post announced on 5 November. ‘A recent analysis of carbon-dating by the Miami-based Beta Analytic Lab has apparently validated findings by a government-sanctioned team that a man-made structure lies buried under Mount Padang in Cianjur, West Java. The lab used samples of sand, soil and charcoal found at a depth of between three and twelve metres beneath the mountain’s surface. Based on geo-electric, geo-radar and geo-magnetic [surveys], a large chamber is buried at least up to fifteen metres from the surface’ Carbon-dating test results from the Miami lab show that the structure could date back to 14,000 B.C., or beyond.’⁸

Since publication of The Jakarta Post report, repeated and additional analysis by Beta Analytic scientists confirmed their initial 14,000 BCE findings. The significance of this discovery cannot be over-stated, because it crosses the Ice Age event horizon. Even Turkey’s Gobekli Tepe, for all its Tenth Millennium BCE antiquity, came into being only after the close of the last glacial epoch, when environmental conditions were moderating sufficiently to allow for the development of proto-civilisation. Less distracted by the incessant challenges to their survival, our ancestors were afforded opportunities for broader, more complex social cooperation. But Gunung Padang proves that humans were already in possession of a relatively high culture two thousand years earlier, while the Ice Age was still in progress.

This ‘Shrine of the Sun’ has radically pushed back the origins of civilisation to remoter levels of time and space, because mainstream palaeo-anthropologists, fixated on Europe and the Near East, are resistant to the very notion of mankind’s transition from ‘savagery’ in Indonesia. Yet, it is precisely here that Stephen Oppenheimer, a British geneticist, member of Green Templeton College, Oxford, and an honorary fellow of Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, traced the beginnings of civilised mankind with his controversial Eden in the East, in 1999.⁹ It had been preceded during the previous century by The Lost Continent of Mu, written by another Englishman, James Churchward, an Imperial British Army colonel serving in India, where his translation of original Hindu monastery source materials likewise recorded how humans took that first step in the Western Pacific realm.¹⁰ My own The Lost Civilization of Lemuria (2006) and Before Atlantis (2013) similarly trace the rise of homo erectus in Java, his Pacific-wide dispersal and accelerated evolution after the eruption of history’s greatest volcanic event, and his descendants’ subsequent invention of civilisation.

These conclusions are wonderfully brought to life by recognition of Gunung Padang as Man’s earliest-known megalithic complex. Its apparent sophistication declares that it was not the first, but must have been preceded by the construction of even earlier ceremonial centres. Civilisation is, therefore, older than we presently comprehend. If, however, the quest for its ultimate origins goes on, and deeper into the past than ever imagined, then at the very least, Gunung Padang is pointing us in their proper direction.

You can read more about ancient civilisations, including articles on an ancient pan-Pacific civilisation and Turkey’s Gobekli Tepe, in New Dawn Special Issue Vol 7 No 1.

If you appreciated this article, please consider a digital subscription to New Dawn.

Footnotes

1. Kurt Mendelssohn, The Riddle of the Pyramids, London: Thames & Hudson, 1974.

2. Robert M. Schoch, Voices of the Rocks, NY: Harmony, 1999.

3. Ringing Rocks Park, Upper Black Eddy, Pennsylvania, www.youtube.com/watch’v=V4VtjFhysgc;Ringing Rocks Park, Lower Pottsgrove Township, Pennsylvania, www.youtube.com/watch’v=NBfrLoBpsIQ; Ringing rocks, Queensland, Australia, www.youtube.com/watch’v=dl_zL4g2gvs;Musical Stones of Skiddaw, England, www.youtube.com/watch’v=inWKcmVEwvs; Ringing Rocks, Montana, www.youtube.com/watch’v=smiCS1Ixfts; Cerro de las Campanas, Querétaro, Mexico,www.youtube.com/watch’v=_dMRcnlZ2tk; The Ringing Stone, or Clach a’ Choire, Scotland,www.youtube.com/watch’v=eNn-4O_G-bU

4. www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread880575/pg1

5. Dr. N. J. Krom, Onder Palmen En Waringins, Holland: Uitgeverij in Den Toren, 1946.

6. ANU Centre for Archaeological Research, http://chl.anu.edu.au/archaeology/car.php

7. www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread880575/pg1

8. ‘U.S. lab validates Cianjur ‘ancient structure’ theory,’ 5 November 2012, The Jakarta Post,www.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/11/05/us-lab-validates-cianjur-ancient-structure-theory.html.

9. Stephen Oppenheimer, Eden in the East, London: George Weidenfeld & Nicholson, Ltd., 1999.

10. Col. James Churchward, The Lost Continent of Mu, U.S.: Brotherhood of Life, 1987 reprinting of the 1924 original.

11. Frank Joseph, The Lost Civilization of Lemuria, U.S.: Bear and Company, 2006; Before Atlantis, U.S.: Bear and Company, 2013.

FRANK JOSEPH has published more books (eight) about the lost civilisation of Atlantis than any other writer in history. These and his twenty, other titles dealing with archaeology, military history and metaphysics have been released in thirty-seven foreign editions around the world. He was the editor-in-chief of Ancient American, a popular science magazine, from its inception in 1993 until his retirement fourteen years later. He lives today with his wife, Laura, in the Upper Mississippi Valley of the United States.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 136 (Jan-Feb 2013).

Read this article with its illustrations and much more by downloading
your copy of New Dawn 136 (PDF version) for only US$5.95

© Copyright New Dawn Magazine, http://www.newdawnmagazine.com. Permission granted to freely distribute this article for non-commercial purposes if unedited and copied in full, including this notice.

October 11, 2025
The Erideans and The Anunnaki

Who are they – and where do they originate?

As a starting point then, let us take a brief view of the origins and social structure of the Eridians to see where and what role they are playing out in this scenario.

Remember, there is a highly complex historical background as to the present scenario that is unfolding, and therefore in some circumstances complete details may not be available. However, for the benefit of those who wish to comprehend what is transpiring and to take on board an understanding in preparation, we submit the following below.

WHO ARE THE ERIDIANS?

Initial contact seems to portray them as Reptoid Klingons for want of a better description, but without the physical fighting qualities of that class! They appear to follow the Reptoid pattern of having little logical brain and are controlled by spirit (Viking.org) It is apparent (?) that this is the first time they have encountered man in its present form, and thus do not comprehend the human race. (Whats new I hear you ask!).

There is one common denominator between them and us, and that is the interest in an old enemy…. THE ANUNNAKI. They seem to be still looking for them. Perhaps this is their motive in orbiting our sun, to await the Anunnaki! If indeed this is the case, then we could witness to and even become drawn into a final conflict!

WHERE DO THE ERIDEANS ORIGINATE

The Erideans themselves are a completely telepathic race and seem to originate from the constellation of Eridanus. It is represented as… a very long, winding river that starts at the left foot of Orion in the north, sweeps south of Taurus, west to the edge of Cetus, then doubles back east to Caelum, and eventually ends far to the south, at the border with Hydrus Its difficult now to identify which river the constellation represents. Some writers claimed it was the Tigris or Euphrates, others the Nile

The constellation is situated approximately 10.7 to 12+ light years to the NEAR groups, which include Eridanus Delta and Epsilon.

Epsilon is very similar to our Earth and their SUN is in the SAME class. The DELTA planet is said to be a CARBONIFEROUS (Agricultural) Planet that possessed diamonds as ubiquitous as is Quartz. To them they are as decorative as are ROCKS on planet earth. It is inhabited by Reptoids that look fairly Human. Their sun, however is a variable STAR so they also employ COMPLETE Weather control, which enables them to live in Windowless STONE houses. Or possibly reinforced concrete as we know it.

The Erideans are also referred to as CETIANS, or Tau Cetians, a sort of human race of Mediterranean or South American and of tan skinned appearance. These are said to be in alliance with the Pleiadians, who have formed a kind of Cetian alliance with others in a desire to establish a common defence against their reptilian nemesis.

It is thought that the Erideans are very hypochondriac about making contact as the telepathic noise we create would upset them greatly. In addition our gravity is slightly too much for their comfort, and there is a risk of bacterial or virus contamination.

By our standards, they may perhaps appear slightly reptilian, and therefore any contact would have to be controlled contact If they do wish to make contact, it will be at a distance without a physical landing. Due to their complete telepathic abilities, they may not appreciate our normal methods of communication, including radio and television etc.

It is possible that these Eridean Plasma carriers then, are part of a fleet, which are involved in a galactic dispute beyond Jupiter. In summing up, therefore, it is conceivable that an alliance may be possible with this group, as they appear friendlier than the Anunnaki.

There are in fact a number of diverse reptilian races distributed throughout a number of equally diverse galaxies and universes, some are good and some BAD! The Draconians (OKA the draqs) originate from the constellation of Draconis and almost entered our solar system, from the companion to HALE BOPPE comet in 1997. It is believed, however, they were prevented from so doing by the Galactic Federation. Otherwise it would have been a case of Jurassic Park where earth would have provided the best restaurant in the Galaxy.

While from SIRIUS we have the red group, the Sirians, it is this group that is involved in the war beyond Jupiter. The Sirians once inhabited and ruled earth prior to 15,000 BCE (Before the Common Era, or BC) in Atlantis.

Apparently, Sirius seems to be the epicentre of the ASHTAR or ASTARTE collective, where humanoids of various types, Sasquatch, Reptiloids, Greys, and Reptilian hybrid species seem to have collated together in the past. The Sirians have waged war previously with the Orion Empire or the Unholy Six reptilian star systems in the ORION open cluster. The ancient dispute involves just who will serve as the landlords of a sector of space containing 21 star systems including the most strategic star system, SQL and particularly planet Earth, Terra or Shan — which is a virtual cosmic oasis of water, mineral, plant, animal and genetic resources in incredible variety compared with most other worlds. This dispute between the Sirians and Orion reptiloids dates back to the ancient invasion of Orion by the Draconian EMPIRE, as a result of which many Nordic type humanoids escaped to Procyon, Sol, Sirius and elsewhere. This war in Sirius-B is gravitating towards the SoI System, in that the opposing agendas for this system is one of the major issues of dispute between the two [or three] warring factions sides (Evadamic- Draconian).
However, as previously mentioned the Anunnaki are the race to be apprehensive of to say the least! Who are they? We on earth are said to be genetically and symbolically, part of an off-planet civilisation known as the Anunnaki. Thought to originate in the constellation of Lyra, these were the first creator gods who knew how to create matter, such as planets, stars, life forms for themselves, and eventually others.

The Lyrans physical lifetimes lasted for approximately one thousand years. In time, however, as their life span decreased, they sought out a substance that would enable them to live longer. They discovered that gold not only increased their longevity, but also provided them with a superconductivity, which gave them the ability to be highly telepathic and experience their multidimensionality.

Eventually, they spread out into the cosmos and created new civilisations, a few went to Vega, others the Pleiades, and others Sirius. However, their need for gold was paramount.

The Anunnaki were said to be tall, and have been called the Nordics or Blondes, emanating a golden glow aura. Their symbol is THE WINGED DISC which not only represents their starship Nibiru, but also symbolic of the ability of the spirit to fly free while remembering its wise, divine source.

These Anunnaki were later called the Elohim (gods) and Nephilim (those who descended).

Upon completion of a number of genetic experiments, in which they created other races, they eventually produced the hybrid Homo sapiens, us. The souls of those who became human came to Earth by their own free will to experience physicality. Several other extraterrestrial civilisations contributed their own input into human DNA and created many races of humans, some of which have now left earth.

Thus the Anunnaki could be said to be pattern-makers, the creators of archetypes and of the template for human life on Earth. One of the Anunnaki leaders was EnIiI (also known as Jehovah). Enki and EnI1I were half brothers through the same father, Anu, who was the king of this Anunnaki group.

Enlil did not want human to be equal to them, while Enki was in favour of human freedom and equality. In order to ensure that humans would be able to benefit from their ancestry, Enki (the serpent of wisdom and healing) suggested those who came to be called Adam and Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. This subterfuge enraged EnliI who, from that point onward, continued to punish humanity whenever they were close to coming to an answer of life itself, thus seeking to reclaim their rightful heritage. See GENESIS CONNECTION. Civilisations and religions were created by Enki and Enlil (and later their offspring). Enki and his lineage developed Egypt. But, these civilisations rarely had long periods of peace.

It is thought that Enlil irradiated Sodom and Gomorrah off the face of the Earth and Atlantis sank due to the Anunnakis experiments with sound technology. The last great flood, approximately 13,000 years ago, became a legend when Enki went against the other Anunnaki and saved humans (the Noahs of Earth) when EnIiI wanted to destroy them.
Mars also had a civilisation that was developed by the Anunnaki. Eventually and possibly after the Exodus, other Anunnaki left the earth, and their secrets of transforming gold into the powerful substance that allowed their longevity also vanished. In time, humans who remembered died or disappeared. The knowledge was lost, and yet, people kept trying to capture that special essence of gold in the form of statues mistakenly believing it was their key to immortality.

Whether today the Anunnaki would be able to adapt to our planets environment is debatable. However, the main advantage of the Anunnaki, like the Erideans, their telepathic ability, may also be their downfall, their Achilles heel if you will. In a telepathic society there can be little crime, but also little FREE WILL. In general, we, as humans at least do have this choice of free will corruption or enlightenment? You choose!

October 11, 2025
The Ship of Heaven

Copyright David Talbott

This is a follow-up article to my earlier “Reconstructing the Saturn Myth” and “On Testing the Polar Configuration” (AEON I: 1-2). It is assumed that readers have read these articles and are familiar with the general context of the theory discussed in the following pages.

Introduction

In two previous essays, I have outlined a theory of the Saturnian age, claiming that only a few thousand years ago (some time before the dawn of civilization) the Earth participated in a planetary system unlike anything known today. Though all of modern science presumes the ancient sky to have looked much like our sky today, I have argued that early man witnessed a remarkable assembly of planets moving close to the Earth and presenting a spectacular apparition in the heavens. I have called this apparition the polar configuration, and suggested that its tangible forms are mirrored in all of ancient myth and symbol.

In fact, the history of this celestial apparition was the history of the gods.

I have claimed also that the theory of the polar configuration can be tested and verified through a comprehensive survey of ancient records; and that the validity of the theory will become increasingly apparent as one descends to particulars: the very level at which other explanations collapse is that at which the explanatory power of the polar configuration is most definitive.

To further illustrate the thesis, I shall here take up an example familiar to all students of myth: The ship of heaven. Because ancient sources offer a huge volume of data on this subject (including many incontrovertible and previously-unexplained facts), it is a chance to see how well the theory is able to unify what has previously ap-peared as contradiction and absurdity.

A Model of the Ship

If the cosmic ship of the myths has any reference in the model I have proposed (Fig. 1), it is without doubt a figure of the revolving crescent. For if ancient man did indeed gaze up at the vast crescent of the proposed polar configuration, watching it move in a daily circuit around the massive orb of Saturn, it is not difficult to imagine that they would see a ship of light revolving in a daily cycle:

Figure 2. The four phases of the polar configuration

According to the model, the apparition began to grow bright as the crescent descended to the left of Saturn (Fig 2:a); reached its point of greatest splendor when the crescent was directly below Saturn (b); began to diminish as the crescent rose to the right (c); and was its weakest when the crescent was directly over Saturn (d). This daily cycle, I have claimed, is reflected in all ancient symbolism of the Saturnian “day” and “night.”

Since the behavior of the crescent in this model is unambiguous and invites no confusion with the behavior of our “new Moon” today there should be no difficulty in confirming the true identity of the ship if the model is fundamentally valid. It will be useful, then, to enumerate the ways in which the model distinguishes itself from conventional interpretations of the ship. As we have emphasized, the advantage of the model is that each of the components of the configuration reveals a specific, testable relationship to the others. The crescent, for example, not only behaves in a clear, easily- defined way, but has an equally-clear relationship to the central sun, the surrounding band, the comet-like streams radiating from the band, the four directional streams of the sun-cross, the polar column, and the revolving cometary curl. And in each of these defined relationships the predicted imagery provides a stark contrast to any likely descriptions of the Sun, Moon and stars as they appear to us today.

For starters, our model suggests these fundamental characteristics:

The cosmic ship was originally the vehicle of the god and planet Saturn.

Since Saturn was the ancient sun god,1 Saturn’s ship must be the universal “ship of the sun.”

The ship was a crescent.

The crescent-ship was not our Moon as usually supposed, but the illuminated half of a band around the sun god.

The band of the enclosed sun was also the celestial “pathway” traversed by the ship.

The ship revolved around the stationary sun god each day. (That is, while the ship was Saturn’s vehicle, only the ship moved.)

The ship revolved around the summit of the polar column, the axis-pillar of the world wheel.

The ship traversed the four “quarters” of the celestial enclosure each day.

The ship was above the sun god at “night” and below during the “day.”2

The ship meant the same thing as the two peaks of the world mountain, the horns of the bull of heaven, the outstretched wings of the mother goddess and the outstretched arms of the heaven-sustaining giant.

As I will seek to show, each of these predictions is confirmed in the most explicit way, removing any doubt as to the ability of the model to account for the most common features of the ship. Moreover, as we begin to address these specific features, it will become increasingly clear that, by interpreting each attribute in a particular way, the model produces a series of additional predictions, all of them highly concrete, extraordinarily improbable under modern-day assumptions, and testable, so that there is almost no limit to the extent to which a researcher can verify, on this singular theme, the far- reaching predictive power of the model. In many of these instances, the deduced requirement of the model poses not only a black and white contrast to the conventional solar and lunar interpretations, but highly novel identities and associations,all extraordinarily unlikely under our familiar sky. For example:

If the ship means the same thing as the two peaks of the cosmic mountain, then it must be concluded that the two peaks literally sailed around the central sun.

If the mythological phrase “sailing upstream” means the rising of the crescent to the right of Saturn, then the sun god must sail upstream in the (archaic) evening, and downstream in the (archaic) morningQa reversal of the language anticipated by the solar interpretation.

By the same logic, when the ship is in its “day” position it is below Saturn and upright but when it is in its “night” position it is above Saturn and it is inverted

. If the revolving cometary curl is the magical towing rope pulling the ship on its circular journey, then the towing rope must be the same thing as the celebrated sidelock of the god-king.

If the cometary streams radiating from the band of the enclosed sun are the mysterious “hair” of the celestial dwelling, then the radiating hair must be the same thing as the “oars” of the cosmic ship.

It needs to be emphasized that such predicted oddities as these follow inexorably from a straightforward application of the model to ancient imagery. Keep in mind also that these anomalies are not predicted by any previously- established theory. In fact, from any conventional viewpoint, they could only be regarded as absurdities without any possibility of a coherent explanation. Hence, in these instances, verification of the model’s predictive ability becomes all the more significant.

Lastly, it is in the nature of a unified theory that it should explain all of the relevant data. If the mythology of the cosmic ship was inspired in its entirety by our proposed celestial forms, then no verifiable attribute of the ship should contradict the model at any level, general or specific. I gladly submit the model to this test, and welcome rebuttal from any critic on any point.

Archetype and Symbol

In evaluating ancient evidence on this subject, it is important to distinguish between the symbol and the thing symbolized. My claim has been that the objects and events of myth point to a coherent and ultimately very simple set of celestial forms. For the sake of clarity, we will call these forms of the polar configuration the archetypes and their mythological representations in ritual and art the symbols. The archetypes, then, evolve only in the sense that the original celestial forms evolved through a series of transformations. The symbols, on the other hand, though inspired originally by tangible objects in the sky, are human concepts subject to endless evolution. And just as soon as the age of the gods ended, the immediate perceptual tie between symbol and archetype was broken, cutting the human concepts loose and setting in motion an evolutionary chain that could only lead to the progressive dilution of all mythical and symbolic constructs.

I will therefore follow what is a self-evident tenet within the framework of the theory, that the oldest sources are the most “authentic.” We will concentrate on those sources closest to the primitive experience, in the conviction that they are most likely to suggest the true character of the archetypes.

Archetypes in Art

In looking at the symbolism of the ship, we must consider the interacting evidences of pictures and words, the one category serving to illuminate the other, and neither standing alone.

Pictorial evidence begins in the prehistoric period, and includes as a most vital contribution the simple pictographs incorporated into the first languages. In a later period come more elaborate artistic renderings on papyrus and stone, often removed many centuries, or thousands of years from the primeval experience. Though the central concepts are not lost in the later epoches, the pure forms of the archetype have, on the whole, been fully transformed into human and animal forms and combined in fascinating symbolic complexes. Though still powerful, these leave no possibility that the artistic portrayals as a whole would actually look like the original celestial apparition. Since the most fundamental concepts remain, however, it would be entirely inappropriate to ignore this body of evidence. In fact, by allowing the earlier sources to serve as a guide, we will discover more meanings embedded in the later artistic elaborations than modern viewers have ever imagined.

Saturn’s Ship

More than a century and a half ago G. S. Faber remarked that the god Saturn is “literally represented as sailing over the ocean in a ship,” and this ship, according to Faber, was synonymous with a host of other ships of world mythology.3 Ovid tells us that because the god traversed the entire sphere of the “earth” in his primordial voyage, his special token was a ship.4 It is generally agreed that Ovid is correct in saying that this ship of Saturn is that which appears on the reverse of coins stamped with the double face of Janus.5 The latter god, Saturn’s acknowledged alter ego, was remembered as the “inventor” of ships.

Figure 3. Babylonian sun god in his cosmic ship

Long before the age of Latin poets and historians, however, the Sumerians and Babylonians celebrated the ship of the planet god Saturn. The priests of Lagash knew Saturn as Ningirsu, owner of “the beloved ship,” a celestial vehicle “that rises up out of the dam of the deep.”6 Similarly, the god Enki (translated by the Greeks as Kronos/Saturn) rides “the ship of the antelope of the Apsu [cosmic ocean].”7 In fact, Saturn’s ship, called the Magur-boat and esteemed as the “Great Boat of Heaven,”8 is one of the more frequently- depicted images in Mesopotamian art (Fig. 3).

Ship of the Sun

As we have already documented, the ancient sun god was Saturn, so there can be no basis for separating the ship of Saturn from the often-noted ship of the sun.

It is also an easily verified fact that virtually all of the great gods of myth sail in a ship, though no one has yet offered a theory to account for the many unusual traits of this celestial vehicle, which is constantly invoked as a visible form moving across the waters of the sky. The ship of Helios is a “golden goblet” sailing on the all-encompassing river Oceanus. A ship of “self-made light” transports the Iranian god Yima.9 The Japanese creator god Sukuna-Biko-Na rides “on the crest of the waves in a heavenly Kagami boat.”10 “A golden ship of golden tackle moved about in the sky,” reads the Hindu Atharva Veda.11 Natives of the Marquesas say that in the beginning there was only the sea on which the creator Tiki floated in a canoe.12 The Hawaiian god Tanaroa sailed above in a “flying canoe,” much like the great shaman of the Yenisei Ostiaks, who “rows his boat in heaven.”13 So also did the legendary Hiawatha navigate “a white canoe which moved without human aid.”14

In ancient Egypt the ship is an extremely popular theme in all local traditions. It was the hope of every pious Egyptian, on their death, to be crowned like the sun god, to enter the celestial city and to alight “upon the forehead of Ra in the bows of his boat which is in heaven,”15 or to “see the Sektet boat of the sacred Sahu passing forth over the sky.”16

O come and acclaim ye Ra, the lord of heaven, the Prince (Life, Health, Strength!), the Creator of the gods, and adore ye him in his beautiful form at his shining forth in the Atet boat.17

I shall advance to my throne which is in the boat of Ra. I shall not be molested, and I shall not suffer shipwreck from my throne which is in the boat of Ra the mighty one.18

I am the King, I am glorious, shining, besouled, strong, mighty, far-reaching, and far-striding. I go aboard, for I am pure; I receive the oar, I take my seat in the rowing-side of the sky, I row in the rowing side of the sky, I ply my oar in the rowing side of the sky.19

What is immediately clear in these texts is that, to those who lived under the influence of the former sky, the celestial ship was no less a visible part of the heavens than the sun god himself. To what celestial object, then, did the ship refer?

Crescent-Ship

Few comparative mythologists would deny that the original form of the ship was a crescent. The crescent form prevails in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, India, China, Greece, Scandinavia, and even the AmericasQgiving rise to the popular belief that the sun god travels nightly in “the ship of the new moon.” The specific character of the ship as a crescent and the relationship of the crescent to the sun god is well illustrated by the Sumerian and Babylonian Sin, probably the most familiar crescent-divinity in the ancient world. While Sin is titled Udsar, “the crescent,” he is also proclaimed to be “the shining bark of the heavens.”20 In view of the acknowledged identity of Saturn as the sun god, it is significant that in numerous Mesopotamian illustrations of the Sin-Crescent, the sun is shown resting in the center of its embrace.21 And to this fact one can add the expert opinion of Peter Jensen, Alfred Jeremias and others that the Sin-crescent was considered as an aspect of Saturn.2

Of course the usual identification of the crescent-ship with the Moon is due to one fact alone: the new Moon is the only crescent familiar to the modern age. And though our Sun never rests within the hollow of the Moon, the standard identification is so routine that mythologists give almost no attention to the actual imagery of the crescent-ship, every detail of which suggests a radically different interpretation.

Ship and Enclosure

One feature of our model distinguishing its interpretation of the ship from all conventional understanding is the virtual identity of the crescent and the revolving wheel of the sun. The universal sun-in-crescent , I have argued, cannot be understood apart from the basic character of the enclosed sun . Illuminated by the solar orb, Saturn’s celestial dwelling presented a brightly lit half, so that as the Earth turned on its axis, earthbound observers saw two revolving semicircles of light and shadow moving in a vast pathway around the stationary orb of Saturn. Hence, our model implies that the ship was part and parcel of the sun god’s enclosure.

In the Egyptian Pyramid Texts, King Unas announces, “I revolve round heaven like Ra, I sail round heaven like Thoth.”23 While Ra’s image is the enclosed sun , the common symbol of Thoth is the crescent-enclosure

. Allowing the one image to explain the other, we see that Unas does not here engage in two separate acts, but in a single act depicted in two different ways: to revolve within the Aten is to sail in the crescent ship of Thoth. “I stand up in thy enclosure, O Maa; I sail round about,” reads the Book of the Dead.24 From such declarations as this, together with other evidences cited below, it is clear that to enter the sun god’s enclosure is to enter the cosmic ship. This is why the royal barge of Amenophis III, for example, bore the name “Aten gleams. “25 The ship itself is the gleaming, brightly illuminated face of the Aten- band. Thus the ship’s common name: “ship of the Aten.” Of course, to recognize that the ship is half of the Aten-band is simply to accept the explicit Egyptian depictions of the band with a great crescent wrapped half way around it:26

Figure 4. The Egyptian crescent-enclosure

Not surprisingly, this direct connection of the crescent-boat with the sun- god’s enclosure will be found also in Mesopotamia. Though the crescent of Sin is the Magur-boat possessed by Ninurta-Saturn, the sign for gur means “circular enclosure.”27 And here, too, reckoning with the symbolism only requires one to accept the explicit presentations of the crescent in Mesopotamian art, showing it as part of the sun god’s enclosure.28

From this unambiguous evidence one perceives that Egyptian pictures of the Aten-band resting in the ship simply give a distinctly mythical expression to the abstract, archetypal form of the crescent-enclosure. In Egyptian illustrations of the crescent-enclosure, the crescent frequently evolves toward a larger receptacle for the band, as can be seen in the three versions of the band offered below (these being taken from different portraits of Khensu, an Egyptian counterpart of the Babylonian crescent god Sin). While the initial portrait retains the archetypal form, the last shows significant evolution:

Figure 5. Evolution of the Egyptian crescent-enclosure

A more dynamic and complex process can be seen in the evolution of the crescent-enclosure’s mythical concept as a ship. Let us start with an illustration from the Papyrus of Anu.

Figure 6. Elementary form of the Egyptian ship

The picture shows an uncomplicated profile of the ship, whose basic form is easily related to the crescent-enclosure images above.

In Fig. 7 below the portrait is only slightly more complex, with the significant addition of a vital conceptQ the resting sun god within the enclosure.

Figure 7. Sun god resting in ship

Then, in Fig. 8, the relative size of the enclosure is reduced and it is pushed to the left to accommodate the resting god, who also wears the enclosure on his head.

Figure 8. Ship with diminished Aten-band

Another example shows the enclosure only on the head of the resting god, and the remaining image is complicated by the addition of two other symbolic figuresQsteersman and ibisQboth associations vital to the total symbolism of the ship.

Figure 9. Sailing god accompanied by others

An illustration from the Papyrus of Nu presents an array of gods in the ship, and though the enclosure is present, it has been reduced and pushed aside:

Figure 10. Further displacement of the Aten-band

In noting these simpler levels of evolution, one sees how easily the archetypal forms were distorted, even as the artists added important mythical associations.

The other, equally fundamental principle is that, with time, the functional attributes of the symbol came to dominate over the archetypal forms. I offer as an example of this process two pictures of the ship, based on the same symbolic concepts. In the first (Fig. 11), we see the Aten-band in the ship, and the sun god, now portrayed conceptually as the beetle god Khepera, inside the enclosure. Around the band and helping to preserve one of its most crucial mythical identities, is an encircling serpent with tail in mouth, the folds of the serpent being presented in such a way as to state pictorially another mythical attribute of the band: it was conceived as a surrounding stream of water.

Figure 11. Khepera in boat

Now notice the evolution of the idea in the illustration from the Book of Gates (Fig. 12).

The watery serpent is still there, but no longer as an unbroken enclosureQand the band has disappeared, having been replaced by a more functional form of the god’s dwelling.

Figure 12. Sun god in navicular shrine

As a concluding example of the evolutionary process, I offer an illustration from Denderah.

Here the accretion of symbols combines with the progressively dominating influence of functionality to almost displace the archetypal band.

The band is, however, still there, with god-child inside, though both appear in highly diminished form and are pushed virtually out of the ship, allowing the imposing functional symbol to dominate the portrait completely.

Figure 13. A popular functional form of the ship

It would be a mistake, however, to assume that the evolution of the artistic tradition destroyed the evidential value of later Egyptian art. As will become clear, by combining interacting symbols the artists helped to preserve many aspects of the original conceptual unity even as they displaced the archetypes. And these incremental additions and distortions cannot hide the fact that, in its original concept, the ship (crescent) is inseparable from the Aten-band.

The Sun God’s Dwelling is a Ship

With this crucial identity in hand we possess the simplest possible explanation for a heretofore unexplained (and all too frequently overlooked) fact of ancient symbolism: virtually every mythical form of the sun god’s dwellingQbe it mother-womb or world wheel, city, temple or kingdom, egg, throne, or circular serpentQwas declared to be a “ship” sailing on the cosmic waters. The ancient mother goddess, conceived as a luminous “womb” in the sky, was also invoked as the “ship.”29 Thus, “ship” is a name of the womb of the Sumerian Inanna.30 Correspondingly, “the ship of the brilliant offspring” was an epithet of the Babylonian goddess Bau.31 The Egyptians conceived the band of the enclosed sun as the womb of the goddess Nut, called also a “ship.” The Pyramid Texts say, “Row me, O mother of mine; row me O abode of mine.”32 “O Boat of the sky. . .O Boat of Nut.”33

The ship of heaven is indeed a crescent, but the crescent is an aspect of the sun-god’s enclosure, remembered as Saturn’s world wheel. This is why the Sumerian Ma-gur boat, ship of the planet-god Saturn, received the appellation “chariot.”34 (Remember that the “chariot” itself was originally nothing but the cosmic wheel.) So too did the Chinese Huang-ti (identified with the planet Saturn) possess a magical vehicle that served as both ship and chariot.35 It is not surprising, then, to find Scandinavian rock carvings showing the wheel of the sun resting in the cosmic boat, or to discover thatQfrom Assyria to Britain and from India to PolynesiaQimages of cosmic ships either contained wheels or were set on wheels and conveyed around dry land in the rites.36 As symbols of the sun god’s enclosure, ship and wheel merge as one.

This same relationship of sun god’s dwelling and cosmic ship can be confirmed in all mythical forms of the dwelling. The myths deem this band to be a circle of “land” brought forth by Saturn in the creation; and “the Barge of Earth” (the celestial land) is at once a name of the sun god’s ship and the kingdom in the sky over which the god rules.37 In both Egypt and Mesopotamia, throne, temple and city all appear as “ships” floating on the cosmic waters. When the Egyptian texts say, “This great god travels in this city, on the water,”38 they mean that cosmic city and cosmic ship are one. Compare the Mesopotamian Surripak, “the City of the Ship,” or the Sumerian Kes temple, described like or as “the princely Magur-boat floating in the sky.”39 In exactly the same way, one will find on examination that the sun god’s eye, throne, shrine, shield and even the circular serpent either appear as a ship or are depicted as an integral part of the ship, despite the fact that the respective terrestrial objects themselves possess no “nautical” quality to explain the pervasive association.

It is an interesting fact, for example, that around the world the former sun- god or creator-king is said to have sailed on a ship constituted from the form of a great serpent or dragon. (The myths declare that in a spectacular celestial event this fiery monster had wrapped itself around the god.40) One of the most universal symbols in the ancient lexicon, the circular serpent- dragon is indisputably a figure of the sun god’s enclosure, as in the well- -known sign of the Aten:

Figure 14. Aten-band as circular serpent

That this enclosing serpent is presented mythologically and ideographically as a “ship” simply confirms that ship and enclosure are one. In Egypt the famous serpent-dragon Set becomes the throne and ship of Osiris, and the serpentine form of the ship occurs throughout Egypt (Fig. 15, a). Likewise, on Mesopotamian cylinder seals, we see repeated instances of a god sailing on a ship that is the dragon of the deep (Fig. 15, b). So too does every Viking ship seem to have been conceived in mythical terms as a dragon on the waters, in the same way that a serpent forms the ship of the Hindu Vishnu and the Mexican Quetzalcoatl.41

Figure 15. (a) Egyptian serpent-ship; (b) Mesopotamian dragon-ship But whether it is a city, temple or circular serpent rendered as a ship, our model interprets these as coherent images and says that the implied celestial forms can be taken in the most literal sense. In the former age of the gods a great wheel turned in the sky. And the rim of the wheel displayed a brightly- illuminated crescent.

It must be added, finally, that our model does not merely identify the crescent ship as an aspect of the band, it says that the crescent is exactly half of the band. As noted above, the Egyptian ship is identified frequently with the god Thoth, whose symbol is the crescent-enclosure . If the ship itself is the crescent, the sign leaves no doubt that here it is precisely half of the enclosure. That the ship does indeed divide the god’s dwelling in half is clear from the etymology of the Egyptian At-boat. The root at means “to divide in half,” “to bisect.” Moreover, this same, very precise relationship can be confirmed in Hindu symbolism. There the celestial enclosure is termed “the world egg,” while the ship of the gods is Argha, identified as the lower half of the egg.42

Stationary Sun

Another equally specific feature of the ship in our model is its unique relationship to Saturn, the polar sun: for the model claims that, in the sun god’s journey, only the ship moves.

Egyptian sources continually depict the ship circling in the sky, and as I intend to fully demonstrate, it does not rise or set in the fashion of our Sun and Moon. Perhaps the most common Egyptian word for “to sail” is seqet, from the root qet, “a circle”Qwritten with the determinative , the form of the Aten-band. Literally, seqet means “to go in a circle.” Hence one text declares that “the barge circles in the sky,”43 while another extols “the circlings of the Henhenu-bark.”44 And the ship does not simply revolve above the observer, it circles around the central sun, which is motionless or remains em hetep, “at rest” or “in one place.” The ship is thus “the Boat of Rest (Hetep].”

O god Ra, grant thou that the Osiris Nu may travel on in thy boat em hetep.45

Let me embark in thy boat, O Ra, em hetep.46

Thy resting place is the barge of Khepri.47

Thus, for a proper understanding of the language one must refer to the universal tradition of a central, resting, polar sun. While the sun god stands motionless the ship and crew circle around him:

The crew of Ra circles about.48

The dwellers in the Sektet Boat go round about thee.49

As the model predicts, then, this is the only sense in which the central sun “moves.”

Enclosure and Pathway

From a number of indications it can be assumed that the band visually enclosing the orb of Saturn possessed a fluid appearance, giving rise to the idea of an encircling river or ocean. To an observer on Earth the real sense of revolution was provided not by the band per se, but by the crescent and the arms of the sun crossQboth appearing to revolve around Saturn as the Earth turned on its axis. To those who viewed this spectacular daily cycle, it appeared as if the great ship sailed daily around an immense, fiery river or ocean.

It is, to say the least, unlikely that anyone looking out at our rising and setting Sun would wish to declare that it dwells in the center of a band that is also the “path” of a ship on which it is seen to sail. So the unique implications of our model constitute a very clear contrast to the solar interpretation, which always identifies the pathway with the circuit of the solar orb.

Celestial Ocean

Like many other ancient races, the Egyptians celebrated a circular stream or ocean around which the sun god sailed each day. “I have made my way and gone round the heavenly ocean on the path of the bark of Ra,”50 reads the Book of the Dead. “Lo, I sail the great Bark on the Stream.”51

Other hymns similarly depict the ship going around the “Pool of Fire.”52 The language makes clear that this visible pathway was not conceived just as water, but also as a flaming circle. Thus chapter CXXXVI of the Book of the Dead is titled “The Chapter of Sailing in the Great Boat of Ra to Pass over the Circle of Bright Flame.”53 “I have traversed the circle of fire,” reads a Coffin Text.54 What was this fiery circle around which the Egyptian ship sailed?

Pathway and Aten

While Egyptologists have from the beginning identified the Aten as our Sun in the sky today, my claim is that the Aten is the band housing the primeval sunQand this leads to the corollary tenet that the Aten was the pathway of the ship, a wholesale contradiction of the prevailing interpretation.

That the Aten-band did indeed signify “the celestial pathway” can be confirmed through numerous lines of investigation. A common hieroglyph which was interchangeable with the Aten-band, for example, was the Shen-sign, representing the band as a circle of rope:

Figure 16. The Shen-rope

This rope-enclosure of the Shen denoted the tangible “boundary,” “edge,” or “border” of the celestial kingdom, yet was used repeatedly to signify the celestial oceanQthe path of the ship. Thus the Aten-sign was often the determinative in hieroglyphic words for the shen-rope.55 In other words, there is no possible way to separate the Shen-rope from the Aten band, and both are certifiable terms for the celestial pathway. (Why this enclosure was interpreted mythologically as a rope can be answered only by the history of the cometary curl, seen at once as a serpent and as a magical rope wrapping itself around the god to form an enclosure. The vital role of the cometary curl, in connection with the ship, is discussed below.)

Serpent Path

It is well known that in Greek thought the serpentine Chronos, representing the boundary of the primeval cosmos (sun-god’s enclosure), forms the path of the ship of Helios, whom we have discovered to be Saturn. An early prototype of this imagery is surely Babylonian symbolism, in which the ship of the gods sails on a circular “ocean” described as both a serpent and a rope and represented pictographically as the band of the enclosed sun .56 In the “interior” of this surrounding stream or ocean is said to shine the planet god Saturn.57

Figure 17. Serpent ship sailing on serpent path

Egyptian sources similarly identify the cosmic serpent as the watery “pathway” traversed by the boat. The Egyptian Book of the Dead, for example, describes the ship sailing over the “back” of the serpent-dragon Apepi,58 a literary motif which finds many correspondences in Egyptian art. (Thus in Fig. 17 we see a ship constituted by a double-headed serpent sailing on the back of a second serpent.)

We are on solid ground, therefore, in observing that the circular serpent fills two roles, one as the ship and one as the pathway. While in the artistic elaborations of later ages, the two may appear as separate symbols, they are only as “separate” as the crescent and enclosure.

Pathway and Temple/City Wall

It follows further from this line of reasoning that the ship, in its daily circuit, revolved around the wall of the cosmic temple or the boundary of the celestial city. And though the idea may seem bizarre (certainly nothing in the character of our Sun or Moon would suggest such a belief), it is hard to imagine that ancient symbolists could have overlooked the idea if our model of the ship is valid. It is therefore significant that throughout ancient Egypt, the priests commemorated the ship’s daily revolution by fashioning an image of the ship, placing it on a sledge-shaped stand, and dragging it around the walls of the city.59 Clearly, the city wall denoted symbolically the path of the ship.

Yet in other rites we find models of the same cosmic ship being pulled around the wall of the temple, in imitation of the ship’s daily circuit.60 Thus the two practices can be seen as complementary rites, both pointing to precisely the same origin and confirming from one more vantage point that the path of the ship was the wall, border, or boundary of the sacred space organized by the creator-king.

Pathway and Goddess

That the circular pathway is the band of the Aten is clear from many other lines of evidence as well. It is known, for example, that in Egyptian symbolism the cosmic ocean, lake, or river means the circular womb (or body) of the mother goddess Nut. But Nut, as we have already observed, simply personified the Aten-band. Thus numerous reliefs show the sun god’s boat sailing over the body of the goddess (Figs. 27, 28).

These portrayals of the ship reveal all of the characteristics of later- evolved art, but preserve the very idea stated in texts such as this from the Book of the Dead: “I am a Sahu [radiant, glorified being], who assigneth the bounds as he saileth round the starry throng of Heaven, the body of thy mother Nut.”61 In fact, to say that the ship travels around the body of Nut is simply to reiterate that the pathway is the wall or boundary of the sun-god’s dwelling, for the dwelling of Ra is the womb of Nut.62

Pathway and Circle of the Gods

What is the “starry throng” that (in the above-cited text, as translated by Budge) constitutes the body of the enclosure-goddess Nut? The prevailing view of Egyptologists has always seen the goddess/pathway as nothing but a metaphor for the expansive sky across which the Sun and Moon move in their respective journeys. Our view of the goddess, on the other hand, is vastly more concrete. The goddess is a shining band around the central sun, and the “starry throng” or circle of secondary gods means nothing other than the literal, constituent parts of the band. In the archaic creation legend, vast quantities of material erupted from the sun god as living “Outflow,” and it was from this ejecta that the band was constituted.63

For the modern interpretation much confusion is created by the fact that this fiery ejecta is recorded pictographically as an assembly of “star”-images. (Hence the “stars” on the body of Nut.) Because we are today so accustomed to seeing these little five-pointed images used for the stars that fill our night sky, no one has felt any need to ask whether that was the original meaning.

But in the hieroglyphs these stars mean the companions of the sun god, and they are not spread randomly across the sky but constitute a visible circle of fiery spirits revolving around the god. This is why the “circle of the gods” is represented hieroglyphically by a crescent-enclosure Qan absurdity under the usual interpretation of the gods. In truth, the circle or band of secondary gods is the enclosure of the Aten; which means not only that the great god in the ship resides within the circle of lesser gods, but also that these gods or light spirits stand on the “pathway” of the ship. Again, we arrive at a radical but testable reinterpretation of the symbolism. And the verification comes from this highly explicit statement of the Coffin Texts:

Every god who is on the border of your enclosure is on the path of your boat. 64

While modern Egyptology could make nothing of this bold statement, it agrees in every way with the previously-discussed images. And as I have surely emphasized enough, it is only their lack of a concrete reference that prevents Egyptologists from perceiving the literal meanings.

Ship and Four Quarters

In my previous essay, I noted that the Egyptians represented the sacred space organized by the creator as an enclosure divided by four life-bearing streams. 65 The land of the gods possessed four “quarters,” with the central sun (the universal “lord of the four quarters”) standing at the juncture of the four streams. Clearly, if the model is fundamentally accurate in representing the former appearance of the sky, the original idea has nothing in common with the vague modern concept of “the four corners of the world.”66

The Egyptians represented the celestial land of the gods by the sign , a hieroglyph also for the goddess Nut. When the sign is interpreted by our model, there is little room for doubt that in sailing around the “border” of Nut, the ship must circumnavigate the “four quarters” of the cosmic dwelling. So once more the requirements of the model are easily distinguished from any meaningful image of the Sun and Moon today: There is no sense in which either our Sun or Moon could be said to sail daily round the “Four Quarters” as they are conventionally defined. Will the texts, then, support the unusual interpretation of the model?

. . .The King crosses the sky over its four quarters.67

I have travelled around the sky over its four corners, and I sit in the place where I desire to be.68

I go round about heaven in the four quarters thereof.69

While I present these quotes as translated by others, it needs to be understood that what is here rendered as the “sky” or “heaven” (Egyptian pet) means the circle of the goddess Nut: in sailing around the band of Nut the ship traverses the four quarters.

Ship and World Mountain

In identifying the cosmic ship as the Saturnian crescent our model leads to two conclusions: 1) the crescent-ship revolved around the summit of the world mountain and, 2) the ship itself provided the cosmic mount with its cleft or horned peak. Consequently, while neither of these ideas would make any sense under a solar or lunar interpretation of the ship, they are both logical tests of the predictive ability of the model.

Axis-Mountain

It is significant that from Egypt to Mesopotamia and from India to Scandinavia, one finds the cosmic ship brought into connection with the image of a crescent and pillar. And while the connection may be nearly lost in the renderings of later ages, drawings of the cosmic ship from the prehistoric period have preserved the very forms anticipated by our model. Examples in Fig. 18, from southwest Norway, can be compared to closely parallel prehistoric images from Egypt (Fig. 19).

Figure 18. The ship of heaven in Scandinavian rock drawings

If these “ships” of ancient art and ritual were derived from the image of a crescent resting on a pillar, we have an explanation for the fact that in both lands, a pillared crescent is displayed within the ship.

(This, as we shall see again and again in this series of articles, typifies the process by which the original abstract form is kept alive in the early pictographic and artistic records of the ship.)

Figure 19. Prehistoric Egyptian ship drawings

As archetypal emblems of the ship above the polar column, the pillared crescents in these drawings keep alive a fundamental principle.

And these examples can be compared with a later Egyptian image of the ship (Fig. 20), in which the symbolic link to the pillared crescent-enclosure has not been forgotten

Figure 20. Egyptain ship carrying archetypal image

For a more stylized version of the ship and mount I offer details from two illustrations in the Book of the Dead (Fig. 21, a, b). In both drawings the ship, in the form of a double serpent, rests upon the world mountain or Primeval Hill, presented in the first instance as a supporting stand or pillar and in the second as a colunn of water. “I have reached the high portals of the Entourage of Ra, who reckon up the pillared bark,” announces the king in a Coffin Text.70 This distinctive phrase, “the pillared bark,” is used more than once in Egyptian sources and cannot be understood apart from the Egyptian image (discussed below) of the pillar god Shu raising the ship aloft on outstretched arms.71 Since the ship is acknowledged to have possessed a crescent form, it is clear that the pillared bark and the pillared crescent are synonymous.72

Figure 21. (a) Ship on the Primeval Hill (b) Ship on column of water

The pictographic evidence is complemented by the texts, which show that the subject is a revolving ship, traversing a circle around the summit of the cosmic pillar or world mountain (i.e., the mount serves as the axis of the ship’s revolution):

I assume my pure seat which is in the bow of the Bark of Ra. It is the sailors who convey Ra round about the Mountain of Fire-Light, and it is they who will convey me round about the Mountain of Fire-Light.73

Hail, Only One! Behold, thou art in the Sektet boat as it goeth round about the Mountain of Fire-Light.74

The reader will recall that what I have rendered literally as “the Mountain of Fire-Light” (Egyptian Aakhut), is conventionally translated as “horizon.” In the texts quoted above, for example, Budge’s translation has the sun god sailing “round about the horizon”Qa meaningless description of the Sun. This is not the only instance in which the translation of highly literal and colorful concepts into vague language more suitable to the solar interpretation has destroyed the integrity of the original symbolism.

Ship and Twin Peaks

In my preceding article I noted the apparently universal idea that the world mountain possessed twin peaks or a cleft summit, which our model interprets as the crescent resting upon the central column. (The fact that the mythical twin peaks are formed by a crescent on the summit of the mount was observed many years ago by Faber.75) Two distinct symbols (ship and twin peaks) thus point to the same celestial form (pillared crescent). And if one can say that the Egyptian ship images reviewed above adapt the crescent to its mythological interpretation as a sea-faring vessel, our theory can claim with equal assurance that the Egyptian “mountain” image adapts the same form to its mythological interpretation as two peaksQthis, despite the fact that a ship and a two-peaked mountaintop, as things in themselves, would appear to have nothing in common.

It is, of course, the universal opinion of Egyptologists that the mountain glyph represents two geographical peaks, real or imaginary, from which the solar orb rises each morning. So it is well worth asking whether the proposed identity of the twin peaks as the cosmic ship can be verified in Egyptian sources. But asking this question raises the further question as to how such an odd identity might have been recorded symbolically. How would an artist, for example, in depicting mythological forms and events, preserve the secret identity of two such disparate objects or symbols? As I have already suggested, and intend to demonstrate through numerous examples in this series of articles, the most common practice was to simply superimpose the one image upon the other. This single habit, while creating unbelievable confusion for Egyptologists, has preserved a wealth of hidden identities against which our model can be tested.

Here is a fact for which no Egyptologist can offer even the beginnings of an explanation: in countless illustrations of the cosmic ship, the two peaks of the Aakhut are shown either as part and parcel of the ship or being carried by the ship. Five examples will be found in T. R. Clark’s Ancient Egypt, proclaiming the essential identity of the two and proving that, unlike any mountain on earth, the two peaks literally sailed around the sky.

Figure 22. Twin peaks sailing in the ship

In the instances found in Clark’s work, the Aten-band rests between the peaks of the right and left, which in turn sit squarely in the cosmic ship. Responding to one instance, Clark calls the cleft hill the “eastern horizon,” adding that “this hill is incongruously placed in the solar boat.”76

In another, the Aten “rests on the twin-peaked mountain of sunrise. Against all verisimilitude this figure, mountain and all, is being conveyed across the waters of the heavenly ocean in a boat.”77

Actually, there are two ways in which Egyptian artists preserved the secret identity of the ship and twin peaks. One was to place the two peaks in the boat (Fig. 22). The other was to place the boat squarely on the two peaks as shown below.

Figure. 23. Ship resting on the twin peaks

The improbable sailing mountaintop is clearly no anomaly of the artistic tradition, for other evidence as well suggests that the two peaks move in the very fashion we have claimed the crescent to move around the central sun in a daily cycle. It has been demonstrated by Heinrich Sch fer, for example, that the two peaks are not always displayed upright: in connection with the symbolism of the “night,” they are presented in an inverted position above the sun godQexactly where our model would have them in the “night” phase of the daily cycle.78

From these considerations the conclusion is inescapable: the two peaks were anything but a fixture of the local landscape; and the Egyptian symbolists recognized them to be synonymous with the cosmic ship.

Mount as Mooring Post.

Several scholars, among them Uno Holmberg and Mircea Eliade, have observed the widespread tradition wherein the world pillar or world mountain appears as the Binding Post, Tethering Post or Hitching Post to which the revolving celestial lights are bound.79 In the symbolism of the cosmic ship there is an apparently similar themeQa celestial “Mooring Post” or “Great Mooring Post,” and this our model would identify as the same cosmic column. An important level of evidence is provided by the Sumerian dimgal (Babylonian tarkullu) and the Egyptian mena or menat, both of which may be translated either as the “Binding Post” or “Mooring Post.” The Egyptian image of the Menat or celestial Mooring Post is.

Figure 24. Egyptian Menat, the celestial “Mooring Post

This image, showing the enclosure of the sun resting on the cosmic column, can help us interpret the corresponding Mesopotamian concept. For as noted by Eliade and others the Sumerian and Babylonian Great Binding Post is a figure of the axis-pillar.80 And if this is so, then it can be assumed that the “Mooring Post” simply adapts the archetypal cosmic column to the mythology of the sun god’s ship, which revolved around the summit of the column each day. In such a role, “Mooring Post” is a very apt term for the world mountain.

Ship’s Mast

In the phase of the polar configuration we have illustrated the central column of the mount visually passes through the crescent, forming a central boss or spike:

If the cosmic ship has its reference in this proposed celestial image, the projection of the mount into the hollow of the crescent provides a direct and obvious explanation of the ship’s “mast,” a frequently-cited attribute of the ship of the sun. So our model not only places the ship in a unique role as the twin peaks of the world mountain, it interprets the “ship’s mast” in a highly unusual wayQindeed as an absurdity in any natural context apart from the actual experience of the polar configuration.

Yet the identity of the axis-pillar and ship’s mast is confirmed in Hindu symbolism noted by Ananda Coomaraswamy. An introductory verse of the Dasakumaccrita, for example, lists the “mast of the ship of the earth” [i.e., ship of the world wheel] as an aspect of “the axis of the universe.”81 In the construction of Hindu stupas the axis-pillar was represented by a central finial often extending upward to an impressive height. The column bore the title “sky-scraping” yasti, or “mast.”82 Another mythical image of the polar column was the famous Mount Meru; and in agreement with the claimed identity, the Hindus designated the mount as the “mast” of the Argha, the ship of the gods.83

That the Egyptians, too, designated the ship’s mast as an extension of the cosmic mountain can be seen from the steps which rise in the center of the Egyptian boat in Fig. 20, a. The symbol does not just mean “steps;” it is the most common Egyptian sign of the Primeval Hill, here replacing the ship’s mast. And it is no accident: for while the Primeval Hill is Khet, the same word means also “ship’s mast.” The significance of the language is only increased by the fact that the Sumerian dimgal, the polar column conceived as the “binding post” or “mooring post,” is often used for “ship’s mast.”84 In our world a mast and a mooring post are wholly distinct, but in the symbolism of the cosmic ship and mountain they mean the same thing, as we should expect.

It should be noted that the identity of mast and polar column simply reinforces the above-stated role of the cosmic ship as the twin peaks of the mount. For it is only through the unique placement and appearance of the ship on the mountaintop that the mountain can fulfill its designated role as “mast. ” In fact the symbolic identity of world mountain and ship’s mast was observed more than 150 years ago by G. S. Faber: “A vast centrical mountain formed the mast or boss of the mundane boat: and the great father, rising out of the sacred umbilicus of the arkite world, supplied to it the place of a mast. That mountain was the hill of paradise.”85 Faber noted that the Hindu ship on the mountaintop was represented symbolically by the trident of Shiva, composed of a rod or staff surmounted by a “lunette” (crescent with a spike rising in its center). The trident, he stated, denotes “the ship Argha under its sidereal form of a crescent, with Shiva standing in the midst of it and supplying the place of a mast.”86

We conclude, therefore, that even while the language and symbolism of the ship’s mooring post and mast violate all mundane functions of such objects, as cosmic symbols they answer with one voice to the archetype of the polar configuration.

Ship and other crescent-forms

The highly unique appearance of the central sun within the pillared crescent of our model implies a series of telling identities. As one applies the model to the mythical record, an increasing body of evidence will suggest that, in the brightly illuminated face of Saturn’s enclosure, men saw not only a cosmic ship resting on a heaven-reaching column, and not just the twin peaks of the cosmic hillQbut also the shining horns of a celestial Bull or Cow; the outstretched arms of a heaven-encompassing or heaven-sustaining god; and the outstretched wings of the winged god or goddess.

It follows that the ship must possess a previously-unexplained symbolic tie to each of these crescent-formsQa virtual identity which no conventional perspective would either anticipate or consider intelligible responses to celestial appearances today. Specifically, we should expect to find in the most original sources an unusual identification of the ship with celestial horns, outstretched arms and outstretched wings, finding also in each case that the respective objects reveal the same form and behavior. Over the centuries of wondering about ancient man’s myths and symbols, no one, to the best of my knowledge, has ever suggested this range of symbolic equationsQa fact which underscores the distinctiveness of our model’s predictions: the interpretations of the model stand wholly apart from all perspectives based on the way the sky looks now.

Ship and Horns

One of the few identities that does not seem to surprise or frustrate comparative mythologists today is the equation of the great god’s ship with the bull or cow of heaven. Perhaps the reader can already see why this is the case.

The Sumerian Nannar, Babylonian Sin, esteemed as a celestial bull with glistening horns, is also “the shining bark of the heavens.”87 An identical role of the celestial bull occurs in Egypt, where the Pyramid Texts declare: “May you ferry over by means of the Great Bull.”88 “The Bull of the Sky has bent down his horn that he may pass over thereby.”89 Thus a Coffin Text celebrates the “long-horn which supports the bark of Anubis.”90 And if these are not explicit enough, we have this from the Coffin Texts:

O Horn, ferry across Him who is in his shrine.91

Prehistoric drawings from Egypt repeatedly associate the ship and a horned creature, and later Egyptian art continued the theme.92 The same connection occurs in many Scandinavian rock drawings.93 So too, a rock picture from the Nubian desert south of Kerma shows the ship so placed on the back of a bull that the boat and the galloping animal are one.94

It is well worth asking here why comparative mythologists have no difficulty in perceiving the identity of the ship and shining horns. The obvious reason is that they think they have a self-evident reference for both in a single celestial form: the crescent of the New Moon. If a single underlying form can explain two different symbols, I am sure that all comparative mythologists would agree that it brings a measure of welcome coherenceQeven though the two objects involved (ship and bull), in and of themselves, have nothing in common. In this particular case it is easy for the mythologists to see that in literature and in art the underlying identity is stated by simply superimposing the one image upon the other. I hope the moral of this truism will be clear as we explore other symbolic equationsQthese having no conceivable reference in anything in the sky today and yet fulfilling down to astonishing detail the predictions of our model.

Ship and Outstretched Arms

Since our crescent Moon does not look like a pair of outstretched arms, our model is, to say the least, on novel ground in implying that the same crescent which the symbolists recorded as a cosmic ship was also recorded as the two arms of a cosmic giant holding aloft the celestial enclosure.

In the Pyramid Texts, the deceased king ascends to the land enclosed within the mother womb, and by this ascent to heaven comes to dwell at once in the cosmic ship and within the outstretched arms of the heaven-containing Atum:

I have come to you, O Nephthys;

I have come to you, O Night-bark. .. .

It is pleasant for me and for them,

Within the arms of my father,

Within the arms of Atum.95

Elsewhere in the same texts we find that the King is raised up “in the Day- -bark. . .within the arms of Anubis.”96 Or again, a prayer to the sun god reads: “Make ready your arms for me, O Ra, come and ferry me over to yonder side. . .”97 Any doubt as to whether the priests were here identifying the ship and outstretched arms is removed by the description of the cosmic ship in the Coffin Texts:

Her starboard side is the right arm of Atum. Her larboard side is the left arm of Atum.98

Thus in the Book of Caverns the sun god “sails over this cavern [the enclosure] on the arms of the mysterious one.”99 In the same way, Osiris sails “on the two arms of Horus.”100

It is this unequivocal identity of ship and outstretched arms that explains the juxtaposition of the two images in the well-known illustration from the papyrus Khensu-mes below: The god Nu, with arms outstretched, bears aloft the ship of heavenQin the very manner we have come to expect .when the artists are combining alternative mythical interpretations of the crescent.

Figure 25. The ship raised aloft on the arms of Nu

Perhaps it is unnecessary to state the obvious: the idea of sailing on the arms of a human-like figure could hardly have been suggested by any experience of nature as we know it, and it is certainly not suggested by the Moon in any phase. Yet who would deny that this unique mythical concept is predicted by the model?

The reader is referred again to the prehistoric Scandinavian and Egyptian images of the cosmic ship (Figs. 18 and 19). Notice in the Scandinavian instances that more than once the ship replaces the arms of the heaven- sustaining god; and notice that the pillar and crescent carried by the ship yield the very archetypal form claimed to underlie the myths of both the heaven-sustaining giant and the pillared ship. Thus, in the Egyptian ship images, the pillared crescent blends almost imperceptibly into the image of the god with upraised arms. Is it possible to review these images and not see the operative ideaQthat the outstretched arms of the pillar-god are the cosmic ship?

Let us, then, carry the logic one step further. If the proposed identity is correct, then one must conclude that, from the vantage point of this particular mythical equation, only the “neck” and the “head” of the heaven- containing god rise in the center of the ship. We are thus led to anticipate the idea expressed in this bizarre Egyptian illustration, showing “the face of Ra” within the ship:

Figure 26. Head and neck of Ra in the ship

Here the neck and head rise in the center of the ship in the very fashion necessary for the ship to represent symbolically the shoulders and outstretched arms of the heaven-containing god. (That this placement of neck and head in the ship is not an aberration on the part of the symbolists, will become clear when we take up the role of Mars below.)

Ship and Outstretched Wings

In the Pyramid Texts the deceased king ascends to the realm of the sun god and demands: “If you do not ferry me over, I will leap up and put myself on the wing of Thoth, and he will ferry me over to yonder side.”101

Since the symbol of Thoth was the crescent enclosure, the god’s association with a crescent is clear. But is there any evidence that this crescent, which we have determined to be the cosmic ship, was also the wing or wings of Thoth? Other texts declare that it is not simply the winged god Thoth that ferries the deceased; the wings themselves are the ship:

O you gods who cross over on the wing of Thoth to yonder side of the Winding Waterway.102

O wings of Thoth, ferry me across, do not leave me boatless.103

O Thoth. . .put me on the tip of your wing, on yonder northern side of the Winding Waterway.104

“Ferry me over, O Thoth, on the tip of your wing.105

The equation of ship and outstretched wings could not have been stated more emphatically. And if the ship was a revolving crescent, then the wings surely meant the same form. But again, we must remember that it is not the crescent alone which provides the impression of outstretched wings; it is the crescent in its unique relationship to central sun and polar column.

With these secret identities in hand, we are able to see from a new perspective the amazing extent to which the related images are combined in Egyptian sources. The Pyramid Texts say:

I have gone up on Shu, I have climbed on the wing of Khoprer, it is Nut who takes my hand, it is Nut who makes a way for me. Hail to you, you two falcons, who are in this [bark] of Ra, which conveys Ra to the East.106

Through these seemingly incompatible images, the priests were in fact keeping alive the lost language of a former epoch. To alight upon the outstretched arms of the pillar god Shu is to rest within the outstretched wings of Khoprer, and both the arms and the wings mean the boat of Ra. Similarly, to enter the boat is to enter the womb of Nut, the goddess who “makes a way” for the boat because she is the celestial pathway. The two “falcons” of the ship are the two arms-peaks-wings which together constitute the boat of the sun. (What is translated as the “East” to which Ra is conveyed means the side of the band occupied by the revolving ship during the phase of growing bright. See below.)

Ship of Day and Night

Our model involves four basic phases in the journey of the cosmic ship: 1) the descending ship to the left of Saturn (phase of growing bright); 2) the ship directly below Saturn (phase of greatest brillianceQthe most celebrated moment in the archaic day); 3) the ship rising to the right of Saturn (phase of diminishing brightness); and 4) the ship inverted directly above Saturn (least visible phase, the archaic night).

What is immediately clear in this requirement of the model is its wholesale contradiction of all behavior of the ship predicted by the solar interpretation. Not just because in our model the ship revolves around the stationary sun, but because of the direction of movement and the location of the ship in connection with the different phases.

In Egypt, one of the well-documented themes noted in all of the familiar commentaries is that of the two ships of the sunQa ship of “day” (or “morning”) and a ship of “night” (or “evening”). In the Pyramid Texts there is a reference, for example, to the sun god “and his two boats.”107 In the Coffin Texts the deceased desires to be rowed “in the Night-bark and the Day- bark like Ra every day.”108 Though one finds several variations on the names of the two boats, the most common titles were Sektet or Semktet (evening- or night-boat) and Atet or Matet (morning- or day-boat). The deceased says, “May I grasp the bows of the Sektet boat and the stern of the Atet boat.”109 “The Sektet boat draweth on, and Ra advanceth in the Atet boat with fair winds.”110 “May you sleep in the Night-bark [Sektet], May you wake in the Day-bark [Atet].”111

What did the Egyptians mean by this idea? In the usual exposition, it is explained that when the sun god rises in the east, he steps aboard the day or morning boat to sail across the sky; then boards the evening boat to journey through an imagined underworld, to rise again in the East.112 On the subject of the two boats, Budge writes: “And as a matter of fact they believed that it [the Sun] passed over the first half of its course in one boat and over the second half in another.”113

There is, however, no basis for considering the ships as two separate entities (there were not two crescents in the sky): the two ships simply meant two contrasting phases in the daily cycle. In our model they would obviously mean the phase of growing bright (morning-boat) and the phase of waning brightness (evening boat) and would have nothing to do with a rising and setting sun. Budge’s explanation of the literal meanings of the two boats is therefore highly relevant to our thesisQ

The morning boat of the sun was called Matet, i.e., “becoming strong,” and the name of the evening boat was Semktet, i.e., “becoming weak.”114

Does this suggest a rising and setting sun, or the waxing and waning of an ever-present celestial object? Though the language could never be reconciled with the ship’s popular identification as the new Moon, it is the very language we should expect in relation to the contrasting phases of the revolving crescent in our model. It is appropriate, therefore, to pursue this line of investigation further.

Ship of the Right and Left

The four phases in our model offer two natural pairs of opposites: The ship above and below (archaic night and day); and the ship to the right and left (archaic evening and morning). Since the ship itself occupies precisely half of the sun god’s enclosureQthe celestial pathwayQboth pairs of opposites are equally appropriate for representing in their symbolic union a full circle or daily cycle.

Consistent with this aspect of the model is the Egyptian terminology of the “left” and “right” phases of the ship’s journey. For example, the Egyptians brought together two originally-independent goddesses, Isis and Nephthys, to represent the two halves of the circuit, or the two phases of the cycleQone phase associated with the “left” (Egyptian Abtet) and the other phase associated with the “right” (Amentet). In all cosmological sources the reference for these two relative terms is the sun god himself. That is, in depicting the two positions of the “twin” goddesses in relation to the two halves of the full circuit, the Egyptian artists always showed them to the left and right of a central celestial figure. And these same goddesses are said to represent the “two ships” of the sun, one to the left and the other to the right. In our model, the ship to the left would be the morning boat, while that to the right would be the evening boat. And the fact acknowledged by all Egyptologists is: the boat Sektet (“growing weak”) stands to the right of the sun god and the boat Atet (“growing strong”) stands to the left the very locations predicted by our model.115 Now I ask the reader: is there anything in the character of the daily circuit of our Sun today that might have suggested this idea of a boat standing on two opposed sides of the sunQin connection with a phase of growing “strong” and a phase of growing “weak”?

It will be instructive to consider the way the translators of the texts deal with this imagery, as they attempt to achieve a fit with the universally accepted solar interpretation. The region of the left is, as stated, connected with the growing bright of the sun. This region occupied by the ship the translators render as “the East,” though the literal meaning is simply, “the left.” In the same way, the literal region of “the right” becomes “the West.” So when the sun’s ship reaches the left and the god “grows bright, ” the translators say the sun “rises in the East.” And by the same token, when the ship reaches the right and the sun “grows weak,” the translators have the sun “setting in the West.” Though in these readings one mistranslation is added to another, it is easy to see how, assuming that the subject is our rising and setting Sun, the translators looked for more “intelligible” readings.

It happens that our model provides an acid test, however. For in relation to the morning and evening phases of the boat, there is a point on which the model implies a blatant contradiction of the movement of the Sun: one would obviously assume that in connection with a solar sun rise, the ship of the sun would be rising. But in our model, the morning shipQthe ship to the left of the central sunQis descending, a reversal of the “obvious” direction assumed by the solar interpretation. Conversely, the evening ship, in our model, is rising, though the solar interpretation could never make sense of such an idea. We have, then, a black and white issue worth pursuing to a conclusion.

Upstream and Downstream

Mythically, the pathway of the ship is, as we have seen, an encircling stream or river. From the vantage point of our model, the ship sails downstream as it begins to grow bright, passes under Saturn in its period of greatest brilliance, then begins to diminish as it sails upstream, reaching its weakest point as it crosses above Saturn.

On the other hand, if the Egyptian ship’s journey originated in the experience of our rising and setting Sun, there is surely no possibility that the sources would agree with this extraordinarily specificQand “absurd”Qrequirement of the model.

Egyptian texts do indeed describe the ship sailing upstream and downstream. “O you who fare downstream or upstream,” reads a spell of the Coffin Texts.116 “O Horus, Lord of Life, fare downstream and upstream.”117 And as we would expect, the two directions of the ship are clearly related to the phases of the day. The god comes to life or grows bright while sailing in one direction, and his light or life diminishes as he sails in the other directionQbut the directions consistently agree with our model and contradict the solar interpretation! Here, for example, is the statement of the Coffin Texts: “Ho N! You shall go up upon the great West [literally the right] side of the sky and go down upon the great East [literally the left] side of the earth.”118 The translator R. O. Faulkner is at a loss to explain the language: “This unexpected reversal of the points of the compass is incomprehensible. We should expect the deceased to go up on the east and down on the west as does the sun. Perhaps we have here a blunder in an early copy which no one has noticed or at least attempted to correct.” The comment assumes there are other texts which have the sun sailing upstream in the morning or downstream in the evening. But wherever the direction of the ship’s movement is explicitly connected with the phases of morning and evening the texts always reverse the direction expected by the solar interpretation. In the Book of the Dead, the god sails downstream “as a living soul” and upstream as the Bennu, symbol of the dying sun. Thus the Pyramid Texts say, “The doors of the firmament are thrown open for me at dawn, that I may go down and bathe in the field of Rushes,”119 while a spell from the Coffin Texts declares: “The mighty ones sail upstream to me on that night of faring upstream.”120 Another spell from the same texts reads: “The sun has shone when going downstream to the north from the south.”121 What are here translated as “north” and “south” are literally the lower region and the upper region: the god shines forth as he sails downstream toward the lower region. Such literal meanings are a key to appreciating a text such as this: “May you sail southward [literally upstream, toward the upper region] in the Night-bark and northward [literally downstream, toward the lower region] in the Day-bark.”122

On this issue I will stick my neck out: having analyzed a considerable number of instances, I do not believe there is a single contradiction of this idea in either the Pyramid Texts or the Coffin Texts, the earliest mythical and ritual sources in Egypt: the god sails downstream in his coming to life, waxing, awakening, growing bright or coming forth and upstream in his diminishment, waning, dying, weakening, sleeping. Because this is indeed a black and white test, it is a perfect opportunity for a critic to prove me wrong if there is any text (taken in the accepted literal meanings and without alteration to accommodate the solar premise) which refutes this claim.

Above and Below

The above-cited test does not end the matter. For just as the ship is descending in the (archaic) morning, it is, according to the model, below Saturn in the “day” or phase of brightness; and just as it is rising in the (archaic) evening, it is above Saturn in the “night” or phase of diminished light.

The respective positions of the ship above and below during distinct phases of the daily cycle are a polar opposite of those required by the solar interpretation: for all conventional interpretations assume the sun-god’s night journey to take place beneath the earth and his day journey to carry him across the sky above.

In their mythology of the ship’s circuit, the Egyptians developed an elaborate symbolism of the two regions or halves above and below. To express the idea, they brought into combination various sets of originally independent words for the sun god’s dwelling, pairing them as opposites (in the very fashion that two independent goddesses, Isis and Nephthys, were combined to represent the left and right halves of the circuit). The two most frequently-employed pairs were Pet and Ta. When these two words for the land of the gods are presented in combination, it can always be assumed that pet means “the upper region,” or “above” and that ta means “the lower region” or “below.” These are the accepted literal meanings of the terms. And, as in the symbolism of the left and right, the reference for above and below is the stationary sun god, who always stands between the symbols of the two regions.123

Unfortunately, however, the translators rarely give the literal meanings, but render the words instead as “heaven” and “earth.” Thus, as translated, one text reads: “I travel upon that upper road of the sky [Pet] and that lower road of the earth [Ta].”124

Again, though the translation may seem logical under the assumptions of the translators, the words are entirely inappropriate for two halves of the celestial land of the godsQthe explicit subject of the cosmological references. Moreover, even with these distortions of actual meanings, the conventional translations cannot resolve the inherent contradictions of the solar interpretation: for it is an easily verified fact that, in Egyptian symbolism, the Night-ship occupies the upper region and the Day-ship occupies the lower region.

Consider first this Coffin Text, as translated by Faulkner:

My bread is in sky and earth, my bread is in the house of Horus and Thoth. It is the Night-bark and the Day-bark which bring to me from the shrine of Horus. . .My bread is in sky and earth. . .it is the Night-bark and the Day-bark which lift (things) up to me.125

Remember that what Faulkner translates as sky and earth are literally the upper region and the lower region of the land of the gods. In this text, the two regions are cited twice, and in both instances they are associated with the two ships of night and day. In both instances, the order of identification connects the night ship with the upper region and the day ship with the lower region.

Concerning the food of the gods, another Coffin Text has: “Four portions are in the sky with Orion and three are on earth in the Day-bark”126Qthat is, three portions are in the lower region, in the Day-bark.

Using the literal translations of pet and ta we obtain these additional instances from Faulkner:

Three portions are in the upper region with Ra, four portions are in the lower region with Geb. It is the Night-bark and the Day-bark which bring them to me daily in the two ships of Ra.127

Seven portions are in the house of Horus, three portions are in the upper region and two are in the lower region. It is the Night-bark and the Day-bark which will bring to me all portions from upon the altars of the Souls of On. 128

The consistency with which the texts juxtapose the terms makes clear that this is a deliberate association of the night ship with the upper region and the day ship with the lower. Thus, in the Pyramid Texts, we find the Night Bark of Ra “sailing over pet,” the upper region.129 Or elsewhere: “Thou sailest on high in the evening barge.”130 And the same placement is confirmed in Chapter 141 of the Book of the Dead, which defines two “Aterts” or regions of the divine land, one above and one below. The Night-ship it connects with the upper Atert; and the lower Atert it identifies with the Day-ship.131

Clearly, this placement is no accident, for the same idea is stated consistently in Egyptian art. The two regions of Pet and Ta were frequently represented by the originally-independent god and goddess Geb and Nut, with Geb always representing the lower region and Nut always representing the upper region. And without exception the artistic tradition always has the ship of the sun sailing over the upper region of Nut in its night journey. This anomaly for the solar interpretation could hardly have been more boldly stated, and it is a wonder that virtually no one has ever asked why the boat of the sun is above at night, rather than below, where the solar mythologists claim the god crosses to the East in his ship.

The Night Crossing

One of the preeminent themes of Egyptian ritual, myth and art is that of the sun god’s night passage through the land of the “dead,” from which journey the god is rejuvenated with the “morning.” When an Egyptian king or noble died, much attention was given to ritual and magical means of assisting the deceased in accomplishing a similar journey. Hence, the ritual texts are filled with images of the deceased taking his place in the ship of the sun and “crossing over” in a perilous night journey, with much celebration on the arrival at the place of the dawn.

It would be fair to say that among all of the assumptions of solar mythology the presumed bedrock is the idea that the sun god passes through an underworld, i.e., beneath the earth in his night journey, and his rebirth or rejuvenation means ascent on the eastern horizon. It is this assumption, of course, that underlies the distorted translations we have noted in this essay.

To this bedrock of the solar interpretation we can contrast the claim of our model. Here the “night”-journey begins with the crescent-ship rising to the right of Saturn and reaches its most “perilous” point when the ship is directly over Saturn and the life and light of Saturn is most diminished. This image of the night journey we should expect to dominate over all others. As the crescent-ship continues its crossing, it arrives at its position to the left of Saturn and a now-darkening sky begins to bring the celestial apparition to life. This, then, is the celebrated “dawn,” when the ship reaches the “region of the left.”

In the Pyramid Texts, as translated by Faulkner, the deceased king says, “I am ferried over to the eastern side of the horizon, I am ferried over to the eastern side of the sky, and my sister is Sothis, my offspring is the dawn light.” 132 A similar text says, “And I am ferried over thereon to yonder eastern side of the sky, to the place where the gods fashioned me, wherein I was born, new and young.”133

As translated, all will agree that these lines sound very much as if the night journey has the sun god passing beneath the earth to rise in the east. Literally, however, the god is “ferried over to the left side of the Mountain of Fire Light,” and this, divorced from the solar interpretation, does not sound like the Sun sailing beneath the earth at all. Furthermore, if the artistic tradition can serve as a guide to the texts, the ship does not simply travel over to the left side, but travels up and overQfor that is exactly what the artists portray in showing the ship sailing over the body of NutQin every instance.

Inverted Ship

One particular prediction of the model adds a fascinating twist. When the ship is sailing across the upper region, the model says that it is inverted or upside down. A ship sailing upside down is indeed an oddity (and certainly not an idea rooted in useful navicular experience “down here”!). So it is appropriate to inquire whether, in the sun god’s perilous “crossing over,” the ship was said to be upside down.

Figure 27. The sun god’s night journey over Nut, the upper region

It will have to be admitted that in the customary portrait of the ship’s night journey the ship is not shown inverted, but is upright (Fig. 27). One might assume, therefore, that on this secondary point the sources fail to support the model.

Another class of evidence, however, indicates that the ship did appear inverted as it journeyed over the upper region. There are, in Egyptian sources, many indications of a lasting fear of travelling upside down during the night passage. The first spell in Faulkner’s presentation of the Coffin Texts, for example, reads: “Here begins the book of vindicating a man in the realm of the dead.” To which one version adds “and not going upside down in the realm of the dead.”134 Another text is a “Spell for not walking upside down in the realm of the dead,”135 and another simply saysQ”Not to walk upside down.”136 Still others sayQ

I will not be head downwards among those who are head downwards.137

I detest travelling in darkness, for then I cannot see those who are upside down.138

The King will not be hanged head downwards.139

If the ship of the sun was, in fact, inverted in its night crossing, we would have an explanation for both the expressed fear and the self-evident (but as yet unexplained) ritual intent to protect the deceased from the imagined fate of such a journey. The deceased declares: “It is the Night-bark and Day-bark which bring to me daily; I walk on my feet, I am not upside-down in the presence of Ra.”140 This widespread fear suggests that the common artistic tradition may not accurately represent a crucial idea in the symbolism of the ship. And this, in turn, prompts us to look further.

The evidence we are looking for comes from the Papyrus of Amen-Hetep in the Cairo Museum. In the second scene depicted on the papyrus, the goddess Nut is shown in the usual arched or semicircular fashion as representative of the upper region. And the ship of the sun is depicted in its night journey crossing the body of the “pathway” goddess. But here, unlike the more familiar versions, the ship is not upright, but is inverted:

Figure 28. The daily cycle, with inverted ship in night journey

It remains to be asked, then, whether this remarkable portrait is a meaningless aberration or speaks for a true tradition commonly distorted out of the fear of “travelling upside down.”

The answer comes from hieroglyphic evidence preceding by many centuries the familiar artistic portrayals of the night journey. In Spell 211 of the Coffin Texts, the night path of the ship is described in the instruction to the deceased. He is to learn the path of the right (Amentet, the ascending path), then to “ferry across the upper region when the divine land is turned upside down.” The position of the ship at this moment is presented in the hieroglyphic text: Not just the land of the gods, but the ship itself is upside down:

Figure 29. Hieroglyph for the inverted ship in the Coffin Texts

The idea that the land of the gods could be turned upside down is perhaps no less mystifying (to those who have noticed this bizarre language) than the inversion of the ship. But when we realize that the crescent-ship is the brightly illuminated half of the divine land or enclosure, we see that the inversion of the crescent-enclosure at “night” could reasonably be viewed as an inversion of both the land and the ship.141

Ship’s oars and Cometary “Hair”

In the prehistoric drawings from Egypt and Scandinavia presented in Figures 18 and 19 above one notes the peculiarity of the short perpendicular lines either extending out of the boat, or into the boat, some appearing to represent oars, other perhaps considered as inhabitants of the boat. This is a feature sufficiently common in prehistoric art to warrant the question: do these lines signify a verifiable feature of the cosmic ship?

Our model would suggest that these lines mean the cometary gas or dust streaming out from the enclosure. Around the world, the simple portrait of the enclosed sun is often made more complete by the depiction of lines radiating from the band in all directions:

Figure 30. Portraits of the rayed enclosure

Though the above instances are taken, respectively, from Denmark, Spain, Venezuela and the Arue Islands, closely parallel images will be found on all continents.

In a future essay, I will take up the rayed enclosure in detail and intend to show that while, in the illustrated phase of the polar configuration, the lines tend to radiate from the band, there were apparently occasions in which they were directed inward, the contrasting appearances being considered as outbreathings and inbreathings of the central sun. I will also have much to say on the origin of the crescent-enclosure and the cometary debris from which the band was constituted. It will be shown that a primary mythological interpretation of this radiating gas or dust was as hair (the cometary symbol par excellence), a pervasive image bearing directly on the concept of the ship’s oars. In view of the ship’s relationship to this cometary band, the unique implication of the model is that these radiating streams were also viewed as oars of the sun god’s boat. Let us consider, then, the interesting mythical equation implied by this identity: ship’s oars = radiating hair.

One of the puzzles of Egyptian symbolism that few have even attempted to resolve is that of the “hair” from which the sun god, as creator, fashioned the land of the gods. One text, for example, speaks of the “hair of the sky which fashioned the earth [divine, celestial land] and the fillet of Horus. “142 The language appears so bizarre to Faulkner that he places an emphatic (sic!) after “hair”Qas if the author or scribe of the text could not have been using the right word. Yet there is much evidence that the band was conceived as a circle of (cometary) hair. For example, the pathway of the ship (as we have seen) was the shen-circle. That shen was probably the most common Egyptian word for “hair” is not a mere quirk of language evolution. In the Book of the Dead, the watercourse of the ship is identified as “the Lake of Hair.”143 So too, the celestial Ta, land of the gods, is said to display “hair.” This language, while appearing laughable under conventional assumptions, will become increasingly compelling as we discover the cometary nature and origin of the band.

Equally enigmatic is the concrete language with which the texts depict the “oars” of the cosmic ship. In the Pyramid Texts the deceased king says: “I go aboard [the sun god’s boat], for I am pure; I receive the oar, I take my seat in the rowing-side of the sky, I row in the rowing side of the sky, I ply my oar in the rowing side of the sky.”144 What is meant by the rowing side of the Pet? Permit our model of the ship and enclosure to explain the terminology: since the reference is to a side of the Pet, it can be assumed that Pet here stands for the celestial circle as a whole (i.e., it is not here paired with Ta to represent the upper and lower portions of the circle). Hence a side of the Pet-circle means one half of the band. And since the ship, as the illuminated portion, is exactly half of the full circle, it follows that the ship with its projecting oars is the “rowing” half or side of the Pet-band, not a meaningless “rowing side of the sky.”

Is there any directly-stated evidence that the Egyptians recognized these oars of the ship to be the “hair” of the sun-god’s enclosure? In Spell 395 of the Coffin Texts, the deceased goes aboard the cosmic ship and asks for the name of the oars. The answer is that they are called nesi shen, which means something likeQ”The projecting hair.” In commenting on the texts, Faulkner notes the curious usage. “The projecting banks of oars on either side of a boat are likened. . .to spreads of hair.” This and other language, he says, is “perhaps an allusion to the resemblance of the oars to scanty straggling locks.”145

Compare this version of the identity in the Book of the Dead, as translated by Budge: “‘Assembler of Souls’ is the name of my boat; ‘Making the hair to stand on end’ is the name of the oars.”146 When viewed in the light of our model, what is a ludicrous statement from any conventional perspective becomes a predictable underlying unity.

mars and venus

Up to this point I have offered only the briefest outline of the roles of the planet Mars and Venus in the model, though in the total corpus of myth and lore no figures loom more frequently than the personifications of these two planetary powersQthe warrior hero and mother goddess. While it is a bit premature to dwell on their roles here (their interacting symbols will be the subject of my next article), we would be amiss in ignoring altogether their symbolic ties to the ship of the sun.

Towing Rope

In the illustrated phase of the polar configuration under discussion, the planet Venus is the small body at the end of the spiralling, comet-like stream appearing to curl out from the band. Considerable evidence indicates that Venus is revolving around the polar axis in the opposite direction of the Earth’s rotation, because it moves in the direction of the visual revolution of the crescent, only faster (that is, while the apparent revolution of the crescent is due to the rotation of the Earth; the faster apparent movement of Venus is due to the direction of its independent revolution around the shared planetary axis.)

In the forthcoming article I will review an array of symbols pointing to Venus’ former cometary appearance. Among these will be the famous “sidelock” of the sun god, described as a luminous apparition revolving in the sky: As spiralling, cometary “hair”, the prehistoric comet Venus was conceived originally as the sacred lock of the sun god and later as that worn by the warrior hero (Mars). It should not surprise us, then, to encounter the celestial sidelock in the symbolism of the sun god’s ship. With respect to the daily circuit of the ship, the deceased says, “I have gone forward over the circle of bright flame which is behind the lord of the lock of hair which moveth round about.”147 This celestial sidelock the Egyptians knew as Hensektet, and the goddess Hensektet is an acknowledged form of the Venus goddesses Isis and Hathor.

But as we shall see, the revolving sidelock merges with many other key images of the cometary curl. In our investigation of the cosmic ship, it would seem reasonable to look for a mythical expression adapted explicitly to the nautical theme. One such symbol is surely the towing rope. In their various portraits of the ship, the Egyptians showed the barge of the sun being pulled in its journey by a coil of rope, held by fiery spirits moving in the company of the sun god.148 An interesting example occurs in the illustration of the ship from the papyrus of Amen-Hetep (Fig. 28). In addition to showing the night journey over the upper region of Nut, the illustration depicts the day- ship in its upright position, being towed by a rope that is itself conceived as a serpent and is being held by light- or fire-spirits of serpentine form.

In the illustration below, the beings carrying the towing rope are presented as human-headed “soul-birds.”

Figure 31. Train of souls towing the ship

These illustrations are complemented by the hieroglyphic texts. In the Coffin Texts, the deceased says, “Hail, thou who towest along the Makhent boat of Ra. . .”149 “Hail, ye gods, who tow along the boat of the lord of millions of years, who bring [it] above the underworld and who make it to travel over Nut. “150

It would be useless to attempt a full explication of the towing rope in advance of an adequate summary of the Venus-comet theme. I will simply state for now that the “souls” associated with the rope are identifiable as the cometary train itself. (Venus is the externalized heart or soul of the sun god; the flaming train is “the train of souls”). And what gives meaning to the idea of a towing rope is the relative motion of the spiraling comet in relation to the revolving crescent: because the rope is revolving faster than the ship, it appears to be pulling the ship on its celestial circuit.

It should be added that other texts present the ship’s “rope” under many mythical variations. For some, it was the “mooring rope” of the ship. The deceased announces in a Coffin Texts: “O you who fare downstream or upstream. . .I have tied the mooring-rope in Djedu.”151 Sometimes the reference is simply to the “rope” of the bark. “I will cast the rope of the great bark, “152 says the deceased in the Coffin Texts. And very frequently, the reference to a rope of the ship alludes to strange mythical settings that can only baffle the specialists.

This is a reminder that I have found the rope which was severed and I have knotted it. I have found the ferry-boat which was lost [in] its flood water. 153

‘Tell me my name,’ saith the Rope. ‘Hair with which Anpu (Anubis) finisheth the work of my embalmment’ is thy name.154

Horus secures the rope of Seth when he ferries him across.155

In each of these instances, the rope of the ship appears in different contexts, not one of which finds even a hint of meaning under conventional interpretations. (Yet when the roles of Venus and Mars have been fully outlined, the reader will see that each of these strange associations and many hundreds more are explicable through the character and behavior of these two planets).

Chapter 99 of the Book of the Dead is devoted to an extended description of the cosmic ship and its respective symbols. Like the sun god, the deceased wishes to be towed over the back of the serpent-dragon Apep (the circular serpent). But he must answer a series of questions put to him by the different parts of the ship. One of these parts is the towing rope, and here the proper answer, according to the text, is that the towing rope is henseket, i.e., the “sidelock.” Why would the ship’s towing rope bear the name of the celestial sidelock? Our model simply says that they are one and the same. The (cometary) Venus goddesses Isis and Hathor, both of whom are called Hensektet, may thus be regarded equally as personifications of the revolving sidelock and of the towing rope.

Ship and Mars.

I have claimed that in the illustrated phase of the polar configuration the planet Mars stood at the termination of the cosmic column, rotating on the shared planetary axis between Earth and Saturn, far enough from Earth to create the appearance that the Mars-column penetrated the band.156 The resulting terrestrial view of crescent and pillar yields a unique placement of Mars in relation to the ship.

As in the question of Venus, only a limited discussion of the predicted relationships is possible at this juncture. To begin with, one must determine which mythical figures are identifiable as Martian powers. In my previous article, I briefly discussed the Egyptian pillar god Shu as belonging to the Martian archetype, and to this well-known god must be added (with significant qualifications) the popular Egyptian figures Horus, Set, and Anup, all of whom will figure prominently in future discussion. I do not list these figures here in order to convince anyone of their planetary identity, but to note the type of associations which the model would predict for these figures insofar as one is able to confirm their full correspondence to the warrior-hero archetype.

In the model, Mars appears inside the enclosure, as the summit or central peak of the world mountain. And because of the defined relationship of the crescent-ship to the polar column, the model can help us to see why the warrior-hero is so commonly identified as the ship’s pilot, steersman or captain. (The god Shu, for example, is the “captain” of the ship of Ra, but the same role is elsewhere played by Horus.) Moreover, from this unique and clearly stated position one should expect a virtual identity of the Mars figure with the mast and mooring post of the shipQan eminently unique and testable prediction of the model. (In the Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts the god Horus appears as the “Lone Star,” and is brought into a direct identification with the ship’s mast: “Her mast is the Lone Star which has severed the storm from the sky.”157)

But we should not look just for a connection with the ship’s mast. Since mast and mooring post are mythically synonymous, one realizes that there is no contradiction between texts identifying the Mars figure with the mast of the ship and those identifying the same figure with the mooring post. And seen through the unifying lens of the model, what is translated in the Pyramid Texts as the “mooring post in the Waterway of Horus” can be understood as an implied identity of Martian post and Martian waterway. (The mythical equation of pillar and waterway was noted, with initial references, in our previous article.)

But there is an even more novel connection predicted by the model. We observed that the ship, as the revolving crescent, is synonymous with the outstretched arms of the heaven-encompassing god. And one notes that when the archetypal configuration is perceived as a human form, the specific position of Mars is on the neck or throat of the human-like figureQoffering a further, testable association, just as “absurd” as any of the foregoing instances. I mention this association here (it will be elaborated in my next article) because one finds in the symbolism of the ship certain curious references to a neck or throat with no apparent rhyme or reason. In the Book of the Dead, for example, when the deceased is asked for the name of the “Upper Post,” the proper answer is, “Throat of Mestha.” Obviously, this is not the kind of reference over which the specialists will want to trouble themselves. Yet, if the Upper Post means that (upper) portion of the mooring post/polar column appearing inside the shipQit would indeed be synonymous with the “throat” of the cosmic being suggested in the archetypal image .

Since we have already identified the god Shu as a Mars-figure, the best test of the possibility at this juncture would be to determine whether the Egyptians associated this distinctive god with an enigmatic neck or throat in the cosmic ship. A definitive answer is provided by Spell 80 of the Coffin Texts, in which the god Shu describes his birth from Atum and how the old sun god and heaven-encompassing creator placed Shu on his “neck”: “He has set me on his neck and will not let me be far from him.” It is this statement which illuminates (with the help of our model) the enigmatic declaration of Shu in the same spell: “I make to flourish the neck which is in the Night-bark and in the Day-bark.”158 We thus possess a clear textual counterpart to the image presented in Figure 26. And the god whom we have identified as Mars fills in a most remarkable way the very role predicted for him.

CONCLUSION

In this paper I have focused on a single mythical themeQone interesting example alongside hundreds of others also deserving separate analysis. But even this single motif is too large for full treatment in one article. To keep the subject within manageable limits, I have confined the discussion to those aspects of the cosmic ship pertaining to the illustrated phase of the configuration. And yet the dynamic history of the configuration adds many fascinating twists to the symbolism of the parts. With respect to the ship, this catastrophic scenario will illuminate such wide-ranging subjects as the ship of the Deluge and the voyage of the warrior hero, each requiring comprehensive analysis, and both involving a far broader field of evidence than that covered here.

Before we can take up these larger dimensions of the ship, however, it is necessary that the Venus and Mars roles in the model be adequately summarized. Toward this end, my next installment will begin a four-part series, “Mother Goddess and Warrior Hero,” outlining Venus’ and Mars’ contributions to the spectacular age of the gods.

Considering the scale of our total subject, I wish to state again the invitation to anyone who would dispute the sweeping claims of the theory. I invite the critic to challenge the model’s predictive ability with respect to any recurring mythical theme or symbol. While I have a general strategy for publishing many pieces of an argument over the next several years, I do not want a pre-defined game plan to prevent others from entering the discussion. The critic should be free to choose his own ground for challenging the polar configuration’s predictive ability. In fact, any well-established mythical theme not predicted by the model will refute the claim to a unified theory. And since most tests can have the same level of specificity as that of the sun god’s ship, we can be sure the model will not permit the wide gap of ambiguity that tends to discourage critics of other mythically-based theories. A vigorous challenge, whatever its outcome, would only help to bring the subject in to clearer focus, and this would provide a valuable service to all of AEON’s readers.

NOTES: 1D. Talbott, “On Testing the Polar Configuration,” AEON, Vol. 1: No. 2, pp. 97 ff.

2At the risk of redundancy, I must repeat that the archaic “day” began at sunset, as the sky darkened and the polar configuration began to grow bright. When the solar orb lightened the sky, the apparition subsided (the archaic “night”). It is my claim that all aspects of the primitive daily cycle derive their meanings from the appearance and behavior of the polar configuration.

3G. S. Faber, Origins of Pagan Idolatry (London, 1816), Vol. II, p. 495 and throughout.

4Ovid, Fasti, i. 233-4. It must be remembered that Saturn is the creator and the surrounding band is the created earth or land of the gods. In the model, the ship literally circumnavigates the land of the gods each day.

5Ibid., i. 229-30.

6M. Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria (Boston, 1898), p. 654.

7S. Langdon, Semitic Mythology, Mythology of all Races, Vol. V (New York, 1964), p. 106.

8Magula-anna.

9 10Donald L. Philippi, trans., The Kojiki (Princeton, 1969), p. 115.

11W. D. Whitney, trans., The Atharva Veda (Berlin, 1966), Vol. I, p. 227.

12Roland B. Dixon, Oceanic Mythology, Mythology of All Races, Vol. IX (New York, 1964), p. 20.

13Leinani Melville, Children of the Rainbow (Wheaton, 1969), p. 37.

14H. B. Alexander, North American Mythology, Mythology of All Races, Vol. X (New York, 1964), p. 37.

15E. A. W. Budge, The Book of the Dead (London, 1901), p. 229.

16Ibid., p. 45.

17Ibid., p. 5, replacing Budge’s misleading term “rising” with the literal “shining forth.”

18Ibid., p. 230.

19Pyr. Text 2122. Unless stated otherwise all translations of the Pyramid Texts are from R. O. Faulkner, The Egyptian Pyramid Texts (Oxford, 1974). For consistency, however, I have followed Budge’s transliterations with respect to the more common Egyptian gods and terms. On those occasions in which I have replaced a translated word with a more literal meaning I have so noted in either the text or in the accompanying footnote.

20E. T. Combe, Histoire du Culte de Sin (Paris, 1908), pp. 7 ff; A. Jeremias, Handbuch der Altorientalischen Geisteskultur (Leipzig, 1913), p. 243.

21Talbott, op. cit., p. 123.

22P. Jensen, Die Kosmologie der Babylonier (Strassburg, 1890), p. 191. A Jeremias, Handbuch, op. cit., p. 96.

23Pyr. Text 130.

24Budge, Egyptian Book of the Dead, op. cit., p. 488.

25A. Piankoff, The Shrines of Tut-Ankh-Amon (New York, 1955), p. 5.

26Talbott, op. cit., pp. 123-4.

27F. A. Vanderburgh, Sumerian Hymns from Cuneiform Texts in the British Museum (New York, 1966), p. 44.

28Talbott, op. cit., p. 123.

29In Hindu myth the goddesses Ila, Isi, Lacshmi and Parvati are all synonymous with the ship Argha, transporting the great father (Manu, Shiva, Brahma) over the waters. Faber, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 330, 385; Vol. III, pp. 30, 230. BergelmirQthe Norse mythical giantQ”was born in a boat.” J. A. MacCulloch, Eddic Mythology, Mythology of All Races, Vol. II (New York, 1964), p. 275. According to Faber, the Latin goddess Minerva “was surnamed Ergane, from Ereg or Erech, the ‘ark’; under which title she was venerated both in Laconia and in Boeotia.” Faber, A Dissertation on the Cabiri (Oxford, 1803), Vol. I, p. 106. The Celtic goddess Ceridwen takes the form of a ship, and the ship was the symbol of the old Latin goddess Ceres (Demeter), the Phrygian goddess Cybele and the Phoenician goddess Ashtoreth. Faber, Origins, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 330, 363, 384.

30S. N. Kramer, The Sacred Marriage Rite (Bloomington, 1969), p. 56, 64.

31Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, op. cit., p. 655.

32Pyr. Text 303.

33Thus the goddess Isis was symbolized by a ship. And as the “son” of the mother goddess, the king is the “son of the Day-bark.” Pyr. Text 1194. On his death the king ascends to “the flame of thy boat, [O Ra], upon that mighty Thigh.” (Thigh and womb are synonymous in Egyptian symbolism.) Budge, Egyptian Book of the Dead, op. cit., p. 395. Thus, the “ship of Hathor,” as stated by Bleeker, was “the expression of her being. When the boat was carried in procession, it was the dramatisation of the deity’s hierophany.” One of the names of the Hathor-ship is “mistress of love;” and it is called “the boat which exalts her beauty.” C. J. Bleeker, Hathor and Thoth (Leiden, 1973), pp. 60-1, 89.

34See references in Hugh Nibley, “Tenting, Tolling and Taxing,” The Western Political Quarterly, Vol. XIX (1966), p. 602, n. 19.

35Joseph Campbell, Oriental Mythology (New York, 1970), p.

36Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, J. S. Stallybrass, trans. (New York, 1966), pp. 258 ff; see also H. Nibley, op. cit.

37A. Piankoff, The Tomb of Ramesses VI (New York, 1954), p. 53.

38Ibid., p. 273.

39Gene B. Gragg, The Kes Temple Hymn (New York, 1969), p. 168.

40D. Talbott and E. Cochrane, “The Origin of Velikovsky’s Comet,” KRONOS X:1 (FALL, 1984), pp. 34 ff.

41″The custom of employing the name ‘dragon’ in reference to a boat is found in places as far apart as Scandinavia and China.” G. E. Smith, The Evolution of the Dragon (Manchester, 1919), p. 117, n. 1.

42Rene Guenon, Le Roi du Monde (Paris, 1958), p. 92, n. 4.

43Piankoff, Shrines of Tut-Ankh-Amon, op. cit., p. 113.

44Coffin Texts, Spell 173. Unless stated otherwise, all translations of the Coffin Texts are taken from R. O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts, 3 vols. (Warminster, 1973-8).

45Budge, Egyptian Book of the Dead, op. cit., p. 410.

46Ibid., p. 398.

47Piankoff, The Tomb of Ramesses VI op. cit., p. 239.

48Piankoff, The Wandering of the Soul (Princeton, 1974), p. 27.

49Budge, From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt (London, 1934), p. 401.

50P. Renouf, The Egyptian Book of the Dead (London, 1904), p. 86.

51Ibid., p. 193.

52Budge, Egyptian Book of the Dead, op. cit., pp. 296, 411, 515.

53Ibid., p. 411.

54Coffin Texts, Spell 1033.

55See, for example, the instances in Budge, An Egyptian Hieroglyphic

Dictionary (Dover edition, New York, 1978).

56Jeremias, Handbuch, op. cit., p. 31.

57Jensen, Die Kosmologie, op. cit., pp. 248, 467.

58Budge, Egyptian Book of the Dead, op. cit., 297-8.

59Piankoff, Shrines of Tun-Ankh-Amon, op. cit., p. 6, n. 40.

60Budge, Egyptian Book of the Dead, op. cit., p. 43, n.

61Renouf, Egyptian Book of the Dead, op. cit., p. 131.

62Thus Ra is the Great Seed in the womb of Nut. Pyr. Texts 532, 990, 1416, 1688; Coffin Texts, Spell 334.

63Talbott, The Saturn Myth (Doubleday, 1980), pp. 71 ff.

64Pierre Lacau, Traduction des Textes des Cercueils du Moyen Empire (Paris, 1937), p. 33.

65Talbott, “On Testing the Polar Configuration,” op. cit., pp. 117 ff

66In fact the vague modern concept can be traced back to the original cosmography of the enclosed sun cross, projected onto the terrestrial landscape in order to sanctify the local habitation as a copy of the ideal.

67Pyr. Text 1777.

68Coffin Texts, Spell 203.

69Budge, Egyptian Book of the Dead, op. cit., p 134. See also the Coffin Texts, Spell 759: The ship is two million cubits in length and yet has four “sides” totalling “four million cubits.” If the four sides mean the four quarters of the crescent-enclosure, the math is correct, since the ship is exactly half of the full circle. Elsewhere the pathway is said to take Ra “over the supports of Shu.” Budge, Egyptian Book of the Dead, op. cit., p. 318. Budge adds (note 1) that this means “the four pillars at the South, North, West, and East of heaven upon which the heavens were believed to rest.” But in truth they are placed at the four corners of the celestial kingdom, called the “place of the four pillars.” (Pyr. Text 158). The four arms of the sun cross were viewed as extensions of the central column, so that in sailing round the circumpolar band, the god could be said both to sail around the four quarters of the celestial kingdom and to sail over the four pillars, the regions and pillars being barely separable in Egyptian symbolism.

70Coffin Texts, Spell 237.

71″Open a path for the Inert One to the abode of embalming, the pillared bark. ” Coffin Texts, Spell 241.

72One of the well known figures of the cosmic column is the Egyptian Tet- pillar, and the Pyramid Texts speak of the “Tet pillar of the Day-bark.” Pyr. Text 1255.

73Pyr. Texts 710-11, replacing Faulkner’s “horizon” with the literal “Mountain of Fire-Light.”

74Budge, Egyptian Book of the Dead, op. cit., p. 478, replacing Budge’s “horizon” with the literal “Mountain of Fire-Light.”

75G. S. Faber, Origins, op. cit., Vol II, pp. 20, 382; Vol III, p. 205.

76T. R. Clark, Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt (New York, 1959), p. 252.

77Ibid., p. 251.

78Heinrich Sch fer, “Alt gyptische Bilder der Auf- und Untergehende Sonne,” Zeitschrift fr gyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde,” 1935, pp. 15-38.

79Talbott, The Saturn Myth, op. cit., p 194 and notes 125-30.

80Ibid.

81A Coomaraswamy, “Symbolism of the Dome,” The Indian Historical Quarterly, Vol. XIV, No. 1 (March, 1938), pp 11, 18 and throughout.

82Ibid.

83Faber, Origins, op. cit., Vol. III, pp. 204 ff.

84E. Bergmann and Ake W. Sjoberg, The Collection of the Sumerian Temple Hymns (Locust Valley, 1969), pp. 21, 67, 151.

85Faber, Origins, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 20.

86Ibid., p. 382.

87Jeremias, Handbuch, op. cit., p. 243.

88Pyr. Text 792.

89Pyr. Text 1432.

90Coffin Texts, Spell 344.

91Coffin Texts, Spell 848.

92Hans Winkler, Rock Drawings of Southern Egypt (London, 1938), nos. 17, 22, and inset, pl. xxxiii; A. Piankoff, Tomb of Ramesses VI, op. cit., p. 153.

93Peter Gelling and Hilda Davidson, The Chariot of the Sun (New York, 1969).

94Joseph Campbell, Oriental Mythology (Viking Compass edition, New York, 197O), pp. 69-70. One important implication of this identity of crescent-horn and crescent ship is the further reinforcement of our claim that the ship is half of the Aten-band. Few themes were more common in Egypt than that of the shining horns wrapped around the band of the Aten. If the crescent-horns embrace the enclosed sun, then the ship with which the horns are identified must be the same crescent.

95Pyr. Text 150-1.

96Coffin Texts, Spell 55.

97Pyr. Text 607.

98Coffin Texts, Spell 398. It is explicit identities such as these that help to illuminate the invocation of the king in the Pyramid Texts (620), when he states: “Horus has lifted you up in his name of Hnw-bark; he bears you up in your name of Sokar.”

99Piankoff, The Tomb of Ramesses VI, op. cit., p. 93.

100M. Selim Hassan, Hymnes Religieux du Moyen Empire (Cairo, 1928), p. 12.

101Pyr. Text 387.

102Pyr. Text 595.

103Pyr. Text. 1176.

104Pyr. Texts 1376-7.

105Pyr. Text 1429.

106Pyr. Texts 1757-9.

107Pyr. Text 1766.

108Coffin Texts, Spell 839.

109Budge, Egyptian Book of the Dead, op. cit., p. 6.

110Ibid., p. 8.

111Pyr. Text 1479.

112This, for example, is the interpretation of Budge.

113Budge, Gods, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 323.

114Ibid.

115These left and right positions of the boat are often associated with the two eyes of Ra, one to the left and one to the right of the god. Budge, Egyptian Book of the Dead, op. cit., pp. 6, 503, 507; Renouf, Egyptian Book of the Dead, op. cit., p. 259; Pyr. Text 259.

116Coffin Texts, Spell 182.

117Coffin Texts, Spell 60.

118Coffin Texts, Spell 18.

119Pyr. Text 1133; see entire Utterance.

120Coffin Texts, Spell 136.

121Coffin Texts, Spell 129.

122Coffin Texts, Spell 44.

123In other words, “above” means the region above the sun god and “below” means the region below the sun god. The terrestrial observer is never the center of the system, as solar mythology always assumes.

124Coffin Texts, Spell 220.

125Coffin Texts, Spell 661.

126Coffin Texts, Spell 192.

127Coffin Texts, Spell 198.

128Coffin Texts, Spell 205. Upper region and lower region are similarly juxtaposed with the Night-bark and Day-bark in Spell 213, as also in Spell 218 and others.

129Pyr. Text 1171.

130Piankoff, Shrines of Tut-Ankh-Amon, op. cit., p. 72.

131Budge, Egyptian Book of the Dead, op. cit., p. 431.

132Pyr. Text 341.

133Pyr. Text 344.

134Coffin Texts, Spell 1, note l.

135Coffin Texts, Spell 224.

136Coffin Texts, Spell 205.

137Coffin Texts, Spell 563.

138Pyr. Text 323.

139Pyr. Text 2156.

140Coffin Texts, Spell 211.

141With this evidence in hand it is not difficult to see why in later art the ship was usually placed upright. This position has the same function as the ritual texts noted above; it declares, “I will not travel upside down in the night journey.” But now we have an explanation of this pervasive fear.

142Coffin Texts, Spell 343.

143Budge, Egyptian Book of the Dead, op. cit., p. 296.

144Pyr. Text 2122.

145Coffin Texts, Spell 395, note 19.

146Budge, Egyptian Book of the Dead, op. cit., p. 203.

147Ibid., p. 413. In the illustrated phase of the configuration, the lock “belongs” to Mars. Hence, the lord of the lock is in front of the enclosure around which the ship sailsQthe consistent position of the Mars-pillar in the general tradition.

148In the original scheme, these luminous “spirits,” as I will show, literally

constitute the train of the Venus-comet.

149Budge, Egyptian Book of the Dead, op. cit., p. 135.

150Ibid., p. 280.

151Coffin Texts, Spell 182.

152Coffin Texts, Spell 660.

153Coffin Texts, Spell 136.

154Budge, Egyptian Book of the Dead, op. cit., p. 299.

155Coffin Texts, Spell 882.

156I emphasize again that we are dealing with many misleading appearances. The band of the crescent-enclosure, of course, was perpendicular to the axis- column and could have produced the stated image while occupying almost any position along the shared axis at a sufficient distance from Earth.

157Coffin Texts, Spell 398.

158Coffin Texts, Spell 80.

October 11, 2025
WHEN EUROPEANS WERE SLAVES

RESEARCH SUGGESTS WHITE SLAVERY WAS MUCH MORE COMMON THAN PREVIOUSLY BELIEVED

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new study suggests that a million or more European Christians were enslaved by Muslims in North Africa between 1530 and 1780 – a far greater number than had ever been estimated before.

In a new book, Robert Davis, professor of history at Ohio State University, developed a unique methodology to calculate the number of white Christians who were enslaved along Africa’s Barbary Coast, arriving at much higher slave population estimates than any previous studies had found.

Most other accounts of slavery along the Barbary coast didn’t try to estimate the number of slaves, or only looked at the number of slaves in particular cities, Davis said. Most previously estimated slave counts have thus tended to be in the thousands, or at most in the tens of thousands. Davis, by contrast, has calculated that between 1 million and 1.25 million European Christians were captured and forced to work in North Africa from the 16th to 18th centuries. Davis’s new estimates appear in the book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 (Palgrave Macmillan).

“Enslavement was a very real possibility for anyone who traveled in the Mediterranean, or who lived along the shores in places like Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, and even as far north as England and Iceland.”

“Much of what has been written gives the impression that there were not many slaves and minimizes the impact that slavery had on Europe,” Davis said. “Most accounts only look at slavery in one place, or only for a short period of time. But when you take a broader, longer view, the massive scope of this slavery and its powerful impact become clear.”

Davis said it is useful to compare this Mediterranean slavery to the Atlantic slave trade that brought black Africans to the Americas. Over the course of four centuries, the Atlantic slave trade was much larger – about 10 to 12 million black Africans were brought to the Americas. But from 1500 to 1650, when trans-Atlantic slaving was still in its infancy, more white Christian slaves were probably taken to Barbary than black African slaves to the Americas, according to Davis.

“One of the things that both the public and many scholars have tended to take as given is that slavery was always racial in nature – that only blacks have been slaves. But that is not true,” Davis said. “We cannot think of slavery as something that only white people did to black people.”During the time period Davis studied, it was religion and ethnicity, as much as race, that determined who became slaves.

“Enslavement was a very real possibility for anyone who traveled in the Mediterranean, or who lived along the shores in places like Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, and even as far north as England and Iceland,” he said.

Pirates (called corsairs) from cities along the Barbary Coast in north Africa – cities such as Tunis and Algiers – would raid ships in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, as well as seaside villages to capture men, women and children. The impact of these attacks were devastating – France, England, and Spain each lost thousands of ships, and long stretches of the Spanish and Italian coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants. At its peak, the destruction and depopulation of some areas probably exceeded what European slavers would later inflict on the African interior.

Although hundreds of thousands of Christian slaves were taken from Mediterranean countries, Davis noted, the effects of Muslim slave raids was felt much further away: it appears, for example, that through most of the 17th century the English lost at least 400 sailors a year to the slavers.

Even Americans were not immune. For example, one American slave reported that 130 other American seamen had been enslaved by the Algerians in the Mediterranean and Atlantic just between 1785 and 1793.
Davis said the vast scope of slavery in North Africa has been ignored and minimized, in large part because it is on no one’s agenda to discuss what happened.

The enslavement of Europeans doesn’t fit the general theme of European world conquest and colonialism that is central to scholarship on the early modern era, he said. Many of the countries that were victims of slavery, such as France and Spain, would later conquer and colonize the areas of North Africa where their citizens were once held as slaves. Maybe because of this history, Western scholars have thought of the Europeans primarily as “evil colonialists” and not as the victims they sometimes were, Davis said.

Davis said another reason that Mediterranean slavery has been ignored or minimized has been that there have not been good estimates of the total number of people enslaved. People of the time – both Europeans and the Barbary Coast slave owners – did not keep detailed, trustworthy records of the number of slaves. In contrast, there are extensive records that document the number of Africans brought to the Americas as slaves.
So Davis developed a new methodology to come up with reasonable estimates of the number of slaves along the Barbary Coast. Davis found the best records available indicating how many slaves were at a particular location at a single time. He then estimated how many new slaves it would take to replace slaves as they died, escaped or were ransomed.

“The only way I could come up with hard numbers is to turn the whole problem upside down – figure out how many slaves they would have to capture to maintain a certain level,” he said. “It is not the best way to make population estimates, but it is the only way with the limited records available.”

Putting together such sources of attrition as deaths, escapes, ransomings, and conversions, Davis calculated that about one-fourth of slaves had to be replaced each year to keep the slave population stable, as it apparently was between 1580 and 1680. That meant about 8,500 new slaves had to be captured each year. Overall, this suggests nearly a million slaves would have been taken captive during this period. Using the same methodology, Davis has estimated as many as 475,000 additional slaves were taken in the previous and following centuries.

The result is that between 1530 and 1780 there were almost certainly 1 million and quite possibly as many as 1.25 million white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast.
Davis said his research into the treatment of these slaves suggests that, for most of them, their lives were every bit as difficult as that of slaves in America.

“As far as daily living conditions, the Mediterranean slaves certainly didn’t have it better,” he said. While African slaves did grueling labor on sugar and cotton plantations in the Americas, European Christian slaves were often worked just as hard and as lethally – in quarries, in heavy construction, and above all rowing the corsair galleys themselves. Davis said his findings suggest that this invisible slavery of European Christians deserves more attention from scholars.

“We have lost the sense of how large enslavement could loom for those who lived around the Mediterranean and the threat they were under,” he said. “Slaves were still slaves, whether they are black or white, and whether they suffered in America or North Africa.”
#
Contact Robert Davis, Davis.711@osu.edu
Written by Jeff Grabmeier, Grabmeier.1@osu.edu

October 11, 2025
The Age of the Pyramids

The Great Pyramid of Giza, among the seven wonders of the ancient world, points towards the celestial north pole with a margin of error of only a tiny fraction of one degree.

Dr. Kate Spence, a British Egyptologist, believes she may have solved two of the great mysteries of archaeology – how the ancient Egyptians aligned the pyramid with such remarkable geographical accuracy and when the vast royal tomb was built.

Pointing north

The Great Pyramid is a master of precision. Comprised of an estimated 2.5 million limestone blocks, archaeologists have known for over a century that the Great Pyramid was pointed almost exactly north, but nobody has been able to explain how the ancient Egyptians managed to align it with such unprecedented accuracy.

The deviation in accuracy is minute as Dr. Spence explains:

‘The Great Pyramid is extremely accurately aligned towards north. The sides deviate from true north by less than three ark minutes, that’s less than a twentieth of a degree, which is extremely accurate in terms of orientation.’

Modern astronomers would have little difficulty in finding north because the Pole Star, Polaris, is almost directly above the North Pole. But astronomers know that the Earth regularly wobbles very slowly on its axis over a period of 26,000 years and so in ancient Egyptian times there would have been no star overhead marking true north.

The Spence theory

Using computer simulations of the night sky as it would have been seen at the time of the Egyptians, Dr Spence, from Cambridge University, suggests that the ancient Egyptians carefully monitored two stars which revolve in the northern region of the night sky.

The north-finding stars were Kochab, in the bowl of the Little Dipper (Ursa Minor), and Mizar, in the middle of the handle of The Plough or Big Dipper (Ursa Major). Dr Spence says that the ancient Egyptians realised that when one was directly above the other then the line between the two-marked true north.

Dr Spence speculates that these astronomical calculations were made at special ceremonies early in a pharaoh’s reign and that construction work would then begin on the pyramids to house their tombs. She explains:

‘What would probably have happened is that the king would have dressed in his ceremonial gear, and there would probably have been priests dressed as gods who would begin stretching chords and marking out the base. It would have been a highly charged religious atmosphere, taking place in the dark, at night, with torches everywhere. It would have been a spectacular ceremony.’

The ancient Egyptians fascination with the night sky is well known. Believing that the Gods lived in the Duat, an afterworld in the sky, the pharoahs who were responsible for the construction of the pyramid at Giza, would have associated the stars with eternity and afterlife.

Dating the pyramids

In the past the date of the ancient Egyptian pyramids has been a source of much debate among historians, who have put it at around the middle of the third millennium BC, by tracing the chronology of Kings. However, publishing her research in the scientific journal Nature, Dr Spence says her theory gives a more precise date for the beginning of construction work on the Great Pyramid.

The celestial north pole was only aligned exactly with Kochab and Mizar in 2, 467 BC, which would put the beginning of building work about 70 years later than many archaeologists, have previously thought.

Dr Owen Gingerich, Senior Astronomer, at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics said Dr Spence’s theory is an ingenious and convincing astronomical solution to a long-standing mystery. He comments:

‘I was rather tickled to see the solution that she had put forward and wondered why nobody else had thought of it before, because I think it makes a lot of sense and it has an internal coherence.’

Source:
BBC World Service, Science and Technology, The Stargazers of Ancient Egypt

How Old are the Pyramids?

by JOSEPH JOCHMANS

The controversy raised by John Anthony West and Robert Schoch concerning the true age of the Great Sphinx is now beginning to overcast the other famous monuments which share space on the Giza plateau—namely, the three pyramids that were supposedly built by Pharaohs Khufu, Khafre and Menkhare in the Fourth Dynasty. Were these Pyramids constructed only 4,300 years ago, or—like the Sphinx—is there evidence they could be far older, dating instead to perhaps 12,000 years ago?

Let’s begin first with looking at the age of the Great Pyramid. The conservative historians’ entire case for dating the Great Pyramid to the Fourth Dynasty rests upon two major pieces of evidence. The first is the story of Herodotus, who in 443 B.C. visited Egypt and recounted how Pharaoh Cheops (the Greek name for Khufu) built the Great Pyramid during his reign with 100,000 men in 20 years. However, we now know this story is highly questionable. Even his contemporaries called Herodotus the “Father of Lies.” Not only do the construction estimates he gave not work, but Herodotus, as an Initiate in the Egyptian Mystery Schools, was sworn to secrecy regarding the true nature of the Pyramid, and he more than likely copied a fictitious tale about the monument that was then in circulation among the common masses. The Greek historian’s account stands in sharp contrast to most other Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Hermetic, Coptic and medieval Arabic scholarly sources which agree that the Great Pyramid was not constructed during the time frame of Pharaoh Khufu or Dynastic Egypt, but was the product of the “Age of the Gods” thousands of years earlier.

The second piece of evidence is the existence of painted hieroglyphic inscriptions found in the air space chambers above the King’s Chamber, which include the name of Pharaoh Khufu. They were supposedly discovered by Col. Richard Howard-Vyse in 1837, when he forced his way up to these chambers using gunpowder. But there are certain facts showing these inscriptions were in actuality forgeries.

Actually, we have the testament of Pharaoh Khufu himself that he only did repair work on the Great Pyramid. The Inventory Stele, found in 1857 by Auguste Mariette just to the east of the Pyramid, dates to about 1500 B.C., but according to Maspero and other experts, shows evidence of having been copied from a far older stele contemporaneous with the Fourth Dynasty. In the Stele, Khufu himself tells of his discoveries made while clearing away the sands from the Pyramid and Sphinx. He dedicated the account to Isis, who he called the “Mistress of the Western Mountain,” “Mistress of the Pyramid,” and identified the Pyramid itself as the “House of Isis.”

The Stele describes how Pharaoh Khufu, “gave to her (Isis) an offering anew, and he built again (to restore, renovate, reconstruct) her temple of stone.” From there, the Pharaoh inspected the Sphinx, according to the text, and related the story of how in his time both the monument and a nearby sycamore tree had been struck by lightning. The bolt had knocked off part of the headdress of the Sphinx, which Khufu carefully restored. Egyptologist Selim Hassan, who dug out the Sphinx from the surrounding sands in the 1930’s, observed there is indeed evidence that portions of the Sphinx were damaged by lightning, and the mark of ancient repairs is very apparent. Also, he noted, sycamore trees once grew to the south of the monument, which had been dated to a great age.

The Stele then ends with the story of how Khufu built small pyramids for himself and his daughters, wife and family, next to the Great Pyramid. Today, the ruins of three small pyramids are indeed situated on the east side of the monument. Archaeologists have found independent evidence that the southernmost of the three small pyramids flanking the Great Pyramid was in fact dedicated to Henutsen, a wife of Khufu. Everything in the inscription thus matches the known facts. If these facts can be believed as true, then the additional information that Khufu was only a restorer of the Great Pyramid and not its builder, must also be treated as historically true.

ANCIENT LEGENDS AND MODERN RESEARCH CONFIRM EACH OTHER

When we look at mythic history for the story of the origins of the Great Pyramid, we discover that the monument was not attributed to any Pharaoh, but was the product of the genius and higher learning of the Gods of Old. Time and time again, from the Roman Marcellinus to the Coptic Al Masudi and the Arab Ibn Abd Alhokim, the recounters of the ancient legends tell how the Pyramid was built to preserve the knowledge of a magnificent civilization from destruction by a Flood, and that it was this Flood which brought the Age of the Gods to its tragic end. The various Chronologies of Legendary Rulers place a minimum date for the Age of the Gods as circa 10,000 B.C. This is the time frame Plato, in his Timaeus and Critias, ascribed the destruction of Atlantis. And it is also this date, as can be proven in modern scientific studies, which was highlighted by major climatic, geologic and geomagnetic disturbances, accompanied by massive paleo-biological extinctions in the planet, marking the division point between the Ice Age and the Present Era.

In Egypt, geologists examining the fossil record have found that the combined effect of melting glaciers in the Mountains of the Moon, plus a sharp rise in precipitation levels in Central Africa, caused the Nile river circa 10,000 B.C. to swell in size a thousandfold, eroding away cliff walls miles from its present banks, and washing out its entire valley throughout the length of Egypt. At the same time, as the Mediterranean Sea began to fill and rise due to higher ocean levels from melting northern glaciers, its waters for a brief period also flooded the lower Nile valley.

These, geologists are certain, are the last major flood events in Egypt’s fossil history, before the sea retreated and the Nile settled down to today’s relatively peaceful, winding flow. Yet, knowing this, geologists are hard pressed to explain why there existed a fourteen-foot layer of silt sediment around the base of the Pyramid, a layer which also contained many seashells, and the fossil of a sea cow, all of which were dated by radiocarbon methods to 11,600 B.P. (Before Present) plus or minus 300 years.

Legends and records likewise speak of the fact that, before the Arabs removed the Pyramid’s outer casing stones, one could see water marks on the stones halfway up the Pyramid’s height, in about the 240-foot level, which would be 400 feet above the present Nile level. The medieval Arab historian Al Biruni, writing in his treatise The Chronology of Ancient Nations, noted: “The Persians and the great mass of Magians relate that the inhabitants of the west, when they were warned by their sages, constructed buildings of the King and the Giza Pyramids. The traces of the water of the Deluge and the effects of the waves are still visible on these pyramids halfway up, above which the water did not rise.” Add to this the observation made when the Pyramid was first opened, that incrustations of salt an inch thick were found inside. Most of this salt is natural exudation from the chambered rock wall, but chemical analysis also shows some of the salt has a mineral content consistent with salt from the sea. Thus, during the prehistoric Flood, when waters surrounded the Great Pyramid, the known and unknown entrances leaked, allowing seawater into the interior, which later evaporated and left the salts behind. The locations where the salts are found are consistent with the monument having been submerged half-way up its height.

If the floodings of 10,000 B.C. were the last major catastrophic water events in Egypt, and the Pyramid exhibits signs of having been subjected to them, it means the Pyramid must date from a period before the flooding occurred.

Though most Egyptologists today have yet to accept such a necessary “radical” revision of their dating of the Pyramid, there have been other discoveries that have forced them to at least realize that their preconceived theories of any early Dynastic age for the structure is no longer tenable.

In 1983 and 1984, prehistorian Robert J. Wenke from the University of Washington, and president of the American Research Center in Egypt, was given permission to collect mortar samples from various ancient construction sites, including the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx Temple. The mortar contained particles of charcoal, insect matter, pollen, and other organic materials which could be subjected for carbon-14 dating analysis. Using two different radiocarbon dating laboratories—the Institute for the Study of Man at Southern Methodist University, and the Institute of Medium Energy Physics in Zurich—the samples revealed a number of curiosities. For the Great Pyramid samples, the tests performed at the two labs initially gave very different clusterings of dates, off by several thousands of years. When certain “adjustments” in the data were applied, the resulting time frame narrowed to 3100 B.C. to 2850 B.C.—which is still 400 years earlier than when most Egyptologists believe the Great Pyramid was built. Even more anomalous, the dates obtained from mortar used near the top of the Pyramid were a thousand years older than those obtained from mortar nearer the Pyramid base. The researchers, if they were to fully believe these findings, would have to propose that the Pyramid had somehow been built from the top down.

What makes the datings further unacceptable is that all of them were taken from areas of previously exposed surfaces. We know from such sources as the Inventory Stele that the Giza monuments were time and time again subjected to many reconstructions and repair work, inside and out. Therefore the radiocarbon dates can only give us clues as to when the time frame was for the repair work, not the actual construction of the Great Pyramid. If the dates are to be believed at all, they at least tell us that reconstruction work was done on the monument in a time period long before the “accepted” building was done, which means the Pyramid itself must be from an even earlier period, farther distant in the past.

WERE THE THREE GIZA PYRAMIDS MODELS FOR EGYPT’S “PYRAMID AGE”?

Expanding our sphere of inquiry to now include all three of the Giza Pyramids, we find that an interesting historical conundrum arises regarding their “accepted” construction. If, as conservative scholars surmise, the three Giza Pyramids were built in the Fourth Dynasty by the succession of three Pharaohs—Khufu, Khafre and Menkhare— what we find regarding the sizes of the three pyramids in association with the three reigns is inconsistent with what we would have expected to have happened.

First, Khufu ruled and supposedly constructed the Great Pyramid. Khafre followed Khufu, and in order to be politically and religiously “correct,” we would have expected him to have erected a pyramid larger than Khufu’s. To do otherwise would have seriously reflected on his being inferior to his predecessor. Generally speaking, a ruler could not afford for his people to think that their Pharaoh was weaker in power and less blessed by the gods and goddesses than the ruler before him.

After Khafre, Menkhare next took the throne of Egypt, and in order to be in continued good political and religious form, we would have expected him to build the largest pyramid of all, dwarfing those of Khufu and Khafre in order to make sure he was not to be outshone by either of his predecessors.

Yet what we find at Giza is exactly opposite the expected scenario: Supposedly Khufu constructed the largest pyramid, Khafre built his slightly smaller than Khufu’s, and Menkhare erected a pyramid only a third the size of the other two.

If what actually happened contradicts what should have happened if the three Giza pyramids were built in the Fourth Dynasty, then this can only mean that something is fundamentally wrong with the accepted scenario.

Instead of the three Pharaohs building the three Giza pyramids, what if the pyramids were already present, old with age, and in the Fourth Dynasty the three succeeding rulers simply claimed possession of the structures, doing repair work on them, and building only the minor subsidiary pyramids around them for themselves and their families—just as the Inventory Stele describes Khufu did. What would we expect would have happened?

Khufu, first on the scene, would naturally have laid claim to the largest pyramid for himself, or the Great Pyramid. His successor, Khafre, now left with only two pyramids to choose from, would have taken possession of the second largest. Menkhare, the last to reign, would have had to be content with the last pyramid available, the smallest of the three.

Such a scenario best fits the actual facts, for this is exactly the succession of pyramids the Pharaoh had jurisdiction over, each in their turn. Clearly, what this suggests is the Giza pyramids came first, then the Pharaohs ruled, not the other way around.

According to conservative scholars, the Giza Three were supposed to represent the “height of accomplishment” in the Egyptian age of pyramid building, from the Third to the Thirteenth Dynasties, 2700 to 1800 B.C. But if the Giza Pyramids are in reality 12,000 years old, then they instead must have served as the models the Dynastic Egyptians repeatedly tried to copy and emulate. If we recognize this greater antiquity for the Giza Three, then many mysteries surrounding the design and construction of Egypt’s other pyramids find their solutions.

The conservative view purports that the early pyramids along the Nile developed by stages of “evolution.” Initially, in the First and Second Dynasties, from circa 3200 to 2800 B.C., the Pharaohs were buried in mastabas, which were rectangular-shaped structures with walls sloping inward, built over underground vaults. What has baffled archaeologists is that each of the first kings of Egypt had not one but two such mastabas, at Abydos, and at Saqqara. One of these served as a cenotaph, or an empty tomb in honor of the royal person. The reason for this early practice is still a puzzle to scholars, not yet solved.

However, we know from ancient records that the peoples of the ancient world at one time had knowledge of the existence of the known entrance to the Great Pyramid, and they left evidence, in the form of torch soot and graffiti on the walls, that they penetrated as far as the Descending Passage and Pit Chamber. The Second and Third Pyramids also possess passages and empty chambers deep beneath their foundations. Did the early Pharaohs, in studying the design of the Giza Pyramids standing silently before them on the Nile, imitate the empty Pyramid chambers in the building of their second royal tombs, believing the empty chambers had a special spiritual significance they wished to emulate?

In the Third Dynasty, beginning about 2780 B.C., Pharaoh Zoser undertook to build a mastaba for himself as had his predecessors, but then decided to go several steps further. Two more mastaba structures were constructed on top of the first in step fashion, and finally, these in turn were incorporated as one side of a six-tiered pyramid. The development of this curious structure—today called the Step Pyramid, and located at Saqqara—indicates that Zoser was attempting to copy or duplicate a particular image. The pyramid does resemble a Sumerian ziggurat, or “holy mountain,” except that unlike the ziggurat Zoser’s structure possessed no sanctuary at its apex, and had a system of internal tunnels and chambers. The only structures which come close to being models for Zoser’s work are the Giza Pyramids.

Significantly—and again in imitation of the Giza monuments—Zoser was not buried in his Step Pyramid. The foot of a mummy thought to have belonged to Zoser was found in one chamber, but the wrappings proved to be from a period much later than the Third Dynasty. All in all, a total of sixty mummies were found in and around the Step Pyramid, but these have been dated to the Saitic or Late Period, in the first millennium B.C. Zoser’s tomb has been identified as located at Bet Khalaif, and no pyramid structure was found associated with it.

Following Zoser, his successor, Pharaoh Sekhemket, attempted to build a pyramid, but it appears never to have been completed, and today is only a mass of rubble. However, archaeologists did find at the bottom of a shaft below the structure a sealed alabaster sarcophagus. When the sarcophagus was opened, it was found to be completely empty, mirroring the state the Stone Box was found in, in the Great Pyramid.

The one ruler who by far was the most ambitious pyramid builder of the Third Dynasty was Pharaoh Senefru. He constructed three monuments, and there is every reason to believe he attempted to duplicate the feat of the three Giza Pyramids. He came close, for his pyramids contained two-thirds as much stone, covered 90 percent as much area, and were built with comparable speed as the Giza structures. The one obvious difference is their building design and masonry were very crude, when examined alongside the work done in the Giza area.

It is in the period immediately following Senefru, at the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty, that we are supposed to believe that Egyptian architects somehow miraculously overcame all their construction shortcomings, and developed the quantum leap of techniques for advanced building that went into the making of the Giza Pyramids. But the Giza monuments, however, stand out above all the rest of the pyramids in Egypt in many unique ways, clearly showing they were not related to the other Egyptian pyramids in time or construction.

First, only the Great Pyramid and (from what is known from legend and esoteric literature) the other two Giza Pyramids have chambers in their upper interior—all the rest possess only a lower chamber or chambers near the foundation. These are copies of the pit chambers in the Giza Pyramids. The Dynastic Egyptians, not knowing of the secret chambers higher up, had no precedent for including these in their own pyramids.

Second, only the Giza Three are accurately aligned to true north, which is indicative of a very sophisticated science of Earth measurement and construction—elements exhibited in no other pyramid.

Third, only the Giza monuments were built with a high degree of accuracy—this precision, coupled with the apparent mastery of large, multi-ton stone construction, is what allowed the Giza Pyramids to reach their gigantic size, the largest in Egypt. In the Second and Third Pyramids the construction blocks are often not as massive or as finely positioned as they are seen in the Great Pyramid, but they are precise enough to place them in an entirely different category from all other structures along the Nile.

Fourth, the Giza monuments were built using construction designs totally alien to any other pyramid form. As William R. Fix, in Pyramid Odyssey observed: “Because the other pyramids consist of much smaller blocks, they were built as a series of shells with multiple internal retaining walls to give cohesiveness. The three large Giza Pyramids do not have these internal casings. The very size of the blocks produces the necessary stability. This characteristic reveals a general excellence of workmanship and also imply a much higher technological capability than that employed anywhere else..

And fifth, unlike any pyramid supposedly built either before or after the Giza Three, none of the Giza monuments contain religious symbols or pictures in any of their inner chambers.

According to conservative scholars, the Giza Pyramids were built by the Fourth Dynasty Pharaohs Khufu, Khafre and Menkhare, as tombs. Yet not one of their bodies was found in any of them. The King’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid was discovered to be completely empty upon its opening, its Stone Box sealed but vacant. In the Belzoni Chamber, beneath the Second Pyramid, a stone box was found like the one in the Great Pyramid, but it too contained no corpse. In 1878, a sarcophagus with a mummy inside was brought to light in the Third Pyramid. Though both the sarcophagus and mummy were lost at sea during their transport to the British Museum, samples had been taken from them, and when later analyzed by radiocarbon dating techniques, they were found to be from a fairly late date, only 2,000 to 2,500 years ago.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the three Pharaohs who are thought to have built the Giza Pyramids instead simply claimed the monuments as their own, having given up on the idea of attempting to duplicate the structures, as Senefru had tried but failed to do before them. There are several subsidiary pyramids around the Giza Three which were probably built by the Pharaohs, and today are almost in total ruins because of their greatly inferior construction. According to ancient stelae and legends, the Pharaohs also made repairs on the Pyramids—but had nothing to do with their actual construction.

With Menkhare came the end of the Fourth Dynasty, and at the beginning of the Fifth Dynasty we are supposed to believe, according to the historians, that the Egyptians suddenly reverted back to the same old methods of design and greatly inferior construction techniques as seen in the pyramids prior to the Fourth Dynasty. The first Pharaoh, Shepeskaf, actually built nothing more than a mastaba for his burial place. He was then followed by Userkaf, whose pyramid was so badly made it today is only a heap of debris. Sahure, Nieswerre and Neferirkare came next, and between them at Abu Sir they attempted to erect three pyramids (again duplicating Giza), but these in no way approached the size or grandeur of the Giza Three, and today are nothing more than broken piles. The same can be said for the monuments of the Sixth through the Thirteenth Dynasties, after which pyramid building for the most part came to an end. In all, 23 major pyramids were erected following the Fourth Dynasty and in each single case, the work on them was done hastily, with little care of precision, and using blocks that were no more than roughly squared boulders. We may well ask, if the Giza Pyramids, in all their excellence, were supposedly built in the Fourth Dynasty, what happened to the advanced knowledge seen in their design and construction—why was it never used again, in not a single later pyramid?

Author William R. Fix concluded: “The many fundamental differences between the major Giza monuments and the rest of Egypt’s pyramids indicates that they do not fit into the contended chronology for dynastic Egypt. But if they do not belong to dynastic Egypt, there is only one direction in which they can be moved-not forward, but back into the past.”

In truth, the Giza Pyramids were not an integral part of the evolutionary development of the Egyptian pyramids. Instead, they were there from the very beginning, the motivation and influence which spurred the building of the Dynastic pyramids along the Nile.

The source of the above article by Joseph Robert Jochmans is available at
http://www.atlantisrising.com/issue8/ar8pyramids.html

Edgar Cayce – Great Pyramid and Sphinx Reading from 1932

READING 5748-6. This Reading given by Edgar Cayce July 1st 1932.

1. EC: Much has been written respecting that represented in the Great Pyramid, and the record that may be read by those who would seek to know more concerning the relationships that have existed, that may exist, that do exist, between those of the Creative Forces that are manifest in the material world. As indicated, there were periods when a much closer relationship existed, or rather should it be said, there was a much better understanding OF the relationship that EXISTS between the creature and the Creator.

2. In those conditions that are signified in the way through the pyramid, as of periods through which the world has passed and is passing, as related to the religious or the spiritual experiences of man – the period of the present is represented by the low passage or depression showing a downward tendency, as indicated by the variations in the character of stone used. This might be termed in the present as the Cruciatarian Age, or that in which preparations are being made for the beginning of a new sub-race, or a change, which – as indicated from the astronomical or numerical conditions – dates from the latter portion or middle portion of the present fall [1932]. In October there will be a period in which the benevolent influences of Jupiter and Uranus will be stronger, which – from an astrological viewpoint – will bring a greater interest in occult or mystic influences.

3. At the correct time accurate imaginary lines can be drawn from the opening of the great Pyramid to the second star in the Great Dipper, called Polaris or the North Star. This indicates it is the system toward which the soul takes it flight after having completed its sojourn through this solar system. In October there will be seen the first variation in the position of the polar star in relation to the lines from the Great Pyramid. The dipper is gradually changing, and when this change becomes noticeable – as might be calculated from the Pyramid – there will be the beginning of the change in the races. There will come a greater influx of souls from the Atlantean, Lemurian, La, Ur or Da civilizations. These conditions are indicated in this turn in the journey through the pyramid. 4. How was this begun? Who was given that this should be a record of man’s experiences in this root race? for that is the period covered by the prophecies in the pyramid. This was given to Ra and Hermes in that period during the reign of Araaraart when there were many who sought to bring to man a better understanding of the close relationship between the Creative Forces and that created, between man and man, and man and his Maker.

5. Only those who have been called may truly understand. Who then has been called? Whosoever will make himself a channel may be raised to that of a blessing that is all that entity-body is able to comprehend. Who, having his whole measure full, would desire more does so to his own undoing.

6. (Q) What are the correct interpretations of the indications in the Great Pyramid regarding the time when the present depression will end?
(A) The changes as indicated and outlined are for the latter part of the present year [1932]. As far as depression is concerned, this is not – as in the minds of many – because fear has arisen, but rather that, when fear has arisen in the hearts of the created, SIN lieth at the door. Then, the change will occur – or that seeking will make the definite change – in the latter portion of the present year. Not that times financially will be better, but the minds of the people will be fitted to the conditions better.

7. (Q) What was the date of the actual beginning and ending of the construction of the Great Pyramid?
(A) Was one hundred years in construction. Begun and completed in the period of Araaraart’s time, with Hermes and Ra.

8. (Q) What was the date B.C. of that period?
(A) 10,490 to 10,390 before the Prince entered into Egypt.

9. (Q) What definite details are indicated as to what will happen after we enter the period of the King’s Chamber?
(A) When the bridegroom is at hand, all do rejoice. When we enter that understanding of being in the King’s presence, with that of the mental seeking, the joy, the buoyancy, the new understanding, the new life, through the period.

10. (Q) What is the significance of the empty sarcophagus?
(A) That there will be no more death. Don’t misunderstand or misinterpret! but the INTERPRETATION of death will be made plain.

11. (Q) If the Armageddon is foretold in the Great Pyramid, please give a description of it and the date of its beginning and ending.
(A) Not in what is left there. It will be as a thousand years, with the fighting in the air, and – as has been – between those returning to and those leaving the earth.

12. (Q) What will be the type and extent of the upheaval in ’36?
(A) The wars, the upheavals in the interior of the earth, and the shifting of same by the differentiation in the axis as respecting the positions from the Polaris center.

13. (Q) Is there not a verse of scripture in Isaiah mentioning the rock on which the great pyramid is builded?
(A) Not as we find; rather the rock on which John VIEWED the New Jerusalem – that is, as of the entering in the King’s Chamber in the Pyramid.

14. (Q) What is the date, as recorded by the Pyramid, of entering in the King’s Chamber?
(A) ’38 to ’58.

15. (Q) If the Passion of Jesus is recorded in the Great Pyramid, please give the date according to our present system of recording time?
(A) This has already been presented in a fair and equitable manner through those students of same, and these descriptions have been presented as to their authenticity.

16. (Q) How was this particular Great Pyramid of Gizeh built?
(A) By the use of those forces in nature as make for iron to swim. Stone floats in the air in the same manner. This will be discovered in ’58.

17. (Q) What is the significance of the character of the figure of the Sphinx, mentioned above?
(A) In this particular period of Araaraart and of the priest (that began those understandings – and passed through those of the hell in the misinterpretation of same), there was even then the seeking through those channels that are today called archaeological research.

In those periods when the first change had come in the position of the land, there had been an egress of peoples – or THINGS, as would be called today – from the Atlantean land, when the Nile (of Nole, then) emptied into what is now the Atlantic Ocean, on the Congo end of the country. What is now as the Sahara was a fertile land, a city that was builded in the edge of the land, a city of those that worshipped the sun – for the use of its rays were used for supplying from the elements that which is required in the present to be grown through a season; or the abilities to use both those of introgression and retrogression – and mostly retrograded, as we are in the present.

The beginnings of these mounds were as an interpretation of that which was crustating in the land. (See, most of the people had tails then!) In those beginnings these were left. When there was the entrance of Arart and Araaraart, they begin to build upon those mounds which were discovered through research. With the storehouse, or record house (where the records are still to be uncovered), there is a chamber or passage from the right forepaw to this entrance of the record chamber, or record tomb. This may not be entered without an understanding, for those that were left as guards may NOT be passed until after a period of their regeneration in the Mount, or the fifth root race begins. In the building of the pyramid, and that which is now called the Mystery of Mysteries [the Sphinx], this was intended to be a MEMORIAL – as would be termed today – to that counsellor who ruled or governed, or who acted in the capacity of the director in the MATERIAL things in the land.

With the return of the priest (as it had been stopped), this was later – by Isis, the queen, or the daughter of Ra – turned so as to present to those peoples in that land the relationships of man and the animal or carnal world with those changes that fade or fall away in their various effect. These may be seen in a different manner presented in many of the various sphinxes, as called, in other portions of the land – as the lion with the man, the various forms of wing, or characterizations in their various developments. These were as presentations of those projections that had been handed down in their various developments of that which becomes man – as in the present.

18. We are through.

October 11, 2025