From Atlantis to the Sphinx (40 page)

This still leaves us with the most puzzling question, however: in that case, why did the Egyptians build the Sphinx in 10,500 BC, and the pyramids 8000 years later?

The answer, according to
Keeper of Genesis
, is astronomical: that they had to wait another 8000 years for some important event to occur in the sky. We shall discuss what this is in a moment.

Meanwhile, it is clear that Bauval and Hancock’s thesis is highly controversial. They are stating that the original ‘priests’ came to Egypt some time before 10,500 BC, that they knew all about precession, and they knew that Orion would reach its lowest point in the sky in 10,500. The Sphinx, facing due east, was built as a marker of the beginning of this new age.

Then there arises the objection I discussed in Chapter 3. Are we really being asked to believe that the ancient priests planned ahead 8000 years, and then carried out their plan with such bravura? It sounds an unlikely proposition.

Bauval and Hancock’s attempt to demonstrate it begins with one of the basic facts about the ancient Egyptian mentality: that the ancients saw the land of Egypt as an
earthly counterpart
of the sky, with the Milky Way as the Nile. Egypt was an image of heaven.

And what was the basic aim of these priests and initiates who built the Sphinx? It was one that enables us to understand why Schwaller de Lubicz felt so at home in the mentality of ancient Egypt—the quest for immortality, that same quest in which the alchemists engaged in their attempts to create the philosophers’ stone.

The argument in
Keeper of Genesis
depends very much on Egyptian texts like
The Book of the Dead
, the Pyramid texts, and
The Book of What Is In the Duat.
These often tell us, with great precision, what we can infer from astronomy. The ‘Duat’ is usually translated as ‘heaven’, but Bauval and Hancock make a strong case for it referring to a specific part of heaven—that area where Orion and Sirius could be seen on the ‘right bank’ of the Milky Way in 2500 BC. And it was of importance only at the time of the summer solstice, when Sirius rose at dawn, and signalled the flooding of the Nile.

The next important step in this argument concerns
Zep Tepi
, the first time, or rather, the
place
where this was supposed to have happened—we might call it the Egyptian Garden of Eden. This, it is clear from many texts, is situated in the area of the Great Pyramids, and of the ancient cities of Memphis and Heliopolis, just south of the Nile Delta. This is where Osiris and Isis ruled jointly, before Osiris’s brother Set—the god of darkness—murdered and dismembered him and scattered the parts of his body abroad. Isis succeeded in bringing them together, and in impaling herself on Osiris’s penis for long enough to be impregnated. Their son was Horus, who would avenge his father (like Hamlet in the later story).

Geb, the father of Isis and Osiris, at first gave Set and Horus a half each of the kingdom of Egypt; then Geb changed his mind and gave it all to Horus, uniting the land of Egypt. This uniting of Upper and Lower Egypt happened, according to historians, in the time of King Menes, around 3000 BC. But the Egyptian myths clearly suggest that it took place at another time.

The body of Osiris, which had been located in southern Egypt, has now floated up the Nile, from his tomb in Abydos in the south, to ‘the land of Sokar’—the area of Rostau (the ancient name for Giza) and Heliopolis in the north. Now, finally, Osiris can depart for his home in the kingdom of the skies in Orion. And he will depart
from Giza
.

When
did this take place? The authors argue that the astronomical evidence gives the date as 2500 BC.

And where? According to Hancock, there is a pyramid painting of the land of Sokar, with corridors and passageways that remind us strongly of those of the Great Pyramid. And of course, Bauval argues in
The Orion Mystery
that the pharaoh—identified with Osiris—took his departure from the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid when the ‘ventilation shaft’ was pointing at Orion.

Now consider. The cycle began—according to Bauval and Hancock—in 10,500 BC, when Orion (Osiris) was at the nadir of its precessional cycle. And if Hancock is correct, these survivors of some great flood felt that the catastrophe marked the end of an age—and, of course, the beginning of another. This next cycle would last for 25,920 years, the half-cycle (when Orion begins to descend again) occurring in AD 2460.

Let us make the admittedly far-fetched assumption that the astronomer-priests who built the Sphinx in 10,500 BC also
planned
to build the pyramids in such a way that their arrangement would reflect exactly the Belt of Orion, and so convey an important message to some future age. The obvious question is:
when
would this building be done?

Let us assume—what is now virtually a certainty—that these priests knew all about precession of the equinoxes: that is, they knew that the equinoxes do not keep occurring against the same constellation: that, like the hand of a clock, they slowly move around the constellations, taking 2200 years to move from figure to figure. (To complicate things, of course, the hand of this clock moves backwards—which is why the phenomenon is called precession.) The most important equinox is traditionally that which takes place in spring, at the beginning of the year—the vernal equinox. And the ‘vernal point’ is the precise spot in the zodiac the ‘hand’ is pointing to at the time. In 10,500 BC, that point was in Leo.

Being skilled astronomers, these priests knew what would happen over the next thousand or so years. First of all, the vernal point would move backwards, from Leo to Cancer, then to Gemini, then to Taurus, until in our own age it would be in Pisces, about to enter Aquarius.

As this happened, the body of Osiris—the constellation of Orion—would rise in the sky, appearing to drift north up the right ‘bank’ of the Milky Way.

Now obviously, a point would come when Osiris would reach ‘the land of Sokar’ in the sky—the land where, down on the ground, the Sphinx had been built. And then, with the correct ceremonies, he could finally take up his proper place as the lord of the sky.

So now, at last, was the time to build the great Temple of the Stars where this ceremony would reach its climax. And where was the vernal point at this time? Exactly where was the hand of the precessional clock pointing?

Between 3000 and 2500 BC, the vernal point was on the ‘west’ bank of the Milky Way, moving slowly past the head of the bull Taurus. This ‘head’ is formed by a group of stars known as the Hyades, in which two stars stand out as the brightest.

If we now look down from the sky to its reflection in the land of Egypt, we see the Nile and the ‘land of Sokar’, which includes Memphis, Heliopolis and Rostau (Giza). And if we look down today, at the place where those two bright stars of the Hyades are ‘reflected’, we also see two pyramids—the so-called ‘Bent Pyramid’ and the ‘Red Pyramid’ at Dahshur, built by the pharaoh Snofru, the father of Cheops.

Bauval and Hancock suggest, very reasonably, that Snofru built them in that place for a purpose—to signal the beginning of the great design.

And where is Osiris (Orion) at this time? He has also arrived virtually in ‘Sokar’. The vernal point and the constellation of Orion—and the star Sirius (Isis)—are now in the same area of the sky.

It was not so in 10,500 BC. As you faced due east towards Leo—which is where the vernal point was situated—you had to turn through a full 90 degrees to look at Orion. Now, eight thousand years later, they have come together.

This, say Bauval and Hancock, is why the Great Pyramid was built eight thousand years after the Sphinx. The ‘heavens’ were finally ready for it. And their logic seems virtually irrefutable. Provided you agree that the ancient Egyptians knew all about precession—and no one now seriously doubts this—and that Orion was their most important constellation, then it is impossible to disagree that the moment when the vernal point moved into the same area as Orion was perhaps the most important moment in Egyptian history.

What followed was the building of the pyramids at Rostau, with their arrangement pointing back clearly to the ‘first time’ in 10,500 BC.

Then came the ceremony that the pharaoh now undertook to send Osiris back to his proper home, which would also gain immortality for himself and for his people.

This ceremony took place at the time of the dawn-rising of Sirius. But it began ten weeks earlier. Sirius was absent for seventy days below the horizon (due, of course, to the fact that the earth is tilted on its axis). So, of course, was its near neighbour Orion—Osiris.

It seems highly probable that a ceremony to ‘rescue’ Osiris took place every year. But the ceremony that took place at the time of the summer solstice—the event that announced the flooding of the Nile—in the year after the completion of the Great Pyramid, would have been climactic.

The Horus-pharaoh—presumably Cheops—had to undertake a journey to bring his father Osiris back to life. In his form as the sun, he had to cross the great river—the Milky Way—in his solar boat, and journey to the eastern horizon, where Osiris was held captive. In his form as the king, he had to cross the Nile in a boat, then journey to Giza, to stand before the breast of the Sphinx.

Bauval and Hancock write:

As the ‘son of Osiris’ he emerged from the womb of Isis, i.e. the star Sirius, at dawn on the summer solstice... It was then—and there—both at the sky-horizon and the earth ‘horizon’ that the Horus-King was meant to find himself in front of the Gateway to Rostau. Guarding that Gateway on the earth-horizon he would encounter the giant figure of a lion—the Great Sphinx. And guarding that Gateway in the sky-horizon his celestial counterpart would find—what?

The answer, of course, is the constellation of Leo.

The Pyramid texts explain that the beginning of the journey of Horus into the Underworld occurred 70 days before the great ceremony. Twenty-five days later, the sun
has
crossed the ‘river’—the Milky Way—and is now moving east towards the constellation of Leo. And 45 days later—the end of the 70 days—the sun is between the paws of Leo.

On the ground, the pharaoh stands on the east bank of the Nile, crosses it in the solar boat—perhaps the boat found buried near the Pyramid in 1954—then makes his way, via the two pyramids at Dahshur, to the breast of the Sphinx.

At this point, according to the texts, he has to face a ritual ordeal, rather like those of the Freemasons described in Mozart’s
Magic Flute
. He is given a choice of two ways, either by land or by water, by which he can journey to the Underworld to rescue his father. The land route, the authors believe, was an immense causeway (of which there are still remains) linking the Valley Temple with the Great Pyramid. It was once roofed with limestone slabs and had stars painted on its ceiling.

The ‘water route’ is still undiscovered—but the authors believe that it was an underground corridor that was kept half filled (or perhaps more than half) with water drawn by capillary action from the Nile. (They cite a French engineer, Dr Jean Kerisel, who suggests that the Sphinx may stand over a 700-metre-long tunnel leading to the Great Pyramid.)

What happened next is pure conjecture—except that it must have ended with the reappearance of Orion and Sirius over the eastern horizon. Bauval and Hancock believe that this ceremony was the symbolic uniting of Upper and Lower Egypt—that is, of heaven and earth. Clearly, the priests who planned it saw it as the central event of Egyptian history after ‘the first time’.

And who were these priests? Bauval and Hancock write:

We shall argue that ‘serious and intelligent men’—and women too—were indeed at work behind the stage of prehistory in Egypt, and propose that one of the many names by which they were known was the ‘Followers of Horus’. We propose, too, that their purpose, to which their generations adhered for thousands of years with the rigour of a messianic cult, may have been to bring to fruition a great cosmic blueprint.

They go on to speak of the Temple of Edfu, parts of which date back to the Pyramid Age, although its present form was built from 237 BC to 57 BC. Its ‘Building Texts’ speak of earlier ages going back to the ‘First Time’, when the words of the Sages were copied by the god Thoth into a book with the oddly modern title
Specifications of the Mounds of the
Early Primeval Age
, including the Great Primeval Mound itself, where the world was created. This mound is believed by Professor Iodden Edwards to be the huge rock on which the Great Pyramid was erected.

According to the Building Texts, the various temples and mounds were designed by Seven Sages, including the ‘mansion of the god’ (presumably the Great Pyramid)—which would seem to support Bauval’s belief that the pyramids were planned (and perhaps partly constructed) at the same time as the Sphinx. The Seven Sages were survivors of a catastrophic flood, and came from an island. These Seven Sages seem to be identical with ‘Builder gods’, ‘Senior ones’ and ‘Followers of Horus’
(Shemsu Hor)
referred to in other writings such as the Pyramid Texts. The Followers of Horus were not gods, but humans who rebuilt the world after the great catastrophe—which was predated by the Age of the Gods.

This, then, is the basic thesis of
Keeper of Genesis
: that a group of priests, survivors of some catastrophe, virtually created ancient Egypt as we know it. It could be regarded as a sequel
to Hamlet’s Mill
, and Jane B. Sellers’
Death of the Gods in Ancient Egypt
, which also argues powerfully that the ancient Egyptians knew all about precession. But it goes further than these books in its mathematical and astronomical arguments (of which I have only had space to present a crude outline). Its arguments about the astronomical alignments of the Sphinx and the pyramids are a
tour de force.
Jane Sellers had already discussed a ‘precessional code’ of numbers, and Graham Hancock summarises her results in
Fingerprints of the Gods
. But Bauval’s use of computer simulations raises all this to a new level of precision, with the result that even those who feel dubious about the idea of a priestly succession lasting for thousands of years will have to admit that the mathematics seems uncontradictable.