Table of Contents
Also by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince
TURIN SHROUD — IN WHOSE IMAGE?
THE TEMPLAR REVELATION: SECRET GUARDIANS OF
THE TRUE IDENTITY OF CHRIST
Also by Lynn Pickinett
FLIGHTS OF FANCY? 100 YEARS OF PARANORMAL EXPERIENCES
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE PARANORMAL (ED.)
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A Berkley Book
Published by the Berkley Publishing Group
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Copyright © 1999 by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Picknett, Lynn.
The Stargate conspiracy : the truth about extraterrestrial life and the mysteries of ancient Egypt / Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince.
p. cm.
Originally published: London : Little, Brown and Co.. 1999.
Includes bibliographical references.
eISBN : 978-1-101-12773-5
1. Human-alien encounters. 2. Egypt — Antiquities — Miscellanea. 3. Military intelligence — Miscellanea. I. Prince, Clive. II. Title.
BF2050 .P53 2001
001.9 — dc21
2001037454
http://us.penguingroup.com
To our friend and colleague Philip Coppens, without whose untiring enthusiasm, support and generosity this book might never have seen the light of day.
Acknowledgements
This book would never have been possible without the contributions - in one form or another - of a great many people. We are indebted to all of them for sharing their expertise and research with us, and in some cases simply for taking the time to talk our ideas through. However, we are entirely responsible for the end result: we must stress that the conclusions of this book are not necessarily shared by the people named here.
We are especially grateful to Philip Coppens, Editor of
Frontier
magazine, for the extraordinary degree of support he has given us. Not only did he undertake research on our behalf, but he also put us in touch with some of the - often very elusive - key players in this story, and shared with us his own incisive and brilliant connections, which we would otherwise have missed.
Keith Prince, as usual, helped us enormously with his research, insights and unique view of life.
Craig Oakley was his customary supportive and intuitive self: thanks to him for many in-depth discussions and for help with the diagrams.
Simon Cox was generous in sharing his expertise on Egypt, especially in supplying us with invaluable research material on this and other subjects. He was also a delightful travelling companion who kept us out of trouble in Cairo.
We are, as always, grateful to our agent, Lavinia Trevor, for all her hard work on this project and for unflaggingly pursuing our best interests.
Thanks to Alan Samson at Little, Brown, and his colleagues Caroline North, Andrew Wille, Linda Silverman and Becky Shaw for their enthusiastic support of, and belief in, this book.
We are indebted to the following people for helping us with the material about Egypt in Chapters 1 and 2: Chris Ogilvie-Herald, whose knowledge of current events in Egypt and whose
Egyptnews
Internet list helped guide us through this often bewildering subject; Jacqueline Pegg of Quest Research, for providing us with invaluable material; Niklas Rasche, for many long discussions about the complex issues in this book; Andrew Collins, especially for the information about Edgar Cayce and Bimini; Rudolf Gantenbrink for his revelations; Ralph Elllis; David Elkington; Ian Lawton: Thomas Danley; Yuri Stoyanov and David Ritchie.
For the material on the Mars enigma in Chapter 3, we are grateful to Ananda Sirisena, Mark J. Carlotto and Stanley V. McDaniel for answering our queries. And thanks also to Nick Pope for supplying us with material on Mars and the extraterrestrial question in general, besides keeping an eye open for unusual titbits of useful information.
For helping to settle questions about astronomy, we are grateful to: Dr Martin Barstow, reader in Astrophysics at Leicester University; Dr Michael Perryman, of the European Space Agency; Dr Malcolm J. Coe of Southampton University. Thanks also to the Library of the Royal Astronomical Society.
For assistance with our research into the Council of Nine in Chapters 4 and 5 we would like to thank Dick Farley, for generously sharing his thoughts and experiences with us; Terry L. Milner, for allowing us to use his research into the strange career of Andrija Puharich; Ira Einhorn, for his insights into the key events of the 1970s; and Jack Sarfatti, for his very useful information. Also Palden Jenkins, David S. Percy and Kim Farmer of the Academy For Future Sciences for taking the time to answer our queries.
We would like to thank Rob Irving for his information about the Barbary Castle crop circle.
Georgina Bruni has given us much useful information in discussions stretching long into the night, and is unfailingly a delightful hostess.
For the material on the esoteric connections we are indebted to: Theo Paijmans, for the astonishing breadth of his knowledge and for being such charming company; Steve Wilson and Caroline Wise, for their knowledge, insight, wisdom and support — not to mention their friendship and much revelry; Mark Bennett, for varied information, particularly in directing us to Christina Stoddard’s work; Dawn Zeffert; Gareth Medway.
We would like to thank Uri Geller for sparing the time to tell us about his work with SRI. Thanks too to Shipi Shtrang.
Dr Vanessa Hill helped us with some of the mathematical concepts, for which we are very grateful.
Jane Lyle, as always, was a fountain of knowledge — especially about astrology - and a joy to be with. Thanks, Jane.
For assistance with the breakthrough shamanic material in the Epilogue, we are indebted to: Jeremy Narby, for discussing his ground-breaking hypothesis with us; Michael Carmichael, for the discussion about shamanism and the acquisition of knowledge; Dr Benny Shanon of Jerusalem University.
We would also like to thank the following people for their help in various ways, including support and encouragement, and just being there for us: Vida Adamoli; Marcus Allen; David Bell; Robert and Lindsey Brydon; Jim Cochrane; Susan Davies; Nic Davis; Christy Fearn; Geoff Gilbertson; Moira Hardcastle; Her-man Hegge; Robin Crookshank Hilton; Mick and Loraine Jones; Michèle Kaczynski; Gopi Krishnadas; Sarah Litvinoff; Karine Esparseil López and Samuel López; Kevin McClure; Loren McLaughlin; John and Joy Millar; Jack Miller; Hugh Montgomery; Francesca Norton; Catherine Ormston; Steve Pear; Trevor Poots; Lily and David Prince; Stephen Prior; Magdy Radwan; Mary Saxe-Falstein; Paul Sieveking and Bob Rickard of
Fortean Times;
Gemma Smith; Nikki Stockley; Sheila and Eric Taylor; Salah El Din Mohamed Tawfik; Greg Taylor; Richard Taylor.
Finally, thanks to the staff of the British Library, the Science Reference and Information Service and the Newspaper Library.
Introduction
Strange though it may seem, this is not the book we originally set out to write. In a sense, we are very surprised — and not a little shaken — to have found ourselves on the rock-strewn path that led, ultimately, to
The Stargate Conspiracy.
We had intended to write a follow-up to our 1997 book
The Templar Revelation,
which argued that Christianity was essentially an offshoot of the ancient Egyptian religion of Isis and Osiris — meaning that our culture is not
Judaeo
-Christian at all, but
Egypto
-Christian. The implications were astonishingly far-reaching, but we also disclosed the most carefully hidden of all the secrets of the heretical Knights Templar in the most controversial revelation of the book — namely, that they believed that John the Baptist was the true Messiah, and that Jesus was, to say the very least, his usurper.
Wanting to learn more about our civilisation’s Egyptian roots, we researched further into the ancient religion, and found ourselves examining the Pyramid Texts and the origin of the Hermetic writings. The more we progressed, the more we realised the ancient Egyptians possessed astonishing knowledge, far beyond that generally accepted by modern academics. We discovered that those far-off people had an understanding of cosmology unequalled until our own century, and even now perhaps they still have something to teach us. But in the end even the largely unknown and unacknowledged genius of the ancient Egyptians was not to be the subject of this book.
As non-academics researching ancient Egypt we could not remain unaware of the upsurge of interest in the ‘alternative Egypt’ of Andrew Collins, Colin Wilson and others, whose books challenge the often rather complacent ‘certainties’ of mainstream Egyptology. Above all three authors have become associated in the public mind with radical new ideas about ancient cultures, particularly Egypt: Robert Temple, author of the seminal
The Sirius Mystery
(1976); Robert Bauval, co-author with Adrian Gilbert of
The Orion Mystery
(1994); and Graham Hancock, whose runaway success was established with
The Sign and the Seal
(1992). Since then Hancock has gone on to entrance huge audiences worldwide with
Fingerprints of the Gods
(1995) and, with his wife Santha Faiia,
Heaven’s Mirror
(1998), and also collaborating with Robert Bauval to produce
Keeper of Genesis
(1996) and (together with John Grigsby)
The Mars Mystery
(1998). These books encompass a vast range of fascinating and radical new ideas, many of which have now become so entrenched among their readers as to be accepted as hard fact. And, like most of their readers, we, too, began as enthralled admirers.
After many months of researching and writing this book, we still admired those authors’ energy and commitment, but as we stood back from their work, we have perceived a new and considerably larger pattern taking shape. Whether or not those authors are aware of it, their work forms an intrinsic part of what amounts to an orchestrated campaign.
And the matter does not end there. The bitter controversy surrounding the idea of a long-dead civilisation on Mars has also been absorbed into this campaign and - like the mysteries of Egypt — has been pressed into service to present a carefully stage-managed message. Essentially, it proposes that the ancient gods were extraterrestrials -
and they’re back.
But the subtext is very clever: only certain, chosen people hear their words, and only certain, chosen people will be part of the revelations to come. We can hazard a guess at the identity of some of the chosen, but the others may be rather surprising.