Twilight of the Gods: The Mayan Calendar and the Return of the Extraterrestrials (17 page)

3.3. Winged sun disk, Karnak. Image courtesy of Tatjana Ingold, Sotothurn, Switzerland.

Visitors to the land on the Nile will be confronted by the so-called "winged sun disk" in practically every temple. It's a golden disk or bowl shape with colored, broadly spreading wings. Entire temple roofs (Dendera!) and countless temple entrances (Karnak!) are decorated with them. (See image 3.3 on page 113.) These winged sun disks are usually associated with the god Horus-the son of Osiris and Isis-whose seat was in the huge temple complex of Edfu (between Aswan and Luxor).

3.4. Osiris and Horus texts on the temple walls at Ed/u. Image courtesy of Tatjana Ingold, Solothurn, Switzerland.

This is where the story of the winged sun disk is immortalized on one of Edfu's temple walls. The inscriptions describe how the god Ra and his retinue landed "in the west of this area, to the east of the Pechennu canal." His earthly representative, the pharaoh, was clearly in some sort of trouble, as he asked the heavenly flier to help him deal with his enemies:

The holy majesty Ra-Harmachis spoke to your holy person HorHut: 0 you sun child, you exalted one, who is created by me, strike down the enemy that is before you without delay. Then Hor-Hut flew up to the sun in a great sun disk with wings upon it...when he viewed the enemies from the high heavens.. .he stormed down so violently upon them that they neither saw with their eyes nor heard with their ears. Within a short time not a head of them still stood living. Hor-Hut, shining and many-colored, returned in his form as a great winged sun disk to the ship of Ra-Harmachis.4

This text was translated in 1870. In other words, at a time when no Egyptologist would have known about supersonic flight. They didn't even have aircraft back then. But the attack described here definitely came from above ("when he viewed the enemies from the high heavens") and it must have taken place at supersonic speeds ("that they neither saw with their eyes nor heard with their ears"). The results down here on Earth were correspondingly gruesome: "Within a short time not a head of them still stood living. " The gods alone know what dreadful weapon they used against this Stone Age folk.

Whether Egypt, Central America, or anywhere else, all of these ancient texts are fed to us these days in a kind of psychological mush. This is a shame because interpretations are possible in every color of the rainbow. I find it hard just to imagine the "Saga of the winged sun disk" in an abstract way, flying blind as I am in the fog of religious/ psychological dogma. After the god Ra-Harmachis had helped the pharaoh defeat his enemies, he succinctly notes: "Here it is a pleasant place to live. " Afterward the surrounding lands are given a special name and the gods of heaven and Earth are praised. I suggest that maybe we shouldn't spend so much time reading about how other people think things are meant and the way we should, in their exalted opinions, see things, and instead look at the uncommented original texts.

"Hor-Hut flew up towards the sun as a great winged disk. Thus he has been known since as the Lord of Heaven.... "5 Lord of Heaven? What about something else? What about "space man"?

As the inscriptions from Edfu show, the divine assistance was the actual reason for the worship and popularization of the winged sun disk and not, as some would have us believe, the sun in some imaginary under- and overworld. The Edfu text says it clearly enough:

Harmakhis flew in a ship and he landed by the city of Horus' throne. Thus spake Thoth: the sender of light, who is born of Ra, he has defeated the enemy. He is to be known from this day on as the sender of light, who is born of the mountain of light. Thus spake Harmakhis to Thoth: Bring this sun disk to all the cities of the gods in Lower Egypt, and all the cities of the gods in Upper Egypt and all the cities of the .6

ere and There

The phrase sender of light, which I have used here, is not one of my own creations. It comes from the text of Professor Heinrich Brugsch, who translated the Edfu text in 1870(!). So what have the sensible and rational Egyptologists-all of them loyal and obedient to their school of thinking and the zeitgeist-made of the winged sun disk? Ceremonial oddments. The original meaning is gone. It was no fantasy or dream of the uneducated Egyptians; it was simply what we would today describe as a UFO! Incapable or recognizing the original reality, academic doctrine transforms the former truth into myth. And now the world is all right again. Really?

A friend of mine, who is an Egyptologist, once told me that the thought that some god had actually intervened in a human conflict, was simply unbearable. Just as unbearable as my belief that extraterrestrials had at some time taken a hand in Earthly affairs. Human logic, however, is sometimes prepared to make quite unexpected leaps. In the Old Testament, for instance, God-descending in a swathe of smoke, fires, and cataclysmic roars-often takes a hand to assist his chosen people in their struggles. Yes, in actual fact! Here the logic is watertight. Really?

What does the winged sun disk in Egypt have to do with Central America?

In 1860, not far from the village of Santa Lucia Cotzumalguapa in Guatemala (on the Pacific coast), a number of magnificent stelae were found during clearance work. The news reached an Austrian researcher, Dr. Habel, who traveled to Mexico in 1862 to visit the excavation site. Dr. Habel made some sketches and showed them to the director of the Royal Museum of Ethnology in Berlin, Dr. Adolf Bastian. Four years later, he himself travelled to Guatemala and bought all the old stone fragments from the owner of the finca where the stelae were found. Transporting these incredibly heavy stelae to Europe was a logistic headache. In the end, they decided to cut the stone monsters in half and transported them to the harbor of San Jose, 50 miles away. To make the blocks lighter, they hollowed out the rear sides. During the loading, one of the stelae broke free and sank into the harbor waters-where it still lies today. The remaining artworks from this forgotten age can be admired in the Ethnology Museum in the west of Berlin. Because archaeologists always have to label and categorize everything (otherwise they can't exhibit the artifacts), the stelae

3.5. The so-called "Ode to the Sun God. "Author's own image.

were given a rather apt name: Ode to the Sun God. And indeed, you can clearly see a flying creature, swathed in flames, descending to the frightened folk below. You really can't miss the sun disk!

xtraterrestrial Technology

In the Edfu text about the winged sun disk, the term sender of light crops up. Or course, that's nothing any rational Egyptologist can work with. What actually is a "sender of light"? Has the term been wrongly interpreted? There are, in all probability, dozens if not hundreds of depictions of these "senders of light," but we do not recognize them because-as the biblical prophet Ezekiel said-we have eyes to see but do not see.

In the Temple of Seti I (also known as Sethos) in Abydos, the goddess Isis handed the pharaoh a strange object. This object must have been something really exceptional; otherwise it would hardly have been attributed directly to the goddess. What's more, this object is, in terms of dimensions, bigger than the pharaoh himself. Egyptologists call this object a Djed pillar. These Djed pillars have been found in various sizes throughout the whole of Egypt, and no one, thus far, has been able to come up with a plausible explanation. Depictions of the Djed pillar were even found under the very oldest of the pyramids, that of Djoser in Saqqara. The pillar must have been something quite special because even in the earliest ages of the old empire there was a priesthood of the "venerable Djed." In Memphis there was even a special ritual for the "erection of the Djed," which was carried out by the pharaoh with the assistance of his priests. Much later, after the original gods had disappeared and the pharaohs had been named the "sons of gods," no one remembered what the Djed pillars actually were. The important thing was that it had something to do with the gods. That was all that mattered. Consequently, depictions of the Djed pillar can be found in countless variations: on temple walls, in crypts, on treasure chests, and even on vases. Djed pillars are just as common in Egypt as winged suns. The only problem is that not a single expert has come up with a plausible explanation for the original meaning of this mysterious object. I have read in the literature that the Djed pillar was: a symbol of permanence, a symbol for eternity, a prehistoric fetish, a defoliated tree, a notched post, a fertility symbol, a spike, and so on.

What about something else? What about a "sender of light"? At least that's what it looks like. Crazy? When I look at all those hokey interpretations of this curious object, I could almost laugh. What actually has to happen before we open our eyes and see things for what they really are? Looking at the Djed pillar as a representation of a technological device seems more plausible to me than claiming it is some kind of "prehistoric fetish" or a "fertility symbol"! After all, the Djed pillar was not the only object that the gods gave to mankind. Another one is the Ark of the Covenant mentioned in the Old Testament. You can read all about it in the Bible. Moses received extremely precise instructions on how to construct a technical object from his "god" (Leviticus, chapter 25 ff.). There was an original of this object; Moses was merely expected to make a copy: "And see that thou make them after their pattern, which hath been showed thee in the mount" (Exodus 25:40). Afterward, Aaron, Moses' brother, was told to form a priesthood to look after this device. So there was a team of specialists-just like the priesthood of the Djed pillar. A "sender of light" belonging to the gods was not something that could be entrusted to just anyone. It was dangerous. Just like the Ark of the Covenant.