by Freddy Silva
A few days later things became more complicated when The Oklahoman continued its coverage and reported archaeologists discovering what resembled an ancient stone hammer at the site. No further attempts on dating were made simply because they refused to accept anything this old could exist in this part of the world. Construction resumed unabated, the site was cleared and covered over with a food processing plant. However, it would not be the only time that out-of-place artefacts were discovered in the region. An iron pot was found embedded inside a 300 million-year old lump of coal deep inside a mine in Wilburton. A miner came upon the solid chunk and, being too large to be of practical use, broke it with a sledgehammer whereupon the iron object fell from inside, revealing an impression in the coal. The incident was witnessed by a company employee.
LEVITATION IN THE LEVANT
The discoveries in Oklahoma represent the subtle presence of a remote and intelligent civilization in the central plains of North America. By contrast, what is seen throughout Palestine and the Near East can only be described as beyond overt.
Around 8000 BC humans were living in a primitive state throughout the Jordan valley, yet in the blink of a geological eye they turned the area into an agricultural oasis, domesticated cattle, and erected megalithic structures of preposterous scale. We are meant to believe it was done on a whim, without precedent or outside assistance, but clearly someone from elsewhere provided the necessary expertise that led to an evolutionary revolution at places like Jericho.
Arabic peoples refer to Jericho as the City of Giants.15 Recent excavations to uncover the roots of this out-of-the-ordinary city exhumed the original megalithic foundation wall, 6.5 feet thick by 20 feet tall, l200 feet in circumference, surrounded by sensational ditches cut from bedrock, which today would require heavy industrial equipment.
The radiocarbon dating of organic matter found at the lowest habitation level shows people already living in the general vicinity c.9000 BC, although it doesn’t tell us when the stones were put there. The general consensus is that no evidence exists of solid structures at Jericho between 9070 to 8030 BC, that megalithic construction allegedly began in earnest two hundred years later, yet the dates were determined from habitation layers on top of the bedrock rather than uncontaminated organic matter taken from under or between the stones, which would give us a more accurate picture. What is certain is the city succumbed to a local inundation around 6540 BC.16
This immediately begs the question: if the region was only populated by hunter gatherers in 9000 BC, how did they come to possess the technology to move and place such extraordinary masonry and why should they have made work so difficult for themselves in the first place? The obvious explanation is, because the architects of Jericho were already technically proficient and comfortable working on a large scale, and if indeed a race of giants lived there — even the Bible categorically claims so — then assembling monoliths would have been as easy for them as stacking bricks would be to a human bricklayer.
With Göbekli Tepe barely four hundred miles to the northeast and already demonstrating the presence of an advanced astronomical-architectural culture by 10,000 BC, it is reasonable to speculate its architects also possessed the know-how to build Jericho.17 So the more important question we ought to ask is, was Jericho already a work-in-progress when it was interrupted by the flood, and the city rebuilt by survivors? After all, the enclosures at Göbekli Tepe suggest they were sealed to protect the site from impending damage. The same architects may also have been responsible for the walls of the Hasmonean Tunnel, the one attached to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. Each stone block weighs around 500 tons and represents some of the oldest masonry supporting the modern-day city. Perhaps. And yet all of this cyclopean building effort was a mere warm-up for the people who erected a stone platform of supernatural proportions in the temple city of Baalbek, three hundred miles southwest of Göbekli Tepe.
The 17th century Patriarch of Lebanon claimed Baalbek was also originally peopled with giants, and looking at the scale of the foundation stones of its temple it is hard to disagree.18 Nothing about this enterprise is on a human scale, and no written trace survives to explain its purpose, but what is clear is that it was built to last for eternity. Why else use such oversize and inconvenient building material?
The platform in question is made up of three courses of megalithic blocks of limestone totaling twenty feet in height. Resting above these along the northern perimeter is a row of nine huge monoliths neatly fitted without mortar, the gap between the stones barely perceptible; this is repeated along the south perimeter. Describing the west wall, however, requires a leap of imagination: Three stones have been raised twenty feet off the ground, each measuring 63 x 14 x 12 feet on average, and weighing an estimated 880 tons. They appear stacked as effortlessly as wooden pallets, and form a U-shaped enclosure with an opening facing east.
A human figure reveals the scale of the megalithic platform at Baalbek.
Dedicated to the Sun god Baal, the temple is a masterpiece of construction and aesthetics. Certainly it has acted as a magnet for a plethora of cultures who occupied the region over its long and tortured history, each adding their presence to the site. What is telling is how each successive course of masonry above the megalithic platform becomes progressively smaller, weaker and poorer in craftsmanship. Apparently it wasn't only Andean stonemasons who got sloppier as centuries passed. Parts of the wall have been repaired and patched, with stones looted from other parts of the temple and adjacent sites. Finally the Romans added their own flourish, a temple dedicated to Jupiter fitted inside the U-shaped enclosure; it too is impressive in scale, least of all the fifty-four towering columns, of which only six now survive, ironically due to earthquake damage, and yet the underlying platform remains as solid as the day it was constructed.
Regional traditions describe Baalbek as having been built in three stages: the original in antediluvian times; the second when Nimrod, great great grandson of Noah, sent giants to repair the walls damaged by the great flood; and the third when it was repaired again by King Solomon.19 Certainly the contrasting construction methods are proof that different people from different eras repaired, extended and juxtaposed their ideas, needs and religious beliefs right up to the Roman era, when Baalbek was still known as an oracle featuring a "black stone which answered questions."20
All the above is mere foreplay for what follows.
Two stones were left behind at the quarry half a mile away. The first measures 71x14x14 feet and weighs 970 tons; the second measures 67x15x14 feet and weighs a slender 1242 tons. These were believed to be the largest pieces of worked masonry in the world until a German archaeological team digging around the second monolith in 2014 unearthed a third block buried beneath, revealing what is considered to be the single largest worked monolith in the world: 64x19x18 feet, clocking in at a puny 1650 tons.21
And just like in Göbekli Tepe, Easter Island and Ollantaytambo, something of grave importance forced the builders to abandon work.
Big? Wait ‘till you see the two blocks underneath. Baalbek.
Baalbek and Göbekli Tepe, along with Temple Mount and Giza, all share a number of common features: all are built on limestone bedrock; all are designated Navels of the Earth; all incorporate megalithic stonework. It all seems beyond mere coincidence.
They also share connections to Egyptian antediluvian gods: Giza and Göbekli Tepe are domains of Osiris, while Jerusalem’s oldest known name is Gar-issa-lem, Issa being the oldest iteration of Isis. As for their divinely conceived son, the solar deity Horus, he may originally have been the tutelary god of Baalbek. The Canaanites who once populated the region are known to have undertaken regular pilgrimage to Giza in veneration of the sphynx, and even as late as 1543 BC they left votives with carvings inscribed with its original Egyptian name, Hor-em-Akhet — Horus of the Horizon — to which they added the Cannanite variant, Hurna and Hauron.22 Being a traveling god, Horus' influence extended north of Giza. In Jordan, the main hil
l at Petra is dedicated to this falcon deity, and his cult in known to have been practiced in the port town of Ugarit, to the north of Baalbek.
Clay tablets portray Horus as a conjurer and magician,23 he knew the medicine of plants and once cured a man of snakebite by distilling an antidote from a tree. As the resurrected form of Osiris, Horus represents the triumph of light, an attribute shared with Baal, from whom Baalbek takes its name. But did this antediluvian magician and his followers assist in the building of Baalbek, moving its stupendous stone blocks half a mile using some lost form of levitation, just like the legends from Tiwanaku and the Pacific? Ancient Egyptian literature describes the deeds of the magician Hor the Nubian who once "made a vault of stone 200 cubits [300 ft] long and 50 cubits [75ft] wide rise above the head of the pharaoh and his nobles... When the pharaoh looked up at the sky he opened his mouth in a great cry, together with the people who were in the court."24
Certainly there exists a link between Baalbek and Giza. A geodetic alignment of 45.1º through the corners of the two large pyramids of Khafre and Khufu extends 400 miles to Baalbek, with a margin of error of just 0.4º. The reference is all the more uncanny since the geodetic alignment through the third pyramid references Göbekli Tepe, as we saw earlier.
Corner alignment through pyramids of Khafre and Khufu.
It would seem the three antediluvian locations share a unified plan, if not a common purpose, yet there is a twist with regard to the age of Baalbek itself. The site has always been associated with the cult of the Sun; if ever there was a reference to a specific constellation or star, it is not known. Working with this basic assumption we can roll back the sky to when, say, the winter solstice might have aligned with the massive temple platform, which faces 75º east.
In the northern hemisphere the winter solstice marks the day when the light of rejuvenation begins to reclaim the longest nights of the year, hence the symbolic association with the triumph of light over dark, and the heroes who personified this quality, gods such as Hor and Baal. Due to the effects of precession the Sun now rises 45º to the south of the platform. To achieve a perfect alignment between the two, one needs to go back to the era of 20,000 BC. If so, how does this tie-in with Giza?
Baalbek aligns to the winter solstice sunrise 20,000 BC.
8. MADE IN EGYPT BEFORE THE FLOOD
When it comes to discussing ancient Egypt, much of the attention falls upon its grandiose structures, such as pyramids, simply because their superhuman scale is candy to the eye and humans are so easily seduced by the scale of things. Yet as all Mysteries traditions teach, the eye is easily deceived by scale to the detriment of seemingly trivial things that ultimately lead to greater illumination.
That said, it would be a travesty to describe the temple of Seti I at Abydos as trivial, for it is a beautifully preserved jewel of a sacred space. Certainly ancient people treated the location with reverence, for Abydos was already a thriving city by 5400 BC,1 and two thousand years later pre-dynastic pharaohs were still building shrines, temples and mortuaries there. Seti I added his own masterpiece during a reign that lasted barely more than a decade in the thirteenth century BC, an elegant temple featuring a series of interconnected halls and side chambers, covered from floor to ceiling in exquisite friezes, murals and hieroglyphs, with a play of shadow and light that penetrates the meticulous rows of reed columns inside a hypostyle hall.
Still, people had long been coming here to witness another wonder.
A masterpiece in its own right. Seti I temple, Abydos.
Twelve thousand years ago the region bore no resemblance to the partly parched, partly cultivated strip of land it is today. The climate was wetter, it sustained a verdant and lush landscape as far as the eye could see, and to the west where now lies an endless desert, there existed an inland sea, much of which drained into the Atlantic when the events that generated the great flood overhauled the terrain. A small saltwater lake at Siwa is all that remains. Referring to an older source, Diodorus of Sicily describes how it "disappeared from sight in the course of an earthquake, when those parts of it which lay toward the ocean were torn asunder," leaving behind the Sahara.2
The course of the Nile was much different too, its shore was five miles closer to the town, its waters reaching another kind of temple, one named for the Egyptian god of resurrection Osiris — the Osirion. When it was cleared of debris The Times of London described it as “a gigantic construction of about 100 feet in length and 60 in width, built with the most enormous stones that may be seen in Egypt.”3 In terms of construction and style, the temple bears no resemblance to Seti’s. It is stark yet hauntingly beautiful, one of the finest examples of simplicity and economy of line, expressed with heavyset blocks of red granite, one of the hardest rocks on Earth, ferried from a quarry two hundred miles away. The construction logistics pose a conundrum for any modern engineer yet the Osirion belongs to a remote age. It was created with the sole intent of defying time.
When news of its excavation reached the world in 1914, the Osirion at Abydos caused a major sensation. Equally exciting news came a century later when it was found to have once been a free-standing structure beside the Nile.
When news of its excavation reached the world in 1914, the Osirion at Abydos caused a major sensation. Equally exciting news came a century later when it was found to have once been a free-standing structure beside the Nile.
The structure consists of two rows of columns connected by substantial architraves upon which once stood a voluminous stone roof. These are poised on a raised rectangular platform surrounded by a deep moat cut into the stone; two ascending staircases lead out of the water and onto the platform, where lie two sunken rectangular pools.
The surrounding courtyard itself is one massive and impenetrable wall made of 25-foot thick red sandstone, fitted without mortar, with corner stones cut and angled much like they are in Cuzco. Seventeen side chambers are meticulously cut into the wall and face the central platform.4 The plan of the courtyard bears a passing resemblance to the head of Pachacamac carved above the Sun Door at Tiwanaku. It's a passing observation for sure, but the same cannot be said for the knobs carved in relief on sections of the courtyard wall, for they are an identical to those in Andean temples.
There are no inscriptions inside the Osirion, no dedications, no name to identify its creator, only a set of hieroglyphs carved into the wall adjoining Seti’s temple and no doubt put there during the pharaoh’s time.
Until recently the Osirion was believed to be a type of underground chamber fitted inside hollowed bedrock, an extension of Seti’s temple. If so it represented a complete departure from standard temple design. However, a geologic appraisal contradicts this opinion. In ancient times the level of the Nile was fifty feet lower than today, its course seven miles closer to and beside the Osirion. When North Africa was subjected to major flooding between 10,500-8000 BC, layers of Nile silt gradually compacted and rose inch by inch until they surrounded and covered the Osirion, in other words, the temple was originally a freestanding feature on the floodplain.5 Legend has it that people once reached the Osirion by boat and navigated its interior by boat, an opinion expressed by Henri Frankfort, one of the early archaeologists at Abydos,6 but as the Nile crept ever more eastwards, it eventually became necessary to connect the Osirion to the river with a long canal.7
There is no doubt about river access. Twelve boats up to 72 feet long were found in the vicinity, buried in the sand, each designed with rounded, phallic tips, and enclosed in individual mud brick enclosures as though the ships were somehow special, something worth commemorating. Like the two boats found in deep pits beside the Giza pyramids, these were large and graceful ocean vessels capable of riding rough seas. The level of sophistication clearly points to people with long sea-faring experience. But why should they be 400 miles from the ocean at Abydos? The boats were dated to around 3000 BC, too late to match them to an antediluvian race, yet wall paintings in temples along the Nile depict the same boats c.45
00 BC, so it is feasible that the seafaring tradition may date back further.
In this regard the Osirion has two counterparts downriver at Giza — the Sphynx Temple and the Valley Temple, all constructed with identical megalithic blocks of red granite (those of the Sphynx Temple were looted for building material), using the same clean, graphic layout, devoid of inscription. The Giza temples too were reached by boat when the waters of the Nile lapped at their respective entrances. The intermediate walls of the Valley Temple are made from massive blocks of limestone quarried from the sphynx enclosure next door and are clearly eroded by water, lots of water. Since it has been convincingly argued that the sphynx itself was carved to face its counterpart in the sky, the constellation Leo, on the spring equinox c.10,400 BC, ostensibly the two sites are contemporaries of each other.8 Furthermore, the enclosure in which this lion sits was also weathered by extensive flooding and rainfall when a pluvial climate predominated northeast Africa, the epoch prior to 10,000 BC.9 Thus by weathering and design alone all the above temples share the same period.
Like the Osirion, the Valley Temple at Giza is freestanding and once bordered the Nile. Its top tier shows extensive water erosion, suggesting the area was submerged. The original limestone blocks were afterwards lined with granite during renovation.
Returning to the Osirion, there is the question of why so many temples and shrines appear in its vicinity of yet none relate to it, as though it was no longer visible by pre-dynastic times, so when pharaohs came here to mark their devotion they were essentially honoring the sanctity of place. By the time Seti I came to build his temple— one of the last to be erected — he may have rediscovered the Osirion because his temple follows the same orientation, but stops short of the underground structure before resuming to the left and creating an L-shape, forcing the most holy of chapels to be placed sideways to the body of the temple, a complete violation of temple protocol.10 The only rational explanation for such a drastic measure is that Seti's superimposed building broke through the chamber beneath during construction.