There are several locations nearby where there are gold-quartz veins. The Hollis Mines are still operational. The area around the wild Ammonoosuc River and Lisbon has gold deposits. Louis A. Brennan, in his book No Stone Unturned, presents carbon-dating evidence between the 2000 to 2500 BCE time period for Mystery Hill. It is my opinion that this site was a gold-quartz slurry crushing mill and storage area. The harbor at Portsmouth, NH, is a day’s river travel away.
The sacrificial table is part of the structure shaped as an ankh, the sextant of the seafarer in ancient times. The passageway appears to have two sections at differing angles. The alignment of the upper section is close to the east-west axis. The top part of this structure appears to have a triangle similar to the Summer (navigation) Triangle. Therefore, the builders of Mystery Hill, America’s Stonehenge, built the ankh sextant into the design.
A stone circle, with several huge stones with pointed tops, is seen in Figure 11-17c. The angles of many of the stones reveal the “sailing by sun-shadow latitudes” strategy at 2500 BCE. Even though Barry Fell (America BC, Reference 19) shows in Figure 11-17c various solstices’ shadow lines, there are too many inconsistencies to get an accurate sun-shadow latitude.
Oak Island, Nova Scotia
Latitude: 44.51° N
Longitude: 64.29° W
The North American trade route discussion would not be complete without mentioning the “Money Pit,” located at Oak Island, Nova Scotia. Much has been written, and much money has been spent finding out the nature of the Money Pit, which is dug into the ground over 120 feet in ten-foot increments. Little has been said about other stone configurations at Oak Island.
Figure 11-18: A schematic view of Oak Island (Reference 61, author’s annotations)
The Money Pit is located on a thirty-/forty-degree triangle that connects two harbors, similar to the Summer (navigation) Triangle. At the lower-left harbor, there is a stone configuration, which is a mirror image of the Northern Cross.
The Money Pit surely was a storage location for international seafarers who were familiar with the navigation triangle and the Northern Cross.
St. John, New Brunswick
Latitude: 45.3° N
Longitude: 66.1° W
The seafarers in North America in 2500 BCE have come full circle. Whether the route was the northern or the southern route, the voyage ended in the St. John area. Today, St. John is a key building area for ships for Canada and has a well-protected harbor where many cruise ships enter, seeing the lighthouse (Figure 11-19a).
Figure 11-19a: St. John, New Brunswick, Lighthouse
Figure 11-19b: St. John, town obelisk with the pictures of an ankh and the Grim Reaper
Figure 11-19c: St. John, town obelisk with a picture of the sun, moon, and three-star hexagrams, instead of a pentagram star
The harbor also was the key entry port for many Irish immigrants over one hundred years ago as well as in ancient times.
St. John’s town center has a standing stone, an obelisk. On the obelisk is an ankh with the Grim Reaper (see Figure 11-19b). This symbolizes going from death, the skull, to life, the ankh. The obelisk also has a picture of the sun, moon, and three hexagram stars, which represent Venus, as seen in Figure 11-19c. The basic navigation symbols are on the center obelisk of the St. John port of entry and exit to the closest harbor to Ireland. Is this a symbolic message concerning the past?
St. John is also the region where the Micmac civilization lived. How did the Micmac’s use symbols, and how did they count and measure angles? Figure 1120 shows the similarity between the Micmac symbols and the Nile River Dynasty’s symbols.
Figure 11-20: Micmac Symbols compared to Egyptian Symbols (Reference 19)
.
Rotated 180 degrees, the symbol for goodness, beauty, and truth is the same symbol for copper and Venus. The symbols for gold and metal are the same. More symbol comparisons are found in Appendix A.
Figure 11-21 compares the Micmac flag showing the sun axis, the moon, and Venus to the flag of the Knights Templar.
Figure 11-21: Micmac(Mi’kmaq) flag and the Knights Templar flag (Reference 61)
If east is up, rotate the flags ninety degrees clockwise. The cross symbolizes the axis for determining the sun-shadow latitudes.
As the seafarers set sail to return to the other side, they pass the St. John Lighthouse. Using the seafarers’ latitude strategy, the seafarers will follow forty-five sun-shadow degrees of latitude back to Ireland.
Where am I? Isle Royale, Michigan
Where am I going? Ireland and then to the Nile River customers
Why am I going? Transporting copper and gold—five hundred thousand tons of copper
How will I get there? Navigation by Boat
How long will it take? Three years
Will I or someone, return? Yes, until the Iron Age
Conclusion
Seafarers came to North America and sailed either of two routes, the St. Lawrence or the Mississippi, looking for metal, gold, and copper. The seafarers would sail up and down the eastern coast of America, depending on whether they came from the north or from the south. The key harbors for the northern and southern trade routes in North America had similar symbols to those found in Ireland and were selected because they related to the copper trade routes.
The key fact is: five hundred thousand tons of copper were mined in the Isle Royale/ Keweenaw Peninsula of northern Michigan from 2500 BCE to 1200 BCE. Figure 11-22 summarizes the copper trade route.
Figure 11-22: Summary of Copper Trade Route locations in North America
The Great Circle Loop for sailing from the St. Lawrence down the Mississippi River and up the East Coast of North America exists today, and also at 2500 BCE. Copper is embedded in all of the key location names on the Great Circle Loop.
All of Chapter 11’s symbols, mounds with passageways, and mound configurations were consistent with those found in Ireland. As John Dee states in the Perfect Art of Navigation, “More is hidden than meets the eye.”
• • •
Chapter 12:
The Penultimate Trip’s Actual Logbook: 2415 BCE
Seafarer’s Penultimate Trip
Where am I: Isle of Meroe, Nubia
Where am I going? Isle Royale, Northern Michigan, return via Ireland
Why am I going? Gold and copper
How will I get there? Boat
How long will it take? Three years
Will I return? Yes, many times!
This trip, taken in 2500 BCE, was kept secret and was then forgotten. The trip’s reality became myth, math, metaphor, and music. The trip was taken many times.
To travel, we need a plan, a purpose. Going back forty-five hundred years requires some imagination but also a mind-set to interpret the data. Given that this trip did occur many times, one has to try to imagine how.
From a seafarer’s perspective, the trip log does exist, and the navigation information recorded by the pharaohs and scribes of 2500 BCE is in stone. So let’s start the trip and understand the symbols. First, the seafarer must navigate the Nile River, reaching the reed fields of the Nile Delta with the harbor at Alexandria/Canopus. The prime meridian was the Nile, zero degrees longitude at a latitude of thirty-two degrees north.
Figure 12-1 shows the key locations to which the seafarer would sail given the penultimate trip took place.
Figure 12-1: The penultimate trip from the Isle of Meroe to the Isle Royale
The horizontal dotted lines are for the thirty-degree, forty-degree and forty-five-degree sun-shadow north latitudes. The almost vertical dotted lines are the meridian lines for longitude using the Nile River as the zero meridian line. The Rose Line is the longitude where the apex of the Venus pentagram is aligned directly north. The solid vertical line is the current prime meridian (Greenwich) line.
The outbound west sailing route across the Atlantic Ocean to North America would use the thirty-degree sun-shadow north dotted line. The return east trip from North America
went to Ireland using the forty-five sun-shadow north dotted line. The return trip could, based on strong northwest winds, go to the Azores Islands and then to the Strait of Gibraltar. Since Brittany was the Egypt of the North, the return trip probably went to Carnac and then eventually took the safe trade route to Narbonne and the Mediterranean Sea. The trip would take advantage of the prevailing Gulf Stream currents and prevailing winds.
Sailing needs knowledge of latitude and longitude for the key locations on the trade routes. Maps were established. Section 2 defined the sailing symbols, tools, and stars used by the ancient seafarers. The previous chapters have shown many grid maps on the scribed stones indicating the land contours of the trade routes.
Throughout this book, emphasis has been given to counting and measuring angles. Given the fact that the seafarers came from the “land of measurement,” logbooks should have been created to record the locations of the penultimate trip from the Isle of Meroe, to the Isle Royale, and return, via Ireland.
The logbooks do exist!
The penultimate trip from the Isle of Meroe, to the Isle Royale, and return, via Ireland was recorded. The logbook comes from the sarcophagus of the last king, Unas, of the Fifth Dynasty near Memphis, Egypt, dated 2415 BCE. Figure 12-2 is the outward-bound route on one side of the sarcophagus. Figure 12-3 is the homeward return route. I was stunned to find, after looking for two years, the homeward route in a book at a used bookstore at Fort Mason, San Francisco, when I was waiting for the America’s Cup races to begin in 2013.
Figure 12-2: Trip to the otherworld, West, or the trip to the supplier (Reference 9)
Figure 12-3: Return trip from the otherworld, or the trip back to the customer (Reference 40)
To decode Figures 12-2 and 12-3, background information about the Nile River Dynasty cultures at 2500 BCE is needed.
Memphis/Heliopolis
Memphis was a critical trading center on the Nile River just below the Nile Delta and was known as the first major city in Egypt with white limestone walls from the Tura quarry. There was the six-step pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara from the Third Dynasty and a pyramid field with the Abusir Room of the yearly seasons with yellow, five-pointed stars.
The Pyramid of Djoser contained the sarcophagus of the kings of the fifth Nile Dynasty, 2600 to 2400 BCE. There were two boat pits of Unas, the last king of the Fifth Dynasty, located near the sarcophagus, 2415 BCE. In Memphis, the Sakkara-stepped pyramids had walls lined with white limestone.
The designer of the stepped pyramids was the great architect Imhotep. He was an astronomer, writer, sage, physician, and high priest of the sun god of Heliopolis.
Imhotep designed the three-step pyramids and the per ankhs. He was born in 2680 BCE, and after his death, he became a god figure to the Nile River dynasties. Imhotep’s philosophies had widespread theological influence on the solar cult priesthood at Heliopolis prior to Alexandria. In Appendix E is a “Song of the Harp,” dedicated to Imhotep.
Per ankhs of Heliopolis were established for the worship of Thoth, the god of knowledge (see Figure 12-4a).
Figure 12-4a: Thoth, God of Truth and Writing (Reference 61)
Figure 12-4b: Maat, Goddess of Balance and Truth
Figure 12-4c: Anubis, Overseer, who oversees the god of tombs, weights, and measures
Note in Figure 12-4a the Nile River ankh sextant. The ankh sextant, containing the ankh, the staff, and the pillar, was the devise to measure angles.
Maat, seen in Figure 12-4b, was the goddess and judge of truth and justice of the earth gods. Note the straight up-and-down position of the staff and the ankh, which represents a start or end location. The feather in the headdress weighs one’s soul relative to truth being delivered.
Anubus is the overseer who oversees the god of tombs, weights, and measures, seen in Figure 12-4c. A person must first travel through the underworld, where his or her heart is weighed on a scale by Anubis and Thoth. The root of Anubis’s name is nub, or gold. He wears a black dog mask, which may relate to the Dog Star, Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens. There is some conflict as to who fathered Anubis, Osiris or Set.
The per ankhs became the house of life and contained libraries of knowledge. Studies of the heavens, calculations of time spans from the rising and setting of stars, the geometry of angles, and the measurements of space were held at the per ankhs. The per ankhs were also hospitals and places for writing. One example was the Decree Canopus, where in line thirty-seven it states, “carved on a block of stone or metal…writing of the Far Islands” (Reference 61). The per ankhs of Ireland in the Boyne Valley became the libraries and the houses of life surrounded by the great stone books of that time.
With this brief background, the penultimate trip becomes realistic, for it needed truth, justice, weighing, balance, and overseeing. This trip was taken, and then reality became myth, math, metaphor, and music. The myth created the otherworld, also called the underworld. Out of waters of chaos arose the primeval mound in the shape of the pyramidal stone. The step pyramid became the staircase whereby the dead king could mount up into the sky to join the crew of the solar barque as it sailed across the heavens as the sun arose.
So the seafarers explored for gold and copper. They built mounds as per ankhs, places of knowledge and healing and libraries containing collections of kerbstones.
From a seafarer’s perspective, we can now decode Figures 12-2 and12-3 found on the sarcophagus of the Unas, the last pharaoh of the Fifth Dynasty. Latitudes and longitudes will be generated from the counts and angles in these figures, 12-2 and 12-3.
Figure 12-2 describes the outbound trip to a supplier in North America returning to a customer in the Nubian Isle of Meroe, 2500 BCE. The outbound trip contains fewer glyphs because there are unknowns to be experienced.
The first step in decoding is to see the big picture. Figure 12-2 shows a supplier delivering a commodity to a customer, which involves a seafaring experience. Since the symbol for gold is not represented, the commodity is probably copper, the key metal in 2500 BCE during the Copper Age, whose symbol is similar to the ankh.
The people and animals in Figure 12-2 need to be described. They are as follows:
Osiris on the throne is the customer. He was the great god of Tuat, of the underworld (West), the region through which the sun god Ra travels from west to east during the night. Osiris uses the boat of the sun god Ra and is accompanied by a bird. The seafarer first travels through the underworld, where one’s heart is weighed on a scale by Maat, who is seen with the scales of justice in the middle of Figure 12-2. The evolution of the scales of justice, Libra, le Balance, is seen in Figure A-8 in Appendix A.
Set (Seth) is on the boat as a pig and is the brother of Osiris. The pig also represents the deliverance of something. Set’s wife is Nepthys, and their son is Anubis, in the upper right of Figure 12-2. Seth sometimes is seen in white with red hair. The red and white has its origins from Pharaoh D’Ewen, about 2900 BCE, the pharaoh who initiated the counting of gold. Seth is known as the god of turmoil, the desert friend of the dead, and the god of overseas trade. He ascends to heaven on a ladder and is associated with life at the oasis in the desert and is venerated in the Nile Delta. He is the distributor.
Anubus is seen in the upper right of Figure 12-2 and oversees the god of tombs, weights, and measures.
The rudder man is probably Canopus and is the navigator in Figure 12-2. Canopus is also the southern polestar and is the second brightest star in the heavens. The rudder man is on the boat with the boat headed south, remembering that east is up. The underworld is down—west. The rudder man gets off the boat, signifying that the delivered commodity needs a land portage. Canopus also means the golden land, which is Nubia.
A field of reeds on the top of Figure 12-2 is the harbor of entry and exit to the otherworld.
Four Horses with Horns of Venus are symbols of animal vitality and beauty and are associated with the power of wind, storm, fire, waves, and running water. They are linked to the sun and
sky gods.
Death is shown riding a black horse; a white horse is a symbol of light, life, and spiritual illumination. Going in four directions, particularly west, the horses will encounter winds, storms, and waves. The white horse may become black. The horse is a boat following the sun with vitality.
Simplistically, we have two brothers, a legitimate or illegitimate son, and a woman in the middle, representing truth. We will not pursue this, for we wish to take a seafarer’s perspective to decoding Figure 12-2.
A commodity at 2500 BCE was being delivered from a supplier to a customer. The travel is going from the reeds to a point where the rudder man must leave the boat and go on land. The commodity is delivered with the scale balanced, saying that which was shipped was delivered. Therefore, the characters represent a customer, a judge, a distributor, a navigator (on the boat), and then, off the boat (on the land) an overseer, a reed field, a transport boat, four horses with the horns of Venus, and a balanced scale.
The characters in Figure 12-2 and Figure 12-3 all represent characters having direct relationships to the underworld, in other words, the otherworld—the West.
Figure 12-2 is the logbook for descending to the otherworld, going to the supplier’s harbor, and returning.
Harbor Locations of Interest:
Harbor location of the customer
Harbor location of the reed field
Harbor location of the supplier
Let’s start the counting and the measuring of angles for the determination of latitude and longitude for these locations, as found in Figure 12-2.
A Seafarer's Decoding of the Irish Symbols Page 19