by Colin Wilson
Whatever happened, it seems clear that Fawcett never reached the city he called ‘Z’, or the deserted city of Manuscript No. 512.
I finished Exploration Fawcett in an odd state of frustration. No one who reads it could doubt that Fawcett knew exactly where he was going and what he was looking for. He had talked to many people – Europeans and Indians – about lost cities, and was quite certain that they existed and knew roughly where they were.19 The person I needed to consult was obviously Rand, whose fascination with Fawcett and Brazil had started when he found references to him in the Hapgood archive at Yale in 1995. He was also interested in South America, since he felt that if Atlantis was Antarctica, then it was almost certain that many of its inhabitants escaped to South America.
Rand had one site in mind as the location of the deserted city. He had already ascertained that if Giza is used as the post-Atlantis prime meridian, a whole series of sites fall on multiples of 10 degrees: Tiahuanaco is 100 degrees west of the Great Pyramid, Quito is at 110 degrees, and so on. It seemed to Rand that there ought to be a major sacred site at 90 degrees from Giza, not merely because it is a multiple of ten but because it is also a quarter of the distance around the world.
Tiahuanaco’s latitude (16 degrees, 38 minutes) had at first seemed disappointing, until Rand realised that it is 10 phi from the pole. The perfect place for a major religious site in the Matto Grosso would be at 90 degrees west of Giza, and 10 phi south.
I looked up this site in my Times Atlas, but saw that this could not have been Fawcett’s objective on that last journey. It was about 50 miles south of Cuiaba – Fawcett’s last major halt – and on the border of Bolivia and Brazil. However, as Rand pointed out to me, it was in an area that Fawcett had explored during his surveying days (the area where he and his companions had almost starved to death). In Mysteries of Ancient South America, Harold Wilkins states: ‘Fawcett’s friends speak of other strange tales brought to the Colonel by wandering Indians, whose tribal law he had studied in the Matto Grosso and the borders of Brazil and Bolivia.’20 It seems at least probable that this site is the location of the city that was half covered by jungle, but it was not on Fawcett’s route during that final journey.
Meanwhile I had faxed to Rand Fawcett’s own map of his intended route (from Exploration Fawcett), together with his coordinates for the ‘city of 1753’. I was hoping, of course, that Fawcett’s coordinates (11 degrees, 30 minutes south, 42 degrees, 30 minutes west) would fall on one of Rand’s sacred sites, but it was not to be. It turned out to be 73 degrees, 38 minutes west of Giza, and in terms of the ‘blueprint’ that means nothing.
But Rand, far from being disappointed, recognised that it provided an important clue. He noted another possible sacred site within 100 miles of the ‘city of 1753’, at 72 degrees west of Giza, which is one-fifth of the distance around the world, and again 10 degrees south. He wrote to me:
Fawcett gave 11 degrees 30 minutes south and 42 degrees 30 minutes west for the site of the ‘city of 1753’, whereas the ‘blueprint’ location is 10 degrees south and 40 degrees 52 minutes west. When you round out the blueprint longitude to the closest half degree (which seems to have been Fawcett’s practice), it becomes 41 degrees west. Please note the following:
The Giza Prime Meridian links sacred sites from Easter Island (140 West of Great Pyramid) to Tiahuanaco (100WGP). This pattern can be extended into the Amazon, where other sacred sites await discovery. Each box represents a sacred site or a potential sacred site.
From left to right they are: Quito (Equator 110WGP); Tiahuanaco (10PhiS 100WGP); Lost Atlantean City (10PhiS 90WGP); Fawcett disappeared here; Potential sacred sites (10S 80WGP and 15S 80WGP); Fawcett’s Z location; Potential sacred site (10S 72WGP)
11 degrees 30 minutes south, 42 degrees 30 minutes west– Fawcett’s location of the city of 1753 minus 10 degrees south, 41 degrees west – Atlantis blueprint location to the nearest Greenwich longitude equals 1 degree 30 minutes, 1 degree 30 minutes.
Both are off one and a half degrees.
In short, Rand suspected that Fawcett had disguised the location by one and a half degrees east and south.
Rand made another interesting point. If Fawcett was disguising the location of the ‘deserted city’ by adding 1 degree 30 minutes to both its co-ordinates, then he was identifying a spot that is one-fifth of the way around the world from the Giza meridian. Is it possible that Fawcett had also stumbled on this notion of the Giza meridian? Fawcett was a youth of seventeen when Smyth was agitating for the prime meridian to run through Giza, arguing that the ancients probably used Giza as their central meridian. Fawcett knew Egypt well, since he was working for British Intelligence in Cairo during the war, and he was also a surveyor. Could he have been using the Giza meridian to locate possible sites for ancient cities in South America?
As I pored over the map of Brazil, I was struck by another matter. Fawcett seems to have chosen a very strange route. Cuiaba is about 1,000 miles west of the site he was aiming at (the deserted city), and 700 miles south. Bahia itself – his ultimate goal – is only about 250 miles east of ‘the deserted city’ (which makes sense; the lost mines of Muribeca cannot possibly have been far from the coast, or it would have taken too long to transport the silver to Bahia). It looks – as G.K. Chesterton put it in one of his poems – as if Fawcett had decided to go to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier. Why would Fawcett have started from Cuiaba, 1,000 miles east of the deserted city? Why not go west from Bahia to the deserted city?
A possible explanation occurred to me, and, as Rand’s next email showed, it had dawned on him at the same time. If sacred longitudes run in tens, then Fawcett would be crossing yet another on his way west – the 80-degree longitude west of Giza (which is about 49 degrees west of Greenwich). Since he would be travelling along the 10th parallel – another sacred latitude – the likeliest location for the city he calls ‘Z’ is where the 80th and the 10th cross.
This crossing point of the two meridians – 80 degrees west of Giza, and 10 degrees south – is only about 200 miles northeast of where Fawcett vanished. If ‘Z’ was a sacred site, then this, according to the blueprint, is its most likely location. From ‘Z’, Fawcett would have to travel almost 500 miles east to reach the deserted city of 1753.
Which brings us back to the question: why would Fawcett want to disguise its location?
Perhaps Fawcett was hoping to return to England to announce his discovery of three ‘lost cities’. One he already knew – the city covered by jungle. If he could also pinpoint ‘Z’ and the deserted city of 1753, his triumph would be complete. He would have been hailed as one of the greatest explorers of all time, the manuscript of Exploration Fawcett, back at his home in Devon, would certainly become a bestseller, and he would have plenty of funds for another expedition. Even if he failed, he would certainly want to return to Brazil, and if anyone had seen the manuscript in the meantime, then he might be beaten to his objective by a rival. It would be a simple, obvious precaution to disguise the location of the deserted city until he had been there.
Whether Rand is correct about the locations of the three lost cities may not be as difficult to establish as one might suppose. Nowadays it is unnecessary for an explorer to equip an expedition and plunge into the Brazilian jungle. A space satellite, using the kind of radar that was used to penetrate the clouds of Venus, would only have to overfly the site – and track it in strips – to locate ruins buried under vegetation.21 Archaeologists have even developed a radar that can penetrate the ground and locate ruins buried under sand.
What they have not yet developed is a method for deciding where to look, and this is what Rand has provided with his Atlantis blueprint.
Rand had already discovered that if you drew a line from the Great Pyramid to the North Pole, and another line from the Great Pyramid to the old North Pole, in Hudson Bay, the angle between the two is 28 degrees, and that 28 plays an important part in the Giza site (see Chapter 4).
Intrigued by
this discovery, Rand had begun to look for other examples of a relationship between the two poles. From Rosslyn, the site of the Templar church in Scotland, the angle
Two of the sites that Fawcett was interested in were located at 12N during the Hudson Bay Pole. From the Lost Atlantean City the Hudson Bay Pole is 12 degrees west of north. This is a 12/12 site.
12N latitude during Hudson Bay Pole; 12 º
(the line to the left of 90)
between the two poles is 50 degrees. But its latitude is also 50 degrees north. Rand called this a 50/50 site. Again, Stonehenge was at a latitude of 46 degrees, and the angle between the two poles from Stonehenge was also 46 degrees – another ‘double’ site, 46/46. And when he discovered many more of these ‘double’ sites, he became convinced that this was one of the basic factors that led the ancients to regard a certain site as sacred. This is why his suggestion for the location for one of Fawcett’s lost cities (the one covered in vegetation) was at a spot where the angle between the poles was 12 degrees and the latitude was also 12 degrees south – a 12/12 site.
Rand then took an interesting leap in the dark. From the Giza meridian, the only important line of longitude (i.e., a multiple of ten) that runs through England is 30. If the blueprint theory is correct, there ought to be a major sacred site on
Canterbury Cathedral may have been built on top of a much more ancient site. During the Hudson Bay Pole it was midway between the pole and the equator at latitude 45N. The angle between Canterbury, the current pole and the former Hudson Bay Pole is 45 degrees. Canterbury is a 45/45 site. It is also 30 degrees west of the Great Pyramid and during the Hudson Bay Pole, when Giza was at 15N, Canterbury was 30 degrees further north at 45N.
this line. Rand ran his finger down a map of England, and found that the line ran through Canterbury, England’s most sacred site.
He drew an imaginary line to the North Pole and to the old North Pole in Hudson Bay. The angle between them was 45 degrees, and Canterbury was at 45 degrees north during the Hudson Bay Pole. So Canterbury is a 45/45 site, and since it was 30 degrees north of Giza, and also on the 30-degree longitude, it is a 30/30 site relative to Giza.
Canterbury may be regarded as a relatively modern site. Its first cathedral was built soon after St Augustine’s arrival in England in AD 597. Before Augustine’s arrival, however, it was the capital of Ethelbert, the Saxon king who became a Christian. And a little research into Dean Stanley’s Memorials of Canterbury reveals that Ethelbert gave the site of a pagan temple to Augustine, who, following the decree of Gregory the Great to build on pagan sites, built an abbey there, and later began to build the cathedral nearby.
The pagan temple had been built on a 45/45 site – that is to say, by someone with a knowledge of the Hudson Bay Pole. England’s most important religious site, Canterbury, also fits perfectly into Rand’s Atlantis blueprint.
What is most significant about the line of investigation opened up by Lubaantum is that Rand had found it by applying his theory that a sacred site ought to be found at that location, at the 10 phi longitude north. If his theory was unsound, the odds against anything being found at that site would have been a million to one. When he located Lubaantum at a longitude of 10 phi north and latitude 120 degrees west, he had virtually confirmed Smyth’s belief that the meridian used by the ancient Egyptians was the line of longitude that ran north and south through the Great Pyramid.
4
Thoth's Holy Chamber
ACCORDING TO HERODOTUS, contemporary Egyptians had decided on a crudely simplistic explanation of the purpose of the Great Pyramid; they said it was basically a monument to the vainglory of the pharaoh Cheops (Khufu). The wickedness of Cheops was unsurpassed – he closed down all the temples during his fifty-six-year reign, and when he ran out of money to build the Great Pyramid, sent his daughter out to work as a harlot. She made enough not only to complete its construction, but also to build a pyramid of her own. Herodotus was also told that underneath the Great Pyramid there were a series of vaults ‘for the Pharaoh’s own use’, so that it also served as a luxury apartment. Nile water was introduced by means of a tunnel, forming an underground lake in the midst of which there was an island on which Cheops was laid to rest. The Great Pyramid, apart from being a monument to monstrous egoism, was also a tomb then. The notion of the pyramids as tombs persists down to the present day – in his standard work on the pyramids of Egypt, Professor Ion Edwards states that they were intended as tombs and nothing more.
This assumption has been questioned. In The Riddle of the Pyramids,1 Kurt Mendelssohn, a physicist who studied under Max Planck then turned his attention to the problem of why the pyramids were built, concluded that there was little evidence that they were tombs. Of the ten major pyramids, only one, the Step Pyramid of King Zoser (or Djoser) at Saqqara, showed unmistakable signs of being a tomb, although mummy fragments found in its granite vault proved – when subjected to radiocarbon-dating – to be dated to several centuries later than Zoser’s reign. Of the other nine pyramids, only three had sarcophagi (which were empty) – it is hard to see why thieves should have gone to the trouble of stealing the other six.
Mendelssohn’s own somewhat unlikely theory is that the pyramids were merely a ‘work project’ designed to unite Egypt’s tribes into a nation state, although it could be asked why the pharaohs did not choose a more practical task, like building harbours or dams. All the same, Mendelssohn’s objections to the tomb theory are certainly convincing, particularly in the case of the Great Pyramid itself. When Herodotus went there, it was covered in gleaming limestone, and was already 2,000 years old.
In AD 820, the caliph Al-Mamun, son of Haroun Al-Raschid, decided to break into it to see whether, as legend declared, it was full of fabulous treasures, but there seemed to be no way in. The position of a hidden door, high up on the north side, had long been forgotten.
Chisels failed to dent the limestone, so Al-Mamun ordered fires to be lit to crack it, then attacked it with battering rams. After months of exhausting effort, his men had only tunnelled a hundred feet or so. Just as they were about to give up, one of the workmen heard a dull thud nearby. They finally broke into a narrow tunnel, and saw that a large stone had fallen from its ceiling.
By sheer luck they had entered several courses below the original entrance, otherwise they might have tunnelled on until they came out the other side. Crawling up the sloping tunnel they found the entrance, covered with a hinged stone. Crawling back down the other way, they eventually found themselves in a small subterranean chamber with a vermin-infested pit and a short tunnel running out of the other side until it simply came to a halt. This seemed to be the disappointing reality of Herodotus’s lake, island and luxury apartment.
But at the point where the stone had fallen from the ceiling, they found a passage ascending towards the heart of the pyramid. This proved to be blocked by a massive granite plug. They used their chisels to cut into the limestone around it, only to find another plug, and then yet another. Finally they were able to stand upright, and were faced with another low corridor that ran horizontally. It led to a barn-like chamber with a gabled roof and salt-encrusted walls – but it was empty. They labelled this the Queen’s Chamber, since Arab tombs for women had pointed roofs. They hacked out part of a wall, but found no treasure.
Retracing their steps to the place where they could stand upright, they discovered that the ascending passage continued upward, but that a connecting part of the causeway had been removed, presumably to discourage further exploration. Suddenly the corridor turned into an awesome gallery, whose sloping walls stretched far above their heads. At the top of this smooth slope they found their way blocked by a 3-foot-tall stone. After clambering over this, they found themselves in what came to be called the Antechamber, faced with a kind of giant portcullis made of granite, which seemed designed to be lowered to block the intruders’ further progress – except that the grooves at the sides terminated 4 feet above the floor, so it could never be lo
wered. Beyond that, the walls contained three more ‘portcullis’ grooves, this time down to the floor, but no portcullises.
They continued down another low passageway, finally arriving at a larger and rectangular chamber, which became known as the King’s Chamber. This was also empty, except for a huge granite sarcophagus that was lacking its lid. It was so big that it must obviously have been introduced while the King’s Chamber was being built, for it was too large to have been brought up the ascending passage.
So it seemed that the Great Pyramid was not a tomb, as it would have been impossible for there to have been a coffin inside the sarcophagus – there was no way that tomb robbers could have got it out.
It has been generally assumed that the granite plugs must have been slid into place from above, and had been stored in the ‘Grand Gallery’, but once the workmen had allowed them to slide into place, how had they escaped? There were no skeletons to suggest they had been entombed alive. The problem remained unsolved for 800 years until, in 1638, an English astronomer called John Greaves noticed a stone missing from the ramp at the west side of the Grand Gallery, just before it rejoined the narrower passage. It looked like a kind of well, but when Greaves tried to lower himself down it he found that it was blocked with sand and rubble and gave up. Two centuries later, in 1814, an Italian named Giovanni Caviglia made a more determined attempt, and found that the ‘well’ descended to the low passageway that led down to the subterranean chamber with the vermin-infested pit.
This route, then, must have allowed the workmen to escape after sliding the granite plugs into place – unless, of course, the top of the Pyramid was still open at that time (this latter was an obvious possibility, for someone must have blocked the well with sand and rubble, presumably from above).