The Message of the Sphinx AKA Keeper of Genesis

by Graham Hancock

  [58] Ibid.

  [59] Ibid., p. 229.

  [60] Ibid., p. 230.

  [61] Ibid., p. 229.

  [62] Mystery of the Sphinx, op. cit.

  [63] Ibid., and KMT, Vol. V, No. 2, Summer 1994, p. 7.

  [64] For block weights see I. E. S. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt, op. cit., p. 215; John Anthony West, Serpent, op. cit., p. 242; John Anthony West, The Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt, Harrap Columbus, London, 1989, pp. 143-5; Mystery of the Sphinx, op. cit.; Dr. Joseph Davidovits and Margie Morris, The Pyramids: An Enigma Solved, Dorset Press, New York, 1988, p. 51.

  [65] Mystery of the Sphinx, op. cit.

  [66] Interviewed in ibid.

  [67] See for example I. E. S. Edwards, Pyramids of Egypt op. cit., p. 220; John Baines and Jaromir Malek, Atlas of Ancient Egypt, Time-Life Books, 1990, pp. 138-9.

  [68] The most thorough study is provided in Peter Hodges (Julian Keable ed.), How the Pyramids Were Built, Element Books, 1989.

  [69] Ibid., p. 11.

  [70] Ibid., pp. 11-13.

  [71] Ibid., p. 13.

  [72] Jean Kerisel, a prominent soils engineer in France and also President of the Franco-Egyptian Society, did an extensive study on the hauling of large blocks using human labour and wooden sledges. Kerisel kindly made this study—Lu Grande Pyramide et ses Derniers Secrets—available to us prior to its publication (due 1996). The basis of his calculation is that the pressure on the soil cannot exceed 1.5 tons/sq.m. for ramps made of compacted soil (probably covered with stone slabs) with slopes not exceeding 8 per cent. The friction coefficient has been calculated at 15 per cent using soaked lime as the lubricant. Kerisel noted that a greater pressure than 1.5 tons would cause the lubricant to seep away and thus the friction coefficient would increase, making hauling even more difficult. The average speed has been worked out to be 0.3 metres/second with a 13-kilogram traction force produced by each man. Thus the hauling of a 70-ton block would require (70,000 X 0.15 X 1/13=) 807 men and would take some 9.25 hours for a ramp of one kilometre. Kerisel worked out that if the traction was much higher than 13 kg/man—even for a short period of time—the result would be serious back injuries. Thus, assuming at least 1 clear metre distance between each standing man, 807 men in 6 rows would need a ramp space of 134.5 metres long and 6 metres wide. The problem, of course, is greatly increased for blocks of 200 tons within the confined working conditions of the Sphinx and Valley Temples—a task almost impossible to imagine with such primitive techniques.

  [73] Robert Schoch’s evidence presented in Mystery of the Sphinx, op. cit.

  [74] KMT Vol. V, op. cit., p. 7.

  [75] The Sacred Sermon (Hermetica, Libellus III), translated by G. R. S. Mead in Thrice Great Hermes: Studies in Hellenistic Theosophy and Gnosis, Samuel Weiser Inc., North Beach, Maine, 1992, Book II, p. 51.

  [76] British Museum Manuscript 25, 619, pp. 15-19.

  [77] W. M. Flinders Petrie, The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, Histories and Mysteries of Man Ltd., London, 1990, pp. 50-1.

  [78] Chassinat, Monuments et Mémoires, Fondation Piot, Volume XXV, p. 57.

  [79] Thor Heyerdahl, The Ra Expeditions, Book Club Associates, London, 1972, p. 15.

  [80] Ibid., pp. 15-17.

  [81] Graham Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods, op. cit. Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert, The Orion Mystery, William Heinemann Ltd., London, 1994.

  [82] Gaston Maspero, The Dawn of Civilization, op. cit., pp. 366-7. See also Peter Tompkins, Secrets of the Great Pyramid, Harper & Row, New York and London, 1978, p. 17 and W. M. Flinders Petrie, Pyramids and Temples, op. cit., p. 13.

  [83] W. M. Flinders Petrie, Pyramids and Temples, op. cit., p. 13.

  [84] The supposed discoverer was Archimedes.

  [85] For further discussion see Fingerprints of the Gods, op. cit., Chapter 48.

  [86] Ibid.

  [87] Piazzi Smyth, The Great Pyramid, Bell Publishing Co., New York, 1990, pp. 79-80.

  [88] Ibid., p. 80.

  [89] J. H. Cole, Paper No. 39, ‘The Determination of the Exact Size and Orientation of the Great Pyramid of Giza’, Survey of Egypt, Cairo, 1925. See also I. E. S. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt, op. cit., p. 87.

  [90] Ibid.

  [91] I. E. S. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt, op. cit., p. 208.

  [92] See discussion in Flinders Petrie, Pyramids and Temples op. cit., pp. 83-4.

  [93] See Fingerprints of the Gods, op. cit., pp. 330-8, The Orion Mystery, op. cit., pp. 41-5.

  [94] I. E. S. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt, op. cit., p. 93.

  [95] We are grateful to James Macaulay for this suggestion.

  [96] Joseph R. Jochmans, The Hall of Records, unpublished manuscript, 1985, p. 175. See also Hodges, Horn the Pyramids Were Built, op. cit., p. 122.

  [97] Flinders Petrie, Pyramids and Temples, op. cit., p. 19.

  [98] Ibid.

  [99] Vyse and Perrings figures quoted in Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt, op. cit., p. 88.

  [100] Ibid., pp. 88-96.

  [101] Ibid., p. 88.

  [102] Herodotus, The History, David Grene trans., University of Chicago Press, 1988, 2:124, pp. 185-6.

  [103] Cited in Jochmans, The Hall of Records, op. cit., pp. 176-7.

  [104] R. Cook, The Pyramids of Giza, Seven Islands, Glastonbury, 1992, p. 52.

  [105] Jean Kerisel, ‘The Pyramid of Cheops: Further Research’ (October and December 1992), extract from his paper in the Revue Française d’Egyptologie, 1993, p. 4.

  [106] Ibid, p. 6.

  [107] Ibid.

  [108] Ibid, p. 7.

  [109] Personal communication.

  [110] A. Badawy, ‘The Stellar Destiny of the Pharaoh and the so-called Air Shafts in Cheops’ Pyramid’, Mitt. Inst. Orient, zu Berlin, Band 10, 1964, pp. 189-206.

  [111] See, for example, I. E. S. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt op. cit., pp. 209-10.

  [112] For further discussion see The Orion Mystery, op. cit.

  [113] For example, see E. M. Antoniadi, L’Astronomie Egyptienne, Paris, 1934, p. 119.

  [114] See The Orion Mystery, op. cit., pp. 97-104.

  [115] Ibid.

  [116] Ibid., pages 105-37.

  [117] Ibid.

  [118] Ibid.

  [119] Ibid., pp. 179-96.

  [120] See The Orion Mystery, op. cit., p. 192.

  [121] Using the rigorous formula of precession corrected for nutation, aberration of starlight, proper motion (from the most recent Yale Bright Star Catalog) and parallax, gives circa 10,500 bc as the epoch that Orion’s belt reached its lowest altitude (9 degrees 25’ measured at the south meridian, i.e. declination 50 degrees 35’).

  [122] Giving a full precessional cycle of 25,920 years.

  [123] For a detailed discussion see Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, Hamlet’s Mill, Godine, Boston, 1977.

  [124] Ibid., p. 59.

  [125] See Fingerprints of the Gods, op. cit., pp. 454-8.

  [126] For a discussion see J. Norman Lockyer, The Dawn of Astronomy, MIT Press, 1973, pp. 60-1ff.

  [127] From Hermetica, Sir Walter Scott trans., Shambhala, Boston, 1993, Asclepius III:24b, p. 341.

  [128] From the eleventh division of the Duat, in the ‘Book of What is in the Duat’, Sir E. A. Wallis Budge trans., in The Egyptian Heaven and Hell, Martin Hopkinson & Co, London, 1925, p. 240.

  [129] Ibid., the twelfth division of the Duat, p. 258.

  [130] Ibid., p. 70.

  [131] For a discussion see The Orion Mystery, op. cit., pp. 179-84; Fingerprints of the Gods, op. cit., p. 380ff.

  [132] Ibid. See also E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, Dover Publications Inc., New York, 1969.

  [133] The tradition that important ‘records’ were brought to Egypt ‘after the flood’ i.e. after 10,000 bc, goes back to at least the third century bc. It is found, for example, in The Book of Sothis (commented upon by the Byzantine historian Georgios Synecellus who lived in the ninth century ad) and which some scholars attribute
to the Egyptian scribe, Manetho (See Garth Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes, Princeton University Press, New Jersey 1993, pp. 29-33). The idea is also planted in the Kore Kosmou (Excerpt XXIII of the Hermetic writings) of the first and second century ad (See Hermetica, op. cit., p. 461). In the Kore Kosmou (section 8) the goddess Isis claims that Thoth deposited in a secret place the ‘sacred books’ which contained ‘the secret things of Osiris ... these holy symbols of the cosmic elements’ and then cast a spell that these books shall remain ‘unseen and undiscovered by all men who shall go to and fro on the plains of this land until the time when Heaven, grown old, shall beget organisms [i.e. humans] worthy of you ...’

  [134] 2 Andrew Tomas, From Atlantis to Discovery, Robert Hale, London 1972, p. 109.

  [135] Ibn Abd Alhokim and the Arab Manuscripts of Ibn Khurradhbih and Lohfat, cited by Joseph R. Jochmans, The Hall of Records, unpublished manuscript, 1985, p. 174. See also John Greaves, Pyramidographia, 1646, translation from the Arabic of Ibn Alhokim.

  [136] Peter Tompkins, Secrets of the Great Pyramid, Allen Lane, 1972, p. 6.

  [137] The famous Westcar Papyrus in the (east) Berlin Museum suggests that a secret chamber or chambers were concealed in the ‘horizon’ of Cheops—i.e. the alleged builder of the Great Pyramid (See The Orion Mystery, op. cit., Appendix 3). The term ‘Horizon’, however, could mean either the Great Pyramid itself or the whole necropolis of Giza, thus including the Sphinx. Spell 1080 of the Coffin Texts (c. 2000 bc) speaks of a secret ‘sealed thing’ belonging to Osiris of Rostau (Giza) and spell 1087 suggests that it was ‘writing material’ linked to Heliopolis (Djedu, the ‘Pillar City’), and hidden somewhere in the desert sands.

  [138] These Coptic traditions were recorded by the Arab chroniclers Al Qodai, Al Masudi and Al Maqrizi, cited in Jochmans, The Hall of Records, op. cit., p. 210.

  [139] The so-called ‘Old Charges’ of Freemasonry speak of a certain Hermenes (obviously Hermes, i.e. Thoth) who preserved the ‘crafts’ by carving their knowledge on sacred pillars or obelisks (see Fred L. Pick and G. Norman Knight, The Pocket History of Freemasonry, Frederick Muller Ltd., London 1983, p. 32). It is generally accepted that much of the ‘Egyptian’ esoteric strain in Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism and, to a certain extent, the Theosophists, comes from the so-called Hermetic Tradition that developed in Europe in the late Italian Renaissance but drew its source from the Greek and Coptic texts known as the Hermetic writings (see Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1991; also The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, Ark Paperbacks, London 1986, p. 212).

  [140] Harmon Hartzell Bro, Edgar Cayce: A Seer Out Of Season, Signet Books, New York 1990, pp. 43-4. Cayce’s life-long secretary was Gladys Davis, described as ‘an attractive honey-blonde’, whom Cayce believed to be his ‘reincarnated’ daughter, Iso, from Atlantean times (Ibid., p. 245).

  [141] Edgar Evans Cayce, Gail Cayce Schwartzer and Douglas G. Richards, Mysteries of Atlantis Revisited: Edgar Cayce’s Wisdom for the New Age, Harper & Row,. San Francisco 1988, p. xxi.

  [142] Ibid. p. 119. We have had the pleasure of meeting with the author, Douglas G. Richards, in July 1995 at the Edgar Cayce Foundation in Virginia Beach.

  [143] Ibid. p. 120.

  [144] Edgar Cayce ‘Reading’ on the Great Pyramid No. 5748-6. This ‘reading’ was given at his home on Arctic Crescent, Virginia Beach, Va., on 1 July 1932 at 4.10 p.m. EST.

  [145] ‘Reading’ 378-16. See Mark Lehner, The Egyptian Heritage: Based on the Edgar Cayce Readings, A.R.E. Press, Virginia Beach 1974, p. 99.

  [146] ‘Reading’ No. 5748-6. The Egyptian Heritage, op. cit., p. 119.

  [147] ‘Reading’ No. 294-151. See Thomas Sugrue, There is a River: The story of Edgar Cayce, A.R.E. Press, Virginia Beach, 1988, p. 393. See also Harmon Hartzell Bro, A Seer Out Of Season, op. cit., p. 247.

  [148] Mark Lehner, The Egyptian Heritage, op. cit., p. 92. See also Harmon Hartzell Bro, A Seer Out Of Season, op. cit., p. 133.

  [149] Edgar Evans Cayce, etc., Mysteries of Atlantis, op. cit., p. 121.

  [150] Ibid, p. 131.

  [151] Confirmed by Douglas G. Richards, in a documented conversation by telephone in September 1995 (Richards is co-author with Edgar Evans Cayce and Gail Cayce Schwartzer of Mysteries of Atlantis Revisited, op. cit.). When we questioned Mark Lehner directly on this matter he replied in writing (pp. 1-2 of letter dated 15 October 1995): ‘I believe I probably am the “scholar” in question. It was never expected that the outcome of the ECF’s support of my Year Abroad at The American University in Cairo would be that I would become a “respected Egyptologist”. ARE-affiliated people supported my stint in Egypt because Hugh Lynn Cayce asked them to. Neither he nor I were sure where it would lead. I think Hugh Lynn helped me to go to Egypt because we both had some sense of destiny about it in line with the common New Age notion that it was “meant to be”.’

  [152] Edgar Evans Cayce, etc., Mysteries, op. cit., p. 131. In his letter of 15 October 1995 Mark Lehner commented on our draft text, which was supplied to him without footnotes: ‘I do not know the reference for your note [20] but I suspect that rather than a prospectus written before I went to Egypt as a student at AUC, this summary was written in hindsight several years later than 1973.’

  [153] Edgar Evans Cayce, etc., Mysteries, op. cit., p. 132.

  [154] Mark Lehner, The Egyptian Heritage, op. cit., back cover text.

  [155] Ibid., p. v.

  [156] In his letter to us of 15 October 1995 Mark Lehner commented as follows: ‘Neither I nor the Edgar Cayce Foundation had anything to do with the first two seasons of the SRI programme at the pyramids and elsewhere in Egypt. This is not clear in your text. The SRI “Science and Archaeology” Project picked up the work of Alvarez who used cosmic rays (before I arrived in Egypt) to analyze the Second Pyramid for undiscovered chambers. I met the SRI team in 1977 about the time they did preliminary resistivity measurements on the Sphinx. SRI was in the business of looking for hidden chambers at Giza well before I or the Edgar Cayce Foundation met up with them.’

  [157] L. T. Dolphin, E. Moussa et. al., ‘Applications of Modern Sensing Techniques to Egyptology’, Menlo Park, Calif, SRI International, September 1977.

  [158] Ibid. See also Zahi Hawass ‘Update’ to Sir W. M. Flinders Petrie’s The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, Histories and Mysteries of Man Ltd., London 1990, p. 102.

  [159] Edgar Evans Cayce, etc., Mysteries, op. cit., p. 132.

  [160] Mark Lehner’s letter to us of 15 October 1995, p. 3.

  [161] Cited in Jochmans, The Hall of Records, op. cit., p. 22ia. Confirmed in documented telephone conversation with project financier, 16 February 1995. Confirmed also by Mark Lehner in his letter to us dated 15 October 1995, p. 3.

  [162] Mark Lehner’s letter to us, 15 October 1995, p. 3.

  [163] Ibid.

  [164] Ibid.

  [165] Ibid.

  [166] See also Part I of the present work for further details of Mark Lehner’s ARCE project on the Sphinx.

  [167] Edgar Evans Cayce, etc., Mysteries, op. cit., pp. 142-3. The discovery of the granite was also confirmed to us by Mark Lehner in his letter, op. cit., p. 4.

  [168] Venture Inward, May-June 1986, p. 57.

  [169] Ibid.

  [170] See American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) Newsletter No. 112, Fall 1980, p. 20 (‘The American Research Center Gratefully acknowledges the support of the Edgar Cayce Foundation for the work of the Sphinx Project’). See also ARCE Newsletter No. 131, 1985, p. 44 (Mark Lehner of the ARCE wrote: ‘We would like to acknowledge the financial sponsorship of ... Bruce Ludwig of TRW Realty in Los Angeles ... the Edgar Cayce Foundation ... Joseph and Ursula Jahoda of Astron Corporation in Falls Church, Va., ... Matthew McCauley of McCauley Music in Los Angeles ...’). Mr. Zahi Hawass, University of Pennsylvania, is specifically acknowledged as advisor and assistant to the project ‘and we look forward to continued collaboration’. The Edgar Cayce Foundation also funded (with US$17,000)
a project at Giza in 1983-4, which involved an attempt to apply Carbon-14 dating to the mortar (which contains certain organic compounds) used in the Great Pyramid. This project was arranged by Mark Lehner through the ARCE’s director, Dr. Robert J. Wenke. We have met Joseph Jahoda several times at the Edgar Cayce Foundation in Virginia Beach in 1994-5 (see below), and also Matthew McCauley once at the Movenpick Hotel in Giza, Cairo, with Dr. Mark Lehner in March 1995 while researching this book.

  [171] Edgar Evans Cayce, etc., Mysteries, op. cit., p. 138.

  [172] Smithsonian, vol. XVII, No. I, April 1986. In his letter to us, op. cit., pp. 4-5, Mark Lehner commented: ‘By the time I started the Mapping Project, Cayce support of my work was phasing out. I stopped accepting their support after the Pyramids Radiocarbon Project [see footnote 38 above and 44 below for fuller details] because my interests and theirs were becoming too divergent. I would have to check the date of their last contribution, but if they did contribute to the mapping project it was a very minimal percentage of total financial support. The primary financial sponsors have been the Yale Endowment for Egyptology, Bruce Ludwig and David Koch. Koch and Ludwig have supported the excavations that we started in 1988.’