Fingerprints of the Gods

by Graham Hancock

  19 Egyptian Metalworking and Tools, p. 17; ‘Iron in Egypt’, p. 6ff.

  20 Among the many mysterious aspects of the Pyramid Texts it is perhaps inevitable that

  a fully qualified Opener of the Ways should put in an appearance. ‘The doors of the sky

  are opened to you, the starry sky is thrown open for you, the jackal of upper Egypt

  comes down to you as Anubis at your side.’ (The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, pp.

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  In my readings—here and there among the most archaic of the

  Utterances—I had come across several metaphors that seemed to refer to

  the passage of epochs of precessional time. These metaphors stood out

  from the surrounding material because they were expressed in what had

  become a clear and familiar terminology to me: that of the archaic

  scientific language identified by Santillana and von Dechend in Hamlet’s

  Mill.21

  The reader may recall that a cosmic ‘diagram’ of the four props of the

  sky was one of the standard thought tools employed in that ancient

  language. Its purpose was to assist visualisation of the four imaginary

  bands conceived as framing, supporting and defining a precessional

  world age. These were what astronomers call the ‘equinoctial and

  solstitial colures’ and were seen as hooping down from the celestial north

  pole and marking the four constellations against the background of

  which, for periods of 2160 years at a time, the sun would consistently

  rise on the spring and autumn equinoxes and on the winter and summer

  solstices.22

  The Pyramid Texts appear to contain several versions of this diagram.

  Moreover, as is so often the case with prehistoric myths which transmit

  hard astronomical data, the precessional symbolism is interwoven tightly

  with violent images of terrestrial destruction—as though to suggest that

  the ‘breaking of the mill of heaven’, that is the transition every 2160

  years from one zodiacal age to another, could under ill-omened

  circumstances bring catastrophic influences to bear on terrestrial events.

  Thus it was said that

  Ra-Atum, the god who created himself, was originally king over gods and men

  together but mankind schemed against his sovereignty, for he began to grow old,

  his bones became silver, his flesh gold and his hair [as] lapis lazuli.23

  When he realized what was happening, the ageing Sun God (so

  reminiscent of Tonatiuh, the bloodthirsty Fifth Sun of the Aztecs)

  determined that he would punish this insurrection by killing off most of

  the human race. The instrument of the havoc he unleashed was

  symbolized at times as a raging lioness wading in blood and at times as

  the fearsome lion-headed goddess Sekhmet who ‘poured fire out of

  herself and savaged mankind in an ecstasy of slaughter.24

  The terrible destruction continued unabated for a long period. Then at

  last Ra intervened to save the lives of a ‘remnant’, the ancestors of

  present humanity. This intervention took the form of a flood which the

  288-9, Utt. 675.) Here, as in other contexts, the function of the canine figure seems to

  be to serve as a guide to secret hoards of esoteric information often linked to

  mathematics and astronomy.

  21 See Part V for full details.

  22 Ibid.

  23 Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt, p. 181.

  24 The pouring fire allusion is cited in Jean-Pierre Hallet, Pygmy Kitabu, p. 185.

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  lioness thirstily lapped up and then fell asleep. When she awoke, she was

  no longer interested in pursuing the destruction, and peace descended

  upon the devastated world.25

  Meanwhile Ra had resolved to ‘draw away’ from what was left of his

  creation: ‘As I live my heart is weary of staying with Mankind. I have gone

  on killing them [almost] to the very last one, so the [insignificant]

  remnant is not my affair ...’26

  The Sun God then rose into the sky on the back of the sky-goddess Nut

  who (for the purposes of the precessional metaphor about to be

  delivered) had transformed herself into a cow. Before very long—in a

  close analogy to the ‘shaft-tree’ that ‘shivered’ on Amlodhi’s wildly

  gyrating mill—the cow grew ‘dizzy and began to shake and to tremble

  because she was so high above the earth.’27 When she complained to Ra

  about this precarious state of affairs he commanded, ‘Let my son Shu be

  put beneath Nut to keep guard for me over the heavenly supports—which

  exist in the twilight. Put her above your head and keep her there.’28 As

  soon as Shu had taken his place beneath the cow and had stabilized her

  body, ‘the heavens above and the earth beneath came into being’. At the

  same moment, ‘the four legs of the cow’, as Egyptologist Wallis Budge

  commented in his classic study The Gods of the Egyptians, ‘became the

  four props of heaven at the four cardinal points’.29

  Like most scholars, Budge understandably assumed that the ‘cardinal

  points’ referred to in this Ancient Egyptian tradition had strictly terrestrial

  connotations and that ‘heaven’ represented nothing more than the sky

  above our heads. He took it for granted that the point of the metaphor

  was for us to envisage the cow’s four legs as positioned at the four points

  of the compass—north, south, east and west. He also thought—and even

  today few Egyptologists would disagree with him—that the simpleminded priests of Heliopolis had actually believed that the sky had four

  corners which were supported on four legs and that Shu, ‘the skybearer

  par excellence’, had stood immobile like a pillar at the centre of the

  whole edifice.30

  Reinterpreted in the light of Santillana’s and von Dechend’s findings,

  however, Shu and the four legs of the celestial cow look much more like

  the components of an archaic scientific symbol depicting the frame of a

  precessional world age—the polar axis (Shu) and the colures (the four

  legs or ‘props’ marking the equinoctial and solstitial cardinal points in

  the annual round of the sun).

  Moreover, it is tempting to speculate which world age was being

  25 Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt, p. 181-5.

  26 Ibid., p. 184.

  27 Ibid., p. 185.

  28 The Gods of the Egyptians, volume II, p. 94.

  29 Ibid., p. 92-4.

  30 Ibid., p. 93.

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  signalled here ...

  With a cow involved it could have been the Age of Taurus, although the

  Egyptians knew the difference between bulls and cows as well as anyone.

  But a much more likely contender—at any rate on purely symbolic

  grounds—is the age of Leo, from approximately 10,970 to 8810 BC.31 The

  reason is that Sekhmet, the agent of the destruction of Mankind referred

  to in the myth, was leonine in form. What better way to symbolize the

  troubled birth of the new world age of Leo than to depict its harbinger as

  a rampaging lion, particularly since the Age of Leo coincided with the

  final ferocious meltdown of the last Ice Age, during which huge numbers

 
; of animal species all over the earth were suddenly and violently rendered

  extinct.’32 Mankind survived the immense floods and earthquakes and

  rapid changes of climate that took place, but very probably in much

  reduced numbers and much reduced circumstances.

  The train of the Sun and the dweller in Sirius

  Of course the ability to recognize and define precessional world ages in

  myth implies that the Ancient Egyptians possessed better observational

  astronomy and a more sophisticated understanding of the mechanics of

  the solar system than any ancient people have hitherto been credited

  with.33 There is no doubt that knowledge of this calibre, if it existed at all,

  would have been highly regarded by the Ancient Egyptians, who would

  have transmitted it from generation to generation in a secretive manner.

  Indeed, it would have ranked among the highest arcana entrusted to the

  keeping of the priestly elite at Heliopolis and would have been passed on,

  in the main, through an oral and initiatory tradition.34 If, by chance it had

  found its way into the Pyramid Texts, is it not likely that its form would

  have been veiled by metaphors and allegories?

  I walked slowly across the dusty floor of the tomb chamber of Unas,

  noting the heavy stillness in the air, casting my eyes over the faded blue

  and gold inscriptions. Expressed in coded language several millennia

  before Copernicus and Galileo, some of the passages inscribed on these

  walls seemed to offer clues to the true heliocentric nature of the solar

  system.

  31 Skyglobe 3.6.

  32 See Part IV.

  33 For a detailed discussion see Sacred Science: The King of Pharaonic Theocracy.

  34 The issue of priestly secrecy and the oral tradition is discussed at length in From

  Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt, e.g. p. 43: ‘It is impossible to think that the highest order

  of the priests did not possess esoteric knowledge which they guarded with the greatest

  care. Each priesthood ... possessed a “Gnosis”, a “superiority of knowledge”, which they

  never put into writing ... It is therefore absurd to expect to find in Egyptian papyri

  descriptions of the secrets which formed the esoteric knowledge of the priests.’ See also

  page 27, and Sacred Science, pp. 273-4.

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  In one, for example, Ra, the Sun God, was depicted as seated upon an

  iron throne encircled by lesser gods who moved around him constantly

  and who were said to be ‘in his train’.35 Likewise, in another passage, the

  deceased Pharaoh was urged to ‘stand at the head of the two halves of

  the sky and weigh the words of the gods, the aged ones, who revolve

  around Ra.’36

  If the ‘aged ones’ and the ‘encircling gods’ revolving around Ra should

  prove to be parts of a terminology referring to the planets of our solar

  system, the original authors of the Pyramid Texts must have enjoyed

  access to some remarkably advanced astronomical data. They must have

  known that the earth and the planets revolved around the sun rather than

  vice versa.37 The problem this raises is that neither the Ancient Egyptians

  at any stage in their history, nor even their successors the Greeks, or for

  that matter the Europeans until the Renaissance, are supposed to have

  possessed cosmological data of anything approaching this quality. How,

  therefore, can its presence be explained in compositions which date back

  to the dawn of Egyptian civilization?

  Another (and perhaps related) mystery concerns the star Sirius, which

  the Egyptians identified with Isis, the sister and consort of Osiris and the

  mother of Horus. In a passage addressed to Osiris himself, the Pyramid

  Texts state:

  Thy sister Isis cometh unto thee rejoicing in her love for thee. Thou settest her

  upon thee, thy issue entereth into her, and she becometh great with child like the

  star Sept [Sirius, the Dog Star]. Horus-Sept cometh forth from thee in the form of

  Horus, dweller in Sept.38

  Many interpretations of this passage are, of course, possible. What

  intrigued me, however, was the clear implication that Sirius was to be

  regarded as a dual entity in some way comparable to a woman ‘great with

  child’. Moreover, after the birth (or coming forth) of that child, the text

  makes a special point of reminding us that Horus remained a ‘dweller in

  Sept’, presumably suggesting that he stayed close to his mother.

  Sirius is an unusual star. A sparkling point of light particularly

  prominent in the winter months in the night skies of the northern

  hemisphere, it consists of a binary star system, i.e. it is in fact, as the

  Pyramid Texts suggest, a ‘dual entity’. The major component, Sirius-A, is

  what we see. Sirius-B, on the other hand—the dwarf-star which revolves

  around Sirius A—is absolutely invisible to the naked eye. Its existence did

  not become known to Western science until 1862, when US astronomer

  Alvin Clark spotted it through one of the largest and most advanced

  telescopes of the day.39 How could the scribes who wrote the Pyramid

  35 Pyramid Texts cited in The Gods of the Egyptians, volume I, p. 158.

  36 Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, volume I, p. 146.

  37 Sacred Science, pp. 22-5, 29.

  38 Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, volume I, p. 93.

  39 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1991, 10:845.

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  Texts possibly have obtained the information that Sirius was two stars in

  one?

  In The Sirius Mystery, an important book published in 1976, I knew that

  the American author Robert Temple had offered some extraordinary

  answers to this question.40 His study focused on the traditional beliefs of

  the Dogon tribe of West Africa—beliefs in which the binary character of

  Sirius was explicitly described and in which the correct figure of fifty

  years was given for the period of the orbit of Sirius-B around Sirius-A.41

  Temple argued cogently that this high quality technical information had

  been passed down to the Dogon from the Ancient Egyptians through a

  process of cultural diffusion, and that it was to the Ancient Egyptians that

  we should look for an answer to the Sirius mystery. He also concluded

  that the Ancient Egyptians must have received the information from

  intelligent beings from the region of Sirius’.42

  Like Temple, I had begun to suspect that the more advanced and

  sophisticated elements of Egyptian science made sense only if they were

  understood as parts of an inheritance. Unlike Temple, I saw no urgent

  reason to attribute that inheritance to extra-terrestrials. To my mind the

  anomalous star knowledge the Heliopolitan priests had apparently

  possessed was more plausibly explained as the legacy of a lost human

  civilization which, against the current of history, had achieved a high level

  of technological advancement in remote antiquity. It seemed to me that

  the building of an instrument capable of detecting Sirius-B might not have

  been beyond the ingenuity of the unknown explorers and scientists who

  originated the remarkable maps of the prehistoric world di
scussed in Part

  I. Nor would it have daunted the unknown astronomers and measurers of

  time who bequeathed to the Ancient Maya a calendar of amazing

  complexity, a data-base about the movements of the heavenly bodies

  which could only have been the product of thousands of years of

  accurately recorded observations, and a facility with very large numbers

  that seemed more appropriate to the needs of a complex technological

  society than to those of a ‘primitive’ Central American kingdom.43

  Millions of years and the movements of the stars

  Very large numbers also appeared in the Pyramid Texts, in the symbolic

  ‘boat of millions of years’, for example, in which the Sun God was said to

  navigate the dark and airless wastes of interstellar space.44 Thoth, the

  god of wisdom (‘he who reckons in heaven, the counter of the stars, the

  40 The Sirius Mystery.

  41 Ibid., p. 3.

  42 Ibid., p. 1.

  43 See Part III.

  44 The Egyptian Book of the Dead, p. cxi.

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  measurer of the earth’) was specifically empowered to grant a life of

  millions of years to the deceased pharaoh.45 Osiris, ‘king of eternity, lord

  of everlasting’, was described as traversing millions of years in his life.’46

  And figures like ‘tens of millions of years’ (as well as the more mindboggling ‘one million of millions of years’)47 occurred often enough to

  suggest that some elements at least of Ancient Egyptian culture must

  have evolved for the convenience of scientifically minded people with

  more than passing insight into the immensity of time.

  Such a people would, of course, have required an excellent calendar—

  one that would have facilitated complex and accurate calculations. It was

  therefore not surprising to learn that the Ancient Egyptians, like the

  Maya, had possessed such a calendar and that their understanding of its

  workings seemed to have declined, rather than improved, as the ages

  went by.48 It was tempting to see this as the gradual erosion of a corpus

  of knowledge inherited an extremely long time ago, an impression

  supported by the Ancient Egyptians themselves, who made no secret of

  their belief that their calendar was a legacy which they had received ‘from

  the gods’.

  We consider the possible identity of these gods in more detail in the