Magicians of the Gods

by Graham Hancock

  15. See, for example, Hurriyet Daily News, 26 July 2012: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/harran-rises-once-more-with-dig.aspx?pageID=238&nID=26318; and 4 September 2012: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/ancient-bath-remains-found-in-harran.aspx?pageID=238&nID=71288&NewsCatID=375; and: 7 December 2012: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/roman-traces-found-in-harran.aspx?pageID=238&nID=36271&NewsCatID=375.

  16. Kay Prag, “The 1959 Deep Sounding at Harran in Turkey,” op. cit., pp. 71–2.

  17. Seton Lloyd and William Brice, “Harran,” op. cit., p. 110.

  18. City of Civilizations, Harran, T.C. Harran Kaymakamligi (official publication of the Government of Harran), p. 5.

  19. Tamara Green, The City of the Moon God, op. cit., p. 183–4. See also Sir Walter Scott (Ed. and Trans.), Hermetica: The Ancient Greek and Latin Writings which contain Religious or Philosophic Teachings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, Shambhala, Boston, 1993, p. 101. The description of Enoch as “the seventh from Adam” is found in Jude 1:14. And see Genesis 5: 1–32, “The Book of the Generations of Adam.” The ten patriarchs listed are Adam, Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, Methusaleh, Lamech, Noah (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+5&version=KJV). There is frequently confusion between Enos, the third patriarch, and Enoch the seventh patriarch. However no special intelligence, skills or qualities are attributed to Enos whereas, by contrast, Enoch “walked with God” (Genesis 5: 24) and mysteriously vanished from the Earth “for God took him” (Genesis 5: 24). The Book of Hebrews elaborates (Hebrews 11: 5): “By faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death, ‘and was not found, because God had taken him’; for before he was taken he had this testimony, that he pleased God.”

  20. Genesis 5: 19–30.

  21. E.g. see Tamara Green, The City of the Moon God, op. cit., p. 170.

  22. Cited in ibid., p. 137.

  23. Cited in ibid., p. 138.

  24. Selim Hassan, Excavations at Giza, Vol. VI, Part I, op. cit., p. 45. It is noteworthy that while much learned speculation is reported by Tamara Green in her authoritative monograph, The City of the Moon God, op. cit., pp. 106, 117, etc, concerning the origin of the name Sabian, she seems unaware of the elegant solution proposed by Selim Hassan.

  25. Genesis 5: 24. See also Hebrews 11: 5: “By faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death, ‘and was not found, because God had taken him’; for before he was taken he had this testimony, that he pleased God.”

  26. Around the third to second centuries BC. See R.H. Charles (Trans.), The Book of Enoch, SPCK, London, 1987, Introduction, p. xiii.

  27. I write extensively about James Bruce, and about his travels and adventures in Ethiopia, in my book The Sign and the Seal: A Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant, William Heinemann Ltd., London, 1992.

  28. H.F.D. Sparks (Ed.), The Apocryphal Old Testament, Clarendon Paperbacks, Oxford, 1989, p. 170: “Among the Ethiopia manuscripts that Bruce brought back were three containing what is now known as ‘1 Enoch’ or ‘Ethiopian Enoch.’ One of these manuscripts (now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford) contained ‘1 Enoch’ only; the second (also in the Bodleian) contained ‘1 Enoch’ followed by Job, Isaiah, ‘The Twelve,’ Proverbs, Wisdom, Ecclesiastes, Canticles and Daniel; the third (now in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris) is a transcript of the second.”

  29. Kenneth Mackenzie, The Royal Masonic Cyclopedia, first published 1877, Aquarian Press reprint edition, 1987, p. 201.

  30. Ibid.

  31. Ibid., p. 202.

  32. Ibid., e.g. pp. 40, 114, etc.

  33. R.H. Charles (Trans.), The Book of Enoch, op. cit., p. 37.

  34. Ibid.

  35. Ibid.

  36. Ibid., p. 31.

  37. Ibid., pp. 35, 37, 89, etc.

  38. Ibid., pp. 35–6.

  39. Ibid., p. 39.

  40. Ibid., p. 40.

  41. Ibid., p. 39.

  42. Ibid.

  43. Ibid.

  44. Ibid., pp. 34–5.

  45. Ibid., p. 46.

  46. Ibid.

  47. Ibid., p. 40.

  48. Ibid.

  49. Graham Hancock, Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind, Century, London, 2005.

  50. It is notable in later chapters of the Book of Enoch, after the bad Watchers have been admonished and received their punishment, that the good Watchers reveal to Enoch a great many of the secrets, notably astronomical lore, that the bad Watchers were condemned for revealing. See, for example, R.H. Charles (Trans.), The Book of Enoch, op. cit., Chapter 41, p. 60ff, Chapter 71, p. 93ff, Chapter 72, p. 95ff, etc. Perhaps it is because he comes into possession of this restricted knowledge himself that Enoch ultimately vanishes from the earth—“taken away by God” as the Bible has it in Genesis 5: 24.

  51. R.H. Charles (Trans.), The Book of Enoch, op. cit., p. 35.

  52. E.g. see closing paragraphs of this article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2513866/A-GI-Christmas-How-American-soldiers-bearing-gifts-extra-rations-proved-festive-hit-British-families-WWII.html.

  53. R.H. Charles (Trans.), The Book of Enoch, op. cit., p. 37.

  54. Ibid., p. 34.

  55. Ibid., p. 36.

  56. Ibid., p. 35.

  57. Ibid.

  58. Ibid., p. 36.

  59. Ibid., p. 37.

  60. Ibid.

  61. Ibid.

  62. Genesis 6: 4, King James Version.

  63. Genesis 6: 4, New International Version.

  64. Genesis 6: 5–8, New International Version. The King James Version reads as follows: “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.”

  65. Zecharia Sitchin, The 12th Planet, Harper, New York, 1976, reprinted 2007, p. 171. To be fair, Sitchin is not alone in making this mistake. A number of genuine Biblical scholars make it also. Writing in The Jewish Quarterly Review in 1985, for example, Jonas C. Greenfield describes the Nephilim as “fallen angels” (Jonas C. Greenfield, “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom,” The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, Vol. 26, No. 1, p. 19). Likewise in a paper in the Journal of Biblical Literature published in 1987, Ronald S. Hendel tells us: “Nephilim literally means ‘the fallen ones’ … It is a … passive adjectival formation of the root npl (‘to fall’) … Similar uses of the verb napal and its derivatives are found elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible” (Ronald S. Hendel, “Of Demigods and the Deluge: Toward an Interpretation of Genesis 6: 1–4,” Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 106, No. 1, March 1987, p. 22).

  66. http://www.sitchiniswrong.com/nephilim/nephilim.htm.

  67. Numbers 13: 32–3.

  68. http://www.sitchiniswrong.com/nephilim/nephilim.htm.

  69. Ibid.

  70. Zecharia Sitchin, The 12th Planet, op. cit., p. 257.

  71. Ibid., p. 172.

  72. Ibid., p. 267.

  73. R.H. Charles (Trans.), The Book of Enoch, op. cit.

  74. Ibid., for example, 7: 2 and 7: 4, p. 35; 9:9, p. 36; 15:3, p. 42.

  75. Michael A. Knibb (Ed.), The Book of Enoch: A New Edition in the Light of the Aramaic Dead Sea Fragments, Oxford University Press, 1979.

  76. George W.E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKamm, 1 Enoch: The Hermenia Translation, Augusburg Fortress, Minneapolis, 2012.

  77. R.H. Charles (Trans.), The Book of Enoch, op. cit., p. 36.

  78. http://clavisjournal.com/the-shadow-of-harran/.

  79. Luke 3: 36.

  80. R.H. Charles, The Book of Jubilees, SPCK, London, 1927, pp. 71–2.

  81. http://jqjacobs.net/blog/gobekli_tepe.html.

  82. As demonstrated in Peter Tompkins, Secrets of the Great Pyram
id, Harper & Row, New York and London, 1978, pp. 101–3.

  83. Einar Palsson, The Sacred Triangle of Pagan Iceland, Mimir, Reykjavik, 1993, p. 32.

  84. Ibid.

  85. Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, Hamlet’s Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and its Transmission through Myth, Nonpareil Books, 1977, reprinted 1999, p. 132.

  86. The detailed workings can be found in Graham Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods, William Heinemann Ltd., London, 1995, pp. 434–6.

  87. Tamara Green, The City of the Moon God, op. cit., p. 19.

  88. http://jqjacobs.net/blog/gobekli_tepe.html.

  89. Ibid.

  90. Ibid.

  91. Ibid.

  92. AD 850 to AD 929—http://www-history.mcs.st.-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Al-Battani.html.

  93. Nicholas Kollerstrom, “The Star Temples of Harran,” in Annabella Kitson (Ed.), History and Astrology: Clio and Urania Confer, Unwin, London, 1989, p. 57.

  94. http://www-history.mcs.st.-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Al-Battani.html.

  95. http://www.physics.csbsju.edu/astro/newcomb/II.6.html.

  96. http://www-history.mcs.st.-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Al-Battani.html.

  97. Ibid. citing Y. Maeyama, “Determination of the Sun’s orbit (Hipparchus, Ptolemy, al-Battani, Copernicus, Tycho Brahe),” Arch. Hist. Exact Sci. 53 (1) (1998), 1–49.

  98. http://www-history.mcs.st.-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Al-Battani.html.

  99. Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography (2008), cited in http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-2830900300.html.

  100. Cited in Sir Walter Scott, Hermetica, op. cit., p. 105.

  101. Tamara Green, The City of the Moon God, op. cit., p. 114.

  102. Ibid., p. 12.

  103. Ibid., p. 114.

  104. Sir Walter Scott, Hermetica, op. cit., pp. 97–9.

  105. I describe Ma’mun’s exploration of the Great Pyramid at some length in Fingerprints of the Gods, op. cit., pp. 296–9.

  106. Peter Tompkins, Secrets of the Great Pyramid, op. cit., p. 5.

  107. Ibid., p. 6.

  108. For possible Mandean connections with the Sabians see, for example, Tamara Green, The Temple of the Moon God, op. cit., pp. 103, 119, 194–5, 205ff.

  109. “The fact that the Harranian Pagans, when required to name a Scripture, chose the Hermetica, proves that in AD 830 a collection of Hermetica was known and read in Syria … It may be inferred from the occurrence of the names Tat, Asclepius, and Ammon in conjunction with that of Hermes in Arabic writings, that these Harranians had in their possession Hermetic libelli in which the pupils were so named; and among these were presumably some that are now lost, as well as those which have come down to us. In the ninth century, Hermetic documents were most likely known to some scholars at Harran in the original Greek; but the Hermetica had probably been translated into Syriac long before that time, and were doubtless usually read in Syriac by Harranians…” Walter Scott, Hermetica, op. cit., pp. 101–2.

  110. Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1964, reprinted 1979, pp. 12–13.

  111. Ibid., p. 13.

  112. This is the primary thesis of my book Talisman, co-authored with Robert Bauval. See Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval, Talisman: Sacred Cities, Secret Faith, Penguin Books, London, 2005.

  113. Amar Annus, “On the Origin of Watchers: A Comparative Study of the Antediluvian Wisdom in Mesopotamian and Jewish Traditions,” Journal for the Study of Pseudoepigrapha, Vol. 19. 4 (2010), p. 283.

  114. Ibid., p. 291.

  115. Ibid., p. 280–1.

  116. See, for example, ibid., pp. 277–320, and Anne Draffkorn Kilmer, “The Mesopotamian Counterparts of the Biblical Nepilim,” in E.W. Conrad and E.G. Newing (Eds.), Perspectives on Language and Text: Essays and Poems in Honor of Francis I Andersen’s Sixtieth Birthday July 28, 1985, Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, IN, pp. 39–44. Likewise there are references to the Watchers in the Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. See for example, R.O. Faulkner (Ed. and Trans.) The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, Oxford University Press, 1969, reprinted by Aris & Phillips Ltd. See, for example Utterance 373, p. 124 and Utterance 667A, p. 281.

  117. Klaus Schmidt, Göbekli Tepe: A Stone Age Sanctuary in South-Eastern Anatolia, Ex Orient e.V., Berlin, Germany, 2012, p. 191.

  Chapter 17

  1. Graham Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods, William Heinemann Ltd., London, 1995, p. 51.

  2. Graham Hancock and Santha Faiia, Heaven’s Mirror, Michael Joseph, London, 1998, p. 288.

  3. J. Alden Mason, The Ancient Civilizations of Peru, Penguin Books, London, 1991, p. 163: “It was formerly believed that the megalithic masonry, employing immense stones of irregular size and shape was pre-Inca in age … while masonry of stone blocks of relatively uniform size, laid in courses, was typical of the Inca. But it is now generally agreed that both types were built by the Inca, and that all the great masonry edifices and structures in the Cuzco region, including Sacsayhuaman, Ollantaytambo, Machu Picchu and Cuzco.”

  4. John Hemming, The Conquest of the Incas, Macmillan London Ltd., 1993, p. 191.

  5. J. Alden Mason, The Ancient Civilizations of Peru, Penguin Books, London, 1991, p. 163. See also http://www.roughguides.com/destinations/south-america/peru/Cuzco-and-around/inca-sites-near-Cuzco/sacsayhuaman/ and http://www.andeantravelweb.com/peru/destinations/Cuzco/sacsay huaman.html and http://www.world-mysteries.com/mpl_9.htm and http://gosouthamerica.about.com/od/perucuzco/ig/Sacsayhuaman-/Sacsayhuaman-Rock-Wall.htm#step-heading.

  6. For full details see Jesus Gamarra’s documentary The Cosmogony of the Three Worlds, http://www.ancient-mysteries-explained.com/archaeology-proofs.html#dvd.

  7. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-31664162.

  8. A. Kruzer, “The Question of the Material Origin of the Walls of the Saqsaywaman Fortress,” http://isida-project.ucoz.com/publ/my_articles/peru/the_question_of_the_material_origin_of_the_saqsaywaman_.fortress/2-1-0-2.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Sir Clements Markham, The Incas of Peru, Smith, Elder & Co., London, 1911, p. 33.

  12. Garcilaso de La Vega, The Royal Commentaries of the Inca Garcilaso de La Vega, 1539–1616, The Orion Press, 1961, pp. 233, 235.

  13. Graham Hancock and Santha Faiia, Heaven’s Mirror, op. cit., pp. 285–6.

  14. See Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval, Keeper of Genesis, William Heinemann Ltd., London, 1996.

  15. Peter Frost, Exploring Cuzco, Nuevas Imagenes, Lima, Peru, 1989, p. 63.

  16. William Sullivan, The Secret of the Incas, Crown, New York, 1996, p. 118.

  17. Ibid., p. 119.

  18. Garcilaso de La Vega, The Royal Commentaries, op. cit., pp. 4–5.

  19. Ibid., pp. 5–6.

  20. The cave is known locally as Naupa Iglesia. In Quechua, the Inca language, Naupa means ancient while Iglesia is Spanish for church—thus “ancient church.” Of course there is nothing of a church about it, but that it is an ancient sacred place, an ancient shrine, is not in doubt. See here for a mainstream interpretation: http://elcomercio.pe/peru/lima/naupa-iglesia-merece-revalorizado-segun-especialistas-noticia-1519677.

  21. http://casadelcorregidor.pe/colaboraciones/_biblio_Tantalean.php.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Bolivia Detects Buries Pyramid at Tiahuanaco Site, http://barbaricum.net/news/2334689254286557840 and http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/entertainment/2015/03/27/bolivia-detects-buried-pyramid-at-tiahuanaco-site/.

  24. Constantino Manuel Torres, David B. Repke, Anadanenthera: Visionary Plant of Ancient South America, The Haworth Herbal Press, New York, London, 2006, p. 35 ff.

  25. See, for example, Martti Pärssinen, Denise Schaan and Alceu Ranzi (2009). “Pre-Columbian geometric earthworks in the upper Purús: a complex society in western Amazonia,” Antiquity, 83, pp. 1084–95; and Ranzi et al, “Internet software programs aid in search for Amazonian geoglyphs,” Eos, Vol. 88, No. 2
1, 22 May 2007, pp. 226, 229; and Carson et al, “Environmental impact of geometric earthwork construction in pre-Columbian Amazonia,” PNAS, 22 July 2014, Vol. 111, No. 29, pp. 10497–502; and “Ancient Earthmovers of the Amazon,” Science, Vol. 321, 29 August 2008, p. 1148ff; and Denise Schaan et al, “New radiometric dates (2000–700 BP) for pre-Columbian earthworks in western Amazonia, Brazil, Journal of Field Archaeology, 2012, Vol. 37, No. 2, p. 132ff; and Anjos et al, “A New Diagnostic Horizon in WRB for Anthropic Topsoils in Amazonian Dark Earths (South America),” The 20th World Congress of Soil Science, 8–13 June 2014, Jeju, Korea; Michael Heckenberger and Eduardo Goes Neves, “Amazonian Archaeology,” The Annual Review of Antiquity, 2009, 38, pp. 251–66; and Heckenberger et al, “Pre-Columbian Urbanism, Anthropogenic Landscapes, and the Future of the Amazon,” Science, Vol. 321, 29 August 2008, p. 1214ff.

  26. Garcilaso de La Vega, The Royal Commentaries, op. cit., pp. 132–3.

  27. Ibid., p. 384.

  Chapter 18

  1. Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, Princeton University Press, p. 16.

  2. Micrea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, Harcourt Inc., New York, 1987, p. 44.

  3. Lewis Ginzberg (Ed.), The Legends of the Jews, Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, 1988, Vol. I, p. 12.

  4. Cited in Micrea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, op. cit., p. 44.

  5. Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, Hamlet’s Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and its Transmission through Myth, Nonpareil Books, 1977, reprinted 1999, p. 57.

  6. New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, Paul Hamlyn, London, 1989, p. 91.

  7. Kenneth McCleish, Myth, Bloomsbury, London, 1996, p. 684.

  8. Thor Heyerdahl, Easter Island: The Mystery Solved, Souvenir Press, London, p. 77; Thor Heyerdahl, The Kon-Tiki Expedition, Unwin Paperbacks, London, 1982, pp. 140, 142; Father Sebastian Englert, Island at the Center of the World, Robert Hale and Company, London, 1972, p. 30; Francis Maziere, Mysteries of Easter Island, Tower Publications, New York, 1968, p. 16.