The beauty of the system lies in its simplicity. The linear length (kush) was originally derived from a pendulum with a period of one Sumerian second but the same unit could be reasonably accurately established by any buyer or seller in the marketplace by simply stringing 360 barley grains together. A brilliant ready-reckoner.
We remembered what we had been told by the expert:
‘The barleycorns are more for calculational convenience rather than being considered as actual barleycorns.’
By now we had confidently concluded that this statement was entirely wrong because even modern barley seeds replicate every aspect of the Sumerian/Babylonian weights very accurately.
As previously stated, the use of grains, meaning barley and wheat grains, still exists within the imperial system of measurements. In this case the most rudimentary experiment will prove to anyone that the grains used in the imperial system have, during the passing of centuries, become divorced from genuine wheat or barley seeds. They have essentially become symbols. Experts in this field have doubtless come to believe, or were taught to believe, that the same is true in terms of Sumerian grains or barley seeds. We respectfully suggest that those involved in the study of Sumerian weights and measures disregard, for a while at least, what they have learned and try these experiments for themselves. We are confident they will come to the same conclusions.
1 We have deliberately chosen not to name the professor in question. He was very helpful to our research and it is not our intention to embarrass him.
APPENDIX 7
The Megalithic Principle and Freemasonry
By Christopher Knight
I joined Freemasonry back in 1976 for the simple reason that I wanted to know what these men where doing behind their closed doors and obscured windows. It did not take too long to realize that even the most senior practitioners had virtually no idea where their weird old rituals came from or what they meant. Between 1989 and 2003 I researched and co-authored four books with fellow Freemason Robert Lomas, starting with The Hiram Key which was a first tentative and speculative attempt to make sense of the oddball rituals of the many degrees of Freemasonry.
As our research became more and more focused, Robert and I found ourselves being taken further and further back in time to the Old Testament period and beyond. Here we found that science and religion had once been two sides of the same coin, with the study and worship of the planet Venus being connected with king-making and stone-building. From the Megalithic sites of Britain to the Temple of Jerusalem we found evidence of careful Venus observation that appeared to be associated with birth, death and resurrection.
The entire layout of a masonic temple is astronomical in design, with the three principal officers placed in the east, south and west to mark the rising Sun, noon and the setting Sun. There are two large pillars in the east that represent the freestanding pillars of Boaz and Jachin from the Old Testament that marked the north/south extremes of the solstice sunrises in the original temple, supposedly built for King Solomon.
A candidate for membership is made to represent a worker in stone and in the all-important third degree of Freemasonry he or she is ritually ‘killed’ and resurrected in near total darkness as the planet Venus symbolically rises in the east ahead of the Sun.
As mentioned in the closing chapter of this book the theme of building in stone being linked to astronomical events is central to these rituals, and God is referred to by Freemasons as ‘The Great Architect of the Universe’ or ‘The Grand Geometrician of the Universe’. This description of the Creator emphasizes the importance of the measurements of both heaven and Earth.
Although this book has nothing directly to do with Freemasonry, I believe that it finally ends my personal quest, for in solving some part of the riddle of the Megalithic Yard, Alan and I have also identified the inspiration that lies behind Freemasonry. Masonic ritual used today states that the real secret of the Order was lost 3,000 years ago and substituted secrets were created until such time as the original ones will be recovered. I believe that time has come.
The picture that I see, built up through researching and writing five books, is that more than 5,000 years ago some unknown group taught the inhabitants of western Europe how to create a measure that was taken directly from Venus, the ‘Queen of Heaven’. This divine unit, designated the Megalithic Yard by the man who recovered it, was the cornerstone of civilization. The power of ancient priesthood lay in their knowledge of working with stone, understanding astronomy and the ability to give their flock measurement!
An 18th-century masonic stamp depicting the central importance of measuring the world and its place in the universe. One pillar carries the Earth and the other the globe of the heavens. The instruments of measurement, the compass and tri-square, surround the letter ‘G’, signifying God, otherwise known as the ‘Grand Geometrician of the Universe’. Above are the Sun and the Moon, surrounded by the planets. In the centre is the ‘All-seeing Eye’ from which no-one can ever hide.
At some point, probably well before 2000 BC, cultures in the Mediterranean adopted the principles of the geometry used by the Megalithic builders of the British Isles. This knowledge extended from Malta to Crete and the city states of Phoenicia on the coast that we now know as Israel and the Lebanon. The Minoan culture adapted the principles to create their own unit based on this 366 geometry and the Phoenician knowledge passed to another Canaanite group of tribes, later knows as Jews, from the principal tribe of Judah.
Like the British Isles and Brittany, Malta and Israel have Megalithic structures scattered across them and the Old Testament gives detailed evidence of how the Canaanite rituals were adopted for king-making. In the Jewish state they were also associated with the ritualized slaughter of royal children to ensure God’s support for their reign, which apparently was allowed to run for just 40 years. This 40-year period mentioned throughout the Bible was unquestionably linked to the study of the cycle of Venus, which is so reliable that it forms a perfect calendar and clock.
By mechanisms fully described in The Book of Hiram the memory of these prehistoric secrets was transmitted by the remnants of the Order of the Knights Templar who took their rituals to Scotland at the beginning of the 14th century when their luck had run out and they were on the run from King Philip of France and Pope Clement V. This was one of the few safe places on the planet because the king of the Scots, Robert the Bruce, had recently been excommunicated from the Church.
As hereditary Grand Master Masons of Scotland, the once dominant St. Clair family had nurtured this ancient knowledge until such time as it was safe to create a new order that we know today as Freemasonry. The opportunity came in 1601 when a Scottish Freemason (James VI of Scotland) became King James I of England, but a little over a century later Freemasonry had to hide itself in London as war had broken out with the Jacobites of Scotland.
In 1715 a Jacobite army marched deep into England and English Freemasons began to walk away from their lodges (meeting places) for fear of being taken as supporters of the enemy. Two years later a small group of London lodges joined forces to try to save the Order from imminent extinction. They did so by forming a new Grand Lodge and by denying all knowledge of where Freemasonry had come from. This mass amnesia worked and Freemasonry began to grow into a major international organization with the United Grand Lodge of England still claiming original authority.
Today, the official line is still, ‘We don’t know anything before 1717’, and hundreds of thousands of men (and women) around the world play out prehistoric rituals in their astronomically-designed temples under the light of the planet Venus, as they say their prayers to the Grand Geometrician of the Universe.
Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and others come together to share substituted secrets connected with the working of stones, the skills of measurement and a shared awe of the workings of the Great Architect of the Universe.
But Freemasonry is dying. Dying at the very moment that we are starting to understand th
e nature of the original secrets: the units of measurement that truly describe both heaven and Earth.
First published in hardback in the UK and USA 2004 by Watkins Publishing, Sixth Floor, Castle House, 75–76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QH
First published in paperback 2005 This edition published 2010
Text Copyright © Christopher Knight and Alan Butler 2004, 2005, 2010
Christopher Knight and Alan Butler have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of this work.
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Civilization One: The World is Not as You Thought it Was Page 22