The Sign and the Seal

by Graham Hancock

  After my April 1990 visit I was so impressed by the Great Pyramid that I spent several weeks researching its history. I discovered that it had been built around 2550 BC for Kufu (or Cheops), the second Pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty, and that it was also the single largest edifice ever constructed by man.166 The conventional belief amongst archaeologists was that it had been designed purely and simply as a tomb. This conjecture, however, struck me as being utterly incomprehensible: no mummy of any Pharaoh had ever been found there, only a poor and undecorated sarcophagus in the so-called King’s Chamber (a sarcophagus, by the way, that was lidless and completely empty when it was first brought to light by Caliph Al-Mamun, an Arab ruler of Egypt who broke in with a party of diggers in the ninth century AD.167)

  As I researched the subject further it became clear to me that the real purpose of the Great Pyramid was, in fact, a matter of considerable debate. On one side stood the most orthodox and prosaic scholars insisting that it was nothing more than a mausoleum. On the other side stood the pyramidologists – an apocalyptic tribe who pretended to find all manner of prophecies and signs in virtually every dimension of the immense structure.

  The lunacies of this latter group were perhaps best summarized by one US critic who pointed out that it is possible to marshal numbers to prove almost anything: ‘If a suitable unit of measurement is used, an exact equivalent to the distance to Timbuktu is certain to be found in the number of street lamps in Bond Street, or the specific gravity of mud, or the mean weight of adult goldfish.’168

  This, of course, was quite true. Nevertheless, I could see that there were certain surprising features to which the pyramidologists persistently drew attention which did seem unlikely to be accidental. For example, it was a fact that the latitude and longitude lines that intersected at the Great Pyramid (30 degrees north and 31 degrees east) crossed more dry land than any others. This put the edifice at the very centre of the habitable world.169 Likewise, it was a fact that when a north-facing quadrant (a cake-slice-shaped quarter circle) was drawn on a map with its axis at the pyramid then this quadrant exactly encapsulated the entire Nile Delta.170 Finally, it was a fact that all the pyramids at Giza were precisely aligned to the cardinal points – north, south, east and west.171 It was, I thought, extremely difficult to explain how this particular feat of surveying could have been achieved so long before the supposed date of the invention of the compass.

  What intrigued me most of all about the Great Pyramid, however, was simply its sheer size and scope. Occupying a ground area of 13.1 acres, I ascertained that the core masonry of the structure was composed of no less than 2.3 million blocks of limestone each weighing approximately 2.5 tonnes.172 Herodotus, whose informant was an Egyptian priest, claimed that gangs of 100,000 labourers built the edifice in 20 years (working only during the three-month agricultural lay-off season), and that the construction technique involved ‘levers made of short timbers’ which were used to lift the massive blocks from ground level.173 No researcher subsequently had been able to guess at exactly what these ‘levers’ might have been or how they could have been used. However, after taking account of the time required for all the site-clearing, quarrying, levelling and other works that would have had to be done, civil engineer P. Garde-Hanson of the Danish Engineering Institute calculated that 4,000 blocks would have had to be installed each day, at the rate of 6.67 blocks per minute, if the job were indeed to have been completed within 20 years. ‘Generally speaking,’ he concluded, ‘I believe it would demand the combined genius of a Cyrus, an Alexander the Great, and a Julius Caesar, with a Napoleon and Wellington thrown in for good measure, to organize the armies required for carrying out the work as assumed.’174

  I then learned that a team of Japanese engineers had recently tried to build a 35-feet-high replica of the Great Pyramid (rather smaller than the original, which was 481 feet 5 inches in height). The team started off by limiting itself strictly to techniques proved by archaeology to have been in use during the Fourth Dynasty. However, construction of the replica under these limitations turned out to be impossible and, in due course, modern earth-moving, quarrying and lifting machines were brought to the site. Still no worthwhile progress was made. Ultimately, with some embarrassment, the project had to be abandoned.175

  All in all, therefore, the Great Pyramid – with its many riddles and mysteries – suggested to me that the ancient Egyptians must have been much more than ‘technically accomplished primitives’ (as they had often been described), and that there must have existed amongst them a special kind of scientific knowledge. If so then it was entirely possible that the baleful powers of the Ark of the Covenant could have been the products of that science – in which Moses would most certainly have been a leading practitioner.

  48 The construction of the Ark of the Covenant at the foot of Mount Sinai.

  49 Glowing with fire and light the Ark is transported through the wilderness wrapped in thick cloths to protect its bearers from its unearthly powers.

  50 The Ark at the destruction of Jericho.

  51 King Uzziah smitten with leprosy after approaching the Ark (see Chapter Fifteen, ‘Hidden History’, this page).

  52 Nadab and Abihu, two of the sons of Aaron, are struck dead as they approach the Ark.

  53 After receiving the tablets of stone, which he later placed inside the Ark, Moses’ face was burnt and shone so terribly that ever afterwards he had to wear a veil.

  54 The Temple complex at Karnak, Egypt.

  55 Archaeologists at work on the site of the Jewish Temple on the island of Elphantine, upper Egypt.

  56 and 57. Above: this Ark-like chest, transported on two carrying poles, was recovered from the tomb of Tutankhamen. Below: the author examining a mysterious engraving on a fallen stele in Axum. The engraving bears an extraordinary resemblance to the Ark from Tutankhamen’s tomb and may be the earliest Axumite representation of the Ark of the Covenant. Tutankhamen reigned in Egypt approximately 100 years before Moses led the Exodus. It is therefore probable that the Hebrew prophet devised the Ark according to an Egyptian prototype of precisely the kind found in Tutankhamen’s tomb.

  58 Priests and deacons at prayer, Timkat, Axum.

  59 Timkat procession, Axum.

  60 The sanctuary of the Ark of the Covenant at Axum.

  61 Gebra Mikail, the Guardian of the Ark.

  Chapter 13

  Treasures of Darkness

  My research had convinced me of the possibility that the ancient Egyptians might have possessed some advanced but secret scientific knowledge which Moses could have applied to the design of the Ark of the Covenant.

  But where could such a body of knowledge have come from? Ancient Egypt itself, as I was very well aware, provided a simple – though supernatural – answer to this question. Every relevant surviving record that I had studied claimed unambiguously that it had been given to mankind by the moon-god Thoth, the lord and multiplier of time, the celestial scribe and invigilator of individual destinies, the inventor of writing and of all wisdom, and the patron of magic.1

  Frequently represented on temple and tomb walls as an ibis, or as an ibis-headed man, and more rarely as a baboon, Thoth was venerated throughout Egypt as a true lunar deity who in some manifestations was identical with the moon itself and in others was the guardian of the moon, charged with ensuring that it kept to its course across the night skies, waxing and waning, vanishing and reappearing, precisely as and when it should. It was in this capacity – as the divine regulative force responsible for all heavenly calculations and annotations – that Thoth measured time, dividing it into months (to the first of which he gave his own name).2

  His powers, however, were believed to have extended far beyond the mere calibration of the seasons. According to the pervasive and influential teachings of the priestly guild established at the sacred city of Hermopolis in Upper Egypt, Thoth was the universal demiurge who created the world through the sound of his voice alone, bringing it into being with the utterance
of a single word of power.3

  Regarded by the Egyptians as a deity who understood the mysteries of ‘all that is hidden under the heavenly vault’, Thoth was also believed to have had the ability to bestow wisdom on certain specially selected individuals. It was said that he had inscribed the rudiments of his secret knowledge on 36,535 scrolls and then hidden these scrolls about the earth intending that they should be sought for by future generations but found ‘only by the worthy’ – who were to use their discoveries for the benefit of mankind.4

  Later identified by the Greeks with their own god Hermes, Thoth in fact stood at the very centre of an enormous body of Egyptian traditions stretching back into the most distant and impenetrable past. No scholar, I learned, could honestly say how old this moon-god really was, or even make a guess at where and when his cult began. At the dawn of civilization in Egypt, Thoth was there. Furthermore, throughout the entire 3,000 or more years of the dynastic period, he was continuously revered for certain very specific qualities that he was said to possess and for his supposed contributions to human welfare. He was, for example, credited with being the inventor of drawing, of hieroglyphic writing and of all the sciences – specifically architecture, arithmetic, surveying, geometry, astronomy, medicine and surgery. He was also seen as the most powerful of sorcerers, endowed with nothing less than complete knowledge and wisdom. He was exalted as the author of the great and terrible book of magic that was regarded by the priests at Hermopolis as the source of their understanding of the occult. Moreover whole chapters of the famous Book of the Dead were attributed to him, as well as almost the entire corpus of closely guarded sacred literature. He was believed, in short, to possess a virtual monopoly on esoteric learning and was therefore called ‘the mysterious’ and ‘the unknown’.5

  The ancient Egyptians were quite convinced that their first rulers were gods. Not surprisingly, Thoth was one of these divine kings: his reign on earth – during which he passed on to mankind his greatest and most beneficial inventions – was said to have lasted 3,226 years.6 Before him the Egyptians believed that they had been ruled by another deity – Osiris, who was also closely associated with the moon (and with the numbers seven, fourteen and twenty-eight which relate to physical lunar cycles7). Although Osiris and Thoth looked quite different from one another in some of their manifestations, I was able to establish that they were similar or related in others (in certain archaic texts they were described as brothers8). A number of papyri and inscriptions went even further and portrayed them as being effectively the same entity, or at least as performing the same functions.

  They were most commonly associated in the celestial Judgment Hall where the souls of the dead came to be weighed in the Great Scales. Here Osiris – as judge and final arbiter – often seemed to be the superior of the two gods, while Thoth was a mere scribe who recorded the verdict. Many of the tableaux from the Book of the Dead, however, reversed this relationship, as did a large vignette of the Judgment Scene found amongst the Theban funerary papyri of the New Kingdom. This latter document portrayed Osiris sitting passively to one side while Thoth determined the verdict, and then recorded and pronounced it.9 In other words, not only were Thoth and Osiris both gods of the moon, gods of the dead (and perhaps brothers); both were also judges and law-makers.

  As my research continued I noted such similarities with interest, but failed, at first, to see their relevance to my own quest for the Ark of the Covenant. Then it occurred to me that there was one invariable link between the two deities which also tied them conceptually to Moses and to all his works: like him they were above all else civilizing heroes who bestowed the benefits of religion, law, social order and prosperity upon their followers.

  Thoth, it will be remembered, invented writing and science and brought these and many other wonders of enlightenment into the world in order to improve the lot of the Egyptian people. Likewise, Osiris was universally believed to have played a crucial role in the evolution and development of Egyptian society. When he began his rule on earth as divine monarch the country was barbaric, rude and uncultured and the Egyptians themselves were cannibals. When he ascended to Heaven, however, he left behind an advanced and sophisticated nation. His many contributions included teaching his people to cultivate the soil, to plant grain and barley, to grow vines, to worship the gods, and to abandon their previously savage customs. He also provided them with a code of laws.10

  Such stories, of course, could have been fabrications. In a speculative frame of mind, however, I found myself wondering whether there might not after all have been something more than pure fancy and legend behind the tradition that Egypt became a great nation because of the gifts of Thoth and Osiris. Was it not just possible, I conjectured, that the all-wise, all-knowing moon-god could have been a mythical version of the truth – a metaphor for some real individual or group of individuals who, in remotest antiquity, brought the benefits of civilization and science to a primitive land?

  The civilizers

  I might have dismissed this notion out of hand had I not learned shortly afterwards of the existence of a great mystery – a mystery to which no definitive solution had ever been proposed. Rather than developing slowly and painfully, as might have been expected, it seemed that the civilization of Egypt had emerged all at once and fully formed. Indeed, by all accounts, the period of transition from primitive to advanced society had been so short that it really made no kind of historical sense. Technological skills that should have taken hundreds or even thousands of years to evolve had appeared almost literally overnight, and apparently with no antecedents whatsoever.

  For example, remains from the pre-dynastic period dated to around 3600 BC showed no trace of writing. Then, quite suddenly and inexplicably, the hieroglyphs familiar from so many of the ruins of ancient Egypt began to appear and to do so, furthermore, in a complete and perfect state. Far from being mere pictures of objects or actions, this written language was complex and structured, with signs that represented sounds only and with a detailed system of numerical symbols. Even the very earliest hieroglyphs were already stylized and conventionalized; it was also clear that an advanced cursive script had come into common usage by the dawn of the First Dynasty.11

  What struck me as remarkable about all this was that there were absolutely no traces of evolution from simple to more sophisticated styles. The same was true of mathematics, medicine, astronomy and architecture, and also of Egypt’s amazingly rich and convoluted religio-mythological system (even such refined works as the Book of the Dead existed right at the start of the dynastic period.12)

  Unfortunately, there is not space here to present all or even a tiny part of the data which confirms the sheer suddenness with which Egyptian civilization emerged. By way of summary, however, I will quote the authoritative opinion of Professor Walter Emery, late Edwards Professor of Egyptology at the University of London:

  At a period approximately 3,400 years before Christ, a great change took place in Egypt, and the country passed rapidly from a state of neolithic culture with a complex tribal character to [one of] well-organized monarchy …

  At the same time the art of writing appears, monumental architecture and the arts and crafts develop to an astonishing degree, and all the evidence points to the existence of a luxurious civilization. All this was achieved within a comparatively short period of time, for there appears to be little or no background to these fundamental developments in writing and architecture.13

  One explanation, I realized, could simply have been that Egypt had received its sudden and tremendous cultural boost from some other known civilization of the ancient world – Sumer, on the Lower Euphrates in Mesopotamia, being the most likely contender. Moreover, despite many basic differences, I was able to establish that a variety of shared building and architectural styles14 did suggest a link between the two regions. None of these similarities, however, turned out be strong enough to allow me to infer that the connection had been in any way causal, with one society directly i
nfluencing the other. On the contrary, as Professor Emery put it:

  The impression we get is of an indirect connection, and perhaps the existence of a third party, whose influence spread to both the Euphrates and the Nile … Modern scholars have tended to ignore the possibility of immigration to both regions from some hypothetical and as yet undiscovered area. [However], a third party whose cultural achievements were passed on independently to Egypt and Mesopotamia would best explain the common features and fundamental differences between the two civilizations.15

  This theory, I felt, shed revealing light on the otherwise mysterious fact that the Egyptians and the Sumerian people of Mesopotamia worshipped virtually identical lunar deities who were amongst the very oldest in their respective pantheons.16 Exactly like Thoth, the Sumerian moon-god Sin was charged with measuring the passage of time (‘At the month’s beginning to shine on earth, thou shalt show two horns to mark six days. On the seventh day divide the crown in two. On the fourteenth day, turn thy full face.’17) Like Thoth, too, Sin was regarded as being all-knowing and all-wise. At the end of every month the other gods of the Sumerian pantheon came to consult him and he made decisions for them.18 Neither was I alone in my intuition that something more than mere chance might have underpinned these links between Sin and Thoth. According to the eminent Egyptologist Sir E. A. Wallis Budge:

  The similarity between the two … gods is too close to be accidental … It would be wrong to say that the Egyptians borrowed from the Sumerians or the Sumerians from the Egyptians, but it may be submitted that the literati of both peoples borrowed their theological systems from some common but exceedingly ancient source.19