The Egypt Code Read online

  3. Pyramids were given ‘star’ names or names implicit of stars (‘The Pyramid of Djedefre is a sehedu star’; ‘Nebka is a star’; ‘Horus is the Star at the Head of the Sky’ and so forth).

  4. Pyramids had ceilings of chambers decorated with five-pointed stars (viz. the Step Pyramid and 5th and 6th dynasty pyramids at Saqqara).

  5. Pyramids contained writings carved on the inside walls that spoke of a star-religion and the destiny of king in a starry world called Duat which contained Orion and other constellations (viz. the 5th and 6th dynasty pyramids at Saqqara).

  It is therefore somewhat odd, not to say perverse, that with so many ‘stellar’ connections there has not been a single Egyptologist who was compelled enough to consider a stellar ‘function’ for the pyramids. And because this important matter was left unbridled for so long, it was not surprising that untrained researchers, dilatants, cranks and charlatans dished out theories that ranged from the derisory to the completely insane. Pyramids were built by the lost civilisation of Atlantis; they were built by a lost technology using levitation; they were power plants; they were electromagnetic receivers for inter-stellar communications; they were built by aliens; they were built by the Jews while in captivity in Egypt; the Great Pyramid was designed to contain detailed information of world history and future in every inch of its plan; it was a Bible in stone. So when I burst on the scene in 1994 with my first book, The Orion Mystery, showing that the pattern of the three Giza pyramids and their relative position to the Nile mirrored the pattern of the three stars of Orion’s belt and their relative position to the Milky Way, the subject was so much soiled and degraded that any new theory that mentioned the ‘stars’ or ‘astronomy’ was immediately met with a barrage of academic indifference (at best) or vociferous opposition. The reaction was even more violent because my theory had received the - albeit cautious - backing by one of the world’s most eminent and most respected Egyptologist, Sir I.E.S. Edwards, who had gallantly and boldly stuck his neck out on my behalf by appearing on a BBC documentary in support of some of my ideas. This brought him the wrath of his peers but it nonetheless twisted their arms and forced some to grudgingly review my theory. But in the years that followed, and especially after Sir Edwards’s death in 1996, I was derided and pilloried by a cabal of Egyptologists and other ‘experts’ seemingly determined to ‘debunk’ the Orion Correlation Theory, as my hypothesis was now being called (see appendix 3). All this academic onslaught was most daunting and distressing, but I held firm my ground for I knew that I had not only generated massive interest and support in the general public and the international media, but that the theory I had proposed neatly dovetailed into the context of Egypt’s Pyramid Age and provided the ‘missing link’ to an otherwise baffling mystery. Even the most entrenched sceptic could not easily dismiss the Orion-Giza Correlation as ‘coincidence’.

  Fifteen long years have now passed since the publication of The Orion Mystery. In the meanwhile the book has been published in more than twenty languages and there has been a dozens of television documentaries fully or partially-based on the Orion Correlation Theory (viz. Britain’s BBC 2 and Channel 4; America’s ABC, NBC and FOX TV, Europe and America’s Discovery Channel and History Channel; Italy’s RAI 3; Germany’s ZDF and ARD; France’s ARTE and TF3; South Africa’s SABC and M-net TV; Holland’s AVRO TV; Australia’s Channel 7; Egypt’s NILE-TV and many other channels in the Far East and Middle East). Forthcoming are two more documentaries, one with National Geographic Television titled Unsolved Mysteries of the Pyramids1 (where my theory will be critically reviewed), and another made for Italy’s RAI 2 and Holland’s AVRO fully based on The Egypt Code.2 Slowly but surely the Orion Correlation Theory has crept, like a thief in the night, into mainstream Egyptology and the new discipline of Archaeoastronomy. And even though it is given much lip and criticism, it is very obvious that it has touched the proverbial nerve of academia. To be fair, not all academics were prone to dismiss The Orion Mystery. Some very eminent Egyptologists such as Dr. Jaromir Malek of the Griffith Institute and the American Egyptologist Dr. Ed Meltzer, kept an open mind in the same fashion as the late Sir Edwards had done. More refreshingly, the theory received cautious support from the astronomical community, particularly from Professor Archie Roy of Glasgow University, Professor Mary Brück of Edinburgh University, Professor Giulo Magli of Milan Politecnico, Professor Percy Seymour of Plymouth University and Professor Chandra Wikramasingh of Cardiff University. And even though these high ranking astronomers maintained a healthy scepticism, they nonetheless found the theory intriguing and deserving of careful consideration and further research. Also in the course of the years a crack began to appear in the Egyptological academic armour when Dr. Joromir Malek (who had reviewed my theory in 1994 in the Oxford journal Discussions in Egyptology3) declared himself favourable to the possibility that the apparent illogical scattering of pyramids in the Memphite necropolis (a 40 kilometre long desert strip west of the Nile near Cairo) may, after all, have had more to do with ‘religious, astronomical or similar’ considerations than with purely practical considerations such as the topography and geology of the land. Similar views began to be heard in Egyptology, especially by the American Egyptologist Mark Lehner, the Czech Egyptologist Miroslav Verner and the British Egyptologist David Jeffreys (see chapter 3). It was, however, the archaeoastronomer Anthony Aveni, a professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University, who, in my view, would come the closest in providing an overall picture of what may have been in the minds of the ancient architects who designed and planned such mysterious structures monuments (not only in Egypt but in other parts of the ancient world) when he wrote that,In order to understand what ancient people thought about the world around them, we must begin by witnessing phenomena through their eyes. A knowledge of each particular culture is necessary, but learning what the sky contains and how each entity moves is also indispensable … strange but true: whole cities, kingdom and empires were founded based on observations and interpretations of natural events that pass undetected under our noses and above our heads.4

  Dr. Aveni was referring to the Mayan and Inca civilisations when he made the above statement. But may as well have been talking about Egypt’s Old Kingdom, for I am now even more convinced that such a statement holds true for the sacred cities, pyramids and temples built by the ancient Egyptians all along the 1,000 kilometre long Nile Valley during their three-thousand years of civilisation. And this, in a nutshell, is what I set out to prove The Egypt Code.

  By the year 2000 I was ready to put the finding of my investigation into a book form. To this end I presented a synopsis to my editor at Random House in London, who promptly commissioned the project. By early 2004 I had a first draft ready. The final draft, however, was completed in Egypt. In February 2005 I rented a fully furnished apartment with a direct view of the Giza pyramids. Being here gave me the unique opportunity to refine the book with a hands-on approach to the pyramids in Lower Egypt and the great temples of Upper Egypt and to verify and test the various ideas of my thesis. Imbued with the enchantment and magic of these ancient sites I have, I believe, succeeded in more ways than one to bring the sky-ground correlation theory I started two decades ago to its natural conclusion. In The Egypt Code I have made use of primary sources whenever available, and relied only on scholarly research published in peer-reviewed journals or in textbooks by renowned Egyptologists and other scholars. My readers should expect no less from me. Culling my data from all these sources I have come to this conclusion: the ancient Egyptian theocracy was regulated by a Cosmic Order called Maat which was none other than the order of the sky viz. the observable, precise and predictable cycles of the sun, the moon and the stars. I have also concluded that this Cosmic Order was fervently believed to influence the material world below, especially the all-important annual flooding of the Nile, for nothing more fascinated, awed and frightened the ancient Egyptians than the Nile’s flood which began in late June and ended in late September.
This was the annual miracle that rejuvenated the crops and all other life in Egypt. But too low a rise in the waters in June would bring famine and pestilence. This double-edged sword that hung perpetually over Egypt compelled the Nile dwellers to seek magical means that would ensure a good flood. Early in their development they came to observe that the stars of Orion and Sirius would disappear underneath the western horizon after sunset in late March and remain for a protracted period (about three months) in the ‘underworld’ before re-emerging in the eastern horizon at dawn in late June just when the waters of the Nile began to rise. During this crucial period of the stars’ sojourn in the ‘underworld’ the astronomer-priests also noted that the sun travelled from a point on the ecliptic just below the bright cluster of the Pleiades (marking the vernal point) to a spot further along the ecliptic just below the chest of the celestial lion, Leo (marking the summer solstice), that bracketed the constellation of Orion and Sirius. The idea began to enter their minds that when the sun-god journeyed through that special part of the sky - the Duat as it was called - he performed a magical ritual-a sort of ‘station of the cross’ - that would bring about the ‘rebirth’ of the stars as well as the ‘rebirth’ of the Nile when, in late June, the star Sirius would re-appear at dawn in the eastern horizon. This even also happened to fall on the day of the summer solstice, when the sun would reach its maximal northerly declination, and was for good reason taken as New Year’s Day and called, among other things, the ‘Birth of Ra’, the sun-god. A mythology and sky-religion developed around this cosmic and Nilotic theme and, more intriguingly, an ambitious plan was gradually hatched around 2800 BC to ‘bring down’, in the literal sense, the Cosmic Order so that the pharaoh, the son of Ra on earth, could undertake the same magical journey in an earthly Duat and thus secure for Egypt a ‘good’ flood. To coin the Hermetic dictum: as above so below. To this end a massive pangenerational project was put into action that would involve building clusters of ‘star’-pyramids at predetermined sites to represent Orion and the Pleiades, as well as the building of great ‘sun’-temples set on both sides of the Nile to define the part of the ecliptic along which the sun-god travelled through the Duat from vernal equinox to summer solstice set on both sides of the Milky Way. But my new theory does not stop here, for I also demonstrated in The Egypt Code that the slow cyclical changes witnessed in the sky landscape caused by precession and the peculiarity of the Egyptian civil calendar over the 3,000 years of the pharaonic civilisation are reflected in the changes witnessed on the ground all along the 1,000 kilometre long Nile Valley in the evolution of temples throughout the same 3,000 years. In other words The Egypt Code proposes, no less, to prove that there existed a sort of ‘cosmic Egypt’ ghosted in the geography of the Nile Valley stretching from north to south that was once literally regulated and administered by astronomer-priests headed by a sun-king that lasted for over three millennia and can still be discerned in the layout of pyramids and temples that remain today.

  The Egypt Code, contrary to what Egyptologists will surely be quick to claim, is not a new-age book that regurgitates wild speculations and theories that cannot be verified or tested. My thesis is entirely verifiable, testable and ultimately falsifiable if need be. Indeed, I happily welcome Egyptologists and other scholars in the field of Egyptian archaeology and history to step up and do so. Let them not be fooled or be put off by the easy-to-read style of presentation and concise arguments. This is for the benefit of the general public who, when all is said and done, are the true judge and jury of all new ideas.

  In closing I would like to add that while I was writing the last version of The Egypt Code in Cairo I would often take short breaks from my long hours at my computer and go up on the roof of our building to look at the pyramids. From that vantage point I could have an unobstructed view of the Giza pyramids hardly a kilometre away. It sometimes felt as if I could reach out and touch them. But my gaze would always wander beyond Giza to a place on the south horizon where I could see the outline of the first pyramid built in Egypt, the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, with its distinctive staggered profile gleaming through the thin veil of haze. The quest for The Egypt Code began there while casually standing one day next to the seated effigy of the pyramid-king who built this strange monument and who, very mysteriously, was made to stare eternally at the circumpolar stars. So I now would invite you to join me at that same spot to re-trace my quest for the ‘Holy Grail’ of the pyramid and temple builders of ancient Egypt.

  Please come and meet the pharaoh who began all this …

  Postscript

  In the last few years dramatic new discoveries have given much credence to the theory that the pharaonic civilisation is the product of a much older culture that brought into the Nile Valley its vast knowledge of astronomy and megalithic building. The finding of the Nabta Playa in southern Egypt and, more recently, the discovery of hieroglyphic inscriptions near the Oasis of Dakhla and at Gebel Uwaynat have provided not only proof of this ‘pre-pharaonic’ culture but also that the pharaohs themselves were aware of such a very ancient origin. The most dramatic result of these new findings and discoveries, however, is that this mysterious prehistoric culture was ethnically black Africans, of the tall, slender type found today among the Maasai of Kenya and the Dinka of Sudan. The certainty of this is provided by the wonderful petroglyphs and drawings that these people have left us at Gilf Kebir and Gebel Uwaynat in the extreme southwest corner of Egypt. The hieroglyphic inscriptions recently found by Mahmoud Marai and Mark Borda at Gebel Uwaynat also open up the real possibility that the prehistoric black people in that area belonged to the almost legendary Kingdom of Yam, a sort of African Shangri-la previously thought to be in northern Sudan but now, with Marai and Borda’s discovery, places this affluent black kingdom in the southwest corner of Egypt, straddling Sudan and Libya. In November 2007 I undertook an expedition to Nabta Playa to examine for myself the enigmatic astronomical complex that has been dated to the 6th millennium BC. Also in April 2008 I undertook an expedition to Gilf Kebir and Gebel Uwaynat to see the newly found inscriptions and also look for evidence of astronomical activity in that poorly explored area. I have thus included at the end of this book two new appendices that give the accounts of these expeditions and also outline the findings and discoveries at Nabta Playa and Gebel Uwaynat.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Star at the Head of the Sky

  God who rules alone, the Fabricator of the universe, bestowed on the earth for a little time your great father Osiris and the great goddess Isis . . . It was they that established upon earth rites of worship which correspond exactly to the holy powers of heaven. It was they that consecrated the temples . . .

  Walter Scott (ed.) Hermetica

  And God arranged the Zodiac in accord with the cycles of nature . . . (and) . . . devised a secret engine (viz. the system of the stars) linked to unerring and inevitable fate, to which all things in men’s lives, from their birth to their final destruction shall of necessity be brought into subjection; and all other things on earth likewise shall be controlled by the working of this engine . . .

  Walter Scott (ed.) Hermetica

  Saqqara

  All discoveries begin with the question why. Indeed, the urge to know why is what distinguishes us from other creatures on this planet and, more importantly, it is the root of all knowledge. To ask why triggers the intellectual process and launches an investigation which, if all goes well, will lead to a breakthrough. A bathtub overflows, the sun rises and sets, an apple falls, two imaginary bicycles collide; some gifted people asked why and the next thing you know man has walked on the moon. Asking why will, in fact, take us beyond the moon, beyond our solar system, beyond our galaxy, beyond our wildest dreams and, who knows, perhaps one day to God. My own ‘why’ and the investigation that I launched because of it began 25 years ago. And my falling apple was, quite literally, in the sky, with its counterpart in the desert west of the city of Cairo in Egypt. In 1994 I presented the discovery (known as th
e Orion Correlation Theory or OCT) that was reaped from this investigation in a book that became an international bestseller.1 It was not, however, to be the end of this strange intellectual adventure. Another apple still hung precariously in my mind waiting patiently for the right moment to fall. It did so eight years later, when I visited the world’s oldest pyramid complex at Saqqara for the umpteenth time. There, and also for the umpteenth time, I examined the seated statue of the pyramid’s owner gazing upwards at the northern sky. Yet for reasons that only the gods know, this was the first time that I was prompted to ask why. Why was the king made to look at the northern sky? Finding no explanation that quite satisfied me in the many Egyptological textbooks I owned, I decided to seek the answer for myself. My story, then, starts here, at Saqqara, with the question why.

  The site of Saqqara lies some 20 kilometres south of modern Cairo. Five kilometres long and two kilometres wide, it stretches like a surreal abandoned moon station in the western desert where the Sahara meets the green Nile Valley. It is by a long shot ancient Egypt’s largest royal cemetery. Here, 5,000 years ago, on this dusty and often windswept promontory, a powerful idea fired a people, launching them into a building frenzy the likes of which the world would never experience again, in a breakneck momentum that was to last for nearly 500 years. The result of this seemingly irrational enterprise can still be seen today: giant pyramids strewn like stony atolls along a 40-kilometre archipelago of sand. Egyptologists call this mysterious region the Memphite Necropolis on account of its proximity to the now-lost city of Memphis. An estimated 50 million tons of stone was quarried, transported, hauled, cut, shaped and lifted by armies of workers toiling like ants across several generations. And all this high-tech engineering without the help of iron tools, without wheeled vehicles or lifting machines, without even the assistance of a single pulley. This was, to quote a phrase from the late Sir I.E.S. Edwards, the Pyramid Age par excellence.