Astronomy of the Sphinx

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To Wilson the present world with all it's difficulties offers special challenges which have the potential to strengthen our hidden capacities. Human suffering he sees as, in large measure, due to the fact that we've forgotten who we are and that we are trying to recover what we have lost. That recovery, though, shouldn't be so difficult.

If we could get the right point of view, so to speak, suddenly these latent powers would become accessible to us all the time.

Certain that he's on to something big, he expands, It really does seem to me that one of the basic problems with human beings is that they experience wonderful moments of insight, for example, children at Christmas, when they feel the whole universe is absolutely glorious, and they feel that surely no one would ever want to die, but the trouble is, you know perfectly well at Christmas that within a couple months in the middle of February you'll be grimly bored and begin to long for the coming of the holidays around August.

The need is to sustain the drive and purpose of the high moments during the low ones. The highs, it seems to him, amount to a kind of three-dimensional consciousness, contrasting with the ordinary two-dimensional humdrum consciousness. And he sees modern nihilistic existential pessimists like Samuel Beckett and Jean Paul Sartre as trapped in the 2D experience.

In contrast, the thoroughly optimistic Wilson believes that we are on the threshold of a time when we will be able to find the kind of balance between modern rational thought and ancient intuitive knowledge that will enable us to become masters of the peak experience. Simply learning the true antiquity of ancient civilization may do much to help us on our way, as he reminded us, when we tried to probe an intellectual riddle which puzzled us.

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In his book, Wilson relates the Giza construction scenario proposed by Hancock and Bauval which has the Sphinx built around 10,500 BC as indicated by geological evidence and corroborated by the precessional time of the Age of Leo, and then approximately 8,000 years later the completion of the Great Pyramid as indicated by the astronomical alignment of air-shafts within the pyramid.

Wilson also cites Rand Flem-Ath and Charles Hapgood's research on Earth Crust Displacement which places the destruction of Atlantis at about 9,500 BC, or about 1000 years after construction of the sphinx, as reported by Plato and confirmed by evidence of animal extinctions such as the mammoths in Siberia.

Earth Crust Displacement would have dramatically altered all astronomical observational phenomena and since the Hancock/Bauval timetable relies on a predictable path for celestial objects, which have remained constant to the present day, we couldn't help wondering how the apparent conflict could be resolved rationally. Wilson agrees that it is all very puzzling and points to other destruction scenarios for Atlantis including collisions with meteors. It seems to me, he says, that Atlantis did in fact go down in a number of catastrophes... But, in any event, he thinks the question is really unimportant at this stage.

The most important thing he believes about the research of Hancock, Bauval, Flem-Ath and others is, what it does seem to indicate is that knowledge of the heavens and so on is far older than we thought, and that man really knew an enormous amount, maybe as long as 30,000 BC...and if we can actually begin to grasp this, really feel that this is what happened, I think that simply that perspective on human history is going to cause a change of consciousness and a different way of looking at history.

Nevertheless, he does not see a wholesale rewriting of the history books any time soon, What I do think will happen, he chuckles, is that this kind of thing will gradually snowball, and a certain point will come when quite suddenly it's accepted knowledge. And then, and only then, will you get the academics who have this kind of vested interest to go along.

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Since Wilson has focused many times in his career on forensics (he's written in depth about Jack the Ripper and other notorious criminals) we wondered if he ever thought of Atlantis as perhaps the victim of a great murder, a crime which we might live to see reenacted, and that our problem is amnesia resulting from the trauma of the first enactment.

"I would agree completely", he declares, "it seems to me that Plato was right.

Something almost certainly had gone wrong with Atlantis, spiritually speaking, before its destruction, which makes me feel that people like Graham and Robert and John West and myself are doing our best, as it were, to sound the alarm before it actually happens.

We're like someone digging frantically to raise some kind of barrier before the flood comes. I've no doubt whatever from my studies of crime that we are moving into an age in which mass murder and this kind of thing is going to become more and more commonplace, things like that affair in Belgium which at the moment seems to me to be a horrific example of the kind of thing that is beginning to happen and which inevitably happens as a civilization becomes more and more free, more and more liberal and so on.

We can't put back the clock. There's no way of doing that.

What we can do, and with a little luck, is really understand the implications of all this. It seems to me that there's a great counterweight to these problems and that counterweight is this kind of knowledge that we're speaking about. If this kind of knowledge could be established for everyone to understand, then suddenly we would begin to see our civilization back on the rails, no longer in danger of meeting the same kind of fate as Atlantis."


http://www.atlantisrising.com/backissues/issue9/ar9atlan2.html

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                                      T H E   R I D D L E   O F   T H E   S P H I N X




PART I


The term "The Riddle of the Sphinx" has an ancient heritage.



The most well-known reference to the Riddle, which you will encounter in most encyclopedias and historical works dealing with ancient history and myth, comes from a Greek legend of Oedipus. The legend describes a living, winged sphinx with the body of a lion and the head of a woman, whose lair was situated on a cliff along the highway to Thebes, one of the major cities of ancient Egypt. Whenever a traveler passed by  her lair, the Sphinx would challenge them to answer a riddle, or else she would devour them. The riddle went something like this:



What animal is it

that in the morning goes on four feet,
 
at noon on two feet,

and in the evening on three feet?



Oedipus, however, realized the answer to the riddle: the "animal" was man who, in the "morning" of his life crawls on all fours as an infant, in the "noon" of his life walks on two feet, and in the "evening" of his life walks on three feet (counting a cane as a third foot). Realizing she was undone, the sphinx cast herself off of the cliff to her doom.

 
 
The Amen Temple, Luxor, Egypt.

 
One wonders, however, whether or not this story was an allegory for something deeper.

The Greeks were fascinated with Egyptian culture, and were forced to admit that Egypt's mathematical, architectural, and astronomical achievements dwarfed anything Greece had accomplished.

Perhaps in their contacts with Egypt, and with the ancient but fading Egyptian priesthood, faint echoes of their original myths made their way into Greek philosophy and literature. And one of these, perhaps the most important scrap of information that the Greeks were able to glean from the Egyptians, was that there was a riddle to the Sphinx.

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In 1993, 'Serpent In the Sky' was published, wherein John Anthony West reiterated the idea first presented by the French mathematician R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz that the Sphinx might actually be thousands of years older than previously thought, based on what appeared to be water erosion on the Sphinx and on the walls of the Sphinx enclosure. West consulted Boston University professor of Geology Robert Schoch on the weathering patterns to be found on the Sphinx and the walls of the enclosure surrounding the Sphinx, and Schoch found distinct evidence of long-term water   



The Sphinx viewed from the northwest, with a good view of the Sphinx enclosure. The rear of the Sphinx was chiseled out of the limestone of the Giza plateau, creating the enclosure area.



A closeup of the rain-eroded walls of the Sphinx enclosure. Geologist Robert Schoch, among others, has determined that this sort of undulating profile could only be created by long-term exposure to heavy rains.


 
Erosion, a form of water erosion that could only be caused by regular, heavy rainfall.

This, of course, was quite shocking as, according to climatologists, the last time water fell in any kind of significant quantity on Egypt had been some 5,000-7,000 years earlier! And since the pyramids did not exhibit water erosion, the only conclusion that could be reached was that the Sphinx had been carved out of the Giza plateau between 7000-11000 b.c., at least 4500 years earlier than the accepted date for the building of the pyramids. In short, evidence now pointed to the idea that the Sphinx was not only not built at the same time as the pyramids, but was probably several thousand years older!

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In 1995, The Orion Mystery was published. Robert Bauval, a Belgian engineer with a lifelong fascination with the pyramids, often visited them and speculated with friends about how they were built, and for what purpose. Studying aerial photographs of the pyramids, Bauval had wondered why the third major pyramid, the "Pyramid of Menkaure", was so much smaller than the other two. Moreover, he also noticed from aerial photographs of the Giza plateau that the Menkaure pyramid was also not in line with the other two much larger pyramids, the so-called "Pyramid of Khufu" and "Pyramid of Khafre" respectively. However, he filed this anomaly away with the numerous other questions he had about the pyramids, giving it no more precedence than any of the other mysteries surrounding the pyramids and Sphinx.

One night, he and a friend sat around a campfire talking about the rising of Sirius and its relationship with the constellation of Orion. Bauval's friend explained to him how  one can find the rising point of the star Sirius on the horizon by following the line created by the three belt stars of Orion - Al Nitak, Al Nilam, and Mintaka - to the horizon. As an afterthought, Bauval's friend also pointed out that the third star in the belt, "Mintaka", was smaller than the other two, and also not quite in line with the other, brighter stars.

This, of course, clicked in Bauval's mind, as he had been long wondering why the Pyramid of Menkaure was likewise noticeably smaller and off the line from the other two major pyramids. Could there be a connection? Bauval then set off to compare more closely the alignments of the three pyramids of Giza with the three belt stars of Orion, and found that the match was nearly perfect.



The three main pyramids of Giza, which mirror exactly the three belt stars in the constellation Orion. Bauval, Hancock and others believe that this was an attempt by the ancient Egyptians to create a "heaven on earth" in a very real sense.
 
In 1996, Graham Hancock, an award-winning writer for The Economist, and Robert Bauval, author of The Orion Mystery cowrote The Message of the Sphinx (released in the U.K. as Keeper of Genesis), summarizing all of these new findings and many new ones into a complete understanding of the "message" that they believed the pyramids and Sphinx were intended to communicate. Their thesis was that the entire pyramid complex, including the Sphinx, was intended to be a message written not in hieroglyphics, but in stone.

Armed with the knowledge that (1) the Sphinx had been created several thousand years earlier than the Pyramids, and (2) that the Pyramids were intended to be an earthly representation of the belt stars of Orion, Hancock and Bauval were able to decode the Egyptian religion and myths as described in the Pyramid Texts. Their conclusion was that the Egyptians, far from being the confused, backward pagans they are typically portrayed as, were a very ancient, highly sophisticated people with a religion based upon a very precise knowledge of astronomy.

In upcoming issues of Mysterious World, we will discuss in detail the exact nature of Egyptian religion as discovered by Hancock and Bauval, and its significance to our understanding of not only Egyptian history, but human history in general.

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PART II




Egyptian religion, like every other ancient religion, was a religion filled with myths and magic, gods, and demigods. However, despite the multiplicity of deities in their ancient religion, and the prominence of fertility rituals in Egyptian rite and cult, the central basis of ancient Egyptian religion was not sexuality, but astronomy. Though sexuality would later come to dominate Egyptian religion, as ignorance and decadence slowly infected the ancient wisdom of Egypt, ancient Egyptian religion was, at its core, astronomical. All the priests of ancient Egypt were master astronomers, as all the deities of ancient Egypt found their homes not only on Earth, but also in the heavens, in the form of constellations.


The greatest of the ancient centers of astronomical wisdom was the temple city of Heliopolis,   
Heliopolis, the biblical "On" (Genesis 41:45), located just north of the Giza pyramids. Heliopolis was the center of Egyptian religion for thousands of years, possibly for over ten thousand years - or more - before the historic period.
 
(the biblical "On"). As Hancock explains, "When the Pyramid Texts were compiled in the epoch of 2500 b.c., the religious centre of the Pharaonic state was at Heliopolis - the 'City of the Sun', called 'On' or 'Innu' by the ancients, which now lies completely buried under the Al Matareya suburb of modern Cairo.... The Heliopolitan priests were high initiates in the mysteries of the heavens and their dominant occupation was the observation and recording of the various motions of the sun and the moon, the planets and the stars."1

Over thousands of years, the Heliopolitan priesthood had kept careful records of the movements of these astral bodies. Even the Greeks and Romans were in awe of the level of astronomical knowledge the priests of On had acquired. And such great minds as Herodotus, Aristotle, and Plato credited the Egyptians with the invention of the solar year and the zodiac, and also noted that they had accumulated thousands of years of astronomical records, possibly over 10,000 years' worth. Most importantly, they also credited the Egyptians with the discovery of the phenomenon of precession, a concept which requires tens of thousands of years of observation to confirm.

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The god Osiris, as the
 constellation of Orion.
Osiris and his constella-
tion sat at the center
of the ancient Egyptian
astronomical religion






Horus, son of Osiris,
in his hawk aspect.
One of the most
important deities in
ancient Egyptian
religion, the Pharaoh
was considered the
incarnation of Horus,
and the inheritor of
the kingdom of Osiris.




Egyptian religion, like every other ancient religion, was a religion filled with myths and magic, gods, and demigods. However, despite the multiplicity of deities in their ancient religion, and the prominence of fertility rituals in Egyptian rite and cult, the central basis of ancient Egyptian religion was not sexuality, but astronomy. Though sexuality would later come to dominate Egyptian religion, as ignorance and decadence slowly infected the ancient wisdom of Egypt, ancient Egyptian religion was, at its core, astronomical. All the priests of ancient Egypt were master astronomers, as all the deities of ancient Egypt found their homes not only on Earth, but also in the heavens, in the form of constellations









                                                  HELIOPOLIS, CITY OF THE SUN







Heliopolis, the biblical "On"
(Genesis 41:45), located
just north of the Giza pyra-
mids. Heliopolis was the
center of Egyptian religion
for thousands of years,
possibly for over ten thou-
sand years - or more -
before the historic period.




It was at Heliopolis that the "Shemsu Hor" - "The Followers of Horus" - kept the knowledge of the ancient Egyptian astronomical religion alive for thousands of years. This ancient priesthood, some believe, had lived in Heliopolis for thousands of years before even the beginning of the historic period in Egypt. There they carefully guided the local population, teaching them the arts of astronomy, mathematics, agriculture, and especially architecture, in order to ensure that the ancient astronomical knowledge would continue. The end result of their efforts were what we now know as the pyramids and Sphinx - hieroglyphics in the form of architecture, the ancient astronomical knowledge frozen in stone.

There is significant evidence to support this theory, that ancient Egyptian civilization did not evolve, but appeared in completed form at its inception. As John Anthony West explains,

Every aspect of Egyptian knowledge seems to have been complete at the very beginning. The sciences, artistic and architectural techniques and the hieroglyphic system show virtually no signs of a period of 'development'; indeed, many of the achievements of the earliest dynasties were never surpassed or even equalled later on. This astonishing fact is readily admitted by orthodox Egyptologists, but the magnitude of the mystery it poses is skillfully understated, while its many implications go unmentioned.2

One primary source of information regarding the ancient history of Egypt, the "Turin Papyrus", contains a chronology of the predynastic period in Egypt. What is strange about this list is the mention of the reigns of ten Neteru, or "gods", who reigned for hundreds of years each, for a total of 23,200 years. After this comes a list dedicated to the Shemsu Hor, the Followers of Horus, who reigned a total of 13,400 years. The papyrus then goes on to list the historical kings, those that are commonly accepted as real by mainline archaeology.

 
 
The "Zodiac of Denderah", located in the Temple of Hathor, in Denderah, Egypt, now on display in the Louvre. Dating from the first century b.c., it details all of the Egyptian constellations. Near the top (and upside down) can be seen the constellation of Aries. Taurus is shown immediately to its right. Leo is below and to the right of the center of the zodiac, treading on a serpent, and below and to the left of Leo one can see Virgo, holding an infant. From E.C. Krupp, Beyond the Blue Horizon: Myths & Legends of the Sun, Moon, Stars, and Planets. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
 
Another primary source for Egyptian history, Manetho's History of Egypt, was written in the third century b.c. Manetho, the high priest of Heliopolis at that time, wrote History of Egypt in order to preserve the fast-disappearing Egyptian traditions and culture. Later commentators tell us that it had been divided into three volumes:


I. The Gods,

II. The Demigods, and
 
III. The Spirits of the Dead and the Mortal Kings.


Though the third volume has been used by Egyptologists as the standard reference for the 31 dynasties of Egypt, for some reason the first two volumes have been relegated to the realm of myth and legend.

However, that is not how the ancient Egyptians viewed the Neteru and their descendants, the Shemsu Hor. These beings were believed to be actual historical personages, who formed a formidable prehistory of which we know litte. As Graham Hancock explains in The Message of the Sphinx, "the 'Followers of Horus' may not have been 'kings' in the usual sense of the word, but rather as immensely powerful and enlightened individuals - high initiates who were carefully selected by an elite academy that established itself at the sacred site of Heliopolis-Giza thousands of years before history began."3

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                                             THE FOLLOWERS OF HORUS





It was at Heliopolis that the "Shemsu Hor" - "The Followers of Horus" - kept the knowledge of the ancient Egyptian astronomical religion alive for thousands of years. This ancient priesthood, some believe, had lived in Heliopolis for thousands of years before even the beginning of the historic period in Egypt. There they carefully guided the local population, teaching them the arts of astronomy, mathematics, agriculture, and especially architecture, in order to ensure that the ancient astronomical knowledge would continue. The end result of their efforts were what we now know as the pyramids and Sphinx - hieroglyphics in the form of architecture, the ancient astronomical knowledge frozen in stone.

There is significant evidence to support this theory, that ancient Egyptian civilization did not evolve, but appeared in completed form at its inception. As John Anthony West explains,

Every aspect of Egyptian knowledge seems to have been complete at the very beginning. The sciences, artistic and architectural techniques and the hieroglyphic system show virtually no signs of a period of 'development'; indeed, many of the achievements of the earliest dynasties were never surpassed or even equalled later on. This astonishing fact is readily admitted by orthodox Egyptologists, but the magnitude of the mystery it poses is skillfully understated, while its many implications go unmentioned.2

One primary source of information regarding the ancient history of Egypt, the "Turin Papyrus", contains a chronology of the predynastic period in Egypt. What is strange about this list is the mention of the reigns of ten Neteru, or "gods", who reigned for hundreds of years each, for a total of 23,200 years. After this comes a list dedicated to the Shemsu Hor, the Followers of Horus, who reigned a total of 13,400 years. The papyrus then goes on to list the historical kings, those that are commonly accepted as real by mainline archaeology.

  Another primary source for Egyptian history, Manetho's History of Egypt, was written in the third century b.c. Manetho, the high priest of Heliopolis at that time, wrote History of Egypt in order to preserve the fast-disappearing Egyptian traditions and culture. Later commentators tell us that it had been divided into three volumes: I. The Gods, II. The Demigods, and III. The Spirits of the Dead and the Mortal Kings. Though the third volume has been used by Egyptologists as the standard reference for the 31 dynasties of Egypt, for some reason the first two volumes have been relegated to the realm of myth and legend.

However, that is not how the ancient Egyptians viewed the Neteru and their descendants, the Shemsu Hor. These beings were believed to be actual historical personages, who formed a formidable prehistory of which we know litte. As Graham Hancock explains in The Message of the Sphinx, "the 'Followers of Horus' may not have been 'kings' in the usual sense of the word, but rather as immensely powerful and enlightened individuals - high initiates who were carefully selected by an elite academy that established itself at the sacred site of Heliopolis-Giza thousands of years before history began."3

Dwelling in Heliopolis, the oldest organized religious center in Egypt (possibly the world), the Followers of Horus sought the answers to eternal life in the stars. Their chief concern was recording the passage of time through intense and regular observation of the sun, moon, stars and planets and their movements through the heavens. This was typical of all ancient religion, but what was most intriguing about their astronomy was that the Heliopolitan priesthood understood the concept of precession, the "Great Year" of 25,920 years. (Click here for a detailed explanation of Precession.) Previously thought to be discovered by the Greeks, new evidence points to the fact that the Egyptians were fully aware of Precession and all of its ramifications for the apparent motion of the stars relative to earth.

In part three of "The Riddle of the Sphinx", we will discuss the effect this knowledge had upon the Egyptian astronomical religion, discover what the Riddle of the Sphinx is, and how Precession is critical to solving this riddle. MW


http://www.mysteriousworld.com/Journal/1999/Spring/Sphinx02/

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A closeup view of the
 Sphinx's southern
face. The Sphinx
gazes due east,
towards the sun
as it rises on the
equinox



Egyptian religion, as we have seen in parts one and two of this series, was essentially astronomical in nature. It is clear from even the most basic study of astronomy and architecture that the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids, Sphinx, and possibly other structures in such a way so as to imitate the stars in the sky, to the point where many now believe that they were attempting to make a "heaven on earth" in a very real sense.

In part one of this series, we saw how the three great pyramids were laid out in such a way as to mimic the three belt stars of Orion. In part two, we saw how the constellation of Orion sat at the center of the Egyptian astronomical religion. Now it remains to be seen exactly why the ancient Egyptians expended so much effort in order to built these massive structures.

Not only the layout of the Giza necropolis but many major pyramids — even the Nile itself — may have 
(Move your mouse over the image to reveal a secret.)
Images adapted from The Message of the Sphinx, copyright 1996 Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval
 
been used by the ancient Egyptians to mirror many major star patterns, such as the belt stars of Orion, (the three great pyramids); the Hyades cluster in Taurus (the Dahshur group of pyramids, which include the peculiar Bent and Red pyramids; the horns of Taurus, including El Nath (northern horn) and Zeta Taurus (southern horn), which may be represented by structures in Memphis and Ayan; and, interestingly, the Nile itself, which was believed by the ancient Egyptians to be the earthly counterpart of the Milky Way.

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The Orion Mystery





Moreover, as discovered by Robert Bauval in his ground breaking book, The Orion Mystery, there is even more to the sky-ground connection — within the Great Pyramid itself. Bauval explains, "In the Great Pyramid are four protracted and narrow channels or shafts which have long baffled Egyptologists.... The two shafts within the King's Chamber had been known since the early seventeenth century.... At first they thought the shafts led to a room ... but abandoned this idea when the air rushed through the chamber after they had cleared the southern shaft. They then decided, erroneously, that the shafts had been designed for ventilation, and coined the term air-shafts.1 Two more shafts, this time in the Queen's chamber, were found in 1872 by a British engineer named Waynman Dixon.



Cross section of the Pyramid of Khufu. The "air shafts" located on the northern and southern walls of the King's Chamber and the Queen's Chamber were formerly thought to be for ventilation purposes. However, recent investigations have revealed that these shafts were actually celestial time-markers, pin-pointing the time of the construction of the Giza pyramids. These shafts actually point at several major stars in the northern and southern skies which, due to precession, were only aligned with the shafts during the epoch of 2450 b.c. This aligns perfectly with the accepted date for the construction of the Giza pyramids, neatly confirming this theory. Image adapted from The Message of the Sphinx, copyright 1996 Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval


 
A closeup of the interior structure of the Khufu pyramid, with a detailed look at the paths of the shafts relative to the inner chambers. Image adapted from The Orion Mystery, copyright 1995 Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert
 

But these shafts had been hidden behind several inches of stone, and therefore had clearly not been intended as
air shafts. Yet, the air shaft theory continued on for decades longer.

In 1964, Dr. Alexander Badawy, a renowned architect and Egyptologist, was the first to suggest that the shafts might have had some sort of ritual function. He pointed out that not only did the northern shafts point at important stars near the north celestial pole, the southern shafts point at the constellation of Orion. Furthermore, Badawy's experience in studying Egyptian architecture made him uniquely suited to pass judgement on the feasibility of the "Air Shaft" hypothesis. "Badawy's architectural studies had shown that the ancient Egyptians did not ventilate tombs."2

Virginia Trimble, coauthor of the article that first revealed this hypothesis, calculated that the belt stars of Orion, Al Nitak, Al Nilam, and Mintaka, would have been aligned with the southern shaft in the King's Chamber around 2500 b.c., corresponding with the generally accepted date for the building of the pyramids. This was due to the fact that the constellation of Orion (and all stars) change their rising and setting points on the horizon over time, due to the phenomenon of precession (click here for a detailed explanation of precession), which allowed Trimble the ability to calculate in exactly what epoch — give or take a century — the belt stars in the constellation of Orion would have been high enough over the horizon to be in line with the southern shaft in the King's Chamber.

Bauval later followed up on their discoveries in The Orion Mystery, adding his own discovery to the mix, that the three main pyramids at Giza       

 
 
The elevation of Orion in the night sky depends on what point Earth is in its precessional cycle of roughly 26,000 years. It is through this relative positioning that Trimble was able to calculate in what epoch the belt stars of Orion were exactly in line with the southern shaft of the King's Chamber (ca. 2500 b.c.). Moreover, it was in this epoch that the southern shaft in the Queen's chamber aligned with the star Sirius, and the northern shafts in the King's and Queen's chambers pointed at the stars Alpha Draconis and Beta Ursa Minor respectively. Beta Ursa Minor was the pole star at that time, as opposed to Polaris, the current pole star. So the shafts in the Great Pyramid were, in effect, markers that used the stars to indicate in what era the pyramids were built — in effect, they were markers in a vast astronomical calendar. Also, note how the Milky Way appears to continue the Nile's path on into the heavens.
 
were laid out in such a way so as to act as earthly representations of the belt stars of Orion (see part one). He further elucidated that the ancient Egyptians' knowledge of precession, as hard coded (literally) into the rocks of the Giza plateau, had been used by them as a means of marking significant points in their history — as a sort of celestial "calendar". But were there other important events marked by the pyramids and Sphinx that were yet to be found?

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The Followers Of Horus




We saw in part two how that before the advent of the reign of mortal kings in Egypt, the ancient Egyptians believed that Egypt had been reigned over by a race of semi-divine beings called the Shemsu Hor, or "Followers of Horus".

These beings, Hancock and Bauval concluded, were an ancient society of astronomer- priests, who manipulated Egyptian history and culture from behind the scenes in order to keep their ancient wisdom alive.

By engineering Egyptian society from behind the scenes from their base in Heliopolis, creating and maintaining the state religion through a carefully trained priesthood, the Shemsu Hor were able to create such massive monuments as the pyramids and Sphinx, so that their scientific knowledge was, quite literally, "set in stone".

As Hancock and Bauval were soon to discover, this knowledge still exists to this day; for thousands of years, the Sphinx had sat quietly, waiting for someone with the courage and tenacity to solve its riddle.

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Solving The Riddle




Through careful study of ancient Egyptian religious texts, specifically the Pyramid Texts, Hancock and Bauval were able to begin to discern a pattern emerging that involved a "sky-ground" dualism that matched the dualism apparent in the layout of the pyramids and Sphinx.

Furthermore, it became increasingly clear that the Heliopolitan Priesthood well understood the concept of precession; it is even possible that it lay at the very heart of their astronomical religion, that precession was one of the "greater mysteries" of their faith.

As Hancock and Bauval proceeded in the quest, they discovered that this was indeed the case, and that the entire purpose of the Quest of the Horus King was to use the clues left behind by his ancestors to solve the riddle of the Sphinx, and to find the treasures that the answer to that riddle would reveal.

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The god Horus, wearing
the Pharaonic crown of
Upper and Lower Egypt.
The pharaoh was con-
sidered to be the incar-
nation of the god Horus,
son of Osiris, and under-
took the Quest in order
to prepare himself to be
reunited with his heavenly
father (Orion/Osiris)
in death.









The Quest of the Horus-King




Through their study of the pyramid texts, Hancock and Bauval were convinced that all of the pharaohs, as a part of their office, underwent an initiation that had the purpose of initiating them into the mysteries of the ancient astronomical religion of the Heliopolitan priesthood, the "Followers of Horus". As such, the pharaoh was to undergo a religious ritual, wherein he was transformed, ritually, into the "Horus-King", the embodiment of the Egyptian god Horus on Earth. Horus was the son of Osiris, the chief of the Egyptian deities, and the pharaoh was believed to be his earthly incarnation. And it was each pharaoh's responsibility to undergo the Quest of the Horus-King in order to become fully initiated into the religion of the Egyptians. Part of this ritual, it is believed, was a knowledge of the deepest mysteries of Egypt, including the deepest mystery of all, the riddle of the Sphinx.

The Horus-King, in order to find the answer to the riddle, must first, in effect, travel back to the "First Time" — what the ancient Egyptians believed to be the beginning of their history. It is here, they believed, that the answer to the riddle might be found. Hancock and Bauval explain, "We wonder whether it is possible that the quest of the Horus-King might have had as its ultimate objective the acquisition of knowledge concerning the 'First Time' — perhaps even the acquisition of specific knowledge from that remote epoch when the gods had walked the earth."3 Hancock and Bauval came upon this idea from the Pyramid Texts, ancient texts that been found inscribed on the

The Horus-King, who had been taught the concept of precession as a part of his training, was now able to imagine how Osiris-Orion "moved" up and down in the sky relative to the earthbound viewer over the 25,920-year precessional cycle. As such, he could envision in his mind's eye how the sky would appear at any time in history, past or future.
 
inner walls of the pyramid of Pharaoh Unas (c. 2356 — 2323 BC) in Saqqara. These texts were intended to give the dead Pharaoah instructions on what he needs to do in the afterlife to attain eternal life. However, they believed that these instructions had a very real earthly meaning as well. Hancock and Bauval explain that, according to the Pyramid texts, "We are told that the Horus-King must 'travel upstream' — i.e., must push against the natural drift of 'time' — in order to reach Orion-Osiris in his proper 'First Time' setting.4 As we saw with the above Orion animation, over millenniums of time, the constellation of Orion appears to literally "move upstream" against the Nile's heavenly counterpart, the "Milky Way". Using this mental image of the constellation of Orion traveling "upstream" (or downstream), the Horus King initiate was able to view in his mind's eye how the stars would look relative to the earthbound observer at any time in history.

Betake yourself to the Waterway, fare upstream [south], travel about Abydos in this spirit-form of yours which the gods command to belong to you; may a stairway [road] to the Duat [the Egyptian "heaven"] be set up for you in the place where Orion Is.... Betake youself to the Waterway, fare upstream ... traverse Abydos. The celestial portal to the Horizon is open to you ... may you remove yourself to the sky, for the roads of the celestial expanses which lead up to Horus are cleaned for you ... for you have traversed the Winding Waterway [Milky Way] which is in the north of the sky as a star crossing the sea which is beneath the sky. The Duat has grasped your hand at the Place Where Orion Is.5

In the final installment of the Riddle of the Sphinx, we will complete The Quest of the Horus King, and see how the quest had as its ultimate prize the Hall of Records, a sacred place hidden somewhere underneath the Giza plateau, that some believe may still hold secrets from times unremembered, possibly from the time before the Flood. 

[Bianca]

Robert Bauval was the first to truly begin to solve the Riddle of the Sphinx in his classic book, The Orion Mystery.

Since then, other prominent authors, including most notably Graham Hancock, have picked up the ball on the question of the Riddle of the Sphinx, focusing their efforts not only on defining what the Riddle means, but what its answer is.

Inevitably, all come to the same conclusion, that the answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx is that the pyramids and Sphinx form a vast, three-dimensional treasure map, where X marks the spot on a mysterious Secret Chamber somewhere in the Giza necropolis.

This chamber is believed to house an ancient Hall of Records which contains knowledge of the ancient world before the Flood, so naturally archaeologists, historians, and those interested in history in general are keen to discover the ancient Secret Chamber, if it truly exists.