Alternative History

Egypt's Lost Legacy & the Genesis of Civilisation

In this two part article, Andrew Collins explains how Egypt's Sphinx-building culture achieved a level of sophistication and technological understanding almost beyond human comprehension.

Yet this wonder of the past is more than just an architectural curiosity, for it embodies a level of sophistication far superior to anything the world has produced at any time since this age.

Over the past 200 years many hundreds of books have been written about the mysteries of the Great Pyramid, most of them more fantasy than fact. Yet shining through all of them is a hardcore of evidence which shows that the pyramid builders were privy to universal knowledge far beyond that accredited to the ancient Egyptians who lived around 4500 years ago, the time-frame in which the pyramids are said to have been built.

Let me provide a few examples. The Great Pyramid is considered to have been built as an exact geodesic representation of the earth's northern hemisphere. Precision geometry incorporating harmonics, proportions and sound acoustics was incorporated into its exterior and interior design. Its four sides are aligned to the cardinal points with such precision that modern-day surveyors would have trouble replicating this laser-like accuracy, while in relation to the earth the Great Pyramid is situated in the dead centre of its largest land-mass.

To the Sound of a Trumpet

More extraordinary still is the knowledge that the pyramid builders could well have possessed a form of sonic technology that included the ability to raise stone blocks into the air and pierce through granite at a feed-rate unmatched even today. It has long been known that many of the temples and monuments of Pharaonic Egypt incorporate an intimate knowledge of sound acoustics, while one specific legend preserved by an Arab writer of the tenth-century AD named al-Masudi records how the builders of the pyramids were able to move stone blocks a distance of "one bow-shot" through an avenue of metal poles, simply by hitting them with a rod. Furthermore, there exist age-old legends from places such as Bolivia, Mexico and Greece which tell of the first cities being built by mythical figures who could make stones raise into the air by using sound alone. At the site of the ancient city of Tiahuanaco high up on the Bolivian Altiplano, for instance, local Indian legends speak of the city's first inhabitants as able to move stones from the local quarry to their places of destination to "the sound of a trumpet".

So what reality is there behind such wild claims? Are they all to be dismissed as the naive delusions of primitive peoples?

Precision Impossible

During an indepth study of the temples and monuments of Giza in the 1880s, respected Egyptologist W.M. Flinders Petrie uncovered clear evidence of a precision stone-ware technology that surpassed anything else achieved in the ancient world. It included the use of nine-feet long, jewel tipped saws to cut and fashion objects such as the sarcophagus inside the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid. He also found that the pyramid builders used highly specialised drilling techniques to bore perfect holes in hard granite, lathe-finish beautiful bowls in tough diorite and fashion exquisite stone vases with openings no larger than a little finger. American technologist Christopher Dunn has recently completed an indepth study of the ancient Egyptians' incredible stone-ware industry and has convincingly demonstrated that they used ultrasound-induced vibration to enhance their drilling capabilities.

Such a conclusion might seem beyond comprehension, but this present author has uncovered hard evidence to demonstrate that Tibetan monastic communities as late as the present century were in possession of a sonic technology that included the creation of weightlessness in stone blocks and the destruction of physical matter using ultrasound vibration. Furthermore, it has now come to light that a nineteenth-century maverick scientist named John Ernst Worrell Keely quite independently found a way of raising heavy objects into the air and disintegrating lumps of granite using sympathetic vibratory apparatus.

How did the pyramid builders of 4500 years ago gain such an extraordinary insight into a science and technology little understood even today? What became of this lost technology, and why has much of it only been rediscovered in our present age? In order to suitably answer these questions, we must embark on a journey that will reveal a virtually alien world, inhabited by a forgotten culture composed of a priestly elite who lived in Egypt's fertile Nile valley during a distant epoch long before the accepted genesis of civilisation. It will reveal the existence at Giza of buildings and monuments seemingly left by this Elder race, as well as the firm presence beneath the Great Sphinx of an underworld complex known today as the Hall of Records.

To attempt to understand this mystery more fully we must return to the Giza plateau and examine its strange megalithic temples, for these suggest a construction date long before the pyramid age.

Temples of the Gods

Egyptologists assert that the Valley Temple, which sits on the edge of the plateau, was built at the time of the Pharaoh Khafre, around 2550 BC. Certainly, it is linked via a stone causeway to another ancient temple on the eastern side of the Second Pyramid which is also accredited to Khafre. Further evidence of this conclusion, they say, is the Valley Temple's similarity in design to other temples on the Giza plateau, as well as its proximity to the Great Sphinx and the fact that statues of Khafre were found abandoned in a well located beneath its floor.

This would appear to be incorrect, for recent geological surveys of the Great Sphinx have revealed that the weathering effects visible on its body, and on the nearby enclosure wall, were caused not by wind, as the Egyptologists believe, but by water precipitation - in other words, rain. Lots of it, over a very, very long period of time. Such a supposition creates insurmountable problems for the academics as it is known that the last time Egypt produced enough rain to have created such raging torrents of water was during the 3000-year stretch between 8000 and 5000 BC.

More damning still to the orthodox views of the Egyptologists is the knowledge that recent astronomical research in respect to the orientation and placement of the monuments on the Giza plateau, clearly point towards a foundation date sometime between 11,000 and 9000 BC - several thousand years before the age of the Pharaohs.

How can this be possible? Scholars argue that in the time-frame under question, the eleventh and tenth millennia BC, the Nile valley was inhabited only by "bands of people who lived in small huts or shelters and sustained themselves by hunting and gathering". They also state that these early Nilotic (ie. those living by the Nile) communities "erected no large stone structures of any kind" and had not "taken even the first steps towards the domestication of plants and animals".

This is simply not true. There is much evidence of prehistoric man along the Nile during this very age, and it clearly shows that between 12,500 and 9500 BC certain communities not only possessed an advanced tool-making industry, but also domesticated animals and developed the earliest agriculture anywhere in the world. Moreover, just 300 miles away from Giza in what is today Jericho, its inhabitants of 8000 BC were constructing enormous fortification walls, gouging out vast trenches in the hard bedrock and erecting a gigantic stone tower in defence against an unknown enemy. Engineering projects on this scale would have required a high level of social structure and co-ordinated operations.

No one can say that humanity in this distant age did not have the ability to carve the image of a 240-feet long recumbent lion, and yet accepting this hypothesis brings with it an even greater problem. Since the core limestone blocks - many up to 100 tonne a piece - used in the construction of the Valley Temple, the Sphinx Temple, as well as at least one other similar structure on the Giza plateau, were extracted from the Sphinx enclosure, we must concede that these too date to this same distant epoch. If this is the case, then the Pharaohs of the pyramid age merely restored these enormous temple structures, which begs the question of who exactly did build them?

Epoch of the Elder Gods

The ancient Egyptians saw their culture and religion as having been inherited directly from a divine race that existed thousands of years before the coming of the Pharaohs. For example, the fragmented Royal Papyrus of Turin, dating to the Nineteenth Dynasty, c. 1300 BC, contains a list of ten netjeru - a word simply meaning 'divinities' or gods - who reigned prior to the first kings of Egypt. The ancient Egyptians also viewed the Giza necropolis as the 'Splendid Place of the First Time', quite literally the abode of the gods who had ruled their land during this misty epoch. More significantly, the hieroglyphic 'building' texts found on the walls at the Temple of Horus at Edfu, in southern Egypt, tell us much about the activities of the Elder gods, the divine inhabitants, who inhabited the Nile Valley during the epoch of the First Time.

Island of the Gods

Looking at the plateau today, with its desert back-drop and its striking sentinel-like pyramids, that cannot help but exude a stark sense of permanence, it is hard to imagine Giza any different. Yet the Edfu account, which was compiled from a series of now lost books attributed to the moon-god Thoth, enables us to construct a quite remarkable picture of how the Giza plateau might have looked over 11,000 years ago.

If we were to find ourselves a time-machine and travel back to this distant epoch the chances are that we would enter a hot, humid environment alive with lush green vegetation or the type you might find today in equatorial Africa. If the texts are to be believed, Giza apparently possessed a shallow lake, fed directly from the Nile itself. Such a supposition is not mere fantasy, for it is known that in past ages the river flowed much closer to the edge of the plateau, while evidence of a sacred lake and dock dated to Old Kingdom times have been found beyond the plateau's western limits. To the Elder gods this would have signified the primeval sea of chaos out of which the first land emerged at the beginning of time.

On the edge of this sacred lake were, it seems, tall djed-pillars, carved perhaps in dark stone, while standing close to the banks was an enclosure wall beyond which was a gleaming white temple known as the Mansion of Wetjeset-Neter, the 'place of reeds'. In the shallow waters was a small island, symbolising the Point of First Creation, crowned with a simple stone structure that proclaimed its immense sanctity. This island is referred to in the Edfu documents as the Island of the Egg or the Island of Trampling, while the stone structure is recalled in the name Place of the Well.

Locally we might have found indigenous peoples of the late palaeolithic age tending cultivated lands, herding domesticated wild animals, making beautiful flint tools and using wooden spears to harpoon fish in the nearby river Nile. Yet behind the tall, imposing walls of the sacred enclosure the texts speak of an altogether different kind of person - commanding figures referred to variously as the Shebtiu, the Sages, the Elders and the Falcons. These mythical individuals take the guise of birds, implying perhaps that they were priest-shamans who adorned themselves in bird feathers. They are also said to have had radiant faces that must have made them quite striking in appearance. This strange menagerie of divine beings, who were said to number sixty, are spoken of as netjeru, or divinities.

This then is the curious picture emerging from the writings of the Egyptians themselves. Yet who exactly were these shamanic individuals who are said to have built the first monuments and temples? Were they the ones responsible for the carving of not just the Great Sphinx, but also the earliest megalithic monuments found to this day at places such as Giza and Abydos? If this is the case, then what happened to this forgotten culture, and what else might they have left as a legacy to the world?

The Hall of Records

As we enter the next millennium, many great discoveries are being made on the Giza plateau. None can be more extraordinary than the detection beneath the Sphinx's wedge-shaped enclosure of a series of nine concealed chambers of unnatural origin. These were first noticed during seismic soundings of the hard bedrock by two research programmes, one led by seismologist Thomas Dobecki in 1991 and the other co-ordinated in 1996 by the University of Florida in association with millionaire Joseph Schor, a life-long member of the Edgar Cayce Foundation (see below).

Myths and legends that date back to Pharaonic times speak of a subterranean world existing beneath the Giza plateau. Modern-day psychics, occult societies and new-age mystics all firmly believe that an underground complex made up of concealed corridors and unknown chambers will eventually be found at Giza. They refer to this underworld complex as the 'Hall of Records', the 'Crystal Chambers' or the 'Chambers of Initiation', and suggest that it contains arcane wisdom and knowledge hidden from the world by Egypt's Elder culture prior to the Great Flood. During the 1930s one American psychic named Edgar Cayce stated that the Hall of Records would be found and opened in secret during 1998. Working on this indication, a British consortium of surveyors and geophysicists, backed by Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, is going to conduct a wide-scale search for the entrance to the Hall of Records in July this year.

What might they expect to find? What really does await discovery beneath the Giza bed-rock?

Ever since Roman times rumours have existed concerning the existence beneath the Giza plateau of a series of under-ground chambers and tunnels. For example, the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus (fl. AD 360-390) spoke of "subterranean fissures and winding passages called syringes" present beneath the Giza pyramid field. These were constructed, he said, by "those acquainted with the ancient rites, since they had foreknowledge that a deluge was coming, and feared that the memory of the ceremonies might be destroyed".

What exactly were these "ancient rites" that needed to be preserved from being lost in "a deluge"? Have the geophysicists working on the recent Giza projects really registered the echoes of Elder gods whose collective memory still lies slumbering beneath its limestone bedrock?

Underworld of the Soul

The Edfu Building Texts speak at length about the presence of this subterranean domain beneath the island of creation once located on the edge of the Giza plateau. Referred to as the Underworld of the Soul, this structure was used by the divine individuals known as the Shebtiu to conduct strange ceremonies, described as acts of creation, using hand-held power objects. They are said to have gained their radiance from another much greater object described variously as the embryo, the seed, the egg, the lotus or even the benben, or phallus stone. This was seen to be the creative source of the island, embodying both the male and female regenerative powers. It is not stated exactly what this object might have been, although the indications are that, similar to the hand-held power objects used by the Shebtiu, it could have been a conical-shaped stone resembling the so-called lingams placed in underground shrines inside some Hindu temples. These too are seen to embody the dualistic regenerative powers of first creation.

Could this be what awaits discovery in Giza's underworld domain - powerful lingam stones that were once used in bizarre rites by the precursors of dynastic Egypt? Is this what will be found inside the Chambers of Creation, the so-called Hall of Records, if it is indeed discovered over the coming year?

That the ancient Egyptians believed that a physical object of immense creative power lie beneath the sands of Giza does not seem in doubt. Among the body of magical literature known as the Coffin Texts it speaks of something described as "the sealed thing, which is in darkness, with fire about it." It is said to contain "the efflux of Osiris", the god of the underworld, and was "put in Rostau", the name given by the ancient Egyptians to the Giza pyramid field. The text in question goes on to state that this "sealed thing" has been "hidden since it fell from him (Osiris), and it is what came down from him onto the desert of sand".

The burial place of the body of Osiris is integrally linked with the Egyptian concept of the Underworld of the Soul as well as Giza itself. Indeed, the Valley Temple of Khafre is actually referred to in ancient inscriptions as the "House of Osiris". It seems certain that the "sealed thing" of the Coffin Texts is therefore another allusion to the nucleus of the sacred island - the so-called seed, embryo, lotus, egg or phallus found at the heart of Giza-Rostau's Chambers of Creation. Illustrations that accompany Egyptian texts that detail what will be found inside the hidden chambers show at its heart a strange fiery-orange bell-shaped object over which is the hieroglyph for "night" or "darkness", implying that this powerful object remains in darkness awaiting discovery.

So much for the contents of this lost world, but where might it have been situated, and can it be found today?

The Sphinx and the River

During the epoch of the First Time the Shebtiu initiates would perhaps have emerged from the Chambers of Creation, the so-called Hall of Records, to stand upon the sacred island, surrounded by the primeval waters of Nun. Yet with the desiccation of the eastern Sahara and the rise of Pharaonic Egypt around 3100 BC, the setting has changed quite dramatically. No longer are we able to look out over the shallow lake, created by the waters of the nearby river Nile, and see beyond it to the first temples of the gods. Gone too is the sacred island, with its structured enclosure and subterranean entrance to Giza's underworld com-plex. Instead, we find ourselves somewhere in the vicinity of the Giza pyramid field. Yet where exactly?

It is my conclusion that the sacred lake must have lain to the east or north-east of the Great Sphinx and Valley Temple, on the eastern edge of the plateau. In no way can it have been located on the plateau itself, for it rises up too steeply beyond the third pyramid of Menkeure on its western side. Only on its eastern side can we find a low-lying area sufficient in size to have created either a temporary, or more permanent, lake or reservoir. This observation is supported by the recent discovery of a stone quay on the eastern side of the Valley Temple, which may itself be the last remains of the first temple constructed by the Elder gods on the edge of the sacred lake.

If I am correct in these assumptions, then it could well mean that the entrance to the Hall of Records now lies beneath the streets of the Nazlet el-Samman village, placed beyond the eastern edge of the plateau.

In many ways I hope I am wrong in this assessment of the evidence available to us at the present time. Despite this, these findings appear to concur precisely with the inspired readings of American psychic Edgar Cayce. In 1933 he revealed the whereabouts of the subterranean complex with the following words:

In position, this lies - as the sun rises from the waters - as the line of the shadows [or light] falls between the paws of the Sphinx; that was set later as the sentinel or guard and which may not be entered from the connecting chambers from the Sphinx's right paw until the time has been fulfilled when the changes must be active in this sphere of man's experience. Then [it lies] between the Sphinx and the river.

Between the Sphinx and the river - in other words to the east of the Sphinx and Valley Temple. If he was right in this respect, then let us also hope that he was correct in his belief that connecting chambers led from the underground complex to a position coincident to the right paw of the Sphinx monument. If this is so, we still stand a reasonable chance of locating a second entry point using modern-day sounding equipment. Whether or not the nine chambers discovered in 1996 beneath the Sphinx enclosure by the team put together by the University of Florida are actually connected with Giza's underworld complex remains to be seen. It may well be that, although of man-made construction, and therefore of profound interest to our knowledge of Egyptian history, they lie too near the surface to be connected with the Chambers of Creation. On the other hand they might well contain the ultimate proof of the former existence in Egypt of a high culture of almost alien mentality whose knowledge of ancient technology and natural sciences will change the entire way we perceive human evolution.

Part 1 | Part 2

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Keywords: alternative history, esoteric history, unsolved mysteries, ancient civilisations, alternative archaeology, unexplained archaeology