or earlier. Like Bauval’s astronomical data, the evidence had always been
available but had failed to attract the attention of established
Egyptologists. The man responsible for bringing it before the public now
was the American scholar, John Anthony West, who argued that the
specialists had missed it—not because they had failed to find it, but
because they had found it and had failed to interpret it properly.9
West’s evidence focused on certain key structures, notably the Great
Sphinx and the Valley Temple at Giza and, much farther south, the
mysterious Osireion at Abydos. He argued that these desert monuments
showed many scientifically unmistakable signs of having been weathered
by water, an erosive agent they could only have been exposed to in
sufficient quantities during the damp ‘pluvial’ period that accompanied
the end of the last Ice Age around the eleventh millennium BC.10 The
implication of this peculiar and extremely distinctive pattern of
‘precipitation induced’ weathering, was that the Osireion, the Sphinx, and
6 The Orion Mystery.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Serpent in the Sky, pp. 184-242.
10 Ibid., 186-7.
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other associated structures were built before 10,000 BC.11
A British investigative journalist summed up the effect:
West is really an academic’s worst nightmare, because here comes somebody way
out of left-field with a thoroughly well thought out, well presented, coherently
described theory, full of data they can’t refute, and it pulls the rug out from
beneath their feet. So how do they deal with it? They ignore it. They hope it’ll go
away ... and it won’t go away.12
The reason the new theory would not, under any circumstances, go away,
despite its rejection by droves of ‘competent Egyptologists’, was that it
had won widespread support from another scientific branch of
scholarship—geology. Dr Robert Schoch, a professor of Geology at
Boston University, had played a prominent role in validating West’s
estimates concerning the true age of the Sphinx, and his views had been
endorsed by almost 300 of his peers at the 1992 annual convention of
the Geological Society of America.13
Since then, most often out of the public eye, an acrimonious dispute
had begun to smoulder between the geologists and the Egyptologists.14
And though very few people other than John West were prepared to say
as much, what was at stake in this dispute was a complete upheaval in
accepted views about the evolution of human civilization.
According to West:
We are told that the evolution of human civilization is a linear process—that it
goes from stupid cavemen to smart old us with our hydrogen bombs and striped
toothpaste. But the proof that the Sphinx is many, many thousands of years older
than the archaeologists think it is, that it preceded by many thousands of years
even dynastic Egypt, means that there must have been, at some distant point in
history, a high and sophisticated civilization—just as all the legends affirm.15
My own travels and research during the preceding four years had opened
my eyes to the electrifying possibility that those legends could be true,
and this was why I had come back to Egypt to meet West and Bauval. I
was struck by the way in which their hitherto disparate lines of enquiry16
had converged so convincingly on what appeared to be the astronomical
and geological fingerprints of a lost civilization, one that might or might
not have originated in the Nile Valley but that seemed to have had a
presence here as far back as the eleventh millennium BC.
11 Ibid.
12 Mystery of the Sphinx, NBC-TV, 1993.
13 Conde Nast Traveller, February 1993, p. 176.
14 E.g, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Chicago, 1992, Debate:
How Old is the Sphinx?
15 Mystery of the Sphinx.
16 John West and Robert Bauval worked in isolation, unaware of each other’s findings,
until I introduced them.
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The way of the jackal
Anubis, guardian of the secrets, god of the funerary chamber, jackalheaded opener of the ways of the dead, guide and companion of Osiris ...
It was around five o’clock in the afternoon, closing-time at the Cairo
Museum, when Santha pronounced herself satisfied with her photographs
of the sinister black effigy. Down below us guards were whistling and
clapping their hands as they sought to herd the last few sightseers out of
the halls, but up on the second floor of the hundred-year-old building,
where ancient Anubis crouched in his millennial watchfulness, all was
quiet, all was still.
We left the sombre museum and walked down into the sunlight still
bathing Cairo’s bustling Tahrir Square.
Anubis, I reflected, had shared his duties as spirit guide and guardian
of the secret writings with another god whose type and symbol had also
been the jackal and whose name, Upuaut, literally meant Opener of the
Ways.17 Both these canine deities had been linked since time immemorial
with the ancient town of Abydos in upper Egypt, the original god of
which, Khenti-Amentiu (the strangely named ‘Foremost of the
Westerners’) had also been represented as a member of the dog family,
usually lying recumbent on a black standard.18
Was there any significance in the repeated recurrence at Abydos of all
this mythical and symbolic doggishness, with its promise of high secrets
waiting to unfold? It seemed worthwhile trying to find out since the
extensive ruins there included the structure known as the Osireion, which
West’s geological research had indicated might be far older than the
archaeologists thought. Besides, I had already arranged to meet West in a
few days in the upper Egyptian town of Luxor, less than 200 kilometres
south of Abydos. Rather than flying directly to Luxor from Cairo, as I had
originally planned, I now realized that it would be perfectly feasible to go
by road and to visit Abydos and a number of other sites along the way.
Our driver, Mohamed Walili, was waiting for us in an underground carpark just off Tahrir Square. A large genial, elderly man, he owned a
battered white Peugeot taxi normally to be found standing in the rank
outside the Mena House hotel at Giza. Over the last few years, on our
frequent research trips to Cairo, we had struck up a friendship with him
and he now worked with us whenever we were in Egypt. We haggled for
some time about the appropriate daily rate for the long return journey to
Abydos and Luxor. Many matters had to be taken into account, including
the fact that some of the areas we would be passing through had recently
been targets of terrorist attacks by Islamic militants. Eventually we agreed
17 The Gods of the Egyptians, volume II, p. 264.
18 Blue Guide, Egypt, p. 509; see also From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt, pp. 211-15;
Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, volume I, p. 31ff; The Encyclopaedia of Ancient
Egypt, p. 197.
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on a price and arranged to set off early the following morning.
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Chapter 41
City of the Sun, Chamber of the Jackal
Mohamed picked us up at our hotel in Heliopolis at 6 a. m. when it was
still half dark.
We drank small cups of thick black coffee at a roadside stall and then
drove west, along dusty streets still almost deserted, towards the River
Nile. I had asked Mohamed to take us through Maydan al-Massallah
Square, which was dominated by one of the world’s oldest intact Egyptian
obelisks.1 Weighing an estimated 350 tons, this was a pink granite
monolith, 107 feet high, erected by Pharaoh Senuseret I (1971-1928 BC).
It had originally been one of a pair at the gateway of the great
Heliopolitan Temple of the Sun. In the 4000 years since then the temple
itself had entirely vanished, as had the second obelisk. Indeed, almost all
of ancient Heliopolis had now been obliterated, cannibalized for its
handsome dressed stones and ready-made building materials by
countless generations of the citizens of Cairo.2
Heliopolis (City of the Sun) was referred to in the Bible as On but was
originally known in the Egyptian language as Innu, or Innu Mehret—
meaning ‘the pillar’ or ‘the northern pillar’.3 It was a district of immense
sanctity, associated with a strange group of nine solar and stellar deities,
and was old beyond reckoning when Senuseret chose it as the site for his
obelisk. Indeed, together with Giza (and the distant southern city of
Abydos) Innu/Heliopolis was believed to have been part of the first land
that emerged from the primeval waters at the moment of creation, the
land of the ‘First Time’, where the gods had commenced their rule on
earth.4
Heliopolitan theology rested on a creation-myth distinguished by a
number of unique and curious features. It taught that in the beginning
the universe had been filled with a dark, watery nothingness, called the
Nun. Out of this inert cosmic ocean (described as ‘shapeless, black with
the blackness of the blackest night’) rose a mound of dry land on which
Ra, the Sun God, materialized in his self-created form as Atum
(sometimes depicted as an old bearded man leaning on a staff):5
1 ‘Saqqara, Egypt: Archaeologists have discovered a green limestone obelisk, the world’s
oldest-known complete obelisk, dedicated to Inty, a wife of Pharaoh Pepi I, Egypt’s ruler
almost 4300 years ago, who was regarded as a goddess after her death.’ Times, London,
9 May 1992; see also Daily Telegraph, London, 9 May 1992.
2 Atlas of Ancient Egypt, pp. 173-4; Rosalie and Anthony E. David, A Biographical
Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, Seaby, London, 1992, pp. 133-4; Blue Guide, Egypt, p. 413.
3 The Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt, p. 110.
4 George Hart, Egyptian Myths, British Museum Publications, 1990, p. 11.
5 The Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt, p. 110; Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt, p. 66;
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The sky had not been created, the earth had not been created, the children of the
earth and the reptiles had not been fashioned in that place ... I, Atum, was one by
myself ... There existed no other who worked with me ...6
Conscious of being alone, this blessed and immortal being contrived to
create two divine offspring, Shu, god of the air and dryness, and Tefnut
the goddess of moisture: ‘I thrust my phallus into my closed hand. I made
my seed to enter my hand. I poured it into my own mouth. I evacuated
under the form of Shu, I passed water under the form of Tefnut.’7
Despite such apparently inauspicious beginnings, Shu and Tefnut (who
were always described as ‘Twins’ and frequently depicted as lions) grew
to maturity, copulated and produced offspring of their own: Geb the god
of the earth and Nut, the goddess of the sky. These two also mated,
creating Osiris and Isis, Set and Nepthys, and so completed the Ennead,
the full company of the Nine Gods of Heliopolis. Of the nine, Ra, Shu, Geb
and Osiris were said to have ruled in Egypt as kings, followed by Horus,
and lastly—for 3226 years—by the Ibis-headed wisdom god Thoth.8
Who were these people—or creatures, or beings, or gods? Were they
figments of the priestly imagination, or symbols, or ciphers? Were the
stories told about them vivid myth memories of real events which had
taken place thousands of years previously? Or were they, perhaps, part of
a coded message from the ancients that had been transmitting itself over
and over again down the epochs—a message only now beginning to be
unravelled and understood?
Such notions seemed fanciful. Nevertheless I could hardly forget that
out of this very same Heliopolitan tradition the great myth of Isis and
Osiris had flowed, covertly transmitting an accurate calculus for the rate
of precessional motion. Moreover the priests of Innu, whose
responsibility it had been to guard and nurture such traditions, had been
renowned throughout Egypt for their high wisdom and their proficiency in
prophecy, astronomy, mathematics, architecture and the magic arts. They
were also famous for their possession of a powerful and sacred object
known as the Benben.9
The Egyptians called Heliopolis Innu, the pillar, because tradition had it
that the Benben had been kept here in remote pre-dynastic times, when it
had balanced on top of a pillar of rough-hewn stone.
The Benben was believed to have fallen from the skies. Unfortunately, it
had been lost so long before that its appearance was no longer
From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt, p. 140.
6 Papyrus of Nesiamsu, cited in Sacred Science: The King of Pharaonic Theocracy, pp.
188-9; see also From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt, pp. 141-3.
7 From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt, p. 142. In other readings Shu and Tefnut were
spat out by Ra-Atum.
8 New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology, p. 27. The figure 3126 is given in some
accounts.
9 The Pyramids: An Enigma Solved, p. 13; C. Jacq, Egyptian Magic, Aris and Phillips,
Warminster, 1985, p. 8; The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt, p. 36.
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remembered by the time Senuseret took the throne in 1971 BC. In that
period (the Twelfth Dynasty) all that was clearly recalled was that the
Benben had been pyramidal in form, thus providing (together with the
pillar on which it stood) a prototype for the shape of all future obelisks.
The name Benben was likewise applied to the pyramidion, or apex stone,
usually placed on top of pyramids.10 In a symbolic sense, it was also
associated closely and directly with Ra-Atum, of whom the ancient texts
said, ‘You became high on the height; you rose up as the Benben stone in
the Mansion of the Phoenix ...’11
Mansion of the Phoenix described the original temple at Heliopolis
where the Benben had been housed. It reflected the fact that the
mysterious object had also served as an endurin
g symbol for the mythical
Phoenix, the divine Bennu bird whose appearances and disappearances
were believed to be linked to violent cosmic cycles and to the destruction
and rebirth of world ages.12
Connections and similarities
Driving through the suburbs of Heliopolis at around 6:30 in the morning I
closed my eyes and tried to summon up a picture of the landscape as it
might have looked in the mythical First Time after the Island of
Creation13—the primordial mound of Ra-Atum—had risen out of the flood
waters of the Nun. It was tempting to see a connection between this
imagery and the Andean traditions that spoke of the emergence of the
civilizer god Viracocha from the waters of Lake Titicaca after an earthdestroying flood. Moreover there was the figure of Osiris to consider—a
conspicuously bearded figure, like Viracocha, and like Quetzalcoatl as
well—remembered for having abolished cannibalism among the
Egyptians, for having taught them agriculture and animal husbandry, and
for introducing them to such arts as writing, architecture, and music.14
The similarities between the Old and New World traditions were hard to
miss but even harder to interpret. It was possible they were just a series
of beguiling coincidences. On the other hand, it was possible that they
might reveal the fingerprints of an ancient and unidentified global
civilization—fingerprints that were essentially the same whether they
appeared in the myths of Central America, or of the high Andes, or of
10 Kingship and the Gods, p. 153.
11 The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, p. 246.
12 For a more detailed discussion see The Orion Mystery, p. 17. Bauval suggests that the
Benben may have been an oriented meteorite: ‘From depictions it would seem that this
meteorite was from six to fifteen tons in mass ... the frightful spectacle of its fiery fall
would have been very impressive ...’, p. 204.
13 The Penguin Dictionary of Religions, Penguin Books, London, 1988, p. 166.
14 E.g. The Egyptian Book of the Dead, Introduction, p. XLIX; Qsiris And The Egyptian
Resurrection, volume II, pp. 1-11.
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Egypt. The priests of Heliopolis, after all, had taught of the creation, but
who had taught them? Had they sprung out of nowhere, or was it more