historical period has been vindicated by archaeology,11 isn’t it a bit
premature for us to assume that his pre-dynastic chronology is wrong
because excavations have not yet turned up evidence confirming it?12
6 Egypt before the Pharaohs, pp. 12-13; The Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt, pp. 200,
268.
7 Egypt before the Pharaohs, p. 12.
8 Archaic Egypt, p. 23; Manetho, (trans. W. G. Waddell), William Heinemann, London,
1940, Introduction pp. xvi-xvii.
9 Egypt before the Pharaohs, p. 11.
10 Ibid., p. 11-13; Archaic Egypt, pp. 5, 23.
11 See, for example, Egypt before the Pharaohs, pp. 11-13.
12 This is a particularly important point to remember in a discipline like Egyptology
where so much of the record of the past has been lost through looting, the ravages of
time, and the activities of archaeologists and treasure hunters. Besides, vast numbers of
Ancient Egyptian sites have not been investigated at all, and many more may lie out of
our reach beneath the millennial silt of the Nile Delta (or beneath the suburbs of Cairo
for that matter), and even at well-studied locations such as the Giza necropolis there are
huge areas—the bedrock beneath the Sphinx for example—which still await the
attentions of the excavator.
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Gods, Demigods and Spirits of the Dead
If we are to allow Manetho to speak for himself, we have no choice but to
turn to the texts in which the fragments of his work are preserved. One of
the most important of these is the Armenian version of the Chronica of
Eusebius. It begins by informing us that it is extracted ‘from the Egyptian
History of Manetho, who composed his account in three books. These
deal with the Gods, the Demigods, the Spirits of the Dead and the mortal
kings who ruled Egypt ...’13 Citing Manetho directly, Eusebius begins by
reeling off a list of the gods which consists, essentially, of the familiar
Ennead of Heliopolis—Ra, Osiris, Isis, Horus, Set, and so on:14
These were the first to hold sway in Egypt. Thereafter, the kingship passed from
one to another in unbroken succession ... through 13,900 years— ... After the
Gods, Demigods reigned for 1255 years; and again another line of kings held sway
for 1817 years; then came thirty more kings, reigning for 1790 years; and then
again ten kings ruling for 350 years. There followed the rule of the Spirits of the
Dead ... for 5813 years ...’15
The total of all these periods adds up to 24,925 years and takes us far
beyond the biblical date for the creation of the world (some time in the
fifth millennium BC16). Because it suggested that biblical chronology was
wrong, this created difficulties for Eusebius, a staunchly Christian
commentator. But, after a moment’s thought, he overcame the problem
in an inspired way: ‘The year I take to be a lunar one, consisting, that is,
of 30 days: what we now call a month the Egyptians used formerly to
style a year ...’17
Of course they did no such thing.18 By means of this sleight of hand,
however, Eusebius and others succeeded in boiling down Manetho’s
grand pre-dynastic span of almost 25,000 years into a sanitized dollop a
bit over 2000 years which fits comfortably into the 2242 years orthodox
biblical chronology allows between Adam and the Flood.19
A different technique for downplaying the disturbing chronological
implications of Manetho’s evidence is employed by the monk George
Syncellus ( c. AD 800). This commentator, who relies entirely on invective,
writes, ‘Manetho, chief priest of the accursed temples of Egypt [tells us]
of gods who never existed. These, he says, reigned for 11,895 years ...’20
Several other curious and contradictory numbers crop up in the
fragments. In particular, Manetho is repeatedly said to have given the
13 Manetho, p. 3.
14 Ibid., pp. 3-5.
15 Ibid., p. 5.
16 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1991, 12:214-15.
17 Manetho, p. 5.
18 There is absolutely no evidence that the Ancient Egyptians ever confused years and
months, or styled one as the other; ibid, p. 4, note 2.
19 Ibid., p. 7.
20 Ibid., p. 15.
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enormous figure of 36,525 years for the entire duration of the civilization
of Egypt from the time of the gods down to the end of the thirtieth (and
last) dynasty of mortal kings.21 This figure of course, incorporates the
365.25 days of the Sothic year (the interval between two consecutive
heliacal risings of Sirius, as described in the last chapter). More likely by
design than by accident, it also represents 25 cycles of 1460 Sothic years,
and 25 cycles of 1461 calendar years (since the ancient Egyptian civil
calendar was constructed around a ‘vague year’ of 365 days exactly).22
What, if anything, does all this mean? It’s hard to be sure. Out of the
welter of numbers and interpretations, however, there is one aspect of
Manetho’s original message that comes through loud and clear.
Irrespective of everything we have been taught about the orderly progress
of history, what he seems to be telling us is that civilized beings (either
gods or men) were present in Egypt for an immensely long period before
the advent of the First Dynasty around 3100 BC.
Diodorus Siculus and Herodotus
In this assertion, Manetho finds much support among classical writers.
In the first century BC, for example, the Greek historian Diodorus
Siculus visited Egypt. He is rightly described by C.H. Oldfather, his most
recent translator, as ‘an uncritical compiler who used good sources and
reproduced them faithfully’.23 In plain English, what this means is that
Diodorus did not try to impose his prejudices and preconceptions on the
material he collected. He is therefore particularly valuable to us because
his informants included Egyptian priests whom he questioned about the
mysterious past of their country. This is what they told him:
‘At first gods and heroes ruled Egypt for a little less than 18,000 years, the last of
the gods to rule being Horus, the son of Isis ... Mortals have been kings of their
country, they say, for a little less than 5000 years ...24
Let us review these figures ‘uncritically’ and see what they add up to.
Diodorus was writing in the first century BC. If we journey back from there
for the 5000 years during which the ‘mortal kings’ supposedly ruled, we
get to around 5100 BC. If we go even further back to the beginning of the
age of ‘gods and heroes’, we find that we have arrived at 23,100 BC, when
the world was still firmly in the grip of the last Ice Age.
21 Ibid., p. 231; see also The Splendour that was Egypt, p. 12.
22 Like the Maya, (see Part III), the Ancient Egyptians made use for administrative
purposes of a civil calendar year (or vague year) of 365 days exactly. See Skywatchers of
Ancient Mexico, p. 151, for further details on the Maya vague year. The Ancient Egyptian
civil calendar year was geared to the Sothic year so that both would coincide on the
same
day/month position once every 1461 calendar years.
23 Diodorus Siculus, translated by C.H. Oldfather, Harvard University Press, 1989, jacket
text.
24 Ibid., volume I, p. 157.
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Long before Diodorus, Egypt was visited by another and more
illustrious Greek historian: the great Herodotus, who lived in the fifth
century BC. He too, it seems, consorted with priests and he too managed
to tune in to traditions that spoke of the presence of a high civilization in
the Nile Valley at some unspecified date in remote antiquity. Herodotus
outlines these traditions of an immense prehistoric period of Egyptian
civilization in Book II of his History. In the same document he also hands
on to us, without comment, a peculiar nugget of information which had
originated with the priests of Heliopolis:
During this time, they said, there were four occasions when the sun rose out of his
wonted place—twice rising where he now sets, and twice setting where he now
rises.25
What is this all about?
According to the French mathematician Schwaller de Lubicz, what
Herodotus is transmitting to us (perhaps unwittingly) is a veiled and
garbled reference to a period of time— that is, to the time that it takes for
sunrise on the vernal equinox to precess against the stellar background
through one and a half complete cycles of the zodiac.26
As we have seen, the equinoctial sun spends roughly 2160 years in
each of the twelve zodiacal constellations. A full cycle of precession of
the equinoxes therefore takes almost 26,000 years to complete (12 x
2160 years). It follows that one and a half cycles takes nearly 39,000
years (18 x 2160 years).
In the time of Herodotus the sun on the vernal equinox rose due east at
dawn against the stellar background of Aries—at which moment the
constellation of Libra was ‘in opposition’, lying due west where the sun
would set twelve hours later. If we wind the clock of precession back half
a cycle, however—six houses of the zodiac or approximately 13,000
years—we find that the reverse configuration prevails: the vernal sun now
rises due east in Libra while Aries lies due west in opposition. A further
13,000 years back, the situation reverses itself once more, with the vernal
sun rising again in Aries and with Libra in opposition.
This takes us to 26,000 years before Herodotus.
If we then step back another 13,000 years, another half precessional
cycle, to 39,000 years before Herodotus, the vernal sunrise returns to
Libra, and Aries is again in opposition.
The point is this: with 39,000 years we have an expanse of time during
which the sun can be described as ‘twice rising where he now sets’, i.e. in
25 The History, pp. 193-4. In the first century AD a similar tradition was recorded by the
Roman scholar Pomponious Mela: ‘The Egyptians pride themselves on being the most
ancient people in the world. In their authentic annals one may read that since they have
been in existence, the course of the stars has changed direction four times, and that the
sun has set twice in the part of the sky where it rises today.’ (Pomponious Mela, De Situ
Orbis.)
26 Sacred Science, p. 87
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Libra in the time of Herodotus (and again at 13,000 and at 39,000 years
earlier), and as ‘twice setting where he now rises’, i.e. in Aries in the time
of Herodotus (and again at 13,000 and 39,000 years earlier).27 If
Schwaller’s interpretation is correct—and there is every reason to
suppose it is—it suggests that the Greek historian’s priestly informants
must have had access to accurate records of the precessional motion of
the sun going back at least 39,000 years before their own era.
The Turin Papyrus and the Palermo Stone
The figure of 39,000 years accords surprisingly closely with the
testimony of the Turin Papyrus (one of the two surviving Ancient Egyptian
king lists that extends back into prehistoric times before the First
Dynasty).
Originally in the collection of the king of Sardinia, the brittle and
crumbling 3000-year-old papyrus was sent in a box, without packing, to
its present home in the Museum of Turin. As any schoolchild could have
predicted, it arrived broken into countless fragments. Scholars were
obliged to work for years to piece together and make sense of what
remained, and they did a superb job.28 Nevertheless, more than half the
contents of this precious record proved impossible to reconstruct.29
What might we have learned about the First Time if the Turin Papyrus
had remained intact?
The surviving fragments are tantalizing. In one register, for example,
we read the names often Neteru with each name inscribed in a cartouche
(oblong enclosure) in much the same style adopted in later periods for
the historical kings of Egypt. The number of years that each Neter was
believed to have reigned was also given, but most of these numbers are
missing from the damaged document.30
In another column there appears a list of the mortal kings who ruled in
upper and lower Egypt after the gods but prior to the supposed
unification of the kingdom under Menes, the first pharaoh of the First
Dynasty, in 3100 BC. From the surviving fragments it is possible to
27 As the following table makes clear:
IN OPPOSITION
VERNAL EQUINOX
SUNRISE
(DUE WEST)
AT SUNRISE
Fifth century BC (time of Herodotus)
Aries
Libra
Approx 13,000 years before Herodotus
Libra
Aries
Approx 26,000 years before Herodotus
Aries
Libra
Approx 39,000 years before Herodotus
Libra
Aries
28 See, for example, Sir A.H. Gardner, The Royal Cannon of Turin, Griffith Institute,
Oxford.
29 Archaic Egypt, p. 4.
30 For further details, Sacred Science, p. 86.
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establish that nine ‘dynasties’ of these pre-dynastic pharaohs were
mentioned, among which were ‘the Venerables of Memphis’, ‘the
Venerables of the North’ and, lastly, the Shemsu Hor (the Companions, or
Followers, of Horus) who ruled until the time of Menes. The final two lines
of the column, which seem to represent a summing up or inventory, are
particularly provocative. They read; ‘... Venerables Shemsu-Hor, 13,420
years; Reigns before the Shemsu-Hor, 23,200 years; Total 36,620 years’.31
The other king list that deals with prehistoric times is the Palermo
Stone, which does not take us as far back into the past as the Turin
Papyrus. The earliest of its surviving registers record the reigns of 120
kings who ruled in upper and lower Egypt in the late pre-dynastic period:
the centuries immediately prior to the country’s unification in 3100 BC.32
Once again, however, we really have no idea how much other information,
perhaps relating
to far earlier periods, might originally have been
inscribed on this enigmatic slab of black basalt, because it, too, has not
come down to us intact. Since 1887 the largest single part has been
preserved in the Museum of Palermo in Sicily; a second piece is on
display in Egypt in the Cairo Museum; and a third much smaller fragment
is in the Petrie Collection at the University of London.33 These are
reckoned by archaeologists to have been broken out of the centre of a
monolith which would originally have measured about seven feet long by
two feet high (stood on its long side).34 Furthermore, as one authority has
observed:
It is quite possible—even probable—that many more pieces of this invaluable
monument remain, if we only knew where to look. As it is we are faced with the
tantalising knowledge that a record of the name of every king of the Archaic
Period existed, together with the number of years of his reign and the chief events
which occurred during his occupation of the throne. And these events were
compiled in the Fifth Dynasty, only about 700 years after the Unification, so that
the margin of error would in all probability have been very small ...’35
The late Professor Walter Emery, whose words these are, was naturally
concerned about the absence of much-needed details concerning the
Archaic Period, 3200 BC to 2900 BC,36 the focus of his own specialist
interests. We should also spare a thought, however, for what an intact
31 Ibid., p. 86. See also Egyptian Mysteries, p. 68.
32 Archaic Egypt, p. 5; Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt, p. 200.
33 Archaic Egypt, p. 5; Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1991, 9:81.
34 Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt, p. 200.
35 Archaic Egypt, p. 5.
36 Egypt to the End of the Old Kingdom, p. 12.
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Palermo Stone might have told us about even earlier epochs, notably Zep
Tepi—the golden age of the gods.
The deeper we penetrate into the myths and memories of Egypt’s long
past, and the closer we approach to the fabled First Time, the stranger
the landscapes that surround us become ... as we shall see.
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Chapter 44
Gods of the First Time
According to Heliopolitan theology, the nine original gods who appeared