The Missing Lands

by Freddy Silva

  One striking feature of these physical gods was their ability to rule for immense periods of time, they were practically immortal by human standards. Of Ra it was said he ruled for so long that in time he became a stumbling old man with saliva running down the side of his mouth. His successor Shu also got tired of reigning for hundreds of years, particularly after a major tempest lasting for nine days tested his limits and finally convinced him to abdicate in favor of his son Geb.13

  Egyptian scholars such as Maspero considered the prehistory of their country to date back 36,000 years.14 Later compilers such as Manetho, Diodorus and Syncellus followed suit with a range between 36,000 to 39,000 years. These seem unrealistic lengths of time, yet a papyrus discovered in Luxor in 1824 sets out the timeline in graphic terms. Dated c.1400 BC, it was taken to Turin for examination (it is known as the Turin Papyrus), but by the time it was finally opened, the papyrus disintegrated. Despite its condition it was still possible to establish a total of nine dynasties belonging to pre-dynastic pharaohs. The oldest belonged to the Venerables of Memfer — Neterw such as Ra, Osiris, Isis, Hor, Set and Twt — who reigned for 23,200 years. They were succeeded by Venerables of the North, the Aku Shemsu-Hor, who settled at Iwnw, and reigned for 13,420 years until the time of Menes, described as the first pharaoh of "purely human bloodline," who gained the throne c.3113 BC. A total of 36,620 years.15 The main point of interest here concerns the 13,420-year reign of the Aku Shemsu Hor until the time of Menes, indicating that the Followers of Horus were not merely a group who survived the great flood, they were in existence 6000 years before the founding of Iwnw, a continuous tradition of sages.

  Roman scholars such as Mela and Herodotus offer additional information based on accounts provided to them by the priests at Iwnw who insisted such numbers were not pure fantasy, the events described actually occurred and were based on physical observation. “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.”16

  If these commentators are referring to the passage of time through the houses of the Zodiac, then in Herodotus’ time, when the Sun rose in Aries and set in Libra at the spring equinox, two completions of this cycle would have begun 39,000 years before his time.17

  The historical timeline of Egypt and the dazzling longevity of its early rulers would seem aberrant were it not for other civilizations claiming the same biological magic, such as the Sumerians and their breathtaking King List. The best-preserved specimen is the Weld-Blundell Prism, a vertical cylinder made of clay inscribed with cuneiform c.2170 BC. The document provides a comprehensive list of the Sumerian Kings from the beginning when "kingship descended from heaven, the kingship was in Eridug... In five cities, eight kings; they ruled for 241,200 years. Then the flood swept over.” The prism was found a few miles to the north of Ur, at Larsa, home of the fourth antediluvian king Kichunna.

  Such numbers seem almost abstract, even if we allow the Sumerians the possibility of having employed a method of computation now lost to us; the Egyptians themselves are known to have employed a calendar based on the motion of Sirius. This Sothic Cycle synchronizes with the solar year with only a margin of error of one month every 1460 years. According to Manetho, recorded Egyptian history is composed of 25 periods of 1460 Sothic cycles, or one full revolution around the Zodiac, which takes us into the region of 23,000 BC.18

  Ancient writers in other parts of the world routinely assert how dynasties in remote civilizations spanned eccentric spans of time. For example, the Troano Manuscript describes twelve Maya Kun dynasties reigning for 16,000 years, while the Chinese Tchi mentions twelve dynasties reigning 18,000 years, as do Hindu records which state, "in those times men lived as long as they chose to live and were without any fear of [the god of Death]."19

  THE GODS GO FLYING

  The Kujiki forms the backbone of Japan’s prehistoric texts concerning deities and the descent of kingship from the sky. They are estimated to be at least 10,000 years old. In the narrative, a period of 1,722,475 years elapses between the descent of the Sky Kami (a god or spirit form) and the first imperial family who became its earthly representatives and continued its values into historical times.20 The Sky Kami brings a civilizing influence to bear on a desolate and violent world, flying to Earth in a Sky-Rock-Boat to a place called Tsukushi, the Center of the World — a navel by any other name — identified as the island of Kyushu on the south-western tip of Japan. In one account, in order to reach this island it was necessary to travel eastwards, implying that the point of origin of the gods might have been the Korean peninsula.

  Iyefune, the boat of the gods. Mt. Miwa.

  Japan's oldest religious practice, Shinto (Way of the Gods) describes antediluvian heroes moving around in flying boats, the legends born from observation and likely handed down through Japan's oldest culture, the Jomon, who state their ancestors were gods who settled the region some 12,000 years ago. They may be right because the Jomon were already established by 14,000 BC, thus not only did they experience all the Dryas cycles, they would have observed the gods dispensing the virtues of civilization after each cataclysm.

  The flying rock boats are easy to locate. To the east of Kyushu, near Osaka, stands a 500-ton Ishi-no-högen (The Departing Stone). This upright monolith is cut to look as though it floats over a sacred spring that never dries, even during drought. It's a massive cube marked with deep, vertical grooves and a pair of rectangular incisions on top; a pyramid extrudes from its side which required the removal and re-shaping of half the block, and yet not one tool mark is visible. It is impressive as it is alien, and neatly conveys the image of a rock ship flown by the prehistoric gods. Legends speak of two gods, Okunisushi (Great Land Master) and Sukuna-biko-na setting out to build a temple in the course of one night but only got as far as creating this monolith due to a local rebellion breaking out among other gods.

  Botanist Philipp Franz Siebold sketched Ishi-no-högen while he was stationed in Japan in the 1920s. Again the mysterious protruding knob so unique to ancient architecture. But what is it for?

  Another example is Iyefune (rock ship), located in dense forest to the east of Osaka on Mount Miwa, one of Japan's most sacred mountains, an area filled with the type of machined megaliths common to the Andes. This single granite slab weighs 800 tons, and features deep, rectangular sections incised from the top all the way through to the core as though made by a surgeon armed with a laser.

  Many eastern traditions unambiguously state that in the time of gods, people had the capacity for flight, be it using a ladder, magical rope, flying vimanna craft, or in the case of Japan, stone boats. The stories are common to the Jorai of Indochina, the Koryaks of Central Asia, and is especially mentioned in the Indian epic Mahabharata: "Visvakarma, the architect among the gods, built aerial vehicles for the gods... You descendent of the Kurus, that wicked fellow came on that all-traversing flying vehicle known as Saubhapura and pierced me with weapons... He entered into the favourite divine palace of Indra and saw thousands of flying vehicles intended for the gods lying at rest... Indra, the Lord of Heaven came with a special type of flying vehicle which could accommodate 33 divine beings.”21

  A Dol Hareubang in Korea. Always the focus on the navel, and large eyes.

  I can't help but recall the earlier story of the Waitaha receiving a group of master craftsmen with narrow eyes from the north after the flood, magicians capable of “shaping rock without breaking its spirit,” because all around the island of Kyushu lies evidence of antediluvian gods possessing extraordinary skills in masonry, particularly on the Korean peninsula which is but a short boat ride away. Before the flood, both locations were joined as one landmass, and included Taiwan to the south. The Korean peninsula itself contains the greatest concentration of dolmen in the world, a tradition that is now seen as originating here be
fore migrating westwards to Europe. For one thing, dol is the Korean word for stone.

  TALL, SHINING AND LONG-HEADED

  Between South Korea and Kyushu lies the small island of Jeju, home to an unusual concentration of 12-foot tall statues carved from porous basalt. They are called Dol Hareubang (grandfather stone), and are said to depict in size and style the ancestors who came here after the flood, outsiders who were very tall magicians. An earlier name, Beoksumeori, means 'head of the shaman'. A number of statues bear a striking resemblance to those of Viracocha around Lake Titicaca, right down to the position of the hands above and below the navel.

  Throughout our quest I’ve made references to very tall people (as opposed to giants) whose lives straddled the boundary at the close of the Younger Dryas. I want to revisit this topic, along with that of elongated skulls, because both overlap in Egypt. The Building Texts describe intermediaries between gods and humans as Urshu, a term applied in conjunction with the half human, half divine Aku Shemsu Hor. The texts put their height at 5 cubits. Depending on the type of cubit used, the Royal or the Sacred, these individuals would have stood between 8.5 and 10.25 feet tall.

  Mesopotamian tradition follows suit. Post-flood Apkallu such as Lu-Nanna are said to have been two-thirds Apkallu one-third human,22 while the flood hero Gilgamesh, himself part Apkallu, is described in the Book of Giants as lugal, meaning ‘big man or giant’;23 in the Hittite version of the epic, Gilgamesh was said to be 11 cubits tall, or 18 feet, meaning that the statue currently on display in the Louvre depicts this man life-size.24

  The Aku Shemsu Hor were also biologically different in that their skulls were naturally elongated, just like the people we dealt with earlier in Peru, Malta, and the region around the Black Sea. I refer to them affectionately as Long Heads. In the words of the prominent Egyptologist Walter Emery: "Towards the close of the fourth millennium BC we find the people known traditionally as the Followers of Horus forming a civilized aristocracy or master race ruling over the whole of Egypt. The theory of the existence of this master race is supported by the discovery that graves of the late pre-dynastic period in the northern part of Upper Egypt were found to contain the anatomical remains of a people whose skulls are of greater size and whose bodies were larger than those of the natives, the difference being so marked that any suggestion that these people derived from the earlier stock is impossible. The fusion of the two races must have been considerable, but it was not so rapid... The dawn of the historic period of Egypt was divided into the two rival kingdoms of the North and the South, both ruled by a royal house and aristocracy of the same race and both known traditionally as the Followers of Horus — the demigods of Manetho’s history. The original capitals of those two states appear to have been Buto in Lower Egypt and Hieraconpolis in Upper Egypt; but at the time of the final unification, the chief cities of the two powers were apparently Sais in the north and Thinis (or Abydos) in the south."25

  The dissertation by Walter Emery is correct in many respects except for the date. The Followers of Horus may indeed have been the offspring of the antediluvian gods, but the Building Texts have them well established in Egypt long before the flood.26 Hor himself was venerated much earlier. The city of Buto, formerly known as Tell El Fara'in, Hill of the Pharaohs, once featured a renowned monolithic sanctuary dedicated to this antediluvian god. The city's importance was built on cultural developments spanning ten thousand years, from the Paleolithic to 3100 BC, implying that the cult of Hor was already well established there around the time of the Oldest Dryas. Likewise Hieraconpolis, formerly Nekhen, was a mound city with similar prehistoric roots, also under the tutelage of Hor.

  Although half human, half divine, the Followers of Horus were loathe to couple with human women for the obvious reason that a man twice as tall as a woman raises life threatening complications at birth for the mother. The second reason was to maintain the purity of bloodline of a people who appear to have kept one foot in the astral world while simultaneously living in a physical body. This underpinned the Shining Ones' declared ability to work their magic, to control the laws of nature. For this reason they developed skulls elongated in the rear and capable of housing a larger parietal cortex, the area of the brain associated with spiritual and dream states.27 By comparison, humans have a more developed frontal cerebral cortex in order to process information.

  But thousands of years after their appearance, the lineage of the Followers of Horus began to thin out. They were faced with a grim choice: accept annihilation or find a way to successfully interbreed with human women, the results of which are confirmed by Emery's findings. This successful transition between two races ultimately culminated in Menes, “first pharaoh of a totally human bloodline” c.3113 BC.28 That said, remnants of the Followers of Horus survived well into the second millennium BC, as attested by Amenhotep III with his elongated skull, and likewise his son and grandson, Akhenaten and Tutankhamun, although the problems of long-term interbreeding had by then led to obvious physical deformations.

  The lineage of the long-headed Followers of Horus was still evident in Amenhotep III.

  One branch of this lineage of sages may have survived into our era. In the early twentieth century there existed in China's Schechuan province a race called the Lolos. Inhabiting an area the size of Wales, these highly independent people were taller than Caucasians, with prominent cheekbones, broad, arched noses, and pointed chins. They possessed a unique pictographic script and a belief that for each person on Earth there is a corresponding star in the sky. They also possessed an I-Pu, an ancestral tablet composed of wooden pieces cut from the Pieris tree, the same type from which the ark in their flood myth was constructed. They believed in patriarchs who live in the sky, among whom are the Creator gods A-chi and A-li — who appear to be variations of the Mesopotamian antediluvian gods Enki and Enlil — and Tse-gu-dzih, the one attributed with causing the great flood after becoming frustrated with the wickedness of humans. These patriarchs lived outrageously long lives of 660 and 990 years respectively. After Tse-gu-dzih opened the sluice gates of the sky to release torrents of water, only one man, Du-mu, was saved in a hollowed out log along with his four sons.29

  MAGICIANS AND WIZARDS

  There is no shortage of magician gods in Egypt. Twt, who is attributed with authorship of every branch of knowledge both human and divine, is also described as the Great Lord of Magic who could move objects with the power of his voice.30 He understood “all that is hidden under the heavenly vault” and was described as “the counter of stars and the measure of the Earth.” He also is said to have invented writing, was a great mathematician and surveyor, and would bestow his wisdom on anyone smart enough to handle such knowledge.31 Shortly before the flood he is said to have inscribed the sum of all knowledge in books of a material that is resistant to damage by conflagration, hiding them in Egypt and throughout the Earth, to be rediscovered “only by the worthy,” individuals who would apply the information to elevate a society reduced to rubble.32

  Isis was said to be “more intelligent than countless gods, of knowing everything in heaven and earth, being strong of tongue... perfect both in giving command and in saying the word. She possessed the understanding of the power of words, incantations and spells with which to bend nature and the known laws of physics.”33

  Her consort Osiris was considered one of the original Wise Ones in the Egyptian pantheon. The name is a Greek phonetic transliteration of the original WSR (pronounced Asar), a word which became the root of vizier, and ostensibly, wizard. Osiris is portrayed as a bearded god, a civilizer who brought with him the knowledge of agriculture, animal husbandry, astronomy, writing, architecture and music, and not forgetting, a spiritual science underpinning a rightful life and laws leading to the immortality of the soul. He also led the way to building cities, temples, and implementing just laws. Business cards must have been awkwardly long back then. Thankfully he was rewarded with a short nickname, 'the Good One' — as was his Irish counterpart Daghda Mo
r, 'the Good God', who is similarly depicted wearing a ceremonial beard, and a white robe with a thin waist sash; just as the Shining Ones wore beards and white robes with beaded sashes; as did the civilizing god of the Indus region, Zarathustra, whose teachings are claimed by his followers to have been already fully implemented by 7500 BC.34

  It seems both Osiris and Viracocha might have been separated at birth, because in physical description and deed they belong to the same brotherhood of seven sages. Many overlapping legends exist of Viracocha throughout the Andes but they generally agree that this blue-eyed, white man possessed a power over the forces of nature, while his words and deeds earned him the image of a scientist, engineer, astronomer, architect, teacher and healer all rolled into one: “He caused the terraces and fields to be formed on the steep sides of ravines, and sustaining walls to rise up and support them. He also made irrigation channels to flow from the living stone... and he went in various directions, arranging many things.”35

  Such terraforming and stonework are evident in the epic works at Ollantaytambo. Only in the fifteenth century did the Inca inherit and restore this citadel, adapting it for their own needs, along with the 15,000-mile network of roads that everyone in the region knew full well had been the work of “white, auburn-haired men who’d lived thousands of years earlier.”36 Viracocha achieved it all with the assistance of seven Hayhuaypanti, each a specialist in his or her field. Writing in the first decade of the seventeenth century, the chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega reminds us of the magic once imbued in Cuzco by Viracocha and his Shining Ones. Garcilaso describes how the streams flowing under and around the Qorikancha, where the Navel of the Earth stood, were endowed with special properties. He goes on to lament the state of disrepair of the water system after the Spanish conquest, particularly one stream that rose a little to the west of the city, the water of which had been so prized for its fecund properties that special piping had to be laid underneath the city to take it from the royal vegetable garden to the temple. The special plumbing was necessary, Garcilaso wrote, because its water caused such vigorous plant growth that it would have damaged the buildings had it leaked onto the land beneath the city’s walls and pavements.37