Faking History

by Jason Colavito

  31. The Pyramids and the Flood

  As I discussed in Chapter 30, the Al-Khitat of Al-Maqrizi, written around 1400 CE, is obviously not “Ancient Egyptian” as ancient astronaut celebrity Giorgio Tsoukalos has implied, but the fact that the book hasn’t been translated into English (to my knowledge) lets Tsoukalos get away with making any claim he likes for it. However, after I translated all of the pyramid references in the Al-Khitat, a much more fascinating story about Near Eastern myths of the pyramids and Great Flood emerged, a tale the offers a fascinating glimpse into the continuity of tradition across millenniums.

  Al-Maqrizi says explicitly that the Arabs know nothing solid about ancient Egypt, only mutually contradictory myths and legends with no foundation. “There is no agreement on the time of their construction, the names of those who have raised them, or the cause of their erection. Many conflicting and unfounded legends have been told of them.”[246] This is not a good sign, but it does eliminate Al-Maqrizi as a suspect in the creation of Tsoukalos’ alien-intervention myth. So, if not Al-Maqrizi, then who? Maqrizi quotes at great length the work of Ibrahim ibn Wasif Shah (d. 1203), who tells of the wonders of the pyramids. This material is scattered across the Al-Khitat, primarily in chapters 10 and 40, and it makes following the story somewhat complex.

  Ibn Wasif Shah begins by discussing the legendary King ‘Adim (or ‘Ad), the leader of the Adites, the Arabian desert people who in the Qur’an are punished by God for their sins.[247] According to Ibn Wasif Shah, King ‘Adim ordered the rocks cut for the Two Pyramids—these would be the pyramids of Dashur—but he did not actually construct them himself. The chronology is unclear, but around this same time two demons or Fallen Angels appeared to him and taught him science before being cast into a well in Babylon to await judgment. These “angels cast out of heaven” must be the “Guardians of the Sky” Tsoukalos is referring to, but there is no explicit discussion of the angels having anything to do with cutting the rocks for the pyramids. This much Maqrizi relates in chapter 10.

  In chapter 24, Maqrizi takes up the story again with Saurid (or Sourid), the figure most closely associated in Islamic lore with the building of the pyramids at Giza. Saurid has a dream in which he sees a meteor shower and some bad astrological omens predicting the Great Flood of Near Eastern myth (Qu’ranic version, of course) and therefore builds the two largest pyramids, filling them with treasures and covering them in silk. (The story is also given in almost identical words by Murtadi and Ibn ‘Abd al-Hakam.) We are then told that the Copts hold that Shaddad ibn ‘Ad, the son of King ‘Ad, built the pyramids at Dashur with the stones cut and left behind by King ‘Ad. Apparently—and I am not clear on this—Saurid is descended in some way from Shaddad.

  Ibn Wasif Shah explicitly connects these events to the wickedness preceding the Flood, recounted most explicitly in Genesis and the Enochian literature but also known in Islamic lore. He has Saurid’s chief priest recount a dream in which angels descend from heaven to punish mankind for wickedness and sin and declare that any who wish to be saved must go to the Ark to be rescued from the imminent Flood. Saurid then builds the pyramids to preserve science and knowledge, presumably that given by the Fallen Angels, when the Flood comes. This is a widespread Arab myth.

  Now since we know that the Arabs also had a tradition that pyramids were built by Idris, whom they identified with Hermes, and Hermes with Enoch, the Hebrew prophet, it is no stretch to see a parallel here with Enoch’s “heavenly tablets”[248] on which are engraved the secrets of the forthcoming flood, as well as the “books of my forefathers” from Jubilees[249] that discuss secret knowledge. This makes much more sense as the mythic wellspring for Ibn Wasif Shah’s claim that the Giza pyramids were engraved with technological treatises and their interior chambers filled with scientific books than any facts. As we all know, (a) the Giza pyramids do not feature hieroglyphic inscriptions and (b) those pyramids that do have them are not scientific treatises on antediluvian scientific knowledge—let alone Ibn Wasif Shah’s astronomical tables and “the list of events of past eras under their [the stars’] influence, and when they must be examined to know the future of everything about Egypt until the end of time.”[250] Since Ibn Wasif Shah was wrong about the interior design of the pyramids, the purpose and content of the hieroglyphics, and pretty much everything else, we have no reason to believe him about Fallen Angels either.

  Erich von Däniken, in History Is Wrong, claims that Idris and Saurid were identical based on Maqrizi’s chapter 33, but in actuality Maqrizi in that passage merely asserts that Idris, Enoch, Saurid, and Shaddad were all proposed by various peoples as the builders of the pyramids—they were not identical with each other. Now here’s the kicker: In Odyssey of the Gods (1999) von Däniken mistakenly calls Maqrizi’s work, which he paraphrases, cites, and partially quotes, “ancient Egyptian texts”[251]—this must be where Tsoukalos got his mistaken idea! It’s even the same wording!

  So, in sum, the tale told my Ibn Wasif Shah in al-Maqrizi’s Al-Khitat is very much in keeping with the Near Easter flood myth dating back to the Sumerians. In all the versions, human become sinful, in part due to corruption from sinful gods, demigods, or angels, leading to the high god(s) sending a flood to cleanse the earth. It is interesting that these fallen creatures all do the same thing. Compare Oannes of Babylonian myth, the Watchers of Enoch, and the angels who visited ‘Ad:

  OANNES

  This Being was accustomed to pass the day among men; but took no food at that season; and he gave them an insight into letters and sciences, and arts of every kind. He taught them to construct cities, to found temples, to compile laws, and explained to them the principles of geometrical knowledge. He made them distinguish the seeds of the earth, and shewed them how to collect the fruits; in short, he instructed them in every thing which could tend to soften manners and humanize their lives.[252]

  THE WATCHERS

  And Azâzêl taught men to make swords, and knives, and shields, and breastplates, and made known to them the metals of the earth and the art of working them, and bracelets, and ornaments, and the use of antimony, and the beautifying of the eyelids, and all kinds of costly stones, and all colouring tinctures. … Semjâzâ taught enchantments, and root-cuttings, Armârôs the resolving of enchantments, Barâqîjâl, (taught) astrology, Kôkabêl the constellations, Ezêqêêl the knowledge of the clouds, Araqiêl the signs of the earth, Shamsiêl the signs of the sun, and Sariêl the course of the moon.[253]

  THE ANGELS OF ‘AD

  In his time there lived two angels cast out of heaven, and who lived in the Aftarah well; these two angels taught magic to the Egyptians, and it is said that ‘Adim, the son of El-Budchir, learned most of their sciences, after which the two angels went to Babel.[254]

  In each case, too, the beings are thrust back to the depths. Oannes (as Uan, or Adapa) is punished for revealing his knowledge by being confined to the underground Apsu sea. The Watchers are thrust into a pit in the deserts of Mesopotamia. The Angels of ‘Ad are buried in a well at Babylon. In 1 Enoch and in Ibn Wasif Shah the transmission of knowledge from heaven to humanity is the primal sin that enrages God and unleashes the Flood. (In the earliest Flood myth, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the source of the corruption is not named.)

  The substantive identity of these stories should serve to prove that the Arabs merely translated to Egypt myths once told of Mesopotamia, as indicated by the fact that the stories supposedly originate with ‘Ad of Iram, a legendary king in Arabia, not Egypt. This agrees very well with what we know of pre-Islamic Arabian myths, where the Tower of Babel was once believed to have been built by the Fallen Angels (probably derived from the Babylonian belief in the Enuma Elish that the Babylonian temple of Esagil was built by angry Annunaki[255]) and to have a relationship of some sort with the eventual revelation of astrology and science by Abraham.[256] Too, it agrees with the Judeo-Christian legend recorded by Flavius Josephus of Seth’s children (the antediluvian men of old, elsewhere called the giants[257]) inscr
ibing all knowledge on pillars before the Flood:

  They also were the inventors of that peculiar sort of wisdom which is concerned with the heavenly bodies, and their order. And that their inventions might not be lost before they were sufficiently known, upon Adam’s prediction that the world was to be destroyed at one time by the force of fire, and at another time by the violence and quantity of water, they made two pillars, the one of brick, the other of stone: they inscribed their discoveries on them both, that in case the pillar of brick should be destroyed by the flood, the pillar of stone might remain, and exhibit those discoveries to mankind; and also inform them that there was another pillar of brick erected by them. Now this remains in the land of Siriad to this day.[258]

  Note that the “fire” and “water” exactly parallel Saurid’s dream, and Siriad (= the land of Sirius) has traditionally been identified with Egypt, where Sirius was used to mark the calendar. I think we’re starting to get the picture. It’s the same story, but in a much older and less folktale form. I find all these connections fascinating—especially the way the story remained remarkably consistent across time and across cultures—and could go on for many more pages, but let’s stop there for now. I think this is sufficient to cast doubt on any claim that the Al-Khitat records an alien architect at Giza. In the next chapter, we’ll look at what else this ancient legend can tell us about alternative history’s pyramid claims.

  32. The Strange Case of Proclus and the Pyramid

  One claim alternative historians have made from the eighteenth century down to today is that the Greek Neoplatonist philosopher Proclus supposedly wrote in his commentary on Plato’s Timaeus that the Great Pyramid of Egypt had a flat top from which the priests of Egypt observed the stars and recorded the rising and setting of Sirius. This claim apparently first appeared in John Greaves’s Pyramidographia (1646), in which he writes: “Upon this flat [top], if we assent to the opinion of Proclus, it may be supposed that the Aegyptian Priests made their observations in Astronomy; and that from hence, or near this place they discovered, by the rising of Sirius the [Sothic cycle].”[259] His source, he said, was Book One of Proclus’ commentary on Timaeus, but nothing more specific.

  The claim was then picked up by many (if not most) writers on the pyramids down to Richard Anthony Proctor, who used this single line of Proclus to argue for the Great Pyramid’s astronomical function in several nineteenth century books. He did not, however, provide a reference for Proclus. This has not stopped modern writers from John Anthony West to Alan Alford to Robert Bauval to Graham Hancock from quoting or citing Proctor’s assertion, derived apparently from Greaves, that Proclus had declared the pyramid an observatory. All of these writers use this assertion in their works, and none quotes Proclus directly—only Proctor. I have never read in any later writer the specific words of Proclus on this subject.

  I have tried in vain to track down the exact words of Proclus, and I have not been able to do so. I have reviewed both a nineteenth century and a 2007 translation of Proclus’ commentary on Timaeus, and there does not appear to be any reference to the Egyptian pyramids in it. Nor did I find a reference to Sirius, or even much about astronomy. Instead, the earliest version of the claim appears in Robert Greaves’s Pyramidographia, and all later versions are dependent upon this source, directly or indirectly. At first I thought that Greaves had simply made up a fake quotation, but a careful review of Greaves’s passage helps us to see the most logical explanation for what happened. Here’s Greaves’s text:

  [The Great Pyramid] ends not in a point, as mathematical pyramids do, but in a little flat or square. […] By my measure it is thirteen feet, and 280 of 1000 parts of the English foot. Upon this flat [top], if we assent to the opinion of Proclus, it may be supposed that the Aegyptian Priests made their observations in Astronomy; and that from hence, or near this place they discovered, by the rising of Sirius the [Sothic cycle]. […] That the priests might near these Pyramids make their observations, I no way question […] But that these pyramids were designed for observatories […] is no way to be credited upon the single authority of Proclus.[260]

  His source for this is given as Proclus’ commentary on Plato’s Timaeus at Book One, chapter 1. It seems to me that Greaves must have been heavily interpreting one of Proclus’ sentences, which otherwise had nothing to do with the Great Pyramid, since no mention of the pyramid appears in Book One. This is what Proclus actually said in the cited passage:

  For extending to the Egyptian priests the most ancient transactions of the Greeks, he [Solon] leads them to the narration of their antiquities; of which the Egyptians participate in a remarkable degree, as they survey without impediment the celestial bodies, through the purity of the air, and preserve ancient memorials, in consequence of not being destroyed either by water or fire.[261] (emphasis in original)

  I am not expert enough in ancient Greek to read Proclus in the original, so I cannot confirm the original meaning of the word scholars have translated variously as “antiquities” (as in things) or “antiquity” (as in time). If the Greek is the former, Greaves may well have read this as a direct reference to the pyramids, which the priests would therefore seem, by the grammar of the sentence, to use in making the observations of the second half. Then, a bit later, Proclus writes that “the history is from pillars, in which things paradoxical and worthy of admiration, whether in actions or inventions, are inscribed.”[262]

  Greaves wrote that he believed that obelisks, pillars tapering to a pyramid-shaped peak, were “but lesser models of the Pyramids,”[263] and he recalled the tradition (see Chapter 31) that “all sciences are inscribed” in the Pyramids,[264] though his own firsthand observations contradicted the point. Since Greaves discounted the claim he ascribes to Proclus that the Egyptians used the pyramids as observatories, it may well be that he was reading into Proclus’ two passages a discussion of the Pyramids in light of the other traditions about the pyramids with which Greaves disagreed. The later information in Greaves about the Sothic cycle is Greaves’s own inference and is not derived from Proclus.

  From Greaves’s account, Richard Anthony Proctor in his posthumously-published Old and New Astronomy (1892) grossly exaggerated Greaves’s discussion of the currently existing small square platform at the top of the pyramid into something completely different:

  …we are told by Proclus that the priests observed from the summit of the pyramid, when that structure terminated at the top in a platform. [...] Unquestionably, Proclus must have been referring to a tradition relating to a time when the grand gallery of the Great Pyramid opened out on a large square platform, where priests could be stationed in order to observe and record observations...[265]

  This was a claim Proctor had been flogging since 1883, in an earlier book on the pyramidology called, oddly enough, The Great Pyramid, though never in so great of detail.[266] In neither book, however, did Proctor cite a source for Proclus, because there is no warrant for the claim outside of Greaves, an author Proctor explicitly cites elsewhere as a source.[267]

  These claims then reappear wholesale in later alternative history books. Robert Schoch, for example, repeats it, with credit to Proctor, in Pyramid Quest (2005), without any effort to cite Proclus directly. From there he attempts to divine Egyptian astronomical techniques based on this speculative notion. John Anthony West does the same in The Traveler’s Key to Ancient Egypt (1985; rev. ed. 1995), though West completely misunderstands the distinction between the (assumed) Proclus and Proctor’s own ideas: Proclus, he said, “mentioned that the Great Pyramid had served as an observatory before it had been completed.”[268] Needless to say, Proctor’s claim entered the work of popular pyramid theorizers Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert, neither of whom sought Proclus’ original text but who, in The Orion Mystery (1994) pretended as though the line attributed to Proclus by Proctor had an existence outside of Proctor, and even claimed—with no citation of any kind—that Proclus had declared the pyramid “part of a machine, whose function is beyond us�
��![269]

  Other authors also repeated Proctor’s speculation with varying allegiance to fact. In Starseekers (1980) Colin Wilson recited the claims with attribution to Proctor, but by the time of From Atlantis to the Sphinx (2004), he wrote that “it had been stated as fact” by Proclus that “the Pyramid was used as an observatory while it was under construction.”[270] He then says Proctor merely repeated Proclus’ original claim, using nearly the same words as Bauval and Gilbert. An Italian book, The Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx (2006), dispenses with Proctor altogether and attributes the claim that the Grand Gallery (not the platform) was an observatory solely to Proclus, who she says inspired “a number of eighteenth century astronomers”[271]—wrong on all counts since Greaves wrote in the seventeenth century and Proctor the nineteenth. Proclus is again claimed as the originating source in Alan Alford’s Pyramid of Secrets (2003), though all of his citations are indirect—to Proctor, Bauval, and other alternative writers.

  But where did the claim originate? My reading of Al-Maqrizi’s medieval compilation of Arab history and lore, the Al-Khitat, provided the accidental evidence that finally let me come up with a reasonable explanation for what happened—and which demonstrates a rather striking continuity of tradition across a thousand years or more.

  Al-Maqrizi, writing c. 1400 CE, claimed to have found a manuscript in which an earlier writer wrote down some verses recited by the Qadi Fakhr Al-Din Abd al-Wahab Al-Masrime centuries earlier. These verses lay out all the then-common pyramid theories, many identical to those proposed by Piazzi Smyth hundreds of years later, including the claim that the pyramid represents the planets, or the cosmos, or something similar. In the poem, the poet asks who built the pyramid and why: