For my daughter, Candice, and my son, Jonathan. May you always remember your genesis.
—Robert Bauval
To my parents, in deepest gratitude for bringing me into this amazing journey.
—Thomas Brophy
BLACK GENESIS
“Black Genesis offers astounding new insights as Bauval and Brophy forcefully support, with hard data, the radical idea that Egyptian civilization was the outgrowth of a sophisticated Black African culture that existed thousands of years prior to the earliest known pharaohs. Their book is a must read for anyone interested in genuinely understanding the true origins of ancient Egypt and the dynamics of how civilizations develop.”
ROBERT M. SCHOCH, PH.D., AUTHOR OF VOYAGES OF THE PYRAMID BUILDERS AND PYRAMID QUEST
“Readers of Black Genesis will never think of ancient Egypt in the same way again. Bauval and Brophy make the case that this venerable civilization was originated by Black Africans from the Sahara Desert and that the pyramids, the statues, and the hieroglyphs were the result of their knowledge and ingenuity. The authors trace the series of errors and misjudgments that have obscured the origins of this remarkable civilization. It is time for the record to be set straight, and Black Genesis is the book that may well do it. This is an authoritative, excellent, well-written book.”
STANLEY KRIPPNER, PH.D., PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY AT SAYBROOK UNIVERSITY AND COAUTHOR OF PERSONAL MYTHOLOGY
“In Black Genesis, Bauval and Brophy combined their investigative skills to answer an obvious but often-neglected question, “Who were the ancient Egyptians?” With new astroarchaeological evidence they build a strong case for “The African origin of the pharaohs” and have dramatically altered our understanding of the past.”
ANTHONY T. BROWDER, AUTHOR AND INDEPENDENT EGYPTOLOGIST
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book was not an easy one to research and to put together due to the vast and complex issues involved as well as the need to organize and undertake deep desert expeditions to the Egyptian Sahara. Yet with perseverance, dedication, and enthusiasm, we plodded on, step-by-step, page-by-page, and we can now say that we are extremely proud and pleased with the result.
As always, our first thanks go to our respective families. Their support, love, and patience are greatly appreciated. We wish to pay special thanks and tribute to anthropologists Fred Wendorf and Romuald Schild of the Combined Prehistoric Expedition for opening the way to the study of Nabta Playa. We also thank astronomer Kim Malville for being the first to realize the importance of the megalithic alignments at Nabta Playa. Special thanks go to longtime colleague and friend Paul Rosen whose combination of scientific integrity and complete lack of bias or dogmatism has supplied immeasurably helpful collaboration. Thanks, too, to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of Pasadena, California, for supporting the unusual project of further studies of Nabta Playa.
Our thanks and respect is also due to the desert explorers Mark Borda and Carlo Bergmann for their many discoveries in the Egyptian Sahara and for their kind efforts to share some of these with us. We also thank Mahmoud Marai for guiding us to the remote locations of Gilf Kebir and Jebel Uwainat and showing us the wonderful rock-art cave and the hieroglyphic inscriptions discovered at Uwainat in 2007. We extend thanks to our friend and desert guide Mahmoud (Tiger) Nemr and geologist and desert guide Diaa Shehata for taking us safely to Nabta Playa, and we thank our friend Michael Ackroyd for delivering us to Nabta Playa in 2003 with necessary permits and with great panache. We thank Chance Gardner and Vanesse McNiel for making the fine graphic animations of the Calendar Circle.
Our thanks also go to the many colleagues and friends who, directly or indirectly, have helped us put this book together: Linda and Max Bauval; Hoda and Camille Hakim-Taraboulsi; Sherif el Sebai of Tarot Travel Tours; Gouda Fayed; Angela Richards; Brian Hokum; Lyra Marble; Dustin Donaldson; John and Josette Orphanidis; Jean-Paul and Pauline Bauval; June and Jim Brophy; Geoffrey and Therese Gauci; Richard (Fuzzy) Fusniak; Ambassador Jean Paul Tarud-Kuborn and his lovely wife, Valentina Troni; William Horsman and Viviane Vayssieres; the lovely family of my late driver, Mahmoud El Kirsh; Arianna Mendo; Robert Schoch; John Anthony West; Lily Lee; the Helios family (you know who you are!); Khaled el Bary, owner of the wonderful Bary’s Restaurant at the pyramids; Giulio Gallo; Mayumi Hashiyama; Carmen Boulter; and many others too numerous to name here, but who surely know that we are grateful for their friendship and support. We also thank our publisher, Inner Traditions, the lovely Cecilia Perugia at Corbaccio Edizione in Milan, and everyone at A. M. Heath Ltd. Last but definitely not least, we give thanks for having so many wonderful readers around the world who make all our efforts worthwhile.
CONTENTS
Cover Image
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION: Ancient Egypt Reborn
Chapter 1. Strange Stones
A Lucky Turn of the Spade
The Combined Prehistoric Expedition (CPE )
Circle, Alignments, and Tumuli
In Comes Archaeoastronomy
Chapter 2. Wanderlust
Oxford Gentleman, Queen’s Lover, and Deep Desert Explorer
The Lost Oasis
The Desert Prince and the English Patient
The Expeditions of Harkhuf
From Ford Company Trainee to Camel Driver
The Abu Ballas Trail
The Egyptian Teacher and the Maltese Businessman
Pharaonic Inscriptions! A Cartouche of a King!
Pharaoh Mentuhotep’s Envoy to Yam
The Road to Yam and Tekhebet
Chapter 3. Stonehenge in the Sahara
Sahara Climate Cycles: Another Link to the Stars?
Tracking the Stars
Textual Evidence?
CNN: “Sahara Stonehenge!”
Gates of the Sun
Inexplicable Constructions
The 2001 Official Site Report: Reluctant Introduction of the Stars
Alignments Toward the Stars: When and Why?
Chapter 4. Sirius Rising
Calendar Circle Revealed
Calendar Circle Resolved
Space Age Meets Stone Age
Sirius, the Circumpolar Stars, and Orion
A Right Angle and Two Stars
One Year of Astronomy at Nabta Playa
More Mysteries at Nabta Playa
The Sun Temple of Djedefre in the Sahara
Bagnold Circle
Chapter 5. The Bible, the Hamites, and the Black Men
Ham, Son of Noah
The Half-Hamites Theory
Black Athena
The Out of Africa Eve
It Is All in the Melanin
Diop and the Cause of His Struggles
Consolidating the Evidence
Out of the Sahara and into the Nile Valley
The Source?
Meet the Ancestors
Two Giant Giraffes in Stone
Deep Desert Journey
Chapter 6. The Cattle and the Star Goddesses
Taming the Auroch
Bones and Stones
Navigating the Sand Sea
Moving East Toward the NileValley
The Sacred Island of Elephantine
The Time Machine of the Ancient
A Sense of Eternity
The Sacred Yearly Inundation
Black Genesis: Year Zero
The Great Pyramid and Zep Tepi
The Great Wall of Time
Other Evidence of the Long-Term Tracking of Sirius
Those Who Followed the Sun
Hathor, Is is, the Big Dipper, and Sirius
The Sun Temples of the Sun Kings
POSTSCRIPT: Discovery of the Kifa
h Cave
APPENDIX 1: Back to the First Time
Vega, Sirius, and Orion Agree at Giza
Vega and the Subterranean Passage
Take a Walk at the First Time with Sirius
Dual Dating and Vega Reconfirmed
Sothic Cycles and Zep Tepi
Exact Date of Zep Tepi?
APPENDIX 2: Sothic Cycles and Imhotep’s Calendar Wall
APPENDIX 3: Saving Nabta Playa
Will the Oldest Prehistoric Astronomical Complex in the World Be Destroyed?
Footnotes
Endnotes
Bibliography
About the Authors
About Inner Traditions • Bear & Company
Books of Related Interest
Copyright & Permissions
INTRODUCTION
ANCIENT EGYPT REBORN
No colors any more I want them to turn black . . .
MICK JAGGER AND KEITH RICHARDS, “PAINT IT BLACK,” 1966
This book is the product of a deep and strong desire to use the best of our intellect, knowledge, and abilities to put right an issue that has long beleaguered historians and prehistorians alike: the vexed question of the Black African origins of the ancient Egyptian civilization. In spite of many clues that have been in place in the past few decades, which strongly favor a Black African origin for the pharaohs, many scholars and especially Egyptologists have either ignored them, confused them, or, worst of all, derided or scorned those who entertained them. It is not our business to know whether such an attitude is a form of academic racism or simply the blindered way of looking at evidence to which some modern Egyptology has become accustomed, but whatever the cause, this issue has remained largely unresolved.
We first came across this inherent bias and prejudice against African origins of the Egyptian civilization in the debate—more of an auto-dafé really—against the Black African professor Cheikh Anta Diop, who, in 1954, published his thesis Nation Négre et Culture, which argued a Black African origin for the Egyptian civilization. Anta Diop was both an eminent anthropologist and a highly respected physicist, and as such, he was armed with an arsenal of cutting-edge science as well as the use of the latest technology in radiocarbon dating and biochemistry to determine the skin color of ancient mummies and corpses by analyzing their content of melanin, a natural polymer that regulates pigmentation in humans. Yet in spite of his careful scientific approach, the Egyptian authorities refused to provide Anta Diop with skin samples of royal mummies, even though only minute quantities were required, and they pilloried and shunned him at a landmark symposium in Cairo in 1974 on the origins of ancient Egyptians. Diop died in 1986, his mission not fully accomplished. Fortunately, however, the debate on African origins was quickly taken up by Professor Martin Bernal, who, in 1987, published a three-volume opus, Black Athena, that flared even further the already-heated debate. Bernal, a professor emeritus of Near Eastern studies at Cornell University, was the grandson of the eminent Egyptologist Sir Alan Gardiner, yet this did not prevent Egyptologists from attacking him with even more vehemence than they had his Black African predecessor Anta Diop.
Even though there is still much controversy surrounding the origins of the ancient Egyptian civilization, we can now say with much evidence-driven conviction that its origins have their genesis with a Black African people who inhabited the Sahara thousands of years before the rise of the pharaonic civilization. In this book we present hard scientific evidence and cogent arguments that have been culled from the latest findings and discoveries made in the Egyptian Sahara during the past four decades. We have consulted the publications of eminent anthropologists, paleoanthropologists, paleoclimatologists, paleopathologists, genetic scientists, archaeologists, archaeoastronomers, geologists, and even reports from daring desert explorers such as Mark Borda, Carlo Bergmann, and Mahmoud Marai, who have all contributed to showing that this specific region of the world was the crucible of the ancient Egyptian civilization. In researching this book, we have used the best and latest research accredited to experts and scholars, and we have also provided extensive notes in order for the reader to trace this source material for further reading. In addition, we have specifically used our own tool kit and method, which entails the application of the science of astronomy to interpret the alignments of complex megalithic structures, pyramids, and temples, as well as extracting the astronomical content in ancient Egyptian texts and tomb drawings. To phrase it another way, we have coaxed the silent, ancient stones to reveal their secrets with the universal language of the sky.
Black Genesis is an intellectual time machine that takes you on a roller-coaster adventure into the beyond of recorded history. We have written it not for academic readership but for lay readers, those who wish to understand more regarding this debate on the origin of civilization and perhaps who wish even to be part of the restoration of Black Africa to its rightful place at the genesis of the human journey. Although, in this book specialized topics such as anthropology and precession astronomy are reviewed, we have kept the discussion as easy and as entertaining as possible in order to achieve a text that is user-friendly and well within the grasp of anyone who has a thirst for knowledge and a sense of adventure. Our wish is to interest a wider audience in this fascinating research and, we hope, to encourage participation in the debate. With Internet communication and the instantaneous distribution of data and information as well as the now easy-to-use astronomy software accessible to all those with a home computer, the participation of the wider public in such debates has become a real and viable possibility, and, indeed, has quite often helped (coerced may be a better word!) experts to remove their blinders and look at the wider picture.
There is still much work to do in bringing to the world a new vision of the Black African origins of civilization. Yet if we buttress the theory with solid, current research and exploration, and if we look at the evidence with open minds free of prejudice and bias, progress of this notion of origins is gaining momentum. For many centuries the Black race of the world has either been exploited by its White counterpart or looked upon as inferior. Although many in the Western world have advanced a great deal in curbing such an attitude, the truth is that racial prejudice is still very much rampant in other parts of the world, and it lingers in uneducated or dark hearts in Europe and the New World. Black Genesis thus becomes not only a scientific thesis but also a testament of respect and admiration of all whose skin happens to be black and who have a direct ancestral line to Black Africa.
Our research has taken us from Europe and the United States to Egypt, from the comfort of five-star hotels in Cairo to camping in the remote Sahara, and from the studious environment of public libraries to chaotic journeys along the entire stretch of the Egyptian Nile Valley. We have consulted with experts on the prehistory of the Egyptian Sahara and traveled in four-wheel-drive vehicles with intrepid explorers along large swaths of no-man’s-land in southwestern Egypt. We have seen the dense, multiracial populations of large Egyptian cities as well as the sparsely inhabited oases of the Western Desert (Egyptian Sahara). In downtown Cairo we have heard the cacophony of traffic, whose din reaches the brooding pyramids of Giza and the great temples of Luxor and Karnak, and we have experienced the deafening silence of Gilf Kebir and Jebel Uwainat. We have done all this because we believe in our cause and in our work and because we love the excitement and thrill of the chase and the challenge of the enterprise. Most of all, we have done all this because a huge intellectual dam has been breached, and we want to be part of the flood that will regenerate Egypt with a new and purer vision of itself.
1
STRANGE STONES
In Nabta there are six megalithic alignments extending across the sediments of the playa. . . . Like the spokes on a wheel, each alignment radiates outwards from a complex structure. . . .
DR. MOSALAM SHALTOUT, NATIONAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF ASTRONOMY AND GEOPHYSICS, EGYPT
[One of the] alignments points to the rising position of Sirius .
. . the primary calibrator of the Egyptian calendar. . . .
DR. FRED WENDORF AND DR. ROMUALD SCHILD, THE MEGALITHS OF NABTA PLAYA
A LUCKY TURN OF THE SPADE
The phrase a lucky turn of the spade is well known in archaeology. It reminds us that many of the great discoveries have often been made not by intellectual ingenuity, as we would expect, but by pure chance. Moreover, it implies that the credit does not necessarily always go to the person who actually held the spade, but rather to his employer, the leader or financier of the archaeological project. For example, when, in 1873, a Turkish worker plunged his rusty spade into the soil and discovered the legendary city of Troy, this was a lucky turn of the spade—not for him—but rather for the German adventurer Heinrich Schliemann. When, in 1922, an Egyptian peasant shifted the sand with his spade and discovered the entrance to Tutankhamun’s tomb, this too was a lucky turn of the spade not for him but for the English archaeologist Howard Carter. Schliemann and Carter became legends in their own time; the workers were given a small stipend and then departed into oblivion.
So when an unnamed student from Southern Methodist University of Texas (SMU) discovered Nabta Playa, his or her name was somehow lost and forgotten in the academic verbiage that followed. Admittedly, this time there was no lucky turn of the spade. In fact, there was no spade in the hand of the unnamed student. The leader of the expedition, Fred Wendorf, and the student as well as a few others with them had by chance stopped their Jeep in order to have a comfort break—a pee—after a long and tiring drive in the Egyptian Sahara. They were 100 kilometers (about 62 miles) due west of Abu Simbel in a nondescript, empty desert spot. During their rest, as they looked down around their feet, they slowly realized they were standing in a field of numerous artifacts, the remnants of finely made stone tools and potsherds. Those artifacts alone were intriguing enough to prompt Fred Wendorf to investigate further and begin an entirely new excavation site. What the explorers did not then realize was that the strange clusters of large stones all around them, half-buried in the sand, would eventually shock the world’s concept of antiquity. At first the members of the expedition assumed that these stones were just natural boulders sticking out of the ancient sediment—a common feature in this arid part of the world. In fact, for years, as they excavated in the midst of the boulders, searching for and finding the expected Neolithic artifacts, they assumed the large stones were natural bedrock outcrops. As they looked closer, however, it dawned on them that the stones were positioned in unnatural formations—strange geometrical clusters, ovals, circles, and straight lines—and they were sitting on the sediments of an ancient dry lake. Someone had taken the trouble to move these stones at great effort. Who had done this? When? More intriguingly, why? It would be no exaggeration to say from the outset of our story that Wendorf’s findings and those of his team, which were published gradually from the mid-1970s until very recently, should have shaken to its very core the scholarly world and should have changed its perception of Egyptian history and even, perhaps, of civilization as a whole. This, however, didn’t happen. Nabta Playa and its mysteries remained an undefused intellectual bomb, ticking away, remaining unexploded in the hallways of established knowledge.
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