Black Genesis
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*29. In Thomas Brophy, The Origin Map: Discovery of a Prehistoric Megalithic Astrophysical Map of the Universe, using purely astronomical puzzle-solving applied to the field data and drawings, we found, partly, that the CSA and the bedrock sculpture appeared consistent with a representative map of our Milky Way Galaxy and seemed to be an indication of Earth’s location in the galaxy. We have noted that this solution was not connected with known cultural archaeological evidence. Further, we asked ourselves that if somehow this representation was the meaning of the sculpture, how could that knowledge have been acquired? It must have been attained in one of three ways: (1) through some very ancient possession of astronomical instrumentation, knowledge of which was totally lost over the ages; (2) through some way of perceiving the universe (such as remote viewing) that was accessible to the ancients, though we are not now capable of this perception; (3) through receiving the knowledge from some outside source. These possible methods stimulated thought and questioning, as we had intended, but they also generatad some hysterical responses from both ends of the spectrum of thought. We did not, as Malville et al. claim in their 2007 report, “propose that the nomads had contact with extra-galactic aliens.”24 Further, they go on to say, “Brophy proposes that the stones of the cromlech represent maps of the stars of Orion as early as 16,500 BC. These extremely early dates . . . are inconsistent with the archaeological record.”25 Yet we did not propose the cromlech (Calendar Circle) was built in 16,500 BCE. We suggested, however, that it represented the long-term precessional motion of the sky and was built and used circa 5000 BCE. Generally science is advanced by the exercise of imaginative problem-solving applied to accurate data and calculations, even if some speculations may not be upheld by more extensive data collection, and science is hindered by applying only conventional reasoning, especially to flawed data and incorrect calculations.
*30. X-1 is indicated in a low-resolution version of the Quickbird image in Brophy and Rosen, “Satellite Imagery Measured of the Astronomically Aligned Megaliths at Nabta Playa,” Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry 5, no. 1 ( June 2005): 15–24.
*31. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listofhieroglyphs/german-Gardiner-list-translated#S-Crowns
*32. In the article about his expedition published in Geographical Journal, Bagnold supplied only a rough mark on a map with a scale of 1:10 million units of scale. Due to the extreme remoteness of the area combined with the paucity of information about the circle’s location, it was visited little or not at all at least until the 1990s, when four-wheel-drive jeep desert travel became readily available in Egypt. The first known visit was in 1998 by a small group calling themselves Zarzoora Expeditions of Wael T. Abed. We are lucky to have the very good black-and-white photograph taken by Ralph Bagnold when he discovered the site in 1930 and from which we can determine the original state of the stone circle.
*33. Both Bagnold in 1930 and the FJE in 2001–2002 say that no implements or artifacts were found in or near the circle. According to the FJE: “We could confirm Bagnold’s observation that no stone implements were to be found in the vicinity. A kilometer (about 3.280 feet) away, near our campsite, a broken aterian biface [sic] and some crude flake tools were noted, but no concentration of artifacts that would indicate any larger permanent settlement.” In April 2008, however, we did, in fact, find a rather beautifully worked stone implement, a knife or perhaps the tip of a lance, at a place only 150 meters or so (about 492 feet) west of the circle, among numerous other man-made stone artifacts. In addition, to the south of the basin there is a gently sloping area, possibly the shore of the ancient playa, with adjacent lines and rows of small rectangular-shaped parcels divided by bits of stones and small upright slates that are still embedded in the sand. (These uprights could be the outlines of small agricultural plots near a prehistoric village, evidence of which was found in a circular gathering of stones that seemed to be the outline of a primitive habitation.) In light of finding the numerous man-made stone artifacts lying on the surface, similar to the initial finds at Nabta Playa, we considered other general similarities between Bagnold Circle and Nabta.
†34. Some kilometers to the west, as we later headed toward the northern edge of Gilf Kebir, we came across the remains of a prehistoric settlement, probably from the late Neolithic, where we found several circles of stones marking the outline of habitations, as well as many stone implements. There can be little doubt, in view of these findings, that there was much human activity in the area, some sedentary, some nomadic, and some perhaps even pastoralist (though no evidence of cattle or other bovine has been found yet near Bagnold Circle). We must be privy to further explortions to confirm this, and the site clearly seems suitable for an extensive survey by field archaeologists. Unfortunately, given that no traditional professional Egyptologists have even managed to visit Bagnold’s site because of its remoteness from the Nile, it may continue to suffer from obscurity. Due to the flat, dry, playa sediment–like conditions of the terrain, however, the site may be a good candidate for study by the new generations of high-resolution synthetic aperture satellite radar with remote sensing, which can see beneath the surface layers of sediment.
*35. We also verified the north–south (meridian) alignment at night by aiming at the Pole Star and in the daytime with a simple gnomon’s noon shadow. In addition, in the distance directly north of the circle there is visible a lone mountain peak that could have been ritually significant to the placement of the circle.
†36. We don’t list the precise coordinates here because important sites in the Egyptian Western Desert have been left essentially unprotected. Even the extremely important and relatively accessible Nabta Playa is left unguarded, with nothing to protect it from damage but (we hope) the good sense of any visitors. The much more distant and remote Bagnold Circle is very unlikely to be protected.
*37. The text simply says that Ham “. . . saw the nakedness of his father . . .” in private and implies that he did something unspeakable. Many scholars believe it was a sexual act or perhaps even castration. (The castration interpretation comes from the fact that Canaan is Ham’s fourth son, and so Noah’s banishing of Canaan from the family lineage could be revenge for Ham prohibiting Noah from having a fourth son himself.)
*38. Religious Jews and Arabs today both consider themselves sons of Ham’s brother Shem through Abraham, who is considered to be a descendant of one of Shem’s five sons, Arpachshad (eighth generation descendant, according to the Book of Genesis), via Abraham’s two sons, Isaac and Ishmael. Further, according to the Exodus story, Moses is the fifth generation descendant of Isaac.
*39. In this chapter, we are focusing on the evidence regarding the color of the people who were the progenitors of the ancient Egyptian civilization. Regarding the term race, we note that contemporary specialists in human genetics, such as S.O.Y. Keita, point out that there are and have been human population groups with variation and fluent characteristics, such as skin color, but the genetic variabilities are such that the classical use of the term race has little scientific value.
*40. Thomas Brophy notes that from recent generations, he himself is a mix of European ethnicities, but he does consider himself a member of humanity, and thus, as we describe in this chapter, about two hundred thousand years ago, he was Black African. Brophy was raised mostly secular with some attendance at Christian churches, but after obtaining a Ph.D. in physics, he wrote a book that describes a view of the unity of all major religions within the context of modern physical science.41
*41. A franchise that sells evergreen trees at Christmas and pumpkins at Halloween.
*42. In 1934 Enrico de Agostini discovered a prehistoric burial ground at Ain Doua on the Libyan side of southern Uwainat. It offered well-preserved pottery and two skeletons, which were apparently taken to Florence, Italy, but were very damaged during transportation and during the famous flood that hit the Florence area in 1966. The pots, however, are displayed today at Florence Archaeological Museum.
†44. In the Dendera zodiac, Isis-Sirius is shown as a crouching cow, and elsewhere she appears as a woman wearing a headdress with cow horns.
*45. Azimuth is measured in degrees all around the horizon: 360 degrees, with the zero point being due north.
†46. Note that this change in rising azimuth depends on the starting azimuth of the star. Roughly about 1 degree applies, for example, to Sirius.
*47. Like the Masai of Kenya and the Dinka of Sudan, the Nabta cattle people probably drank the blood of live cattle by inserting a straw into their jugular, and they likely only rarely slaughtered a calf for meat, perhaps only on special feast days or for ceremonial purposes.
*48. A cataract is a change in the level of the river. In all, on the Nile there are six main cataracts, and the sixth is just north of Khartoum in Sudan.
*49. The first phase of the Satet (Satis) temple was an early-dynasty hut built into the corner of the three-boulders enclosure. In the third dynasty this was enlarged and a fore-court was added. Further work took place in the sixth dynasty, and various new temples were constructed on top of the ruins of the earlier one during the eleventh and twelveth dynasties, especially by the pharaoh Sesostris I. In the New Kingdom, the eighteenth-dynasty queen-pharaoh Hatshepsut had the Satis temple completely rebuilt some 2 meters (7 feet) higher than the original three boulders. The eighteenth-dynasty edifice was then extended to the east during the Ramesside period and again in the twenty-sixth dynasty. Finally, a totally new temple was built over the ruins of the last one during the Ptolemaic period.
*50. The Egyptologist Gaston Maspero explains that Krophi and Mophi are Qer Hāpi (Cavern of the Nile God) and Mu-Hāpi (Water of the Nile God).
*51. The latitude of Elephantine Island, 24.08 degrees north, precisely equaled the Tropic line circa 3760 BCE. By 3300 BCE, the Tropic line had moved down to 24.045 degrees, which was essentially the same.
†52. According to Ron Wells, Sirius had to be at an altitude of 10.48 degrees in order to be seen when observers took into account the high knoll that rises on the east bank of the river (today occupied by the Old Cataract Hotel).
*53. Actually, it is 365.242 days, to be exact.
*54. Some scholars suggest this date is also astronomical—occurring at the beginning of the zodiac Age of Pisces, and hence the reason why early Christians adopted the fish as the symbol of their age.
*55. The Hebrew called Sirius Sihor, and the Romans called it Sirio or Canicula—the Dog.
*56. The altitude of Sirius is taken as 1 degree above horizon and that of the sun 9 degrees below horizon. Sirius would have had an azimuth of 109 degrees 16 minutes.
*57. The Orion Mystery was first published by Heinemann in 1994. It was a bestseller in the United Kingdom and was an international bestseller. It has been translated into more than twenty languages.
*58. The number of days that a star takes to return to the same point, usually measured at the meridian transit. The rising of a star, such as Sirius, occurs about 4 minutes longer than sunrise each day, thus it “looses” 1 day in the solar year.
*59. A sidereal day is the time it takes Earth to complete one rotation relative to the vernal equinox, which is essentially one full rotation with respect to the stars (hence the word sidereal). It is four minutes shorter than a solar day, which is a full rotation of Earth with respect to the sun. Thus there is one extra sidereal day in a standard solar year of 365 days, as we can see, because one solar-day rotation is taken up by Earth moving around the sun in one year.
*60. The word Hwt (“Hat”) . . . was used in the New Kingdom with the meaning “Temple.”
*61. The heliacal reappearance of Sirius occurred before the day of summer solstice in early dynastic times, before about 2600 BCE, and it occurred after summer solstice in later years up to today.
*62. Lockyer actually took in situ measurements and concluded that the alignment of the Isis temple was 18 degrees 30 minutes south of east; this was also roughly the average of the measurements obtained earlier by Lepsius and Mariette.
*63. Lockyer’s calculations that the main temple was aligned to Dubhe (Alpha Ursa Major), the brightest star in the Bull’s Thigh constellation, were based on very early dates that do not apply to the existing temple.
*64. Evidence of an earlier presence at Abu Ruwash is attested by found objects that bear the names of kings of the first dynasty, Aha and Den.
†65. The azimuth of the rising sun at summer solstice was nearly 28 degrees north of east. If we allow for 2 degrees altitude for the full disk to be seen over a mound or obelisk from Abu Ruwash, the azimuth is nearer to 27 degrees north of east.
*66. According to Miroslav Verner, the name Abusir derives from the Greek Busiris, which was taken from the ancient Egyptian Per Usir, meaning the Realm of Osiris.
*67. Actually, the term Neolithic was originally devised by anthropologists in 1865 to refer to a stage of human cultural development defined by the types of tools used (lithos is “stone” in Greek), rather than to refer to dates. Over the decades, as scholars developed a sort of canonical view, the actual dates believed to apply to the various cultural developmental stages (Early Neolithic, Middle Neolithic, Late Neolithic, Terminal Neolithic) gathered an air of certainty, though the dates of each stage were believed to be different for different geographic regions of the planet. Over time terms such as Late Neolithic became almost interchangeable with actual dates, rather than cultural type. At Nabta, however, Wendorf himself notes that, regarding the megalithic constructions there, “[b]uilding large stone monuments was not expected among such groups.”1 These very findings have changed the concept of what is Neolithic and are changing our understanding of the time period to which the term will apply. To avoid confusion, then, we refer mostly to actual dates rather than conventional terms such as Middle Neolithic.
*68. Sirius is the brightest star of all. At visual magnitude −1.46, it is significantly brighter than Vega, but Sirius is in the Southern Hemisphere.
*69. Atmospheric refraction affects the apparent viewing angle of a star significantly only when very close to the horizon—by up to about 0.56 degrees on the horizon. At an altitude of 26.5 degrees, the altitude of the subterranean passage, the atmospheric refraction would be very small, less than 2 arc minutes.
†70. Of course, we believe our calculations are accurate according to the current knowledge of the long-term motion of the celestial pole and Vega’s currently measured proper motion, which is quoted in the SIMBAD database as having small uncertainty. It is always possible, however, that new information might be measured or discovered about the long-term apparent motion of a star.
‡71. In addition, if we were to consider only the part of the passage that descends through the bedrock, which is about two-thirds of its length, the Vega-shining-down time would be extended by a couple of hundred years.
§72. In The Origin Map, Brophy estimates around 11,770 BCE for the match of Orion’s belt and the pyramids, and in The Egypt Code, Bauval estimates 11,450 BCE. For a number of reasons, these matching dates should be considered estimates to within a few hundred years. For example, some date variation may arise from the choice between matching the line connecting the end stars (to the end pyramids) or matching the first two stars (to the first two pyramids). In addition, there may be some differences as to whether more recent, proper motion measurements were used for the stars and slight differences in approximations in the methods of celestial pole motion calculations. We do not, therefore, view the Orion’s-belt-to-pyramids layout match as a highly precise date, though it definitely occurred within this era. The subterranean passage star shafts, however, offer more precise dating.
*73. Dimmer stars cannot be viewed when they are just barely above the horizon, because of atmospheric
extinction. As they rise farther above the horizon, often to a degree or more altitude, the light from the star passes through less of Earth’s atmosphere and obscuring dust, and the star becomes visible to the eye.
*74. The ancient names of its two sister structures were less poetic and seemingly less informative: Great is Khafre and Menkaure is Divine.
*75. As we have said, there is a significant spread of half a degree or so in the viewing angle of these subterranean passages, due to their 1.2 meter- (3.9 feet) shaft heights, so the possible association of the precessional culmination of Vega does not depend on the fact that it seems to have hit directly the middle of the viewing angle—that amount of precision could be happenstance.
*76. If we wanted to interpret the half-degree difference as precise to Vega, the central alignment would be about three hundred years later than for Khufu’s subterranean passage. Alternatively, they may be considered as less precise versions of the same alignment to Vega.
†77. Djoser’s and Imhotep’s step pyramid complex at Saqqara was the first major pyramid complex construction, but it contained a step pyramid, not a true pyramid.
*78. Recent discoveries in Turkey, at a site called Gobekli Tepi, involve finely carved megalithic pillars and rings that have been firmly radiocarbon dated to the tenth millennium BCE. In a submission to an academic journal, we mentioned Gobekli Tepi as evidence that man was making fine megalithic constructions much earlier than the Late Neolithic to support our contention that some of the megalithic constructions at Nabta Playa may also predate the orthodox view of the Late Neolithic. The anonymous academic referee objected to our reference on the grounds that “authors’ remarks on megalithic pillars found in Turkey are totally irrelevant. I reject any idea of possible contacts between Turkish site and Nabta assuming both sites were independently constructed.” In our paper, we neither claimed nor disclaimed contact between Nabta and Gobekli Tepi. We did claim that recent evidence pushed much farther back in time the dates of ceremonial megalithic architecture at other sites and that this evidence should lessen the resistance to consider new evidence, which might similarly push back dates at Nabta.