Signs of the Gods?

by Erich von Daniken

  The English archaeologist, Gertrude Caton-Thompson, who was in charge of excavations in 1929, thought there was a tomb under the tower. Digging took place, but no tomb was found. So the tower stands there among the other buildings, even though it has no apparent purpose.

  A less spectacular site, called the ‘valley ruins’, extends around the ellipse. However, I found no signs of a valley. The ruins are scattered over the same plain on which the large ellipse lies. And as is only appropriate here, luxuriant colourful plant life flourishes between the stones.

  The large ellipse and the valley ruins are dominated by a third complex, which lies on a hill and is called the ‘Acropolis’. The natural features of the ground have been used with extraordinary ingenuity. Walls have been built wherever there are gaps in the rock. The thickest, outer walls are 7.50 m high and 6.70 m wide at the base, and although they taper upwards they are still 4 m wide at the top! The construction workers must have had good heads for heights, because some sections of the walls are built on sheer rock faces. These sections of the Acropolis must have been easy to defend—if Zimbabwe really was a fortress.

  Digs on the hill have revealed small gold bracelets, glass beads and eight birds made of soapstone, the mineral saponite, which feels like soap in its dry state. These ‘Zimbabwe birds’ add to the mystery of the site. 30 cm high, they were probably perched on columns originally.

  There are geometrical patterns on the floor of the Acropolis. Looking down on the valley ruins and the great wall, the view is breathtaking.

  Some of the stone blocks, which are over 15 m high, seem to have been worked by human hands, others could have been dressed mechanically. I know monoliths in Peru which bear similar traces. There, above the Inca fortress of Sacsayhuaman, it looks very much as it does here in Zimbabwe—as if giants had once been toying with the blocks of stone. Today a narrow zigzag stairway leads up to the monoliths. Anyone ascending in the noonday heat without a guide should beware of snakes.

  Cecil Rhodes (1853-1920), the founder of Rhodesia, visited Zimbabwe and was extremely interested in the numerous theories about the origin of the buildings. He opted for the biblical version, according to which Zimbabwe was Ophir, the land of gold.

  About the same time, the archaeologist J. P. Went supported the view that Zimbabwe had been built by the Arabs. Today this view is still shared by R. Gayre, who says that Bantu negroes have never built monolithic buildings anywhere else, so why here? Gayre uses the gold trade to justify his hypothesis. The Arabs mined here in pre-Islamic times and built Zimbabwe to protect their treasures. As regards the elliptical wall, he points to a similar seventeenth-century wall, which is located in the Yemen.

  According to some estimates, as much as 600,000 tons of gold a year were excavated in Zimbabwe’s heyday. Today Rhodesia’s annual gold production is a mere 16 tons.

  Everything is problematical; uncertainty reigns. Zimbabwe really does seem to have no history.

  As I like to imagine that our ancestors, whether black or white, thought about practical matters very much as we do, I never felt at all happy about the dreamland of Ophir idea, when actually faced with the massive buildings. Why not?

  If a garrison is supposed to have been there to guard the transport of gold, the soldiers would certainly have lived in the formidable Acropolis. They could have overlooked the plain from up there.

  On the other hand the ellipse of the big ruins in the plain makes no sense. There was no commanding all-round view, nor any of the features which defenders in all ages have needed: towers, battlements, embrasures! It was not even possible to climb the walls of the ellipse; there were no steps leading to the top or projections from the wall to scramble up. As a fort the great ellipse is a washout.

  Why, for heaven’s sake, did African negroes drag hundreds of tons of granite here and then break them up to build this monumental edifice?

  I could not get this question out of my mind; it followed me daily on my visits to the various ruins . . . until a map of the complex on the wall of the Zimbabwe Museum gave me an idea!

  Inside the great ellipse, the massive conical tower in the ‘right-hand corner’ has a significant position. Ellipse and tower—surely they resemble, with slight distortions, the Sirius model which was discovered among the Dogon negroes in the West African Republic of Mali?

  The scholar Robert K. G. Temple has clearly proved that the Dogon tribe has known about the Sirius system down to the last detail from time immemorial.

  Sirius A is the main star in the constellation of Canis Major. A tiny invisible neutron star, Sirius B, revolves around it in an elliptical orbit. This orbit around Sirius A is clearly recognisable in the ‘bottom right’ of the Dogons’ stone drawings.

  The Dogon assert that they got their enormous astronomical knowledge from a god called Nommo. But not only did Nommo tell the negroes about the orbit of the invisible Sirius B around Sirius A, he also supplied the names and orbital data of some other planets in the Sirius system. For example, there is a ‘shoemaker planet’ and a ‘planet of the women’ —knowledge which modern astronomy does not yet possess. It only knows that Sirius B revolves round Sirius A in an elliptical orbit lasting fifty years.

  Standing in front of the plan in the Zimbabwe Museum, I felt strongly that there was a visual parallel. Surely the great ellipse of Zimbabwe with the conical tower at the ‘bottom right’ resembles the traditional Dogon Sirius model? Do the inexplicable ruined walls inside the great ellipse trace the orbits of the ‘shoemaker planet’ and the ‘planet of the women’? Why else does an apparently meaningless wall run parallel to the elliptical great wall for a full third of its length? It cannot have served a defensive purpose, any more than the other round or spiral-shaped walls inside the ellipse.

  You only need to fly at a moderate altitude to see that the great ellipse of Zimbabwe with the massive tower in the bottom right-hand corner is almost identical with the Dogon Sirius model.

  The question is whether there is an ideological connection between the Zimbabwe complex and the Dogon Sirius model, in addition to their astonishing visual similarity?

  In all places at all times religion has been the driving force that spurred men on to superhuman achievements. Signs for the gods all over the world were of religious origin. Religious impulses inspired megalithic temples and the pyramids, not to mention Arabic mosques and Christian cathedrals. Incas and Mayas built their step pyramids and temples in honour of the gods. In all the leading religions in the world even the poorest of the poor collected gold and precious stones to ornament the symbols of the gods. Heathen or Christian, it makes no difference; man has always built and made sacrifices in order to honour a god.

  We must ask ourselves whether the Zimbabwe blacks, worshippers of their god Nommo, built a gigantic edifice in memory of his origin in his home amid the stars—a model of the Sirius system. Did religious fervour drive them to undertake the monumental work in order to express in stone their hope that Nommo would return? Did they want to signal to their god, ‘Here we live and wait for you!’

  Diagram of the ruins of Zimbabwe compared with the model of Sirius made by the Dogon negroes from Mali.

  The eight Zimbabwe birds from the Acropolis are very similar to the sacred falcons of the Egyptian god Horus, who was originally a celestial god. He was symbolised by a falcon with outspread wings.

  Did the Dogon acquire their ancient wisdom from the Egyptians, as Robert K. G. Temple postulates? In fact the oldest Egyptian calendar was a Sirius calendar and Isis, the Egyptian goddess, was originally the Sirius goddess.

  What are the eight falcon-like birds doing in the African ruins?

  We do not know when or by whom Zimbabwe was built. The ruins apparently have no history. But neither do we know when and whence the Dogon came to Mali. The model of a stellar system seems to have been familiar to both the Dogon and the Bantus. Both worshipped the falcon, the symbol of the Egyptian god Horus. Were the Dogon perpetuating the memory of a visit from the gods w
ith their stellar legend of the Sirius system? Were the Bantus doing the same thing with a model of the system laid out on the ground, even though it could only be understood from above?

  I do not claim that my contribution provides the solution to the Zimbabwe mystery. I only know that so far no one has said anything at all satisfactory. As the great ellipse of Zimbabwe was not a fortress—the fortress is 100 metres higher up on the Acropolis—it must have been either a residence or a kind of temple. But the residence theory falls down because no signs of occupation for this purpose were found; there are no kings’ names or decorations on the rather barbaric masonry. Nothing resembling a throne was found. No rooms to indicate that men once lived here. And what could a king have had to do with the conical tower inside the ellipse or the pointless second wall running parallel to it?

  If the fortress and residence theories are eliminated, we are left with the assumption of a religious cult. When I was staying in Zimbabwe, I could easily imagine a procession of chanting Bantu negroes advancing through the passage between the parallel walls towards the conical tower and worshipping the god Nommo from the Sirius system.

  The solutions to the problem of Zimbabwe that have been put forward so far are no more than speculations. That is why I add my own. It is just as valid as any other speculation about Zimbabwe.

  After all my studies and travels, I keep on thinking about the grey-haired gentleman from Athens. I must beg his forgiveness.

  * * *

  Communiqué

  THE Rongomai legend of the New Zealand Maoris says:

  ‘There was a war between the ancestors of the Nga-Ti-Hau and another tribe. The bad tribe dug in in a Pa (fortified village). The priests of the Nga-Ti-Hau tribe begged their god Rongomai for help, because the bad tribe had stolen a sacred relic. At noon the god Rongomai came through the air. He was like unto a twinkling star, or a comet or a flame of fire. He flew until he was directly above the Pa and then dived swiftly down on the Maray (village square). The earth was whirled up in heaps and scattered, and the noise was that of thunder. The Nga-Ti-Hau warriors hailed their god Rongomai with shouts of joy and occupied the Pa at once.’

  Source:

  John White: Ancient History of the Maori, New Zealand, 1887.

  6: Right Royal King Lists

  LARGE reference books such as lexicons and encyclopedias have the invaluable advantage for the average reader of supplying accepted knowledge succinctly and neatly, without ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’.

  Testing this under the heading ‘Sumerians’, I found data like these in various learned tomes:

  ‘Sumerians, the inhabitants of the region (Mesopotamia) between present-day Baghdad and the Persian Gulf. A people of unknown race, whose existence since the beginning of the third millennium B.C. can be proved on linguistic grounds. When and whence the Sumerians migrated to Babylon, in the region between the Euphrates and the Tigris, has not yet been discovered.’

  Or:

  ‘Sumerians, the inhabitants of central and southern Mesopotamia from the fourth to the second millennium B.C.’

  Or:

  ‘The origin of the Sumerian people is uncertain. They may have come from the mountains of the east or from the sea. The only definite fact is that they were settled in Mesopotamia at the beginning of history.’

  It is unanimously admitted that we do not yet know where this people came from. Their traces might well have been blown away by the winds of time, but for the native intelligence of this people with the Nansen passport.* They invented 42 alphabetical cuneiform characters and so turned ephemeral speech into permanent writing.

  *Travel document for stateless or quasi-stateless refugees.

  Excavations south of Baghdad yielded more than 30,000 clay tablets dating back to the Sumerian epoch.

  It is extraordinary, even uncanny, but only 100 years ago not even the name of Sumer was known! The Assyriologist Jules Oppert (b. Hamburg 1825, d. Paris 1905) was the first to locate the land of Sumer by deciphering the cuneiform script. That was in 1869.

  Professor Samuel Noah Kramer, Assyriologist at the University of Pennsylvania, found out from drawings on clay tablets that the cart-wheel and the sailing ship were among the Sumerians’ technical achievements, that they were governed by well-organised authorities and that we still make use of their astronomical knowledge today—where on earth did they get it? They knew everything from the sixty-second minute to the solar year.

  Just as Europe was leaving the Neolithic Age, the Sumerians had already thought of stamping documents, bills, etc., with the impression of a seal of office. They invented the cylinder seal. These seals, only two to six centimetres long, were worn on necklaces so that they were always to hand. Tax collectors used them to give receipts. Seals, some of them of great beauty, have now been used globally for 4,000 years. O those Sumerians!

  What further information can we add to the unknown people’s file?

  Colour of hair: very dark. Inscriptions mention ‘black heads’.

  Race: before the Sumerians emerged between the Euphrates and the Tigris, Semitic tribes lived there, but they themselves were definitely not Semites, nor were they of negroid descent.

  From depictions on Sumerian reliefs we can recognise an Indoeuropean mixture, which obviously spread far and wide, for Sir Arthur Keith noted:

  ‘One can still see the facial traits of the Sumerians in the East, among the inhabitants of Afghanistan and Baluchistan, and as far as the Indus valley, about 2,400 km away.’43

  Wherever they came from, the Sumerians obviously brought with them—as modern scholars know—a polished culture and a complete civilisation which was so infinitely superior to the native tribes that they could not stand up to it and were wiped out.

  They were also conscious of their superiority, for they described themselves in numerous creation myths as ‘the authentic founders of civilisation’, as men born to serve their divine creators.44 ‘With the help of their gods, especially Enlil, the “King of Heaven and Earth”, the Sumerians transformed a flat, arid, windswept land into a blossoming, fertile kingdom’ (Kramer).

  How was it possible for a highly developed culture to emerge from nothing at least 4000 years B.C.?

  Who taught them urban architecture (in a crash course?!)?

  Who taught them how to organise their twelve city states so efficiently?

  Where did they get the engineering knowledge to canalise their country? For that is how they protected the harvests from the raging floods which constantly overflowed the banks of the Euphrates.

  Where did they get the mathematical ability—confirmed on cuneiform tablets—to handle squares, cubes, reciprocal values, roots, powers and even some abstruse Pythagorean calculations? How could they calculate areas and circles? Who told them that a circle is divided into 360 degrees? Who gave them that unit of measurement?

  Today such evidence of Sumerian history can be visited at archaeological sites in Mesopotamia or in the large collections in the British Museum and the Louvre. They take your breath away. In my opinion the Sumerians should have left traces of their technology, culture and religion on what was presumably a lengthy journey to Mesopotamia. They did not, otherwise we should know where they came from.

  Some archaeologists think that the Sumerians did not immigrate, but developed in their native land between Baghdad and the Persian Gulf. Excavations at Uruk actually yielded documents with strange lists giving the names of things and concepts such as house, bird, fire, temple, god, heaven, rain, etc., etc., as if a teacher was instructing primitive peoples and saying: ‘Take a good look. That is the name of this thing!’ Aids to evolution?

  Strictly speaking the confusion about the Sumerians could be settled. While the first dynasty ruled in Isin, the ancient royal city south of Babylon, from 1953-1730 B.C., a chronology of the past, the ‘King Lists’, was drawn up. Copies have been preserved. In the fourth or third century B.C. the Babylonian priest Berossus transcribed them, somewhat imaginatively, into Greek. Nev
ertheless, they offer a serviceable staircase back into time.

  But in 1932 Sumerologists were astounded, confused and delighted. The original King Lists were found at Khorsabad, the Iraqi town near Mosul in the valley of the Tigris. Now scholars had authentic names and dates to deal with.

  The oldest and most precise dynastic list is called Ancient Babylonian King List WB 444 in archaeological literature. It is on a block 20.5 cm high—big enough to trace back the series of mysterious original kings to the distant time of the creation of man.