The Message of the Sphinx AKA Keeper of Genesis

by Graham Hancock

  Computer simulations show that it lay exactly 111.111 degrees east of the station that it had occupied at 2500 bc. Then it had been at the head of the Hyades-Taurus close to the right bank of the Milky Way; 8000 years earlier it lay directly under the rear paws of the constellation of Leo.

  As we have hinted, this is a location that is likely to have a terrestrial ‘double’. The three stars of Orion’s belt have their terrestrial doubles in the form of the three Great Pyramids. The constellation of Leo-Horakhti has its terrestrial double in the form of Hor-em-Akhet, i.e. the Great Sphinx. The ‘Horizon of the Sky’ has its terrestrial double in the form of the ‘Horizon of Giza’. And the Great Sphinx crouches literally within this ‘Horizon’.

  It was to the breast of the Great Sphinx, at the summer solstice in the Pyramid Age, that the quest of the Horus-King led. There he encountered the Akhus:

  ‘How has this happened to you’, say they, the Akhus with their mouths equipped, ‘that you have come to this place more noble than any place?’

  ‘I have come ... because the reed floats of the sky were set down for Re [the sun-disc and cosmic ‘double’ of the Horus-King] that Re might cross [the Milky Way] on them to Horakhti at the Horizon’ ...[663]

  In other words, the Horus-King has successfully understood and used the clues provided in the ritual. He has noted and followed the path of the sun during the solar year from its starting point—designated in the texts as being beside the Hyades-Taurus, i.e. the ‘Bull of the Sky’—and thence across the Milky Way until the moment of its conjunction with Regulus, the heart-star of Leo. He has then taken this celestial treasure map, transposed its co-ordinates to the ground, made his way across the River Nile and ascended to the Giza plateau, coming eventually to the breast of the Sphinx.

  We think that he received there the necessary clues or instructions to find the entrance to the terrestrial Duat, to the ‘Kingdom of Osiris’ on the ground—in short to the ‘Splendid Place of the “First Time” ’ where he would have to go in order to complete his quest. And we suggest that these clues were designed to encourage him to track the vernal point, just as we have done, to the location that it would have occupied in 10,500 bc when Orion’s belt had reached the lowest point in its precessional cycle.

  In other words it is our hypothesis that the Giza monuments, the past, present and future skies that lie above them, and the ancient funerary texts that interlink them, convey the lineaments of a message. In attempting to read this message we have done no more than follow the initiation ‘journey’ of the Horus-Kings of Egypt. And like the ancient Horus-Kings we, too, have arrived at a most intriguing crossroad. The trail of initiation has guided us, directed us and finally lured us to stand in front of the Great Sphinx and, like Oedipus, to confront the ultimate riddles: ‘Where did we come from?’ ‘Where are we to go to?’

  The gaze of the Sphinx urges us to see through the shadowy veil and seek the ‘First Time’. But, having done that, it also provokes us to ask whether there might not in fact be something at Giza, something physical, that would give form to the site’s strange aura of vast and exceptional antiquity.

  We remember a passage from the Coffin Texts which invites us to consider the possibility that some great ‘secret’ of Osiris may remain hidden within or beneath the monuments of Rostau-Giza in a ‘sealed’ container: ‘This is the sealed thing, which is in darkness, with fire about it, which contains the efflux of Osiris, and it is put in Rostau. It has been hidden since it fell from him, and it is what came down from him onto the desert of sand; it means that what belonged to him was put in Rostau ...’[664]

  What can it be that was put in Rostau?

  What hidden thing with fire about it?

  And where in darkness does it lie?

  If we look at our computer simulation of the skies over Giza in 10,500 bc the answer appears to be staring us in the face. In that year, in the predawn on the spring equinox, the constellation of Leo could be seen rising slowly in the east. By around 5 a.m. it was fully risen, exactly straddling due east—a lion in the sky, with its belly resting on the horizon. At the same moment, the sun—marking the vernal point—lay some 12 degrees beneath its rear paws.

  68. The Horus-King’s treasure map: the heliacal rising of Leo on the spring equinox in 10,500 bc. The sun, marking the vernal point, lies below the horizon, some 12 degrees beneath the constellation’s rear paws. When this image is transposed to the ground, the logic of the Horus-King’s quest suggests the possibility of a hidden chamber deep in the bedrock of the Giza plateau, approximately too feet beneath the rear paws of the Sphinx.

  When we translate this sky-image onto the ground, in the form of a colossal, leonine, equinoctial monument with its belly resting on the bedrock of the real physical environment of the ‘Horizon of Giza’, we do indeed find ourselves looking at the Horus-King’s treasure map. It is a map, not buried in the earth but cunningly concealed in time, where ‘X’ almost literally ‘marks a spot’ directly under the rear paws of the Great Sphinx of Egypt at a depth, we would guess, of about 100 feet.

  69. Possible locations of an underground system of passageways and chambers beneath the Great Sphinx suggested by astronomical correlations and by seismographic tests (see Part I of the present work).

  If we have read the message of the ‘Followers of Horus’ right, then there is something of momentous importance there, waiting to be found—by seismic surveys, by drilling and excavations, in short by a rediscovery and exploration of the hidden corridors and chambers of the earthly ‘Kingdom of Osiris’.

  It could be the ultimate prize.

  Conclusion

  Return to the Beginning

  ‘I stand before the masters who witnessed the genesis, who were the authors of their own forms, who walked the dark, circuitous passages of their own becoming ... I stand before the masters who witnessed the transformation of the body of a man into the body in spirit, who were witnesses to resurrection when the corpse of Osiris entered the mountain and the soul of Osiris walked out shining ... when he came forth from death, a shining thing, his face white with heat ... I stand before the masters who know the histories of the dead, who decide which tales to hear again, who judge the books of lives as either full or empty, who are themselves authors of truth. And they are Isis and Osiris, the divine intelligences. And when the story is written and the end is good and the soul of a man is perfected, with a shout they lift him into heaven ...’

  Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead (Normandi Ellis translation)

  The dictionary tells us that, separately from its modern usage, the word ‘glamour’ has a traditional meaning roughly equivalent to ‘magic spell’ or ‘charm’, and is the Old Scottish variant of: ‘grammar ... hence a magic spell, because occult practices were popularly associated with learning.’

  Is it possible that men and women of great wisdom and learning cast a ‘glamour’ over the Giza necropolis at some point in the distant past? Were they the possessors of as yet unguessed-at secrets that they wished to hide here? And did they succeed in concealing those secrets almost in plain view? For thousands of years, in other words, has the ancient Egyptian royal cemetery at Giza veiled the presence of something else—something of vastly greater significance for the story of Mankind?

  One thing we are sure of is that unlike the hundreds of Fourth-Dynasty mastaba tombs to the west of the Sphinx and clustered around the three great Pyramids, the Pyramids themselves were never designed to serve primarily as burial places. We do not rule out the possibility that the Pharaohs Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure may at one time have been buried within them—although there is no evidence for this—but we are now satisfied that the transcendent effort and skill that went into the construction of these awe-inspiring monuments was motivated by a higher purpose.

  We think that purpose was connected to the quest for eternal life wrapped up in a complete religious and spiritual system that the ancient Egyptians inherited from unknown predecessors and that they later c
odified in their eerie and other-worldly funerary and rebirth texts. We suggest, in short, that it was the goal of immortality, not just for one Pharaoh but for many, that the corridors and passages and hidden chambers and concealed gates and doorways of the Giza complex were ultimately designed to serve. Depicted in the Book of What is in the Duat as being filled with monsters, these narrow, claustrophobic, terrifying places, hemmed in on all sides by sheer stone walls, were in our view conceived as the ultimate testing ground for initiates. Here they would be forced to face and overcome their most horrible and debilitating fears. Here they would pass through unimaginable ordeals of the spirit and the mind. Here they would learn esoteric wisdom through acts of concentrated intelligence and will. Here they would be prepared, through practice and experience, for the moment of physical death and for the nightmares that would follow it, so that these transitions would not confuse or paralyse them—as they might other, unprepared, souls—and so that they might become ‘equipped spirits’ able to move as they wished through heaven and earth, ‘unfailingly, and regularly and eternally’.[665]

  Such was the lofty goal of the Horus-King’s quest and the ancient Egyptians clearly believed that in order to attain it the initiate would have to participate in the discovery, the unveiling, the revelation, of something of momentous importance—something that would bestow wisdom, and knowledge of the ‘First Time’, and of the mysteries of the cosmos, and of Osiris, the Once and Future King.

  We are therefore reminded of a Hermetic Text, written in Greek but compiled in Alexandria in Egypt some 2000 years ago, that is known as the Kore Kosmu (or Virgin of the World).[666] Like other such writings, this text speaks of Thoth, the ancient Egyptian wisdom-god, but refers to him by his Greek name, Hermes:

  Such was all-knowing Hermes, who saw all things, and seeing understood, and understanding had the power both to disclose and to give explanation. For what he knew, he graved on stone; yet though he graved them onto stone he hid them mostly ... The sacred symbols of the cosmic elements [he] hid away hard by the secrets of Osiris ... keeping sure silence, that every younger age of cosmic time might seek for them.[667]

  The text then tells us that before he ‘returned to Heaven’ Hermes invoked a spell on the secret writings and knowledge that he had hidden:

  O holy books, who have been made by my immortal hands, by incorruption’s magic spells ... free from decay throughout eternity remain, and incorrupt from time. Become unseeable, unfindable, for every one whose foot shall tread the plains of this land, until Old Heaven doth bring forth meet instruments for you ...[668]

  What instruments might lead to the recovery of ‘unseeable and unfindable’ secrets concealed at Giza?

  Our research has persuaded us that a scientific language of precessional time and allegorical astronomy was deliberately expressed in the principal monuments there and in the texts that relate to them. From quite an early stage in our investigation, we hoped that this language might shed new light on the enigmatic civilization of Egypt. We did not at first suspect, however, that it would also turn out to encode specific celestial coordinates or that these would transpose onto the ground in the form of an arcane ‘treasure map’, directing the attention of seekers to a precise location in the bedrock deep beneath the Sphinx.

  Nor did we suspect, until we met them, that others such as the Edgar Cayce Foundation and the Stanford Research Institute—see Part II—might already be looking there.

  Osiris breathes

  Throughout this investigation we have tried to stick to the facts, even when the facts have been very strange.

  When we say that the Sphinx, the three Great Pyramids, the causeways and other associated monuments of the Giza necropolis form a huge astronomical diagram we are simply reporting a fact. When we say that this diagram depicts the skies above Giza in 10,500 bc we are reporting a fact. When we say that the Sphinx bears erosion marks which indicate that it was carved before the Sahara became a desert we are reporting a fact. When we say that the ancient Egyptians attributed their civilization to ‘the gods’ and to the ‘Followers of Horus’ we are reporting facts. When we say that these divine and human civilizers were remembered as having come to the Nile Valley in Zep Tepi—the ‘First Time’—we are reporting a fact. When we say that the ancient Egyptian records tell us this ‘First Time’ was an epoch in the remote past, thousands of years before the era of the Pharaohs, we are reporting a fact.

  Our civilization has had the scientific wherewithal to get to grips with the many problems of the Giza necropolis for less than two centuries, and it is only in the last two decades that computer technology has made it possible for us to reconstruct the ancient skies and see the patterns and conjunctions that unfolded there. During this period access to the site, and knowledge about it, has been monopolized by members of the archaeological and Egyptological professions who have agreed amongst themselves as to the origin, and age, and function of the monuments. New evidence which does not support this scholarly consensus, and which might actively undermine it, has again and again been overlooked, or sidelined, and sometimes even deliberately concealed from the public. This, we assume, is why everything to do with the shafts of the Great Pyramid—their stellar alignments, the iron plate, the relics, and the discovery of the ‘door’—has met with such peculiar and inappropriate responses from Egyptologists and archaeologists. And we assume that it explains, too, why the same scholars have paid such scant attention to the solid case that geologists have made for the vast antiquity of the Sphinx.[669]

  The Giza monuments are a legacy for Mankind, preserved almost intact over thousands of years, and, outside the privileged circles of Egyptology and archaeology, there is today a broad-based expectation that they might be about to reveal a remarkable secret. That expectation may or may not prove to be correct. Nevertheless in an intellectual culture polarized by public anticipation and orthodox reaction, we feel it is only wise that future explorations at the necropolis should be conducted with complete ‘transparency’ and accountability. In particular the opening of the ‘door’ inside the southern shaft of the Queen’s Chamber, the videoscopic examination of the northern shaft, and any further remote-sensing and drilling surveys conducted around the Sphinx, should be carried out under the scrutiny of the international mass media and should not again be subjected to bizarre and inexplicable delays.

  We cannot predict what new discoveries will be made by such research, or even whether any new discoveries will be made. However, after completing our own archaeoastronomical investigation, and following the quest of the Horus-King, we are left with an enhanced sense of the tremendous mystery of this amazing site—a sense that its true story has only just begun to be told. Looking at the awe-inspiring scale and precision of the monuments we feel, too, that the purpose of the ancient master-builders was sublime, and that they did indeed find a way to initiate those who would come after—thousands of years in the future—by making use of the universal language of the stars.

  They found a way to send a message across the ages in a code so simple and so self-explanatory that it might rightly be described as an anti-cipher.

  Perhaps the time has come to listen to that clear, compelling signal that beckons to us out of the darkness of prehistory. Perhaps the time has come to seek the buried treasure of our forgotten genesis and destiny:

  Stars fade like memory the instant before dawn. Low in the east the sun appears, golden as an opening eye. That which can be named must exist. That which is named can be written. That which is written shall be remembered. That which is remembered lives. In the land of Egypt Osiris breathes ...[670]

  Appendix 1

  The Scales of the World

  ‘We three kings of Orion are;

  Bearing gifts we traverse afar;

  Field and fountain,

  Moor and mountain,

  Following yonder star.

  Oh! Star of wonder, Star of might,

  Star with royal beauty bright!

  Westwa
rd leading,

  Still proceeding,

  Guide us to thy perfect light.

  HE is the King of Glory.’

  In her thesis on the astronomical content of ancient Egyptian funerary texts, Jane B. Sellers observes that Spell 17 of the Book of the Dead, which is drawn from extremely ancient sources, alludes in cosmic terms to the ‘unification’ or joining of the ‘Two Lands’:[671] ‘Horus, son of Osiris and Isis ... was made ruler in the place of his father, Osiris, on that day the Two Lands were united. It means the union of the Two Lands at the burial of Osiris ...’[672]

  Following this statement, Spell 17 also makes specific reference to the ‘sun-god’ and how he was not obstructed by the celestial river but rather ‘passed on, having bathed in the Winding Waterway’.[673]

  Sellers notes the conclusion of Yale astronomer-Egyptologist Virginia Lee Davis that the ‘Winding Waterway’ of the Pyramid Texts is to be equated with the Milky Way and that this feature of the sky ‘divides’ the cosmic landscape into two halves.[674] She then adds: ‘I have contended that the joining of the two lands is a joining of sky to earth.’[675]