A key point of their argument is based on the idea that the Sphinx as a recumbent lion is intended to represent the constellation of Leo, which also implies that the ancient Egyptians recognised the signs of the zodiac in the same terms that we do today. There is no evidence for this, but for the sake of the argument let us accept that the Sphinx could have been intended to represent Leo. It carries a certain logic.
As the Sphinx faces directly east, Bauval and Hancock assume that it was intended to look towards its heavenly counterpart on the day that it rose with the sun exactly east, which only happened on the two annual equinoxes, at spring and autumn. Traditional astrology counts the spring equinox as the more important of the two. The astronomical Ages - of Pisces, Aquarius, and so on — are defined by the section of the sky (or astrological house) identified with the constellation against which the sun rises on the spring equinox at a given period. Because of the precession of the equinoxes, this constellation changes about every 2,160 years. For most of the last 2,000 years the sun has risen in Pisces, so we are said to be in the Age of Pisces. Next will come the Age of Aquarius. In 10,500 BCE the world was in the Age of Leo, which is why Hancock and Bauval believe the Sphinx was carved in the shape of a lion.
Such steps in their argument are only assumptions, which may or may not be valid. None constitutes proof, and there is no independent evidence to support any of them. We can accept each of them individually ‘for the sake of argument’, but remain cautious about any conclusions drawn from them, since we can by no means be sure of the basic premise.
Hancock and Bauval argue that 10,500 BCE represents the fabled First Time (tep zepi) when the ancient Egyptians believe their civilisation began. On the Sphinx Stela the Sphinx of Giza is described as, among other things, ‘presider over ... the splendid place of the First Time’,72 showing that Giza was associated in some way with tep zepi. Bauval and Hancock bolster their argument with computer simulations of the sky as it appeared in 10,500 BCE, finding other significant correlations that happened in or around that year. In fact several of these correlations actually happened not at one moment but on a whole range of dates, often several centuries on either side of 10,500 BCE. So why are they still homing in on that particular point in time?
Bauval and Hancock’s method was to find significant correlations between the stars and constellations in which they are interested — Orion, Leo, Sirius and the Sun - and to use them as added proof that the Giza complex was laid out specifically to ‘encode’ the importance of the year 10,500 BCE. But again, this is circular reasoning: they are only looking for correlations that happened in that year. Their logic for choosing that year in the first place is manifestly wrong.
To demonstrate this, we used SkyGlobe 3.6, the same computer sky map program they used, to find correlations in the year 8700 BCE that, by Bauval and Hancock’s reasoning, could be just as significant. For example, on the spring equinox of that year the sun rises at exactly the same moment as Regulus, the brightest star in Leo, which Bauval and Hancock call its ‘heart’. The sun, in fact, covers Regulus at the moment of sunrise. And, at exactly the same moment in the south, Orion’s Belt is in the ‘Giza position’ (as given by Robin J. Cook). If that had happened in 10,500 BCE, it could have been used as evidence that the year was especially significant.
It is curious that Hancock and Bauval should construct such a complicated (and contrived) argument to explain the astronomical significance of the Sphinx and its relationship with Leo, since there is a much simpler explanation - one that was originally suggested by none other than R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz.
He pointed out that, throughout most of Egypt’s early history, on the day of the first heliacal rising of Sirius - their New Year’s Day, the most sacred day of their calendar - the sun rose in Leo.73 Checking Schwaller de Lubicz’s idea using SkyGlobe, we found it to be correct. Between about 6000 BCE and 2500 BCE the sun did rise in Leo on the day of Sirius’s first heliacal rising. Therefore, if the Sphinx was intended to represent Leo, and was made to look eastwards towards the dawn and its heavenly counterpart, this would provide a much more logical - and considerably less convoluted - reason for its construction than the idea that its purpose was to pinpoint the year 10,500 BCE. This explanation also has the advantage of fitting Robert Schoch’s water erosion theory, which dates the Sphinx to between 7000 and 5000 BCE.
There is a major puzzle here. It was Schwaller de Lubicz — that great hero of Hancock, Bauval and West — who made these observations, so clearly they must know about them. Yet none of these authors so much as mentions this alternative explanation, clearly preferring to promote their own 10,500 BCE agenda.
The crucial point of Keeper of Genesis, however, was the ‘discovery’ of the existence of a secret chamber beneath the hindquarters of the Sphinx, as ‘revealed’ by astronomical correlations. 74 Although meant to be the great revelation of the book, this is in fact its weakest point. At the spring equinox in 10,500 BCE, Leo rose directly east of the Sphinx, and therefore lay immediately under its gaze. At this moment the sun lies below the horizon, 12 degrees below Leo’s hind quarters. Bauval and Hancock assume that this is what the ancient Egyptians were trying to draw our attention to. Their so-called ‘Genesis Chamber’ can be found in an analogous position, a hundred feet under the Sphinx. What secrets would it hold!
Even if their arguments about the importance of 10,500 BCE were correct - and we have already seen that they lack firm foundations - why do they assume that this is connected with some coded message, sent across time to reveal the location of a completely hypothetical chamber? (On a more logical basis one could argue that the Sphinx might be looking at something of great significance. Follow its gaze today, however, and you find a Pizza Hut/Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet.)
There have been many criticisms of Bauval and Hancock’s astronomical hypothesis. During a 1998 lecture cruise around the coast of Alaska, Hancock found himself in the unusual position of being criticised by a fellow speaker, the leading archaeoastronomer Dr E.C. Krupp of the Griffith Observatory in California. He pointed out the flaws in the central argument of Keeper of Genesis, specifically that the Sphinx should be on the other side of the Nile for their claimed identification of Horakhti (another name for the Sphinx) with the constellation of Leo to work. Afterwards, Krupp reported his frustration that Hancock countered such challenges by evoking ‘artistic licence’ on the part of the ancient builders.75
Hancock’s major hypothesis is that there was an advanced civilisation before the last Ice Age, which came to an end around 10,500 BCE as the result of some global cataclysm that brought about the melting of the ice and the rising of sea levels. He claims that knowledge from that civilisation survived, filtering through to later cultures and resulting, for example, in the building of the pyramids some 8,000 years afterwards.
Above: Top - A ground plan of the temples of Angkor.
Below - The correlation between the constellation of Draco
and Angkor, according to Graham Hancock.
Opposite: The closest match possible between Draco and Angkor.
Hancock has continued to expound this theory and the alleged significance of 10,500 BCE in his book (co-written with his wife, Santha Faiia) Heaven’s Mirror (1998) and the Channel 4/Discovery Channel television series Quest for the Lost Civilization. In both, he demonstrates the ubiquity of the significance of the date throughout the ancient world by examining the most colourful and mysterious sites in Europe, Central and South America, Egypt and the Far East. At all of these places he finds astronomical alignments that fit his theory, although when we double-checked they appeared to us to be highly contrived, very debatable — or often simply wrong.
A prime example of this questionable theorising concerns the magnificent Cambodian city of Angkor, the centrepiece of which is the vast Hindu temple of Angkor Wat, the largest religious building the world has ever known. Angkor was the capital city of the Khmer Empire that dominated Indo-China between 800 and 1500 CE.
The city itself is surrounded by an enormous array of other temples and shrines, all staggeringly beautiful and superbly crafted.
Hancock seized upon Angkor as a perfect example of ‘as above, so below’ — the ancient idea that the heavens were in some way mirrored on Earth. He claims that certain of the temples and shrines were deliberately positioned to represent the northern constellation of Draco (the Dragon), in much the same way as he believes the pyramids at Giza mirror the stars of Orion’s Belt. He says that not only do the buildings reflect the composition of Draco but that the orientation of the groundplan was intended to show the constellation as it would have been at dawn on the spring equinox in - not too surprisingly - 10,500 BCE.76
A pause for thought reveals that Hancock’s Angkor scenario is surely the least credible of all of his examples supporting the 10,500 BCE theory. For a start, Angkor was a brand new city, created by the Khmers after their rise to power in the ninth century CE. Most of its temples date from after the year 1000 CE; Angkor Wat, for example, was built as late as the twelfth century. Hancock has claimed that the pyramids had been laid out according to a grand design that had been created 8000 years before. This stretches credulity to breaking point. Surely even the most robust mystery school tradition, in which secret plans were handed down to initiates from generation to generation, would have had major problems in keeping such an agenda alive over such a huge number of years. Now we are asked to believe that the same master plan was put into effect at Angkor, 3,500 years after the pyramids were built and 11,500 years after the plan was first created.
The so-called alignment between Angkor and Draco does not in fact exist. Hancock has been very selective, taking only certain of the temples to use in his groundplan and leaving all those that fail to fit his scheme out of the picture entirely — but even so the resulting shape only roughly corresponds to Draco. Individual temples and individual stars simply do not match up, yet Hancock is claiming that the builders somehow created precise matches between them.
The ease with which, in our view, Hancock’s theories can be discredited does a great disservice to the very subject that he is ostensibly trying to promote: serious debate about the undoubtedly real mysteries of mankind’s ancient past. In the very act of dismissing them there is a danger of throwing out the baby with the bath water, of rejecting any daring new hypothesis about our past, and of condemning the original evidence - the anomalies that intrigued Hancock in the first place. It would be a terrible shame to let dubious theorising bring the whole field into disrepute: there are real mysteries and challenges to the accepted historical paradigm. Academia does not have all the answers.
The work of both Bauval and Hancock is riddled with subjectivity, with an insistence on the importance of the year 10,500 BCE, although almost all of the arguments in its favour simply cannot be supported. Despite the flaws in their arguments, they appear to be convinced that something of great historic significance happened then, something that has a relevance to us today.
Selling Cayce
A clue may lie in the prophecies of America’s ‘Sleeping Prophet’, the psychic Edgar Cayce (1877-1945). Both Bauval and Hancock make apparently casual allusions to him without actually endorsing his psychic information.
According to the standard story - which, as we will see, only approximates to the whole truth — Cayce was an ordinary, God-fearing Kentucky-born citizen who wanted to be a minister but failed to show the required aptitude for book learning. He became a stationery salesman, but his public reputation grew from his talent for falling into trances - ‘sleeping’ — and while in that altered state, diagnosing illnesses and advising on treatment. This later expanded into him giving ‘life readings’, either for individuals or to a circle of followers, in which he predicted the future and gave information about the past. Interestingly, while in normal consciousness his views were those of a mainstream Christian, but while entranced he frequently told of past lives — reincarnation — and claimed to have once been a high-ranking priest of ancient Egypt himself, one Ra Ta.
According to Cayce, the civilisation of Atlantis flourished for some 200,000 years, and finally came to an end around 10,500 BCE. He claimed that some of the survivors travelled to Egypt, where they built the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid between 10,490 and 10,390 BCE. This was also linked to an exodus from the Caucasian Mountains to Egypt, led by Cayce’s previous incarnation Ra Ta, displacing the original, yellow-skinned natives of that country. The Atlanteans arrived in Egypt shortly afterwards.77
Cayce’s influence on the New Egyptologists extends well beyond sketchy details of a putative past life. He was responsible for the introduction of the single most emotive theme to run through many of the most recent high-profile books about Egypt: the idea of the Hall of Records, a hidden chamber somewhere in Egypt, containing ancient records of mankind, perhaps including the secrets of Atlantis. According to Cayce the refugee Atlanteans arrived in Egypt after the sinking of the island in 10,700 BCE, bringing with them the records of their civilisation. In 10,500 BCE these were deposited in the ‘Hall of Records’, also called the ‘Pyramid of Records’ - an underground pyramid. These contain ‘the records of the people of One God from the beginning of man’s entrance into the earth’.78 The Hall of Records, enclosed in its underground pyramid, lies between the Sphinx and the Nile, connected by a passage running from the right forepaw of the Sphinx - according to Cayce.
In our present fin de siècle era, a rising Hall of Records hysteria is carefully being whipped up by books, videos and the instant whispering machine of the Internet. Where is this fabled place located? What does it contain? Who will find it - and what will happen when they do? Already this has become, in every possible sense, the modem quest for the Holy Grail: the ancient, elusive object of the heart’s desire is somewhere waiting to be found by the select few, like the mythical Grail knights, who will suffer and fight in order to find it and unlock its secrets. Some will no doubt die in the attempt, but the Chosen will eventually win through, and when the Grail Hall is uncovered, somehow magically the whole of our civilisation will be transformed. We shall understand our past and even our future. We shall suddenly see humankind for what it is, and know the truth about the gods. Oh how we shall be glad, and be grateful to the Grail Hall knights who bring these secrets to us! And because they are chosen, and we are not, we shall see them in the new light of the gods themselves.
The basis of this comes from Cayce. He linked the finding of the Hall of Records to the triggering of global changes: ‘After the end of the cycle [in 1998], there is to be another change in the earth’s position, with the return of the Great Initiate for the culmination of the prophecies.’79 He also said that 1998 marks the beginning of the ‘time of preparation for the coming of the Master of the World’.80 Many have associated this statement with the Second Coming of Jesus, although perhaps it is strange that Cayce, of all people, did not explicitly do so himself. In fact, he also believed it referred to the emergence of a new race of human beings.81 According to the Sleeping Prophet the end result will be:
With the changes that will be wrought, true Americanism, the universal thought that is expressed and manifested in the brotherhood of man, as in the Masonic order, will be the eventual rule in the settlement of affairs in the world.82
Cayce may have been right, and any person who bravely throws himself behind the prophecies may have the right idea. Certainly, neither of us has any objection in principle to the idea of accurate psychic prediction or the miraculous, nor to the idea that information from our very remote past may impinge in some real and even apocalyptic way on our own times. If Cayce was right then all eyes should be turned to the various expeditions that, overtly and covertly, are now seeking to locate the Hall of Records. But that depends on whether Cayce was right ...
Of all his ‘readings’, collected from 1909 onwards, 14,249 have been preserved for posterity, but despite claims by his followers that his predictions are almost entirely accurate — close to
one hundred per cent’83 — it is actually hard to find one that is! Edgar Cayce must have one of the most dismal track records of any alleged prophet.
For example, in February 1932 he was asked to give predictions of the most significant events over the next fifty years. Cayce predicted the ‘breaking up of many powers’ in 1936.84 When asked to be more specific about which powers, he named Russia, the United States, Japan and the United Kingdom. Astonishingly, Cayce’s supporters regard this as a success, claiming that it accurately foretells the beginning of the events that would lead to the Second World War. In Edgar Cayce on Prophecy, produced by the Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE), the organisation of Cayce followers, Mary Ellen Carter points out that the following events happened in 1936: the abdication crisis in Britain; the start of the Spanish Civil War; the first of Stalin’s great purges in Russia; and the formation of the German-Italian fascist alliance.85 Only two of these events happened in countries singled out by Cayce, and it is certainly debatable whether the British abdication crisis constitutes ‘the breaking up’ of the nation. The most significant events concerning the imminent global conflict were those in Spain and the German-Italian alliance - but Cayce had mentioned none of these countries. Even then, none of this constitutes a great ‘breaking up of powers’ in 1936. And what happened to the Second World War? Cayce simply did not predict the coming global conflict.
If ‘readings’ highlighted by the followers of Edgar Cayce for their amazing accuracy look doubtful when placed under scrutiny, on other occasions, he could be even vaguer. When asked in 1932 about the outcome of Gandhi’s campaign for Indian independence, he replied that it ‘depends on individuals’.86 And during the Second World War, someone asked him ‘What is Hitler’s destiny?’ to which the great prophet answered ‘Death!’87 At least here he had every chance of being ‘close to one hundred per cent’ accurate. But astonishingly, it was regarded as another of his successes. In 1943, Cayce predicted that within twenty-five years — i.e. by 1968 - China would not only become more democratic, but also Christian. Astoundingly, this was published in an ARE book in 1968, which implicitly argues that what Cayce really meant was that China would be purged by Maoism and civil war so that democracy and Christianity would be able to take root.88 Perhaps it is time to cross that prophecy off the list as well.
The Stargate Conspiracy Page 7
