Osirion, which incidentally (also spelled Osireion) is a prehistoric megalithic site, located fifteen meters below the level of the temple of Seti I, who built the sites of Abydos. Why is the site called Osirion? Because the head of the heavenly god Osiris is supposed to be hidden there. This at least is what legend tells us. Osiris equals Orion. He originally came from that constellation. But Osiris had a jealous brother, Seth. Seth murdered Osiris and dismembered his body into fourteen parts. The most important part of the body, the head, is supposed to be buried here in Osirion. It was never found.
When considering Osiris you inevitably end up at Herodotus' gods who are mentioned in the pyramid texts. The tomb of Teti—who immediately followed the heavenly original god Menes—contains the following writing about Osiris: “Behold, Osiris comes as Orion. Heaven has received you in Orion. You are born with Orion.”5 In the pyramid texts of Unas (2356–2323 BC), Osiris also travels “to the heavenly road.” He is a “horizon-dweller who takes off from the Earth in his ship,” and who, as statement 303 describes, “ascends to heaven.”6 The statements are unambiguous. Provocatively, I could already ask at this point: What more could you ask for? And this Osirion is, according to Professor Edouard Naville, “the oldest structure in all of Egypt.” Most likely he is right. The megaliths that weigh up to one hundred tons are from Aswan, located 400 kilometers up the Nile. The giant blocks used to build Osirion are a perfect fit with Seti I, the builder of the Abydos temple. The stones of the temple of Seti I rest in part on the megaliths of Osirion. So Osirion already stood before Sethos started his temple construction. It is a distorted world: the oldest technology—the transport and the precise fitting of tons of granite blocks, one with the next, with millimeter precision—is clearly the most perfect one. Seti I, who came along much later, delivered only small stuff. It should be the other way around according to the dictates of technological evolution. First, the primitive construction method of Seti I should have been used: smaller stones on top of smaller stones—after all, one keeps learning and gains experience. And only much later should we expect the grandiose technology of megalithic art.
Or was the oldest technology the most perfect because the master teachers of young humankind came from the outside; from the skies and from the stars? And in this very temple of Seti I, engraved in a wall, was the famous list of the kings of Abydos. It is a wall with the name-cartouches of the Egyptian pharaohs. On the left side, Pharaoh Sethos I and his son Ramses—the future Ramses II—are recognizable. The engravings show seventy-six rulers of Egypt up to Seti I's time. The following list of names allows a comparison with other royal lists. I am following the spelling used on the German Wikipedia.7
Meni
Teti
Iteti
Ita
Sepati
Meribape
Semsu
Qebeh
Bedjau
Kakau
Banetjer
Wadjnes
Sened
Djadjai
Nebka
Djoser
Tati
Sedjes
Neferkare
Snefru (Snofru)
Chufu (Cheops)
Djedefre
Chaifre (Chefren)
Menkaure (Mykerinos)
Schepseskaf
Userkaf
Sahure
Kakai
Raneferef (Neferefre)
Niuserre
Menkauhor
Djedkare
Unis (Unas)
Teti (Teti II)
Userkare
Merire (Pepi I)
Merenre
Neferkare (Pepi II)
Merenre II
Netjerikare
Menkare
Neferkare II
Neferkare Nebi
Djedkare
Neferkare Chendu
Merenhor
Neferkamin
Nikare I
Neferkare Tereru
Neferkahor
Neferkare Pepi Seneb
Neferkamin Anu
Qaikaure
Neferkaure
Neferkauhor
Neferirkare
Nebhepetre (Mentuhptep II)
Seanchkare (Mentuhotep III
Sehetepibre (Amenemhet I)
Cheperkare (Sesostris I)
Nebukaure (Amenemhet II)
Chaicheperre (Sesostris II)
Chaikaure (Sesostris III)
Nimaatre (Amenemhet III)
Maacherure (Amenemhet IV)
Nebpehtire
Djeserkare (Amenophis I)
Aacheperkare (Thutmosis I)
Aacheperenre (Thutmosis II)
Mencheperre (Thutmosis III)
Aacheperure (Amenophis II)
Mencheperure (Thutmosis IV)
Nebmaatre (Amenophis III)
Djesercheperure-Setepenre
Menpehtire (Ramses I)
Menmaatre (Sethos I)
A total of seventy-six names, starting with the mystical original god Meni (Menes) around 3032 BC and continuing until Menmaatre (Sethos I) of the Nineteenth Dynasty around 1300 BC. Does everything make sense? Where are the missing pharaohs? Finally, Herodotus writes: “Menes was followed by 330 kings whose names the priests read from a book.” But the royal list of Abydos has only seventy-six names. To be sure, according to Herodotus, some pharaohs followed until the Twenty-fourth Dynasty; but then Nubians, Assyrians, and Persians ruled over Egypt, and finally, after a “short golden age,” Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) invaded Egypt. In 331 BC, the city of Alexandria was founded. (Alexander himself died at thirty-three years of age from an infection in Babylon.)
There is a very long way to go until Herodotus's figure of 330 kings. Egyptology now knows other king lists than just that of Abydos. For example, the royal tablet of Karnak, the Saqqara tablet, or the Turin papyrus. (I'll come back to that.) The annoying thing about Egypt is the fact that no real beginning of its era is known. For comparison, we Christians count the years from the birth of Christ, the Romans counted “ab urbe condita,” (after the founding of Rome) in 753 BC. The Maya in Central America counted from the visit of their gods from the universe: 3114 BC. The Jewish calendar begins in 3761 BC—on the day the world was created. But the Egyptians do not know of a fixed date that could be expressed in numbers. It's like sitting in front of a gigantic piece of jelly—there is no fixed point to sink your teeth into. For the chronology following the mystical Meni, alias Menes, the experts painstakingly recalculated their figures from isolated finds with royal cartouches, from buildings and other king lists. This can be a difficult and confusing way, because often pharaohs of the same name occur several times and intersect with other king lists. The resulting data construct is not uncontroversial among Egyptologists, but at least there is a red line one can follow along. Nevertheless, the actual origin, the start date of the Egyptian era, remains unclear. Millennia may be missing. How credible is Herodotus?
The man came from Halicarnassus, a city in the southwest corner of Asia Minor. Herodotus's father rebelled so vehemently against the despot and tyrant Lygdamis of Naxos (around 546 BC) that Herodotus's entire family had to emigrate. On the island of Samos, Herodotus observed the political events of his time. At that time the Persian Empire threatened the Greeks. It was probably the political quarrels that led the young Herodotus to look for firsthand information. He became a “writing globe trotter” of his time and toured Asia Minor, Italy, Sicily, southern Russia, Cyprus, Syria, and even spent a long time in Babylon. In July 448 BC, when he arrived at the place that would later become Alexandria, he began to take notes of what he was told by the people he talked to about their country's past and customs. Herodotus was critical of and often opposed to what he heard “with a certain amount of bias and distrust.”8 Although he grew into the role of a historian, he also reported on the geography and topography of the areas he visited. Herodotus was the first to put the idea to paper that “every story must be viewed in its geographical s
pace, and each geographic space has its own story.”9 At the time of Herodotus there was a lively trade relationship between Greece and Egypt. The Persian king Artaxerxes I (465–424 BC), who then ruled in the country on the Nile, even sent Egyptian boys to Greece for language instruction; conversely, Greek merchants and landlords worked in Egypt. At least at the beginning of his journey, Herodotus did not speak the Egyptian language. But there were plenty of interpreters for different subject areas, even those who we would today classify as “scientific translators.” They provided their services to schools and temples.
Herodotus very quickly differentiated between folk tradition and serious historiography. He could study the latter in numerous libraries in Egypt. When the priests read out the names of the 330 kings to him, he wrote them down exactly, but when he was told a story about a cow, he commented, “I think that's foolish chatter.” (Chapter 131) Having become interested, he gathered information about the construction of the Great Pyramid, but complained about details—for example, that during the construction of the pyramid, 1,600 silver talents had been spent for radishes and onions. Herodotus was never gullible; his comments testify to a critical and often sardonic mind. In his reports he neatly separated what was narrative from what was his own opinion. The story of the 330 kings was truly read to him by priests from a book. Herodotus affirms this expressly: “The Egyptians certainly want to know about that because they constantly calculated and wrote down the years of kings and chief priests.” (Histories, Second book, Chapter 145)
In contrast to the kings list of Abydos, there are names of kings in Herodotus's texts that do not exist on the Abydos list. Examples: “After Proteus, Rhampsinitos became king.” (Chapter 121) Cheops, the (alleged) builder of the Great Pyramid, is said to have been the successor of this Rhampsinitos. Herodotus also reports: “After Mykerinos, Asychis ascended the Egyptian royal throne.” (Chapter 136) Who is Asychis? Next in Chapter 137: “After him, a blind man from the city of Anysis became king, who was also called Anysis.” He was expelled by Ethiopians who, according to Herodotus, ruled Egypt for fifty years. After the (meanwhile very old) Anysis who had returned to Egypt, Seti I became king. But where did Herodotus get the names of kings like Proteus, Rhampsinitos, or Asychis? They do not exist on the king list of Abydos, but they are found in the narrative version of Herodotus's writings.
It's all a bit confusing. In which lost times do Herodotus's missing kings hide? After all, they can only be found in Herodotus's past. Prophetic pharaohs of a distant future were not on any list. But it gets even more complicated. Around 300 BC, a man named Manetho lived in Heliopolis. Commissioned by Ptolemy II (308–246 BC), he wrote three history books on Egypt. Manetho himself was active as a priest. He had free access to all documents in the temple libraries. Manetho's works have been lost, but the Roman-Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (around 37–100 AD), the Christian historian Julius Africanus (160–240 AD) as well as the church prince Eusebius (around 260–339 AD) cited his works. Manetho doesn't just give us seventy-six names as in the Abydos list, but lists even more pharaohs. In connection with the countless kings, Manetho reports again and again about very specific events that are missing from other historians' texts. He seems to have had access to special sources. Manetho deals with vast ancient times that our current Egyptology is not interested in at all.
In volume 1, Manetho reports about dynasties of deities. Eleven of them are listed.10 Volume 2 lists dynasties twelve to nineteen and volume 3 dynasties twenty to thirty-one. Manetho writes that the first ruler of Egypt was Hephaestus, who also brought the practice of using fire to the people. In Greek mythology, the ruler bears the name Prometheus. Whether in Greece or Egypt, Prometheus was also a descendant of the gods. As in Egypt, he took care of the people: “He took care of his creatures. He taught them to observe the rising and setting of the stars, invented the art of counting for them, the art of writing . . . , but also shipbuilding . . . , and taught them everything else the people needed in life . . .”11
In Manetho's list, Hephaestus (in Greek, Prometheus) was followed by Chronos. He, in turn, in Greek mythology, is the father of Zeus. Of course, he came from outer space—where else? Chronos was followed by Osiris (a.k.a., Orion); Tiphon, a brother of Osiris; then came Horos, a son of Osiris; and Isis (a.k.a., Sirius). Manetho states that after Osiris and Isis, the monarchies continued for 13,900 years until King Bidis. “After the gods, the sons of gods ruled for 1,255 years. And other kings ruled 1,817 years. After that 30 memphitic kings ruled for 1,790 years. After that came 10 other Thynitic kings and ruled for 350 years. The kingdom of the sons of gods lasted 5,813 years . . .”12
Later, the ecclesiastical prince Eusebius tried to interpret Manetho's numbers—all of them, not just those listed here—as lunar years. But these lunar years, converted into Earth years, still yielded a figure of over 14,000 BC. In our time, the engineer and mathematician Heiner Paul Kranich dealt extensively with the data of the Egyptian pharaohs. According to his calculations, Manetho's list covers a period of a full 24,925 years.13 Is Egyptian history much older than we accept? Our diligent Egyptologists dread such thoughts. Every expert knows the famous Sumerian-Babylonian list of kings (now in the British Museum of London), which contains even more impossible numbers. According to this list of kings, the first ten kings ruled 456,000 years from the creation of mankind until the Great Flood. After the Flood “the kingdom descended again from heaven.” Again: from where else? The twenty-three rulers listed by name after the flood reigned for a total of 24,510 years, three months and three and a half days. Where in the world do we get the precise details of “three months and three and a half days” from?
For comparison: the first ten Babylonian kings in the list just mentioned—ten patriarchs before the Flood in the Old Testament, all had impossibly long lifetimes. Adam is supposed to have aged 930 years, and Seth, Adam's son, was 912 years old when he died. And Methuselah lived 969 years, and so on.
The same is true of Diodorus of Sicily, who worked on his Universal History for thirty years (from 60–30 BC). His work encompasses a full forty volumes and begins with the cosmogony, the origin of life in the universe. Of course, the highly educated Diodorus knows all the works of his predecessors, sometimes even mentions them by name and quotes from their works. According to Diodorus, the stars have a connection with mankind. The origin and the father of all beings is a deity. You could hardly express it in a more modern way.14 According to Diodorus, the Egyptian god Osiris is “a benefactor who visited the whole world.” Osiris “taught mankind, he ended its wild behavior and gave man the first civilized form of life.” Diodorus asserts that the Chaldeans “watched the stars for many millennia” and taught the eternity of the cosmos. (The Chaldeans were the forerunners of the Babylonians and were admired for their knowledge of astronomy.) But if the Chaldeans observed the stars (for many millennia, according to Diodorus), logically thousands of years of astronomy must have existed. Diodorus notes about the Egyptian era: “Originally, gods and heroes were said to have ruled over Egypt for no less than 18,000 years. The last divine king was Horos, son of Isis. But human kings ruled the land beginning with Moeris for no less than 5,000 years . . .”
Where did the ancient historians take their data from? What Herodotus, Diodorus, and others seem to know is also known to the New World beyond the ocean. The Maya conducted an incredibly precise astronomy, which in turn was only made possible through previous, millennia-old observations, or through a direct training by their heavenly teachers, as some historians note. In the so-called Temple XIX of Palenque, Mexico, a god took over his reign in the year 3309 BC, and on the third tablet of the temple of the inscriptions a date appears in connection with the “boy king Pacal” that lies 1,247,654 years in the past.15
In Herodotus's case—and he is the reason for all these cross-connections—what also stunned me was another statement I know no one has stumbled on yet. After reporting about 330 kings and 11,340 years in Chapter 142 of the second book of his H
istorien (Histories), which is dedicated to Egypt, he notes: “During this time, four times the sun did not rise in the usual place. Twice it rose from the spot where it presently sets, and twice it set in the east, where it presently rises.”
How does a highly educated man like Herodotus write such nonsense? He knows that the sun has been rising daily in the east for ages, traversing the Nile and disappearing to the west. Why should our heavenly star have changed the orbit twice, and above all, how? My astonishment is explained by similar statements of Mayan and several Greek populations who, millennia ago, had no knowledge of Central American cultures. In the Codex Chimalpopoca, one of the Old Mexican manuscripts, one reads this: “The second sun was created . . . In it the sky collapsed and then the sun did not follow its path. It's just midday, and then it became night immediately.”16
This baffling situation becomes understandable when Plato, who lived in Ancient Greece and knew nothing of any Maya in Central America, made similar statements: “Numerous and varied are the devastating ravages that have come upon the human race and will come upon it . . . it is a deviation of the celestial bodies orbiting the sun, and, during long periods of time, an annihilation of the Earth's surface . . .”17
Where does Plato's knowledge of the “celestial bodies orbiting the sun” come from? Galileo Galilei was still executed 2,000 years later by the Roman Inquisition because of this same statement. And why did Herodotus, the Maya, and Plato say that the sun was rising in the wrong place?
Have you ever heard of a shift in the Earth's axis? As is well known, the position of the geographic poles of our planet is constantly changing, and at some point the Earth's axis tilts; this is called a pole shift. The Earth naturally continues to turn as before, but north suddenly has become south, and the sun in fact suddenly rises in the west. This event is associated with terrible, hard-to-imagine natural disasters.
There is a highly charged cross-link to Fátima, Portugal. There, in 1917, the so-called Marian apparitions took place. What would they have to do with Herodotus, the Maya in Central America, and Plato's Ancient Greece? Well, the visionaries of Fátima received three messages from the alleged Virgin Mary, destined for all humanity. The first two concerned the two world wars of the twentieth century. But all popes have refused to publish the actual third message. (The cleaned-up version of the third message, released years ago, has nothing to do with its true content. See the following statement by Pope John Paul II, which is in contrast to this diplomatic version.) Was it the knowledge of a pole shift that the popes gained from the apparitions of Fátima but did not dare reveal to humanity? The papal refusal to publish the message was justified by Pope John Paul II on the occasion of a visit to Germany in 1980 as follows: “On the other hand, it should be sufficient for all Christians to know this: if there is a message in which it is written that the oceans will flood whole areas of the earth, and that from one moment to the next millions of people will perish, truly the publication of such a message is no longer something to be so much desired.”18
War of the Gods Page 4
