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We created this brainteaser for use on our blog, but have now chosen to release it under Creative Commons - which is great news for anyone wanting to use it, as this means you have our full permission to use it in any way you wish! (Horay!) Please be sure to credit us if you do use the image, though, by linking out to our website: www.dancewearcentral.co.uk
WHAT proofs have we that the Egyptians were a colony from Atlantis?
1. They claimed descent from "the twelve great gods," which must have meant the twelve gods of Atlantis, to wit, Poseidon and Cleito and their ten sons.
2. According to the traditions of the Phœnicians, the Egyptians derived their civilization from them; and as the Egyptians far antedated the rise of the Phœnician nations proper, this must have meant that Egypt derived its civilization from the same country to which the Phœnicians owed their own origin. The Phœnician legends show that Misor, from whom, the Egyptians were descended, was the child of the Phœnician gods Amynus and Magus. Misor gave birth to Taaut, the god of letters, the inventor of the alphabet, and Taaut became Thoth, the god of history of the Egyptians. Sanchoniathon tells us that "Chronos (king of Atlantis) visited the South, and gave all Egypt to the god Taaut, that it might be his kingdom." "Misor" is probably the king "Mestor" named by Plato.
3. According to the Bible, the Egyptians were descendants of Ham, who was one of the three sons of Noah who escaped from the Deluge, to wit, the destruction of Atlantis.
4. The great similarity between the Egyptian civilization and that of the American nations.
5. The fact that the Egyptians claimed to be red men.
6. The religion of Egypt was pre-eminently sun-worship, and Ra was the sun-god of Egypt, Rama, the sun of the Hindoos,
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[paragraph continues]Rana, a god of the Toltecs, Raymi, the great festival of the sun of the Peruvians, and Rayam, a god of Yemen.
7. The presence of pyramids in Egypt and America.
8. The Egyptians were the only people of antiquity who were well-informed as to the history of Atlantis. The Egyptians were never a maritime people, and the Atlanteans must have brought that knowledge to them. They were not likely to send ships to Atlantis.
9. We find another proof of the descent of the Egyptians from Atlantis in their belief as to the "under-world." This land of the dead was situated in the West--hence the tombs were all placed, whenever possible, on the west bank of the Nile. The constant cry of the mourners as the funeral procession moved forward was, "To the west; to the west." This under-world was beyond the water, hence the funeral procession always crossed a body of water. "Where the tombs were, as in most cases, on the west bank of the Nile, the Nile was crossed; where they were on the eastern shore the procession passed over a sacred lake." (R. S. Poole, Contemporary Review, August, 1881, p. 17.) In the procession was "a sacred ark of the sun."
All this is very plain: the under-world in the West, the land of the dead, was Atlantis, the drowned world, the world beneath the horizon, beneath the sea, to which the peasants of Brittany looked from Cape Raz, the most western cape projecting into the Atlantic. It was only to be reached from Egypt by crossing the water, and it was associated with the ark, the emblem of Atlantis in all lands.
The soul of the dead man was supposed to journey to the under-world by "a water progress" (Ibid., p. 18), his destination was the Elysian Fields, where mighty corn grew, and where he was expected to cultivate the earth; "this task was of supreme importance." (Ibid., p. 19.) The Elysian Fields were the "Elysion" of the Greeks, the abode of the blessed, which we have seen was an island in the remote west." The Egyptian
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belief referred to a real country; they described its cities, mountains, and rivers; one of the latter was called Uranes, a name which reminds us of the Atlantean god Uranos. In connection with all this we must not forget that Plato described Atlantis as "that sacred island lying beneath the sun." Everywhere in the ancient world we find the minds of men looking to the west for the land of the dead. Poole says, "How then can we account for this strong conviction? Surely it must be a survival of an ancient belief which flowed in the very veins of the race." (Contemporary Review, 1881, p. 19.) It was based on an universal tradition that under "an immense ocean," in "the far west," there was an "under-world," a world comprising millions of the dead, a mighty race, that had been suddenly swallowed up in the greatest catastrophe known to man since he had inhabited the globe.
10. There is no evidence that the civilization of Egypt was developed in Egypt itself; it must have been transported there from some other country. To use the words of a recent writer in Blackwood,
"Till lately it was believed that the use of the papyrus for writing was introduced about the time of Alexander the Great; then Lepsius found the hieroglyphic sign of the papyrus-roll on monuments of the twelfth dynasty; afterward be found the same sign on monuments of the fourth dynasty, which is getting back pretty close to Menes, the protomonarch; and, indeed, little doubt is entertained that the art of writing on papyrus was understood as early as the days of Menes himself. The fruits of investigation in this, as m many other subjects, are truly most marvellous. Instead of exhibiting the rise and progress of any branches of knowledge, they tend to prove that nothing had any rise or progress, but that everything is referable to the very earliest dates. The experience of the Egyptologist must teach him to reverse the observation of Topsy, and to '`spect that nothing growed,' but that as soon as men were planted on the banks of the Nile they were already the cleverest men that ever lived, endowed with more knowledge and more power than their successors for centuries and centuries could
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attain to. Their system of writing, also, is found to have been complete from the very first. . . .
"But what are we to think when the antiquary, grubbing in the dust and silt of five thousand years ago to discover some traces of infant effort--some rude specimens of the ages of Magog and Mizraim, in which we may admire the germ that has since developed into a wonderful art--breaks his shins against an article so perfect that it equals if it does not excel the supreme stretch of modern ability? How shall we support the theory if it come to our knowledge that, before Noah was cold in his grave, his descendants were adepts in construction and in the fine arts, and that their achievements were for magnitude such as, if we possess the requisite skill, we never attempt to emulate? . . .
"As we have not yet discovered any trace of the rude, savage Egypt, but have seen her in her very earliest manifestations already skilful, erudite, and strong, it is impossible to determine the order of her inventions. Light may yet be thrown upon her rise and progress, but our deepest researches have hitherto shown her to us as only the mother of a most accomplished race. How they came by their knowledge is matter for speculation; that they possessed it is matter of fact. We never find them without the ability to organize labor, or shrinking from the very boldest efforts in digging canals and irrigating, in quarrying rock, in building, and in sculpture."
The explanation is simple: the waters of the Atlantic now flow over the country where all this magnificence and power were developed by slow stages from the rude beginnings of barbarism.
And how mighty must have been the parent nation of which this Egypt was a colony!
Egypt was the magnificent, the golden bridge, ten thousand years long, glorious with temples and pyramids, illuminated and illustrated by the most complete and continuous records of human history, along which the civilization of Atlantis, in a great procession of kings and priests, philosophers and astronomers, artists and artisans, streamed forward to Greece, to Rome, to Europe, to America. As far back in the ages as the
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eye can penetrate, even where the perspective dwindles almost to a point, we can still see the swarming multitudes, possessed of all the arts of the highest civilization, pressing forward from out that other and greater empire of which even this wonderworking Nile-land is but a faint and imperfect copy.
Look at the record of Egyptian greatness as preserved in her works: The pyramids, still in their ruins, are the marvel of mankind. The river Nile was diverted from its course by monstrous embankments to make a place for the city of Memphis. The artificial lake of Mœris was created as a reservoir for the waters of the Nile: it was four hundred and fifty miles in circumference and three hundred and fifty feet deep, with subterranean channels, flood-gates, locks, and dams, by which the wilderness was redeemed from sterility. Look at the magnificent mason-work of this ancient people! Mr. Kenrick, speaking of the casing of the Great Pyramid, says, "The joints are scarcely perceptible, and not wider than the thickness of silver-paper, and the cement so tenacious that fragments of the casing-stones still remain in their original position, notwithstanding the lapse of so many centuries, and the violence by which they were detached." Look at the ruins of the Labyrinth, which aroused the astonishment of Herodotus; it had three thousand chambers, half of them above ground and half below--a combination of courts, chambers, colonnades, statues, and pyramids. Look at the Temple of Karnac, covering a square each side of which is eighteen hundred feet. Says a recent writer, "Travellers one and all appear to have been unable to find words to express the feelings with which these sublime remains inspired them. They have been astounded and overcome by the magnificence and the prodigality of workmanship here to be admired. Courts, halls, gate-ways, pillars, obelisks, monolithic figures, sculptures, rows of sphinxes, are massed in such profusion that the sight is too much for modern comprehension." Denon says, "It is hardly possible to believe, after having seen it, in the reality of the existence of so many buildings
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collected on a single point--in their dimensions, in the resolute perseverance which their construction required, and in the incalculable expense of so much magnificence." And again, "It is necessary that the reader should fancy what is before him to be a dream, as he who views the objects themselves occasionally yields to the doubt whether he be perfectly awake." There were lakes and mountains within the periphery of the sanctuary. "The cathedral of Notre Dame at Paris could be set inside one of the halls of Karnac, and not touch the walls! . . . The whole valley and delta of the Nile, from the Catacombs to the sea, was covered with temples, palaces, tombs, pyramids, and pillars." Every stone was covered with inscriptions.
The state of society in the early days of Egypt approximated very closely to our modern civilization. Religion consisted in the worship of one God and the practice of virtue; forty-two commandments prescribed the duties of men to themselves, their neighbors, their country, and the Deity; a heaven awaited the good and a hell the vicious; there was a judgment-day when the hearts of men were weighed:
"He is sifting out the hearts of men
Before his judgment-seat."
Monogamy was the strict rule; not even the kings, in the early days, were allowed to have more than one wife. The wife's rights of separate property and her dower were protected by law; she was "the lady of the house;" she could "buy, sell, and trade on her own account;" in case of divorce her dowry was to be repaid to her, with interest at a high rate. The marriage-ceremony embraced an oath not to contract any other matrimonial alliance. The wife's status was as high in the earliest days of Egypt as it is now in the most civilized nations of Europe or America.
Slavery was permitted, but the slaves were treated with the greatest humanity. In the confessions, buried with the dead,
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the soul is made to declare that "I have not incriminated the slave to his master," There was also a clause in the commandments "which protected the laboring man against the exaction of more than his day's labor." They were merciful to the captives made in war; no picture represents torture inflicted upon them; while the representation of a sea-fight shows them saving their drowning enemies. Reginald Stuart Poole says (Contemporary Review, August, 1881, p. 43):
"When we consider the high ideal of the Egyptians, as proved by their portrayals of a just life, the principles they laid down as the basis of ethics, the elevation of women among them, their humanity in war, we must admit that their moral place ranks very high among the nations of antiquity.
"The true comparison of Egyptian life is with that of modern nations. This is far too difficult a task to be here undertaken. Enough has been said, however, to show that we need not think that in all respects they were far behind us."
Then look at the proficiency in art of this ancient people.
They were the first mathematicians of the Old World. Those Greeks whom we regard as the fathers of mathematics were simply pupils of Egypt. They were the first land-surveyors. They were the first astronomers, calculating eclipses, and watching the periods of planets and constellations. They knew the rotundity of the earth, which it was supposed Columbus had discovered!
"The signs of the zodiac were certainly in use among the Egyptians 1722 years before Christ. One of the learned men of our day, who for fifty years labored to decipher the hieroglyphics of the ancients, found upon a mummy-case in the British Museum a delineation of the signs of the zodiac, and the position of the planets; the date to which they pointed was the autumnal equinox of the year 1722 B.C. Professor Mitchell, to whom the fact was communicated, employed his assistants to ascertain the exact position of the heavenly bodies belonging to our solar system on the equinox of that year. This was done, and a diagram furnished by parties ignorant of his object, which showed that on the 7th of October, 1722 B.C.
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the moon and planets occupied the exact point in the heavens marked upon the coffin in the British Museum." (Goodrich's "Columbus," p. 22.)
They had clocks and dials for measuring time. They possessed gold and silver money. They were the first agriculturists of the Old World, raising all the cereals, cattle, horses, sheep, etc. They manufactured linen of so fine a quality that in the days of King Amasis (600 years B.C.) a single thread of a garment was composed of three hundred and sixty-five minor threads. They worked in gold, silver, copper, bronze, and iron; they tempered iron to the hardness of steel. They were the first chemists. The word "chemistry" comes from chemi, and chemi means Egypt. They manufactured glass and all kinds of pottery; they made boats out of earthenware; and, precisely as we are now making railroad car-wheels of paper, they manufactured vessels of paper. Their dentists filled teeth with gold; their farmers hatched poultry by artificial beat. They were the first musicians; they possessed guitars, single and double pipes, cymbals, drums, lyres, harps, flutes, the sambric, ashur, etc.; they had even castanets, such as are now used in Spain. In medicine and surgery they had reached such a degree of perfection that several hundred years B.C. the operation for the removal of cataract from the eye was performed among them; one of the most delicate and difficult feats of surgery, only attempted by us in the most recent times. "The papyrus of Berlin" states that it was discovered, rolled up in a case, under the feet of an Anubis in the town of Sekhem, in the days of Tet (or Thoth), after whose death it was transmitted to King Sent, and was then restored to the feet of the statue. King Sent belonged to the second dynasty, which flourished 4751 B.C., and the papyrus was old in his day. This papyrus is a medical treatise; there are in it no incantations or charms; but it deals in reasonable remedies, draughts, unguents and injections. The later medical papyri contain a great deal of magic and incantations.
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"Great and splendid as are the things which we know about oldest Egypt, she is made a thousand times more sublime by our uncertainty as to the limits of her accomplishments. She presents not a great, definite idea, which, though hard to receive, is, when once acquired, comprehensible and clear. Under the soil of the modern country are hid away thousands and thousands of relics which may astonish the world for ages to come, and change continually its conception of what Egypt was. The effect of research seems to be to prove the objects of it to be much older than we thought them to be--some things thought to be wholly modern having been proved to be repetitions of things Egyptian, and other things known to have been Egyptian being by every advance in knowledge carried back more and more toward the very beginning of things. She shakes our most rooted ideas concerning the world's history; she has not ceased to be a puzzle and a lure: there is a spell over her still."
Renan says, "It has no archaic epoch." Osborn says, "It bursts upon us at once in the flower of its highest perfection." Seiss says ("A, Miracle in Stone," p. 40), "It suddenly takes its place in the world in all its matchless magnificence, without father, without mother, and as clean apart from all evolution as if it had dropped from the unknown heavens." It had dropped from Atlantis.
Rawlinson says ("Origin of Nations," p. 13):
"Now, in Egypt, it is notorious that there is no indication of any early period of savagery or barbarism. All the authorities agree that, however far back we go, we find in Egypt no rude or uncivilized time out of which civilization is developed. Menes, the first king, changes the course of the Nile, makes a great reservoir, and builds the temple of Phthah at Memphis. . . . We see no barbarous customs, not even the habit, so slowly abandoned by all people, of wearing arms when not on military service."
Tylor says (" Anthropology," p. 192):
"Among the ancient cultured nations of Egypt and Assyria handicrafts had already come to a stage which could only have
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been reached by thousands of years of progress. In museums still may be examined the work of their joiners, stone-cutters, goldsmiths, wonderful in skill and finish, and in putting to shame the modern artificer. . . . To see gold jewellery of the highest order, the student should examine that of the ancients, such as the Egyptian, Greek, and Etruscan."
The carpenters' and masons' tools of the ancient Egyptians were almost identical with those used among us to-day.
There is a plate showing an Aztec priestess in Delafield's "Antiquities of America," p. 61, which presents a head-dress strikingly Egyptian. In the celebrated "tablet of the cross," at Palenque, we see a cross with a bird perched upon it, to which (or to the cross) two priests are offering sacrifice. In Mr. Stephens's representation from the Vocal Memnon we find almost the same thing, the difference being that, instead of an ornamented Latin cross, we have a crux commissa, and instead of one bird there are two, not on the cross, but immediately above it. In both cases the hieroglyphics, though the characters are of course different, are disposed upon the stone in much the same manner. (Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. v., p. 61.)
Even the obelisks of Egypt have their counterpart in America.
Quoting from Molina ("History of Chili," tom. i., p. 169), McCullough writes, "Between the hills of Mendoza and La Punta is a pillar of stone one hundred and fifty feet high, and twelve feet in diameter." ("Researches," pp. 171, 172.) The columns of Copan stand detached and solitary, so do the obelisks of Egypt; both are square or four-sided, and covered with sculpture. (Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. v., p. 60.)
In a letter by Jomard, quoted by Delafield, we read,
"I have recognized in your memoir on the division of time among the Mexican nations, compared with those of Asia, some very striking analogies between the Toltec characters and institutions observed on the banks of the Nile. Among these
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analogies there is one which is worthy of attention--it is the use of the vague year of three hundred and sixty-five days, composed of equal months, and of five complementary days, equally employed at Thebes and Mexico--a distance of three thousand leagues. . . . In reality, the intercalation of the Mexicans being thirteen days on each cycle of fifty-two years, comes to the same thing as that of the Julian calendar, which is one day in four years; and consequently supposes the duration of the year to be three hundred and sixty-five days six hours. Now such was the length of the year among the Egyptians--they intercalated an entire year of three hundred and seventy-five days every one thousand four hundred and sixty years. ... The fact of the intercalation (by the Mexicans) of thirteen days every cycle that is, the use of a year of three hundred and sixty-five days and a quarter--is a proof that it was borrowed from the Egyptians, or that they had a common origin." ("Antiquities of America," pp. 52, 53.)
The Mexican century began on the 26th of February, and the 26th of February was celebrated from the time of Nabonassor, 747 B.C., because the Egyptian priests, conformably to their astronomical observations, had fixed the beginning of the month Toth, and the commencement of their year, at noon on that day. The five intercalated days to make up the three hundred and sixty-five days were called by the Mexicans Nemontemi, or useless, and on them they transacted no business; while the Egyptians, during that epoch, celebrated the festival of the birth of their gods, as attested by Plutarch and others.
It will be conceded that a considerable degree of astronomical knowledge must have been necessary to reach the conclusion that the true year consisted of three hundred and sixty-five days and six hours (modern science has demonstrated that it consists of three hundred and sixty-five days and five hours, less ten seconds); and a high degree of civilization was requisite to insist that the year must be brought around, by the intercalation of a certain number of days in a certain period of time, to its true relation to the seasons. Both were the outgrowth of a vast, ancient civilization of the highest order,
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which transmitted some part of its astronomical knowledge to its colonies through their respective priesthoods.
Can we, in the presence of such facts, doubt the statements of the Egyptian priests to Solon, as to the glory and greatness of Atlantis, its monuments, its sculpture, its laws, its religion, its civilization?
In Egypt we have the oldest of the Old World children of Atlantis; in her magnificence we have a testimony to the development attained by the parent country; by that country whose kings were the gods of succeeding nations, and whose kingdom extended to the uttermost ends of the earth.
The Egyptian historian, Manetho, referred to a period of thirteen thousand nine hundred years as "the reign of the gods," and placed this period at the very beginning of Egyptian history. These thirteen thousand nine hundred years were probably a recollection of Atlantis. Such a lapse of time, vast as it may appear, is but as a day compared with some of our recognized geological epochs.
A kiddie roller coaster built in 1981 by Zierer (the same manufacturer that made the Wave Swinger ride, Lasso) originally know as "Ladybug" and it is part of the "Tiny Trio" along with BMX Motocross (no longer at the park) (kiddie umbrella ride) and Dodge 'Ems (now Raccon Rally) (kiddie bumper cars).
The Elsie Quirk Library offers activities and opportunities for children to experience the joy of books and reading.
FORTY CARROTS’ PARTNERS IN PLAY—For ages 0-5. Tuesdays, 9:45-10:45 a.m. Forty Carrots Family Center is bringing a FREE class to Elsie Quirk Library for you and your child. Every week you will have the chance to enjoy meaningful playtime together, experience new activities, join in circle-time fun, spend time with other families, and get valuable parenting information. Attendance is limited to 10 families on a first come, first served basis.
PRESCHOOL STORY TIME—For ages 3-5. Wednesdays, 10:30-11:15 a.m. Programs provide an opportunity to develop and reinforce skills such as reading for pleasure, language development, letter knowledge, oral discussion, and comprehension. Programs include reading aloud, rhymes and music, alphabet and letter recognition, creative dramatics, and related crafts.
TODDLER TIME—For ages 1-3 with a caregiver. Thursdays, 10:00-10:45 a.m. Programs provide an introduction to early literacy skills including book sharing, simple concepts, and language development. Programs are related to experiences familiar with toddlers and include reading aloud, music and movement, letter and shape recognition, vocabulary development and playtime with educational toys.
READ TO THE DOGS—For ages 5 and up (younger if accompanied with a caregiver). Children are invited to read to certified pet therapy dogs from Suncoast Humane Society. This program encourages conversation and develops reading and communication skills. The dogs love the attention and the kids love the interaction. Gifts of good used blankets, towels, dog toys and treats are always appreciated.
ART WITH CAROLYN—For ages 5 and up. Learn basic art techniques with certified art teacher Carolyn Johnston. Registration is required and limited to 10 children.
SPECIAL EVENTS!
SUSTAINABILITY MONTH—All Sarasota County Libraries will be offering programs related to sustainability throughout the month of September.
BORN TO READ LULLABY CONCERT—Introduce young children to live classical music as you listen to Musicians Out of the Box perform childhood favorites. Children must be accompanied by a parent or caregiver. Registration at the youth services desk, or call 861-2506. Sept. 20, 11-11:30 a.m.
FAMILY GEOGRAPHY NIGHT—For families with children ages 9 and up. Work together to solve geography riddles, puzzles, trivia and brainteasers. Learn while having fun. Program provided by the Friends of Elsie Quirk Library. Sept. 15, 6 p.m.-8 p.m.
For more information about library programs and services, please call 941-861-5000.
Puzzle game 3-D in which a set of 16 cubes, disordered on the 3 visible faces of a cube, must be dragged to the starting position in the fewest possible number of moves.
The logical puzzle is designed for different original graphic combinations, appropriately created so that, in addition to making it aesthetically elegant, the design of each graphic also determines the degree of difficulty.
Website: www.eugeniocoppo.com/app/3x16
Android: play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.coppo.trepersed...
IOS: itunes.apple.com/app/3x16/id1169437869?mt=8
Facebook: www.facebook.com/3x16app/
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/architettoeugeniocoppo/3x16-3d-logic-game/
Tumblr: 3x16game.tumblr.com/
Twitter: twitter.com/3x16game
This brainteaser illustration was first created for use on our blog to give our readers a challenge! But we've now decided to release it under Creative Commons Attribution Licensing. This means you may use it in any way you wish (wohoo)! All we ask is that you kindly credit us when you do so by including a link to our website: www.dancewearcentral.co.uk/
#347/365 Some of my old puzzles, I used to love figuring out these things and brain teasers. I think the guys at work will love these things too!
Ver la galería más comodamente AQUÍ
CUALQUIER COMENTARIO O CRÍTICA SERÁ BIENVENIDO.
Empezó como una fotografía de producto y termino como una metáfora.
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ANY COMMENTS OR CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM ARE WELCOME.
For a bit of fun, we thought we’d create a creepy-crawly themed puzzle to get us all in the mood for the spooky season! We love halloween and we also love a good puzzle, so we thought why not combine the two?
Luckily these smiling spiders look more sweet than sinister to us, but there’s something not quite right about one of them. One of these little fellas is missing a fang!
Can you spot which one it is?
This is a halloween themed brainteaser / puzzle we produced for use on our blog and have now decided to release it under the a
Attribution Creative Commons licence. This means you can use it as long as you credit us as the owners of the image by linking to our website at www.scribbler.com/
LE4EL project - expl4re - Coordinate October:
www.le4el.de/explore/explore_index.html#
The picture series on [OOM]:
www.out-of-memory.eu/LE4EL_Okt_Stadtw%C3%A4ldchen/index.html
As I am frequently busy doing stuff (and by that I mean having a life outside of LEGOs), I have decided to start my own little side mission called "How Did He Do That?" I'm challenging all who think they know LEGO and figure out how I constructed the image before you. The rules are simple- I post a photo of something I've created and you try to solve it. Good luck.
(P.S. there are no current prizes, this is just a brain teaser- you know, for fun.)
#1- Batsignal
Note- this photo is not edited.
Rubik's Cube - a classic... Not exactly from my 'childhood' but I bought one when they came out in the early 80's and actually solved it a few times. Then it got revisited when our daughters got to the age to try it...
I did not dare twist it too far today - as I'm sure it would take far longer than I am willing to spend to try to solve it again!!
brain teasers logic games 3d puzzles wooden brainteasers mazes iq bit.ly/Rbscsh
via Crafty Puzzles bit.ly/QPxQDy
The Elsie Quirk Library offers activities and opportunities for children to experience the joy of books and reading.
FORTY CARROTS’ PARTNERS IN PLAY—For ages 0-5. Tuesdays, 9:45-10:45 a.m. Forty Carrots Family Center is bringing a FREE class to Elsie Quirk Library for you and your child. Every week you will have the chance to enjoy meaningful playtime together, experience new activities, join in circle-time fun, spend time with other families, and get valuable parenting information. Attendance is limited to 10 families on a first come, first served basis.
PRESCHOOL STORY TIME—For ages 3-5. Wednesdays, 10:30-11:15 a.m. Programs provide an opportunity to develop and reinforce skills such as reading for pleasure, language development, letter knowledge, oral discussion, and comprehension. Programs include reading aloud, rhymes and music, alphabet and letter recognition, creative dramatics, and related crafts.
TODDLER TIME—For ages 1-3 with a caregiver. Thursdays, 10:00-10:45 a.m. Programs provide an introduction to early literacy skills including book sharing, simple concepts, and language development. Programs are related to experiences familiar with toddlers and include reading aloud, music and movement, letter and shape recognition, vocabulary development and playtime with educational toys.
READ TO THE DOGS—For ages 5 and up (younger if accompanied with a caregiver). Children are invited to read to certified pet therapy dogs from Suncoast Humane Society. This program encourages conversation and develops reading and communication skills. The dogs love the attention and the kids love the interaction. Gifts of good used blankets, towels, dog toys and treats are always appreciated.
ART WITH CAROLYN—For ages 5 and up. Learn basic art techniques with certified art teacher Carolyn Johnston. Registration is required and limited to 10 children.
SPECIAL EVENTS!
SUSTAINABILITY MONTH—All Sarasota County Libraries will be offering programs related to sustainability throughout the month of September.
BORN TO READ LULLABY CONCERT—Introduce young children to live classical music as you listen to Musicians Out of the Box perform childhood favorites. Children must be accompanied by a parent or caregiver. Registration at the youth services desk, or call 861-2506. Sept. 20, 11-11:30 a.m.
FAMILY GEOGRAPHY NIGHT—For families with children ages 9 and up. Work together to solve geography riddles, puzzles, trivia and brainteasers. Learn while having fun. Program provided by the Friends of Elsie Quirk Library. Sept. 15, 6 p.m.-8 p.m.
For more information about library programs and services, please call 941-861-5000.
contents: rubbery monster finger puppet, modelling clay, brainteaser puzzle, sparkler, pen, crayon, pencil, Toblerone, lollipops, fizzing candy, dice, bulldog clip, stripy paperclips, notebook, NaNo stickers, strange animal stickers, CD with wordcount spreadsheet, and various bits of inspirational paperwork that I can't think how to describe.
See, Cambridge wrimos? Everyone should come to the party, as the goodies are *wondrous*!
www.kaboodlestoystore.com | Kaboodles Toy Store has a great selection of learning toys, blow your mind science toys and educational toys for all ages. We are located in the Kids Market at Granville Island, why not come in and check us out!
Raging Rapids. Here's how it works. 12 paddlers sit in the raft. A raging rapid approaches and they all fall out of the boat. You have to put them back in the boat, facing forward. Here's the challenge: each piece has its own unique puzzle bottom. You'd think it's easy but I tried all day yesterday to get these little mother fuckers back in. Then this morning, at the ass crack of dawn, I gave it another whirl and I got it. I'm impressed. I fell out of my proverbial boat so long ago and have never managed to get my ass back on the boat, sit forward and paddle. Who knew progress could come in the form of a brainteaser.
The other funny thing is that I'm on a little personal temporary revolution against God. My husband pointed out jokingly that Jesus had 12 disciples and they all rowed around in a boat. God can't even stay out of my games :))
Wow! Stuff product code IQ-1047
PL15196
234 pieces, used and complete
4 x 6 in
The third ( and smallest) jigsaw taken to Rhodes for a little light relief, it comes complete with tweezers, magnifying glass and bonus brainteaser puzzles. This one was a little more difficult than the Cheatwell and required more concentration.
Total piece count for 2018: 135,411
Puzzle number 182
This intricate 6-piece wooden puzzle is a fun challenge for kids and adults alike. There's two solutions to the puzzle (that I know of) but several combinations to lead you astray. It's not that easy of a puzzle to solve!
It's made from poplar that's been sanded smooth and finished with an oil varnish. There's interesting streaks of color in a few pieces of the poplar, too.
This is an ongoing project.
I made too many of these tonight... your punishment for solving this one will just be another one.
Loads and loads more wordpuzzles like this are available to challenge your mental skills here
www.flickr.com/photos/alaig/sets/72157607905919374/detail/
and for more word teasers, photo mystries, and other curiosities visitwww.flickr.com/groups/areyougame
This is a game my wife had tucked away call Roadside Rescue a Binary Arts Brainteaser Puzzle. The idea is to line up the Police, Ambulance and Firetruck in their spots shown on the game. You have different ways to set it up and only certain moves you can make. The cars can only fit certain way and switch from lane to lane. You can see extra pieces that you can replace to change the puzzle. Sometimes you have to only get one in its spot such as a police car but it sits in the back and you might have road blocks. I used this for a few photo setup with my Anglia AA car in previous photos. This is a fun game and a good brainteaser.
If you've a child aged 12 years and above, there's no better place for a weekend saga than at Jumble Dubai. Team up in pairs of 3 and solve tricky brainteasers in the world’s first urban indoor maze! Spread over 3,500 sq m space, fabricated with twists, turns, brightly coloured doors and brick walls, Jumble Dubai is a huge maze that has taken the brilliant escape rooms experience in Dubai to a new height. Each session goes on for 2 hours and once you are locked inside the room, you must use all your skills, physical, mental and cognitive, to solve the game and make your way out and move on to the next challenge. Sounds like a fun way to get your kids thinking and cracking right?
Visit:- jumble.ae/
The film Stargate (1994, directed by Roland Emmerich) forms the basis of a successful science-fiction franchise spanning four television series with 380 episodes and two direct-to-DVD films. Its premise is an incredible archaeological discovery in Egypt: In 1928, a mysterious artifact is unearthed near the pyramids of Giza - a giant ring, fifteen feet in diameter, inscribed with strange characters, and made of a metal which does not occur naturally on Earth - the eponymous ‘Stargate,’ so-called by accompanying hieroglyphic inscriptions. For more than sixty years, no one is able to decipher the unknown symbols that presumably hold the key to its function, until the arrival of wunderkind Egyptologist Dr. Daniel Jackson, recruited because the artifact’s apparent non- terrestrial origin and immense age lend credence to his unorthodox theories. When we first encounter him, Jackson is giving a passionate lecture arguing for a much greater antiquity of the pyramids and the Sphinx than conventional Egyptology will allow. Stubborn, elitist professors in the audience pillory him without mercy, asking whether he thought men from Atlantis built the pyramids - “or Martians perhaps!” Not Martians, but close. Jackson divines the purpose of the giant ring by recognizing the strange symbols as stylized star constellations: as the name implies, the Stargate is a threshold to the universe. If one enters the correct ‘address’ of seven of the thirty-nine symbols engraved on its surface, the gate opens a conduit between itself and an identical counterpart on another planet, much as one telephone dials another. Once Jackson and a team of soldiers step through this artificial ‘wormhole,’2 they are hurled across the universe within seconds and, emerging from the Stargate on the other side, find
1 I wish to thank Dylan M. Burns for helping this Egyptologist navigate the religionswissenschaftliche literature that has been essential for the story told on the following pages. I am furthermore very grateful to Ingbert Jüdt, Uwe Neuhold, and Jonas Richter for generously providing me with digital copies of some of their works cited here.
2 The popular term for a so-called ‘Einstein-Rosen Bridge,’ a sort of shortcut through space-time that has been hypothesized by astrophysicists. themselves on the desert planet Abydos, inside an Egyptian temple near a virtual duplicate of the Great Pyramid of Giza - total vindication of Jackson’s theories. The American explorers soon discover that the planet Abydos is inhabited by the descendants of Ancient Egyptians who were enslaved millennia ago by an alien tyrant who, having chanced upon Earth and primitive humans, created Egyptian civilization, assumed the persona of the sun god Ra, and took thousands of slaves through the Stargate to Abydos to work in the planet’s mines, harvesting the precious metal from which the Stargates are made and which serves as the foundation of Ra’s technological might. With impeccable timing, Ra himself soon appears in his ominous pyramid-shaped spaceship and lands on the pyramid near the gate. The Americans take up the fight against the god-king and his legions of warriors, who wield high-tech laser weapons and conceal their faces behind frightful helmets resembling the head of a falcon - the ‘Horus guards’ - while their captain Anubis wears the likeness of a jackal’s head. After the Americans are able to convince the Abydonians to rebel, Ra is eventually vanquished after a fierce battle at the pyramid, the symbol of his despotism. In the television series Stargate SG-1, the ‘Stargate Command’ battles many more (usually Egyptian or otherwise ‘Oriental’) false gods like Ra and liberates planet after planet from their despotic grasp.
From a critical standpoint, Stargate gives the initial impression of a very confused pop-cultural salad, randomly tossed together out of the vegetable bins of sci-fi, American military triumphalism, and a lot of Orientalizing Egyptomania. Yet the film was a lasting hit that developed into a franchise, complete with television spinoffs (four serials, from 1997 to 2011), merchandising, and even Stargate- inspired conspiracy-theories. Meanwhile, other films such as Mission to Mars (2000), Alien vs. Predator (2004), or Prometheus (2012) also proved commercially successful ventures in exploring the theme of extraterrestrial races interfering in Earth’s past, as have ‘non-fiction’ series such as Ancient Aliens (eleven seasons and counting). What is the cultural resonance of a story like that of Stargate, and where does such a story come from?
The present contribution seeks to address these questions by way of a multi- faceted analysis addressing questions of reception of antiquity and Egypt, as well as sociology of religion. Following general methodological remarks about reception-theory which are indebted primarily to the literary theory of reception aesthetics as well as a mnemohistorical approach in the vein of Jan Assmann, I proceed to identify the traditional images of Egypt that the film harnesses, and how they are embedded in the appropriation of contemporary discourses. One of these is the focus of my essay - the so-called Ancient Astronaut discourse (henceforth: AAD or just AA for other attributive instances of ‘Ancient Astronaut’), or Preastronautics, popularized above all by Erich von Däniken, who claimed that ancient mythologies commemorate extraterrestrial visits in Earth’s distant past. I proceed to examine the centrality of Ancient Egypt in the AAD, starting with narratives about ancient Oriental and Egyptian wisdom that have been contested since late antiquity until they were discredited around the eighteenth century and pushed to the cultural fringe, thus becoming open to appropriation by new religious currents. I illustrate how esoteric currents, particularly Theosophy, as well as popular culture and an increasing belief in extraterrestrials, all paved the way for the birth of today’s AAD.
I will then focus on the ‘Egyptian front’ of this discourse, showing that Stargate responds above all to the theories of Zecharia Sitchin and Robert Bauval. A close look at key works of the genre creates a strong impression that (the) Stargate was in a way ‘prepared’ by an increasingly technological language applied to the Great Pyramid as a literal ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ Post-1994, the AAD exhibits a stunning development as the fictional origins of the Stargate device are silently dropped or explained away by conspiracy theories. I try to account for this phenomenon by adapting, in the vein of recent studies of fiction-based religions, Jean Braudillard’s theory of postmodernity. I argue that we are dealing with a ‘simulacrum,’ something that has become ‘hyper-real,’ supporting Carole Cusack’s assertion that “it is necessary to posit a definition of ‘religion’ that can harmonize with fiction and invention.”3 The AAD, we will observe, resembles in several facets a religious discourse to be located within the fringe realm of ‘occulture’ as defined by Christopher Partridge, particularly in its deep entanglement with popular culture. It serves as a neo-mythology able to re- enchant the world, to present an attractive anti-authoritarian option for identity formation and yet functionally equivalent to religion (according to traditional modern definitions) in its creationist tenets. In summary, the aims of this contribution are essentially twofold: One, to showcase the emergence of the AAD out of religious discourse as well as its continued religious functions despite all differences and pretensions to the contrary, and second, to sketch a concise literary history of this emergence itself, as well as the continuous mutual influence between the AAD and popular culture, exemplified via the rather spectacular case of Stargate. Throughout these observations, we will encounter an imaginary Egypt as providing both the primary building blocks and the general backdrop of ancient mystery from and upon which the AAD’s flying pyramids are built.
2. Reception Theory, Cultural Memory, and the Mnemohistorical Approach
In the late 1960s, German literary theorists, beginning with Hans-Robert Jauß, developed the reception theory of reader-response criticism, or Rezeptionsästhetik.4 Its defining characteristic is the focus on the reader not as a passive recipient of preexisting authorial meaning, but as the active producer of meaning that may or may not conform to the meaning originally intended by the author.5 When the Ancient Egyptians gave expression to their worldview through their art, literature, architecture, etc., they too were encoding ‘authorial meaning’ which Egyptologists attempt to recover through reconstruction of the original cultural context of Egyptian texts and artefacts. In Gunter Grimm’s terms, these are “interpretations [...] assessed in terms of their adequacy (Adäquanz) in reflecting authorial intentions”6 - something that only became possible in 1822 with the decipherment of the hieroglyphic script and the birth of Egyptology. Preceding this paradigm shift, and since then accompanying and fighting it, lies a long history of Ägyptenrezeption - a web of passionate constructions of Egypt whose primary threads go back to ancient Greece, Rome, and Israel. These cultures incorporated ideas of Egypt into founding narratives that were of central importance for what I call, following Jan and Aleida Assmann, their respective ‘cultural memory’ - the memory (as opposed to Egyptology’s domain: factual knowledge) of Egypt in the West.7 The basic theory, laid out extensively by J. Assmann in 1992’s Das kulturelle Gedächtnis (published in English only in 2011), sets out to accomplish what Assmann’s most important predecessor, Maurice Halbwachs, had not considered: “expanding his theory of memory into the realm of a theory of culture.”8 His most brilliant case studies (most notably 1997’s Moses the Egyptian) emerged where Assmann qui Egyptologist applied to his main area of expertise (i.e., pharaonic Egypt) the notion that culture is, for all intents and purposes, the sum of its ‘memories’ (i.e., cultural constructions imagined as such, be they true or not) of founding myths that are shared by and thus consolidate a community of people. Important groundwork for this endeavor was laid in the concluding chapter of 1996’s Ägypten. Eine Sinngeschichte, where Assmann turns from the ancient Egyptians’ conceptions of self and world to the outside perspective - the history of the memory of Egypt that survives to this day, “enshrined in the cultural memory of western civilization.”9 Assmann emphasizes that identity-forming discourses of both Greco-Roman culture as well as Judeo-Christian religiosity - the two main ‘pillars’ on which Western cultural identity rests - look back to Ancient Egypt as their mythical place of origin. With respect to the overarching theme of this volume, these are the two most basic ‘master narratives’ of Western conceptions of Egypt: For the Greeks, it served as the glorified vault of mysteries and arcane wisdom from which civilization and knowledge of the gods itself reached Hellas; for Judaism (and then Christianity), it served as the abhorred prototype of false religion and the house of slavery - something to be resisted and overcome, instead of admired.10 As we will see, both images inform the representation of Egypt in Stargate. In adopting the premises of reception aesthetics and mnemohistory, I will consequently focus not on the veracity, but on the history and cultural relevance of the ideas that we will encounter.
3. Stargate as an Ancient Astronaut narrative
Stargate feels a bit like two movies shoehorned into one. The approximate first third covers the mythical story of Daniel Jackson’s vindication: An orphan, outcast, and misunderstood genius finds new meaning in life as he cracks an ancient mystery and is finally led to a portal to another world, where he finds himself before a giant pyramid and says blissfully, “I knew it.” At this point, his journey of (self-)discovery is essentially over, and Stargate switches gears as the American soldiers take it upon themselves to liberate the helpless and clueless ‘orientals’ from their evil God-king - a demonizing, biblical vision of Egypt as a ‘house of slavery’ that fuels a neocolonialist narrative negotiating legitimizing strategies about American military intervention in the Middle East shortly after the First Gulf War.11 Jackson’s solving of the Stargate mystery, however, is bound up with the so-called Ancient Astronaut theory (also called ‘Pre- astronautics,’ and, increasingly ‘Paleo-SETI’ [Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence]) which constitutes a popular discourse in Western industrialized societies and particularly the German-speaking countries.12 Its (in)famous founding father is, of course, Erich von Däniken, whose 1968 bestseller Chariots of the Gods? is the prototypical incarnation of the entire genre, as both his specific points and rhetorical tactics are retreaded to this day. As the ‘Bible’ of this discourse was written in German, its organized adherents are found predominantly in the germanophone sphere, and most in-depth scholarship on the subject is written in German as well (a significant exception being the work of Jason Colavito).13
In Chariots, von Däniken famously professed the idea that the gods of ancient mythology were really extraterrestrial visitors who were mistaken for deities by primitive humans, and that ancient writings and various (alleged) anomalies inthe archaeological record attest to the visits and the technology of these visitors. Von Däniken’s theory has been described by Andreas Grünschloß as a ‘ufological’ or ‘pre-astronautic Euhemerism,’ as it resembles a belief held by the philosopher Euhemerus (fl. 300 CE) that the gods were really great kings of yore who had over time been deified due to their remarkable innovations and achievements.14 As will be shown, the AAD was at the peak of its popularity in the mid-1990s when it was used as the premise for Stargate. Although it may seem that its popularity has diminished somewhat since then, the AAD is still very much alive and influential - in fact, I suspect that it is less conspicuous today because it has become normalized as an element of popular culture and lost some of its original shock value. The ‘gods’ are here to stay, and they continue to inspire ‘worship’.
4. The Road to von Däniken: Ancient Wisdom through the Ages
We have seen above that the mystification of Egypt originates with the ancient Greeks. One may specifically point to the transformation of Middle- and Neoplatonic philosophical speculation into religious narratives (such as the various incarnations of Gnosticism, Hermeticism, etc.) in late antiquity, sharing as a common legitimizing strategy the reference to a primordial wisdom possessed by the ‘barbarians’ of the Orient, including the Jews, Brahmans, Magi, and, of course, the Egyptians, usually represented by the god of wisdom Thoth, known to the Hellenistic world as Hermes Trismegistus. It was debated whether Platonic wisdom was really wisdom derived from the ancient Orient, hence the moniker ‘Platonic Orientalism.’15 In these narratives, Egypt was one of the key players: “(N)ot only was Greek philosophy seen as derived from oriental sources, but the Egyptians in particular could even claim to be the true founders of philosophy as such.”16 This controversy of how Greeks (and later, Christians) should evaluate the ‘wisdom of the pagans’ was picked up again when the sources became known in Europe during the Renaissance. While the verdict of the church fathers was overwhelmingly negative,17 the Renaissance witnessed a new apologism for ‘Oriental pagan wisdom,’ whose Egyptian chapter was largely defined by a platonizing misunderstanding of the hieroglyphic script that long obstructed its actual decipherment and that remains influential to this day.18 A crucial early figure in this resurgence of Platonic Orientalism is Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), who “stands at the origin of a non-institutional current of religious speculation, the development of which can be traced in European culture through the sixteenth and into the seventeenth century, and where ‘Plato’ stands as a generic label for a much wider complex of practices and speculations largely inherited, as we know today, from the Hellenistic culture of late antiquity.”19 This label went on to assimilate over time all those “traditional bodies of spiritual, theurgical, magical, arithmological, astrological, and alchemical lore” attributed to ancient sages such as Hermes Trismegistus, thus accumulating the collective ‘referential corpus’ sometimes referred to today as ‘Western esotericism,’ which in this essay is to be understood as a typological umbrella term for such currents.20 This spectrum was eventually exiled into the ‘occultural’ fringe where we find it today, in large part due to new methods of philological criticism that began to view the narrative of ancient wisdom “as an inherently a-historical approach to historical questions.”21 The emerging historiographical disciplines - such as Egyptology - distanced themselves sharply from what was perceived as embarrassing and unscientific fantasy. This ‘other’ history was appropriated by new religious movements like Theosophy, founded by Helena Blavatsky (1831– 1891). She and other influential esotericists “absorbed diverse culturally available elements, interpreted this material through a hermeneutic framework of their own and presented the result as a coherent doctrine.”22 For our purposes, this means that conceptions of Egypt were embedded in a larger narrative that strings together various ‘wisdom-bearing’ cultures.23
Another important feature of many esoteric traditions that survives into the AAD is the minor significance or absence of a supreme deity.24 Instead, the focus is on contact with intermediary beings such as angels that populate the heavens, sometimes understood to be extraterrestrials.25 Blavatsky focuses on intermediary figures in a particular, salvific-historical framework crucial to the development of AAD.26 According to Blavatsky, human development had arrived at a crucial turning point: she and other theosophical leaders were in spiritual contact (via ‘channeling’) with benevolent ascended masters, “living persons who had fully evolved through many reincarnations, had acquired and become the custodians of ‘ancient wisdom,’ and now sought to impart that wisdom to humanity in order to lead it into a new age of peace, spirituality, and global community.”27
While Blavatsky’s first major work Isis Unveiled (1877) - with its “plea for the recognition of the Hermetic philosophy, the anciently universal Wisdom- Religion”28 - carried strong Egyptian connotations, her Theosophical Society soon shifted its focus permanently towards India, where Blavatsky claimed to have been initiated.29 Among the second generation of Theosophists, Edgar Cayce (1877–1945) can be said in many ways to bridge the gap between the tradition of Theosophy and the beginning of the New Age movement of the 60s and 70s;30 furthermore, the messages he claimed to receive have had a lasting impact on ‘alternative Egypts.’31 Cayce believed, as did many Theosophists, that ancient Egypt had preserved the primordial wisdom of the lost civilizations of Lemuria and Atlantis. He claimed to have experienced past lives in Ancient Egypt, around 10,500 BCE - long before Egyptian civilization even existed, according to orthodox Egyptology - and he prophesized that, beneath the Sphinx, the fabled ‘Hall of Thoth’ would be discovered. We will reencounter this dating and this prophecy as cornerstones of ‘alternative Egyptology’ and the AAD.32 While Cayce (who identified firmly as Christian) was very influential in the United States, Alice Bailey (1880–1949), who channeled messages from extraterrestrials, was the more prominent figurehead of second generation Theosophy and the ‘New Age’ in the United Kingdom and Europe.33
Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925), the father of Anthroposophy, also integrated Egypt into a diffusionist sequence of civilizations, beginning with Atlantis. Steiner approached the ancient texts with a strong literalist tendency, interpreting, e.g., the god Osiris as an extraterrestrial visitor, and his headdress as a spiritual sense organ.34 This way of reading the ancient sources as literally true and declaring the gods extraterrestrials marks an important step towards AA rhetoric. Literalist readings became more widespread in the New Age movement,35 and messages received through channeling increasingly stem from extraterrestrials. Already in Neo-Theosophy, represented among others by Charles Webster Leadbeater (1847–1934), extraterrestrial explanations had begun to displace spiritual ones - Sanskrit, for Blavatsky the language of the gods, was declared by Leadbeater to be an extraterrestrial language, and Nirvana a sort of space station.36 While Blavatsky and other early Theosophists still considered the intermediaries angelic beings who lived on an ‘etheric plane,’ later authors like A. E. Powell already show them steering physical spaceships toward Earth.37
The ‘60s and ‘70s saw a veritable explosion of counter-culture,38 leading to the pop-cultural entanglement of the AAD, analogous to the interdependency that informs the development of UFO religions.39 Since 1947, when an alien spacecraft is alleged to have crash landed in Roswell, New Mexico, UFOs have remained something of a national obsession in the United States. This phenomenon lent further immediacy to the increased Theosophical emphasis on extraterrestrials outlined above, rooted it deeply in popular culture, and it did much to further what Christopher Partridge has called “the sacralization of the extraterrestrial.”40 Following in the tradition of the Theosophists’ ‘channeling’ of messages from ascended masters, the teachers were now extraterrestrial beings - Theosophical mythology thus began to merge with the UFO phenomenon, a synthesis that Mikael Rothstein dubs “a case of mythological modernization or updating, and...an example of Theosophical adaptability.”41 Already in 1934, Guy Ballard, who founded the I AM Activity, had claimed to be in contact with Venusian masters.42 Like in the New Age movement, UFO religions feature prominently a millennialist expectation that a new age and a transformation of humanity are upon us.43 The extraterrestrials wish to help us through this crisis, often specifically connected to the threat posed by the atomic bomb.44 Indeed, UFO religions and the AAD alike share a desire to establish a unified worldview where science and religion are no longer separate - a ‘re-enchanted’ world.45 Important early UFO contactees such as George Adamski (1891–1965) described the Venusian masters of Blavatskian myth as extraterrestrial visitors who brought civilization to earth and were remembered as gods - preparing the central belief of the later AAD.46 Recalling the extreme literalism brought to Ancient Egyptian texts by Rudolf Steiner, we encounter across the spectrum of UFO religions “the physical interpretation of scriptures and ancient mythologies” that is the basis of AA theorists’ interpretations. Those, notes Partridge, are in turn “sacralised and replicated” in religious movements: “this physicalism is explicit in the writings of all the principle [sic] individuals and groups, from Adamski to von Däniken and from the Raëlian Church to Heaven’s Gate.”47 The AAD therefore serves as an integral origin myth in various religious movements.
A crucial transformation was achieved by the veritable ‘godfather’ of AA theories, Charles Fort (1874–1932), who, with a righteous gesture of unveiling uncomfortable secrets that had been guarded jealously by conspirational orthodox historians, offered as the answer to all kinds of perceived ancient anomalies the intervention of extraterrestrial visitors in Earth’s distant past.48 Instead of spiritual enlightenment, Fort’s project was that of an alternative historiography, an agenda that was popularized in France by Louis Pauwles and Jaques Bergier, whose major work, Le matin des magiciens (1960), “is little remembered now, but it has the distinction of launching a revival of interest in the occult in the 1960s and 1970s that would culminate in the ancient-astronaut craze of the 1970s.”49 Pauwles and Bergier were both influenced by H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937),50 whose most famous cosmic horror stories comprising the ‘Cthulhu Mythos’ are based around monstrous extraterrestrial beings that were worshiped by primitive humans. While Colavito’s The Cult of Alien Gods certainly overstates Lovecraft’s influence on the AAD as a whole, it is nevertheless significant to note that these stories impacted the authors of Le matin des magiciens. Much of its content, as well as the works of another representative of this largely forgotten French chapter of the history of Preastronautics, Robert Charroux, were later borrowed - mostly without credit51 - by Erich von Däniken when he wrote the ‘Bible’ of the AAD, Chariots of the Gods?
5. The Egyptian Front: From Chariots to Stargates
While sidelined in the Theosophical ancient wisdom narrative, Egypt rules supreme in the AAD. Chapter seven of Chariots deals with the pyramids of Giza as “Space Travel Centers,” and several of von Däniken’s claims here would become ever-repeated tropes: First, he asserts that “ancient Egypt appears suddenly and without transition with a fantastic ready-made civilization. Great cities and enormous temples, colossal statues...splendid streets...perfect drainage systems, luxurious tombs...pyramids of overwhelming size - these and many other wonderful things shot out of the ground, so to speak. Genuine miracles in a country that is suddenly capable of such achievements without recognizable prehistory!”52 As the prehistorian Herbert Kühn noted, “nothing is more false than this. The prehistory of Egypt is known particularly well, and a great number of books documents it. Däniken knows nothing of them.”53 The notion that Egyptian civilization simply “shot out of the ground” as von Däniken puts it, or rather, “fell from the sky,” is repeated to this day, and it is representative of the anti-evolutionist overtones of AA narratives. Further important claims are the implication that the barque of the sun god Ra is actually a spaceship,54 as well as the notion that the extraterrestrials had some part in the building of the pyramids55 - both points are of course present in Stargate.
Two further aspects are particularly significant for the AAD’s quasi-religious properties. First, von Däniken suggests that it may be humanity’s destiny to follow in the footsteps of the ‘gods,’ and that we too may one day be greeted as gods by the primitive inhabitants of other worlds (which happens repeatedly in Stargate and the television series Stargate SG-1).56 Second, von Däniken assures the reader that “(d)rawings and sagas actually indicated that the ‘gods’ promised to return from the stars.”57 This vague reference to “certain legends” that allegedly tell of the gods coming from the stars to earth and leaving again with a promise to return, is one of the most typical clichés of AA narratives. Which specific legend that is, and on which temple wall or papyrus one may read it, is never stated - which in the case of Egypt may be explained by the fact that no such myth exists.
Von Däniken’s influence hit America in the early 1970s, mainly to the credit of Rod Serling and Alan Landsburg, respectively the host and producer of the popular science-fiction series The Twilight Zone (who, like von Däniken’s forgotten French precursors, were also fans of H. P. Lovecraft whose stories influenced several episodes of their show). Inspired by Chariots, they cooperated on a television documentary titled In Search of Ancient Astronauts that aired on NBC in 1973, presenting von Däniken’s main claims with impressive images. The program was a huge hit, and in its wake, Chariots became a massive success in the US as well, spawning many sequels, imitators, and further television events.58
The second most influential figure in the AAD after von Däniken is Zecharia Sitchin (1920–2010). Between 1976 and 2007, Sitchin published the seven books comprising The Earth Chronicles, beginning with The Twelfth Planet (1976), where he explains that Sumerian culture, like von Däniken’s Egypt, mysteriously appeared out of nowhere. “A mysterious hand once more picked Man out of his decline and raised him to an even higher level of culture, knowledge, and civilization.”59 We learn that Sumerian civilization and the human race itself were created by extraterrestrials from Nibiru, another planet in our solar system. Those aliens, the Annunaki, were considered gods by the Sumerians, and Sitchin insists that the mythology of ancient Mesopotamia (of which all others are deemed derivative) preserves actual historical records of their activities. Sitchin’s most significant contribution to the Egyptian ‘front’ of the AAD is the second volume, The Stairway to Heaven (1980). Here we are told that, according to the usual unspecified “Egyptian traditions,” “in times immemorial ‘Gods of Heaven’ came to Earth from the Celestial Disk”60 - the latter is illustrated by the symbol of the winged sun disk (which is actually a form of the god Horus, not a dwelling- place for the gods). This misinterpretation of the ‘winged disk’ as either the planet or the spaceship of the aliens is repeated in Preastronautic literature to this day.61
Furthermore, Stitchin’s entire book is framed by a narrative concerning humanity’s eternal quest for immortality, a prevalent theme in Stargate as well: Ra takes a human body as a host “to cheat death,” and he possesses a machine in the shape of a sarcophagus in which he perpetually recharges his life forces and is potentially immortal - reminiscent of Sitchin’s assertion that “Ra...managed to live forever because he kept rejuvenating himself.”62 While Stargate’s Ra found and enslaved humanity and Sitchin’s aliens genetically engineered humans, both do so for the specific purpose of mining a precious metal: The Annunaki made Homo Sapiens as a slave race that could mine the Earth’s gold resources.63 In Stargate, Ra takes thousands of slaves through the Stargate to Abydos in order to mine the alien metal that is the basis of his technology. The entire part, the aliens as oppressors who enslave humans and abuse their status as ‘gods’ for evil, is rather atypical of the AAD, making it all the more likely that Emmerich was inspired by Sitchin.
Meanwhile, Stargate’s Daniel Jackson argues in his lecture at the beginning of the film that the only inscription inside the pyramid that gives the name of king Khufu - the main basis for Egyptologists’ ascribing the pyramid to this Pharaoh - is a forgery, at which point the room begins to empty, accompanied by laughter and jokes about Martians and Atlantis. Jackson’s argument here is that the discovery of the hieroglyphs made by Col. Richard Vyse, “was a fraud.” Sitchin was the first to make this accusation,64 and argued that, as Jackson concludes, “the Pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty did not build the great pyramids.” For Sitchin, the pyramids of Giza were built by the Annunaki as guiding beacons for their starships during landing on Earth, and all other Egyptian pyramids are just inferior imitations.65 In Stargate, Ra’s starship is seen landing on top of a pyramid as a kind of alien airport (cf. Sitchin: “the Celestial Boat of Ra was depicted as sitting atop a mountain”),66 and even the fact that Ra’s ship is itself pyramid- shaped seems lifted from Stairway, for Sitchin explains that an Egyptian funerary pyramidion, showing the deceased in adoration of the sun god (this is literally what the accompanying hieroglyphs say), actually represents the sun god who “landed on Earth” in his “Celestial Chamber.”67 According to Sitchin, just as the Pharaohs could only build inferior imitations of the great “mountains” built by the “gods,” so the journey of the deceased described in Egyptian funerary literature constitutes an emulation of actual journeys to the stars actually undertaken by the “gods” long ago. This section of his book is dominated by imagery of “doors,” “portals,” and “gates” - due to the fact that, for instance, the Book of the Dead is full of portals that the deceased needs to pass through.68 The Egyptian gods “open for the king a path and a gateway,”69 and Sitchin states that “the gods assume more technical aspects.”70 In light of all the other close correspondences, it seems very likely that this technologized ‘gate’-language inspired Emmerich to give a concrete form to one such “gate of the star gods.” Another of Emmerich’s inspirations may have been the work of Peter Krassa and Reinhard Habeck who popularized certain depictions in the temple of Dendera which supposedly (not really)71 show lightbulbs. After earlier treatments, it was in their Das Licht der Pharaonen (1992) where the “Dendera lightbulbs” are embedded in a larger Preastronautic narrative. Krassa and Habeck were in turn von Däniken’s source when he presented the same case.72 Since then, the Dendera lightbulbs have become recurring stars.73 Much emphasis is furthermore put in Das Licht der Pharaonen on the wars, weaponry, and starships used by the Egyptian “gods” - obviously inspired by Sitchin’s Mesopotamian scenarios - Krassa and Habeck even reprint (their fig. 17), and they are not the last to do so,74 Sitchin’s absurd illustration implying that Egyptian funerary pyramidia represent starships. So here we have pyramid- shaped starships, Egyptian gods as aliens with horrifying weapons, and as the formidable pilot of the “winged sun-disk” spaceship we meet the falcon-headed god Horus.75 And just two years later, Ra’s soldiers in Stargate wear falcon helmets and fly fighter jets with stylized wings. The name of Emmerich’s Egyptian planet, Abydos, may be derived from early 90s AA literature as well. In 1990, a group from the AA Society took pictures of some hieroglyphs in the funerary temple of Seti I. in Abydos that appear to depict technological contraptions, including what looks deceptively like a helicopter. First published in 1991, the (long debunked) Abydos “technoglyphs” have joined the ranks of Aegyptiaca technologica in the ever-repeated canon of Preastronautic literature.76 In 1976, the same year that saw Sitchin’s Twelfth Planet, Robert Temple claimed in The Sirius Mystery that the tribe of the Dogon in Mali possessed astronomical knowledge that they could only have inherited from the ancient Egyptians, who had it from extraterrestrials.77 This book in turn inspired Robert Bauval to construct a complex archaeoastronomical theory, published first in two articles in Discussions in Egyptology in 1989 and 1990, and most famously and comprehensively together with Adrian Gilbert in The Orion Mystery (1994), holding that the three great pyramids of Giza were all planned in advance and aligned with the three stars of the ‘belt’ of Orion, representing the god of the dead Osiris. While this alone was not outside the realm of what most Egyptologists would consider possible, the notion that the foundations for this entire monumental landscape were laid around 10,500 BCE certainly was (Cayce’s year again). The so-called ‘Orion Correlation Theory’ was popular in the 1990s, coinciding with exciting new explorations of the great pyramid of Khufu in 1993, as the UPUAUT 2 robot crawled along narrow shafts and ran into a sealed door, quickly prompting wild speculations and conspiracy theories about hidden chambers. It is this media hype around the pyramids of Giza - supposedly linked to the stars and thousands of years older than orthodox Egyptology would allow - which clearly forms the most immediate ‘occultural’ context for Stargate, released in the same year as Bauval’s and Gilbert’s Orion Mystery,78 although the simultaneous release means that Stargate could hardly have been inspired by the book, but rather by the previous popularization of its main theory. At any rate, it is surely no coincidence that it is specifically the constellation of Orion that leads Daniel Jackson to realize what the Stargate really is. Remembering Sitchin’s very technical ‘gate’ terminology that seems to have inspired (the) Stargate, it is noteworthy how Bauval and Gilbert opine with a similar tone “that the Grand Gallery looks like part of a machine, whose function is beyond us.”79 They refer to shafts in the King’s Chamber as “channels to the stars”80 and to the whole Giza complex as “the great star-clock of the epochs.”81 In 1995, one year after Stargate and The Orion Mystery, Graham Hancock made the case for a forgotten civilization that was the real originator of the pyramids and the Sphinx (Fingerprints of the Gods).82 Then, with Robert Bauval, he fused this lost civilization theory with the ‘Orion Correlation Theory’ in 1996’s Keeper of Genesis (in the US: Message of the Sphinx). Together, they aimed “to align the pyramids with Orion circa 10,500 BCE, which they claim was the date of the lost civilization’s entry into Egypt,” during the astrological Age of Leo, represented by the Sphinx. Their calculations were also meant to demonstrate the existence of a secret chamber beneath the Sphinx - thus proving Cayce’s prophecy.83 Bauval and Hancock adopt Sitchin’s conspiracy theory discrediting the inscriptions with Khufu’s name,84 and their terminology is once more striking: The shaft containing the newly discovered door is literally called a “Stargate,”85 and the pyramid is interpreted as a kind of salvific machine to which New Age millenarian hopes are attached “that the sages of Heliopolis, working at the dawn of history, could somehow have created an archetypal ‘device’, a device designed to trigger off messianic events across the ‘Ages’ – the Pyramid Age...and perhaps even a ‘New Age’ in Aquarius?”86 While these theories did not involve extraterrestrials explicitly, their 1996 articles in the London Daily Mail postulated that the ancient cultures of Earth were actually influenced by an advanced civilization from Mars, due to a renewed interest in NASA images of the red planet, where believers wanted to see the infamous ‘Mars face’ as well as various pyramids. Bauval and Hancock teamed up again, assisted by John Grigsby, to write The Mars Mystery in 1998, where they announced more carefully that aliens may or may not be the originators of the “Martian monuments.”87
A particularly interesting entry is Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince’s The Stargate Conspiracy (1999), because it is unusually critical and self-aware. The authors take several ‘celebrities,’ such as Temple, Bauval, and Hancock to court, expose flaws in their theories and conclude that there is an agenda to construct a new alternative orthodoxy about the pyramids, the Sphinx, the Mars face, and to arrive at all costs at the year 10,500 BCE, prophesized by Cayce. As far as this goes, most orthodox historians and Egyptologists would probably applaud the authors for having seen the light. However, this project of debunking is only the beginning. Picknett and Prince identify as the source of this artificial mythology a shadowy group preparing for a sinister new world order ushered in by the return of the Egyptian gods (or possibly, in the vein of Stargate, evil imposters). These gods are specifically “the Nine,” i.e., the Great Ennead of Heliopolis, the most significant genealogy in the Egyptian pantheon who have been the alleged source of messages received through ‘channeling’ since 1952.88 Picknett and Prince chronicle the activities of various organizations at Giza and relate rumors “that the US government is searching for a physical artefact or ancient device, perhaps even of extraterrestrial origin,” prompting the authors to speculate that “(i)f the Americans are involved with ancient stargate technology, then it would be the most top secret project in history, and the number of people ‘needing to know’ about it would be minimal.”89
The Stargate Simulacrum: Ancient Egypt, ...
Heidelberger OJS-Journals
Wow! Stuff product code IQ-1047
PL15196
234 pieces, used and complete
4 x 6 in
The third (and smallest) jigsaw taken to Rhodes for a little light relief, it comes complete with tweezers, magnifying glass and bonus brainteaser puzzles. This one was a little more difficult than the Cheatwell and required more concentration.
Total piece count for 2018: 135,411
Puzzle number 182