Page 141 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

What is remarkable is that there are no traces of evolution from simple
to sophisticated, and the same is true of mathematics, medicine,
astronomy and architecture and of Egypt’s amazingly rich and convoluted
religio-mythological system (even the central content of such refined
works as the Book of the Dead existed right at the start of the dynastic
period).
7
The majority of Egyptologists will not consider the implications of
Egypt’s early sophistication. These implications are startling, according to
a number of more daring thinkers. John Anthony West, an expert on the
early dynastic period, asks:
How does a complex civilization spring full-blown into being? Look at a 1905
automobile and compare it to a modern one. There is no mistaking the process of
‘development’. But in Egypt there are no parallels. Everything is right there at the
start.
The answer to the mystery is of course obvious but, because it is repellent to the
prevailing cast of modern thinking, it is seldom considered. Egyptian civilization
was not a ‘development’, it was a legacy.
8
West has been a thorn in the flesh of the Egyptological establishment
for many years. But other more mainstream figures have also confessed
puzzlement at the suddenness with which Egyptian civilization appeared.
Walter Emery, late Edwards Professor of Egyptology at the University of
London, summed up the problem:

At a period approximately 3400 years before Christ, a great change took place in
Egypt, and the country passed rapidly from a state of neolithic culture with a
complex tribal character to one of well-organized monarchy ...
At the same time the art of writing appears, monumental architecture and the arts
and crafts develop to an astonishing degree, and all the evidence points to the
existence of a luxurious civilization. All this was achieved within a comparatively
short period of time, for there appears to be little or no background to these
fundamental developments in writing and architecture.
9
One explanation could simply be that Egypt received its sudden and
decisive cultural boost from some other known civilization of the ancient
world. Sumer, on the Lower Euphrates in Mesopotamia, is the most likely
contender. Despite many basic differences, a variety of shared building
techniques and architectural styles does suggest a link between the two
10
regions. But none of these similarities is strong enough to infer that the
connection could have been in any way causal, with one society directly
influencing the other. On the contrary, as Professor Emery writes:

The impression we get is of an indirect connection, and perhaps the existence of a
third party, whose influence spread to both the Euphrates and the Nile ... Modern

7 Ibid., p. 38. See also The Egyptian Book of the Dead (trans. E.A. Wallis Budge), British
Museum, 1895, Introduction, pp. xii, xiii.
John Anthony West, Serpent in the Sky, Harper and Row, New York, 1979, p. 13.
8
9 Archaic Egypt, p. 38.
10 Ibid., pp. 175-91.

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