Page 142 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

scholars have tended to ignore the possibility of immigration to both regions from
some hypothetical and as yet undiscovered area. [However] a third party whose
cultural achievements were passed on independently to Egypt and Mesopotamia
would best explain the common features and fundamental differences between
the two civilizations.
11
Among other things, this theory sheds light on the mysterious fact that
the Egyptians and Sumerian people of Mesopotamia appear to have
worshipped virtually identical lunar deities who were among the oldest in
their respective pantheons (Thoth in the case of the Egyptians, Sin in the
case of the Sumerians). According to the eminent Egyptologist Sir E.A.
12
Wallis Budge, ‘The similarity between the two gods is too close to be
accidental ... It would be wrong to say that the Egyptians borrowed from
the Sumerians or the Sumerians from the Egyptians, but it may be
submitted that the literati of both peoples borrowed their theological
systems from some common but exceedingly ancient source.’
13
The question, therefore, is this: what was that ‘common but
exceedingly ancient source’, that ‘hypothetical and as yet undiscovered
area’, that advanced ‘third party’ to which both Budge and Emery refer?
And if it left a legacy of high culture in Egypt and in Mesopotamia, why
shouldn’t it have done so in Central America?
It’s not good enough to argue that civilization ‘took off’ much later in
Mexico than it had in the Middle East. It is possible that the initial
impulse could have been felt at the same time in both places but that the
subsequent outcome could have been completely different.
On this scenario, the civilizers would have succeeded brilliantly in Egypt
and in Sumer, creating lasting and remarkable cultures there. In Mexico,
on the other hand (as also seems to have been the case in Peru), they
suffered some serious setback—perhaps getting off to a good start, when
the gigantic stone heads and reliefs of bearded men were made, but
going rapidly downhill. The light of civilization would never quite have
been lost, but perhaps things didn’t pick up again until around 1500 BC,
the so-called ‘Olmec horizon’. By then the great sculptures would have
been hoary with age, ancient relics of immense spiritual power, their all-
but-forgotten origins wrapped in myths of giants and bearded civilizers.
If so, we may be gazing at faces from a much more remote past than
we imagine when we stare into the almond eyes of one of the negro
heads or into the angular, chiselled Caucasian features of ‘Uncle Sam’. It
is by no means impossible that these great works preserve the images of
peoples from a vanished civilization which embraced several different
ethnic groups.
That, in a nutshell, is the ‘hypothetical third party’ theory as applied to

11 Ibid., pp. 31, 177.
Ibid., p. 126.
12
13 E. A. Wallis Budge, From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt, Oxford University Press, 1934,
p. 155.

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