Page 148 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

and believed by archaeologists to date back to pre-dynastic times. The
20
high priest and four assistants participated, wielding the peshenkhef, a
ceremonial cutting instrument. This was used ‘to open the mouth’ of the
deceased God-King, an action thought necessary to ensure his
resurrection in the heavens. Surviving reliefs and vignettes showing this
ceremony leave no doubt that the mummified corpse was struck a hard
physical blow with the peshenkhef. In addition, evidence has recently
21
emerged which indicates that one of the chambers within the Great
Pyramid at Giza may have served as the location for the ceremony.
22
All this finds a strange, distorted twin in Mexico. We have seen the
prevalence of human sacrifice there in pre-conquest times. Is it
coincidental that the sacrificial venue was a pyramid, that the ceremony
was conducted by a high priest and four assistants, that a cutting
instrument, the sacrificial knife, was used to strike a hard physical blow
to the body of the victim, and that the victim’s soul was believed to
ascend directly to the heavens, sidestepping the perils of the
underworld?
23
As such ‘coincidences’ continue to multiply, it is reasonable to wonder
whether there may not be some underlying connection. This is certainly
the case when we learn that the general term for ‘sacrifice’ throughout
Ancient Central America was p’achi, meaning ‘to open the mouth’.
24
Could it be, therefore, that what confronts us here, in widely separated
geographical areas, and at different periods of history, is not just a series
of startling coincidences but some faint and garbled common memory
originating in the most distant antiquity? It doesn’t seem that the
Egyptian ceremony of the opening of the mouth influenced directly the
Mexican ceremony of the same name (or vice versa, for that matter). The
fundamental differences between the two cases rule that out. What does
seem possible, however, is that their similarities may be the remnants of
a shared legacy received from a common ancestor. The peoples of
Central America did one thing with that legacy and the Egyptians another,
but some common symbolism and nomenclature was retained by both.
This is not the place to expand on the sense of an ancient and elusive
connectedness that emerges from the Egyptian and Central American
evidence. Before moving on, however, it is worth noting that a similar
‘connectedness’ links the belief systems of pre-Colombian Mexico with
those of Sumer in Mesopotamia. Again the evidence is more suggestive of
an ancient common ancestor than of any direct influence.

20 See, for example, R. T. Rundle-Clark, Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt, Thames &
Hudson, London, 1991, p. 29.
21 Henri Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods, University of Chicago Press, 1978, p. 134. The
Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, e. g. Utts. 20, 21.
22 Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert, The Orion Mystery, Wm. Heinemann, London, 1994,
pp. 208-10, 270.
23 The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya, pp. 40, 177.
24 Maya History and Religion, p. 175.

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