Page 253 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

Computing the Great Return

The precessional numbers highlighted by Sellers in the Osiris myth are
360, 72, 30 and 12. Most of them are found in a section of the myth
which provides us with biographical details of the various characters.
These have been conveniently summarized by E. A. Wallis Budge, formerly
keeper of Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum:
The goddess Nut, wife of the sun god Ra, was beloved by the god Geb. When Ra
discovered the intrigue he cursed his wife and declared that she should not be
delivered of a child in any month of any year. Then the god Thoth, who also loved
Nut, played at tables with the moon and won from her five whole days. These he
joined to the 360 days of which the year then consisted [emphasis added]. On the
first of these five days Osiris was brought forth; and at the moment of his birth a
voice was heard to proclaim that the lord of creation was born.
5
Elsewhere the myth informs us that the 300-day year consists of ‘12
months of 30 days each’. And in general, as Sellers observes, ‘phrases
6
are used which prompt simple mental calculations and an attention to
numbers’.
7
Thus far we have been provided with three of Sellers’s precessional
numbers: 360, 12 and 30. The fourth number, which occurs later in the
text, is by far the most important. As we saw in Chapter Nine, the evil
deity known as Set led a group of conspirators in a plot to kill Osiris. The
number of these conspirators was 72.
With this last number in hand, suggests Sellers, we are now in a
position to boot-up and set running an ancient computer programme:
12 = the number of constellations in the zodiac;

30 = the number of degrees allocated along the ecliptic to each
zodiacal constellation;

72 = the number of years required for the equinoctial sun to complete a
precessional shift of one degree along the ecliptic;

360 = the total number of degrees in the ecliptic;

72 x 30 = 2160 (the number of years required for the sun to complete a
passage of 30 degrees along the ecliptic, i.e., to pass entirely through
any one of the 12 zodiacal constellations);

2160 x 12 (or 360 x 72) = 25,920 (the number of years in one complete
precessional cycle or ‘Great Year’, and thus the total number of years
required to bring about the ‘Great Return’).

The Egyptian Book of the Dead, Introduction, page XLIX.
5
6 Cited in The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt, p. 204.
7 Ibid.

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