Page 354 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

the pyramid, stopping for a moment before disappearing into a hole. The
bemused Arab decided to follow his lead. After slipping through the narrow hole,
he found himself crawling into the dark bowels of the pyramid. Soon he emerged
into a chamber and, lifting his light, saw that the walls were covered from top to
bottom with hieroglyphic inscriptions. These were carved with exquisite
craftsmanship into the solid limestone and painted over with turquoise and
gold.’
19
Today the hieroglyph-lined chamber beneath the ruined pyramid of Unas
is still reached through the north face by the long descending passage
the French archaeological team excavated soon after the foreman’s
astonishing discovery. The chamber consists of two rectangular rooms
separated by a partition wall, into which is let a low doorway. Both rooms
are covered by a gabled ceiling painted with myriads of stars. Emerging
stooped from the cramped passage, Santha and I entered the first of the
two rooms and passed through the connecting doorway into the second.
This was the tomb chamber proper, with the massive black granite
sarcophagus of Unas at its western end and the strange utterances of the
Pyramid Texts proclaiming themselves from every wall.
Speaking to us directly (rather than through riddles and mathematical
legerdemain like the unadorned walls of the Great Pyramid), what were
the hieroglyphs saying? I knew that the answer depended to some extent
on which translation you were using, largely because the language of the
Pyramid Texts contained so many archaic forms and so many unfamiliar
mythological allusions that scholars were obliged to fill in the gaps in
their knowledge with guesswork. Nevertheless it was generally agreed
20
that the late R. O. Faulkner, a professor of the Ancient Egyptian Language
at University College London, had produced the most authoritative
version.
21
Faulkner, whose translation I had studied line by line, described the
Texts as constituting ‘the oldest corpus of Egyptian religious and
funerary literature now extant’ and added, ‘they are the least corrupt of
all such collections and are of fundamental importance to the student of
Egyptian religion ...’ The reason why the Texts were so important (as
22
many scholars agreed), was that they were the last completely open
channel connecting the relatively short period of the past that humanity
remembers to the far longer period that has been forgotten: ‘They
vaguely disclose to us a vanished world of thought and speech, the last of
the unnumbered aeons through which prehistoric man has passed, till
finally he ... enters the historic age.’
23

19 The Orion Mystery, pp. 57-8.
20 Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt, pp. 166; The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, p. V:
‘The Pyramid Texts ... include very ancient texts ... There are many mythological and
other allusions of which the purport is obscure to the translator of today ...’
The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts.
21
22 Ibid., p. v.
23 James Henry Breasted, The Dawn of Conscience, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York,

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