Page 358 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

up and alight.’
11
Other passages also seemed to me worthy of more thorough
investigation than they have received from scholars. Here are a few
examples:

12
O my father, great King, the aperture of the sky-window is opened for you.
‘The door of the sky at the horizon opens to you, the gods are glad at meeting you
... May you sit on this iron throne of yours, as the Great One who is in Heliopolis.
13
O King, may you ascend ... The sky reels at you, the earth quakes at you, the
Imperishable Stars are afraid of you. I have come to you, O you whose seats are
hidden, that I may embrace you in the sky ...
14
The earth speaks, the gate of the earth god is open, the doors of Geb are opened
for you ... May you remove yourself to the sky upon your iron throne.
15
O my father the King, such is your going when you have gone as a god, your
travelling as a celestial being ... you stand in the Conclaves of the horizon ... and
sit on this throne of iron at which the gods marvel ...
16
The constant references to iron, though easy to overlook, were puzzling.
Iron, I knew, had been a rare metal in Ancient Egypt, particularly in the
Pyramid Age when it had supposedly only been available in meteoritic
form. Yet here, in the Pyramid Texts, there seemed to be an
17
embarrassment of iron riches: iron plates in the sky, iron thrones, and
elsewhere an iron sceptre (Utterance 665C) and even iron bones for the
King (Utterances 325, 684 and 723).
18
In the Ancient Egyptian language the name for iron had been bja, a
word that meant literally ‘metal of heaven’ or ‘divine metal’. The
19
knowledge of iron was thus regarded as yet another gift from the gods ...

Repositories of a lost science?

What other fingerprints might these gods have left behind in the Pyramid
Texts?
20

11 Ibid., p. 284.
12 Ibid., p. 249, Utt. 604.
Ibid., pp. 253-4, Utt. 610.
13
14 Ibid., p. 280, Utt. 667.
15 Ibid., p. 170, Utt. 483.
16 Ibid., p. 287, Utt. 673.
17 B. Scheel, Egyptian Metalworking and Tools, Shire Egyptology, Aylesbury, 1989; G. A.
Wainwright, ‘Iron in Egypt’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, vol. 18, 1931.
18 The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, pp. 276, 105, 294, 311.
19 Egyptian Metalworking and Tools, p. 17; ‘Iron in Egypt’, p. 6ff.
20 Among the many mysterious aspects of the Pyramid Texts it is perhaps inevitable that
a fully qualified Opener of the Ways should put in an appearance. ‘The doors of the sky
are opened to you, the starry sky is thrown open for you, the jackal of upper Egypt
comes down to you as Anubis at your side.’ (The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, pp.

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