Page 372 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

enormous figure of 36,525 years for the entire duration of the civilization
of Egypt from the time of the gods down to the end of the thirtieth (and
last) dynasty of mortal kings. This figure of course, incorporates the
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365.25 days of the Sothic year (the interval between two consecutive
heliacal risings of Sirius, as described in the last chapter). More likely by
design than by accident, it also represents 25 cycles of 1460 Sothic years,
and 25 cycles of 1461 calendar years (since the ancient Egyptian civil
calendar was constructed around a ‘vague year’ of 365 days exactly).
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What, if anything, does all this mean? It’s hard to be sure. Out of the
welter of numbers and interpretations, however, there is one aspect of
Manetho’s original message that comes through loud and clear.
Irrespective of everything we have been taught about the orderly progress
of history, what he seems to be telling us is that civilized beings (either
gods or men) were present in Egypt for an immensely long period before
the advent of the First Dynasty around 3100 BC.

Diodorus Siculus and Herodotus

In this assertion, Manetho finds much support among classical writers.
In the first century BC, for example, the Greek historian Diodorus
Siculus visited Egypt. He is rightly described by C.H. Oldfather, his most
recent translator, as ‘an uncritical compiler who used good sources and
reproduced them faithfully’. In plain English, what this means is that
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Diodorus did not try to impose his prejudices and preconceptions on the
material he collected. He is therefore particularly valuable to us because
his informants included Egyptian priests whom he questioned about the
mysterious past of their country. This is what they told him:

‘At first gods and heroes ruled Egypt for a little less than 18,000 years, the last of
the gods to rule being Horus, the son of Isis ... Mortals have been kings of their
country, they say, for a little less than 5000 years ...
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Let us review these figures ‘uncritically’ and see what they add up to.
Diodorus was writing in the first century BC. If we journey back from there
for the 5000 years during which the ‘mortal kings’ supposedly ruled, we
get to around 5100 BC. If we go even further back to the beginning of the
age of ‘gods and heroes’, we find that we have arrived at 23,100 BC, when
the world was still firmly in the grip of the last Ice Age.

21 Ibid., p. 231; see also The Splendour that was Egypt, p. 12.
22 Like the Maya, (see Part III), the Ancient Egyptians made use for administrative
purposes of a civil calendar year (or vague year) of 365 days exactly. See Skywatchers of
Ancient Mexico, p. 151, for further details on the Maya vague year. The Ancient Egyptian
civil calendar year was geared to the Sothic year so that both would coincide on the
same day/month position once every 1461 calendar years.
Diodorus Siculus, translated by C.H. Oldfather, Harvard University Press, 1989, jacket
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text.
24 Ibid., volume I, p. 157.

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