Page 373 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

Long before Diodorus, Egypt was visited by another and more
illustrious Greek historian: the great Herodotus, who lived in the fifth
century BC. He too, it seems, consorted with priests and he too managed
to tune in to traditions that spoke of the presence of a high civilization in
the Nile Valley at some unspecified date in remote antiquity. Herodotus
outlines these traditions of an immense prehistoric period of Egyptian
civilization in Book II of his History. In the same document he also hands
on to us, without comment, a peculiar nugget of information which had
originated with the priests of Heliopolis:

During this time, they said, there were four occasions when the sun rose out of his
wonted place—twice rising where he now sets, and twice setting where he now
rises.
25
What is this all about?
According to the French mathematician Schwaller de Lubicz, what
Herodotus is transmitting to us (perhaps unwittingly) is a veiled and
garbled reference to a period of time—that is, to the time that it takes for
sunrise on the vernal equinox to precess against the stellar background
through one and a half complete cycles of the zodiac.
26
As we have seen, the equinoctial sun spends roughly 2160 years in
each of the twelve zodiacal constellations. A full cycle of precession of
the equinoxes therefore takes almost 26,000 years to complete (12 x
2160 years). It follows that one and a half cycles takes nearly 39,000
years (18 x 2160 years).
In the time of Herodotus the sun on the vernal equinox rose due east at
dawn against the stellar background of Aries—at which moment the
constellation of Libra was ‘in opposition’, lying due west where the sun
would set twelve hours later. If we wind the clock of precession back half
a cycle, however—six houses of the zodiac or approximately 13,000
years—we find that the reverse configuration prevails: the vernal sun now
rises due east in Libra while Aries lies due west in opposition. A further
13,000 years back, the situation reverses itself once more, with the vernal
sun rising again in Aries and with Libra in opposition.
This takes us to 26,000 years before Herodotus.
If we then step back another 13,000 years, another half precessional
cycle, to 39,000 years before Herodotus, the vernal sunrise returns to
Libra, and Aries is again in opposition.
The point is this: with 39,000 years we have an expanse of time during
which the sun can be described as ‘twice rising where he now sets’, i.e. in

25 The History, pp. 193-4. In the first century AD a similar tradition was recorded by the
Roman scholar Pomponious Mela: ‘The Egyptians pride themselves on being the most
ancient people in the world. In their authentic annals one may read that since they have
been in existence, the course of the stars has changed direction four times, and that the
sun has set twice in the part of the sky where it rises today.’ (Pomponious Mela, De Situ
Orbis.)
26 Sacred Science, p. 87

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