Page 374 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

Libra in the time of Herodotus (and again at 13,000 and at 39,000 years
earlier), and as ‘twice setting where he now rises’, i.e. in Aries in the time
of Herodotus (and again at 13,000 and 39,000 years earlier). If
27
Schwaller’s interpretation is correct—and there is every reason to
suppose it is—it suggests that the Greek historian’s priestly informants
must have had access to accurate records of the precessional motion of
the sun going back at least 39,000 years before their own era.

The Turin Papyrus and the Palermo Stone

The figure of 39,000 years accords surprisingly closely with the
testimony of the Turin Papyrus (one of the two surviving Ancient Egyptian
king lists that extends back into prehistoric times before the First
Dynasty).
Originally in the collection of the king of Sardinia, the brittle and
crumbling 3000-year-old papyrus was sent in a box, without packing, to
its present home in the Museum of Turin. As any schoolchild could have
predicted, it arrived broken into countless fragments. Scholars were
obliged to work for years to piece together and make sense of what
remained, and they did a superb job. Nevertheless, more than half the
28
contents of this precious record proved impossible to reconstruct.
29
What might we have learned about the First Time if the Turin Papyrus
had remained intact?
The surviving fragments are tantalizing. In one register, for example,
we read the names often Neteru with each name inscribed in a cartouche
(oblong enclosure) in much the same style adopted in later periods for
the historical kings of Egypt. The number of years that each Neter was
believed to have reigned was also given, but most of these numbers are
missing from the damaged document.
30
In another column there appears a list of the mortal kings who ruled in
upper and lower Egypt after the gods but prior to the supposed
unification of the kingdom under Menes, the first pharaoh of the First
Dynasty, in 3100 BC. From the surviving fragments it is possible to

27 As the following table makes clear:
IN OPPOSITION
VERNAL EQUINOX SUNRISE (DUE WEST)
AT SUNRISE
Fifth century BC (time of Herodotus) Aries Libra
Approx 13,000 years before Herodotus Libra Aries
Approx 26,000 years before Herodotus Aries Libra
Approx 39,000 years before Herodotus Libra Aries

28 See, for example, Sir A.H. Gardner, The Royal Cannon of Turin, Griffith Institute,
Oxford.
29 Archaic Egypt, p. 4.
30 For further details, Sacred Science, p. 86.

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