Page 378 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

is well known, the latitude and longitude lines which intersect just beside
the Great Pyramid (30° north and 31° east) cross more dry land than any
others. Curiously, too, at the end of the last Ice Age, when millions of
7
square miles of glaciation were melting in northern Europe, when rising
sea levels were flooding coastal areas all around the globe, and when the
huge volume of extra moisture released into the atmosphere through the
evaporation of the ice fields was being dumped as rain, Egypt benefited
for several thousands of years from an exceptionally humid and fertile
climate. It is not difficult to see how such a climate might indeed have
8
been remembered as ‘well tempered for the first generation of all living
things’.
The question therefore has to be asked: whose information about the
past are we receiving from Diodorus, and is the apparently accurate
description of Egypt’s lush climate at the end of the last Ice Age a
coincidence, or is an extremely ancient tradition being transmitted to us
here—a memory, perhaps, of the First Time?

Breath of the divine serpent

Ra was believed to have been the first king of the First Time and ancient
myths say that as long as he remained young and vigorous he reigned
peacefully. The passing years took their toll on him, however, and he is
depicted at the end of his rule as an old, wrinkled, stumbling man with a
trembling mouth from which saliva ceaselessly dribbles.
9
Shu followed Ra as king on earth, but his reign was troubled by plots
and conflicts. Although he vanquished his enemies he was in the end so
ravaged by disease that even his most faithful followers revolted against
him: ‘Weary of reigning, Shu abdicated in favour of his son Geb and took
refuge in the skies after a terrifying tempest which lasted nine days ...’
10
Geb, the third divine pharaoh, duly succeeded Shu to the throne. His
reign was also troubled and some of the myths describing what took
place reflect the odd idiom of the Pyramid Texts in which a non-technical
vocabulary seems to wrestle with complex technical and scientific
imagery. For example, one particularly striking tradition speaks of a
‘golden box’ in which Ra had deposited a number of objects—described,
respectively, as his ‘rod’ (or cane), a lock of his hair, and his uraeus (a
rearing cobra with its hood extended, fashioned out of gold, which was
worn on the royal head-dress).
11
A powerful and dangerous talisman, this box, together with its bizarre

7 Mystic Places, Time-Life Books, 1987, p. 62.
8 Early Hydraulic Civilization in Egypt, p. 13; Egypt before the Pharaohs, pp. 27, 261.
New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology, p. 11.
9
10 Ibid., p. 13.
11 Ibid., pp. 14-15.

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