Page 379 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

contents, remained enclosed in a fortress on the ‘eastern frontier’ of
Egypt until a great many years after Ra’s ascent to heaven. When Geb
came to power he ordered that it should be brought to him and unsealed
in his presence. In the instant that the box was opened a bolt of fire
(described as the ‘breath of the divine serpent’) ushered from it, struck
dead all Geb’s companions and gravely burned the god-king himself.
12
It is tempting to wonder whether what we are confronted by here might
not be a garbled account of a malfunctioning man-made device: a
confused, awe-stricken recollection of a monstrous instrument devised by
the scientists of a lost civilization. Weight is added to such extreme
speculations when we remember that this is by no means the only golden
box in the ancient world that functioned like a deadly and unpredictable
machine. It has a number of quite unmissable similarities to the Hebrews’
enigmatic Ark of the Covenant (which also struck innocent people dead
with bolts of fiery energy, which also was ‘overlaid round about with
gold’, and which was said to have contained not only the two tablets of
the Ten Commandments but ‘the golden pot that had manna, and
Aaron’s rod.’)
13
A proper look at the implications of all these weird and wonderful
boxes (and of other ‘technological’ artefacts referred to in ancient
traditions) is beyond the scope of this book. For our purposes here it is
sufficient to note that a peculiar atmosphere of dangerous and quasi-
technological wizardry seems to surround many of the gods of the
Heliopolitan Ennead.
Isis, for example (wife and sister of Osiris and mother of Horus) carries
a strong whiff of the science lab. According to the Chester Beatty Papyrus
in the British Museum she was ‘a clever woman ... more intelligent than
countless gods ... She was ignorant of nothing in heaven and earth.’
14
Renowned for her skilful use of witchcraft and magic, Isis was particularly
remembered by the Ancient Egyptians as ‘strong of tongue’, that is being
in command of words of power ‘which she knew with correct
pronunciation, and halted not in her speech, and was perfect both in
giving the command and in saying the word’. In short, she was believed,
15
by means of her voice alone, to be capable of bending reality and
overriding the laws of physics.
These same powers, though perhaps in greater degree, were attributed
to the wisdom god Thoth who although not a member of the Heliopolitan
Ennead is recognized in the Turin Papyrus and other ancient records as
the sixth (or sometimes as the seventh) divine pharaoh of Egypt.
16

12 Ibid.
13 Hebrews 9:4. For details of the Ark’s baleful powers see Graham Hancock, The Sign
and the Seal, Mandarin, London, 1993, Chapter 12, p. 273ff.
14 Cited in Egyptian Myths, p. 44.
Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, Egyptian Magic, Kegan Paul, Trench, London, 1901, p. 5; The
15
Gods of the Egyptians, volume II, p. 214.
16 New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology, p. 27. If Set’s usurpation is included as a

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