Page 413 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

Then, thousands of years later, in the same place, pharaonic civilization
popped up already fully formed, apparently out of nowhere, with all its
knowledge complete. That much we can be certain of. But whether or not
the knowledge that Ancient Egypt possessed was the same as the
knowledge that produced the Sphinx I really can’t say.’
‘How about this,’ I speculated: ‘The civilization that produced the
Sphinx wasn’t based here, at least not originally ... It wasn’t in Egypt. It
put the Sphinx here as some sort of a marker or outpost ...’
‘Perfectly possible. Could be that the Sphinx for that civilization was
like, let’s say, what Abu Simbel [in Nubia] was for dynastic Egypt.’
‘Then that civilization came to an end, was extinguished by some sort
of massive catastrophe, and that’s when the legacy of high knowledge
was handed on ... Because they had the Sphinx here they knew about
Egypt, they knew this place, they knew this country, they had a
connection here. Maybe people survived the ending of that civilization.
Maybe they came here. ... Does that work for you?’
‘Well, it’s a possibility. Again, going back into the mythologies and
legends of the world, many of them tell of such a catastrophe and of the
few people—the Noah story that’s prevalent through endless
civilizations—who somehow or other retained and passed on knowledge.
The big problem with all this, from my point of view, is the transmission
process: how exactly the knowledge does get handed on during the
thousands and thousands of years between the construction of the
Sphinx and the flowering of dynastic Egypt. Theoretically you’re sort of
stuck—aren’t you?—with this vast period in which the knowledge has to
be transmitted. This is not easy to slough off. On the other hand we do
know that those legends we’re referring to were passed on word for word
over countless generations. And in fact oral transmission is a much surer
means of transmission than written transmission, because the language
may change but as long as whoever’s telling the story tells it true in
whatever the language of the time is ... it surfaces some 5000 years later
in its original form. So maybe there are ways—in secret societies and
religious cults, or through mythology, for example—that the knowledge
could have been preserved and passed on before flowering again. The
point, I think, with problems as complex and important as these, is
simply not to dismiss any possibilities, no matter how outrageous they
may at first seem, without investigating them very, very thoroughly ...’

Second opinion

John West was in Luxor, leading a study group on Egypt’s sacred sites.
Early the next day he and his students went south to Aswan and Abu
Simbel. Santha and I journeyed north again, back towards Giza and the
mysteries of the Sphinx and the pyramids. We were to meet there with
the archaeo-astronomer Robert Bauval. As we shall see, his stellar

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