Page 439 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

equinoxes. As the reader will recall from Part V, however, it was the
vernal equinox that was considered by ancient man to be the marker of
the astronomical age. In the words of Santillana and von Dechend:

The constellation that rose in the east, just before the sun, marked the ‘place’
where the sun rested ... It was known as the sun’s ‘carrier’ and the vernal equinox
was recognised as the fiducial point of the ‘system’ determining the first degree of
the sun’s yearly cycle ...’
15
Why should an equinoctial marker have been made in the shape of a giant
lion?
In our own lifetimes, the epoch of AD 2000, a more suitable shape for
such a marker—should anyone wish to build one—would be a
representation of a fish. This is because the sun on the vernal equinox
rises against the stellar background of Pisces, as it has done for
approximately the last 2000 years. The astronomical Age of Pisces began
around the time of Christ. Readers must judge for themselves whether it
16
is a coincidence that the principal symbol used for Christ by the very
early Christians was not the cross but the fish.
17
During the preceding age, which broadly-speaking encompassed the
first and second millennia BC, it was the constellation of Aries—the Ram—
which had the honour of carrying the sun on the vernal equinox. Again,
readers must judge whether it is a coincidence that the religious
iconography of that epoch was predominantly ram-oriented. Is it a
18
coincidence, for example, that Yahweh, God of Old Testament Israel,
provided a ram as a substitute for Abraham’s offered sacrifice of his son
Isaac? (Abraham and Isaac are assumed by biblical scholars and
19
archaeologists to have lived during the early second millennium BC ). Is it
20
likewise coincidental that rams, in one context or another, are referred to
in almost every book of the Old Testament (entirely composed during the
Age of Aries) but in not a single book of the New Testament? And is it
21
an accident that the advent of the Age of Aries, shortly before the
beginning of the second millennium BC, was accompanied in Ancient
Egypt by an upsurge in the worship of the god Amon whose symbol was a
ram with curled horns? Work on the principal sanctuary of Amon—the
22
Temple of Karnak at Luxor in upper Egypt—was begun at around 2000
BC and, as those who have visited that temple will recall, its principal
23
icons are rams, long rows of which guard its entrances.
The immediate predecessor to the Age of Aries was the Age of Taurus—

15 Hamlet’s Mill, p. 59.
16 Ibid.; Sacred Science, p. 179.
17 Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 514.
18 Sacred Science, p. 177.
19 Genesis: 22:13
20 Jerusalem Bible, chronological table, p. 343.
King James Bible, Franklin, Computerized First Edition.
21
22 The Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt, p. 20.
23 Ibid., p. 133.

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