Page 440 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

the Bull—which spanned the period between 4380 and 2200 BC. It was
24
during this precessional epoch, when the sun on the vernal equinox rose
in the constellation of Taurus, that the Bull-cult of Minoan Crete
flourished. And during this epoch, too, the civilization of dynastic Egypt
25
burst upon the historical scene, fully formed, apparently without
antecedents. Readers must judge whether it is a coincidence that
Egyptians at the very beginning of the dynastic period were already
venerating the Apis and Mnevis Bulls—the former being considered a
theophany of the god Osiris and the latter, the sacred animal of
Heliopolis, a theophany of the god Ra.
26
Why should an equinoctial marker have been made in the form of a
lion?
I looked down the slope of the Giza plateau towards the great leonine
body of the Sphinx.
Khafre, the Fourth Dynasty pharaoh believed by Egyptologists to have
carved the monument out of bedrock around 2500 BC, had been a
monarch of the Age of Taurus. For almost 1800 years before his reign,
and more than 300 years after it, the sun on the vernal equinox rose
unfailingly in the constellation of the Bull. It follows that if a monarch at
such a time had set out to create an equinoctial marker at Giza, he would
have had every reason to have it carved in the form of a bull, and none
whatsoever to have it carved in the form of a lion. Indeed, and it was
obvious, there was only one epoch when the celestial symbolism of a
leonine equinoctial marker would have been appropriate. That epoch was,
of course, the Age of Leo, from 10,970 to 8810 BC.
27
Why, therefore, should an equinoctial marker have been made in the
shape of a lion? Because it was made during the Age of Leo when the sun
on the vernal equinox rose against the stellar background of the
constellation of the Lion, thus marking the coordinates of a precessional
epoch that would not experience its ‘Great Return’ for another 26,000
years.
Around 10,450 BC the three stars of Orion’s Belt reached the lowest
point in their precessional cycle: west of the Milky Way, 11° 08’ above the
southern horizon at meridian transit. On the ground west of the Nile, this
event was frozen into architecture in the shape of the three pyramids of
Giza. Their layout formed the signature of an unmistakable epoch of
precessional time.
Around 10,450 BC, the sun on the vernal equinox rose in the
constellation of Leo. On the ground at Giza, this event was frozen into
architecture in the shape of the Sphinx, a gigantic, leonine, equinoctial
marker which, like the second signature on an official document, could

24 Sacred Science, p. 177.
As early as 3000 BC. See Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1991, 3:731.
25
26 Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt, pp. 27, 171.
27 Skyglobe 3.6.

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