Book Review:
"THE MESSAGE OF THE SPHINX"Are the major structures at Giza
a clock designed to tell cosmic time....by Mark Hammons
TITLE: The Message of the Sphinx: A Quest for the Hidden Legacy of Mankind
AUTHORS: Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval
PUBLISHER: Crown, 1996 $27.50 hardcover LENGTH: 349 pp (29 b&w illustrations, numerous line drawings; 5 appendixes, ISBN 0-517-70503-6).
ABSTRACT: "The Message of the Sphinx" tries to establish that the original conception of the Giza astronomical relationships came into being during the last time the equinoxes occured in the constellation Leo, some 12,000 years ago.
A collaboration between Graham Hancock, author of "Fingerprints of the Gods," and Robert Bauval, coauthor of "The Orion Mystery," seems a natural event. Both have advanced useful speculations and insights into the search for a predecessor civilization beyond the far edge of what now passes for academically-accepted human history.
These men fall into a group of similarly-interested reseachers which include amateur Egyptologist, John Anthony West, who stirred the pot through his work with geologist and geophysicist, Robert Schoch, to establish scientifically a more ancient date for the Great Sphinx, and Rudolf Gantenbrink, a tidy German engineer whose little robot, Upuat, blessed the world in 1993 with views of a mysterious unopened panel in the Great Pyramid. Clearly, the Giza plateau is home to a new cottage industry of potentially unsurpassed importance to understanding the origins of humanity.
In their new book, "The Message of the Sphinx: A Quest for the Hidden Legacy of Mankind," Hancock and Bauval extend arguments first presented in "The Orion Mystery" that the configuration of major monuments at Giza reflects an astronomical pattern.
The arrangement of the Great Sphinx and the major pyramids are explained by the authors as reflecting ancient recognition of the precession of the equinoxes, something that Western historical doctine holds was not known to humans until "discovered" by the Bithnian mathematician, Hipparchus (fl. 190-127 BC). As revealed in the text, the major structures at Giza are, taken together, an astonishing clock designed in the dimmest reaches of antiquity to tell cosmic time.
The relationship of ancient Egyptian buildings to the precessional phenomenon is not new in Western thought. The most notable and still one of the best reads on the subject is the treatise called "The Dawn of Astronomy," published by J. Norman Lockyer in 1894 (and curiously absent from the Selected Bibliography of this book, though quoted at the beginning of Chapter 4). In brief, the precession is a shift of the point on the eastern horizon against the celestial background of stars at which occurs the sunrise marking the arrival of spring, summer, fall, and winter. This cycle across the heavens, passing through the twelve signs of the Zodiac, requires 25,920 years to come full circle and is due to the rotational wobble of the earth on which we whirl through space.
The millennia-long course of the precessional cycle is called the great year. This heavenly sojourn is divided into 12 great months, of 2160 years each, during which time the equinoctial sunrises occur in one of the twelve signs of the zodiac. The main thrust of "The Message of the Sphinx" is to establish that the original conception of the Giza relationships came into being during the last time the equinoxes occured in the constellation Leo, some 12,000 years ago. The existence of such astronomical knowledge at that date is wholly excluded by current historical models and, if indisputably demonstrated, would be proof positive of an earlier, now lost, advanced civilization. Not that academe is interested in hearing about it, you understand.
Before getting to the most interesting of their own contributions to this notion, the authors first establish a number of intellectual landmarks spanning many centuries. First, of course, there is the Great Sphinx. Leonine in form, the Sphinx is shown to have a variety of historical associations with the Egyptian "Tep Zepi" or "First Time," a period when the Egyptians reported matter-of-factly that "gods" ruled the land. A review of the available literature, both ancient and medieval, reveals that the statue long served as a place of religious pilgrimage by peoples who believed the monument marked the beginning of known human affairs.
The relationship of the First Time to the beginnings of ancient Egyptian historicity is joined with the meanings of divine names of the Sphinx in the rituals of the Pharoahs, also known as Horus-Kings. In the era of the Old Kingdom, stated by standard Egyptological texts as the time when the Sphinx and the great pyramids were constructed (ca. 2500 B.C.), the Horus passage was the exclusive journey of the Pharoahs. Later, this practice emerged into a wider popular expression, which has come down to us in various Egyptian books of the dead. In essence, upon death, the Horus or earthly incarnation of human consciousness joins his father, the divine Osiris, in the heavens.
The book provides a number of artist's intepretations of this concept; attempting to relate, for example, the Horus/Osiris mythos to the internal design of the Great Pyramid. The text draws attention, once again, as in "The Orion Mystery," to the "reflexion" of three stars in the constellation of Orion related by the ancient Egyptians to Osiris~in the position of the three largest pyramids at Giza and the course of the nearby Nile River as a mirror of the Milky Way in the skies above.
All of this leads to the best moment in the whole presentation, the discussion of the astronomical alignments of various architectural elements to the eastern horizon. By using a computer program to calculate the appearance of the Egyptian sky in circa 10,500 B.C., the authors make a case for the original feline form of the Sphinx being meant as an indicator for the First Time. At that ancient date, the vernal equinox showed the sun rising in the constellation Leo.
This relationship is further bolstered by line drawings showing that Leo would have been only partly visible on the horizon, just as the Sphinx itself is set down in an excavation of the ground. Furthermore, the strange angles of the causeways related to the pyramids are noted to be at the correct inclination to show the movement of the sun across the horizon to the sunrise points of the winter and summer solstices, a yearly variance in position of 58 degrees.
Along the way to these revelations, some modern brickwork is added to the structures under consideration. In Chapter 5, titled "The Case of the Psychic, the Scholar, and the Sphinx," the authors review the career origins of mainstream -- indeed, head guru -- of modern academic Egyptology, Mark Lehner. Lehner, it seems, started out in his Egyptian interests through the auspices of work for the Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE), an arm of the Edgar Cayce Foundation.
Cayce is renowned for his channeled history of Atlanteans in Egypt being responsible for the contruction of the Great Pyramid in 10,460 B.C. Needless to elaborate, anything to do with psychic, Cayce, is anathema to any straight-laced Egyptologist who values the esteem of his peers (their views being right or wrong is less important than professional solidarity). The authors conveniently reprint their correspondence with Lehner about the contents of this chapter in Appendix 3.
We are also treated to an account of the attitudes of Zahi Hawass, the Egyptian in charge of excavations at Giza, toward the search for a predecessor civilization. Lehner and Hawass are reported as "muy sympatico" with one another, and both are vehement defenders of the current Egyptological paradigm. John Anthony West, we are told, for example, almost came to physical blows with Hawass and was permanently shown off the Sphinx site because Hawass regarded his project filming as "unscientific." Later, we hear of Hawass promoting a 10 million dollar deal to open the little shaft door in the Great Pyramid on "live television." Clearly, there is a petty element of personal ego at play here which has nothing to do with an open-minded approach to questions about the monuments nor the interest of the world in their meaning.
The authors bring themselves to the edge of respectability, as well, but take great pains to remain within the pale. Even though they treat the presence of the great pyramids as implicit in the arrangement with the Sphinx throughout their arguments, they are pleased to concur with the Egyptologists that the Pharoahs Khufu, Khapre, and Menkare were probably responsible for their construction, circa 2500 B.C.
Instead, they argue, the design of the Giza complex was implicit from 10,500 B.C. onwards and these Pharoahs, together with earlier works (the Red and Bent Pyramids at nearby Dashur) attributed to their forefather Sneferu, were only filling in the dots, so to speak, as part of their own Horus journey. This speaks to nothing of the mysteries implicit in the construction of these incredible structures. The technical accomplishments of the Giza pyramids are certainly quite beyond the modern will and very likely the modern technological reach, as well. This is the strongest possible evidence for a missing advanced civilization and is tossed away out of seeming amiability toward those controlling access to the fieldwork.
At this point, a sense of dissatisfaction creeps into the book. The information contained in the several appendices would seem better placed, not to mention further developed, within the body of the text, but this would weaken cleaving to the academic standard model, such as they do.
In Appendix 5, for example, we are shown that radiocarbon dating conducted by, of all people, Mark Lehner, demonstrates the Great Pyramid to be between 1300 to 500 years earlier than the Old Kingdom pharoahs to whom they are attributed by Egyptologists. And where was this startling information discussed by Lehner? In a 1986 issue of "Venture Inward," a publication of the ARE! Yet the authors note primly that the apparent disregard of this information by academics speaks poorly of intellectual integrity. Why does it appear briefly in an appendix, and not front and center in their own arguments about the antiquity of the monuments?
Hancock and Bauval make clear their astronomical reading of the Giza plateau, and relate this somewhat effectively to the concept of Akhus, or adepts, who would have kept such knowledge down through the ages since the disappearance of the original advanced civilization. They bring forward excerpts, or utterances, from various Egyptian books of the dead to bolster the case made mathematically.
Noting such relationships as a 1/43,200 base length of the Great Pyramid to the circumference of the earth, they tie together such diverse elements as the fact that 600 x 72 = 43,200 and that 6 "Great Months" have passed, since the construction of the Sphinx. This marvelous cleverness descends, they say, from the "Followers of Horus" mentioned as those who preceeded the human kings of Egypt. Yet as the pages go on, there is no mention of the number of "Followers of Seth" responsible for the murder of Osiris who totaled, the ancient texts say, 72. With Seth as the god of chaos and responsible for the destruction of the "golden age" of Osiris. This number also recurs in the fact that it takes 72 years for the equinoctial point to cycle through one degree of the heavenly circle of the great year, (72 x 360 = 25,920) surely no coincidence to the mathematical/mythical relationships. Such significant oversights bring forth a sense of incompleteness in the cultural analysis presented in the book."
Also, while much is made of the "First Time" as the era to which the entire Giza construction points as being dated to 10,500 B.C., no mention is made of the fact that in the same sources quoted for the "First Time" the Egyptians regarded their history as reaching back much farther, up to 40,000 years. In some instances, especially in the brushing aside of significant points into the rearbound appendices, Hancock and Bauval sometimes seem as self-serving in their selection of material as they lament the Egyptologists are prone to be. It is obvious that the authors want to remain as close to the center of the argument as they can and are willing to ruffle as few academic feathers as possible. In this urge to conservatism, possibly, they do harm to their cause.
Nonetheless, the book is a pleasant update to the interests raised in their earlier works, as well as bringing readers up-to-speed on the various private and institutional players now intent on funding pursuant research. Not everyone, it seems, cares to share and not just the possessive, perhaps overly-protective, Egyptologists involved. There are suspicions everywhere, if not outright suspicious persons. Money is changing hands. Promotional tapes come and go. Key starters like John Anthony West and Rudolf Gantenbrink are shut out. What's an innocent but intrigued bystander left at a distance to do?
Only in the last words of the first appendix do we get a glimpse of what all this might mean, beyond a treasure map, to hidden records that could be the more overt "Message of the Sphinx." Here, past the formal end of their argument and in a gasp of hushed intrigue, Hancock and Bauval finally cut to the chase. There is more going on at Giza than meets the material eye. The "Message of the Sphinx" may well be about the attainment of altered, probably transpersonal, forms of consciousness. We are back, sideways, to the "gods." With a wink, the authors intimate they have glimpsed a deeper purpose at work. Could the Great Pyramid, for instance, be a device, that influences world history, and is it still functioning? Naturally, we must wait for the next book but at least one reader thinks this one could have done much more to germinate the seed planted after the last word.
Back to Book Review Selections
Back to Home Page