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We suspect that the phrase to 'go down to any sky' suggests an awareness - and recording - of precessionally induced changes in the positions of the stars over long periods of time. And we also note its implication that if the chosen initiate was equipped with the correct numerical spell then he would be able to work out - and visualize - the correct positions of the stars in any epoch of his choosing, past or future.
Once again Sellers stands out amongst Egyptologists for being the first to have entertained such apparently outlandish notions. 'It is possible', she writes, 'that early man encoded in his myths special numbers; numbers that seemed to reveal to initiates an amazing knowledge of the movement of the celestial spheres.' 27
Such numbers, she argues, appear to have been derived from a sustained, scientific study of the cycle of precession and a measure- ment of its rate and, puzzlingly, turn out to be extremely 'close to the calculations made with today's sophisticated procedures'. Intrigu-ingly, too, there is evidence not only 'that these calculations were made, and conclusions drawn', but also that 'they were transmitted to others by secret encoding that was accessible only to an elite few':28 In short, Sellers concludes, 'ancient man calculated a special number that he believed would bring this threatening cycle [of precession] back to its starting point. . .' 29
The 'special number' to which Sellers is referring to is 25,920 (and multiples and divisions of it) and thus represents the duration, in solar years, of a full precessional cycle or 'Great Year' 30 She shows how it can be derived from a variety of simple combinations of other numbers - 5,12,36,72,360,432,2100, etc., etc. - all of which are in
turn derived from precise observations of precession. Most crucially of all, she shows that this peculiar sequence of numbers occurs in the ancient Egyptian myth of Osiris where, notably '72 consipirators' are said to have been involved with Seth in the murder of the God-King.31
As was shown in Fingerprints of the Gods, the sun's perceived motion through the signs of the zodiac at the vernal equinox proceeds at the rate of one degree every seventy-two years. From this it follows that a movement of the vernal point through 30 degrees will take 2160

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years to complete, 60 degrees will take 4320 years, and a full 360- degree cycle will require 25,920 years 32
Curiously enough, as the reader will recall from Part I, the Great Pyramid itself incorporates a record of these precessional numbers - since its key dimensions (its height and the perimeter of its base) appear to have been designed as a mathematical model of the earth's polar radius and equatorial circumference on a scale of 1 :43,200. The number 43,200 is, of course, exactly 600 times 72. What we have in this remarkable monument, therefore, is not just a scale model of a hemisphere of the earth but also one in which the scale involved incorporates a 'special number' derived from one of the key planetary motions of the earth itself - i.e. the rate of its axial precession.
In short it seems that secret knowledge is indeed available in the myth of Osiris and in the dimensions of the Great Pyramid. With this secret knowledge, if we wanted to fix a specific date - say 1008 years in the future - and communicate it to other initiates, then we could do so with the 'special number' 14 (72 x 14 = 1008). We would also have to specify the 'zero point' from which they were to make their calculations - i.e the present epoch - and this might be done with some kind of symbolic or mathematical marker to indicate where the vernal point presently is, i.e. moving out of Pisces and into Aquarius.
A similar exercise could likewise be carried out in reverse. By following the 'eastwards' direction along the ecliptic path we can 'find' (calculate, work out) where the vernal point was at any epoch in the past. Thus if today we wished to use the precessional code to direct attention towards the Pyramid Age we would need to confide to other initiates the 'special number' of 62.5 (72 x 62.5 = 4500 years ago = approximately 2500 BC). Again, we could rule out any ambiguity as to the zero date from which the calculations were to be made if we could find a way to indicate the present position of the vernal point.
We have seen that this is what Sneferu appears to have done with the two Pyramids at Dahshur, which map the two sides of the head of the celestial bull- the 'address' of the vernal point in his epoch. And in a sense, though with a great deal more specificity and precision, this could also be exactly what the builders of the Great Pyramid were doing when they deliberately targeted the southern shafts of the King's and Queen's Chambers on the meridian-transits of such

/ Page 249 /  

significant stars as Orion and Sirius in the epoch of 2500 BC. To be clear about this, it seems to us well worth investigating the possibility that by setting up such obvious and precise 'time markers' they were trying to provide an unambiguous zero point - circa 2500 BC - for calculations that could only be undertaken by initiates steeped in the mysteries of precession, who were equipped by their training to draw out the hidden portents concealed in certain 'special numbers'..."
 

 

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continues
 We note in passing that if the Horus-King could have been provided with the 'special number' 111.111, and had used it in the way described above, it would have led him back to (72 x 111.111 years =) 7,999.99 years before the specified 'ground zero', i.e. to almost exactly 8000 years before 2500 BC - in short, to 10,500 BC.
We know this seems like wishful numerology of the worst sort - i.e.'factoring in' an arbitrary value to a set of calculations so as to procure spurious 'corroboration' for a specific desired date (in this case the date of 10,500 BC, twelve and a half thousand years before the present, that we have already highlighted in Chapter 3 in connection with the Sphinx and the Pyramids of Giza). The problem, however, is that the number 111 . 111 I may well not be an arbitrary value. At any rate, it has long been recognized that the main numerical factor in the design of the Great Pyramid, and indeed of the Giza necropolis as a whole, is the prime number 11 - a prime number being one that is only divisible by itself to produce the whole number1. Thus 11 divided by 11, i.e. the ratio 11:11, produces the whole number 1 (while 11 divided by anything else, i.e. any other ratio, would, of neccessity, generate a fraction).
What is intriguing is the way that the architecture of the Great Pyramid responds to the number 11 when it is divided, or multiplied, by other whole numbers. The reader will recall, for example, that its side length of just over 755 feet is equivalent to 440 Egyptian royal cubits - i.e. 11 times 40 cubits.33 In addition, its height-to-base ratio is 7:11.3. The slope ratio of its sides is 14:11 (tan 51 degrees 50').35 And the slope ratio of the southern shaft of the King's Chamber - the shaft that was targeted on Orion's belt in 2500 BC - is 11:11 (tan 45 degrees).36
Arguably, therefore, the ratio 11: 11, which integrates with our

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'special number' 111.111, could be considered as a sort of mathemati-cal key, or 'stargate' to Orion's belt. Moreover, as we shall see, a movement of 111.111 degrees 'backwards along the ecliptic from 'ground-zero' at the Hyades-Taurus, the head of the celestial bull, would place the vernal point 'underneath' the cosmic lion.
Is it not precisely such a location, underneath the Great Sphinx, that the Horus-King is urged to investigate as he stands between its paws 'with his mouth equipped' and faces the questions of the Akhus whose initiations have led him this far? Indeed, does it not seem probable that the 'quest-journey' devised by the 'Followers of Horus' was carefully structured so as to sharpen the mind of the initiate by requiring him to piece together all the clues himself until he finally arrived at the realization that somewhere underneath the Great Sphinx of Giza was something (written or pictorial records, artefacts, maps, astronomical charts) that touched on 'the knowledge of a divine origin', that was of immense importance, and that had been concealed there since the 'First Time'?
In considering such questions, we are reminded of the Hermetic doctrines which transmit a tradition of the wisdom god Thoth who was said to have 'succeeded in understanding the mysteries of the heavens [and to have] revealed them by inscribing them in sacred books which he then hid here on earth, intending that they should be searched for by future generations but found only by the fully worthy'}37 Do the 'sacred books of 'Thoth', or their equivalent, still lie in the bedrock beneath the Great Sphinx of Giza, and do the 'fully worthy' still seek them there? "

 Page number 359 omitted

Giza, Egypt, I6 March I993, 3.30 p. m..
"It was mid afternoon by the time I left the Great Pyramid. Retracing the route that Santha and I had followed the night before when we had climbed the monument, I walked eastwards along the northern face, southwards along the flank of the eastern face, clambered over mounds of rubble and ancient tombs that clustered closely in this part of the necropolis, and came out on to the sand-covered limestone bedrock of the Giza plateau, which sloped down towards the south and east.
At the bottom of this long gentle slope, about half a kilometre from the south-eastern comer of the Great Pyramid, the Sphinx crouched in his rock-hewn pit. Sixty-six feet high and more than 240 feet long, with a head measuring 13 feet 8 inches wide,' he was, by a considerable margin, the largest single piece of sculpture in the world - and the most renowned:
'A shape with lion body and the head of a man
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun 2..."

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Page 118

There are twelve thousand myriads of bridges, six above and six below; twelve thousand myriads of rivers of fire, six above and six below; twelve thousand treasuries of snow, six above and six below; twenty-four thousand myriads of wheels of fire, twelve above and twelve below, surrounding the bridges, the riv-ers of fire, the rivers of hail, the treasuries of snow and the ministering angels. How many ministering angels are at each entrance? Six for every human being, and they stand in the midst of the entrances, facing the paths of heaven. (5) What does YHWH, the God of Israel, the glorious king, do. The great God, mighty in power, covers his face.. (6) In Arabot there are 660 thousands of myriads of glorious angels, hewn out of flam-ing fire, standing opposite the throne of glory. The glorious King covers his face, otherwise the heaven of Arabot would burst open in the middle, because of the glorious brilliance, beautiful brightness, lovely splendor, and radiant praises of the appearance of the Holy One, blessed be he.

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How high was the knowledge of those prehistoric inventors?
'They knew their epochs,' said Bauval, 'and the clock that they used was the natural clock of the stars. Their working language was precessional astronomy and these monuments express that language in a very clear, unambiguous, scientific manner. They were also highly skilled surveyors - I mean the people who originally prepared the site and laid out the orientations for the pyramids - because they worked to an exacting geometry and because they knew how to align the base-platforms, or whatever it was they built, perfectly to the cardinal points.'
'Do you think they also knew that they were marking out the site of the Great Pyramid on latitude 30° North?'
Bauval laughed: 'I'm certain they knew. I think they knew everything about the shape of the earth. They knew their astronomy. They had a good understanding of the solar system and of celestial mechanics. They were also incredibly accurate and incredibly precise in everything they did. So, all in all, I don't think anything really happened here by chance - at least not between 10450 and 2450 BC. I get the feeling that everything was planned, intended, carefully worked out. . . Indeed I get the feeling that they were fulfilling a long- term objective - some kind of purpose, if you like, and that they brought this to fruition in the third millennium BC . 'In the form of the fully built pyramids which they then precessionally anchored to Al Nitak and to Sirius at the time of completion?'
'Yes. And also, I think, in the form of the Pyramid Texts. My guess is that the Pyramid Texts are part of the puzzle.'
'The software to the Pyramids' hardware?'
'Quite possibly. Why not? At any rate it's certain that there's a connection. I think what it means is that if we're going to decode the pyramids properly then we're going to have to use the Texts. ..' ,

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'What's your guess?' I asked Bauval. 'What do you think the purpose of the pyramid builders really might have been?'
'They didn't do it because they wanted an eternal tomb,' he replied firmly. 'In my view, they had no doubts at all that they would eternally live. They did it - whoever did it - they have transmitted the power of their ideas through something that is to all intents and purposes eternal. They succeeded in creating a force that is functional in itself, provided you understand it, and that force is the questions it challenges you to ask. My guess is that they knew the human mind to perfection. They knew the game of ritual. . . Right? I'm serious. They knew what they were doing. They knew that they could initiate people far ahead in the future into their way of thinking even though they couldn't be there themselves. They knew that they could do this by creating an eternal machine, the function of which was to generate questions.'
I suppose that I must have looked puzzled.
'The machine is the pyramids!' Bauval exclaimed, 'the whole of the Giza necropolis really. And look at us. What are we doing? We're asking questions. We're standing out here, shivering, at an ungodly hour, watching the sun come up, and we're asking questions, lots and lots of questions just as we've been programmed to do. We're in the hands of real magicians here, and real magicians know that with symbols - with the right symbols, with the right questions - they can lead you into initiating yourself. Provided, that is, you are a person who asks questions. And, if you are, then the minute you start asking questions about the pyramids you begin to stumble into a whole series of answers which lead you to other questions, and then more answers until finally you initiate yourself. . .'
'Sow the seed. . .'
'Yes. They were sowing the seed. Believe me, they were magicians, and they knew the power of ideas. . . They knew how to set ideas growing and developing in people's minds. And if you start with such ideas, and follow the process of reasoning like I did, you arrive at things like Orion, and 10450 bC. In short, this is a process that works on its own. When it enters, when it settles inro the subconscious, it is a self-willing conversion. Once it's there you can't even resist it . . .'
'You're talking as though this Giza cult, whatever it was - revolving

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around precession, and geometry, and the pyramids, and the Pyramid Texts - you're talking as though it still exists.'
'In a sense it does still exist,' Robert replied. 'Even if the driver is no longer at the wheel, the Giza necropolis is still a machine that was designed to provoke questions.' He paused and pointed up to the summit of the Great Pyramid where Santha and I had climbed, at dead of night, nine months previously. 'Look at its power,' he continued. 'Five thousand years on it still gets you. It involves you whether you like it or not. . . It forces you into a process of thinking . . . forces you to learn. The minute you ask a question about it you've asked a question about engineering, you've asked a question about geometry, you've asked a question about astronomy. So it forces you to learn about engineering and geometry and astronomy, and gradually you begin to realize how sophisticated it is, how incredibly clever and skilful and knowledgeable its builders must have been, which forces you to ask questions about mankind, about human history, eventually about yourself too. You want to find out. This is the power of the thing.'
The second signature
As Robert, Santha and I sat out on the Giza plateau that cold December morning at the end of 1993, we watched the winter sun, now very close to solstice, rising over the right shoulder of the Sphinx, almost as far south of east as it would travel on its yearly journey before turning north again.
The Sphinx was an equinoctial marker, with its gaze directed precisely at the point of sunrise on the vernal equinox. Was it, too, part of the Giza 'grand plan'?
I reminded myself that in any epoch, and at any period of history or prehistory, the Sphinx's due east gaze would always have been sighted on the equinoctial rising of the sun, at both the vernal and the autumnal 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:

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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.16 Readers must judge for themselves whether it 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 preceeding 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 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?19 (Abraham and Isaac are assumed by biblical scholars and archaeologists to have lived during the early second millennium BC)20. Is it 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?21 And is it 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?22 Work on the principal sanctuary of Amon - the Temple of Karnak at Luxor in upper Egypt - was begun at around 2000 BC23 and, as those who have visited that temple will recall, its principal icons are rams, long rows of which guard its entrances.
The immediate predecessor to the Age of Aries was the Age of Taurus - the Bull-which spanned the period between 4380 and 2200 BC:" It was during this precessional epoch, when the sun on the vernal

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equinox rose in the constellation of Taurus, that the Bull-cult of Minoan Crete flourished!' And during this epoch, too, the civiliza-tion of dynastic Egypt 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 Helipolis, 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 10970 to 8810 BC27
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 10450 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 unmistak-able epoch of precessional time.
Around 10450 BC, the sun on the vernal equinox rose in the

/ ( Page 483 diagram omitted ) /

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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 be taken as a confirmation of authenticity.
The eleventh millennium BC, in other words, soon after the' Mill of Heaven' broke, shifting sunrise on the spring equinox from Virgo into the constellation of Leo, was the only epoch in which the due east facing Sphinx would have manifested exactly the right symbolic alignment on exactly the right day - watching the vernal sun rising in the dawn sky against the background of his own celestial counter-part...

'It can't be a coincidence that such a perfect alignment of the terrestrial and the celestial occurs at around 10450 BC,' said Robert. 'In fact I don't think coincidence is any longer an issue. To me the real question is Why was it done? Why did they go to such lengths to make this enormous statement about the eleventh millennium BC?'
'Obviously because it was an important time for them,' suggested Santha.
'It must have been very, very important. You don't do something like this, create a series of vast precessional markers like these, carve a Sphinx, put up three pyramids weighing almost 15 million tons, unless you have some hugely important reason. So the question is:w what as that reason? They've forced this question by making such a strong, imperative statement about 10450 BC. Really, they've forced the question. They want to draw our attention to 10450 BC and it's up to us to work out why.'
We fell silent, for a long while as the sun climbed the sky south-east of the Great Sphinx."