Book Review: Before the Pharaohs

There are some fascinating books out there on "Alternative History," and I'm not talking about science fiction "what if this happened instead of that?" books. I mean books that take a look at history in a new light, presenting new and interesting theories about what really happened. Some of them are idiotic ancient conspiracy theories, but others are food for thought, even if they do turn out to be crap in hindsight.

Back in 2006, I was on one of these kicks and I read two books that purported to turn History on its head. One of them was about the Templars and North America (maybe I'll post it later), but the other one fits this week's Egypt theme.

It's a book by Edward Malkowski called Before the Pharaohs, and it's a truly fascinating book that puts forth a lot of theories, both about the Sphinx (which is prominent on the cover) and about Egyptian civilization in general. Did you know that some people believe the Great Pyramids of Giza are not tombs but actually power conduits, a power source to create massive amounts of electricity?

Yeah, that's in there.

Malkowski's book is also the source of the "Sphinx must be dated before 10,000 BC because of soil erosion around it" theory that I mentioned in Sunday's post on Robert Temple's The Sphinx Mystery, though Malkowski is just telling us about that theory. He didn't come up with it.

In fact, there's a lot of that in Before the Pharaohs.

That doesn't mean it's a bad book, of course. It's actually very interesting.

If you can get through the first 60 or so pages.

From my review on Curled Up With a Good Book:

"Malkowski begins the book by looking at the Sphinx. "Aha!" I thought. "Starting at the top and then working his way down." In fact, no. Instead, we get several pages of in depth analysis of erosion and how the differing levels of such indicate that the Sphinx must be older than is currently claimed. There is no way that the erosion the Sphinx has suffered, via both wind and water, could have happened in the period of time estimated. This is fine in itself, but halfway through the chapter I just wanted to grab the author by the throat and cry "We get it! Get on with it!" Instead we get diagrams showing the different levels of the Sphinx and how far the erosion would go. What's even worse, one of the two experts whom Malkowski spends a lot of time detailing actually claims that rainfall runoff could account for the Sphinx being built from 3000 B.C.E to 2500 B.C.E. This dating, of course, falls within the current projections. So what was the point of this? The other scientist whom Malkowski heavily details claims that erosion and weathering on the Sphinx would mean that it must have been built between 7000 B.C.E and 5000 B.C.E. This could be an important point, but to begin the book with it?

The next chapter is on climate change. Malkowski tells us that the Saharan desert went through three cycles of climate change, getting wetter and then more arid and then back again, between 10,000 B.C.E. and 2800 B.C.E. He gives us much more than we could ever want to know about this, and then goes back to erosion rates, this time with graphs and tables! He uses all of this information to disprove the 3000-2500 dating for the Sphinx, stating that the other theory must be correct. He may very well be right, but by this time, I was ready to close my eyes. This was the most difficult beginning of a book I've had to get through in a while."

I had actually forgotten about the expert Malkowski quotes that mentioned rainfall erosion, since that's one of Temple's theories.

Then the book gets really good, talking about ancient timekeeping, the Giza Power Plant theory, and so much more. It's incredibly intriguing, and even if only part of it is true, it's still interesting stuff to read and theorize about.

For example, the theory that Mayan god-figures actually came to Egypt and became Egyptian gods, instead of the commonly-theorized other way around? That's cool. May be bull. But it's still cool.

This review has the most positive votes of any of my reviews on Amazon. I'm proud of that fact (not to mention proud of the fact that my Curled Up review is quoted in the "Editorial Reviews" section of the book's Amazon listing).

It's an endlessly fascinating book if you can get past the extremely detailed soil erosion theories. They literally almost killed me (and I use "literally" in the Joe Biden sense of the word).

Check out the review, and also let me know some of your thoughts on this kind of subject. Do you like "alternative history?" Any theories you'd like to share?

Book Review: The Sphinx Mystery

One of the great mysteries of the ages is: just who or what is the Sphinx? You know what the Sphinx is, of course. That huge statue that's sitting there in the Egyptian desert on the Giza Plateau, an animal creature with a human head?

You know, this?

(Thanks to Kewl Wallpapers)

The mystery has always been who made this? Just how old is the Sphinx? Whose head is that on the Sphinx?

Those questions may never be officially answered, but one man thinks he has done so.

In The Sphinx Mystery: The Forgotten Origins of the Sanctuary of Anubis, Robert Temple and his wife Olivia claim that they have figured out everything about this giant monument.

Is he right?

Not being an expert in all of this, I can't really say yay or nay. I'm a book reviewer. All I can comment on is the book itself, and whether or not it's convincing.

I reviewed the book back in 2009, and apparently I wasn't posting my book reviews here, or I did it before I actually started this blog. Either way, it never showed up here. So, in keeping with my Egyptian theme this week ("theme" meaning at least two posts, because I'm not going to tie myself down any further than that, though there could be more!), here's my Curled Up With a Good Book review of Temple's tome.

You'd like an excerpt? I thought you'd never ask.

"Yes, I did say "Sanctuary of Anubis" in the last paragraph. One of the obvious things about the Sphinx is that the head is much too small for the huge body atop which it sits. Was it recarved into a pharaoh's image? If so, whose? Temple not only makes the case for who actually did the recarving, but he also has an interesting theory about what the Sphinx was before its current incarnation. He states that the Giza plateau, on which stand all of the Great Pyramids, the Sphinx just off to the side, is a sacred entrance to the realm of the dead, and that the Sphinx is the guardian of that entrance. While the Sphinx is commonly described as having the body of a lion, Temple says there is no way that this is a lion: instead, it's a giant statue of the god Anubis, the dog/jackal that deals with those crossing over from the living to the dead. He proposes that the statue was disfigured during the 150 years of chaos between the Old and Middle Kingdoms of Egypt, and that a pharaoh decided to make it his own face instead."

I had never thought of it before, and I don't know much about lions and how they sit, but Temple is certainly right that the way the Sphinx is sitting on the ground does look a lot more like a dog than what our image of lions sitting is.

What about the age of the Sphinx, though? Aren't there erosion patterns (as some authors have claimed, more about which later this week) that indicate the Sphinx has to be vastly older than just 5000 years or so? These claims make it up to 10,000 BC or even earlier, which is amazing given the state of civilization (as in there wasn't much of one) back then?

Temple's solution to that is very nicely done. I have no idea if it's bullshit or not, but it does make sense.

"The Nile river flowed near Giza back in ancient Egypt, and would regularly flood every year. He claims that there is a channel around the Sphinx so that, for religious reasons, the Sphinx was an island unto itself for a large part of the year. Water flowed in and out of what he calls the "Sphinx Moat," either from the river itself or from collected rainwater (there was much more rain in Egypt back then) that the Egyptians funneled into the moat. The constant inflow and outflow of water into this moat accounts for the water erosion. It's a fascinating theory for those who are familiar with the other arguments."

Again, I have no idea whether Temple's theories are way out there or right on the mark.

What I do know is that the book is fascinating (though loses its way a bit toward the end, but by then you're already hooked). Added to this is Temple's "old-man" crankiness about the state of History and Archaeology today and how people actively avoid paying attention to evidence that's right in front of them.

That makes entertaining reading no matter what the subject. This book is great for those with an interest in Egyptian archaeology.

Let me know what you think of the review, too, in addition to your thoughts on the Sphinx itself.

Last Segments of Egyptian Book of the Dead Found

The archaeology of Ancient Egypt has always fascinated me, and I get a thrill when I hear about new discoveries about the ancient tombs, Pharaohs, or whatever. I know I have a few fellow travelers in that respect.

After yesterday's super-serious post, I thought I would present to you something that's more intriguing than anger-inducing.

Did you ever see The Mummy, with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz?

One of the objects in the movie, and one that causes a bunch of problems for our heroes, is the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Evelyn (Weisz) reads a passage from the Book and it brings to life the ancient mummy Imhotep, a High Priest that was entombed for falling in love with the mistress of the Pharaoh.

We all know that these types of movies have tons of historical inaccuracies, but that's beside the point. They're a hell of a lot of fun. One inaccuracy is, of course, that they didn't have books back in Ancient Egypt. By "books," I mean bound copies with pages that you flip, even if they do appear to be metal plates or something like that in the movie.

No, they wrote everything on papyrus scrolls. Like this:

(Thanks to the Daily Mail)

The real Book of the Dead, or at least the most famous one, has been an incomplete set of papyrus scrolls and fragments that have been collected from museums over the last 100 years. But some pieces were still missing.

Until now.

Apparently, according to the Daily Mail, the last remaining pieces of this particular manuscript have been found in a museum in Queensland, Australia.

"‘After spotting the piece Dr Taylor was shown the other 100 plus fragments held in the Museum’s stores and was floored by what he had uncovered,’ Ms Bates said.

‘These unsuspecting papyrus pieces form the missing part of a highly historically valuable ‘Book of the Dead’ that belonged to the Chief Builder of the temple of Amun, Amenhotep."

I see what the producers of the movie did there. Nice subtle name change.

So what is a "Book of the Dead?"

"A ‘Book of the Dead’ is an Egyptian manuscript, up to 20 metres in length, of magical spells written on papyrus that were commissioned by families upon the death of a loved one to guide them on their hazardous journey into the afterlife."

There are apparently many books like this, but this one is special because it's one of only four or five that have "unusual features" compared to the rest of them. These sorts of things appear to indicate that a person was quite wealthy and influential.

Now that they've found these missing pieces, they can put them all together and electronically join them together into one actual book. The missing pieces have made it impossible to do that until now.

This also speaks to the sci-fi nerd in me. Does that surprise you?

It shouldn't, if you're a Dr. Who fan. Many of the older Dr. Who episodes were lost because the BBC deleted them back in the old days rather than keeping them. So for the past 30 years, missing episodes have occasionally resurfaced when found in an attic bin of an old collector or what have you, overlooked for years, sometimes in a film canister that wasn't labelled.

This kind of find reminds me of those Dr. Who episodes. Hiding in plain sight, with nobody who sees these pages daily even realizing what they have until somebody who knows what they're seeing actually spots it and brings it to our attention. These pages were donated to the museum by a collector and have been sitting there for years.

Yet another ancient mystery solved! Now if they can only determine what the Sphinx really is.

Oh wait. Somebody's already done that.