From Atlantis to the Sphinx Read online

  From Atlantis to the Sphinx

  Colin Wilson

  To

  John West

  Graham Hancock

  and

  Robert Bauval -

  friends without whose

  help this book could

  not have been written.

  First published in Great Britain in 1996 by

  Virgin Books

  an imprint of Virgin Publishing Ltd

  332 Ladbroke Grove

  LONDON W10 5AH

  Reprinted 1996

  Copyright © Colin Wilson 1996

  The right of Colin Wilson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 1 85227 526 X

  Phototypeset by Intype London Ltd

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  Mackays of Chatham plc, Chatham, Kent

  Analytical Table of Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  Schwaller de Lubicz and the age of the Sphinx—was it built by ‘Atlanteans’? Hapgood’s ancient maps. The Atlantis film script. Schoch’s conference at San Diego. Scepticism of ‘the experts’. Robert Graves and Mr Gunn. Mathematical prodigies. I meet John West. Graham Hancock and Rand Flem-ath. Bauval’s Orion Mystery. André VandenBroeck’s Al-Kemi. Publication of Fingerprints of the Gods. What does it all mean? The search for ‘the intensity experience’. What can ‘the ancients’ teach us?

  1 Egyptian Mysteries

  The Hancocks scale the Great Pyramid at dawn. How was it built? The Sign and the Seal. Was the Sphinx eroded by water? Serpent in the Sky. Schwaller de Lubicz and alchemy. Death of Fulcanelli. Schwaller in Luxor. André and Goldian VandenBroeck visit Schwaller. A different kind of knowledge. Gurdjieff on the Sphinx. Pythagoras and music. Schwaller on ancient Egypt

  2 The New Race

  Robert Schoch agrees to look at the Sphinx. Who carved the Sphinx? Schoch agrees the Sphinx is weathered by water. How did the Egyptians move 200-ton blocks? Flinders Petrie discovers ‘the New Race’ then changes his mind. Unknown techniques of carving. Christopher Dunn on the granite sarcophagus. A drill that works 500 times faster than a modern drill. Schoch announces his results at San Diego. The BBC proves Schoch correct about rock layers at Giza. The Sphinx Temple and the Oseirion. The ‘Cyclopeans’. The Inventory Stela. Frank Domingo declares the Sphinx is not Chefren

  3 Inside the Pyramid

  Al-Mamun breaks into the Great Pyramid. The missing mummy. The ‘other entrance’. Davison’s Chamber. Howard-Vyse ‘proves’ that Cheops built the Great Pyramid. Sitchin throws doubt on Howard-Vyse. Did the Egyptians know the size of the earth? Was the Great Pyramid an observatory? Robert Bauval reads The Sirius Mystery. How did the Dogon know Sirius was a double star? The Pyramid Texts. The pyramids and the belt of Orion. Edgar Cayce on Atlantis. Were there pyramids planned in 10,500 BC? Mendelssohn on the pyramids. Boats. Thor Heyerdahl on Egyptian shipbuilding

  4 The Forbidden Word

  Hapgood’s Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings. The great Ice Ages. The Piri Re’is map. The significance of Syene. How Eratosthenes worked out the size of the earth. Earth's Shifting Crust. A worldwide maritime civilisation in 7000 BC? Plato and Atlantis. Ignatius Donnelly. The Bimini Road. Randy Flemming begins a novel on Atlantis. When the Sky Fell. Is Atlantis in Antarctica?

  5 The Realm of the White Gods

  Cortes and the conquest of Mexico. Careri and the Aztecs. Stephens discovers a jungle city. Why did the Mayas disappear? Brasseur de Bourbourg on the ‘great cataclysm’. Charnay in Mexico. Palenque, ‘City of the Serpents’. Augustus le Plongeon learns the Mayan language. Evidence for Atlantis. Queen Moo. James Churchward and Mu. Thompson and Chichen Itza. He dives in the sacrificial well. Hoerbiger and the World-Ice theory. Velikovsky and catastrophes. The mystery of Tiahuanaco. The Hancocks in Tiahuanaco. Posnansky on the place of the Standing Stones. Was Tiahuanaco built in 15,000 BC? The fish gods. Teotihuacan. Cortes fights his way out of Tenochtitlan. Batres excavates the Pyramid of the Sun. Gerald Hawkins on Teotihuacan. The Nazca lines. Did they expect Viracocha to return by air? The move towards caution. Why did the Egyptians and the Mayans both regard Sirius as sacred?

  6 The Antiquity of Man

  Scheuchzer’s ‘Old Sinner’. The beginning of palaeontology. Maillet’s theory of evolution. Cuvier on catastrophes. Lyell’s Principles of Geology: A brief history of the earth. How man developed from a tree shrew. Darwin sails on the Beagle. The survival of the fittest. The Missing Link. Piltdown Man. The discovery of Neanderthal Man. Cro-Magnon Man. Don Marcelino and the Altamira cave. Did man exist five million years ago? Dubois and Java Man. The Olduvai Gorge and Reek’s skeleton. Peking Man. Leakey and the Kanjera skulls. Dart and the Taung baby. The killer ape. Leakey and Homo habilis. Johanson and Lucy

  7 Forbidden Archaeology

  How old is man? Michael Cremo studies palaeontology. Von Ducker and the Pikermi bones. Pliocene sharks’ teeth with holes bored in them. Ribeiro and the River Tagus beds. Bourgeois’s flints—artefacts or naturefacts? Ragazzoni and Pliocene man. ‘Conventional history’—a summary. The wheel. The implications of ‘alternative history’. What caused the brain explosion? Language? Maerth’s cannibalism theory. The Romantic theory of evolution

  8 More Forbidden Archaeology

  Why is man a religious animal? Cave art and ritual magic. Shamans and ‘miracles’. The Wizard of the Upper Amazon. Manuel Cordova is kidnapped. The ‘collective mind’ of the Amahuaca Indians. Grimble and the ‘calling of the porpoises’. ‘Mental radio’. Mavromatis and hypnagogia. Why has man evolved so quickly? Neanderthal man. Julian Jaynes and the ‘bicameral mind’. The right and left brain. Did man become a ‘left brainer’ in 1250 BC? Schwaller on hieroglyphics. The Egyptian mentality. Harvalik and dowsing. Alternative history of man. Pygmy hunting ritual

  9 Of Stars and Gods

  Alexander Thom and the Callanish stone circle. Megaliths as observatories. Anne Macaulay on the ancient ‘code’ of Apollo. Cro-Magnon man as a star-gazer. Marshack’s Roots of Civilisation. Robert Graves and The White Goddess. Maurice Cotterell and The Mayan Prophecies. Is the Mayan calendar based on sunspot activity? Santillana and Hamlet’s Mill. The precession of the equinoxes. The mill of the sky. Ancient civilisation in India. The date of the Rig-Veda. A new theory of human evolution. Hunting magic. Bauval and Hancock reconstruct the sky in 10,500 BC. Why did the Sphinx builders wait eight thousand years to build the pyramids of Giza? Osiris’s voyage up the Milky Way. The journey to Rostau. Osiris returns to Orion. The ‘Followers of Horus’. Does the secret lie below the rear paws of the Sphinx?

  10 The Third Force

  Edward T. Hall and the Hopi Indians. Monochronic time and polychronic time. ‘A different kind of perception’. The Hopi and Mother Earth. Quiche time. Zen and archery. Children in a school playground—the dance of life. Basic rhythms. Mike Hayes and DNA. The mysterious 64. The I-Ching and its 64 hexagrams. Pythagorianism. The third force. The number π. The tetrad. The Luxor temple. Synchronicity. The Chinese rain maker. Jacques Vallee and Melchizedek. Ross Salmon and the condor. Egyptian magic. Ancient Egypt and the Nile. How man evolved. How did Egyptians move 200-ton blocks? Ed Leedskalnin and
Coral Castle. The sheet of iron found in the Great Pyramid. How did Egyptian artists light the tombs? Egypt as a ‘collective’ civilisation. Electronic ping pong in Las Vegas. Boris Yermolayev suspends a cigarette packet in the air. Lifting a man with four index fingers. The drawbacks of group consciousness. The Chalice and the Blade—a matriarchal civilisation? Wells’s Experiment in Autobiography. Are we human? The need for a ‘third force’ to achieve the next step in evolution. Maslow and peak experiences. The importance of insights into past civilisations. The ‘next step’ has already happened

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  Illustrations

  All pictures from The Art and Architecture Collection except where credited otherwise

  Map of Atlantis from Mundus Suhterraneus by Athansius Kircher (The Charles Walker Collection)

  Neanderthal Man (Hulton Deutsch Collection)

  Java Man (Hulton Deutsch Collection)

  The Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt The pyramids at Giza

  The sarcophagus of Cheops in the King’s Chamber, the Great Pyramid

  The Grand Gallery in the Great Pyramid

  The Sphinx and the Pyramid of Chefren at Giza

  The Sphinx

  The Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, Mexico View of the ruins at Teotihuacan Cave painting, Lascaux, France Cave painting of urus, Lascaux

  Acknowledgements

  Many friends have helped in the writing of this book—primarily the three to whom it is dedicated: John Anthony West, Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval. The latter was particularly helpful with astronomical information, while Graham Hancock patiently printed up spare copies of the typescripts of Fingerprints of the Gods and Keeper of Genesis for me. It was Graham’s uncle Jim Macaulay who lent me the important book Time Stands Still by Keith Critchlow, and also introduced me to the ideas of Anne Macaulay (no relative), who was kind enough to allow me to read her unpublished typescript Science and Gods in Megalithic Britain. Rand and Rose Flem-ath allowed me to see their (then) unpublished typescript of When the Sky Fell which, in my opinion, solves the problem of the present whereabouts of ‘Atlantis’.

  My old friend Eddie Campbell, for whom I used to write reviews when he was literary editor of the London Evening News, lent me André VandenBroeck’s Al-Kemi several years ago, and in due course, Schwaller de Lubicz’s American publisher, Ehud Spurling, was able to give me André’s address. He also sent me copies of all Schwaller’s books in English. (The Temple of Man is unfortunately still awaiting publication.) Christopher Bamford has also been extremely helpful in providing me with information on Schwaller—of which, as it turned out, I was able to use only a fraction in this book. The same is true of the vast amount of material with which André VandenBroeck provided me, and which I am still hoping to use in some future book. Christopher Dunn has also been unstintingly helpful in trying to help me find possible answers to Egyptian scientific mysteries. Detective Frank Domingo, of the New York Police Department, also provided me with valuable information on his facial reconstruction techniques.

  Paul Roberts was responsible for introducing me to the work of David Frawley on ancient India, and my friend Georg Feuerstein sent me the book he co-authored with Frawley and Subhash Kak, The Roots of Civilisation.

  An old acquaintance, Carole Ann Gill, introduced me to the work of Zechariah Sitchin. Graham Hancock was able to provide me with Sitchin’s address, and Sitchin was kind enough to answer my innumerable questions with kindly patience. I must also thank my old friend Martin Burgess, who proved to be a Sitchin devotee, and who was able to answer my many questions about him.

  It was Alexander Imich who recommended me to read Forbidden Archaeology, and its author, Michael Cremo, was also kind enough to enter into correspondence.

  Readers who know Herbert Wendt’s books on palaeontology will note my indebtedness to them in Chapter 6.

  Other friends who have read parts of the book in typescript form and made valuable suggestions are Howard Dossor, Maurice Bassett, Ted Brown, Gary Lachman and Donald Hotson.

  I am grateful to Mike Hayes for sending me his book The Infinite Harmony, which had been lying around my untidy house for six months before I happened to read it, and realised that it provided some of the answers I had been looking for.

  A casual visit from Frank and Carina Cooper led to my reading of Kevin Kelly’s Out of Control, which arrived with a perfect timeliness which looked remarkably like synchronicity. But then, the whole writing of this book has involved a series of synchronicities that left me slightly incredulous.

  Introduction

  My own part in this quest began in July 1979, when I received a review copy of a book called Serpent in the Sky, by John Anthony West. It was basically a study of the work of a maverick Egyptologist called Rene Schwaller de Lubicz, and its central argument was that Egyptian civilisation—and the Sphinx in particular—was thousands of years older than historians believe. Schwaller had devoted the latter part of his life to demonstrating that the ancient Egyptians possessed ‘a grand, interrelated and complete system of knowledge’. The passage that excited me so much was on page 198:

  Schwaller de Lubicz observed that the severe erosion of the body of the Great Sphinx at Giza is due to the action of water, not wind and sand.

  If the single fact of water erosion of the Sphinx could be confirmed, it would in itself overthrow all accepted chronologies of the history of civilisation; it would force a drastic re-evaluation of the assumption of ‘progress’—the assumption upon which the whole of modern education is based. It would be difficult to find a single, simple question with graver implications. The water erosion of the Sphinx is to history what the convertibility of matter into energy is to physics.

  The problem is that although this final chapter of the book is called ‘Egypt: Heir to Atlantis’, it actually says very little about such a possible link. The most important comment about this occurs in the Introduction:

  Following an observation made by Schwaller de Lubicz, it is now possible virtually to prove the existence of another, and perhaps greater civilisation ante-dating dynastic Egypt—and all other known civilisations—by millennia. In other words, it is now possible to prove ‘Atlantis’, and simultaneously, the historical reality of the Biblical Flood, (I use inverted commas around ‘Atlantis’ since it is not the physical location that is at issue here, but rather the existence of a civilisation sufficiently sophisticated and sufficiently ancient to give rise to the legend.)

  So West was not, in fact, necessarily talking about Plato’s mythical Atlantis, but simply about this possibility that civilisation may be millennia older than historians accept. In which case, there is a sense in which what has been called ‘the dreaded A word’ (which entails the instant assumption that its user is a member of the lunatic fringe) may not be necessary at all. We are not talking about the fictional Atlantis of Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea or Conan Doyle’s Maracot Deep, but simply about the possibility that human culture may be far older than we believe.

  Now, at the same time as I received Serpent in the Sky, another publisher sent me the reissue of a book called Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, subtitled Advanced Civilisation in the Ice Age, by Charles Hapgood, a professor of the history of science in New England. Like West and Schwaller, Hapgood had also come to accept the notion of an ancient civilisation that pre-dated dynastic Egypt. Hapgood had arrived at his conclusion by a completely different route. He had studied medieval navigation maps called portolans, and concluded from certain of them that they had to be based on far, far older maps, and that the South Pole had been mapped in the days before it was covered with ice, possibly as long ago as 7000 BC—three and a half thousand years before the Great Pyramid. But Hapgood takes great care not to suggest that his ancient maritime civilisation might be Atlantis, or even to breathe the word.

  Hapgood’s quest began with the so-called Piri Re’is map, dating back to 1513, which shows the coast of South America
and the South Pole—many centuries before the latter was discovered. I had heard of the Piri Re’is map via a popular bestseller called The Morning of the Magicians, by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier—the book that had started the 'occult boom’ in 1960—as well as in the work of Erich von Daniken: both had tried to use the map to prove that earth must have been visited by spacemen in the remote past. I was perfectly willing to be open-minded about the possibility—as I still am—but it seemed to me that their arguments were simply untenable, and in Daniken’s case, often absurd and dishonest. Now I was interested to learn that the argument for an Ice-Age civilisation did not depend on ancient astronauts, and that Hapgood’s reasoning was cautious, sound and logically irrefutable. As far as I could see, he had proved, once and for all, that there had been a maritime civilisation in the days before the South Pole was covered with ice.

  But I had other work to do—for example, writing an enormous Criminal History of Mankind—and pushed aside the whole question of ‘Atlantis’.