Secret FEMA Plan To Use Pastors as
Pacifiers in Preparation For Martial Law
Paul Joseph
Watson/Prison Planet.com | May 24 2006
by Frank M. Wanderer Ph.D
Truth is an objective fact, whereas a lie is always something that has to be fabricated. A masterfully created lie is, however, very similar to the truth, so such a lie can be extremely dangerous. Lies, taken as truth, will lull us into a false sense of security, into a dream. Once we have believed that we know the truth, we no longer look for it, and we will not long for it any more. The masters of fabricating lies exploit that very psychological reaction. Let us see who they are and why they keep producing their misleading lies relentlessly.
Day by day, we hear from the media, what a lot of lies there are in the world. Politicians lie to us, bankers, business people and our acquaintances do the same. Even we lie to others, when we find it necessary. Where and what are the roots of all those lies?
A thorough and detailed analysis will yield a surprising result: we will find that all those different lies have only one single root, and that is found in ourself. That is nothing but the separate little self, the Ego. The Ego is responsible for all the lies in the world, the Ego is the greatest master of fabricating lies.
The Ego itself is the product of a masterfully constructed lie, as it is in fact a non-existent thing, which is given a pseudo-existence under certain circumstances. The circumstances exert their influence on us through our parents and other people important for us. They are the people who created the Ego in us, when they told us in our childhood who we were and what are names were.
The lies, naturally, did not begin there, since we needed an Ego to survive and collect experience in the world. The lies began when our parents made us believe that we were identical with that Ego, we were nothing but a restricted, separate existence. That was the first lie, and the others were nicely added like new layers over the years. With the effective help of other people we fabricated a lie about the world, and another one about our own mission in it. Naturally, we were not aware that these were lies, as we took them as truth, and we honestly believed in them.
By believing in, and identifying with, our lies, we have invested so much energy into these lies over the years that even when someone attempts to question their truth, we are scared to death. We believe that we know what the world is like around us and how it works. We can clearly see that it does not work perfectly, and we believe that if we try really hard, we are able to change it, to improve it. With such thoughts we want to create a comfortable dream for us all. The dream is supposed to give us peace of mind, to convince us that we are appreciated by other people, and what we do is correct and desirable.
Lies are, however, only lies and they might give us peace of mind for a shorter or longer period, but in the end they will only bring us disappointment. That is exactly what reveals their real nature. We all must face reality one day. In order to postpone that moment, we rapidly replace our old and failed lies with new ones. We are doing that because we are afraid of the idea of giving up our existence as a separate self, we fear facing the unknown.
But now the time has come for us to abandon all lies, and jump head first into the unknown. Let us imagine for a moment that all thoughts evaporate from our head, and we no longer have any concepts, ideas, etc. there. Our lies are wrapped in thoughts, and they carry the false stamp of truth. The loss of thoughts will scare us so badly because the dream world, giving us a false sense of security, will also disappear with them.
When we are able to break free from the spell of our thoughts, we are surprised to realize that our image that we created about ourself will also disappear with our thoughts. We are then unable to answer the question, ”Who are we?” If we find an answer somewhere inside us, we are still the captives of our thoughts, the thoughts have not entirely disappeared from our head yet. But once our self-image has evaporated, we may no longer think of ourselves as fathers or mothers, Catholics or Muslims, good or bad.
The disappearance of thoughts leaves a gateway open for us towards experiencing real truth. Together with the thoughts, the Ego, the self also disappears, and the truth of I am shines out bright. That is the true fact that we have dressed up into the rags of ”I am this or that” over the years. Since our environment has concentrated all their attention on that garment, we wanted to make it more and more sumptuous and beautiful. We were so successful in that work that finally we completely identified with that clothing, and the basic fact of existence sunk into oblivion for us.
In our days, however, the time has finally come to shed our garment of thoughts, and find our real Self in the naked truth of existence.
About the author:
Frank M. Wanderer Ph.D is a professor of psychology, a consciousness researcher and writer. Frank is the author of the books „The Revolution of Consciousness: Deconditioning the Programmed Mind”, “The Flames of Alertness: Discover the Power of Consciousness!“, “The Biggest Obstacle to Enlightenment: How to Escape from the Prison of Mind Games?” and several books on consciousness. With a lifelong interest in the mystery of human existence, Frank’s work is to help others wake up from identification with our personal history and the illusory world of the forms and shapes, and to find our identity in what he calls “the Miracle”, the mystery of the Consciousness.
You can also follow his blog frankmwanderer.com
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Queen of Sheba
The first use in the Bible of the word “queen” refers to a Black woman (1 Kings 10:1). Her name is alleged to be Makeda, but the Scriptures refer to her as the Queen of Sheba or the Queen of the South. Her fame was such that 2,000 years after her death, according to blacksinthebible.net, Jesus Christ mentioned her long trip and referred to her challenge of Solomon’s wisdom, which led to a love affair with the wise Jewish king.
Zipporah
Moses, who wrote the first five books of the Bible, married an Ethiopian woman, Zipporah, and was persecuted for it, says blacksinthescriptures.com. He and his family almost lost their lives because she was African and because of her Ethiopic religious roots. “God, Himself, brought judgment time and again because of this African woman,” says blacksinthebible.org. “And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman.” (Numbers 12:1)
Pharaoh
He was from a line of kings that predated any nation of Europe. They are known as Pharaohs, which means Sun Kings and they ruled the land Ham known as Egypt (Psalm 105:27). Pharaoh was the king of North Africa who said, “Who is the Lord that I should obey Him?”
Ham
Western theology vilifies him as cursed and equates his name with swine, according to blacksinthebible.org. He was the son of Noah and helped him build the ark. Ham’s second son inherited his land in Africa upon Ham’s death.
Nimrod
Many call someone whom they deem as uncouth or silly a Nimrod, and, therefore, they show a severe lack of knowledge of Scripture. Nimrod was Ham’s (the father of the Black races) grandson, and he was the first ruler of human government, according to the Scripture. The Bible indicates Nimrod was the first king in human history and he ruled mankind from the tower of Babel, after the flood of Noah (Genesis 10:10). The world leaned on his hunting prowess for food after the deluge when animals began migrating back to their natural habitats. Nimrod the Great became a mighty hunter before the Lord.
Hagar
This Black woman from Africa is reported in Scripture as the first enslaved sex victim, namely to Abraham, father of the Arab and Jewish people. Abraham impregnated his wife’s African enslaved worker, who she obtained from Pharaoh, the greatest king in Africa. God never acknowledged the child as Abraham’s heir. He would refer to him as “the lad,” the son of the “bond (bondage) woman.”
Asenath
Asenath was the daughter of an African priest, who named her after a Black goddess the Greeks renamed Minerva. Asenath was a native of Africa and all of her in-laws were Jewish, according to blackwomeninthebible.com. She met her in-laws when her husband summoned all the Jews in the world to Africa to weather a famine.
Tirhakah
Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia, waged war against Sennacherib during the reign of King Hezekiah of Judah (2 Kings 19:9; Isaiah 37:9) and drove him from his intention of destroying Jerusalem and deporting its inhabitants, according to blacksinthebible.org. God used this African king to protect the Jews, his chosen people.
Simon the Canaanite
He was the only Black apostle of Jesus Christ. He converted to the Nation of Israel to become a Jew through the article of circumcision, says blacksinthebible.net.
Simon of Cyrene
The only race that did not willingly participate in the capital murder of Jesus was Blacks, according to blacksinthebible.org. However, Simon of Cyrene had the cross of the Son of God slammed on his back by a European guard and was forced to carry the cross of “humanity’s shame” the rest of the way to the crucifixion.
There is no other place on Earth like Egypt’s Giza Plateau. Anyone with even a slight interest in history and civilisation is aware of this fact. For on this plateau there stands the Great Pyramids and their sculpted guardian, the Great Sphinx.
Although there are plenty of theories, no one really knows who built the Giza Pyramids or carved the Sphinx, or when they were constructed. Any statement as to who built them, or when they were built, is pure theory. In light of all the various theories concerning these mysterious structures, I don’t think the theoretical nature of the pyramid builders can be emphasised enough.
What stands out at Giza more than anything else is not only the magnitude of the construction of the pyramids, but the internal design of the Great Pyramid; three chambers, of which one is subterranean, and their connecting passageways. The passageway that leads to the so-called King’s Chamber rises to a height of thirty-six feet! On the other hand, all other passageways were not built tall enough to accommodate the average man or woman.
There is also the unique configuration of the King’s Chamber as well as the Queen’s Chamber. Both of these contain two shafts, one on each side of the chamber. The Queen’s Chamber contains a corbelled niche built into its east wall, and the King’s Chamber’s ceiling is composed of five granite slabs stacked one atop the other. Why these chambers were constructed in this manner is unknown.
The official theory is that the pyramids were tombs, and that King Khufu kept changing his mind where his burial chamber was to be placed; thus, the reason for three chambers in the Great Pyramid. However, in comparison to typical Egyptian burial methods (the mastaba and the tombs in the Valley of the Kings), the Giza pyramids, and particularly the Great Pyramid, do not fair well within the Egyptian concept of a tomb.
The Egyptians believed in an afterlife, and the tomb was an important part of that belief. As the tomb of King Tutankhamun testifies, the deceased’s chamber of internment was to be decorated with art and filled with that person’s possessions. Why they practiced this ritual was not for superstitious reasons, as one might suspect. It was practical, according to their beliefs, and aimed at preventing that person’s energy (spirit) from being re-absorbed into Nature’s spiritual force.
For the ancient Egyptians, Ba animated a living person, whereas Ka was the energy emanating from that person. Although not an exact analogy, the Ka and the Ba are what traditional Western thought might refer as spirit and soul. Another important aspect of Egyptian belief represented immortality, the ankh, depicted as the crested ibis.
The Ka, represented in art by up-stretched arms, was believed to be the part of man’s consciousness and energy (man’s spirit or inner quality) that related to the immediate world. It is the part of us connected to the physical body; where it lived, its possessions, as well as the people he or she was acquainted with. The Ka can be likened to one’s personality, which upon death is separated from the body, and naturally seeks a way to once again take form. The Ba, represented by a winged human head, or sometimes a human-faced bird, represented the part of consciousness that is immortal.
When someone passed away, it was their goal as well as the hope of the family, that the deceased’s Ka would seek a way to remain united with their Ba. To help accomplish this eternal union, the possessions of the deceased were gathered together by the family and placed in the tomb with the mummified body. Mummification prevented the body from decomposing and returning to the soil of the Earth, whereas the tomb, with the deceased’s possessions, served as a ‘home’ for the Ka. As a result, the Ka maintained its identity in the spiritual world and could seek out its Ba in order to achieve ankh, which resulted in the resurrected and glorified form of the deceased beyond the limits of an earthly realm.
Like the pharaonic tombs carved into the Valley of the Kings, royal mastabas built during the early dynasties – some as early as 3000 BCE – were also designed with ‘home’ in mind, as that home relates to a person’s Ka. Case in point: from the sixth dynasty, Mereruka’s mastaba was crafted in mansion-like proportion with thirty-two rooms and adorned with statues and art depicting, for example, scenes of wildlife along the Nile River.
The traits of Egyptian domestic life, so beautifully incorporated into the design of their tombs, are not found in the Giza pyramids. The Giza pyramids contain no art or hieroglyphics of any kind, very uncharacteristic of Egyptian tombs. So why is it the case that the Giza pyramids are generally considered to be tombs of fourth dynasty Pharaohs? The reason is because of an association of the Giza complex with another development ten miles south at Sakkara where the Egyptians really did build tombs as pyramids.
At Sakkara in 1881, the French Egyptologist, Gaston Maspero (1846–1916) discovered that the subterranean chamber of the Pepi I Pyramid (second ruler of the sixth dynasty) was engraved with hieroglyphics. Over the course of subsequent explorations, it was discovered that a total of five pyramids at Sakkara also contained inscriptions, from the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth dynasties of the Old Kingdom. In 1952, Dr. Samuel A.B. Mercer (1879–1969), Professor of Semitic Languages and Egyptology at the University of Toronto, published a complete English translation of “The Pyramid Texts” in a volume of the same name. According to Mercer, The Pyramid Texts contained ‘words to be spoken’ concerning funerary ritual, magical formulae, and religious hymns, as well as prayers and petitions on behalf of the deceased king.1
With the pyramids at Sakkara being confirmed as tombs the associative logic came to be that all pyramids must be tombs. Furthermore, since there are two cemeteries (mastaba fields) to the east and west of the northernmost Giza pyramid, assuming that all pyramids are tombs was a likely conclusion. However, the condition of the Sakkara pyramids – most of which are believed constructed after the Giza pyramids – poses serious problems in this logical association. Of the pyramids at Sakkara only Djoser’s ‘Step Pyramid’ is in good condition, although not really a true pyramid. (The Step Pyramid was originally a mastaba that was modified into a pyramid.) All other pyramids at Sakkara, most of which belong to the fifth and sixth dynasties are in ruins today and resemble mounds of rubble.
According to a consensus of Egyptologists, Djoser’s Step Pyramid at Sakkara was constructed during the third dynasty and was the forerunner to the fourth dynasty pyramids on the Giza Plateau. After pyramid development at Giza, for whatever reason, the focus of pyramid building shifted back to Sakkara.
The easily observable and obvious differences in the Giza pyramids and the Sakkara pyramids, which were all supposed to have been built during the same era, are a problem. Clearly, the construction techniques, as well as materials, for the Giza pyramids were different than those at Sakkara, or else we would expect pyramids at both sites to have stood the test of time in a similar manner. They did not. The important point is why. Did the engineers and construction workers of the Old Kingdom not pass along their methods from the fourth to the fifth dynasty? It seems they did not, which is a very curious occurrence given the stability of Egyptian civilisation. It may also be the case that the fourth dynasty Egyptians did not build the Giza pyramids.
No other pyramid in Egypt (the world for that matter) is like the Giza pyramids, and in particular the Great Pyramid. Additionally, there is no direct evidence to support the claim that the Great Pyramid, or the other Giza pyramids were tombs. Nor is there any record left by its builders as to what it was for or when it was built. This creates a problem of explanation. If the Great Pyramid was not a tomb, then what was it? A mystical temple for initiation ritual, or a public works project designed to unify the country? Or, was it something else entirely? Theories are abundant, but the only theory I am aware of that covers all aspects of the Great Pyramid’s interior design, is Christopher Dunn’s theory that it was a device. According to Dunn, the Great Pyramid was a machine for producing power by converting tectonic vibration into electricity.
There are a number of reasons to accept Dunn analysis. First, he explains the interior design and all other evidence within the Great Pyramid in a cohesive manner. Second, he demonstrates the technical skills required to accomplish precision construction. Third, Dunn’s expertise and career is in the precision fabrication and manufacturing industry, which makes him uniquely qualified to express a professional opinion on the techniques and tools of the Giza pyramid builders.
The fact is, modern construction companies could not build the Great Pyramid today without first inventing specialised tools and techniques in order to deal with blocks of stone that vary in weight from ten to fifty tons. Such an endeavour would be on a magnitude equivalent to building a hydroelectric dam or a nuclear power station requiring tens of billions of dollars in resources. Although our modern economy is different than that of the ancient world, the resource required now as compared to then is the same! The stone must be quarried and moved and the workers must be paid. The fact that an extremely large amount of resources were dedicated to Giza pyramid development over a long period of time demands, in my opinion, that pyramid building was utilitarian, and not for any fourth dynasty pharaonic vanity of having the largest headstone in the world.
For me, the evidence clearly tells a very different story of early dynastic Egypt. Sometime around 3000 BCE, the establishment and growth of permanent settlements in the Lower Nile Valley led to the development of civilisation. Why Giza and the surrounding area were chosen as the focal point for early Dynastic Egypt was because ‘civilisation’ had been there before, as the three pyramids and the Great Sphinx testify. Without knowing what the pyramids were designed for, the early Egyptians also assumed they must have been tombs. As a result, they rejuvenated the Giza Plateau and turned it into a Necropolis, then expanded to Sakkara where they built tombs in pyramid form, albeit of lesser quality and not brandishing the skills the original builders of the Giza pyramids demonstrated. Pyramid building, even the smaller ones at Sakkara, was resource intense, so the Egyptians reverted to burying their nobility in the traditional mastaba.
This scenario, which calls for an earlier civilisation with advanced technical skills, poses another problem. It does not fit the standard model of history. However, the notion that an earlier civilisation existed does not rest on the Giza pyramids alone. There is also the Sphinx, which in 1991 was geologically dated to between 7,000 and 9,000 years old by the team of John Anthony West and geologist Dr. Robert Schoch. Add to that the megaliths of Nabta Playa in southwestern Egypt, which is believed to have been a star viewing diagram, according to astrophysicist Dr. Thomas Brophy, that relates not only the distance from Earth to the belt stars of Orion, but their radial velocities as well. Another ‘head scratching’ discovery is the 1260-ton foundation stones of the Baalbek temple, west of Beirut in Lebanon, one of which was left in its quarry.
Clearly history has its secrets, but there is enough evidence to validate, as theory, that civilisation is much older than we have previously believed. History, according to the ancient Egyptians themselves, confirms this. According to the Papyrus of Turin, which is a complete list of kings up to the New Kingdom, before Menes (before 3000 BCE) the:
…venerables Shemsu-Hor, [reigned] 13,420 years
Reigns up to Shemsu-Hor, 23,200 years2
These two lines in the king’s list are explicit. According to their documents, the total years of Egyptian history goes back 36,620 years. The argument that the years in the king’s list do not represent actual years, but some other, shorter, measurement of time seems more of an attempt to explain away than to explain. The ancient Egyptians employed a sophisticated calendar system that involved a 365-day year, which was periodically corrected through the predictable and cyclical nature of the star Sirius. Every 1,461 years, the heliacal rising of Sirius marked the beginning of the new year. A single Sirius cycle corresponds to 1,461 years, where each year is equivalent to 365.25 days. In essence, the marking of the New Year at the heliacal rising of Sirius was the ancient Egyptian’s ‘leap year.’ Of course, determining the length of Sirius’ cyclical nature requires stellar observation over thousands of years which means the origins of pharaonic Egypt, or its source of knowledge, must originate in the remote past.
Late twentieth century Egyptologist Walter Emery seems to have agreed in principle that the origins of ancient Egypt date well into prehistory. Emery believed that ancient Egypt’s written language was beyond the use of pictorial symbols, even during the earliest dynasties, and that signs were also used to represent sounds, along with a numerical system. When hieroglyphics had been stylised and used in architecture, a cursive script was already in common use. His conclusion was that:
All this shows that the written language must have had a considerable period of development behind it, of which no trace has as yet been found in Egypt.3
Ancient Egyptian religion also testifies to a considerable period of development. Their religion, which is more of a philosophy of nature and life than it is a ‘religion,’ is based on a level of sophistication that, in all respects, appears more scientific than it does mythical.
From a modern Western perspective their religion has been billed as primitive and polytheistic, and appears as a mythological menagerie of gods. Nothing could be further from the truth. The source of this misunderstanding stems from the Egyptian word neter being translated into Greek as ‘god,’ which later took on the Westernised meaning of deity. The true meaning of neter was to describe an aspect of deity, not a deity to be worshipped. In essence, neters referred to principles of nature in a practical scientific way.
Yet, the meaning of a specific neter was communicated in a visually symbolic manner. When a human was depicted with an animal head, this signified the principle as it occurs in man. If the whole animal was depicted it was a reference to a principle in general. Alternatively, a human head depicted on an animal represented that principle as it relates to the divine essence within mankind, not any person in particular, but the archetypal; as the immortal Ba is represented by a human-faced bird.
Another example is Anubis (the jackal), who presided over the process of mummification. He did so as a representation of the decomposition or fermentation process. In nature, the jackal keeps its prey and allows it to decompose before consumption. Therefore, he who presided over the mummification ritual was depicted in art as a man with the head of the jackal, thereby representing man’s death as the digestive principle found in nature. From a universal perspective, the decomposition of a body is, to Nature, digestion. Hence, those organs associated with digestion, after being removed from the deceased, were placed in a Canopic jar with a lid shaped in the image of the jackal’s head.
The sudden emergence of Dynastic Egypt, at the beginning of the third millennium BCE, is one of civilisation’s greatest mysteries. How did this supposedly primitive North African culture organise itself into a civilisation of such magnificence? One aspect that I believe has been overlooked is that mankind – anatomically modern humans – has been around for a very long time. According to recent genetic studies, all people today are the descendents of a single African woman who walked the Earth 150,000 years ago. According to geneticists, her mitochondrial DNA exists in all of us.
This is a long time, 147,000 years, for our ancestors to have remained in a relatively primitive state. In my opinion, the evidence, some of which is incredibly anomalous (in particular the Great Pyramid) suggests they did not remain primitive. Given the evidence of ancient Egypt’s technical abilities (their monument, temples, and other crafted artifacts still exist), as well as their sophisticated symbolism in describing Nature, it appears that in establishing a dynastic society, the Egyptians of the third millennium BCE benefited from a legacy of knowledge.
Skeptics of this approach to history, of course, would want to know where the evidence of this technical and prehistoric civilisation is. If such a civilisation existed, surely there would be overwhelming evidence to support its existence. If an exclusively uniformitarian approach to geologic formation were generally accepted as fact, I would agree with the skeptic.
However, mass extinctions, as a result of environmental catastrophism because of volcanism, asteroid or comet impact, or stellar (gamma) radiation, now seems to be a reality.
According to geologists there have been five large mass extinctions in Earth’s history: the Ordovician (440–450 mya), Devonian (408–360 mya), Permian (286–248), Triassic (251–252 mya), and Cretaceous (144–65 mya). Although all of these cataclysms occurred well before the modern human form, there are two global disasters that occurred relatively recently.
Approximately 71,000 years ago Mount Toba, in Sumatra, erupted spewing an enormous amount of ash into the atmosphere. It was the largest volcanic eruption in the last two million years, nearly 10,000 times larger than the Mount St. Helen’s explosion in 1980. The resultant caldera formed a lake 100 kilometres long by 60 kilometres wide, with devastating and lasting climatic consequences. A six-year long volcanic winter followed, and in its wake an ice age that lasted for a thousand years. With its sulfuric haze, the volcanic winter lowered global temperatures, creating drought and famine decimating the human population.
According to geneticist’s estimates, the population was reduced to somewhere between 15,000 and 40,000 individuals. Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Utah, Lynn Jorde, believes it may have been as low as 5,000.4
Even closer to our time is the mysterious cataclysm at the end of the Ice Age, only 10,000 years ago. No one really knows if it was the result of natural phenomenon or an asteroid impact. What is known is that the climate drastically altered life for those who lived at that time. It is a known geologic fact that at the end of the Ice Age many North American species became extinct, including the mammoth, camel, horse, ground sloth, peccaries (pig-like hoofed mammals), antelope, American elephant, rhinoceros, giant armadillo, tapirs, saber-toothed tigers and giant bison. It also affected the climates of lower latitudes in Central and South America, as well as Europe in a similar way. Those lands have also revealed evidence of mass extinction. Yet, the mechanism that brought on this Ice Age ending cataclysm remains a mystery.
If an ancient technical civilisation existed during the remote past, what would be the likelihood of that civilisation surviving a global catastrophe intact? Estimates from the Toba eruption are not encouraging. Neither are the scenarios that astronomers and climatologists build today for a theoretical asteroid impact.
According to the archeological evidence, anatomically modern man (Cro-Magnon) appeared in Western Europe 40,000 years ago. Where they came from has been a long-standing mystery. The logical deduction is that they migrated from Africa. However, such a migration requires a host culture, of which there is no evidence.
Nevertheless, a likely location for this host culture would have been along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, which were likely a series of fresh water lakes during the remote past.
If ancient civilisation existed in the region of the Mediterranean, it would not have survived the conflagration that turned those lakes into a salt-water sea.
If that were indeed the case, the remnants of those who lived on the perimeter of that civilisation would appear to us, today, as anomalies such as the Giza pyramids and the giant stones of Baalbek.
Cro-Magnon cultures of Western Europe, although once a part of a great Mediterranean civilisation, would also appear as an anomaly. For us, it would be as if they appeared from nowhere.
Sources http://www.newdawnmagazine.com
Along the cliffs of the Bandiagara escarpment in Mali – south of the Niger river and north of Upper Volta – live the modern-day Dogon tribe, a reclusive society consisting of approximately 300,000 individuals. To all outward appearances, they are a primitive tribe, who manage a near-subsistence living as onion farmers, metal-workers, weavers, and artisans under the often difficult conditions of a Sahelian climate, one that typically provides four months of rain followed by an extended dry season.
The current locale of the Dogon, which is far from any of the well-travelled routes of modern society, may have been a deliberate choice based on its ability to shelter a valued traditional way of life from unwelcome outside influences – the Dogon are thought to have migrated to this region from the Niger River in the 1500’s as a way of avoiding forced conversion to Islam.
Although Dogon society may seem well distanced from outside contact, their culture appears to constitute a kind of spiritual crossroads for several important ancient religious traditions. The Dogon are the keepers of a well-preserved cosmology that is cast in the symbols and myths of the classic ancient cosmologies. These myths provide a conceptual framework upon which many Dogon civic traditions are based, and often take forms distinctly similar to those that are known to have existed in ancient Egypt.
Likewise, the cosmology is often expressed ritually through familiar acts that are shared commonly with Judaism – such as the wearing of skull-caps and prayer shawls, the celebration of a Jubilee year, and the practice of circumcision. Furthermore, the cosmology appears to be a close relative to the ancient Vedic tradition of India, which served as the foundation for Buddhism and Hinduism.
Likewise, key concepts are couched in well-defined cosmological keywords whose pronunciations and meanings often closely reflect similar pronunciations and meanings found in the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic language. Parallels such as these suggest that the Dogon religion may well have had its roots in much more ancient cosmological traditions.
What we know of Dogon cosmology and religion was attained through the expeditions of French anthropologists Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen, which began in the 1930’s and continued until Griaule’s untimely death in 1956. These studies culminated in two primary texts relating to Dogon religion, entitled Dieu D’Eau and Le Reynard Pale (later translated into English as Conversations With Ogotemmeli and The Pale Fox.) Griaule and Dieterlen meticulously documented a well-kept secret Dogon tradition – known primarily to the Dogon priests and a relative handful of other tribe members.
After decades of devoted study, Griaule himself was eventually initiated into the Dogon cosmological tradition. In fact, the tradition as Griaule describes it is actually open to any person who chooses to pursue it in an orderly manner. Griaule and Dieterlen tell us that the Dogon priests are required to respond truthfully to any question posed to them that is deemed to be in order, or appropriate to the initiated status of the questioner. Likewise, a priest is required to remain silent – or even to lie, if necessary to protect inner secrets of the tradition, in response to a question that is deemed to be out of order.
In 1975, nearly two decades after Griaule’s death, the studies of Griaule and Dieterlen stirred controversy with the publication of a book by Robert K.G. Temple called The Sirius Mystery. Temple’s book focused on unexpected Dogon knowledge of subtle astronomic details relating to the stars of Sirius, many of which should be undetectable without access to a powerful telescope. Temple offered this purported Dogon knowledge as evidence of a possible alien contact. Soon after, popular researcher Carl Sagan countered the suggestion of an alien contact with the proposal that the Dogon priests had simply learned these facts about the stars of Sirius from some modern visitor – a suggestion that Germaine Dieterlen sought to refute by producing a 400-year-old carved artefact that depicted the star system.
During the 1980’s, a second wave of anthropologists – led by Belgian Walter Van Beek – restudied the Dogon and – notwithstanding Griaule’s description of Dogon cosmology as a well-kept secret – reported an inability to recreate Griaule’s findings. Van Beek wrote in his book Dogon: Africa’s People of the Cliffs (p. 103):
The Dogon have no creation myth, no deep story relating how the world came into being. (An anthropologist some decades ago probed his informants for creation myths so insistently that the Dogon, polite as ever, obligingly produced them….)
Unfortunately, what Professor Van Beek and his colleagues failed to notice – as apparently did every other Dogon researcher for the first half-century following Griaule’s death – were the many abiding parallels that can be shown to exist between Griaule’s Dogon cosmology and that of classical Buddhism.
Both the Dogon and Buddhist cosmologies begin conceptually with an aligned symbolic ritual structure that serves as a grand mnemonic for the cosmology itself – the Dogon granary and the Buddhist stupa. These structures are built on a common base plan and evoke a series of matching symbolic shapes, such as the figure of a circular base around a central point that represents the sun, intersecting perpendicular lines that symbolise the axis munde, a dome or hemisphere that represents the concept of essence or substance (the Dogon say mass or matter), and culminate in a square that is said to represent the concept of space. Both structures serve as the foundation for a complex system of cosmology that ultimately defines matter as the product of primordial threads woven by a spider; these threads are said to pass through seven vibrations conceived of as rays of a star of increasing length, and are characterised by the spiral that can be drawn to inscribe the endpoints of the rays.
In essence, we can show that Griaule’s descriptions of Dogon cosmology closely conform to a known system of cosmology, and therefore that the correctness of Griaule’s observations are directly affirmed. Such parallels leave Professor Van Beek in the unenviable position of having falsely accused the Dogon priests of fabrication – a claim that we know most assuredly cannot be true.
The classic Dogon granary – a structure that Van Beek later called “a chimera known only to Griaule” – is in truth a symbolic structure that is quite well-known to large populations all across India and Asia. (Details of Buddhist stupa symbolism were documented some two decades after Griaule’s death by Adrian Snodgrass of the University of West Sydney, Australia – a leading authority on Buddhist architecture and symbolism – in his book The Symbolism of the Stupa.)
We can only surmise that the rush to judgment against Griaule’s Dogon cosmology was done without adequate consideration of the principles of comparative cosmology. No critic seems to have seriously investigated the possibility that Dogon cosmology as reported by Griaule might represent a known and legitimate cosmological form.
(In fairness, although Griaule openly cited parallels between Dogon and ancient Greek mythology, neither Griaule, Dieterlen, nor any member of their anthropological team seems to have been aware of the many intimate parallels to Buddhism.)
The same might be said for researchers in other disciplines whose fields of studies might be potentially impacted by the findings of comparative cosmologists.
There are suggestions that the earliest characters in various ancient written languages may have borrowed their shapes and meanings from ancient cosmology. This possibility should not be a surprising one, since key elements of Egyptian cosmology are known to have existed in pre-dynastic cultures.
For example, there is clear evidence for the worship of both the mother goddess Neith and the creator god Amen that dates from pre-dynastic times – well before the first surviving written text in Egypt. This view is also upheld by a variety of on-going parallels that become evident when we compare Dogon cosmological drawings with ancient Egyptian glyph shapes, and key words of Dogon cosmology with likely counterparts in the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic language.
A classic example of this apparent relationship between cosmological shapes and written characters is found in the Egyptian sun glyph (Figure 1), which for traditional Egyptologists can represent the sun, the concept of a day, or can indicate by its presence in a word that the word’s meaning relates to a period of time.
Any Egyptologist will be aware of the multiple meanings of the glyph, but few offer credible suggestions for how this specific shape may have come to be assigned to these specific meanings. Some researchers attribute the dotted-circle shape to an effect that happens when a person stares too long at the glaring sun. My personal view is that the natural impulses of humanity will likely be reflected in those of a typical five-year old, and in my experience, no five-year-old draws the sun as a circle around a central dot. More often, he or she draws the sun as a simple circle, perhaps coloured yellow.
In Dogon and Buddhist cosmology, the sun glyph shape represents the starting point both for the cosmology and for the ritually aligned structures that both mnemonically symbolise the cosmology. The base of these structures are established when an initiate draws a circle around a central stick or gnomen. This simple act creates an effective sun dial which can be used to track the hours of a day. The sun glyph shape can be thought of as resulting from the circular progression of shadows that are cast by the sun as it shines on the central stick throughout the course of a day. Consequently, the figure becomes a sensible symbol to represent both the sun and the concept of a day as defined by a single rotation of the earth in relation to the sun. We can see these meanings play out symbolically in terms of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic word for ‘week’, which is written with only two characters – the sun glyph and the number ten.
As a second step in the alignment of a ritual stupa or granary, the initiate marks the two longest shadows of the day (morning and evening) at the points where they intersect the drawn circle (see Figure 2). These points define an east/west line or axis that will pass through the stick on the two equinoxes, and that moves progressively further away from the stick until the date of the next solstice. In this way, the same sun glyph figure can be used to track and measure the length of a season or a year, and thereby comes to represent the concept of a period of time.
The many close parallels that exist between the Dogon and Buddhist cosmologies define a kind of framework, within whose context we can make sense of the various fragmentary references of Egyptian cosmology.
For example, the Egyptian god Amen is a likely counterpart to the ‘hidden’ Dogon god Amma; the eight paired gods and goddesses of the Egyptian Ogdoad or Ennead share important attributes with the eight male/female ancestors of Dogon tradition. Like the ancient Egyptians and the Buddhists, the Dogon conceive of the processes of creation in terms of multiple Worlds. The Dogon define a Second World similar to the Egyptian Underworld that is associated with a jackal – a figure who is symbolic of the concept of disorder – and is governed by a canine who is assigned the role of judge between truth and error. Likewise, careful comparison shows that many of the key Dogon cosmological drawings take shapes reminiscent of ancient Egyptian glyphs and are often defined by the Dogon priests in relation to concepts or meanings similar to those found in ancient Egypt.
In fact, there are many different ways in which the study of Dogon cosmology provides us with potential insights into the forms and meanings of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic characters and words. It is almost impossible for the comparative cosmologist to miss stark similarities between words such as Ogo (the name of a character who plays the role of light in Dogon myth) and Aakhu (the name of the Egyptian light god), or Sigui (the name of an important Dogon festival) and skhai (an Egyptian word meaning ‘to celebrate a festival’.) Support for these comparisons is most often provided by the cosmology itself, which typically defines a second level of meaning for important cosmological words – one that is logically disconnected from the first such that one cannot reasonably derive one meaning from the other.
Another example is that Amma and Amen are both defined as ‘hidden gods’, but both words can also mean ‘to grasp, to hold firm, or to establish’. The significance of these multiple meanings may be more obvious in the Dogon language, where – because no actual written Dogon language exists – words must be grouped based on similarity of pronunciation. However in the modern view of the Egyptian hieroglyphic language, the choice has been made to categorise words based on commonality of spelling – not pronunciation – and so any significance that may have originally rested on similarities of pronunciation is often rendered effectively transparent.
The initial impulse to consider the possible influences of cosmology on the Egyptian hieroglyphic language begins with the many persistent parallels that have been shown to exist between modern-day Dogon culture and that of ancient Egypt. These are documented in greater detail in my book The Science of the Dogon, but include such subtle practices as the founding of villages and districts in deliberate pairs – one called Upper and the other Lower.
Cultural comparisons between the Dogon and the ancient Egyptians range from the types of calendars observed, to common units of measure such as the cubit, to the observance of similar holidays and festivals, common modes of dress for their priests, common ritual practices such as circumcision, and a host of common words, mythical themes and symbols relating to concepts of cosmology. Given the depth and breadth of these other cultural parallels, it seems somewhat surprising that the Dogon have no native written language, but rather simply define an extensive set of drawn figures and signs. Many of these are closely associated with concepts of cosmology, and often take similar form and meaning to written Egyptian glyphs.
Given that the Dogon are understood to place a high value on purity of language, it seems unthinkable that they might once have possessed a written language but then – as an entire culture – somehow simply lost track of it. It seems far more likely that the priestly Dogon tribe never possessed a written language.
The absence of a written language among the Dogon suggests that any close contacts that may have occurred between the Dogon and the ancient Egyptians may have happened prior to the onset of written language in Egypt, or roughly at the boundary between pre-dynastic and dynastic Egypt. Support for this view can be found in many other aspects of Dogon cosmology and culture, which can also be seen to make sense if we postulate an early Dogon relationship to ancient Egypt.
Where Dogon cosmology defines eight relatively undifferentiated ancestors/teachers who emerge as paired opposites, ancient Egypt defines eight paired ancestor/gods and goddesses, who together define a category of deity that is simply not found in Dogon cosmology. Again and again we see non-deities in Dogon cosmology – characters from Dogon mythology (such as a jackal who symbolises the concept of disorder and a fox who is defined as a judge between truth and error) rise to the status of deities in ancient Egypt.
Yet Dogon cosmology also includes many cosmological elements from pre-dynastic Egypt that are known to have carried forward to ancient Egypt much in their pre-dynastic form. Such evidence again points to a likely timeframe for any close contact between the Dogon and the ancient Egyptians at or around the boundary between pre-dynastic and dynastic Egypt.
Matching aspects of Dogon and Buddhist cosmology provide us with a series of defined shapes that are evoked by the cosmology and explicitly assigned to symbolic concepts – the first of these is the circular sun glyph shape, which both the Dogon and Buddhists associate with the sun (see Figure 3, page 55). Among others is the shape of a hemisphere or dome, which is associated with the concept of essence or mass, substance or matter. Another is the shape of a square, which the Dogon and Buddhists correlate to the concept of space. (One expressed purpose of a stupa is to define an ordered space from a disordered field.)
These shapes and their associated concepts, the pairing of which is cross-confirmed between the plans of the Buddhist stupa and the Dogon granary, play out in similar ways to the sun glyph when we examine their usage in ancient Egyptian words. My book Sacred Symbols of the Dogon traces the likely origins of these shapes along with likely relationships between them and ancient Egyptian counterparts, and illustrates how concepts such as mass and space play out symbolically in the definitions of various ancient Egyptian cosmological words. It is not surprising that the decidedly scientific creational themes of ancient cosmology should play out in terms of symbols that appear to relate to scientific concepts.
Most importantly, it is the cross-confirming evidence that can be drawn from comparative cosmology that supports a new view of Egyptian language. The straightforward argument runs like this: Dogon cosmology assigns a specific word to a cosmological concept and associates that word both with a drawn cosmological shape and with two logically-disconnected meanings. Buddhist stupa symbolism – through its direct parallels to Dogon cosmology – directly affirms the association between the concept and the shape. The pronunciation of the Dogon word, along with its well-defined pair of meanings, links us to a set of corresponding Egyptian words pronounced like the Dogon word, and which reflect the same logically-disconnected concepts. Most often, at least one of these related written Egyptian words includes the related Dogon cosmological shape as a written glyph.
Perhaps the best clue to indicate that the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic language was intended to be primarily symbolic – rather than phonetic – in nature lies with its lack of written vowel sounds. Like ancient Hebrew and other contemporaneous ancient languages, vowel sounds are only implied in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic words. When we interpret the word symbolically – by substituting concepts for glyphs to produce a symbolic sentence – any question of a missing vowel is rendered moot. No vowel is provided because none is required. It is a known fact that Hebrew acquired markings later in history to signal vowel sounds, whereas the Egyptian hieroglyphs did not. To the comparative cosmologist, it seems nonsensical to choose phonetic interpretation as the first purpose of a language that deliberately omits key phonemes from every word.
Additional clues to the symbolic meanings of Egyptian glyph shapes are provided in Egyptian mythology, and are perhaps best understood through comparisons to Dogon cosmology. In Dogon myth, each discreet mythological character – such as the one true Dogon god Amma, who initiates creation, or Ogo, a character who plays the role of light in Dogon myth – represents a component stage of creation – the very same component stages that are illustrated by the Dogon cosmological drawings whose shapes we correlate to Egyptian glyphs. This hint leads us to examine Egyptian deities and glyphs shapes in a similar context, and ultimately to uncover a systematic relationship between Egyptian deities and Egyptian glyph shapes – governed by similarities of pronunciation between the name of the deity and the corresponding glyph. This relationship is outlined in great detail in my book Sacred Symbols of the Dogon.
From this perspective, evidence of a symbolic written language becomes one of the signature attributes of a likely parent cosmology – one that could provide a sensible conceptual umbrella over the Dogon, Buddhist and Egyptian cosmologies.
Likewise, it becomes glaringly obvious that ancient Chinese writing, which increasingly, based on recent discoveries, can be reasonably dated to a period contemporaneous with the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and ancient Hebrew – shares key attributes in common with these written cosmological symbols. These begin with a Chinese sun glyph that takes a form similar to the Egyptian sun glyph and that carries the same three signature cosmological meanings. We know that Chinese language first emerged in the earliest Chinese civic centres that – according to some authorities – arose at the sites of important ritual shrines. These proto-cities were carefully aligned to the cardinal points according to the same principles as a Buddhist stupa.
Clearly, the relationship between ancient cosmology and early written language offers us an important key by which to potentially synchronise yet another classic cosmology with the three cosmologies we have already addressed.
Sources http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/
Liberia got its name from the group of Quakers and slaveholders who wanted to repatriate freed Black people to Africa, a report by PBS explains. The group, known as the American Colonization Society, planned to send freed Black people back to Africa instead of having them potentially causing an uprising in America. The scheme of creating an entire country full of freed Black people from America ultimately resulted in the land being deemed Liberia, which translates to “Land of Freedom.”
Sierra Leone
In 1462, Portuguese explorer Pedro de Sintra mapped the hills around what is now known as Freetown Harbour. As he mapped the landscape, he deemed the formation Serra da Leoa, Portuguese for “lioness mountains,” according to the Kingfisher Geography Encyclopedia. The name was eventually adapted and the now misspelled term for the majestic mountains became the country’s new name — Sierra Leone.
Cameroon’s name originated from one Portuguese sailor’s fascination with how many shrimp he spotted when he arrived in the African country. According to an article posted by the Cameroon Embassy in the Netherlands, “Cameroon is derived from the Portuguese word, Camaroes, meaning shrimps.” Fernando Po arrived at the Wouri River in Douala when he spotted so many shrimp that he declared the river Rio Dos Camaroes, which translates to river of shrimps. Eventually, explorers from all around the globe came to know the land adjacent to the Rio Dos Camaroes as Cameroon.
Eritrea
According to a report published by Uppsala University, the country’s name comes from Italian settlers who created colonies on the Horn of Africa in the 19th century. Italians used the phrase “Mare Erythraeum,” which loosely translates to Red Sea, to describe the cluster of colonies that lined what is now known as the Red Sea. Adaptations of that name eventually led to the name it still holds today.
Zimbabwe’s name originates from one of the most prominent landmarks in the country. The name is derived from a large, historical stone structure called the Great Zimbabwe, which translates to “houses of stone,” the Zimbabwe embassy’s website explains. The embassy’s site states that this stone structure is one of the largest in Africa following the Egyptian pyramids.
Togo
Prior to the era of colonial rule by Germany, various tribes had already settled into the country that would soon become known as Togo. In the neighboring countries of Ghana and Benin, Portuguese settlers built forts and began to trade at the small fort at Porto Seguro, according to the Journal of the Royal African Society. The area became a major trading center for Europeans in search of slaves, earning the region the name Togo, which translates to “The Slave Coast.”
Seychelles
According to an article published by the National Assembly of Seychelles, the 115-island country was named after Jean Moreau de Sechelles, Louis XV’s minister of finance. In 1756, the French started taking control of the country, which was eventually contested by the British for years starting in 1794.
Gabon’s name originated from the unusual shape of the Rio de Como estuary, according to Encyclopedia of Nations. The Portuguese arrived on the country’s coast around 1470 when explorers realized the estuary was shaped like a hooded cloak called a “gabao.” After a series of adaptations and translations, the country became known as Gabon.
Mauritius
According to Mauritius: A Country Study, the island nation was named in honor of Prince Maurice Nassau by Dutch explorers. In 1715, the French claimed the country and renamed it Ile de France before the British captured the country in 1810 and changed its name back to Mauritius.
Mozambique
According to the country’s official tourism site, the origin of Mozambique’s name isn’t certain, but there is a widely believed theory. The site explains that it is “believed to have come from the name of a Muslim leader called ‘Musa al Bique’ that lived in the Island of Mozambique, where Vasco de Gama in 1498 anchored his ship.”
Source http://atlantablackstar.com
Maat: The Ancient Egyptian Goddess of Truth, Justice and Morality
Maat, also known as Ma’at or Mayet, was a female goddess in the ancient Egyptian religion who represented truth, justice, balance and morality. The daughter of the Egyptian sun deity Ra and wife of the moon god Thoth, she served a kind of spirit of justice to the Egyptians. She decided whether a person would successfully reach the afterlife, by weighing their soul against her feather of truth, and was the personification of the cosmic order and a representation of the stability of the universe. The earliest writings where she is mentioned date back to the Old Kingdom of Egypt more than 2,300 years ago.
The Egyptian culture was centered on order, everything had its due place in the world. This included religion, society and seasonal changes. The goddesses Ma’at came to represent the concept of balance and order because many Egyptians needed to explain the world around them. She was the one that kept the stars in motion, the seasons changing and the maintaining of the order of Heaven and Earth. The opposing force of this was known in ancient terms as “isfet” or chaos. Ancient Egyptians considered the desert beyond the Nile River to be chaotic; whereas, the area close to the Nile was considered orderly. Together, these two forces brought balance to the world in which they lived and was an important part of everyday Egyptian life.
Ma’at is usually depicted in the form of a woman seated or standing with outstretched wings attached to both her arms. In other instances she is seen holding a scepter in one hand and an ankh (the symbol of life) in the other. Her statue was a stone platform depicting a stable foundation on which order was built. A common symbol associated with her is an ostrich feather, which she is almost always shown as wearing in her hair. Often, the Feather of Ma’at was a distinctive feature of her headdress. Less frequently images of the goddess showed her without a head, instead replaced by the feather. In other images the feather alone conveyed her presence. This feather has come to symbolize her being, as well as the representation of balance and order, it became a hieroglyph for “truth.”
Wall relief of Maat in the eastern upstairs part of the temple of Edfu, Egypt. The ostrich feather can be seen on top of her head. (Wikimedia Commons)
Ma’at was associated with the law in ancient Egypt. From the 5th dynasty (c. 2510-2370 BC) onwards, the Vizier responsible for justice was called the Priest of Maat and in later periods judges wore images of her. The ‘Spirit of Maat’ was embodied by the chief judge in charge of the Egyptian law courts. He had a dual role, serving as both a priest and working directly in the law courts and justice system. The “Priest of Ma’at” began court hearings whilst wearing the feather of Ma’at and all other court officials wore small golden images of the goddess as a sign of their judicial authority, also as a symbol that their judgement would be balanced and fair. Priests drew the Feather of Ma’at on their tongues with green dye, so that the words they spoke were truth. The priest would rule on the earthly punishment according to the nature of the law that had been broken. Punishments included imposing fines, corporal punishment and in extreme cases capital punishment. It was considered a crime against Ma’at if a person engaged in jealousy, dishonesty, gluttony, laziness, injustice, and ungratefulness. The guilty Egyptian was deemed to have violated the Spirit of Ma’at and would face a further judgment in the Underworld during the ceremony of justification in the Hall of the Two Truths. The ‘Spirit of Ma’at’ detailed in the wisdom literature contained practical guidance with examples and some rules applied in previous law cases. These kinds of instructional texts have been described as “Ma’at Literature”.
Excerpt from the ‘Book of the Dead’, written on papyrus and showing the “Weighing of the Heart” using the feather of Maat as the measure for the counter-balance.
The Book of the Dead is a collection of funerary texts and spells from ancient Egypt designed to assist a person’s journey through the underworld, into the afterlife. Without these spells, it was believed a person could not proceed. In the book is a spell called the “Forty-Two Declarations of Purity” or the “Negative Confessions”. This spell is comprised of confessions the tomb owner believed he committed throughout his life. It was believed that any crimes committed against Ma’at should be written down as they could easily be forgiven. In the Hall of Ma’at is where the judgement of the dead was performed in which Ma’at played an important role. The ceremony, called the “Judgment of Osiris,” was named after Osiris, the god of the dead. When the dead were judged, it was the feather of Ma’at that their hearts were weighed against. If a balanced scale was struck, the deceased was deemed worthy to meet Osiris in Paradise. The weightlessness of their hearts indicated that their souls were not burdened with sin and evil. If the heart of the deceased was found to be heavier than the feather of Ma’at, it would be devoured by Ammit, the soul-eating monster depicted with the head of a crocodile, the forequarters of a lion and the hindquarters of a hippopotamus. Other gods in the judgement hall who were part of the tribunal overseeing the weighing of the heart were also pictured holding a feather but the scales always represented Ma ́at.
Ancient Egyptians worshipped many gods, one was certainly Ma’at, although Egyptian archaeologists now believe she was perhaps more of a concept or an ideal. It’s reasonable to assume her principles aided the people of Egypt in being better individuals and that she could be compared to the conscience of a person. There was a small temple dedicated to Ma’at by Hatshepsut, the fifth pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt, Egypt’s first female pharaoh, at the Karnak temple complex in Luxor Egypt. Largely in ruins, it still preserves inscriptions of some of the viziers of Ramesses III and XI. A previous Ma’at temple existed in this area, indicated by reliefs and stelae belonging to the reign of Amenhotep III. The temple is inside the Precinct of Montu, the smallest of three enclosures at Ipet-Isut.
Source http://www.ancient-origins.net
Read more: http://www.ancient-origins.net/node/3131%22#ixzz3bMX8YnyZ
Bad news, Bible-bashers – it seems unlikely that Noah actually ushered two of each species onto a giant ark a few thousand years ago.
In fact, ordinary rocks show that Biblical creationism is absolute piffle, a University of Washington expert has said.
David R Montgomery stirred up the hornet’s nest of true believers this week by claiming that ordinary conglomerate rocks prove that geological history is FAR more complex than one simple flood.
Writing for The Conversation, he says, ‘There’s a slab of polished rock on the wall outside my department office that refutes so-called Flood Geology: the view that a global, world-shattering flood explains geologic history after the initial creation of Earth by God. This eight-foot-long slab is a conglomerate – a rock made from water-worked fragments of older rocks.
‘Preserved in it, you can see the original particles of sand, gravel and cobbles made of various kinds of rock. And if you look closely you can see some of the cobbles are themselves conglomerates — rocks within rocks
‘A conglomerate made of fragments of an older conglomerate not only requires a first round of erosion, deposition, and burial deep enough to turn the original sediments into rock. It requires another pass through the whole cycle to turn the second pile of sedimentary rock fragments into another conglomerate.
‘In other words, this one rock shows that there is more to the geologic record than creationists describe in their scripturally-interpreted version of earth history. A single grand flood cannot explain it all. Embracing young Earth creationism means you have to abandon faith in the story told by the rocks themselves.’
Creationism
1 the doctrine that matter and all things were created, substantially as they now exist, by an omnipotent Creator, and not gradually evolved or developed.
2 (sometimes initial capital letter) the doctrine that the true story of the creation of the universe is as it is recounted in the Bible, especially in the first chapter of Genesis.
3 the doctrine that God immediately creates out of nothing a new human soul for each individual born.
Sources
http://metro.co.uk
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/creationism
https://mjfleck.wordpress.com/2014/06/19/ziusudra-and-the-deluge-how-the-flood-myth-found-its-allure/
A magical ‘knife’ intended for the protection of a mother and child
Childbirth and early infancy were felt to be particularly threatening to both mother and baby. Magic played the primary role in countering these threats; various evil spirits needed to be warned off, and deities invoked to protect the vulnerable. These magic knives, also known as apotropaic (that is, acting to ward off evil) wands, were one of the devices used. They are usually made of hippopotamus ivory, thus enlisting the support of that fearsome beast against evil.
The term ‘knife’ is inappropriate, and the shape may be related more to the throwstick (similar to a modern boomerang). Throwsticks were used to hunt birds, and flocks of birds were seen as a symbol of chaos, hence the appropriateness of the shape.
The depictions on this knife encompass a range of protective images. They include a grotesque dwarf, probably known as Aha at this date, but later the more famous Bes, and Taweret (a pregnant hippopotamus carrying a knife), both of whom are associated with childbirth. Lions, the scarab of rebirth, serpents, and other fantastic protective demons also feature.
Archaeologists have found that many of these ‘knives’ seem to have been deliberately broken before being placed in the tombs. One explanation is that this was done to destroy some of the object’s powers, which would have been inappropriate in the context of death and burial.
Sources
http://commons.wikimedia.org/
http://www.britishmuseum.org
Queen Sobeknefru
Sobeknefru Cartouche
Sobekneferu (sometimes written “Neferusobek”) was an Egyptian woman reigning as pharaoh after the death of her brother Amenemhat IV. She the last ruler of the 12th Dynasty and governed Egypt for almost 4 years from 1806 to 1802 BC.[1] Her name means “the beauty of Sobek.
She was the daughter of Pharaoh Amenemhat III. Sobekneferu had an older sister named Nefruptah who may have been the intended heir. Neferuptah’s name was enclosed in a cartouche and she had her own pyramid at Hawara. Neferuptah died at an early age
Collar of Neferuptah
Sobekneferu is the first known female ruler of Egypt, although Nitocris may have ruled in the Sixth Dynasty, and there are five other women who are believed to have ruled as early as the First Dynasty.
Amenemhat IV most likely died without a male heir; consequently, Amenemhat III’s daughter Sobekneferu assumed the throne. According to the Turin Canon, she ruled for 3 years, 10 months, and 24 days[3] in the late 19th century BC.
She died without heirs and the end of her reign concluded Egypt’s brilliant Twelfth Dynasty and the Golden Age of the Middle Kingdom as it inaugurated the much weaker Thirteenth Dynasty.
Sources
http://www.touregypt.net/images/touregypt/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sobekneferu
Breaking The Spell Radio Show 