From Atlantis to the Sphinx Read Online Free PDF

the Hebrew sacrifice of rams. Slowly, Hancock established that the Ark had been moved to Meroe, in Sudan, then to the island of Tana Kirkos, on Lake Tana, and finally to Axum.
    The Sign and the Seal (1992) tells the fascinating story of how Hancock tracked down the route of the Ark from Jerusalem to Axum. The quest took him to many countries, including Egypt, and it was there in April 1990 that he succeeded in spending some time alone in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid. The experience deeply impressed him, and his subsequent study of the Pyramid’s history brought to a head his increasing conviction that the ancient engineers possessed far more knowledge than has been attributed to them. Far from being—as one authority expressed it—‘technically accomplished primitives’, they seemed to possess a level of scientific accomplishment that we have still not reached.
    This second visit to the Pyramid in 1993 deepened that conviction. Studying the baffling yet incredibly precise mathematics of its corridors and chambers, he concluded that the science that had been responsible for this construction must have been far, far older than professional Egyptologists will admit. The history books tell us that Egyptian civilisation came into existence about 2925 BC, and that a mere four centuries later, it was building monuments like the Sphinx and the Giza pyramids. To Hancock this seemed absurd. There had to be some ancient, ‘lost’ civilisation that dated back thousands of years earlier.
    This was a view supported by a guide book he had been using since his first visit to Egypt: The Traveller’s Guide to Egypt , by John Anthony West. This differed from the standard guide books in that it discussed the mysteries associated with the pyramids; and temples, a subject more orthodox travel writers shy away from. And in this book, West had mentioned the view of a highly unorthodox Egyptologist named R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, to the effect that the Sphinx had not been eroded by wind-driven sand, but by water. Schwaller de Lubicz had argued that since the Sphinx is protected from the west by its ‘enclosure’ wall, and that in any case, it has spent most of its life buried up to its neck in sand, wind erosion is unlikely. But there has obviously been no significant rainfall in Egypt for thousands of years—otherwise the Sahara desert would not exist.
    Now, according to modern historians, the Sphinx was built at about the same time as the second Giza pyramid, around 2500 BC, probably by the Pharaoh Chefren, the son (or brother) of Cheops, who is supposed to the builder of the Great Pyramid. This assumption is based on the fact that Chefren’s cartouche—the ‘box’ bearing the name of the pharaoh—was found on the stela between the paws of the Sphinx. But this view is comparatively recent. In 1900, Sir Gaston Maspero, director of the Department of Antiquities in the Cairo Museum, suggested that Chefren simply excavated or repaired the Sphinx, which was already old.
    If, in fact, it is eroded by water, not by sand, it must obviously be a great deal older—perhaps thousands of years.
    What is more, if the Sphinx is older than modern historians believe, the same could well apply to the Great Pyramid—a thought that had occurred to Graham Hancock after his first visit. He found the idea at once exciting and disturbing. His academic training inclined him to caution and scepticism. But in studying the Ark of the Covenant, he came upon reference after reference to its ‘miraculous’ powers—to strike people dead, to destroy cities, to level mountains, to cause burns and cancerous tumours. The old monk who claimed to be the Ark’s present guardian explained that it was wrapped in thick cloths when it was carried in religious processions—not to protect the Ark, but to protect other people from its powers. It sounded rather like atomic radiation, or perhaps Wilhelm Reich’s ‘orgone energy’. And as he read through