The Egypt Code Read Free Page A

is necessary, but learning what the sky contains and how each entity moves is also indispensable … strange but true: whole cities, kingdom and empires were founded based on observations and interpretations of natural events that pass undetected under our noses and above our heads. 4
     
     
     
    Dr. Aveni was referring to the Mayan and Inca civilisations when he made the above statement. But may as well have been talking about Egypt’s Old Kingdom, for I am now even more convinced that such a statement holds true for the sacred cities, pyramids and temples built by the ancient Egyptians all along the 1,000 kilometre long Nile Valley during their three-thousand years of civilisation. And this, in a nutshell, is what I set out to prove The Egypt Code .
     
    By the year 2000 I was ready to put the finding of my investigation into a book form. To this end I presented a synopsis to my editor at Random House in London, who promptly commissioned the project. By early 2004 I had a first draft ready. The final draft, however, was completed in Egypt. In February 2005 I rented a fully furnished apartment with a direct view of the Giza pyramids. Being here gave me the unique opportunity to refine the book with a hands-on approach to the pyramids in Lower Egypt and the great temples of Upper Egypt and to verify and test the various ideas of my thesis. Imbued with the enchantment and magic of these ancient sites I have, I believe, succeeded in more ways than one to bring the sky-ground correlation theory I started two decades ago to its natural conclusion. In The Egypt Code I have made use of primary sources whenever available, and relied only on scholarly research published in peer-reviewed journals or in textbooks by renowned Egyptologists and other scholars. My readers should expect no less from me. Culling my data from all these sources I have come to this conclusion: the ancient Egyptian theocracy was regulated by a Cosmic Order called Maat which was none other than the order of the sky viz. the observable, precise and predictable cycles of the sun, the moon and the stars. I have also concluded that this Cosmic Order was fervently believed to influence the material world below, especially the all-important annual flooding of the Nile, for nothing more fascinated, awed and frightened the ancient Egyptians than the Nile’s flood which began in late June and ended in late September. This was the annual miracle that rejuvenated the crops and all other life in Egypt. But too low a rise in the waters in June would bring famine and pestilence. This double-edged sword that hung perpetually over Egypt compelled the Nile dwellers to seek magical means that would ensure a good flood. Early in their development they came to observe that the stars of Orion and Sirius would disappear underneath the western horizon after sunset in late March and remain for a protracted period (about three months) in the ‘underworld’ before re-emerging in the eastern horizon at dawn in late June just when the waters of the Nile began to rise . During this crucial period of the stars’ sojourn in the ‘underworld’ the astronomer-priests also noted that the sun travelled from a point on the ecliptic just below the bright cluster of the Pleiades (marking the vernal point) to a spot further along the ecliptic just below the chest of the celestial lion, Leo (marking the summer solstice), that bracketed the constellation of Orion and Sirius. The idea began to enter their minds that when the sun-god journeyed through that special part of the sky - the Duat as it was called - he performed a magical ritual-a sort of ‘station of the cross’ - that would bring about the ‘rebirth’ of the stars as well as the ‘rebirth’ of the Nile when, in late June, the star Sirius would re-appear at dawn in the eastern horizon. This even also happened to fall on the day of the summer solstice, when the sun would reach its maximal northerly declination, and was for good