Black Genesis (37 page)

Figure A4. Top: Robert Bauval and the director of the Nubian Museum with the broken cow stone scupture, April 2008. Bottom: Bauval and John Anthony West examine a piece of the broken cow stone at the Nubian Museum in 2003.

Figure A5. Left: Prehistoric grinding block seen near Nabta Playa in 2007. Right: A similar grinding block used as an ashtray at a hotel.

As for the rubbish on the site, Schild at first offered that it had been left by tourists. When Bauval, however, said that the evidence pointed to the rubbish being from the CPE, Schild offered that perhaps it had been interred in a pit and now, for some unknown reason, someone had excavated the pits and exposed the rubbish. On June 12, Bauval received an e-mail from Dr. Schild in which Schild stated that “since May 2007 I am not heading the CPE any more, although, I have been responsible for some of the projects carried out by the CPE, like the archaeological operations undertaken in conjunction with the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, i.e., salvage of Nabta monuments.” It was also at this stage that Dr. Schild informed Bauval, “Nabta has been earmarked for an extensive reclamation, i.e., total destruction, as a part of the Tushka project.”

Since 1997, the Egyptian government has launched a series of large civil engineering projects to reclaim the arid Western Desert and turn 1.5 million acres into agricultural land. The projects are broadly divided into two parts: (1) to build a canal fed by Lake Nasser that will deliver billions of cubic meters of water to irrigate various regions of the desert as far north as the Qattara Depression, and (2) to extract groundwater from natural aquifers, mostly from the east Uwainat region, a few hundred kilometers west of Abu Simbel. To date the first phase of the canal project, known as the Sheikh Zayed Canal, has been completed. It involves a 70-meter-wide (230-feet-wide) concrete-lined canal that is fed by a huge pumping station (the Mubarak Pumping Station). At its terminus, the canal splits into four branches, each about 50 kilometers (31 miles) long, which will be used to irrigate the adjacent desert lands. The whole region where the canal and its branches run is known as the Tushka Depression or Basin, and these projects are collectively known sometimes as the Tushka Project. (The official name of the collective project is the Southern Egypt Development Project.) The project that most threatens the Nabta Playa area is the east Uwainat groundwater project, which, according to the Egyptian government, would irrigate 200,000 feddans (acres) in the region. Nevertheless, as Schild himself admits, “recent financial problems facing the project brought a temporary stop to these plans, although all the planning work, designs, drilling for water, survey, soil assessments, etc., of the area have been
finished.”
²
In addition, according to Schild, “exempting Nabta from these governmental plans by the SCA has not yet been successful.” It is because of this, says Schild, that “the CPE has been very intensively recording all the megaliths and related monuments at Nabta, e.g., we have just finished mapping, in the scale of 1:50, all the megaliths and their fragments, together with the associated quarries, in the entire Nabta
Basin.”
³

We felt it was important that UNESCO World Heritage be consulted on this matter. Communications were sent to both the UNESCO World Heritage headquarters in Paris and its offices in Cairo. UNESCO funded the creation and operation of the impressively built Nubian Museum of Aswan. No reply, however, has yet been received. We also contacted Dr. Malville, the astronomer who was a member of the CPE and who had been responsible for the study of the Calendar Circle and the megalithic stellar alignments at Nabta Playa in 1997–1998. Oddly, Dr. Malville had not been consulted or even informed of the removal of the Calendar Circle. We also communicated with the Egyptian astronomer Dr. Mosalam Shaltout, who had been involved with the study of Nabta Playa. Dr. Shaltout had also not been informed of the removal of the Calendar Circle. We hope that with the publication of this text an alarm bell will be heard by the archaeological and anthropological communities in the hope of salvaging the Nabta Playa prehistoric site as well as other monuments that may be threatened by ongoing desert reclamation projects.

April 2010 update: Unauthorized visits to Nabta Playa are still taking place. To our knowledge, no security system has been put into place, and the site still remains unprotected. We are given to understand that no official announcements have been made by the Nubian Museum in Aswan or the Supreme Council of Antiquities as to what is planned for the Calendar Circle and other monuments that were removed from the site. On April 7, 2010, Robert Bauval discussed the matter with professor Salima Ikram of the American University in Cairo. She offered to look into this matter.

February 2011 update: As these pages go to press, stunning events are sweeping through Egypt. On January 25, popular democratic protests began in Tahrir Square. On January 31 a new “Ministry of Antiquities” was created by the besieged dictator Hosni Mubarak, and Zahi Hawass was made minister. On February 11, amid charges of rampant and pervasive corruption, Hosni Mubarak resigned after twenty-eight years in power, the entire Mubarak government was dissolved and power transferred to a temporary military council, ostensibly to prepare for democratic elections. All former government ministries are in a state of uncertainty. We sincerely hope these events will lead to a democratic Egypt born anew and with a reinvigorated care and love for its astonishing ancient past.

Footnotes

*1.
The English Pa
tient,
1996, features Ralph Fiennes and Kristen Scott Thomas. The so-called Cave of Swimmers (which is actually in Gilf Kebir's Wadi Sura), where the heroine, Lady Clayton, dramatically dies, was also filmed not on location in southwest Egypt but in Morocco. The real Lady Clayton actually died many years later in England by jumping from the open cockpit of her airplane and breaking her neck against a metal bar.

*2.
As the historian of science Jed Z. Buchwald describes, the Dendera ceiling was constructed in the interregnum years after the death of Cleopatra's father, Ptolemy Auletes, in 51 BCE, when there was no king and therefore no royal name to put in the cartouches. We note, however, that is the date of the construction of the ceiling. There is still uncertainty regarding the date(s) to which the actual contents of the zodiac itself may refer. We caution the curious reader that before launching off to date the Dendera zodiac again, it is best to be aware that no less than the likes of LaPlace, Fourier, and Biot expended significant efforts at extracting dates, and their results remained inconclusive.

*3.
[Bey is a Turkish title for “chieftain.” —Ed.]

*4.
The eccentricity is currently about 0.017, meaning that Earth is 3.4 percent closer to the sun during closest approach compared to the farthest it is from the sun in the yearly orbital cycle. The gravitational pull from Jupiter, Mars, and the other planets causes the eccentricity of Earth's orbit to vary from a mostly round path (0.005) to a more elongated one (0.058) in a complex cycle of about one hundred thousand years. Also, the time of year when Earth is closest to the sun varies. Currently, Earth is closest to the sun on January 4 (perihelion).

*5.
Oddly, in all subsequent publications on Nabta Playa by Malville et al., there is no more mention of this highly accurate due-east alignment.

*6.
As the primary member of a set of circumpolar stars.

*7.
Some scholars who emphasize the cultural approach rather than the physical approach to archaeology claim this method of analysis or puzzle-solving is invalid, because, they say, any proposed astronomy should be linked directly to ethnographic justifications—that is, we should have access to other evidence, including writings or stories, already proving that the specific people who built the structure in question were in fact interested in the proposed astronomy. We absolutely agree that ethnographic justifications greatly improve the validity of any archaeoastronomical finding, but we also note that considering astronomy first and then, subsequently, considering the ethnographics is equally scientific.

*8.
Of course, critics chime in at this point: “There is no reason to assume the Calendar Circle builders were interested in the stars of Orion's belt. Therefore it is pseudoscientific to consider such a solution to the Calendar Circle puzzle!” Our answer is that we must not start with ethnographic associations or presumptions. In fact, for the moment, we exclude from the puzzle as we have defined them ethnographic assumptions in order to have a well-defined question that involves only simple physical astronomy and a man-made pattern of stones on the ground. Further, to isolate a problem by employing well-defined parameters is actually good scientific method. If we come up with a solution to the well-defined simplified astronomy puzzle, then we can consider whether there are or are not ethnographic justifications. This is at least as scientific a procedure as starting with ethnographic presumptions in the first place.

*9.
The constellations change shape very slowly over long periods of time due to the so-called proper motions of stars. All the stars are moving with respect to each other, like billiard balls scattering on a pool table—though at extremely slow, angular rates.

†10.
The Bible mentions Orion three times: Job 9:9, “He is the maker of the Bear and Orion”; Job 8:31, “Can you loosen Orion's belt?”; and Amos 5:8, “He who made the Pleiades and Orion.”

*11.
One key aspect of this interpretation is the visibility of the stars on the meridian. Also, given that solar zenith crossing was considered to be of significance to the Neolithic people and that at Nabta Playa the sun crossed the zenith two days per year—21 days after and 21 days before the day of summer solstice—we can use this information to define an operational window for the Calendar Circle (that is, those years when the Orion's belt stars would have been visible on the meridian in the proper configuration any time during those six weeks around summer solstice). Further, we estimate that the stars could be seen in the sky up to about forty-five minutes before the sun rises above the horizon. This gives an end date to the Calendar Circle operational window of about 4800 BCE. The start of the window is when the configuration angle and altitude become a good match, which we estimate to be about 6400 BCE. In actual practice, though, the device may have been used after 4800 BCE, especially if its interpretation was known.

*12.
Though we do not see why it should be considered impossible, such an extremely ancient date would mean the Calendar Circle would have had to survive through thousands of years of wet Sahara conditions and through periods of heavy human use. Instead we think the device was constructed and used during the recent epochs of significant human activity and then was abandoned when the area became hyperarid—and thus the construction survived mostly intact to modern times.

*13.
Our interpretation does not require precision knowledge of astronomy or precision matching to the stone diagram, as some have objected. We did calculate the star locations with accuracy and precision only because there is no reason not to do so. Further, we noted that the astronomy matches the field archaeological reconstruction precisely, because it happens to, but the validity of our interpretation does not depend on such precision. If the field archaeology drawings turn out to be a bit incorrect, our case for this interpretation is not hindered in any way. Of course, however, certainly if these drawings are completely in error, then any interpretation based on them suffers.

*14.
As we suggested in our earlier book,
The Origin Map.
Essentially the megalith alignments were consistent with the C1 line, indicating the stars of Orion's belt at the early date of 6200 BCE; and the B1 and B2 lines of megaliths, indicating stars of Orion's head and shoulders as suggested by the Calendar Circle; and the three lines A1, A2, and A3, indicating the brightest star in the north, Vega, at simultaneous times with the Orion stars.

*15.
J. M. Malville, R. Schild, F. Wendorf, and J. Brenmer, “Astronomy of Nabta Playa
,
”
African Skies/Cieus Africains,
no. 11 ( July 2007). The authors further suggested that the B1 and B2 megalith alignments may have been intended to indicate Sirius on two different dates—ca. 3500 BCE and ca. 4500 BCE—and possibly also Orion's belt ca. 4200 BCE or Alpha Centauri ca. 4400 BCE. They also proposed a new target for the A1, A2, and A3 lines toward the bright star Arcturus at ca. 4500 BCE to 3600 BCE. In addition, they recommended that because many of the megaliths, which they determine stood as stele when they were intact, are now scattered and fragmented, an uncertainty of order of a half degree azimuth should be included when we try to ascribe star alignment dates to the megaliths. Finally, they abandoned one major alignment of megaliths, the C line, and chose not to interpret them, noting they they are in a more distant area that may have been removed from the playa.

*16.
For any extremely rigorously minded scholars we note again that this correspondence of the megaliths to this interpretation of the stars happens to be rather precise—but our interpretation does not depend on such precision. For alignments such as these, even within a half-degree or so, correspondence would be considered a good match. It is possible that the Neolithic builders and the way the stones toppled throughout the millennia happened to produce such precision.

*17.
We can note that the precise rate of precession is variable with time, and we use in all our calculations the modernly calculated exact variable precession rate. The exactness of a number such as 2,166 for a zodiac age should not be overly emphasized.

†18.
Nabta Playa is centered at 22.5 degrees north latitude, giving the horizon there a geometric declination of 90 − 22.5 = 67.5 degrees, but astronomers generally use the visual horizon, which is a half-degree lower due to atmospheric refraction of Earth's atmosphere bending starlight, or about 67 degrees for the declination of the visual horizon at Nabta.

‡19.
Dubhe became an eternal star, always above the horizon, in around 3500 BCE, but perhaps it was considered circumpolar enough by around 4500 BCE.

*20.
The star Vega, on the opposite side of the sky from Orion, had its autumnal equinox heliacal rising around 5840 BCE, when it was in the center of the A megaliths—essentially, at line A2. In our previous publications we have noted that the other alignments (B lines and A lines) were consistent with Vega in the north rising simultaneously with the Orion shoulder stars that are also indicated in the Calendar Circle. Yet we note here that those alignments, if represented by the present megaliths, must be re-creations of previous markers that are now beneath the playa sediments, because those particular Vega and Orion alignment dates precede the final heavy sedimentation period. Given that the complex structures also contain evidence of a much earlier symbolic landscape carved on the bedrock under the playa sediments, it seems the interpretation that the A line and B line megalith indicated Vega and Orion at the earlier dates (in addition to the later post-heavy sedimentation alignments) may still be viable. Indeed, as we will see, there is evidence of symbolic architecture involving these stars—Sirius, Orion's belt, and Vega—going back to the First Time, or Zep Tepi, at Giza, circa 12,000 BCE.

*21.
If we assume that the Sirius–Big Dipper simultaneous star alignments extended back to 6100 BCE, we may logically ask why, if Sirius rising was tracked for as long as two millennia or more, there are not more alignments beyond the three major ones identified thus far. The geological sedimentation history of the playa may provide an answer. If the earliest line “C-line” is off the playa or on fossil dune hills not affected by the late heavy playa sedimentation period, then possibly there were a sequence of alignments to Sirius rising as Sirius's location marched north via precession through the playa, from the C-line megaliths to the B-line megaliths. Those alignments would be gone or invisible now, covered by playa sediments. Only the 4500 BCE and 3500 BCE alignments survive because they were placed after the heavy sedimentation stopped.

*22.
Today the precise angular separation of Dubhe and Sirius is 93.4 degrees. Yet both Sirius and Dubhe are relatively close to our solar system, about 8.6 light-years distant and 124 light-years distant, respectively. Thus they have a fairly large proper motion (the apparent motion of individual stars against the backdrop of distant “fixed stars”). Combining the best recent measures of their proper motions, we can calculate that Sirius and Dubhe are moving away from each other at a rate of about 0.34 degree per thousand years. About 4500 BCE, then, they were separated by 91.2 degrees, and they formed a perfect 90 degrees—a right angle—in the sky around 8160 BCE.

*23.
Sirius is about 1 degree above the horizon as the sun is about 5 degrees below the horizon.

†24.
When it is just under 3 degrees above the horizon and the sun is about 6 degrees below the horizon, before rising.

*25.
When Sirius is about 1 degree above the horizon and the sun is about 6 degrees below the horizon.

*26.
This attitude perhaps harks back to premodernity, which was characterized socio-culturally by often prerational and fused (or predifferentiated) notions of the dualities of theory versus measurement, mind versus matter, inner versus outer, religion versus science. Modernity is characterized by a radical differentiation of these dualities. That differentiation is the wonderful essence of the Scientific Revolution and the Renaissance. Post-modernity, which is only beginning to activate in our culture, is characterized by fully rational operation, a complete appreciation for the modern and Renaissance differentiation of the inner and the outer, the spiritual and the material—and an awareness of the value of both aspects of those dualities and a movement toward a reintegration, at a fully differentiated level, into a new, whole conception of those dualities. Scholarly argument must still operate generally in terms of modernity, because this is how the majority culture operates . . . on a good day, that is. Obviously, vast portions of our culture still operate in the premodern and prerational modes.

*27.
Initially we were skeptical of the sculpture's cowlike appearance, and we suggested that because it was at the centerpiece of astronomically oriented megalithic alignments, it too may have astronomical meaning. [See Thomas Brophy,
The Origin Map: Discovery of a Prehistoric Megalithic Astrophysical Map of the Universe
(Bloomington, Ind.: iUniverse, September 20, 2002)].

†28.
There is no agreement among astrologers or astronomers as to exact beginnings and endings of the zodiac Ages. A zodiac Age is when the vernal equinox sun resides in the sky against the backdrop of a given zodiac sign, or constellation of stars. The beginning of an Age depends on where in the starry sky we choose to draw a zodiac sign boundary. There may in fact be another curious correspondence to zodiac Age symbology in the Calendar Circle. We can recall that the window of applicability of our Calendar Circle interpretation was determined to be roughly 6300 BCE to 4800 BCE. That span of time is very similar to the zodiac Age of Gemini, which immediately precedes the Age of Taurus. Indeed, our interpretation of the circle is that it twice represents the figure of Orion, and the physical size of the circle is 4 meters (about 13 feet)—the size of two men. If we consider the size of the constellation Orion when it matched the stone circle, in the later date (ca. 4900 BCE), Orion is larger—when the stars are rising (north toward the pole) on their precession cycle—and in the earlier date (ca. 16,500 BCE) Orion is smaller—when the stars are falling (south away from the pole) on their precession cycle. Could a more subtle layer of symbology be present in the Calendar Circle also indicating the Age of Gemini, with the burial of the cow stone marking the start of the Age of Taurus?