Serpent in the Sky: The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt

Serpent in the Sky: The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt

John Anthony West's revolutionary reinterpretation of the civilization of Egypt challenges all that has been accepted as dogma concerning Ancient Egypt. In this pioneering study West documents that: Hieroglyphs carry hermetic messages that convey the subtler realities of the Sacred Science of the Pharaohs. Egyptian science, medicine, mathematics, and astronomy were more sophisticated than most modern Egyptologists acknowledge. Egyptian knowledge of the universe was a legacy from a highly sophisticated civilization that flourished thousands of years ago. The great Sphinx represents geological proof that such a civilization existed. This revised edition includes a new introduction linking Egyptian spiritual science with the perennial wisdom tradition and an appendix updating West's work in redating the Sphinx. Illustrated with over 140 photographs and line drawings. John Anthony West was an American author, lecturer, guide and a proponent of the Sphinx water erosion hypothesis. His early career was as a copywriter in Manhattan and as a science fiction writer. He received a Hugo Award Honorable Mention in 1962. The Serpent in the Sky The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt By John Anthony West Theosophical Publishing House Copyright © 1993 John Anthony West All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8356-0691-2 Contents Acknowledgments, Foreword to the first edition, Foreword to the revised edition, Preface, Introduction, Pythagoras Rides Again, Serpent in the Sky, Science and Art in Ancient Egypt, Myth, symbolism, language, literature, The Temple of Man, Egypt: Heir to Atlantis, Appendix I: The Gauri/Lehner survey, Appendix II: Sphinx update, Afterword: Ringing out the old, Selected bibliography, CHAPTER 1 Pythagoras Rides Again The development of orthodox Egyptology in the historical context The earliest recorded account of Egypt comes to us from the Greek historian Herodotus, who visited Egypt around 500 BC, when it was already well into its decline. Though much that he wrote has proven true, much is evidently fancy; Herodotus indiscriminately reports as truth tales told to him by an ancient version of tourist guides, whom he mistook for temple priests. Like so many travellers after him, Herodotus marvelled at the sights. But neither he nor anyone following had access to those responsible for their construction. Throughout history, then, visitors to Egypt have recorded their impressions according to personal interpretation. But the exact nature of Egyptian knowledge, locked as it was in the impenetrable hieroglyphs, could not help but remain a mystery. Modern Egyptologists insist with justice that no possibility of understanding Egypt existed until the hieroglyphs were deciphered. In the late eighteenth century, Napoleon invaded Eygpt armed with scholars as well as soldiers, determined to solve the mystery as well as to build an empire. Accounts of his discoveries, illustrated with fine, accurately rendered drawings, made Egyptian civilisation known to a European public for the first time and interest ran high as gifted scholars pitted their wits against the hieroglyphs. But it was not until 1822, nearly thirty years after Napoleon's campaign, that a key was found. Jean François Champollion was convinced, at the age of twelve, that he would decipher the hieroglyphs. He set out to master all the languages, ancient and modern, that he believed would lead to this goal. The solution was provided by the Rosetta Stone, a Ptolemaic relic upon which the same inscription was recorded in hieroglyphs, demotic (a sort of shorthand or vernacular form of the hieroglyphs) and Greek. Working back through the Greek into the hieroglyphs, Champollion was eventually led to the answer or, rather, a partial answer. Egyptology was born. Prior to Champollion's discovery, many scholars worked upon the reasonable assumption that a civilisation capable of such works must have had a high order of knowledge. Some made sound observations that were subsequently forgotten or neglected in the face of the apparently boastful, repetitive, banal and incoherent nature of the translated hieroglyphs. The early translations stand in such striking contrast to the works themselves that it is hard to believe so few scholars should have stopped to question the paradox. But it is, of course, impossible to 'prove' a masterpiece. Those who understand, understand. Emotional and psychological factors, more than science, combined to make modern Egyptology. Colin Ronan Lost Discoveries MacDonald, 1973, p. 95 How did the Egyptians build an immense structure like this [the pyramids]? We do not know all the details even now. It is clear from what remains that they used huge limestone blocks, but there are still problems over how they managed to slide one block across another, and of the way in which the walls and ceiling of the inner chamber are supported ... Obviously they used a block and tackle to lift the blocks, but even s