From Atlantis to the Sphinx

The right of Colin Wilson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 1 85227 526 X

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Schwaller de Lubicz and the age of the Sphinx—was it built by ‘Atlanteans’? Hapgood’s ancient maps. The Atlantis film script. Schoch’s conference at San Diego. Scepticism of ‘the experts’. Robert Graves and Mr Gunn. Mathematical prodigies. I meet John West. Graham Hancock and Rand Flem-ath. Bauval’s
Orion Mystery
. André VandenBroeck’s
Al-Kemi.
Publication of
Fingerprints of the Gods
. What does it all mean? The search for ‘the intensity experience’. What can ‘the ancients’ teach us?

1 Egyptian Mysteries

The Hancocks scale the Great Pyramid at dawn. How was it built?
The Sign and the Seal.
Was the Sphinx eroded by water?
Serpent in the Sky.
Schwaller de Lubicz and alchemy. Death of Fulcanelli. Schwaller in Luxor. André and Goldian VandenBroeck visit Schwaller. A different
kind
of knowledge. Gurdjieff on the Sphinx. Pythagoras and music. Schwaller on ancient Egypt

2 The New Race

Robert Schoch agrees to look at the Sphinx. Who carved the Sphinx? Schoch agrees the Sphinx is weathered by water. How did the Egyptians move 200-ton blocks? Flinders Petrie discovers ‘the New Race’ then changes his mind. Unknown techniques of carving. Christopher Dunn on the granite sarcophagus. A drill that works 500 times faster than a modern drill. Schoch announces his results at San Diego. The BBC proves Schoch correct about rock layers at Giza. The Sphinx Temple and the Oseirion. The ‘Cyclopeans’. The Inventory Stela. Frank Domingo declares the Sphinx is
not
Chefren

3 Inside the Pyramid

Al-Mamun breaks into the Great Pyramid. The missing mummy. The ‘other entrance’. Davison’s Chamber. Howard-Vyse ‘proves’ that Cheops built the Great Pyramid. Sitchin throws doubt on Howard-Vyse. Did the Egyptians know the size of the earth? Was the Great Pyramid an observatory? Robert Bauval reads
The Sirius Mystery.
How did the Dogon know Sirius was a double star? The Pyramid Texts. The pyramids and the belt of Orion. Edgar Cayce on Atlantis. Were there pyramids planned in 10,500 BC? Mendelssohn on the pyramids. Boats. Thor Heyerdahl on Egyptian shipbuilding

4 The Forbidden Word

Hapgood’s
Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings
. The great Ice Ages. The Piri Re’is map. The significance of Syene. How Eratosthenes worked out the size of the earth.
Earth's Shifting Crust.
A worldwide maritime civilisation in 7000 BC? Plato and Atlantis. Ignatius Donnelly. The Bimini Road. Randy Flemming begins a novel on Atlantis.
When the Sky Fell
. Is Atlantis in Antarctica?

5 The Realm of the White Gods

Cortes and the conquest of Mexico. Careri and the Aztecs. Stephens discovers a jungle city. Why did the Mayas disappear? Brasseur de Bourbourg on the ‘great cataclysm’. Charnay in Mexico. Palenque, ‘City of the Serpents’. Augustus le Plongeon learns the Mayan language. Evidence for Atlantis. Queen Moo. James Churchward and Mu. Thompson and Chichen Itza. He dives in the sacrificial well. Hoerbiger and the World-Ice theory. Velikovsky and catastrophes. The mystery of Tiahuanaco. The Hancocks in Tiahuanaco. Posnansky on the place of the Standing Stones. Was Tiahuanaco built in 15,000 BC? The fish gods. Teotihuacan. Cortes fights his way out of Tenochtitlan. Batres excavates the Pyramid of the Sun. Gerald Hawkins on Teotihuacan. The Nazca lines. Did they expect Viracocha to return by air? The move towards caution. Why did the Egyptians and the Mayans both regard Sirius as sacred?

6 The Antiquity of Man

Scheuchzer’s ‘Old Sinner’. The beginning of palaeontology. Maillet’s theory of evolution. Cuvier on catastrophes. Lyell’s
Principles of Geology:
A brief history of the earth. How man developed from a tree shrew. Darwin sails on the
Beagle
. The survival of the fittest. The Missing Link. Piltdown Man. The discovery of Neanderthal Man. Cro-Magnon Man. Don Marcelino and the Altamira cave. Did man exist five million years ago? Dubois and Java Man. The Olduvai Gorge and Reek’s skeleton. Peking Man. Leakey and the Kanjera skulls. Dart and the Taung baby. The killer ape. Leakey and Homo habilis. Johanson and Lucy

7 Forbidden Archaeology

How old is man? Michael Cremo studies palaeontology. Von Ducker and the Pikermi bones. Pliocene sharks’ teeth with holes bored in them. Ribeiro and the River Tagus beds. Bourgeois’s flints—artefacts or naturefacts? Ragazzoni and Pliocene man. ‘Conventional history’—a summary. The wheel. The implications of ‘alternative history’. What caused the brain explosion? Language? Maerth’s cannibalism theory. The Romantic theory of evolution

8 More Forbidden Archaeology

Why is man a religious animal? Cave art and ritual magic. Shamans and ‘miracles’.
The Wizard of the Upper Amazon.
Manuel Cordova is kidnapped. The ‘collective mind’ of the Amahuaca Indians. Grimble and the ‘calling of the porpoises’. ‘Mental radio’. Mavromatis and hypnagogia. Why has man evolved so quickly? Neanderthal man. Julian Jaynes and the ‘bicameral mind’. The right and left brain. Did man become a ‘left brainer’ in 1250 BC? Schwaller on hieroglyphics. The Egyptian mentality. Harvalik and dowsing. Alternative history of man. Pygmy hunting ritual

9 Of Stars and Gods

Alexander Thom and the Callanish stone circle. Megaliths as observatories. Anne Macaulay on the ancient ‘code’ of Apollo. Cro-Magnon man as a star-gazer. Marshack’s
Roots of Civilisation
. Robert Graves and
The White Goddess.
Maurice Cotterell and
The Mayan Prophecies.
Is the Mayan calendar based on sunspot activity? Santillana and
Hamlet’s Mill
. The precession of the equinoxes. The mill of the sky. Ancient civilisation in India. The date of the
Rig-Veda
. A new theory of human evolution. Hunting magic. Bauval and Hancock reconstruct the sky in 10,500 BC. Why did the Sphinx builders wait eight thousand years to build the pyramids of Giza? Osiris’s voyage up the Milky Way. The journey to Rostau. Osiris returns to Orion. The ‘Followers of Horus’. Does the secret lie below the rear paws of the Sphinx?

10 The Third Force

Edward T. Hall and the Hopi Indians. Monochronic time and polychronic time. ‘A different kind of perception’. The Hopi and Mother Earth. Quiche time. Zen and archery. Children in a school playground—the dance of life. Basic rhythms. Mike Hayes and DNA. The mysterious 64. The
I-Ching
and its 64 hexagrams. Pythagorianism. The third force. The number π. The tetrad. The Luxor temple. Synchronicity. The Chinese rain maker. Jacques Vallee and Melchizedek. Ross Salmon and the condor. Egyptian magic. Ancient Egypt and the Nile. How man evolved. How did Egyptians move 200-ton blocks? Ed Leedskalnin and Coral Castle. The sheet of iron found in the Great Pyramid. How did Egyptian artists light the tombs? Egypt as a ‘collective’ civilisation. Electronic ping pong in Las Vegas. Boris Yermolayev suspends a cigarette packet in the air. Lifting a man with four index fingers. The drawbacks of group consciousness.
The Chalice and the Blade
—a matriarchal civilisation? Wells’s
Experiment in Autobiography
. Are we human? The need for a ‘third force’ to achieve the next step in evolution. Maslow and peak experiences. The importance of insights into past civilisations. The ‘next step’ has already happened

Notes

Bibliography

Index

All pictures from The Art and Architecture Collection except where credited otherwise

Map of Atlantis from
Mundus Suhterraneus
by Athansius Kircher
(The Charles Walker Collection)
Neanderthal Man
(Hulton Deutsch Collection)
Java Man
(Hulton Deutsch Collection)
The Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt The pyramids at Giza
The sarcophagus of Cheops in the King’s Chamber, the Great Pyramid
The Grand Gallery in the Great Pyramid
The Sphinx and the Pyramid of Chefren at Giza
The Sphinx
The Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, Mexico View of the ruins at Teotihuacan Cave painting, Lascaux, France Cave painting of urus, Lascaux

Many friends have helped in the writing of this book—primarily the three to whom it is dedicated: John Anthony West, Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval. The latter was particularly helpful with astronomical information, while Graham Hancock patiently printed up spare copies of the typescripts of
Fingerprints of the Gods
and
Keeper of Genesis
for me. It was Graham’s uncle Jim Macaulay who lent me the important book
Time Stands Still
by Keith Critchlow, and also introduced me to the ideas of Anne Macaulay (no relative), who was kind enough to allow me to read her unpublished typescript
Science and Gods in Megalithic Britain
. Rand and Rose Flem-ath allowed me to see their (then) unpublished typescript of
When the Sky Fell
which, in my opinion, solves the problem of the present whereabouts of ‘Atlantis’.

My old friend Eddie Campbell, for whom I used to write reviews when he was literary editor of the London
Evening News
, lent me André VandenBroeck’s
Al-Kemi
several years ago, and in due course, Schwaller de Lubicz’s American publisher, Ehud Spurling, was able to give me André’s address. He also sent me copies of all Schwaller’s books in English. (
The Temple of Man
is unfortunately still awaiting publication.) Christopher Bamford has also been extremely helpful in providing me with information on Schwaller—of which, as it turned out, I was able to use only a fraction in this book. The same is true of the vast amount of material with which André VandenBroeck provided me, and which I am still hoping to use in some future book. Christopher Dunn has also been unstintingly helpful in trying to help me find possible answers to Egyptian scientific mysteries. Detective Frank Domingo, of the New York Police Department, also provided me with valuable information on his facial reconstruction techniques.

Paul Roberts was responsible for introducing me to the work of David Frawley on ancient India, and my friend Georg Feuerstein sent me the book he co-authored with Frawley and Subhash Kak,
The Roots of Civilisation
.

An old acquaintance, Carole Ann Gill, introduced me to the work of Zechariah Sitchin. Graham Hancock was able to provide me with Sitchin’s address, and Sitchin was kind enough to answer my innumerable questions with kindly patience. I must also thank my old friend Martin Burgess, who proved to be a Sitchin devotee, and who was able to answer my many questions about him.

It was Alexander Imich who recommended me to read
Forbidden Archaeology
, and its author, Michael Cremo, was also kind enough to enter into correspondence.

Readers who know Herbert Wendt’s books on palaeontology will note my indebtedness to them in Chapter 6.

Other friends who have read parts of the book in typescript form and made valuable suggestions are Howard Dossor, Maurice Bassett, Ted Brown, Gary Lachman and Donald Hotson.

I am grateful to Mike Hayes for sending me his book
The Infinite Harmony
, which had been lying around my untidy house for six months before I happened to read it, and realised that it provided some of the answers I had been looking for.

A casual visit from Frank and Carina Cooper led to my reading of Kevin Kelly’s
Out of Control
, which arrived with a perfect timeliness which looked remarkably like synchronicity. But then, the whole writing of this book has involved a series of synchronicities that left me slightly incredulous.