Edward F. Malkowski - Before the Pharaohs: Egypts Mysterious Prehistory

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T his book is dedicated to John Anthony West, to whom I extend a very special thanks. In many respects, his work has forged a new generation of Egyptologists and historians, of which I am one.

I also want to express my gratitude to Christopher Dunn for his brilliant insights into the technologies of ancient Egypt; Dr. Thomas Brophy, for his astute observations into the level of knowledge of the prehistoric peoples of North Africa; and Dr. Robert Schoch and Colin Reader, for their continuing research into the origins of the Great Sphinx of Egypt. To these men and all the others in the following pages, we who search for truth in history owe a debt of gratitude.

I would like to thank the following people for permitting me to use photographs and illustrations in this book:

Jon Bodsworth of The Egypt Archive Web site (figures 1.3, 1.6, 4.2 [bottom], 4.4, 4.5, and 11.3)

John Anthony West (figure 1.2)

Colin Reader (figures 1.4, 2.1)

Christopher Dunn (figures 4.2 [top], 4.6, 6.3, 6.4)

Jimmy Dunn (figures 4.7 and 4.8)

Thomas Brophy (figures 4.9 and 4.12)

Dorothy Norton (figure 4.10)

Bruce Bradley (figure 9.1)

Olga Soffer (figures 9.2 and 9.3)

John Opsopaus, from The Pythagorean Tarot Web site (figure 10.2)

Tony Ford (figure 12.2)

Martin Gray (figure 12.3)

Every effort has been made to trace the ownership of all illustrative material reproduced in this book. Should any error or omission in acknowledgment have been made, the author offers his apologies and will make the necessary corrections in future editions.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1
RAINY DAYS FOR THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX
Old Evidence, New Observations

2
THE WEIGHT OF GEOLOGIC EVIDENCE
Erosion and the Age of the Sphinx

3
THE GREEN SAHARA
A Climatic Context for the Sphinx

4
WHAT CULTURE, WHEN?
A Massive Contextual Problem Solved

5
KEEPING TIME
Remembering the Forgotten Science of Astrology

6
PYRAMID TECHNOLOGY
The Evidence Speaks for Itself

7
WHO WERE THE FIRST EGYPTIANS?
A Century of Theories

8
TOXIC EVIDENCE FOR AN OLD THEORY
Ancient Contraband: Trick or Trade?

9
EGYPTS PREHISTORIC ROOTS
The Legacy of Cro-Magnon

10
THE SYMBOLISTS EGYPT
A Legacy of Knowledge

11
BU WIZZER
Land of the Neteru

12
BREAKING INTO A NEW HISTORY
The Mediterranean Civilization

PREFACE

I n primary and secondary schools, history is taught as dates and facts. From an early age we learn that civilization began on the Mesopotamian Plain five thousand years ago, then spread throughout the rest of the world. Twenty-five hundred years after the birth of civilization, the classical Greek state emerged as the progenitor of the modern world, solely responsible for the birth of philosophy, science, and mathematicsor so we are taught. Thanks to a rather provocative professor, I discovered that this view of the origin of Western civilization was more interpretation than it was historical fact, and that historyparticularly ancient historyis more theory than anything else. As a result, I have devoted the past twenty-five years to investigating unanswered questions concerning ancient history, and will continue to do so for the remaining years of my life.

Pursuing the truth of what actually happened so long ago is a quest I find endlessly intriguing. At its heart is the same mystery everyone wants solved: Who are we and where did we come from? These two questions are ultimately the driving force behind all philosophy and religion as well as the scientific disciplines. Investigating them requires a certain amount of insight into the intricacies of human behavior as much as it does deductive logic. Knowing what motivated ancient peoples, and how they viewed the world around them, is just as important as determining where they lived and what they ate.

Even though the social sciences are relatively new disciplines, after 150 years of scholarship there exists a profusion of historical and archaeological research available to everyone. All this data has led to various theories describing what really happened during the most ancient of times. Some of those claims are in striking opposition to the established ideas regarding the timeline for civilizations development. Among them is the supposition that civilization had achieved a high level of sophistication more than ten thousand years ago. Defending such a theory would, of course, require extraordinary evidence. As a skeptic I was surprised to discover that extraordinary evidence does, in fact, exist.

I first learned of this in 1993 as I watched Charlton Heston narrate the NBC special presentation The Mysteryof the Sphinx, based on the research of John Anthony West and Boston University geologist Dr. Robert Schoch. According to the documentary, the Sphinx was carved thousands of years before the birth of dynastic Egypt. I noted with interest the harsh reaction from the Egyptology community to West and Schochs conclusions. Why was there such outrage? For me, it was obvious that West and Schoch had touched a nerve, and that mainstream ideas about the origins of mankind and of civilization were teetering on the brink of change. So-called crackpot theorists with unsubstantiated claims are typically ignored by the academic mainstream, but West and Schoch were receiving a Super Bowl of attention. Fascinated by the story, I decided to begin my own investigation into what West and Schochs opponents claimed was missing from their argument: namely, the existence of evidence that mankind had achieved a level of civilization capable of building such a precision-crafted structure well before 3000 B.C. Geologists, archaeologists, and historians have been investigating prehistory for many years, which has resulted in volumes of analysis and opinion. Essentially there were two kinds of evidence available: the physical, or archaeological, and the historicalwhat the ancient people themselves reported about their history. I wanted to survey the data and see for myself what evidence existed and how it might explain West and Schochs conclusion concerning the age of the Sphinx.