disinformation
Copyright 2011
Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval
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Table of Contents
BY THE SAME AUTHORS
BY GRAHAM HANCOCK
The Sign and the Seal
Fingerprints of the Gods
Heaven's Mirror (WITH SANTHA FAIIA)
Underworld
Supernatural
BY ROBERT BAUVAL
Secret Chamber
The Orion Mystery (WITH ADRIAN GILBERT)
The Egypt Code
Black Genesis (WITH THOMAS BROPHY)
BY GRAHAM HANCOCK AND ROBERT BAUVAL
The Message of the Sphinx
www.grahamhancock.com
www.robertbauval.com
To my mother, Yvonne Bauval.
Robert Bauval
For my father. Your warmth and wise advice are sorely missed.
Graham Hancock
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The making of this book has a long and chequered history. It began in 1992 and was finally brought to a close in 2011. The time-span reflects not only the complex nature of the subject matter but also the strong and enduring working relationship and friendship that I have with my co-author, Graham Hancock, a master of the trade par excellence. It also highlights, yet again, the power of teamwork and the old but true axiom that two heads are better than one.
I would like to thank the many colleagues and friends who, through the many years, have helped me directly or indirectly with this book. My foremost thanks go to my wife, Michele, who always gave me unflinching support. It is not easy to live with someone whose mind is often engrossed in solving historical puzzles. I also would like to pay special tribute to Mary Bruck of Edinburgh who sadly passed away recently. She was a very dear friend and she will be sorely missed. Much thanks also go to my friends all over the world, not least Hoda Hakim (Cairo), Chafik and Racha Kotry (Alexandria), John and Josette Orphanidis (Athens), Gouda Fayed (Giza, Nazlet El Salman), Javier and Eva Sierra (Malaga), Adriano Forgione (Rome), Sandro Mainardi (Florence), Linda and Max Bauval (Hawaii), Christopher and Caroline Knight (UK), Alan Butler (UK), Juliano Fernadez (Uruguay), Jean-Paul and Valentina Tarud-Kuborn (Chile), Jeanne Ribeiro (Brazil), Ryan Gilmore (Canada), Gary Evans (UK), Hillary Raimo (USA) and Sherif el Sebai (Cairo). My gratitude to my literary agent and friend Bill Hamilton of A. M. Heath & Co. Ltd., who is always there to encourage and advise me, and to listen to my over-enthusiastic oratory. The same gratitude also goes to my editor and friend Gary Baddeley of The Disinformation Company in New York for his patience, dedication, support and invaluable help. Much appreciation to Ralph Bernardo for his diligence and dedication in putting this book together. As always I give thanks to all my readers, old and new, and hope that they will find The Master Game as enjoyable as it was for me to co-write.
Robert Bauval
Malaga, Spain
Thank you to my wife Santha and to our six children Sean, Shanti, Ravi, Leila, Luke and Gabrielle, who have given me so much solidarity, love and support over the 19 years this book has been in the making. Im really grateful to my Dad, too, who read the whole manuscript during what turned out to be his last summer and took the trouble to give me many helpful comments and suggestions. He passionately disagreed with many of my views on the Christian Church, but we agreed equally passionately that life has a spiritual meaning and that it does not end with the grave.
Graham Hancock
Bath, England
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Preface:
The Master Game
Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Le Contrat Social
There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world; and that is an idea whose time has come.
Proverb
What is the Master Game?
Who is playing it?
Where? How? Why?
And which side is winning?
INTRODUCTION
THE GAME OF GAMES
For a very long time there has been a belief, sometimes widely held and proclaimed, sometimes held only by persecuted minorities, that we humans are here on this planet to nurture and perfect our souls and thus to equip ourselves for immortality.
Those who hold such beliefs usually also believe that negative spiritual forces are at work amongst mankind evil angels who seek to lead us astray and divert us from our true path.
It is irrelevant whether any of this is ontologically true. All that matters is that it has been and continues to be believed. Such beliefs, built around a concept of antagonistic forces Darkness and Light, Good and Evil battling for the human soul are bound to have been acted upon by those who held them strongly.
In this book we will explore a number of mysterious ancient documents, prominent amongst them the so-called
Hermetic Texts, written down in Latin and Greek in the early centuries of the Christian era. In one of these texts the god Hermes (the Greek counterpart of the ancient Egyptian wisdom god Thoth) delivers a prophecy to his pupil Asclepius:
Do you know, Asclepius, that Egypt is an image of heaven, or to speak more exactly, in Egypt all the operations of the powers which rule and work in heaven are present in the Earth below? In fact it should be said that the whole Kosmos dwells in this our land as in a sanctuary.
And yet, since it is fitting that wise men should have knowledge of all events before they come to pass, you must not be left in ignorance of what I will now tell you.
There will come a time when it will have been in vain that Egyptians have honored the Godhead with heartfelt piety and service; and all our holy worship will be fruitless and ineffectual.
The gods will return from earth to heaven; Egypt will be forsaken, and the land which was once the home of religion will be left desolate, bereft of the presence of its deities.
O Egypt, Egypt, of thy religion nothing will remain but an empty tale, which thine own children in time to come will not believe; nothing will be left but graven words, and only the stones will tell of thy piety.
And in that day men will be weary of life, and they will cease to think the universe worthy of reverent wonder and worship Darkness will be preferred to light, and death will be thought more profitable than life; no one will raise his eyes to heaven; the pious will be deemed insane, the impious wise; the madman will be thought a brave man, and the wicked will be esteemed as good.