Last year I translated the fragments of Abenephius, an otherwise unknown figure quoted in the works of Athanasius Kircher. As I discussed at the time, he was claimed to be a Jewish author resident near Cairo during the early Middle Ages, but no evidence of his existence or proof of the authenticity of his writings exists. Nevertheless, some of the fragments are clearly derivative of Classical sources, and it is to one of these that I’d like to return today to point out something I didn’t highlight very well last year but returned to my attention while doing some research this week.
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Egyptian Space Rock News Update: A Pebble from Another Galaxy and a Throne of Meteoric Iron1/13/2018 Over the past few months, ufologists linked to billionaire UFO nut Robert Bigelow have promoted a growing number of claims that they are investigating debris from flying saucers containing chemical properties never before seen on this Earth. Jacques Vallée, Tom DeLonge, and a former Pentagon official now employed by DeLonge have all made these claims, and journalist George Knapp even provided a sample of such a substance to a UFO exhibit at a Smithsonian-backed museum a few years ago. According to media accounts the Pentagon official, who oversaw Bigelow’s government contract to investigate UFOs, claims that Bigelow has buildings in Las Vegas to store such material
How do we live in a world where this is a normal headline? “Charlie Daniels Issues Grim Warning to Taco Bell About the Illuminati.”
Meanwhile... Some people never learn. Regular readers will remember Scott Creighton, the writer who has some outlandish ideas about ancient Egypt, including the claim that the first sixteen pyramids map the stars of the constellation Orion to depict Osiris and the claim that Col. William Howard Vyse forged Khufu’s name on the Great Pyramid’s quarry marks to hide the true age of the pyramid. (See my review: Part 1 and Part 2.) Well, prompted by the recent announcement of the discovery with cosmic rays of an unexplored void in the Great Pyramid, Creighton returned with an article on Graham Hancock’s website repeating old errors and misusing the medieval pyramid myth that I have spent so many years exploring to make a false claim for an antediluvian origin for the structure. Most of you have already seen that on Tuesday former television personality Scott F. Wolter posted a blog entry suggesting that he had “proof positive” that the Kensington Rune Stone was a medieval artifact. His “evidence” was laughably illogical. He claimed that measuring the diagonal of the stone yielded the fictitious “megalithic yard,” a unit of supposed ancient measure that was actually invented in the twentieth century. The first problem is that the measurement is subjective. The stone is irregular, so the length of the diagonal can vary depending on which lump, bump, or uneven part one chooses to measure from. The second problem is logical: Since Wolter believes that the megalithic yard remained in use down to modern times—since he claims, following Alan Butler, that the Freemasons laid out Washington, D.C. with that measurement in the 1700s, the 1800s, and again in the 1940s—its inclusion in the rune stone, even if true, would provide no proof whatsoever of medieval origins since it could just as easily have been chosen by a nineteenth century Freemason faker.
Most conspiracy theories about Freemasonry tend to focus on its alleged connections to the Knights Templar and occult Christian secrets, but a century or more ago, it was Masonry’s alleged connection to ancient Egypt that offered grist for occult speculation. I came across an obscure but strange book called Freemasonry from the Great Pyramid of Ancient Times (1885) by Freemason Thomas Holland in which Holland outlines his belief that the Great Pyramid of Giza was actually a divine map to the mysteries of Freemasonry, crafted on orders from Yahweh by Israelites to show future generations the rituals and mysteries of the Craft. While this is silly on the face of it, derived from Charles Piazzi Smyth’s belief that the Pyramid contained a plan crafted by the God of Israel, and the frequent Masonic insistence that their Craft could be traced back to Egypt (and, specifically, the Great Pyramid), the expression of it is a bit bizarre.
Regular readers will remember that last month ufologist and fading rock musician Tom DeLonge launched a public benefit corporation to promote science fiction movies and what he describes as high-speed time travel transportation systems. Oh, and something about UFO disclosure, but not really, except when it is. As part of the launch of To the Stars… Academy of Arts and Science, or TTS-AAS, in its official and illogical abbreviation, the company offered shares of stock to the public.
Is it possible that I am running out of things to write about? It seems that this has been a particularly slow week for bad claims about history, and I am inclined to think that the collapse of the media’s interest in fringe history is to blame. Over the past couple of years, the number of cable shows focusing on fringe history (broadly defined) has declined markedly. Where once they filled several hours per day several days per week, to the point that one weekend there were nonstop fringe shows on some cable channel or another, now there are only a few, led by Ancient Aliens, a show that stopped being about history when it decided to become a spiritual movement and a lifestyle brand. Even written fringe is in decline. Nephilim theorists like L. A. Marzulli have devolved into pro-Trump pundits, and even the clickbait sites are reduced to recycling recycled content.
There are times when I just don’t have the energy to seek out crazy stuff to write about. Sometimes I have to let the crazy come to me. Today’s subject is brief but interesting. It’s a graphic representation of a secret base located inside the Great Pyramid, and it comes to us courtesy of David S. Anderson (@DSAArchaeology) who posted it to his Twitter feed yesterday. Take a look:
I usually like to end the week on a high note, but today I can report a bit of a disappointment. Yesterday, I discussed a French text by Assyriologist Francois Lenormant that is the obvious source for most fringe writers’ claims that the Sphinx predates dynastic Egypt and that the Valley Temple is a primeval construction by a wandering tribe of mystics known as the Followers of Horus. Lenormant attributed his information to the eminent Egyptologist Gaston Maspero, in his 1875 book The Ancient History of the Peoples of the East. Taking Lenormant at his word, I believed that Maspero must have made the same claims as Lenormant, presumably with more detail. I was quite disappointed to see that he had only very briefly alluded to the claims in the book Lenormant cited. The bottom line therefore seems to be that Lenormant is the origin point for the specific formulation of the myth that the Shemsu Hor built the Sphinx and the Valley Temple thousands of years before dynastic Egypt.
I came across a fascinating little book put out by the Theosophical Society’s publishing arm in 1913. Entitled The Faith of Ancient Egypt, it surprised me by presenting in précis most of the arguments about precession, astrology, and Egyptian wisdom that we would see come to fruition under R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz (Temple of Man, 1949) and the authors of Hamlet’s Mill, and those influenced by them such as John Anthony West, Graham Hancock, etc. Basically, Golden Dawn member Sidney G. P. Coryn suggested that the Sphinx predated dynastic Egypt, that the precession of the equinoxes governs the shape and symbolism of world religions in each astrological “age,” and that Egypt was possessed of fabulous wisdom and technology that could only have come from a superior civilization.
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AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
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