Articles

| Profiles in Ancient Astronautics |
ROBERT K. G. TEMPLE

Promotional image from Inner Tradition Books

Coverage on JasonColavito.com:

• Golden Fleeced (Skeptic magazine)
• Robert Temple's uncertain academic credentials
• Robert Temple and CIA persecution

OVERVIEW
Born in 1945, Robert K. G. Temple holds an undergraduate degree in Oriental Studies and Sanskrit from the University of Pennsylvania. At the age of 22, he began writing his most famous work, The Sirius Mystery, published in 1976, which claimed that amphibious extraterrestrials from the Sirius star system were responsible for jump starting Sumerian culture.

In the 1960s, Temple became friends with Charles Hapgood, the professor who believed that ancient maps indicated that an Atlantis-like civilization had charted the world in the last Ice Age. He also corresponded with the widow of Arthur Posnansky about that writer’s controversial (and false) re-dating of Tiwanaku in Bolivia to 15,000 BCE, a date Temple accepted. At the University of Pennsylvania, Temple he met Arthur Young, a New Age believer who explored archaeology and extrasensory perception and believed he had been in contact with extraterrestrials from Sirius who served as the creator gods of Egypt. Young made Temple the assistant secretary of Young’s Foundation for the Study of Consciousness in 1966.

During the few months in which Temple held that position, Young introduced him to the anthropological work of Marcel Griaule, who had written of the Dogon tribe of Africa and their seemingly-impossible knowledge of the binary nature of the Sirius star system. This inspired Temple to write The Sirius Mystery after his move to England to explain the origin of the Dogon’s knowledge by tracing it to the Argonauts of Greek myth, whom he held to be real, and through them to the Egyptians and then the Sumerians, who had mistaken amphibious extraterrestrials from Sirius for gods.

The Sirius Mystery received strong reviews because it seemed to rest on a bedrock of solid academic citations, though in time these would be revealed to be in three categories (a) outdated research superseded after Temple’s work was published, (b) inaccurate sources known in 1976 to be incorrect, and (c) secondhand sources that were misrepresented or otherwise incorrect.

Temple went on to a career on the borderline between legitimate and fringe science, publishing serviceable mainstream works like The Genius of China and The Fables of Aesop alongside fringe works on hypnosis and extraterrestrials.

In 1998 Temple published a revised version of The Sirius Mystery at the suggestion of Robert Bauval, but his revision failed to address a major 1991 article by Walter van Beek, “The Dogon Restudied,” which concluded that the basis of the Sirius Mystery, Marcel Griaule’s research, was incorrect and the Dogon possessed no knowledge of Sirius. Therefore, there was no Sirius Mystery.

That year Temple began to claim that a coalition of international security agencies, including the CIA, FBI, MI5, KGB, and NASA, had targeted him and worked to suppress his research into both extraterrestrials and hypnosis. He maintains these claims to the present day despite the fact that a careful review of all available U.S. government files turns up no references to Temple or his work in any form. By contrast, such writers as Erich von Däniken were discussed in the State Department and elsewhere.

CREDENTIALS
Robert Temple holds an undergraduate degree and has participated in some legitimate scholarly research. He also claims a number of academic affiliations, although these are heavily inflated. This appears to be part of a pattern whereby Temple attempts to emulate academia while publishing outside of it. His highest-profile credential claims are as follows:

• Temple is a member of the Royal Astronomical Society, an organization open to anyone with the £98 membership fee
• Temple is a member of the British School of Archaeology at Rome, an organization open to anyone with the £50 membership fee
• Temple claims membership in the British School of Archaeology at Athens, although that organization’s records show that he has not been a member since 1998. He was a member for only two seasons, on in 1989 and another in 1998, both coinciding with major publishing efforts for which he presented credentials
• Temple also claims the title of professor based on past stints as a visiting lecturer at a Chinese university and the University of Louisville, which has no record of him. He does not hold an academic appointment

MAJOR WORKS

• The Sirius Mystery (1976, revised 1998)
• The Sphinx Mystery (2009)

MAJOR CLAIMS

• Amphibious extraterrestrials from Sirius instructed the Sumerians in civilization
• The myth of the Argonauts encodes a secret message about Sirius
• Ancient sites were laid out to emulate the stars of the constellation Argo
• The Sphinx was originally a statue of Anubis, the jackal-headed god

CONTROVERSIES

• Temple claims security agencies have worked to suppress his books, though there is no evidence to support this claim
• Temple claims American book publishers are also in cahoots with security agencies and the “hypnosis community” to suppress his work
• Despite having some genuine academic credentials, Temple inflates his academic experience to give his work the patina of academic scholarship