Twelve new tombs discovered in Gebel el Silsila, Egypt

Researchers have discovered 12 new tombs dating from the 18th Dynasty (Thutmosid period).
Credit: Image courtesy of Lund University

The Swedish mission at Gebel el Silsila has discovered 12 new tombs dating from the 18th Dynasty, including crypts cut into the rock, rock-cut tombs with one or two chambers, niches possibly used for offering, a tomb containing multiple animal burials, and several juvenal burials, some intact.

The Swedish mission at Gebel el Silsila, led by Dr. Maria Nilsson from Lund University and John Ward, has discovered 12 new tombs dating from the 18th Dynasty (Thutmosid period), including crypts cut into the rock, rock-cut tombs with one or two chambers, niches possibly used for offering, a tomb containing multiple animal burials, and several juvenal burials, some intact. “The eighteenth dynasty of ancient Egypt (Dynasty XVIII) (c. 1543–1292 BC) is the best known ancient Egyptian dynasty. It boasts several of Egypt's most famous pharaohs, including Tutankhamun, whose tomb was found by Howard Carter in 1922. The dynasty is also known as the Thutmosid Dynasty for the four pharaohs named Thutmosid (English: Thot bore him)”.



The archaeological material produced from the newly discovered tombs and burials chronologically correlate with those excavated within the cemetery previously, so far limited to the reigns of Thutmosis III and Amenhotep II. In addition to the architecture, the excavation has revealed a wealth of material culture, including finely dressed sandstone sarcophagi, painted car-tonnage, sculptured and occasionally painted pottery coffins, textile and organic wrapping, ceramic vessels and plates, as well as an array of jewelry, amulets and scarabs.



Preliminary studies of the vast amount of human remains so far recovered from the necropolis indicate generally healthy individuals. At this time, very little evidence of malnutrition and infection has been discovered. Fractures of the long bones and increased muscle attachments amongst the skeletal remains indicate behaviors related to occupational hazards and an extremely labor intensive environment. Furthermore, many of the injuries appear to be in an advanced stage of healing, suggesting effective medical care.

The new finds add exciting new components to the necropolis, changing yet again the perceived function and apparent appearance to the site of Gebel el Silsila, and with further fieldwork the team look forward, to increasing their understanding of the overall function and role of the area during the New Kingdom.
Story Source: Lund University

YOUR INPUT IS MUCH APPRECIATED! LEAVE YOUR COMMENT BELOW.

Egypt’s Oldest Papyrus Detail Great Pyramid Construction

The oldest-known of Egyptian writing, which describe the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza in ancient hieroglyphics, have been placed on public display at Cairo’s Egyptian Museum.

In 2013, a joint team of French and Egyptian archaeologists discovered a remarkable find in a cave at the ancient Red Sea port of Wadi el-Jarf—hundreds of inscribed papyrus fragments that were the oldest ever unearthed in Egypt. As Egyptologists Pierre Tallet and Gregory Marouard detailed in a 2014 article in the journal Near Eastern Archaeology, the ancient texts they discovered included a logbook from the 27th year of the reign of the pharaoh Khufu that described the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza.



The hieroglyphic letters inscribed in the logbook were written more than 4,500 years ago by a middle-ranking inspector named Merer who detailed over the course of several months the construction operations for the Great Pyramid, which was nearing completion, and the work at the limestone quarries at Tura on the opposite bank of the Nile River. Merer’s logbook, written in a two-column daily timetable, reports on the daily lives of the construction workers and notes that the limestone blocks exhumed at Tura, which were used to cover the pyramid’s exterior, were transported by boat along the Nile River and a system of canals to the construction site, a journey that took between two and three days.

The inspector, who led a team of sailors, also noted that the vizier Ankhhaef, Khufu’s half-brother and the “chief for all the works of the king,” was overseeing the enormous construction project. Additional logbooks provide information about other projects undertaken by the same team of sailors in the same year, including the construction of a harbor along the Mediterranean Sea.



After their discovery in the caves of Wadi el-Jarf, which is the most ancient maritime harbor known to date, the archaeologists transferred nearly 800 fragments of varying sizes in 100 glass frames to the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities. Last Thursday, six of the papyri were placed on public display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo as part of a special exhibition.

Among the papyri now open to public view are accounting documents. Very similar to modern-day ledgers, the ancient financial balance sheets record revenues transferred from various Egyptian provinces in red and payments for food and wages in black. “The documents indicate the highly efficient administrative system in Khufu’s reign,” said Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities.

According to the Associated Press, ministry official Sabah Abdel-Razek told the Egyptian state-news agency that other papyri describe food distribution to workers, including one in clear hieroglyphics that records the number of sheep imported for the project. Another ministry official, Hussein Abdel-Bassir, told the Associated Press, “These show the administrative power and the central nature of the state at the time of Khufu.”



Completed sometime between 2560 B.C. and 2540 B.C., the Great Pyramid of Giza is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World that is still standing today. The largest of Egyptian pyramids took an estimated 23 years to complete and, at a height of over 450 feet, remained the tallest structure in the world for nearly 4,000 years. The average weight of the 2.3 million blocks required for its construction was seven tons.

In spite of the location of their discovery nearly 150 miles southeast of Giza, the relics do not contain any information about activities related to the pyramid construction at Wadi el-Jarf. “The surprising presence of these documents on the Red Sea site at Wadi el-Jarf is most likely explained by the fact that the same specialized teams that worked on the construction of the royal tomb were also responsible for some operations at this port facility,” Tallet surmised. One possible explanation is that the Red Sea port could have been a distant dependency of the Great Pyramid project in order to obtain the copper needed to fashion the necessary tools for the structure’s construction.



Source: Christopher Klein, History Channel

YOUR INPUT IS MUCH APPRECIATED! LEAVE YOUR COMMENT BELOW.

Pharaoh Tutankhamen’s Dagger was made from a Meteorite: Revealed Researches

Tutankhamen, the famed boy king of Egypt’s 18th Dynasty, ruled from about 1333 to 1323 B.C., and was believed to have been only 19 when he died. In 1922, the English archaeologist Howard Carter discovered King Tut’s near-intact tomb, containing the young pharaoh’s mummified corpse inside a solid gold coffin, along with other priceless treasures. Nearly a century later, Carter’s find remains one of the most celebrated in the history of Egyptology, and a lesser-known artifact from Tut’s tomb is making news of its own. A new study has determined that the blade of an ornate dagger found wrapped with the pharaoh’s body does not match iron found on Earth, and probably came from a fallen meteorite.



In 1925, three years after discovering Tutankhamen’s largely intact tomb in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor (ancient Thebes), the English archaeologist Howard Carter found two daggers hidden in the folds of material wrapped, around the pharaoh’s mummified body. In the wrappings on Tut’s right thigh, he found an iron blade with a decorated gold handle ending in a round crystal knob, encased in an ornate gold sheath decorated in a pattern of feathers, lilies and the head of a jackal. The second blade, found near Tut’s abdomen, was of gold.

The iron dagger instantly attracted attention from archaeologists. Iron was still relatively rare in the Bronze Age, and was considered even more valuable than gold. Though ancient Egypt was rich in mineral resources — copper, bronze and gold were in use since the fourth millennium BC — the earliest references to iron smelting in the Nile Valley date to much later, during the first millennium BC, and most archaeologists agree that the handful of iron objects that have been found from Egypt’s Old Kingdom (third millennium B.C.) were probably produced from meteoric metal, a substance the Egyptians of Tut’s era reverently called “iron from the sky”.



Earlier examinations of the iron dagger found in King Tut’s tomb in the 1970s and 1990s probed the possibility that its blade came from a meteorite. Their findings were inconclusive or controversial, at best.

Recently, however, a team of Italian and Egyptian researchers took advantage of new technology—specifically a technique called portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry—to take another look. According to their findings, published this week in the journal Meteorites and Planetary Science, the blade’s composition of iron, nickel and cobalt “strongly suggests an extraterrestrial origin.” What’s more, it is nearly identical to the composition of a meteor found in the seaport city of Marsa Matruh, 150 miles west of Alexandria.



Researchers from Polytechnic University of Milan, the University of Pisa in Italy and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo led the new study, which compared the iron of the blade found in Tut’s tomb with 11 meteorites that fell within a radius of 1,250 miles. Made of mostly iron, plus 10.8 percent nickel and 0.58 percent cobalt, the blade matched up closely with the meteorite known as Kharga, which was discovered near Marsa Matruh in 2000. In 2009, a separate study found that the oldest Egyptian iron artifacts found to date—nine small beads dating to around 3200 B.C. discovered in a tomb in Gerzeh (Egypt)—were made of meteoritic iron, which had been carefully hammered into thin sheets. The authors of the new study hope that their examination of Tut’s dagger will provide further insight into the use of meteoric iron in the young pharaoh’s time and help archaeologists reconstruct the evolution of metalworking technology in Egypt and the Mediterranean.



Nearly a century after Carter’s discovery, Tutankhamen’s 3,300-year-old tomb continues to be an object of fascination and study—not to mention controversy. Earlier this year, the Egyptian government said eight workers at the state-run Egyptian Museum would be disciplined for their role in damage caused to King Tut’s golden burial mask during repairs of a light fixture in its display case.



Even more recently, Egyptian antiquities officials announced last month that a deeper analysis of radar scans showed that organic material or metal could be hidden behind the walls of Tut’s tomb. The officials have been pursuing a controversial theory—proposed in 2015 by the British archaeologist Nicholas Reeves—that the long-lost tomb of another ancient Egyptian icon, Queen Nefertiti, may be concealed behind Tut’s burial chamber. Nefertiti was the chief wife of Akhenaten, Tut’s predecessor on the throne (and possibly his father).

Source: Sarah Pruitt

YOUR INPUT IS MUCH APPRECIATED! LEAVE YOUR COMMENT BELOW.

Unique discovery made in Egypt

The mysterious Egypt is once again on the news, and this time the Archaeological mission of Czech, in association with the Oroso Laboratory, found a spectacular discovery in Abusir city.

Such notice was disseminated by the Facebook page of the former Ministry for Antiquities of Egypt, Dr. Zahi Hawass.

Following the discovery of the Mastaba tomb of Khentkaus III in the Abusir Central pyramid field (selected by Heritage Daily as one of 2015’s most significant discoveries in the world of archaeology), the mission of the Czech Institute of Egyptology, Charles University in Prague has recently made yet another unexpected and historically unique discovery at Abusir South. This fact furthermore highlights the importance of this cemetery of the Old Kingdom officials, and the high level of scientific work carried out by the mission.

-Mastaba means "house for eternity" or "eternal house" in Ancient Egypt, and is also a type of ancient Egyptian tomb in the form of a flat-roofed, rectangular structure with outward sloping sides, constructed out of mud-bricks (from the Nile River) or stone. Mastabas marked the burial sites of many eminent Egyptians during Egypt's Earliest Dynastic Period and Old Kingdom. During the Old Kingdom, kings began to be buried in pyramids instead of mastabas, although non-royal use of mastabas continued for more than a thousand years.-

-Khentkaus III, often called Khentakawess III, was an ancient Egyptian Queen who lived during the Fifth Dinasty, around 2450 BC.-
-Khentkaus was very likely a daughter of King Neferirkare Kakai and Queen Khentkaus II, while her husband was equally as likely the Pharaoh Neferefre, and her son the future Pharaoh Menkauhor Kaiu”.-



The discovery is connected with the project that commenced in 2009 that focused on a large Mastaba labelled AS 54, which was followed by several seasons of excavations. Its exceptional size (52.60 x 23.80 m), orientation, architectural details, as well as the name of King Huni (3rd Dynasty), discovered on one of the stone bowls buried in the northern underground chamber, indicates the high social standing of the person buried in the main (so far non-located) shaft. Unfortunately, his name remains unknown due cruciform chapel’s bad state of preservation. One of the spectacular features of the Mastaba was its south wall decorated with black and yellow bricks resembling the enclosure wall of the oldest pyramid complex in Egypt, the Step Pyramid of Djose a famous founder of the 3rd Dynasty.

While clearing the area south of Mastaba AS 54, an 18 m-long wooden boat was revealed covered with the wind-blown sand and no protective structure surrounding it. Although the boat was situated nearly 12 meters south of Mastaba AS 54, its orientation, length, and the pottery collected from its interior made a very clear and strong connection between the structure and vessel both dating to the very end of the 3rd or beginning of the 4th Dynasty, c. 2550 BC.



While extremely fragile, the approximately 4,500 year old planks will shed new light on the ship building in ancient Egypt. The wooden planks were joined by wooden pegs that are still visible in their original position. Extraordinarily, the desert sand has preserved the plant ‘fibre battens’ which covered the planking seams. Some of the ropes that bounded the boat together are still in their original positions with all their details intact. This is a unique discovery in the study of ancient Egyptian boats. All of these minute details are of the highest importance considering that most of the ancient Egyptian boats and ships have survived in either a poor state of preservation, or were dismantled into pieces. During the spring 2016 season, the Czech Institute of Egyptology will launch a project, together with experts from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA) at Texas A&M University, to study the techniques used in the hull’s construction.

The construction details are not the only features that make the boat unique. The habit of burying boats beside ‘Mastabas’ began in the Early Dynastic Period. This phenomenon has been well documented for royal structures, as well as for some tombs belonging to members of the royal family, the elite of society. Dr. Miroslav Bárta, director of the mission notes; “In fact, this is a highly unusual discovery since boats of such a size and construction were, during this period, reserved solely for top members of the society, who usually belonged to the royal family. This suggests the potential for additional discoveries during the next spring season.”



Scholars debate the purpose of the Egyptian boat burials. Did they serve the deceased in the afterlife, or might they have functioned as a symbolical solar model, used during the journey of the owner through the underworld? The Old Kingdom kings adopted the earlier tradition, and often had several boats buried within their pyramid complexes. Unfortunately, most of the pits have already been found empty of any timber, while others contained little more than brown dust in the shape of the original boat. The only exception was the two boats of Khufu that have survived, and were reconstructed or are in the process of reconstruction. However, there was no boat of such dimensions from the Old Kingdom found in a non-royal context, that is until the new discovery at Abusir. “It is by all means a remarkable discovery. The careful excavation and recording of the Abusir boat will make a considerable contribution to our understanding of ancient Egyptian watercraft and their place in funerary cult. And where there is one boat, there very well may be more.” says director of excavations, Miroslav Bárta.

The boat by the southern wall of Mastaba AS 54 indicates the extraordinary social position of the owner of the tomb. Since it is not located adjacent to a royal pyramid, the owner of the Mastaba was probably not a member of the royal family: both the size of the tomb, as well as the presence of the boat itself were clear indications. However, clearly places the deceased within the elite of his time with strong connections to the reigning pharaoh.

This discovery provides fundamental evidence corroborating a theory on which Dr. Bárta and the Czech mission have based their excavations over the past years on. This theory attempts to provide an explanation for the rise and, especially, the fall of the Old Kingdom, which was one of the first great civilizations in history.

This theoretical understanding can be briefly summed up as follows:

According to Bárta’s theory on punctuated history, societies develop in major leaps separated by long uneventful periods, rather than gradual periods. It is possible to identify four or five leaps throughout the history of the Old Kingdom.

During the time of the first 3rd Dynasty King Djoser, for example, many innovations took place: architectural stone building, language writing, and the sophistication of the state administration are some of the technological advances that increased the Egyptian society’s complexity. Another major leap occurred during the time of Snofru a century later.

A society’s collapse means that a substantial part of the complexity accumulated by that society is lost. Complexity is related to the advancements of a society: the more advanced it is, the more sophisticated it is, and consequently, the more energy it will be required to sustain its complexity. Therefore, complexity and resources are fundamentally interlinked.

The factors determining the collapse of a society are in general internal and contribute positively to the society’s rise. However, they end up playing a key negative role in the society’s crisis, which is generally also exacerbated by significant climate change.

The rise of the Old Kingdom was marked by a significant increase in the bureaucratization of the state which led to an increasingly efficient management of the system. The surplus generated by this progress allowed for the pursuit of scientific and technological advancements.

However, once the system reached its peak and became saturated, the bureaucracy started to consume more energy than it could produce directly or indirectly and became a negative factor.

At the end of the Old Kingdom, one of the direct effects of an excessively large bureaucracy was the increasingly influential role of the various interest groups. Studies show how interest groups, in times of limited resources, can tear apart a society.

In 2200 BC, the Old Kingdom society was going through a period of climate change and shrinking resources, which, in addition to the rising power of interest groups, led to the society’s collapse and consequent loss of verticality. The office of the king disappeared and the state dissolved into regional power centers.

The study of these macro-processes and their dynamics contribute significantly to our understanding of the causes behind the collapses of these societies. So far, this has been a recurrent process in history that several scholars and scientists believe it will concern our current society too.

Laboratory Oroso has established an extraordinary partnership with Dr. Bárta and the Czech Institute of Egyptology. They are currently working together on an exciting new project that will be announced soon.

YOUR INPUT IS MUCH APPRECIATED! LEAVE YOUR COMMENT BELOW.

High Priest Sarcophagus found in Egypt

The sarcophagus of ‘Ankh-af-na-khonsu’, a high priest (2,700BC) of ancient Egyptian god Amon Ra, has been unearthed in the west bank of Luxor, Antiquities Minister Mamdouh Al Damaty announced Thursday November 26.
‘Some assume that Amon (Amen, Amon) was a relatively modern god within the context of ancient Egyptian religion. His worship at Thebes, where the earliest known Temple dedicated to him was located, is only documented from the 11th Dynasty onward.

It is true that he gained most of his prestige after replacing the war god Montu as the principle god of Thebes during Egypt's New Kingdom, when he was recognized as the "King of Gods". At that time, because of Egypt's influence in the world, he actually became a universal god. In fact, by the 25th Dynasty, Amun-Ra was even the chief god of the Nubian Kingdom of Napata and by the Ptolemic, or Greek period, he was regarded as the Egyptian equivalent of Zeus. However, he is actually mentioned in the pyramid text from the Old Kingdom (5th Dynasty, Unas- line 558), which show him to be a primeval deity and a symbol of creative force. This text seems to assign great antiquity to his existence.’



The sarcophagus, which dates back to the 22nd Dynasty (943B.C-716B.C.,) was found in the tomb of Amenhotep-Huy, who served as Egypt’s viceroy and vizier during the reign of Pharaoh Amenhotep III (1391 B.C.–1353 B.C.

“The sarcophagus is made of wood and covered with a layer of plaster. It represents the deceased wearing a wig and crown with flowers and colorful ribbons along with ceremonial beard and a necklace adorning his chest,” Sultan Eid, Director of Upper Egypt Antiquities Department said in a statement Thursday.



The sarcophagus also contains a number of hieroglyphic inscriptions with scenes of the deceased making offerings to several ancient Egyptian deities, he added.
Apparently, the tomb has been reused more than 500 years after it was completed, Mahmoud Afifi, the head of the Ancient Egyptian Antiquities Sector at the Antiquities Ministry said, adding that the sarcophagus is “well preserved.”
Discovered in 1978, the tomb of Amenhotep-Huy is located at Qurnet Marei, part of the Theban Necropolis on Luxor’s west bank, said Karar, adding that multi-national team of archaeologists led by the Institute for the Study of Ancient Egypt in Madrid has been studying and renovating the architectural elements of the tomb since 2009.
"A translation of the name might be close to the following: Ankh is both a tool and a symbol meaning 'new life.' The hyphen ‘af’ is always part of another word that lends exclamatory force. The word, ‘na’ is generally used as a preposition, such as 'to, for, belonging to, through, or because.' Khonsu was the adopted son of Amun and Mut from the Theban triad. His name comes from a word meaning, 'to cross over' or 'wanderer' or 'he who traverses.' So, his entire name may be translated as 'the truth that has crossed over.'"
Most of the scenes at Amenhotep-Huy’s tomb represent the vizier’s daily life activities of agriculture, hunting and fishing. It also features scenes of female musicians and dancers and shows Huy, among his family members, being greeted by high priests, archaeologist Sherif-el-Sabban told The Cairo Post Saturday.
The Theban Necropolis is an area of the west bank of the Nile, opposite Thebes (Modern Luxor) in Upper Egypt. According to Sabban, it was used for ritual burials for several Pharaohs, noblemen and high officials starting from the New Kingdom Period (1580 B.C.-1080 B.C.) and for over a millennium.
Sources:
Jimmy Dunn
Museum of Antiquities in Cairo, Egypt
Kara Cooney, Egyptologist
Wikipedia
The Cairo Post Sunday

The Occult and Mysterious Egypt

The Occult and Mysterious Egypt

Whenever we talk about Egypt, the usual things that come to our minds are the pyramids, the Great Sphinx, and of course the treasures of King Tutankhamun. But there is something much deeper than tourism and momentary admiration. When we personally contemplate these wonders, there is something hidden in the mystery of Egypt, and it is not esoteric or supernatural. Such part of the hidden history, because is not in accordance with the logical history, is not taken into account. Now, why is it that we reject these findings, even though many of the prestigious ancient historians have written about it? These writings, at the present, only serve to swell the great libraries of the forgotten history.
When modern academics composed reference books about early Egyptians, they scrupulously avoided mention of the impressive body of ancient evidence attesting to the celestial rulers of pre-dynastic Egypt. Like all researches, historians drew their material from recognized ancient sources such as Book of the Dead, The Pyramid Texts, the Turin Papyrus, the Bible, and the records of highly regarded historians, like Herodotus, Manetho, Stravo, Diodorus Siculus, Plyni, and Lamblichus.


[Herodotus]
However, the paranormal portion of academia’s primary reference material was relegated to myth and only data required to support a particular line of study was used. Those who ‘patrolled the earth’ are scarcely mentioned by scholastic writers, church leaders and reputable press, and if scientists mentioned them at all, all it was usually to denounce or dismiss them as irrelevant.
Key aspects of Herodotus’ writing involved descriptions of advanced beings, living on Earth,
providing guidance and directions to local inhabitants. A generation of scholars examined the form and
structure of Herodotus’ records and concluded that his constant references to ‘gods’ was ‘full of
difficulty and frequently muddled with mythology’.

However, in a series of Harvard University Press books called simply, Herodotus, the following opinions
of Herodotus’s records was expressed:

‘It happens sometimes that the stories which have reached Herodotus from very distance land and seas, and which he duly reports without necessarily stating his belief in them, do in truth rest on a basis of actual fact.



Not all of the Herodotus’s records have been publicly released but the picture that emerges from researching what is available is extraordinary and necessity examination of his reference sources. They proved to be none other than initiated high priests of the Egyptian temple hierarchy, the men in charge of the age- old libraries and temple traditions. Of them, Herodotus said:
That these were real facts I learned at Memphis from the priests of Hephaestus. I got much other information also from conversation with these priests while I was at Memphis, and I went to Heliopolis and to Thebes, expressly to try whether the priests of these places would agree in their accounts with the priests of Memphis. The Heliopolitans have the reputation of being the best skilled in history of all the Egyptian priests, they proved to me that what they said was true.
The priests told Herodotus that sky-gods descended to Earth in 17,500 BC, and that traffic continued until 11,850 BC, after which ‘no god ever assumed mortal form’. The priests also told him that Osiris appeared in Egypt about 15,500 BC. Speaking of the great antiquity of the age of the gods, Herodotus remarked: ‘they (priest of Egypt) claim to be quite certain of these dates, for they have always kept a careful written record of the passage of time’.
Herodotus realized the vastness of the period about which he was writing, for he stated that since the legendary era of the gods ‘the sun had changed its usual position four times’, probably having in mind the precession of the equinoxes, already noted in an early chapter recorded in the tomb of Senmouth.



Additional documentation suggested that gods visited not only Egypt but also other parts of the planet in prehistoric times. History and sacred scriptures of most people contains a wealth of material portraying the descent of wisdom- bearing gods to Earth and their life among ignorant humanity. For centuries , the Dogon of Mali in Africa worshipped a pyramid with steps leading up to a square platform on top, where, according to one of their legends, sky gods landed on each of their visit to Earth in time past. The Dogon priests spoke of an epoch when gods came regularly ‘to play on Earth’ and taught the Elders how to divide and cultivate their land.
The astronomer priests of Babylon had stepped pyramids, the pinnacles of which were reserved for sky-beings descending to Earth. The pyramids of Chichen Itza and Tikal in Central America were very much like those of the Dogon and Babylonians, again, their purpose was similar …to provide specific sites upon which celestial visitors could land. Considering the isolation of the Old World from the Americas for thousands of years, it is a wonder that such identical structures and legends should have originated independently.
Egypt also had its flat-topped stepped pyramids, the oldest being the magnificent example at Saqqara within sight of the Great Pyramid. An ancient inscription found in the Pyramid Texts uncovered in the Valley Temple of Unas, in the same Saqqara complex read, ‘A stairway to heaven is laid for them so that they may mount up to heaven thereby’. The idea of building stepped pyramid s caught on and at Meidum another one was created, possibly for King Huni. Similarly, the mystery of the flat-topped sacred mountain of Gebel Barkal rising 90 meters (300 feet) high near the fourth Nile Cataract has never been solve. So sacred was the mountain that around 700 BC an enormous temple dedicated to the god Amun was built on its summits.
The Edfu Buildings Texts referred to a Company of beings on Earth called the Shebtui, and Coptic texts called the same group the ‘gods of Egypt’ who came from ‘the direction of the setting sun’ It seemed that the Company of gods into Egypt with a fully developed knowledge of the sciences needed to build the Great Pyramid.



Those suppositions are not generally accepted today, and shall probably be considered a live heresy in the field of classic Egyptology. Yet, some answer must be given to the question, ‘from whence sprang that extremely advanced knowledge?’ From records available, it appeared to literally spring into existence from nowhere for there is no evidence of its accomplishments preceding it. Diodorus Siculus visited Egypt around 40 BC and wrote:
The Egyptians themselves claimed that their ancestors were strangers who in very remote times settled on the bank of the Nile, bringing with themselves the civilization of their motherland, and art of writing and a polished language. They had come from the direction of the Setting Sun and they were most ancient.
Many may scoff at the idea that Egyptian, at the time, were suddenly evolved and their consciousness infused with a rare wisdom, but credence must be given to the documentation of ancient chronicles. Herodotus’ records were founded upon stories that endured the dust of the ages in the archives of Egypt and in Histories, probably his most celebrate work, he said: ‘Thus I give credit to those from whom I received this account of early Egypt …the priests say nothing but what is true….and I myself am persuaded’.
Unusual events are recorded to have occurred in those momentous years, implying the presence of an outside agency. Herodotus distinctly defined his initiated understanding between godly matters and humans matters by stating, ‘Now, the account s which they gave me (the Egyptian priests) with regard to mere human matter, and which they all agreed, were the following‘, and he then relayed a series of simple earthly issues associated with ‘some of the Greeks wishing to get a reputation for cleverness’ after learning a number of priestly secrets. That type of basic worldly narrative was in stark contrast to his understanding of the high priesthood’s portrayal of celestial visitors: ‘They called them gods’, he said.



Certainly more research is necessary to definitely discover that there are many sources, hidden for convenience or ignorance, where we can find the truth about a civilization that, every other day, is more mysterious as our historic archetype is.
Sources:
Herodotus, Introduction, Book IV
Universal History, Vol. I, page 50
Crystallinks.com
The Secret in the Bible, Joshua Books