Breaking the Mirror of Heaven: The Conspiracy to Suppress the Voice of Ancient Egypt
Autor Robert Bauval, Ahmed Osmanen Limba Engleză Paperback – 26 iul 2012
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9781591431565
ISBN-10: 1591431565
Pagini: 384
Ilustrații: 88 b&w illustrations
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 33 mm
Greutate: 0.61 kg
Ediția:Original
Editura: Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
Colecția Bear & Company
ISBN-10: 1591431565
Pagini: 384
Ilustrații: 88 b&w illustrations
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 33 mm
Greutate: 0.61 kg
Ediția:Original
Editura: Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
Colecția Bear & Company
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Notă biografică
Egyptian-born Robert Bauval began studying Egyptology in 1983. The author of The Orion Mystery and coauthor of Black Genesis, he lives in Torremolinos, Spain. Ahmed Osman was born in Cairo in 1934 and is the author of several books, including Christianity: An Ancient Egyptian Religion and Moses and Akhenaten. He lives in England.
Extras
Chapter 4
Saving Ancient Egypt
What strange fate brings a person to the right place at the right time?
What strange synchronicity is at play when something obvious and in plain sight is only seen by that one person? Why it is that only one person could notice a vital clue when everyone else had ignored it? We would normally think of geniuses like Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, or Einstein, not of a Frenchman with the uncommon name of Auguste Mariette. Yet his story will show how almost single-handedly this man changed the course of Egyptian antiquities from one of mindless destruction and desecration to one of responsible preservation and restoration. To put it in other words, the legacy of the pharaohs was saved by a Frenchman with a big heart and huge determination. We fast forward, however, to hear Mariette, on his deathbed, modestly summing up the huge service he had rendered to Egypt.
It behooves us to preserve Egypt’s monuments with care. Five hundred years hence Egypt should still be able to show to the scholars who shall visit her, the same monuments that we are now describing.
The truth is that, were it not for Mariette Pasha (as he was called in Egypt), the temples, tombs, and all those wonderful Egyptian artifacts would simply have vanished, perhaps even the pyramids--either stolen, sold, or pulverized into oblivion.
Romancing the Serapeum
Mariette’s story could be said to have begun, oddly enough, three millennia ago on the windy and dusty promontory known today as Saqqara. Located at the edge of the western desert south of the Giza pyramids, Saqqara had been the burial ground of pharaohs and nobles since the earliest dynasties. It was famed in the ancient world, however, for its huge labyrinth, the Serapeum, in which the sacred bulls of Memphis, the Apis, were buried in giant sarcophagi.
In the late first century BCE, when Cleopatra had just committed her celebrated suicide and Egypt had become a province of Rome, the Greek geographer Strabo (63 BCE-24 CE) visited Saqqara. One has to imagine the place, without modern roads, cars, postcard vendors, hustlers, and “tourist police” soliciting baksheesh from visitors. Probably all that Strabo encountered was a small Roman encampment or perhaps a Bedouin camp within the ruins of the great Step Pyramid Complex or, a little farther north, a strange open-air temple where statues of the Greek philosophers stood in a semicircle. And, luckily for Mariette many centuries later, what Strabo saw strewn on the sand he diligently reported in his Geographica (a seventeen-volume opus that is regarded as the first-ever book of geography). In that typical delightful and eloquent archaic Greek style, the father of geography describes in volume seventeen of Geographica an alleyway (dromus in Greek) of sphinxes, some half buried in the shifting sand, others with only their heads sticking out, which led toward a temple dedicated to the god Serapis.
Oddly, no one took Strabo’s report seriously about the Serapeum of Memphis (Saqqara), at least not until the arrival of Napoleon in Egypt in 1798, when apparently some of his savants undertook a hasty search but gave up when they found nothing.
François Auguste Ferdinand Mariette (1821-1881) was born in the seaside town of Boulogne-sur-Mer on the northern coast of France. Mariette’s interest in ancient Egypt began when he was six years old. He had a great ability for languages and taught himself Egyptian hieroglyphics, demotic script, and Coptic. When he was only twelve he was able to read ancient Coptic texts. Mariette first worked as a teacher in a school in Douai but got indirectly involved with archaeology by writing articles for a local magazine to supplement his meager salary. His work on a catalogue of the Egyptian gallery in the Boulogne Museum grabbed the attention of the Louvre Museum, and, in 1849, he was offered a minor job working on Coptic and other ancient manuscripts.
The amazing romantic discovery of the fabled Serapeum properly begins with the arrival of Mariette in Egypt in 1850. Mariette had been sent by the Louvre Museum to collect Coptic and other ancient manuscripts in Alexandria and Cairo and had received a modest budget. The project became difficult because the Coptic monks, having been tricked before by French traders, refused to deal with Mariette. Rather than abort his mission, Mariette made the decision to use the funds of the Louvre to do some private archaeological excavations. He chose Saqqara as the most promising site.
Mariette hired a small team of workers, bought some basic equipment, and boldly set out to excavate at Saqqara. Unlike others before him, Mariette had a strong inkling that Strabo’s narrative about the Memphis Serapeum was rooted in truth. In Mariette’s own words:
Did it not seem that Strabo had written this sentence to help us rediscover, after over eighteen centuries, the famous temple dedicated to Serapis? It was impossible to doubt it. . . . Undoubtedly many precious fragments, many statues, many unknown texts were hidden beneath the sand upon which I stood. At that instant I forgot my mission [obtaining Coptic texts from the monasteries], I forgot the Patriarch, the convents, the Coptic and Syriac manuscripts . . . and it was thus, on 1 November 1850, during one of the most beautiful sunrises I had ever seen in Egypt, that a group of thirty workmen, working under my orders near that sphinx, were about to cause such total upheaval in the conditions of my stay in Egypt.
Mariette was convinced that the buried avenue of sphinxes at Saqqara was the very same described by Strabo. Mariette urged his workforce to expose the avenue, which led him to the entrance of the fabled Serapeum, built like a kind of huge underground maze. Upon entering the ancient labyrinth, Mariette immediately realized that he had hit the jackpot!
Saving Ancient Egypt
What strange fate brings a person to the right place at the right time?
What strange synchronicity is at play when something obvious and in plain sight is only seen by that one person? Why it is that only one person could notice a vital clue when everyone else had ignored it? We would normally think of geniuses like Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, or Einstein, not of a Frenchman with the uncommon name of Auguste Mariette. Yet his story will show how almost single-handedly this man changed the course of Egyptian antiquities from one of mindless destruction and desecration to one of responsible preservation and restoration. To put it in other words, the legacy of the pharaohs was saved by a Frenchman with a big heart and huge determination. We fast forward, however, to hear Mariette, on his deathbed, modestly summing up the huge service he had rendered to Egypt.
It behooves us to preserve Egypt’s monuments with care. Five hundred years hence Egypt should still be able to show to the scholars who shall visit her, the same monuments that we are now describing.
The truth is that, were it not for Mariette Pasha (as he was called in Egypt), the temples, tombs, and all those wonderful Egyptian artifacts would simply have vanished, perhaps even the pyramids--either stolen, sold, or pulverized into oblivion.
Romancing the Serapeum
Mariette’s story could be said to have begun, oddly enough, three millennia ago on the windy and dusty promontory known today as Saqqara. Located at the edge of the western desert south of the Giza pyramids, Saqqara had been the burial ground of pharaohs and nobles since the earliest dynasties. It was famed in the ancient world, however, for its huge labyrinth, the Serapeum, in which the sacred bulls of Memphis, the Apis, were buried in giant sarcophagi.
In the late first century BCE, when Cleopatra had just committed her celebrated suicide and Egypt had become a province of Rome, the Greek geographer Strabo (63 BCE-24 CE) visited Saqqara. One has to imagine the place, without modern roads, cars, postcard vendors, hustlers, and “tourist police” soliciting baksheesh from visitors. Probably all that Strabo encountered was a small Roman encampment or perhaps a Bedouin camp within the ruins of the great Step Pyramid Complex or, a little farther north, a strange open-air temple where statues of the Greek philosophers stood in a semicircle. And, luckily for Mariette many centuries later, what Strabo saw strewn on the sand he diligently reported in his Geographica (a seventeen-volume opus that is regarded as the first-ever book of geography). In that typical delightful and eloquent archaic Greek style, the father of geography describes in volume seventeen of Geographica an alleyway (dromus in Greek) of sphinxes, some half buried in the shifting sand, others with only their heads sticking out, which led toward a temple dedicated to the god Serapis.
Oddly, no one took Strabo’s report seriously about the Serapeum of Memphis (Saqqara), at least not until the arrival of Napoleon in Egypt in 1798, when apparently some of his savants undertook a hasty search but gave up when they found nothing.
François Auguste Ferdinand Mariette (1821-1881) was born in the seaside town of Boulogne-sur-Mer on the northern coast of France. Mariette’s interest in ancient Egypt began when he was six years old. He had a great ability for languages and taught himself Egyptian hieroglyphics, demotic script, and Coptic. When he was only twelve he was able to read ancient Coptic texts. Mariette first worked as a teacher in a school in Douai but got indirectly involved with archaeology by writing articles for a local magazine to supplement his meager salary. His work on a catalogue of the Egyptian gallery in the Boulogne Museum grabbed the attention of the Louvre Museum, and, in 1849, he was offered a minor job working on Coptic and other ancient manuscripts.
The amazing romantic discovery of the fabled Serapeum properly begins with the arrival of Mariette in Egypt in 1850. Mariette had been sent by the Louvre Museum to collect Coptic and other ancient manuscripts in Alexandria and Cairo and had received a modest budget. The project became difficult because the Coptic monks, having been tricked before by French traders, refused to deal with Mariette. Rather than abort his mission, Mariette made the decision to use the funds of the Louvre to do some private archaeological excavations. He chose Saqqara as the most promising site.
Mariette hired a small team of workers, bought some basic equipment, and boldly set out to excavate at Saqqara. Unlike others before him, Mariette had a strong inkling that Strabo’s narrative about the Memphis Serapeum was rooted in truth. In Mariette’s own words:
Did it not seem that Strabo had written this sentence to help us rediscover, after over eighteen centuries, the famous temple dedicated to Serapis? It was impossible to doubt it. . . . Undoubtedly many precious fragments, many statues, many unknown texts were hidden beneath the sand upon which I stood. At that instant I forgot my mission [obtaining Coptic texts from the monasteries], I forgot the Patriarch, the convents, the Coptic and Syriac manuscripts . . . and it was thus, on 1 November 1850, during one of the most beautiful sunrises I had ever seen in Egypt, that a group of thirty workmen, working under my orders near that sphinx, were about to cause such total upheaval in the conditions of my stay in Egypt.
Mariette was convinced that the buried avenue of sphinxes at Saqqara was the very same described by Strabo. Mariette urged his workforce to expose the avenue, which led him to the entrance of the fabled Serapeum, built like a kind of huge underground maze. Upon entering the ancient labyrinth, Mariette immediately realized that he had hit the jackpot!
Cuprins
Acknowlegments
Introduction: A Cross between a Peacock and a Scorpion
1 The Making of Egypt’s Indiana Jones
2 Out of Darkness
3 The Pasha
4 Saving Ancient Egypt
5 The End of an Era
6 Secret Chambers
7 Revolution!
Postscripts
“A Message to All My Friends”
November 2011
March 2012
May 2012
Appendix 1 The Paris Obelisk: How and Why Freemasonry Came into Egypt
Appendix 2 Discoveries and Achievements—or Personal Agenda?
Appendix 3 “LIVE” Egyptology
Appendix 4 The Death of Tutankhamun: The Cover-up
Appendix 5 Egypt, My Native Country
Out of Egypt by Ahmed Osman
Losing Alexandria by Robert Bauval
A Last-Minute Update
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Recenzii
“This is a book that needed to be written . . . and I can’t imagine a better writing team to have taken on the challenge. Robert Bauval and Ahmed Osman have expertly untangled the history of the Egyptian Antiquities Organization, in all its guises, and successfully exposed the trauma of the Zahi Hawass years. This is a story that should be read by all those interested in Egyptology and everyone who cares passionately about Egypt . . . a tour de force in modern historical investigation.”
“Breaking the Mirror of Heaven is a hugely important book. In a time when we can all see ‘the rise of idiot experts,’ this book focuses our attention on the political games that are played with the honest interpretation of our past. Self-serving individuals seek to bury new information by pretending that claimed academic rank outweighs cold evidence. Bravo, Robert and Ahmed, for such a delightful and persuasive blow for reason.”
“Clearing cultural and historical distortions, the authors reveal the long hidden and persecuted voice of ancient Egypt and call for the return of Egypt to its rightful place as ‘the Mirror of Heaven’.”
“Bauval and Osman’s Breaking the Mirror of Heaven (‘Mirror of Heaven’ is the name given to Egypt by Hermes-Thoth) is not just about Hawass and his monumental ego and failings; it is an attempt to reveal the truth about the desecration of artifacts over the centuries, the effects of foreign rule, the suppression of ‘pagan’ wisdom, the Freemasonry-inspired Napoleonic invasion, and the political power plays in the post-war era from Nasser to Mubarak that continue morphing to this day.”
“Prolific writers with in-depth knowledge of ancient Egypt, Robert Bauval and Ahmed Osman have teamed up to produce a scathing indictment of former Egyptian Minister of Antiquities Zahi Hawass.”
“Due to Robert Bauval’s influence, as well as that of many other great authors, false beliefs on the origins of civilization will be studied well into the future. The observations and approaches in Bauval’s books are dazzling.”
“Egyptology has lied to us for too long. Now a meticulous investigation by two top authors reveals the disturbing truth. This book is dynamite.”
“Breaking the Mirror of Heaven is a hugely important book. In a time when we can all see ‘the rise of idiot experts,’ this book focuses our attention on the political games that are played with the honest interpretation of our past. Self-serving individuals seek to bury new information by pretending that claimed academic rank outweighs cold evidence. Bravo, Robert and Ahmed, for such a delightful and persuasive blow for reason.”
“Clearing cultural and historical distortions, the authors reveal the long hidden and persecuted voice of ancient Egypt and call for the return of Egypt to its rightful place as ‘the Mirror of Heaven’.”
“Bauval and Osman’s Breaking the Mirror of Heaven (‘Mirror of Heaven’ is the name given to Egypt by Hermes-Thoth) is not just about Hawass and his monumental ego and failings; it is an attempt to reveal the truth about the desecration of artifacts over the centuries, the effects of foreign rule, the suppression of ‘pagan’ wisdom, the Freemasonry-inspired Napoleonic invasion, and the political power plays in the post-war era from Nasser to Mubarak that continue morphing to this day.”
“Prolific writers with in-depth knowledge of ancient Egypt, Robert Bauval and Ahmed Osman have teamed up to produce a scathing indictment of former Egyptian Minister of Antiquities Zahi Hawass.”
“Due to Robert Bauval’s influence, as well as that of many other great authors, false beliefs on the origins of civilization will be studied well into the future. The observations and approaches in Bauval’s books are dazzling.”
“Egyptology has lied to us for too long. Now a meticulous investigation by two top authors reveals the disturbing truth. This book is dynamite.”
Descriere
Exposes the many cycles of monument destruction and cultural suppression in Egypt from antiquity to the present day.