1967 cont.
Evidence of the Existence of an Atlantean Culture, Egerton Sykes
c. 1967
It was Donnelly who first pointed out the resemblance's between certain cultural manifestations on
both sides of the Atlantic as evidence of the
existence of a cultural bridge between them.
To begin with there is the question of the pyramids. When
the idea was first mooted it was not realized that the typical smooth
appearance of the Great Pyramid of Egypt was a fairly recent idea, the original
pyramids were all step pyramids, presumably with ramps leading from one stage
to another so that ceremonies could be held outside of them. This was certainly
the case with the great Ziggurat at Babylon, The Tower
of Babel, the remains of
which are to be seen today. The story of the confusion of languages here may
have arisen from the large members of prisoners of war who were employed on the
construction of work, coming from all parts of the Middle
East and having no common tongue. It was originally suggested that
there was no resemblance between the pyramids of Egypt
and those of Mexico,
in that the Egyptian ones all had interior chambers and the Mexican ones none.
However, recent archaeological research, has shown
that all the American ones have interior chambers, some of considerable size.
The main difference lies in the fact that the African ones have entrances at
the sides and the American ones entrances at the top down shafts. The
Babylonian examples did not survive as, owing to the almost complete lack of
hard materials for building in Babylonia, they
had to be made of burnt clay bricks which eventually succumbed to the
destructive power of the elements. The reason for the pyramids seems to be the
erection of buildings which were supposedly high enough to survive the Deluge,
if it came again. The story of the Siriadic Columns
put up by Suria, a pre-diluvian
ruler, one of brick and one of stone, containing in them the knowledge of the
past, and in the hope that at least one would survive, seems to be related to
the building of these pyramids. Perhaps one day we shall discover something of
real interest in them, so far every interior opening that has been discovered
had already been looted by robbers many years ago. An American University
team is now working on the Great Pyramid with cosmic ray counters, in the
endeavor to discover undiscovered chambers within it. To my mind they are
looking in the wrong place, as I think that anything of interest would be below
where they are working but that is a matter for discussion next year when they
have finished their tests. One of the geological features of the catastrophe
was the widening and intensification of the Great Rift. At Baalbek, in the
Great Temple, they used to hold an annual ceremony of pouring sea water brought
with difficulty from the coast 30 miles away, into a cleft of the Northern End
of the Rift, to commemorate the fact that the waters of the Deluge finally ran
away through this crack in the upper mantle of the earth. Although there is an
arched window from Tiahuanaco there seems no
evidence that this early culture either knew of it nor
employed it as a constructional feature. However the architectural level of
these rude stone buildings was extremely high, in that the cutting of the
stones to fit was done with the greatest care so that they would hold together
without mortar, in fact after all these years it is still a matter of the
greatest difficulty to get even a knife blade between the two stones. It is
tempting to assume that astronomy was one of the sciences generated from
Atlantis, but here we are faced with the fact that the New World Astronomers
were far ahead of the Old World ones. For example in Mexico
Transits of Venus were recorded which seems to have been practically unknown in
the Near East. In the same way the
various Mexican calendrical systems, which differed
in details, while being basically the same, were accurate as far back as we can
trace, whilst the European systems were very much out of kilter until 1752 when
the famous adjustment of 12 days was made in Britain. It is generally assumed
that the ancient Egyptians had considerable knowledge of astronomy, but
unfortunately, no astronomical papyri have come down to us. A communication
received this morning suggests that the Babylonians must have had a Stonehenge to calculate eclipses. Another custom that
appears to have come down to the world from the Atlantis culture is that of the
couvade. This is usually marked by the male parent of
a child going into ritual taboo for a month or six weeks after the birth of a
child. The custom was mainly restricted to important families. The reason for
it may be one of sympathetic magic, in that if the
father of the child has an injury before the baby is weaned it may reflect
itself in the child. The custom is widespread on both sides of the Atlantic,
and still exists, a case was reported from the Bordeaux area about 1951.
Linked with this are circumcision and the ritual sacrifice of the first born
which cover roughly the same area. This is tied up with the dedication of the
first born male to the church, and the ritual sacrifice of circumcision being
accepted as a substitute for this. As a matter of interest there is not a
public building dating back to the Old Testament times, in the Near or middle
east, where small children were not being sacrificed and their bodies put under
each corner stones, presumably to give life and sanctity to the structure. The
same system applied to Meso America."
(Webmaster note- As of recently they found Peruvian Inca or
Mocha mummies buried on a mountain top (pyramid substitute) indicating
sacrifice to the four corners of the world with children, this is a common
practice in both old and new world.)
"Then we have the custom of ritual cranial deformation,
found through out Meso America,
Europe, Africa. As
the skull of a newly born infant is soft and pliable, it is possible to alter
the shape without causing any exceptional serious damage. The process usually
consisted in linking two boards with a leather hinge, placing the newly born
child on its back on one and strapping down the other, thereby making a species
of the nut cracker. If the bandage is tightened every day for a couple of
months the skull shape is completely changed. In British Columbia the Chinooks were known as
the Flat Head Indians because of this. A similar type of deformation was
employed extensively in Mexico,
and to judge from the portraits also in Egypt. Nowadays it is current in
the Sudan
and further south, although here bandages are more usual than the wood frames.
A typical example of this skull, but possibly produced by birth, is shown in
the Head of Nefertiti, the most beautiful women of early antiquity, where the
nose line contained unbroken right up to the top of the skull. It is of
interest to note that it is from people such as this that one gets the
expression "to look down on someone" owing to the shape of their
heads they had to hold them at an angle which involved looking down wards
instead of straight at a person."
Webmasters note- A recent author pointed out about the
theory of the squint eye cult to be able to look at something with a kind of
pseudo cross eye glare to see into its mysteries in writing, nature, or on
stone. I believe I maybe the first to point out that if the case of the
squint eyes cult , that the cranial deformation not only makes you cross
eyes if you are forced to look to low but also to squint from the sun which
eyes set back would force you to shut the glare out from. The other
advantage is if this is only the high society that had to have this ritual done
its purpose was not originally for high society, but of astronomers for they
would have to spend many hours staring into the sky which a slanted back
forehead would help the neck in balance. July 6th
2002 c.
"The reason for this deformation lies in the fact, for
some reason unknown to us, this shape of skull was fairly usual among the
people of Atlantis, and that for social reasons mothers discovered that it was
possible to obtain this shape by artificial means. There must be tens of
thousands of artificially deformed skulls in museums all over the world, there
were some magnificent ones in the Museum of the royal college of Surgeons
before it was bombed during the war. Mummification was usual on both sides
of the Atlantic and even spread as far south as Peru. The associate cult of
preserving the entrails in jars dedicated to the gods of the four points of the
compass was usual both in Egypt
and Mexico.
These canopic jars seem to go a long way back in
history, but only seem to have occurred in the Atlantis culture perimeter. The
first ball games played in courts evolved during this culture period. The Maya
and Aztec ball game, resembling a combination of Royal Tennis with a dedans
and fives, of which the present day direct descendants is pelota played by the Basques, was one of the first
balls made of rubber. That is shown on both sides of the Atlantic is shown by
the fact that Royal tennis, of which mention is made in Shakespeare's 'Henry
the V', was known and played in Europe hundreds of years before Columbus
reached America. It probably came from the Basques, whose traditions of
Atlantis were crystallized into Verdegauers
"Atlantida". This was printed about a
century ago and has recently been made the subject of an Opera.
The Sahara Inland Sea, By Egerton Sykes 1967 ends
"That the Sahara desert was once an inland sea of
considerable dimensions is not only confirmed by classical references but also
by the fact that underlying most of it there is a layer of brackish water
ranging from 200 to 500 feet under the soil. The various Oases presumably are
established in spots where the depth is down to some 50 feet, sufficient for
plant life to survive. The climatic change seems to have occurred fairly recently,
say between BC 5000, as the classics contain numerous references to its
existence. To Theopompus and Aelian
it was the Meropic
Sea, on the borders of
which lived the Meropidae. Oddly enough the hero of
the deluge Legend of the island
of Cos was named Merope, but the nature of the link is uncertain. According
to Diodorus Silicus there
was at least one port on this sea coast, it was named Nysa
and was said to be the birthplace of Dionysius, the son of Zeus and Semele." (Webmaster note- and a kind of Jesus of the
Greeks note the Dead Sea comparison later in
history?) "The Cerne mentioned by Hanno seems to
have been the Atlantic port, lying north of Lixus
(Webmaster note- The Rabbit in Basque) and the Cheretes
Rivers, it was also mentioned by Festus Avenius in his Ora Maritima. We are faced with great difficulty in identifying
either of these two cities, as also the only other one known to us, the City of
Brass, the story of which is in the 1001 Nights, nos. 566 to 578, where it
states that it was abandoned because of the lack of water, which indicates that
it had been built before the climatic changes. Leaving out the pornography,
which accounts for slightly over half the text, there is quite a lot of
valuable historical material in the Arabian Nights, Burton's translation is the
best but rather turgid; Lane's is also quite good. Byron de Prorok
had planned an expedition in 1935, to complete his long series of journeys
across North Africa and was to have been accompanied by a friend of mine Jean Gattefosse, another expert on the region, who died several
years ago. Unfortunately the advent of the Italian War
with Abyssinia upset all the plans, the yacht that was to have been used ended
up as a hospital ship, and by 1947 not only the political situation but also
the people concerned had so changed that further effort was impossible. Prorok will be remembered as the man who brought the mummy
Queen Tin Aten or Antinea
of the Hoggar to Britian
about 1932, when I saw it on exhibition in London. He died in 1953 but his wife and his
two daughters Maureen and Denise are still alive, as far as I know and living
somewhere in Western Europe. They probably
have all the missing data. The mummy is stated to be in the museum at Fez. Once the disturbed
and extremely muddy waters of Arab nationalism settle it may be possible for
the potential sites to be investigated afresh. In the meantime there is
speculation about the people who lived on the borders of the Meropic Sea and their relationship to the
earliest Mediterranean cultures. They were white skinned and not of Semetic Stock, as witness their descendents today, but that
is about as far as one can go with safty. Among the
authorities who should be consulted are- E.F. Berlioux,
Ibn Khaldoun, E. Roudaire, Dr. Rouire, and either
Burton or Lane for the Arabian Nights. Somewhere in the region lies concealed
one of the major keys to the history of the Middle Sea.
E.S. 1967 ends.
In 1968 Lemuria was looked into
more than any of other years for the Journal with a few exceptions, Sykes was
very dubious of Churchward and almost viewed him as
part a charlatan. This however changed over time with strange discoveries in
the Peru and South America areas that Sykes felt may not be a direct
imprint of Atlantis alone. Sykes reviewed more material on the Peru culture's then he really did of the Maya because in most
cases he felt Maya were in a culture sense to recent. So, he does mention the Toltecs more times then the Maya except in Calendar
sources, which he felt they borrowed from Toltec or from Mexico. In a
chronological sense today he is still about right. The Lemuria
question was not however vague to him he had many books on the subject and made
a special booklet called Lemuria Reconsidered and a
very painstaking work at that which made Churchward
work look like child's play. In these Journals I will not put on line Lemuria information for purposes of space, since most of
the site is dedicated to Atlantis material. So for 1968 I begin with:
Atlantis
in Peru, by Egerton Sykes and Karola
Seibert 1968 c.
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