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Authors: Stel Pavlou

BOOK: Decipher
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And King Cheops said: “It has been said that you know the number of the secret chambers in the sanctuary of Thoth.” And Djedi said: “So it please you, O sovereign my lord, I know not the number thereof, but I know the place where it is.”
 
 
Excerpt from:
King Cheops and the Magicians
, c. 1700 B.C.E.,
from an earlier text c. 2500 B.C.E. Translated in:
The Wisdom of Ancient Egypt,
Joseph Kaster, 1968.
Revised from:
The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians
,
Adolf Erman, 1927
“The cross and the circle representing the sun is the oldest piece of symbolism known to mankind,” Scott explained hurriedly as the team donned white boiler-suits for their sojourn down to where the Carbon 60 crystals sat, surrounded by highly sensitive research equipment.
He grabbed a pen and started scrawling. “They occur all over the world. These are Stone Age glyphs from India:
. This is the Rongorongo script sun symbol from Easter Island:
. This symbol pops up in Venezuela:
. This Mayan symbol for the sun was also the phonetic sound ‘kin':
. In South America the quincunx or cross was also the symbol indicating mankind's existence at the intersection of the physical world represented by the horizontal plane, and the eternal world represented by the vertical plane. If you think about it, the Egyptian ankh represents eternal life and that's a cross and a circle just in a slightly different form: † . At the Temple of Paintings, at Bonampak near Palenque in Mexico, they even have pictures of fishmen visitors bearing crosses in circles.”
November frowned. “Fishmen?”
“Foreign visitors with beards and fish on their heads. Go figure.”
“So it all comes down to a big cosmic game of tic-tac-toe—noughts and crosses, huh?” Hackett smirked.
Scott ignored him. Tapped the drawings again. “Palenque is the site of the Temple of the Sun and the Foliated Cross.” Suddenly clicking to what he'd just said, he grabbed Gant's attention. “Hey, did anyone point a satellite at that site and look for C60?”
“Mm-hmm. Rola Corp. did a sweep. Came up negative.”
Scott seemed deflated. “Oh well. Cross symbolism was real big in South American culture. Quetzalcoatl, the tall white-bearded savior who brought civilization to the Incas wore a robe fringed with white crosses. Okay, he wasn't Mayan, but—”
“It still came up negative.”
Pearce zipped his boiler-suit up to his neck as he came over to inspect Scott's doodled glyphs. “I think I remember reading somewhere that Linear B, the distant cousin to ancient Greek, had a cross and circle symbol too.”
“Oh, you mean this one? ⊕ Yeah. Now that's interesting because Linear B and the other Greek cousin, the Phaistos Disk, which used this symbol:
were both phonetic. These signs didn't mean the sun, but stood for the sound ‘Ka.'”
“Ka?” Pearce questioned. “In ancient Egypt the Ka was divine essence. When you were born, your double, or your Ka, was created and remained in the divine world. Guiding you and protecting you until you died and rejoined it.”
“Well, I wouldn't get too excited,” Scott warned. “This symbol ⊕ is also used in early cuneiform, in Sumeria, and it means sheep.”
“Sheep … ?”
Now November was intrigued. “Dr. Scott, you said Jesus was given the symbol of the cross and the halo after his death from other religions. What about the sheep? They called him a lamb all the time. I thought it was to do with Passover. Y'know, a symbol for sacrifice?”
Scott mulled it over as Hackett retorted, “Come on, are you saying the resurrection of Atlantis is actually the Second Coming?”
“No, that's not what I'm saying at all,” November bridled, defensive and angry. “We're talking about symbols. Mythology—”
Scott held up a hand. “Shut up!” he barked. “Y'see? Y'see what religion does to people?” He turned his attention back to his doodle pad. Scrawled another glyph. Beckoned everyone to stand around and join him. “Now look,” he said, “this symbol is ancient Egyptian too. But this one doesn't mean any of those things.”
“That's the closest symbol so far to the layout of Atlantis,” Matheson commented. “That and the Indian one. What does it mean?”
“It's Hieroglyphic Egyptian,” Scott explained. “Denoting a city.”
All eyes turned to the screen where the sub-ice images of Atlantis were being displayed. “Plato said his story of Atlantis originated in Egypt,” Scott told them. “His description of the city was of concentric circles of land and water, divided into quarters by land bridges. From the air it would seem like a series of circles and a cross.”
“So the Egyptians knew about Atlantis?” Matheson asked.
“Possibly. Either that, or they knew about ancient Mexico City.”
Pearce blinked. “Okay, now I'm confused. What's the connection?”
“Aztec legend has it that after the flood, Coxcoxtli and his wife landed at Antlan and journeyed eventually to Mexico, where they set about reclaiming land and built the city of Tenochitlan. When the Europeans arrived it was still in existence and was larger and more impressive than anything back home. It had temples, pyramids, canals, aqueducts, markets. It matched the layout Plato gave for Atlantis, but was referred to by the Aztecs as a replica built in honor of their own lost ‘Aztlan,' the birthplace of their own civilization, which was washed away in a flood. Today, Mexico City stands on that site.”
“Did they say where this Aztland was?”
“Somewhere to the south.”
Major Gant finished suiting himself up and was about to lead them all to the door where they would make their way down to the research lab's main floor when he turned back. “Out of interest,” he said, “do you happen to know the Chinese symbol for the sun?”
“This is the earliest one from the Shang Dynasty,” Scott said as he drew it. “Eventually it evolved into a square shape, for reasons only the Chinese know. As you can see, it's the odd man out. It's not a cross.”
They all eyed the symbol.
“Curious,” Hackett responded. “It's the only one that's scientifically accurate.”
Scott frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Positive and negative,” Hackett explained. “The basics you learn about magnetism in school. North is positive, represented by a cross. South is negative, represented by a minus sign. Atlantis is situated at the
South
Pole. The Chinese aren't just telling us that the sun is important—they're telling us where to go to find the answers.”
 
All suited up in their white coveralls, they followed Gant through the door and out onto a metal gantry overlooking the vast research facilities below where bundles and bundles of wires were hanging in looms above the pipe-work of liquid gas coolant systems, banks of computers, dials and switches.
As they clanked their way down the flights of steps they could smell the plastic and metal odors of scientific research. The clinical aroma of technology. When they reached the bottom they could see a table stretched before them. And piled on top of it across its entire length were rows and rows of blue crystals. The Carbon 60 shards brought back from Antarctica.

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