Fingerprints of the Gods

When he had set everything in order, he handed over the control of the kingdom to Isis, quit Egypt for many years, and roamed about the world with the sole intention, Diodorus Siculus was told,
of visiting all the inhabited earth and teaching the race of men how to cultivate the vine and sow wheat and barley; for he supposed that if he made men give up their savagery and adopt a gentle manner of life he would receive immortal honours because of the magnitude of his benefactions

Osiris travelled first to Ethiopia, where he taught tillage and husbandry to the primitive hunter-gatherers he encountered. He also undertook a number of large-scale engineering and hydraulics works: ‘He built canals, with flood gates and regulators … he raised the river banks and took precautions to prevent the Nile from overflowing …’29 Later he made his way to Arabia and thence to India, where he established many cities. Moving on to Thrace he killed a barbarian king for refusing to adopt his system of government. This

It is tempting to wonder whether what we are confronted by here might not be a garbled account of a malfunctioning man-made device: a confused, awe-stricken recollection of a monstrous instrument devised by the scientists of a lost civilization. Weight is added to such extreme speculations when we remember that this is by no means the only golden box in the ancient world that functioned like a deadly and unpredictable machine. It has a number of quite unmissable similarities to the Hebrews’ enigmatic Ark of the Covenant (which also struck innocent people dead with bolts of fiery energy, which also was ‘overlaid round about with gold’, and which was said to have contained not only the two tablets of the Ten Commandments but ‘the golden pot that had manna,

reader will not have forgotten that this god – once again like Quetzalcoatl and Viracocha – was remembered principally as a benefactor of mankind, as a bringer of enlightenment and as a great civilizing leader.25 He was credited, for example, with having abolished cannibalism and was said to have introduced the Egyptians to agriculture – in particular to the cultivation of wheat and barley – and to have taught them the art of fashioning agricultural implements. Since he had an especial liking for fine wines (the myths do not say where he acquired this taste), he made a point of ‘teaching mankind the culture of the vine, as well as the way to harvest the grape and to store the wine …’26 In addition to the gifts of good living he brought to his subjects, Osiris helped to wean them ‘from their miserable and barbarous manners’ by providing them with a code of laws and inaugurating the cult of the gods in Egypt.27

Working from this rounded-up figure, the Osiris myth is capable of yielding a value of 2160 years for a precessional shift through one complete house of the zodiac. The correct figure, according to today’s calculations, is 2148 years.10 The Hipparchus figures are 2400 years and 2347.8 years respectively. Finally, Osiris enables us to calculate 25,920 as the number of years required for the fulfilment of a complete precessional cycle through 12 houses of the zodiac. Hipparchus gives us either 28,800 or 28,173.6 years. The correct figure, by today’s estimates, is 25,776 years.11 The Hipparchus calculations for the Great Return are therefore around 3000 years out of kilter. The Osiris calculations miss the true figure by only 144 years, and may well do so because the narrative context forced a rounding-up of the base number from the correct value of 71.6 to a more workable figure of 72.

The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt,

amily relationships are involved. Amlodhi/Amleth/Hamlet is always a son who revenges the murder of his father by entrapping and killing the murderer. The murderer, furthermore, is always the father’s own brother, i. e., Hamlet’s uncle.36
This is precisely the scenario of the Osiris myth. Osiris and Seth are brothers.37 Seth murders Osiris. Horus, the son of Osiris, then takes revenge upon his uncle.38

Was there motive in the apparent madness of these archaic mind games?

Equally indicative of the cataclysmic change that took place at the onset of the great cold in Siberia is the food the extinct animals were eating when they perished: ‘The mammoths died suddenly, in intense cold, and in great numbers. Death came so quickly that the swallowed vegetation is yet undigested … Grasses, bluebells, buttercups, tender sedges, and wild beans have been found, yet identifiable and undeteriorated, in their mouths and stomachs.’

What is certain, however, is that at some point between 12–13,000 years ago a destroying frost descended with horrifying speed upon Siberia and has never relaxed its grip. In an eerie echo of the Avestic traditions, a land which had previously enjoyed seven months of summer was converted almost overnight into a land of ice and snow with ten months of harsh and frozen winter.24