Mar 30, 2017

Debunking Egyptologists Dr. Mark Lehner From the University Of Chicago & James F. Romano, Curator At The Brooklyn Museum

Background: Geologists Agree That The Sphinx Has Rain Erosion Patterns On It Indicating It Was Built Before 5000 BC! 2500 Years BEFORE Mainstream Egyptologists Claim It Was Built!

In the documentary "Mystery Of The Sphinx", outlined in the post linked above, Mark Lehner & James F. Romano, mainstream Egyptologists, present their arguments for ignoring hard science (geology). Since these are very easy arguments to debunk so I thought I would get it out of the way. I would like to point out that while I'm debunking these guys they are already ignoring the hard science of geology and so they are really nothing more than cultists, so the fact that I can make their beliefs seem even more backwards and out of date should come as no surprise.

The following is what Mark Lehner said followed by a piece by piece analysis.

Dr. Mark Lehner, Egyptologist from the University of Chicago: My own reaction as a non-geologist is I was waiting to see some hardcore data that the weathering to the Sphinx is in fact water induced. Induced by the periods of rain such that it has to date during the period with more heavy rains. I didn’t see any evidence. I saw many slides that yes this dramatically undulating profile of what we call number two (?) of the Sphinx… but various people, mostly… well, various people standing in the view but I didn’t see any data that convinces me one way or another that it is in fact rain inducing. Our reaction is if it was birth (?) by a civilization or a culture that is that much earlier where is the other evidence of this culture? Where? Show me a pot shard. Show me a tomb. Show me an inscription. Show me any other piece of sculpture. Show me any archaeological site that dates to this period.


Mark's words are in bold italic and mine are in regular type.


Mark: My own reaction as a non-geologist is I was waiting to see some hardcore data that the weathering to the Sphinx is in fact water induced.

When a bunch of GEOLOGISTS are explaining their scientific observations to you, you ARE receiving hardcore data. For this not to be hardcore data you would have to debunk ALL of Geology. In other words, the first piece of the argument is so bad that I wonder if he is trying to protect his degree/reputation from being dragged through the dirt by a non-Egyptologist.


Mark: Induced by the periods of rain such that it has to date during the period with more heavy rains.

That evidence was also provided by Geologists and historical data such as the sort you can find online on any reputable science site;

Live Science: Sahara Was Once Lush & Populated
Some 12,000 years ago, the only place to live along the eastern Sahara Desert was the Nile Valley. Being so crowded, prime real estate in the Nile Valley was difficult to come by. Disputes over land were often settled with the fist, as evidenced by the cemetery of Jebel Sahaba where many of the buried individuals had died a violent death.
But around 10,500 years ago, a sudden burst of monsoon rains over the vast desert transformed the region into habitable land.
...
Humans also frolicked in the rain pools, as depicted in rock art from Southwest Egypt.
In the more southern Sudanese Sahara, lush vegetation, hearty trees, and permanent freshwater lakes persisted over millennia. There were even large rivers, such as the Wadi Howar, once the largest tributary to the Nile from the Sahara.
"Wildlife included very demanding species such as elephants, rhinos, hippos, crocodiles, and more than 30 species of fish up to 2 meters (6 feet) big," Kroepelin told LiveScience.
A timeline of Sahara occupation [See Map]:

  • 22,000 to 10,500 years ago: The Sahara was devoid of any human occupation outside the Nile Valley and extended 250 miles further south than it does today.
  • 10,500 to 9,000 years ago: Monsoon rains begin sweeping into the Sahara, transforming the region into a habitable area swiftly settled by Nile Valley dwellers.
This is basic scientific knowledge.


Mark: I didn’t see any evidence. I saw many slides that yes this dramatically undulating profile of what we call number two (?) of the Sphinx…

As I outlined in a previous post (Geologists Agree That The Sphinx Has Rain Erosion Patterns On It Indicating It Was Built Before 5000 BC! 2500 Years BEFORE Mainstream Egyptologists Claim It Was Built!) there are certain features that, with an explanation, even a child can understand and observe accurately. I wonder what Mark is up to?


Mark:... but various people, mostly… well, various people standing in the view but I didn’t see any data that convinces me one way or another that it is in fact rain inducing.

"various people standing in the view" is a clear sign that he's lying, in my opinion. There is more than enough visual data from Wikipedia to notice the types of erosion on the Sphinx. Mark is definitely lying. May I suggest we ask him if he is willing to take a lie detector test? If he says no that is probably good enough to indicate he's lying and doesn't want to be caught given how much the science of lie detection has advanced in our time.


Mark: Our reaction is if it was birth (?) by a civilization or a culture that is that much earlier where is the other evidence of this culture? Where? Show me a pot shard. Show me a tomb. Show me an inscription. Show me any other piece of sculpture. Show me any archaeological site that dates to this period.

Sure, no problem.

Here is a trace of Megalithic Cultures from 9500 BC down to recent times...

Tracing Lost Megalithic Cultures From 9500 BC To The Present

Here is a quick outline of how different aspects of our culture (stuff we still do today) can be traced well into the Paleolithic age...

Tracing The Sources Of Our Culture To The Paleolithic Age... With Art & Music Being Well Over 40,000 Years Old!



Debunking James F. Romano - Curator of the Egyptian collection at the Brooklyn Museum

James: “We’re relatively certain of the accuracy of our reconstruction of Egyptian civilization because if we were to take the alternative view, think of what we’re stuck with. We have an antediluvian civilization with all the trappings of later pharaonic civilization like the Sphinx with the characteristic Egyptian head cloth or the characteristic use of the lion in the guise of the king, and then you have nothing.

This is a better argument from the Cult of Egyptology. But it shouldn't bee seen as a logical one because ignoring a hard science in favor of not having a theory to begin with isn't a science but a cult. That said, these are questions that finding the hard scientific facts need to be asked and answered by the professionals... who happen to be novice explorers like in the early age of science as the "professionals" are nothing more than accredited cults.

Anyways, to the debunking on this guy. It isn't necessarily, originally, a Sphinx, although a sphinx appears to have been found at Gobekli Tepe so I won't go into it any further here.

Quote form the Guardian on Gobekli Tepe: "Look at this", he said, pointing at a photo of an exquisitely carved sculpture showing an animal, half-human, half-lion. "It's a sphinx, thousands of years before Egypt. South-eastern Turkey, northern Syria - this region saw the wedding night of our civilization."  - Article: 7,000 years older than Stonehenge: the site that stunned archaeologists Circles of elaborately carved stones from about 9,500BC predate even agriculture


James: You have nothing for 1000 years, 2000 years and then it starts up again. Where’s the link? What ties this antediluvian culture to what came later? Are you saying that two exactly parallel cultures evolved at the same place, 3, 4, 5 thousand years apart?


This is actually normal in the world of, what I'm guessing must have been, Megalith temple, ritual, worship and dance areas for those cultures. In this post I outlined this possibility based on the behavior/construction of other megalithic sites:

Was The Egyptian Pyramid Complex Built Up Over Time? From About 10,500 BC To About 2,500 BC?


James: It sounds like a star trek episode. It simply doesn’t work that way.

It DOES work that way and Star Trek DID use history and theories in it's story making... so poor Egyptologists are right and wrong at the same time though this time due to a lack of knowledge about TV shows


James: Culture evolves in a linear fashion. To accept the theories that you’re reporting means that you’ve got culture A, culture B, and in between nothing. And it simply doesn’t work that way”

That statement is incorrect as the signs of culture are very clear AND traceable.

Tracing Lost Megalithic Cultures From 9500 BC To The Present

Tracing The Sources Of Our Culture To The Paleolithic Age... With Art & Music Being Well Over 40,000 Years Old!

Was Ancient Egyptian Culture Influenced By Shamans & Shamanism In Its Early Development Stages?

Was The Egyptian Pyramid Complex Built Up Over Time? From About 10,500 BC To About 2,500 BC?

Evidence is clear.

Note: This debunking takes for granted that Egyptology is nothing more than a cult as it rejects hard science such as that explained in the background post on what Geologists say about the age of the Sphinx because of the rain erosion patterns on it. Geology and the accepted views of multiple geologists IS hard evidence, my own analysis should be seen as secondary no matter how badly I just debunked the Egyptologists. Hard science comes first. Geology is a physical science Egyptology isn't a science but a study of Egypt. If a hard science disproves a theory man came up with from fantasizing then obviously the science will take precedence in any advanced civilization. That Egyptologists and Archaeologists may be going through a dark age like psychology seems likely.

i.e.:

{Subject: Archaeology} The Fragmentation of Knowledge Part 1 [Or, The case against over-specialization in theory based academics] - This may not have all it's dates the most accurate BUT it does provide an overview of the problem with PhD's such as Egyptologists.

{Subject Psychology} Fragmentation Of Knowledge 2 - [Or, The case against over-specialization in theory based academics]

When a hard science debunks a theory the polite thing to o is to redo the theory to take into account the hard scientific evidence. What theory you like or hold on to as the way to measure reality is what religious people do. Egyptology should just admit they are a cult of old theories they got from their textbooks.

The Church could once control information such as science and now cults have formed around textbooks who seek to hold scientific discovery at a standstill. Seems to be a normal part of human psychology to become so egotistical so as to create little cults around their favorite beliefs like Chimpanzees sitting in stunned fascination round their favorite &/or fun activity (not like there isn't a link through dancing). Such non-scientific and egotistical behavior does halter progress by decades if not centuries... which may explain alot of human history.

Tracing The Origins Of Culture & Civilization

Mar 29, 2017

Was The Egyptian Pyramid Complex Built Up Over Time? From About 10,500 BC To About 2,500 BC?

Background:
1. Geologists Agree That The Sphinx Has Rain Erosion Patterns On It Indicating It Was Built Before 5000 BC! 2500 Years BEFORE Mainstream Egyptologists Claim It Was Built!
2. Breaking News: Using Archeoastronomy The Pyramid Complex At Giza In Egypt Has Been Dated To 10,500 BC
3. Tracing Lost Megalithic Cultures From 9500 BC To The Present

Many Megalithic sites are built up over time and given Egypt's central location and the uniformity of mythological structure over time (example 1 - example 2 - example 3) it makes sense that the Egyptian Pyramid/Sphinx complex was built up over a period of time, in stages.

What we find with the Giza pyramid complex is two interesting anomalies.

The first is that if you align the site to the sky, as many megalithic cultures seem to be doing, then we end up with a START for the Giza site at 10,500 BC.

The second is that in the pyramids themselves we find shafts through which stars can be seen, aligned to the year approx 2,450 BC... so did the Giza plateau site start in 10500 BC with a Sphinx (previously a lion, which would fit my thesis that the Egyptian culture developed from a Shamanic culture AND correspond to the type of symbology the hunter-shamanic society at Gobekli Tepe were using - more details later) and get to it's present built state by around 2500 BC? Evidence certainly seems to suggest so.

Note: The Sphinx Was Probably Originally A Lion

What I found most interesting is that the Sphinx seems to have been originally sculpted into a lion and then re-sculpted by a later civilization (the Pharaonic one) AFTER water and time had weathered the structure to such a degree that many of the lions head features were probably already gone.



Some Megalithic sites have been built up and expanded over time. Could the Pyramid complex at Giza Egypt be one of them? And does the age of 10,500 BC (approx) represent the beginning of a millennium long fascination with stars and stones in some, if not all, of the Megalithic Cultures?

The following are megalithic sites that have been built up over time (often with thousands of years separating first construction to last construction... it's like adding a new wing to the Vatican in Rome... it only happens rarely and after long periods of time)

Gobekli Tepe



Wikipedia: Göbekli Tepe, "Potbelly Hill" in Turkish, is an archaeological site atop a mountain ridge in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of modern-day Turkey, approximately 12 km (7 mi) northeast of the city of Şanlıurfa. The tell has a height of 15 m (49 ft) and is about 300 m (980 ft) in diameter. It is approximately 760 m (2,490 ft) above sea level. The tell includes two phases of ritual use dating back to the 10th–8th millennium BCE. During the first phase, pre-pottery Neolithic A (PPNA), circles of massive T-shaped stone pillars were erected, the world's oldest known megaliths. More than 200 pillars in about 20 circles are currently known through geophysical surveys. Each pillar has a height of up to 6 m (20 ft) and a weight of up to 20 tons. They are fitted into sockets that were hewn out of the bedrock. In the second phase, Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB), the erected pillars are smaller and stood in rectangular rooms, also with floors of polished lime. The site was abandoned after the PPNB-period. Younger structures date to classical times. The details of the structure's function remain a mystery. It was excavated by a German archaeological team under the direction of Klaus Schmidt from 1996 until his death in 2014; Schmidt believed that the sites were early neolithic sanctuaries used as a holy site and not used as a settlement.


The Cromlech of the Almendres megalithic complex of Portugal - 6000 to 4000 BC



Wikipedia: The construction of these structures date back to the 6th millennium BC, though they were only rediscovered in 1966 by Henrique Leonor Pina, who was proceeding with field work relating to the country's geological charts The excavation of the site unearthed a series of both megalithic and neolithic construction phases; Almendres I 6000 BC (Early Neolithic), Almendres II 5000 BC (Middle Neolithic), Almendres III 4000 BC (Late Neolithic). The relative chronology of the cromlech and menhirs is extremely complex and covers a period from the Neolithic to Chalcolithic, and it is believed that the monument had a religious/ceremonial purpose, or functioned as a primitive astronomical observatory.


Stonehenge may actually show signs of a culture transitioning from wood to stone (underlined below)... as cultures as supposed to do, i.e. the earliest star observatories must have been marked in wood - such as poles and tree trucks - which have long since rotten away and disspeared. Following the natural development of culture, stone comes AFTER a long period of development in wood (for example, before the car came the wooden, horse drawn cart. Before the metal plane came the wooden plane and before the metal boat came the wooden boat and so on), so, all megalithic cultures CAN be seen as later developments in the region which we have been able to track archaeologically because they reached the stage of using stone but the system itself was already part of the culture.

Wikipedia: Stonehenge evolved in several construction phases spanning at least 1500 years.


Archaeologists believe it was constructed from 3000 BC to 2000 BC. The surrounding circular earth bank and ditch, which constitute the earliest phase of the monument, have been dated to about 3100 BC. Radiocarbon dating suggests that the first bluestones were raised between 2400 and 2200 BC, although they may have been at the site as early as 3000 BC.

Before the monument (8000 BC forward) 

Archaeologists have found four, or possibly five, large Mesolithic postholes (one may have been a natural tree throw), which date to around 8000 BC, beneath the nearby modern tourist car-park. These held pine posts around 0.75 metres (2 ft 6 in) in diameter, which were erected and eventually rotted in situ. Three of the posts (and possibly four) were in an east-west alignment which may have had ritual significance; no parallels are known from Britain at the time but similar sites have been found in Scandinavia. A settlement that may have been contemporaneous with the posts has been found at Blick Mead, a reliable year round spring 1 mile (1.6 km) from Stonehenge. Salisbury Plain was then still wooded but 4,000 years later, during the earlier Neolithic, people built a causewayed enclosure at Robin Hood's Ball and long barrow tombs in the surrounding landscape. In approximately 3500 BC, a Stonehenge Cursus was built 700 metres (2,300 ft) north of the site as the first farmers began to clear the trees and develop the area. A number of other adjacent stone and wooden structures and burial mounds, previously overlooked, may date as far back as 4000 BC. Charcoal from the ‘Blick Mead’ camp 2.4 kilometres (1.5 mi) from Stonehenge (near the Vespasian's Camp site) has been dated to 4000 BC. The University of Buckingham's Humanities Research Institute believes that the community who built Stonehenge lived here over a period of several millennia, making it potentially "one of the pivotal places in the history of the Stonehenge landscape."

The Stonehenge site: Holes that no longer, or never, contained stones are shown as open circles. Stones visible today are shown coloured





Egyptian Pyramid Complex - 10,500 - 2500 BC

Here is the astronomical alignment of the Giza Plateau according to Robert Bauval in the first time (i.e. when the site was first developed, probably with the building of the Sphinx in some form or another), dating the SITE of the Giza Plateau to 10,500 BC.

Robert Bauval: THE GREAT SPHINX IN THE AGE OF LEO?

These two names, Horemakhet and Horakhti, have a very similar rendition. Horemakhet meaning ‘Horus in the Horizon’, and Horakhti meaning ‘Horus of the two Horizons’. There is no doubt, however, that the name Horemakhet was exclusively used for the Great Sphinx of Giza, whereas the name Horakhti was used for a figure in the eastern horizon which I have identified to the zodiacal constellation of Leo and which was also idetified with the Great Sphinx. If this is the case, then there is a problem with allocating the Great Sphinx to Khafre, a king of the IVth Dynasty who reigned in c. 2500 BC is this: the Great Sphinx is gazing directly DUE EAST, whereas the constellation of Leo/Horakhti rose at that time some 28 degrees north of due east. The correct epoch for the Great Sphinx to gaze at his own image would be 10,500 BC.


What makes the Sphinx-Leo correlation of 10,500 BC unlikely to be a coincidence is that it ‘works’ in conjuction with the ‘beginning’ of the Prececessional cycle of Orion’s belt as seen in the southern sky, which can be matched on the ground with the Giza Pyramids. This ‘beginning’ I have identified to the golden age that the ancients called Zep Tepi meaning the First Time (of creation).

Egyptologists are generally opposed to the idea that the ancient Egyptians identified the constellation of Leo to a lion. However Richard H. Wilkinson, professor of Egyptology at the University of Arizona, and an expert on Egyptian deities, wrote: “An important mythological aspect of the solar god in the heaven is found in his identity as a a cosmic lion as seen in Chapter 62 of the Book of the Dead, for example, which states that ‘I am he who crosses the sky, I am the lion of Re…’ The stellar constellation now known as Leo was also recognized by the Egyptians as being in the form of a recumbent lion… the constellation was directly associated to the sun god.” Wilkinson H., Richard. The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, 2003, p.206]


Robert Bauval: Precise Astronomical dating of the Great Pyramid: Breakthrough or Old News?

The Orion Mystery (1994) p. 270-1: "In previous articles it was shown that the two southern shafts pointed to Orion's belt and Sirius...the two northern shafts were directed to the pole star, Alpha Draconis, and to the head of Ursa Minor (Kochab).... All these alignments work for the same precessed epoch of c. 2450 BC plus or minus 25 years."

DE vol. 31, 1995, p. 8: "As for the two northern shafts, these were directed to the pole star, Alpha Draconis, and the 'head' of Ursa Minor (Kochab)... All these alignments work out for the same precessional epoch of c. 2450 BC +- 25 years."


So, now we have astronomical alignments for the Giza plateau in Egypt from 10,500 BC to 2500 BC!

Tracing The Origins Of Culture & Civilization

Mar 28, 2017

Was Ancient Egyptian Culture Influenced By Shamans & Shamanism In Its Early Development Stages?

Background:
1. Tracing The Sources Of Our Culture To The Paleolithic Age... With Art & Music Being Well Over 40,000 Years Old!
2. Tracing Lost Megalithic Cultures From 9500 BC To The Present
3. Cultural Diffusion: Tracing Water Travel By Canoes To AT LEAST 8000 BC & Extensive Ocean Travel By Ships To 1600 BC!

In the drawings left by ancient cultures there is this strange yet blatantly obvious connection deep into the paleolithic age to shamans, for anyone familiar with mythology and its art. Same for ancient Egypt. In other words, it looks like the ancient Egyptian culture, in the first time or even earlier, was founded/created-over-time by a bunch of shamans.  The following outlines the connection with the art left behind with extracts from Joseph Campbell's Primitive Mythology (Book 1 of the Masks of God) for context.

The Shaman With the Bird Head Among The Cave Paintings Of Lascaux (15000 BC);


“... in the great paleolithic cavern of Lascaux, in southern France, there is the picture of a shaman dressed in a bird costume, lying prostrate in a trance and with the figure of a bird perched on his shaman staff beside him. The shamans of Siberia wear bird costumes to this day, and many are believed to have been conceived by their mothers from the descent of a bird. In India, a term of honor addressed to the master yogi is Paramahamsa: paramount or supreme (parama) wild gander (hamsa). In China the so-called “mountain men” or “immortals” (hsien) are pictured as feathered, like birds, or as floating through the air on soaring beasts. The German legend of Lohengrin, the swan knight, and the tales, told wherever shamanism has flourished, of the swan maiden, are like-wise evidence of the force of the image of the bird as an adequate sign of spiritual power. And shall we not think, also, of the dove that descended upon Mary, and the swan that begot Helen of Troy? In many lands the soul has been pictured as a bird, and birds commonly are spiritual messengers. Angels are but modified birds. But the bird of the shaman is one of particular character and power, endowing him with an ability to fly in trance beyond the bounds of life, and yet return.” - Joseph Campbell , Primitive Mythology, page 258

Joseph Campbell explains further;

Down there a large bison bull, eviscerated by a spear that transfixed its anus and emerged through its sexual organ stands before a prostrate man. the latter, (the only crudely drawn figure, and the only human figure in the cave) is rapt in a shamanistic trance. He wears a bird mask; his phallus erect, is pointing at the pierced bull; a throwing-stick lies on the ground at his feet; and beside him stands a wand or staff, bearing on its tip the image of a bird. And then, behind this prostrate shaman, is a large rhinoceros, apparently defecating as it walks away.

There has been a good deal of discussion of this painting among the scholar, and the usual suggestion is that it may represent the scene of a hunting accident. No less an authority than Abbe Breuil himself has supported this opinion, suggesting that the rhino may have been the cause of the disaster. It seems to me certain, however, that, in a cave where pictures are magical and consequently were expected to bring to pass such situations as they represent, a scene of disaster would not have been placed in the crypt, the holy of holies. The man wears a bird mask and has birdlike instead of human hands. He is certainly a shaman, the bird costume and bird transformation being characteristic, as we have already seen, of the lore of shamanism to this day throughout Siberia and North America.



Here is a drawing of a shaman wearing a deer skin and head from 1692 (showing how shamsn have been a mainstay of hunting cultures tracing back to the paleolithic age showing, yet again, how mytholgy tends to stay uniform/simlar in some way or another over long periods of time);



The earliest known depiction of a Siberian shaman, drawn by the Dutch explorer Nicolaes Witsen, who wrote an account of his travels among Samoyedic- and Tungusic-speaking peoples in 1692. Witsen labelled the illustration as a "Priest of the Devil," giving this figure clawed feet to express what he thought were demonic qualities. - Wikipedia


Paleolithic cave painting in France of a half man half bull, which was also probably a shaman and represents another form the religious symbolism was taking in pre-historic times



Another cave...


The picture in the huge paleolithic temple-cave known as Trois Freres, In southern France, of a buffalo-dancer wearing precisely the ceremonial garb established in this legend, and functioning apparently, in the way of the brave shaman whose power it was to lure the animals to their fall, gives us a clue - or more than a clue, I should say, a very strong suggestion - to the antiquity of the legend just told; or, at least, of it's theme. Further more, in the neighboring cave, known as Tuc d'Audoubert, there is a chamber in which two bison are represented in bas-relief on a raised prominence, around which the footsteps of a dancer have been found. The bison represent a cow being mounted by a bull; and the dance was performed not on the soles of the feet, but on the heels, in imitation of the hoofs of a beast. We have already said that Persephone and Demeter in thier animal aspects were to be seen as pigs, and that Persephone as the bride of the monster serpent was a serpent. Here, comparably, as the bull's wife, the mainden was, surely, a buffalo cow - so that this may well be an early representation of that same divine connubium by which the buffalo dance was given to mankind.- Joseph Campbell, Primitive Mythology page 286





(Notice the the intricacy of the clay bull sculpture of 13000 BC)




Joseph Campbell believes that the most likely interpretation of this drawing is "that the so-called Sorcerer of Trois Freres is actually a god, the manifestation of a god - who, indeed, may also have been embodied in some of the shamans themselves, during the course of the rites, but here is embodied for us, forever, in this wonderful icon." - 311

Now take a look at a Native American mythological tradition where people emulate the Buffalo gods by wearing their hides and dedicating a dance to them (so the buffalo herd keeps growing despite their hunting and possibly to avert "blood revenge");


Certainly seems like an old tradition of shamans and shamans wearing skins to emulate gods going back millennia.

Now here are some of the ancient Egyptian gods taken directly from Wikipedia, look like anything?

Ra - The Sun God





“Among the Buriat, the animal or bird that protect the shaman is called khubilgan, meaning “metamorphosis,” from the verb khubilku, “to change onesself, to take another form.” - Joseph Campbell, Primitive Mythology, page 257


Ra (in the center) travels through the underworld




Looks like a drawing of a typical shamanic experience to me... 

"The magic of his drum carries him away on the wings of its rhythm, the wings of spiritual transport. The drum and dance simultaneously elevate his spirit and conjure to him his familiar - the beasts and birds, invisible to others, that have supplied him with his power and assist him in his flight. And it is while in his trance of rapture that he performs his miraculous deeds. While in this trance he is flying as a bird to the upper world, or descending as a reindeer, bull, or bear to the world beneath." Joseph Campbell, Primitive Mythology, Page 257


Other Egyptian gods who sound like shamans...


Anubis, God of Cemeteries (preparing the dead for the afterlife, an important aspect in shamnic cultures)




Horus, God of hunting and war




Set, God of deserts, evil, storms, war (bad stuff - not all shamans were good)




From Left to right: Osiris, Anubis & Horus


Could Osiris (the dead and resurrected God - later "Dionysus" and even later "Jesus"- in a more ascetic form) & ISIS (his wife), been the Egyptian cultures move AWAY from the paleolithic age where, basically, shamans were in charge to a great degree, to an age where regular people became the kings? (This was when the hunters society of the paleolithic age began to transform into the agricultural style of modern civilization... and society rejected it's earlier leaders in favor of a larger more orderly system). 

The Apache have a creation legend which can be dated to the Neolithic age. In it you can see that the powerful figures of the Paleolithic age (such as shamans) are being humiliated (even the animals are more useful in food they contributed to the community) and put to service of the community as dancers and clowns. Here is an excerpt to provide context;

One said, "I made the sun"; another: "No,I did." They began quarreling, and the Hactin (Gods) ordered them not to talk like that. But they kept making claims and fighting. One said, "I think I'll make the sun stop overhead, so that there will no no night. But no, I said, "Perhaps I'll get rid of the moon. We really don't require any light at night." But the sun rose the next day and the birds and animals were happy. The next day it was the same. When noon of the fourth day came, however, and the shamans, in spite of what the Hactcin had told them, continued to talk, there was an eclipse. The sun went right up through a hole overhead and the moon followed, and that is hwy we have eclipses today.

One of the Hactcin siad to the boastful shamans, "All right, you people say you have power. Now bring back the sun."

So they all lined up. In one line were the shamans, and in another all the birds and animals. The shamans began to perform, singing songs and making ceremonies. They showed eveyrthing they knew. Some would sit singing and then dis spear into the earth, leaving only thier eyes sticking out, then return. But this did not bring back the sun. It was only to show that they had power. Some swalloed arrows, which would come out of thier flesh at thier stomachs. Some swallowed feathers; some swallowed whole spruce trees and spat them up again. But they were still without the sun and the moon.

Thereupon, the Hactin themselves began to do something. They sent for thunder of four colors, from the four directions, and these thunders brought clouds of the four colos, from which rain fell. Then, sending for Rainbow to make it beautiful while the seeds that the people had produced were planted, the Hactcin made a sand-painting with four little colored mounds in a row, into which they put the seeds. The bird and animals sang, and presently the little mounds began to grow, the seeds began to sprout, and the four mounds of colored earth merged and became one mountain, which continued to rise.

The Hactcin then selected twleve shamans who had been particularly spectacular in thir magical performances, and painitng six of them blue all over, to represent the summer season, and six white to represent winter, called them Tsanati; and that was the origin of the Tsanato dance of the Jicarilla Apache. After that the Hactcin made six clowns, painting them white with four black horizontal bands, one across the face, one across the chest, one across the upper leg and one across the lower. The TSanati and clowns then joined the people in thier dance, to make the mountain grow.

It would be difficult to find a clearer statement of the process by which the individualistic shamans, in thier paleolithic style of magical practice, were discredited by the guardians of the group-oriented, comparatively complex organization of a seed-planting, food-growing community. Lined up, fitted into uniform, they were given a place in the liturgical structure of the larger whole. The episode thus represents the victory of a socially annointed preisthood over the highly dangerous and unpredictable force of the individual endowment. And the teller of the Jicarilla Apache story himself explained the necessity for incorporating the shamans in the ceremonial syste,. "These people," he said, " had ceremonies of thier own which they derived from various sources, from animals, from fire, from the turkey, from frogs, and from other things. They could not be left out. They had power, and they had to help too."

I do not know of any myth that represents more clearly than this the crisis that must have faced the societies of the Old World when the neolithic order of the earth-bound villages began to make it's power felt in a gruadual conquest of the most habitable portions of the earth. The situation in Arizona and Mexico at the period of the discovery of America was, culturally, much like that which must have prevailed in the Near and Middle Eat and in Europe from the fourth to second milleniums B.C, when the rigid patterns proper to an orderly sttlement were being imposed on peoples used to the freedom and vicissitudes of the hunt. And if we turn our eyes to the mythologies of the Hindus, Persians, Greeks, Celts , and Germans, we immediately recognize, in the well-known, oft-recited tales of the conquest of the titans by the gods, analogies to this legend pf the subjugation of the shamans by the Hactcin. The titans, dwarfs, and giants are represented as the powers of an earlier mythologial age - crude and loutish, egoistic and lawless, in contrast to the comely gods, whose reign of heavenly order harmoniusly governs the worlds of nature and man. The giants were overthown, pinned beneath mountains, exiled to th eurgged regions at teh bounds of the earth, and as long as the power of the gods can keep them there the people, the animals, the birds, and all living things will know th eblessings of a world rulled by law.

In the Hundu sacred books there is a myth that appears frequently, of the gods and titans cooperting under the supervision of the two supreme deities, Vishnu and Shiva, to churn the Milky Ocean for its butter. They took the World Mountain as a churning stick and the World Serpent as a twirling rope, and wrapped the serpent around the mountain. Then, the gods taking hold of the head end of the snake and the demons of the tail, while Visnu supported the World Mountain, they churned for a thousand years and produced in the end the Butter of Immortality

It is almost impossible not to think of this myth when reading of the efforsts of the quarrelsome shamans and the orderly people, under the supervision of the Apanche Hactcin, to make the World Mountain grown and carry them to the world of light. The Tsanati and clowns, we are told, joined the people in thier dance, and the mountain grew, until it's top nearly reached the hole through which the sun and moon had dissapeared; and it remained, then, only to contruct four ladders of light of the four colors, up which the people could ascend to the surface of our present earth. The six clowns went ahead with magical whips to chase disease away and were followed by the Hactcinl and then the Tsanati came; after them, the people and animal. "And when they came up onto the earth," said the teller of the story, "it was just a child being born from it's mother. The place of emergence is the wonb of the earth."

The highest concern of all mythologies, ceremonials, ehtical systems, and social organizatoins of the agriculturally based societies has been that of supressing the manifestation of individualism; and this has been generally achieved by compelling or persuading people to identify themselves not with thier own interests, intuitions, or modes of experience, but with the archetyoes of behaviour and sytems of sentiment developed and maintained in the public domain. A world vision derived from the lesson of the plants, representing the individual as a mere cell or moment in a larger process - that of teh sib, the race, or, in larger terms, the specias - so devaluates even the first signs of personal spontaneity that every impulse to self-discovery is purged away. "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it ramains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit," This noble maxim represents the binding sentiment of the holy society - that is to say, the church militant, suffering, and triumphant - of those who do not wish to remain alone.

But, on the other hand, there have always been those who have very much wished to remain alone, and have done so, achieving sometimes, indeed, even that solitude in which the Great Spirit, the Power, the Great Mystery that is hidden from the group in its concerns is intuited with the inner impact of an immediate force. And the endless round of the serpent's way, biting its tail, sloughing its old skin, to come forth renewed and slough again, is then itself cast away - often with scorn - for the supernormal experience of an eternity beyond the beat of time. Like an eagle the spirit then soars on its own wings. The dragon "Thou Shalt," as Nietzshe terms the social fiction of the moral law, has been slain by the lion of self discovery; and the master roars - as Buddhists phrase it - the lion roar; the roar of the great Shaman of the mountain peaks, of the void beyond all horizons, and of the bottomless abyss." Joseph Campbell, Primitive Mythology, Page 237-238

Of course, you can trace Egyptian mythology to the ancient Persians (Zoroastrians) and the Semitic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam)...

The scales of Judgement



From Wikipedia: This detail scene, from the Papyrus of Hunefer (c. 1275 BCE), shows the scribe Hunefer's heart being weighed on the scale of Maat against the feather of truth, by the jackal-headed Anubis. The ibis-headed Thoth, scribe of the gods, records the result. If his heart equals exactly the weight of the feather, Hunefer is allowed to pass into the afterlife. If not, he is eaten by the waiting chimeric devouring creature Ammit composed of the deadly crocodile, lion, and hippopotamus. Vignettes such as these were a common illustration in Egyptian books of the dead.

Bible connection

Job 31:6
Let Him weigh me with accurate scales, And let God know my integrity.
Psalm 62:9
Men of low degree are only vanity and men of rank are a lie; In the balances they go up; They are together lighter than breath.
Proverbs 16:2
All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight, But the LORD weighs the motives.

Quran (Islam): And We will set up a just balance on the day of resurrection, so no soul shall be dealt with unjustly in the least; and though there be the weight of a grain of mustard seed, (yet) will We bring it, and sufficient are We to take account. (21:47)


Note: Another culture of Shamans that developed in it's own rather unique way? ... 

Proto-Shiva from the Indus Valley civilization of, what appears to be, a shaman in a headdress meditating;

"The seated yogi among the beasts wears on his head a curious headdress with a high crown and two immense horns, which, as Heinrich Zimmer has pointed out, resembles to a striking degree on of the so-called "Three Jewels" (symbolizing the Buddha, the doctrine, and the order of the Buddha’s followers), which in the form of a kind of trident. The Hindu god Shiva carries a trident also; and among the Greeks, as we know, this same sign was the attribute of Poseidon (Neptune), the god of the watery deep." Primitive Mythology page 436

Tidbit: Is meditation a technique that originates from the shamans?

"the yogi, as a high transformation of the shamanistic techniques and experiences of ecstasis" Joseph Cambell, Primitive Mythology, Page 437

Yes!

The following extract is from Primitive Mythology by Joseph Campbell page 435, put here to show how a culture in wood can disappear from the archaeological record but suddenly appear into view when they start using stone (if they ever use stone, of course);

"The so-called Harappa stage of the great cities of Mohenjo-daro, Chanhu-daro, and Harappa (c. 2500-1200/1000 B.C), which bursts abruptly into view, without preparation, already fully formed and showing many completely obvious signs of inspiration from the earlier high centers of the West (i.e. fertile crescent), yet undeniable signs, also, of a native Indian tradition – this too already well developed. As professor W. Norman Brown has suggested, a native Indian center (i.e., a mythogenetic zone) somewhere either in the south or in the Ganges-Jumna area would seem to be indicated, where the characteristically Indian traits, unknown at this time farther west, must have come into form. For on two of the stamp-seals of the period we find figures seated on low thrones in the meditating yoga posture."

"One of these is flanked by two kneeling worshipers and rearing serpents, while the other, with two gazelles reposing beneath his seat, is surrounded by four wild beasts – a water buffalo, rhinoceros, elephant, and tiger. It is well known that precisely these compositions are associated in later Hindu and Buddhist art both with the god Shiva and with the Buddha. One can only suppose that the practice of yoga must have already been developed and associated with the concept of heightened state of consciousness, not only worthy of worship but also capable of quelling and fascinating the animal world – like the music of Orpheus in the later tradition of the Greeks. The presence of serpents in the attitude of attendant worshipers or protectors, furthermore, indicates that the well-known serpent daemon (naga) motif that plays such a conspicuous role in later Indian religion had already been evolved - no doubt from the primitive theme of the monster-serpent of the abyss. We have referred to the God Vishnu reclining on the Cosmic Serpent, which in turn is floating on the Cosmic Waters. The supporting energy and substance of the universe, and consequently of the individual, imaged in India in the figure of the serpent. And the yogi is the master of this power, both in himself (in his control of his own spiritual and physical states) and in the world (in his magical mastery the phenomenon of nature)."

Is this sort of thing represented by the God Thoth?

Thoth, the God of Knowledge and everything mystical




“Among the Buriat, the animal or bird that protect the shaman is called khubilgan, meaning “metamorphosis,” from the verb khubilku, “to change onesself, to take another form.” - Joseph Campbell, Primitive Mythology, page 257

Tracing The Origins Of Culture & Civilization