Egypt and the Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) at Giza, history, mythology and old astronomy Options

[Alina]

The last correlation to be made with The Urantia Book's description of the Garden of Eden pertains to following two statements: "The great river that watered the Garden came down from the higher lands of the peninsula and flowed east through the peninsular neck to the mainland and thence across the lowlands of Mesopotamia to the sea beyond." "Concomitant with this vast submergence the coast line of the eastern Mediterranean was greatly elevated." In Images 10 and 11 a depression in the mountains can be seen that runs parallel the
angle at which the now-submerged peninsula protrudes from the shore, and it is also aligned with where the converging ridges meet the shore.

In Image 10 the line at the shore represents the twenty-seven mile distance marked by the double arrows in Images 5 and 6. The line that is superimposed onto

Image 11 marks the depression in the mountains that can also be seen in Image 10 directly above where the name of the coastal city, Al Lathqiyah, appears. Note also from Image 7 that this dip in the mountains is right where the Anatolia and Sinai plates meet.



Image 10: The angle of the peninsula runs parallel to the angle of the break in the mountains.



Image 11: The break in the mountain where the submerged
peninsula meets the shore.

The eastern side of the Mediterranean was and continues to be a geophysically active. It is easy to speculate about how this area may have been affected 33,000 years ago by tectonic plate shifts, earthquake and volcanic activity, and flooding occasioned by a submergence of a land bridge from Sicily to Africa. However, these various influences make it a challenging area for geophysicists to make definitive statements about the history of this area. In time, as geophysicists continue to develop their understanding of this area, even more corroborations may develop concerning The Urantia Book's account of the Garden of Eden.

[Alina]

For now, at least advances in sonar technology allow us to see a topography between Cyprus and Syria that is harmonious with all of The Urantia Book's statements about the size, shape, and location of the Garden of Eden. Even the description of how water flowed off the peninsula can be correlated with the topography in this region. As well, tectonic plate theory, which was not developed until more than a decade after it was published, also lends support to The Urantia Book's depiction of the fate of Eden.

1. UB 74:0.1 (Urantia Book citations refer to the Paper (Chapter), Section, and paragraph. In this case, the reference means the 74th Paper, introductory
Section, paragraph 1. Clicking on the link will take you to the beginning of the Paper from which the quote is taken.)
2. UB 73:3.1
3. UB 73:7.1
4. UB 73-78
5. UB 73:3.1,3,4
6. UB 73:5.1
7. UB 73:7.1
8. Robert Sarmast's research, published in Discovery of Atlantis, led him to conclude that there is link between the mythology of Atlantis and the religious accounts related to Adam and Eve. He believes that the story of Atlantis developed because a new tribe of people came to occupy the architecturally developed Edenic peninsula after Adam, Eve, and their progeny
abandoned this area. By the time the peninsula sank, some 4,000 years after Adam and Eve left, it had become disassociated with the civilization they had started.

According to Sarmast's research, the connection between Garden of Eden and Atlantis is that they had the same geographic location, but became associated with two different cultures. Sarmast attempted to find vestiges of human civilization at this location between Cyprus and Syria. More can be learned about his work by going to http://discoveryofatlantis.com/. Much thanks goes to him for allowing the UBtheNEWS project to use the images that were created in connection with his work.
9. http://www.geodesy.miami.edu/articles/Wdow...al_2006_JGI.pdf
10. http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/article-9362118/Cyprus


Garden of Eden Raw Data

1. Urantia Book 74:0.1
2. Urantia Book 73:7.1
3. Urantia Book 73-78
4. Urantia Book 74:6.1
5. Urantia Book 73:5.1
6. Urantia Book 73:3.1,3,4
7. http://www.geodesy.miami.edu/articles/Wdow...al_2006_JGI.pdf
8. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-ref_...e=2003EAEJA.....
1663E&refs=AR&db_key=PHY
9. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003EAEJA.....2282M
10. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_...e=2003EAEJA..... 1663E&db_key=PHY&data_type=HTML&format
11. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query? bibcode=2004AGUFM.T53B0487M&db_key=PHY&data_type=HTML&format

[HSTa]

Nice, Alina, you have covered much of the basic facts. You are really interested, like I was some ten years ago. That's fine. I have been to Cyprus twice, and made some early recognition. I also went on a short trip from Cyprus, to the Mediterranean eastern shore, to Haifa, Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

There are some mentions about a later Cyprus and its population in the UB. In the following short article I have compared some of the UB info to modern archaeological findings. (my paper was kindly edited and published by Saskia Raevouri).

Archaeology (THE CIRCULAR), Ancient Cyprus, by Stefan Tallqvist :

http://www.squarecircles.com/articles/arch...cientCyprus.pdf

One of the most important things would be to understand the plate motions around Cyprus and in the Mediterranean, and the lowering process of the sea floor.
More later.

This post has been edited by HSTa: Feb 2 2010, 10:01 AM

[HSTa]

The statement that we would like to understand in considerable detail, is the following:

UB(p.826): "Concomitant with this vast submergence the coast line of the eastern Mediterranean was greatly elevated."

Although I worked for many years with European scientists measuring plate motions by radio astronomical methods (VLBI), these complicated processes and the connected vocabulary are difficult to understand!

Alina gave the following picture:


I have earlier found a corresponding picture:

Although Robert made splendid animations of the water filling the Mediterranean basin, these animations didn't include an animation of the changes in sea depth due to the continental drift.

Bathymetric maps of good quality are now available, but they don't tell you in what way, where exactly and on what rate, the ocean floor has submerged !

The result is that the coastline of the eastern Mediterranean is elevated, and the sea bottom outside the coastline is lowered.

The plates involved around Cyprus are:
- African plate
- Turkish plate
- Arabian plate

And clear effects seen on:

- Dead Sea transform
- Read Sea spreading ridge

The situation isn't clear, and there are really different hypotheses:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Plate
The African Plate is rifting in the eastern interior along the East African Rift. This rift zone separates the Nubian Plate to the west from the Somali Plate to the east. One hypothesis proposes the existence of a mantle plume beneath the Afar region, while an opposing hypothesis asserts that the rifting is merely a zone of maximum weakness where the African Plate is deforming as plates to its east are moving rapidly northward.

Some interesting pictures:
http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/project-pages...s/tectonics.jpg
http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/project-pages...apartBasin2.jpg

Understanding Plate Motion:

http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/understan...l#anchor3617237

"It looks like the red sea is closing and so Israel will be in a mountain building zone."

I have to try to get some more understanding of all this.

[HSTa]

Above are the figures n:o 4, 5, and 19 from this very informative rapport by
Robertson:

54. MESOZOIC–TERTIARY TECTONIC EVOLUTION OF THE EASTERNMOST MEDITERRANEAN AREA: INTEGRATION OF MARINE AND LAND EVIDENCE
Alastair H.F. Robertson, 1998

http://www-odp.tamu.edu/publications/160_SR/ABSTRACT/54.HTM

This paper by Robertson gives a good idea about the complicity of these matters. The important thing is of course to get a better idea about the tectonics resulting in the submergence of the first Eden!

This, and similar, papers might also might be of interest for evaluating tectonic activity with a possible influence on the Great Pyramid in Egypt. Several cracks in the descending passage are known to exist, and the angle might have changed somewhat with time?

[HSTa]

I have tried to estimate the size and area of Eden according to the following UB statement:

(824.6) 73:5.2 At the time of Adam's arrival, though the Garden was only one-fourth finished, it had thousands of miles of irrigation ditches and more than twelve thousand miles of paved paths and roads. There were a trifle over five thousand brick buildings in the various sectors, and the trees and plants were almost beyond number. Seven was the largest number of houses composing any one cluster in the park. And though the structures of the Garden were simple, they were most artistic. The roads and paths were well built, and the landscaping was exquisite.

= = =

To make calculations as easy as possible, lets assume that there are 5000 houses and 12000 miles of road, as said above. Lets also assume for the moment that each house is surrounded by a circular road which has a length of 12000/5000 = 2.4 miles.

The mean radius of each area belonging to the 5000 houses is then:

r = 2.4 miles / (2*pi) = 0.382 miles

And the area corresponding to this radius is:

Area = pi*r^2 = 0.458 square miles


This gives a total area of 5000 * 0.458 = 2292 square miles

If we further assume that this Eden area is rectangular with one side equal to 100 miles, the other side has to be about 23 miles. (100 * 22.92 = 2292 square miles)

This is a huge area, and it is only one forth of what was originally planned! Where would all this fit into Cyprus, or even the ancient peninsula?

Please try some other method of estimation, and see if you arrive at roughly the same conclusions according to the UB information?

The following map of Cyprus is from Google Earth. The dimension of 100 miles is marked on the map:



This post has been edited by HSTa: Feb 4 2010, 06:06 AM

[Bill Martin]

It would seem that subsidence from the subduction zone "swallowed" a vast area.

In attempting to estimate the area each home was allotted, you would be correct in allowing that they were trying to replicate conditions on Jerusem, where living is done in "mansions." Also, the ideal life is that of a gardener, so a certain space would be allowed for gardens and orchards.

[HSTa]

In my pervious crude estimate the resulting total area of Eden was much too large! So what to do?

Lets keep the assumption that the length of road per building is 12000 /5000 = 2.4 miles.

But now we assign a smaller total area per building by distributing the roads (schematically) according to the picture above. Now we have 24 pieces of road per building, each of length 0.1 miles.

The area per building is then 0.3 x 0.3 = 0.09 square miles.

The total cultivated Eden area was therefore, in this case:

5000 x 0.09 = 450 square miles; (and the "original plans" for Eden had an area of four times that area, ie 1800 square miles)

This sounds more reasonable. Or would you like to use the sparse information given in the UB texts, in some other way?

The total area of Cyprus today is (according to Wikipedia):
3572 square miles (= 9251 square km). I don't know the total length of all roads on Cyprus today.

The place that I consider most probable for the cultivated part of Eden is the now submerged extension of the Cyprus walleye called today Mesaoria, ie the valley between the Kyrenia mountain Range in the north and the Troodos mountains in the middle and to the south.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprus

This post has been edited by HSTa: Feb 5 2010, 08:24 AM

[HSTa]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprus

Form wikipedia:
‘The name Cyprus has a somewhat uncertain etymology. One suggestion is that it comes from the Greek word for the Mediterranean cypress tree (Cupressus sempervirens), (kypárissos), or even from the Greek name of the henna plant (Lawsonia alba), (kýpros). Another school suggests that it stems from the Eteocypriot word for copper. Georges Dossin, for example, suggests that it has roots in the Sumerian word for copper (zubar) or for bronze (kubar), from the large deposits of copper ore found on the island.’.

==

Although most people believe that the name of Cyprus has to do with the old copper extracted on the island, Wikipedia also suggests that the name might have to do with trees or plants!

My favorite theory is, that the name of the island might have to do with the old Sumerian word for orhcard : symbolically depicted with two plants, seed or trees growing from a square:



Picture (detail of): “4 Table of cuneiform signs showing for each sign the pictographic form (c. 3000 BC), and early cuneiform representations (c. 2400 BC) and the Late Assyrian form (c. 650 BC), now turned through 90 degrees, with the Sumerian phonetic equivalent and meaning”.
By C.B.F Walker, “Cuneiform”, British Museum publications, second impression 1989.

Note, that the pictographic form of the word ‘orchard’ originally was ‘kiri’, according to Dr. Walker.


’ki-ri’ is close enough to the name of Cyprus in the form ’kipri’ or ’kibris’!

This post has been edited by HSTa: Feb 5 2010, 12:47 PM

[HSTa]

My orig. picture:
http://kotisivu.dnainternet.net/adslfor/MED50T2.GIF

The picture is from page 34 of 'The Times Atlas of World History' , fifth impression 1981, edited by Geoffrey Barraclough.

The coastline during the last glacial phase ( Ice Age 70 000 to 10 000 years ago), and modern coastline and rivers, are marked. Sea levels were low worldwide , perhaps about 120 meter below present, because much of the water exists in frozen form in the polar regions.

In this map the Mediterranean is divided in two parts, by the Italian / Sicilian land bridge to Africa. Gibraltar is still obviously closed, on my picture. And Cyprus is larger and almost in contact with the eastern Mediterranean coast line!

= = =

UB Page-702:
35,000 years ago marks the termination of the great ice age excepting in
the polar regions of the planet.


UB Page-721:
Mammalian life had been little changed by the great glacier. These
animals persisted in that narrow belt of land lying between the ice and the
Alps and, upon the retreat of the glacier, again rapidly spread out over all
Europe. There arrived from Africa, over the Sicilian land bridge,
straight-tusked elephants, broad-nosed rhinoceroses, hyenas, and African
lions, and these new animals virtually exterminated the saber-toothed tigers
and the hippopotamuses.


UB Page-890:
About the time of these climatic changes in Africa, England separated
from the continent, and Denmark arose from the sea, while the isthmus of
Gibraltar, protecting the western basin of the Mediterranean, gave way as the
result of an earthquake, quickly raising this inland lake to the level of the
Atlantic Ocean. Presently the Sicilian land bridge submerged, creating one sea
of the Mediterranean and connecting it with the Atlantic Ocean. This cataclysm
of nature flooded scores of human settlements and occasioned the greatest loss
of life by flood in all the world's history.
= = =

Therefore this map from 1981 is in rather good agreement with the UB information, but it is difficult to find the same information in more recent sources! Do you know of any maps with this Ice Age extension of the Mediterranean depicted?

[HSTa]

UB Page-764
The modern phrase, "back to nature," is a delusion of ignorance, a belief
in the reality of the onetime fictitious "golden age." The only basis for the
legend of the golden age is the historic fact of Dalamatia and Eden. But these
improved societies were far from the realization of utopian dreams.
= = =

The Egyptians knew about a counterpart of the Greek 'Golden Age', called Zep Tepi. I tried to ask you about possible Egyptian sources to the Atlantis myth earlier.

Probably the Egyptian concept is much older than the Greek, and probably the Egyptian Zep Tepi had to do with the original Atlantis myth as told by Plato. But I don't now much about the original Egyptian sources, and what actually was said in the old texts.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Zep Tepi ("First Time") is a period in Ancient Egyptian beliefs.[1] It is the mythological golden age when the gods lived amongst humanity together with half-divine offspring of gods and humans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zep_Tepi

The following are more fanciful sources, but they demonstrate that there obviously existed an old belief in an Egyptian 'Golden age':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zep_Tepi
http://www.crystalinks.com/zeptepi.html
http://www.gurdjieff-legacy.org/60gine/source.htm

Gurdjieff in Egypt:

"Zep Tepi, the First Time, the time of the very first prehistoric Egyptian civilization, was founded by Seven Sages, say the walls, divine beings who came from "the Homeland of the Primeval Ones," an island that sank during a catastrophic flood. The Seven Sages inaugurated a new, prehistoric Egyptian civilization from which the later historic civilization was derived. "

This post has been edited by HSTa: Feb 9 2010, 01:50 PM

[Bill Martin]

Thank You for the map of the glacial period. That waterfall at the "pillars of Hercules" must have made Noah's look puny by comparison.

I concur with your assessment of the dearly held belief among many romantics as to the "hidden (or lost) knowledge" from the so called "Golden Age." The cosmology and cosmic consciousness of the ancients, despite some excellence in astronomy and some understanding of near earth celestial mechanics, was severely circumscribed by their lack of revelation, deprived as they were by rebellion and default. They were "earthbound." Look at their death myths and the concept of the underground.

I think I can understand the compulsion of those with "higher" knowledge (Ikhnaton) that made them resort to an over-revelation to attempt to pull their fellows out the darkness and into the light. Jesus wisely resisted this compulsion and modeled his message by use of a readily accessible and familiar idea- a loving Father, an idea that we will be using forever.

The ancients, and many moderns, have sought meaning to explain life in the movement of the celestial bodies. Anyone who has had the supreme pleasure of drinking in the beauty of God's creation as displayed in a moonless and cloudless night of clear sky can attest that the experience is "awe- full" and , ultimately, humbling. The vastness of the solitude, and the depth of creation itself, can be overwhelming without the consciousness that a fragment of that First Source (who willed this all to be) lives and directs the destiny of men and universes.

When I open my mind to the night sky, I feel the "friendly universe" calling me home from deep within my soul...

[HSTa]

Well said, Bill.

"I am absolutely assured that the entire universe is friendly
to me--this all-powerful truth I insist on believing with a wholehearted trust
in spite of all appearances to the contrary." (p.1469)

Sometimes I wish that we humans also should see a bit more of the friendly universe!

But the "Pillars of Hercules" is a theme closely related to this thread, so a few commects about it is motivated. Like Robert Sarmast said, the pillars of the Gibraltar Strait were not the only ones known. The Phoenicians put up inscribed pillars, telling about Hercules, on many places in the Mediterranean.

This statement would appear to locate Atlantis in what we today call the Atlantic ocean; but the problems with this interpretation are manifold. The greatest difficulty is our incomplete knowledge of what the ancients meant by the "Pillars of Heracles" (or Hercules). Some researchers assume that the Egyptians were referring to the Strait of Gibraltar". But in "The Flood from Heaven: Deciphering the Atlantis Legend" (1992) Eberhard Zangger explains that according to the poet Servius (400 A.D.), the ancients knew of several different Pillars of Hercules. ...

'Discovery of Atlantis', by Robert Sarmast, page 45, 2003.

Heracles was really tutelar god of Tarsus.

The modern city of Tarsus, north of Cyprus was, according to old sources, the chief town dedicated to Hercules!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarsus_(city)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cilician_Gates

Another Phoenician cult place dedicated to Hercules was situated close to the Gibraltar Strait, the city of Cadiz. The cities of Tarsus and Cadis could have been easily confused with each other, due to many historical similarities:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadiz

Wikipedia:
The ancient name is Tarsos, ( ) possibly derived from a pagan god, Tarku; at other times the city was named Tarsisi;

Anchiale, daughter of Iapetus, founded Anchiale (a city near Tarsus): her son was Cydnus, who gave his name to the river at Tarsus: the son of Cydnus was Parthenius, from whom the city was called Parthenia: afterwards the name was changed to Tarsus

With a history going back over 9,000 years Tarsus has long been an important stop for traders, a focal point of many civilisations including the Ancient Romans when Tarsus was capital of the province of Cilicia, scene of the first meeting between Mark Antony and Cleopatra and birthplace of Saint Paul.

Later the coinage of Tarsus bore the image of Hercules, due to yet another tale in which the hero was held prisoner here by the local god Sandon.

Both Tarsus and Cadiz are also connected to the story of the goddess Atar-Gatis (Gades?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atargatis


Frazer (1907) says in the book ´Adonis, Attis, Osiris´ page 131: "The change of the goddess ´Atheh of Tarsus´ into Gad or Fortune would be easy if we suppose that she was known as Gad-Atheh, "Luck of Atheh" (the Semitic god of fortune or luck, who, though the exigencies of grammar, is supposed to have been often merely a special aspect of the great goddess Astarte or Atargatis conceived as the patroness and protector of towns.)"

CRITIAS by Plato (360 BC) translated by Benjamin Jowett:

"To his twin brother, who was born after him, and obtained as his lot the extremity of the island towards the Pillars of Heracles, facing the country which is now called the region of Gades in that part of the world, he gave the name which in the Hellenic language is Eumelus, in the language of the country which is named after him, Gadeirus. Of the second pair of twins he called one Ampheres, and the other Evaemon."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Frazer
He studied at the University of Glasgow and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated with honors in Classics (his dissertation would be published years later as The Growth of Plato's Ideal Theory) and remained a Classics Fellow all his life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadiz

Gadir (in Phoenician: גדר), the original name given to the outpost established here by the Phoenicians, means "wall, compound", or, more generally, "walled stronghold". The Punic dialect lent this word, along with many others, to the Berber languages, where it was nativised as agadir meaning "wall" in Tamazight and "fortified granary" in Tashelhiyt; it appears as a common place name in North Africa.[1]

Later, the city became known by a similar Attic Greek name, Gádeira, τὰ Γάδειρα. In Ionic Greek, the name is spelled slightly differently, Gẽdeira Γήδειρα. This spelling appears in the histories written by Herodotus. Rarely, the name is spelled Gadeíra ἡ Γαδείρα, as, for example, in the writings of Erastosthenes (as attested by Stephanus of Byzantium).

In Latin, the city was known as Gades; in modern Arabic, it is called قادس, Qādis. The Spanish autonym for a resident of Cádiz is gaditano.

map:


This post has been edited by HSTa: Feb 12 2010, 02:36 PM

[ankhmosed]

Something that might be readily investigated among the UB statements, are those relating to human history. This is an example:

UB (1044.6) 95:2.7 The Egyptians long believed that the stars twinkling in the night sky represented the survival of the souls of the worthy dead; other survivors they thought were absorbed into the sun. During a certain period, solar veneration became a species of ancestor worship. The sloping entrance passage of the great pyramid pointed directly toward the Pole Star so that the soul of the king, when emerging from the tomb, could go straight to the stationary and established constellations of the fixed stars, the supposed abode of the kings.

Is it for instance true, that : The sloping entrance passage of the great pyramid pointed directly toward the Pole Star ?

I have collected evidence for this and related matters on my travel in Egypt, to Cairo and Alexandria, and from several other, also scientific, sources.

I will write more about it in this thread. Any of your related comments are welcome.

The entrance does notpoint anywhere the small shafts leading from the Kngs chamber point to these star consellations. Ankmosed

[HSTa]

The entrance does notpoint anywhere the small shafts leading from the Kngs chamber point to these star consellations. Ankmosed

“The entrance does notpoint anywhere”; agreed,

but the sloping entrance passage is directed to celestial north with high (astronomical) precision even today. The angle of the sloping entrance passage to the subterranean chamber is also quite close to the elevation angle of the celestial, fixed, pole!

The entrance to the sloping passage is however blocked for tourists today, but the measurements and drawings of the “sloping entrance passage” are well known by researchers.

Even Petrie (in AD 1883) used these words in his description:
…the sloping floor of the p. 62 entrance…

one of my previous references in this thread was:
The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, by W. M. Flinders Petrie 1883.

If there still is some doubt about these facts, I’m prepared to give further proof of the Urantia Book statements about this matter.

This post has been edited by HSTa: May 12 2010, 02:49 AM