Brief Review of ‘Before the Pyramids’

Front cover of 'Before the Pyramids (1)

When you look through the Ancient History section in any bookstore, one is bound to find books, which make one wonder, why they were placed there in the first place?As we have looked at James Patterson’s book on the Murder of King Tut before, so another book has called upon my curiosity. Written by Christopher Knight and Alan Butler, the book is entitled ‘Before the Pyramids‘ and deals not only with the alignment and construction of the pyramids, but also with sites in England as well as the modern structure of the Pentagon in the United States. In contrast to Patterson’s work, this publication has endeavored to step further into the realm of speculation (2). As they state in their introduction,

“we began with an important archaeological breakthrough but ended with what our publishers believe is a full-blooded rival for any Dan Brown novel. However, the difference between our work and a novel is that everything contained in these pages is true – fully testable and checkable.” (3)

They also write a few lines further:

“The findings in this book have ended up as nothing less than sensational. The evidence we put forward is easy to follow and to check out by anyone – without specialist knowledge. This is bad news for us in one respect, because the archaeological establishment may use the ‘sensational’ revelations in this book as an excuse to ignore our key findings and to declare them non-academic.” (4)

I would like to just show the back of the cover and let you draw your own conclusions:

Backcover of 'Before the Pyramids' (5)

My dissertation for my M.A. in Egyptology dealt mainly with the precious stone lapis lazuli and systems of exchange between Egypt and the Levant in the Predynastic Period (that is before 3,000 B.C.) The likeliest source of the stone seems to be located in the Badakhshan region in modern Afghanistan (6), which is quite a fair distance away from Egypt. The big question here is, how the stone has traveled from there to Egypt, a subject which has been of great debate in the last few decades (7). Although several articles have been published already (8), more work needs to be carried out to prove conclusively, whether these mines are indeed the source for the objects of lapis lazuli that have been found in Egypt. (9) Hence, we have several possible hypotheses of how lapis lazuli got to Egypt, yet conclusive evidence is still eluding us.

Therefore, noting the limitation of the evidence for lapis lazuli, the idea that the plan of the pyramids has been copied from a site in England, a site that predates the pyramids by a millennium, has to be regarded with great caution.

As a conclusion, there is an interesting interview with the author that is available on Youtube.

Upcoming Review of Robert Temple’s ‘Egyptian Dawn’

We wanted to provide a brief paragraph about ‘Before the Pyramids’ in anticipation of a review I will be posting shortly regarding similar theories that Robert Temple will be discussing in ‘Egyptian Dawn‘. I would urge every reader, who reads such works, to take these statements with a grain of salt and not be left confused about Egyptian history.

Visit to the Vancouver Museum

The Vancouver Museum here in Vancouver contains a mummy, named Panechates, that has been in the possession of the museum since 1994 (as well as having been there from 1922 until the late 1960s) and dates to the late 2nd to mid 1st Centuries B.C. (10) The author is currently scheduling a visit there in the early part of May and will be posting his visit here shortly. We hope to feature several photographs of the mummy and explore, how the mummy got here in the first place. Visit the Vancouver Museum page on the mummy to get a preliminary idea of its history.

Notes:

1. Innsmouth Free Press <http://www.innsmouthfreepress.com/?p=4237> accessed April 27, 2011.
2. As such, the book ought to shelved alongside books in the UFO & Controversial Knowledge section; a section, that contains the works of another popular ‘scientistic’ writer, Robert Bauval. However, this section is still within the Non-Fiction universe of my bookstore, albeit distinct from Ancient History.
3. C. Knight & A. Butler, Before the Pyramids, (Watkins; London, 2009), 1.
4. Knight & Butler, Before the Pyramids, 2.
5. Amazon.com <http://www.amazon.com/Before-Pyramids-Cracking-Archaeologys-Greatest/dp/1907486666/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303935901&sr=8-1> accessed April 27, 2011.
6. B. Aston, J. Harrell & I. Shaw, “2. Stone”, in P.T. Nicholson & I. Shaw (eds), Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology, (Cambridge University Press; Cambridge, 2000), 39.
7. My research found that there is not enough evidence yet to fully lay out appropriate trade routes conclusively; in effect, how the stone arrived in Egypt is still up for debate.
8. See: 1. L. Bavay, “Matière première et commerce à longue distance: le lapis-lazuli et l’Égypte prédynastique”, Archéo-Nil 7 (1997), p. 79-100, 2. G. Herrmann, “Lapis Lazuli: The Early Phases of Its Trade”, Iraq 30(1) (1968), p.21-57, & 3. J.C. Payne, “Lapis Lazuli in Early Egypt”, Iraq 30(1) (1968), p. 58-61.
9. The author is currently researching this topic in further detail in collaboration. More details will be posted as they become available.
10. Vancouver Museum <http://www.museumofvancouver.ca/object_gallery.php?id=18&slide=2&theme=all&tag=none&medium=all> accessed April 27, 2011.