pyramids were built by the Atlanteans. ( Beelzebub , it should be noted, was written before Schwaller discovered ancient Egypt, so there was no mutual influence.) Some time later, around the time of dynastic Egypt, there occurred a spiritual 'cataclysm’ that caused mankind to degenerate to a lower level. Man began to believe that the material world is the only reality, and that the spiritual is a mere reflection of the material. This would seem to echo Schwaller’s conviction that mankind has degenerated from ‘giants ... to a near-animal state’.
It seems ironic that Schwaller’s interest in the age of the Sphinx—and the other great Egyptian monuments—was virtually a by-product of his interest in ‘alchemy’, and its bearing on human evolution. What he believed he had found in ancient Egypt was a completely new mode of thought—a mode that cannot be expressed in the analytical concepts of language, but only shown in myth and symbolism.
This knowledge also involved a highly sophisticated technology, capable of such incredible feats as moving 200-ton blocks (used in building the Sphinx temples) and placing them on top of one another.
In short, Schwaller believed that ancient Egypt possessed a knowledge system that had been inherited from a far older civilisation, whose modes of thought were fundamentally different from those of modern man. The secret of this knowledge system he believed lay in ancient Egypt.
It was probably because Schwaller was anxious not to undermine the reputation of his mathematical studies on the temple of Luxor that he took care not to be too specific about his view of the age of the Sphinx.
But in Sacred Science , in the chapter in which he discusses the legends of Egyptian prehistory, he speaks about ancient traditions that refer to the days before the Nile delta existed—before, that is, the Nile had brought down the billions of tons of mud that now form the delta. He continues:
A great civilisation must have preceded the vast movements of water that passed over Egypt, which leads us to assume that the Sphinx already existed, sculptured in the rock of the west cliff at Gizeh, that Sphinx whose leonine body, except for the head, shows indisputable signs of aquatic erosion.
He goes on to say: ‘We have no idea how the submersion of the Sphinx took place...’, which seems to make it plain that he is thinking in terms of a Sphinx submerged beneath the sea. But when he read these sentences, John Anthony West was struck by the obvious fact that this notion—of erosion by water—ought to be scientifically testable. He expressed this conviction in 1978, in Serpent in the Sky , his study of Schwaller and ancient Egypt. During the next decade, he tried to interest scholars in the problem. For example, he asked an Oxford geologist if he would mind if he played a trick on him, then showed him a photograph of the Sphinx in which the head and other identifying features had been hidden by masking tape, so that it looked like a fragment off cliff. ‘Would you say this is wind-erosion or water erosion?’ The geologist said without hesitation: ‘Water erosion.’ Then West stripped off the tape, revealing the head and the paws. The geologist stared at it and said: ‘Oh.’ And after more reflection he added: ‘I don’t want to say any more. You see, I’m not a desert specialist.’ Other scientists to whom West wrote did not even reply.
It was several years more before he found a geologist who was sufficiently open-minded to go and look at the Sphinx. It was the beginning of an important new phase in the search for Atlantis.
2 The New Race
The problem of finding an open-minded scientist, West has remarked (with understandable bitterness), is about as easy as finding a fundamentalist Christian who loves Madonna. But in 1985, a friend at Boston University remarked: ‘I think I might know someone.’
The 'someone’ was Robert Schoch, a geologist at Boston University, and his entry in
It seems ironic that Schwaller’s interest in the age of the Sphinx—and the other great Egyptian monuments—was virtually a by-product of his interest in ‘alchemy’, and its bearing on human evolution. What he believed he had found in ancient Egypt was a completely new mode of thought—a mode that cannot be expressed in the analytical concepts of language, but only shown in myth and symbolism.
This knowledge also involved a highly sophisticated technology, capable of such incredible feats as moving 200-ton blocks (used in building the Sphinx temples) and placing them on top of one another.
In short, Schwaller believed that ancient Egypt possessed a knowledge system that had been inherited from a far older civilisation, whose modes of thought were fundamentally different from those of modern man. The secret of this knowledge system he believed lay in ancient Egypt.
It was probably because Schwaller was anxious not to undermine the reputation of his mathematical studies on the temple of Luxor that he took care not to be too specific about his view of the age of the Sphinx.
But in Sacred Science , in the chapter in which he discusses the legends of Egyptian prehistory, he speaks about ancient traditions that refer to the days before the Nile delta existed—before, that is, the Nile had brought down the billions of tons of mud that now form the delta. He continues:
A great civilisation must have preceded the vast movements of water that passed over Egypt, which leads us to assume that the Sphinx already existed, sculptured in the rock of the west cliff at Gizeh, that Sphinx whose leonine body, except for the head, shows indisputable signs of aquatic erosion.
He goes on to say: ‘We have no idea how the submersion of the Sphinx took place...’, which seems to make it plain that he is thinking in terms of a Sphinx submerged beneath the sea. But when he read these sentences, John Anthony West was struck by the obvious fact that this notion—of erosion by water—ought to be scientifically testable. He expressed this conviction in 1978, in Serpent in the Sky , his study of Schwaller and ancient Egypt. During the next decade, he tried to interest scholars in the problem. For example, he asked an Oxford geologist if he would mind if he played a trick on him, then showed him a photograph of the Sphinx in which the head and other identifying features had been hidden by masking tape, so that it looked like a fragment off cliff. ‘Would you say this is wind-erosion or water erosion?’ The geologist said without hesitation: ‘Water erosion.’ Then West stripped off the tape, revealing the head and the paws. The geologist stared at it and said: ‘Oh.’ And after more reflection he added: ‘I don’t want to say any more. You see, I’m not a desert specialist.’ Other scientists to whom West wrote did not even reply.
It was several years more before he found a geologist who was sufficiently open-minded to go and look at the Sphinx. It was the beginning of an important new phase in the search for Atlantis.
2 The New Race
The problem of finding an open-minded scientist, West has remarked (with understandable bitterness), is about as easy as finding a fundamentalist Christian who loves Madonna. But in 1985, a friend at Boston University remarked: ‘I think I might know someone.’
The 'someone’ was Robert Schoch, a geologist at Boston University, and his entry in
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