The mystery of the Great pyramid : traditions concerning it and its connection with the Egyptian Book of the dead : with numerous illustrations

MYSTERY OF THE GREAT PYRAMID

archeology of America, and like them are set out on an astronomical basis. Mr. Spence traces their origin to the sacred hill of Atlantis (vide his Problem of Atlantis (Rider and Co.), ch. ‘‘Egyptian and American Comparisons ’’), the survivors from which continent carried their civilization to Europe and North Africa—via the Mediterranean basin—in one direction and to America in the other. ‘These remarkable similarities—including extraordinary perfection of workmanship—are clearly due to some highly trained civilization which spread its culture throughout the world (including the Americas), organizing the native races with whom it came into contact to carry out great constructive works, but keeping the technical knowledge involved a close secret, like the secrets of the medieval trade-guilds in Europe. Whether the cradle of this race was in Central Asia, as the present writer has indicated in his previous volume on the Great Pyramid, or in the lost continent of Atlantis, for which Mr. Spence makes out a very interesting case, our respective readers must be left to decide.

Mr. Cotsworth remarks on the significant fact that the various pyramids of Egypt, Babylonia, India, and Mexico are all confined to latitudes within about 35° from the Equator, where the shadows cast by them were sufficiently well defined to record, whereas the Mound-builders, like that at Kokh in Asia Minor or Silbury Hill in England, began about 35° and ranged into higher latitudes, where shadows were not strong enough for exact records, but had to depend upon sighting methods by means of a staff erected on their truncated summits.

Note W: Tue “ RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX ” (page 88)

A possible key to the solution of the so-called “ riddle of the Sphinx ”’ seems to be afforded by the representation of the signs of the Zodiac in the Temple of Esneh, in Egypt, wherein the Sphinx, as a human-headed lion, is shown between Leo and Virgo. Now the Zodiac being in the form of a circle, it has neither beginning nor end. Astronomers to-day commence with Aries (the Ram) at the spring equinox, and end with Taurus (the Bull). The

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