Robert Temple opening presentation Egyptian Dawn

Introduction: “Special guest from London,” introduces Michael. “No I am not I am on another planet somewhere,” booms Robert's voice over the video link up. "Unfortunately Robert had a misfortune a few months ago, a back injury which for a moment we thought he wasn't going to talk to us at all let alone come here. Fortunately he was able to recover miraculously and through this marvel of technology speak to us right across the continent. Robert Temple is the author of a number of provocative and incisive books including the Sirius Mystery. (This was) translated into a total of 44 languages. He is a visiting Professor of the history of Philosophy and Science at the Tsinghua University in Beijing and for many years the science writer at Sunday Times, Guardian, Timelife as well as a ‘streetwind' reviewer for Nature.”

Robert Temple is speaking through the computer via an internet link from the Linder Auditorium in Johannesburg, the venue for Megalithomania 2011, to his home in London.

"Thanks very much Mike I appreciate the kind introduction. I am very sorry indeed not to be with you, I have never been to South Africa, this was going to be a truly thrilling trip for me and Olivia but unfortunately fate saw otherwise, but, I can be with you through this technology.

"I am talking to you today about Egyptian Dawn which is the title I gave to my last book. At the time of writing the book I intended it to refer to the origins of Egyptian civilization but I believe I should pay tribute to the new Egyptian dawn which is the dawn of Egyptian democracy. The Egyptian people have shown to be courageous. They have overthrown a modern dictator." APPLAUSE:

GOLDEN ANGLE From Robert Temples “Egyptian Dawn”

"The plan of Giza plateau makes perfect geometrical sense. It is connected with the resurrection of the rising sun on the equinox and finally it is connected with the second sun on winter solstice when you have this giant shadow cast. The great pyramid was constructed in order to cast the maximum shadow at noon on the solstice in order to measure the year precisely. This is the true meaning of the eye of Horus because the Egyptians were fanatics about the calendar. They knew the year was precisely 365.264 days long. They were able to measure the shadows so precisely that they were able to get the exact length of the year.

"The plan of Giza plateau is a triple plan superimposed. The first one is currently on the golden angle of 26 degrees 32 minutes and 52 seconds which is the angle you get from various constructions like the descending and ascending passages of the great pyramid . It is (the angle of) the ascending and descending passages rising up out of the valley temple on the Chephren causeway . It is the angle of the winter solstice sunset shadow cast on the south wall of the great pyramid. It is certainly the world's largest winter solstice display using light shadow in the entire history of the world. Now if you go there at Christmas and it is clear sky you can very clearly see the shadow.

"The golden angle was the basis of ancient Egyptian architecture and many of the strange features inside the chamber beneath the temple of Dendera . The golden angle is the angle which the deceased pharaoh reclined . When he did that, he became a Horus, the angle of resurrection . The Egyptians themselves had no word meaning religion. The Egyptian cosmology and belief was all centred around the concept of Ma'at which was a word meaning cosmic order and I believe that all the gods were aspects of manifestations of Ma'at of the one cosmic order . They were all symbolic. And we need to bear in mind for Egypt that despite the fact that there was a multiplicity of gods who all had their own temples they were all facets of the divine cosmic order, the ultimate representation of that was Ma'at . And that is found in the sacred geometry which under-laid all the great constructions, all of the Egyptian art, all of the sacred architecture, all of the temples and above all, the fantastic layout of the Giza plateau.

"If we were to study and think about the concept of Ma'at and examine the sacred origins from the point of view of their geometry and their deeper meaning and how this relates to the structure and harmony of the cosmos. We would have more peace with ourselves we would have deeper meaning and we would feel we belong in the universe and we are part of the universe, that we were not just sawn off. There was a deeper meaning to everything that we can participate (in) and this was known to the Egyptians. I believe we should try to embody this concept of Ma'at in our modern way if we wish to save ourselves and our civilization and leave some kind of legacy for the future in the way the Egyptians have left for us." RT

Sphinx temple :

“When I stood inside the Sphinx temple - from the base of the Sphinx temple to the apex of the pyramid of Khafre, the sunrise at the equinox symbolised the resurrection, and that was when the rising sun struck the peak of the pyramid of Khafre. The rays were at that angle, the angle of resurrection so that Giza was basically the resurrection centre and the centre of the cult of the transcendence of death . As part of the plan you can see the eye of Ra depicted looking up at the sky.

“Selim Hassan discovered the Sphinx temple. The Sphinx temple was discovered later by a German called Hermann Junker. There is a strange feature. A very long granite slab weighing about 100 tonnes was put in the floor before the temple was built . There is a kind of groove coming out of the middle of it with blocks cut into it. Those grooves slant in and not out. It is not a water conduit, therefore what is it? That was a cable conduit that was used for cables for loading sarcophagi into subterranean tombs.

"A cutting takes the cable conduit from inside the Sphinx temple to underneath the cliff face. At the end of the granite where the stone ends is the top of what was once a shaft that is now closed with sand. If you can open up that shaft, you will go down to an intact royal tomb. From 2000bc to 1936 when Selim Hassan excavated it this was completely covered in sand and nobody knew it was there so it cannot possibly have been robbed.

“In the Sphinx temple (there is) a gigantic boulder that looked like it might be alabaster. I took a sample and I took that sample into the natural history museum in London to the mineralogist. He said this was a stalactite and it has to come from caves. There are huge pieces of stalactite sitting on the floors of the Sphinx temple that have been there for 4000 years. They were not moved by the archaeologists because they were too heavy and nobody knew what they were. The ancient Egyptians were bringing up stalactites from the complex of caverns that lie beneath these temples and they were using them to construct all the alabaster sections of the valley temple which is only in stalactites and granite .

“Under the granite basalt floor lies an intact tomb of KIOSK. These cable conduits running up through all the temples had nothing to do with waste water they were cable conduits used for lowering the heavy sarcophagi into the tombs. The intact tombs of KIOSK and KEFRON are beneath the temples and at the feet of their pyramids. Corologists said that these pharaohs were not buried in these pyramids. They were buried on the ground on the pilobolus which the pyramids stand.” RT

Valley Temple

"The Western wall of the valley temple has cable grooves (sticking out) which were used to lower sarcophagi and other material into the subterranean vaults which lie below the valley temple. If you go onto the roof it shows the network of concealed passages and secret chambers. The whole place was honeycombed with three stories of chambers and passages. No archaeologist has ever been through some of these features. It is really shocking. They had been using the wrong key.

"The Mycerinus causeway leads down to the valley temple at Mycerinus which is now covered in sand. Reisner excavated a hundred years ago above the valley temple at Mycerinus. There is another cable conduit beneath the funerary temple of Mycerinus . This temple was built on semi gravel so they could not cut the channel into the bedrock. They laid the mould slab into the gravel and in order to have a firm base they placed a hollowed out limestone block at the foot of the far end of the cable channel, to guide the cable .” RT

“A new kingdom painting from the valley of kings from the tomb of Ramesses the sixth shows the very long ropes that were being used by the ancient Egyptian for two reasons: to raise and lower heavy things, and for measuring. These ropes were made of Egyptian cotton. I found an old manual of a rope maker from the 19th century that said Egyptian cotton ropes were the strongest in the world and cotton did exist in ancient Egypt. The cotton did not come from South America only, as some people think.

OSIRIS ISLAND & CANAL “There is a canal that goes around Osiris island. In 1944 the site was viciously vandalised presumably by bandits and the columns were destroyed. The canal is 114ft below the surface of the earth. They took care in constructing the canal by cutting it out of the bedrock.

“How did the Egyptians know they were going to be able to fill that canal with water and where does the water come from ?

"I am convinced there is an inlet and a conduit leading into the canal below the water level from another chamber and another system to tunnels and chambers, which cannot otherwise be accessed from the Osiris shaft itself. The only way to get into them would be to go diving in this canal, find the entrance and come up in another source. No one has ever cleared the canal and the canal is now full of the rubble of the smashed columns which were left by the crazed bandits. The canal needs to be completely cleared of the rubble and carefully explored. We need to find the inlet and then go into the next chamber through the conduit. That is for someone who knows how to dive so maybe Graham is the man!

“Very important secret religious rituals were taking place down there because you couldn't get many people down there. We suspect the pharaoh or the high priest went down there to enact extremely secret religious rituals relating to the death and resurrection of Osiris.” RT

SPHINX ISLAND AND ANUBIS From Robert Temple “ the forgotten origins of the sanctuary of Anubis”

Rostau, means “mouth of the passages” and “entrance to the winding passages”. philipcoppens.com

"I am going to talk about the chamber beneath the Sphinx. There is a living roof in the chambers in front of the Sphinx between the paws. Several of you would have been to the Sphinx and stood between the paws of the Sphinx. You would have noticed a metal plate.

"In the Sphinx Mystery I show that there used to be a tunnel leading to this. It was blocked up by Henry Salt. I found a contemporary account of a visitor complaining that Henry Salt had blocked up this tunnel leading from this chamber. We did not know where it was leading to and because he blocked it up we will never know, and (that) we might be able to unblock it, is suggested.

"In the centre in front of the Sphinx is the famous dream cell which records the dream that the New Kingdom pharaoh Tuthmosis the 4th had when he was out hunting at Giza. He rested and he thought he was just going to have a nap and then he dreamed that if he cleared this statue he would become king and he did. This is an amazing survival story, because the story inscribed in hieroglyphics was done 3000 years before a Dutch explorer in 1482 visited the Sphinx and was told the same story by the local inhabitants who were illiterate. That goes in the Guinness book of records as the longest proven recorded survival folk tradition in the history of the world. And it includes the Sphinx. So we are proud to discover that.

“There is an indentation in the Northern flank of the Sphinx behind his front leg. This was opened in 1926 by Emile Baraize who went inside a chamber inside the Sphinx which went down below ground level. He used big blocks to fill up what he considered to be the unsightly hole inside the Sphinx. Emile Baraize was not an archaeologist he was being paid by the early piracy trade.

"There is a little hole in the Sphinx's ass. This most of you will know leads to a chamber inside the Sphinx underneath his bottom. This was concealed and forgotten about until the 1980's. This is a close up of it and inside some reinforcements have been put on it and steel as you can see. It is not easy to squeeze down there if you are fat. I squeezed down there.” RT

Robert Temple shows the photo “me with my head sticking out of the Sphinx's ass” and the Audience laughs

"If you go a short distance you go into a hole made out of bedrock and was used for people who wanted to sleep overnight and have sacred dreams. That goes down about 15 feet and it is a hollowed out scoop in the bedrock and you can curl up overnight with your potty a loaf of bread and dahl and have your sacred dream. There is another passage inside the Sphinx.

"That passage goes all along the South haunch of the Sphinx and I tried going along but the wooden crops began to fall away and I suddenly got this vision of myself dying inside I didn't feel like having the Sphinx collapse on me so I am afraid I reclined the invitation to crawl along the rest of the passage. The passage was sealed off by concrete in 1926 so we will never know how far along it really went. Here we have the bottom of the image, here the southern haunch of the Sphinx and the tunnel goes all the way along to a blob and that blob is a concrete patch. And when they put that blob there the concrete ceiled up the passage of the tunnel and we cannot go any further than that.

"What I discovered was that that crack opened in a region where there was a vertical shaft which intruded into the body of the Sphinx made at a later date after its construction. This was probably a shaft constructed during the Saite period of the 26th dynasty. That is our guess because it leads to a tomb beneath the Sphinx. I have published accounts of many people over 281 years of eye witnesses all of which have been forgotten by Egyptologists. I collected all these which describe all the eye witness reports of people who went down the vertical shafts and took precise dimensions which later made this crack which leads to a chamber beneath the Sphinx. That chamber was completely filled with inscriptions. That was completely filled with cement by that bloody idiot Emile Baraize in 1926. What we need to do is get that concrete out of there and read the hieroglyphic inscriptions on the wall to see if it is the tomb of a pharaoh from the 26th dynasty. There is a chamber under the Sphinx at that point. I don't believe it is the only chamber.

" The other strange Sphinx features; are weird boxes. There are four weird boxes. I believe the Sphinx is riddled with holes and chambers underneath. There is so much unexplored about the Sphinx. ” RT

"There is a disproportion in size between the tiny little Sphinx head and the giant body. It is like having a pimple on an ocean liner. The head can't possibly be original it must have been cut down and re-carved, because the Egyptians of all the people in the world were most enamoured by correct proportion of statues. And they would never have done a thing like this.

“The Sphinx is a dog. The original head was larger than it seemed and the head of a dog. Sphinx was a giant crouching Anubis who was the guardian of the complex throughout the whole thousands of years of Egyptian history. Anubis guarded the dead and he was placed there to guard the sacred precinct of Giza. That is a crouching dog in the position of Anubis. The head is as it now was easily cut out of what remained of the original Anubis head. We know that the Giza plateau was rampaged, (people) smashing statues and things. It was the easiest thing in the world at that time for them to knock the nose and ears off of poor old Anubis.

"The head was carved out of the stone remaining from the Anubis head. (It is alike) the classic Anubis crouched pose from the tomb of Tutenkamen from the New Kingdom. The face of the Sphinx as it now is has been very heavily and clumsily restored. The lattice on either side of the head: is known as the Nemes headdress. It is what the pharaoh wore on sacred occasions. It was worn in his role as high priest and not in his role of earthly king. You can see the very clumsy extensions of this in the form of modern concrete in the 1930's, patches were made because of course he had gouges in his face and so they were all filled. The Sphinx has been so clumsily restored it is more like a prop from Disneyland than an original artefact.

“The pharaoh I believe that put his face on the Sphinx is called Amenhemhet the 2nd from the New Kingdom. He was the third pharaoh of the middle kingdom. Now, imagine the situation: They pull themselves together out of mayhem and chaos after the old kingdom collapsed and created what we now call the ‘middle kingdom'. You can imagine the wrecked state of Giza when he came to power. That must have been very depressing. They would have had this Sphinx sitting there - the remains of Anubis, a stump for a head, so they decided to give it a second head. And Amenhemhet the 2nd who was quite a handsome looking chap was clearly not the shy type. And doubtless when the carvers went to him and said oh our majesty what should we put on the face of the Sphinx, he said put my own face, how about that. And that is how it happened.

“Now why is this giant statue sitting in a hole in the ground? This was the world's largest statue and it's sitting in a hole in the ground. Clearly the Egyptians were not interested in flaunting it. They were concealing it. If you had the world's largest statue wouldn't you want people to see the world's largest statue? The world's largest statue is sitting in the middle of a hole on purpose because they wanted it to be surrounded by a moat to become an island. What I call Sphinx island.

"As soon as you realise you have Anubis sitting in a lake you immediately plunge into a whole series of texts from the pyramid text which talks about ‘Jackal Lake' which is mentioned constantly throughout the pyramid texts. It is where very sacred ceremonies took place. I believe the pharaoh got into a little boat after the death of his father and he took a jar containing the internal organs of his father and performed a sacred ablution of his father's organs in ‘jackal lake' as part of the ceremony preceding the internment of his father's body in his tomb. And he then went around the Sphinx in a little boat described also in the pyramid texts.

Bear in mind the water in the times of the Old Kingdom, the inundation period came right up to the doors of the temple. In front of that temple we see excavated remains of a quay . There was a quay in front of the Sphinx temple but it has been covered up again as well. I believe the water was flowing through this corridor between the two temples into the Sphinx pit. The Sphinx pit was a moat and the Sphinx was an island sitting there surrounded by water. In the north wall of the valley temple there are sleuth gates, counterweights and boat holes. Sleuth gates were controlling the level of the water. The quay in front of the Sphinx temple was excavated in 1936. It was later covered up and forgotten about in the sand.

“The North wall of the valley temple; is the corridor where I believe the water entered. There is a sloth for a counterweight for a sleuth gate. There are various boat holes for holding the sleuth gate shut and evidence of water levels and so on. This has all been covered up now and my photos are the only evidence that remain. They were covering up the restoration at the time I came along, just in time to capture this evidence. There are more photos.

"At the entrance to the Sphinx pit there is a swirling pattern on the carved bedrock. That is because the water swirled as it came pouring down the corridor, swirled into that and then swirled into the pit. That is another photo of the swirling pattern seen more closely. This is another example of water erosion inside the Sphinx temple. The Sphinx temple may have been itself continually flooded at the time of inundation which is why it doesn't have proper flooring. And if you were the pharaoh you got down into this pit in your reed boat from the Western wall of the Sphinx temple. I believe he had some sort of multiple ceremony inside the Sphinx temple.

… * … * … * … * … * … * ROBERT TEMPLE transcribed at : struhuru@gmail.com