Chapter 19 Chapter 19

According to the "hypothetical third party" theory, ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia inherited a common cultural asset from a common, ancient ancestor, and therefore the civilizations of the two regions shared many similarities with some notable differences.However, so far, no scholars have seriously explored where and when this ancient civilization arose, and what its connotation and essence are.Like a "black hole" in space, it is invisible.However, we can deeply feel its existence from its concrete and visible influence on the Egyptian and Sumerian civilizations. Is it possible that this mysterious ancestor, the hidden root of civilization, also left its traces in Mexico?If possible, then we will certainly find some cultural similarities between the ancient civilizations of Mexico and the ancient civilizations of the Middle East.We'll also find some major differences—after all, the cultures of the two regions developed independently of each other over long periods of history.The cultures of Sumer and Egypt were in contact from time to time, so the differences are naturally relatively small. However, before Columbus "discovered" the New World in 1492 AD, there was little chance of contact between the two civilizations in the Middle East and the distant Mesoamerican civilization. So the difference is also relatively large.

reincarnation of stars Strange to say, for some unknown reason, the ancient Egyptians had a special fondness for dwarves and respected them; similarly, since the Olmecs, the civilized peoples of Central America have also particularly revered dwarves.Some scholars point out that the people of both places believed that the gnomes were closely related to the gods.In the cultures of Egypt and Mesoamerica, dwarves were popular dancers, and artists also liked to depict their dancing looks and postures① More than 4,500 years ago, at the beginning of the Egyptian dynasty, the priests of Heliopolis especially worshiped the "Ennead" with boundless magic power; similarly, in Central America, the Aztecs and Mayans also worshiped the gods composed of nine gods. An all-powerful theocracy composed of only one.The ancient Quiche Mayans of Mexico and Guatemala venerated a sacred book called the Popol Vuh.Several passages make it clear that this people believed in "star reincarnation" -- the transformation of the soul into stars in the sky after death.For example, after the heroic twin brothers Hunahpu and Xbalanque were slain, their souls "raised up in a cluster of rays to heaven... when the sky and the earth were lighted. From then on they settled in Heaven".Followed by the twin brothers, there were four hundred other dead companions, "so they were reunited with Unap and Sbalanc, and reincarnated as stars in the sky"③.

As mentioned above, most of the legends about the "God King" Kui and Kotel focus on his activities as a civilization mentor.However, his disciples in ancient Mexico also believed that after his physical death, his soul "transformed into a star". Coincidentally, during the pyramid period more than 4,000 years ago, the state religion of Egypt also enshrined the same belief: the pharaoh would be reincarnated as a star after his death.The priest chanted scriptures at the funeral, urging the gods to let the dead king be reborn in the heaven as soon as possible: "O king, you are this great star, the partner of Orion, and follow Orion across the sky... You rose from the eastern sky, Reincarnated at an auspicious time..."⑤In the Nazca plateau in southern Peru, we have seen the Orion constellation depicted on the ground, and we will meet it again in the future...

Here, we might as well take a look at the ancient Egyptian "Book of the Dead".Parts of the book are almost as old as Egyptian civilization; for the Egyptians at the time, the book was a guidebook to the underworld for reincarnated souls.It instructs the deceased how to overcome the dangers of the afterlife and how to transform into a mythical monster; it also provides the deceased with relevant "passwords" so that the soul of the deceased can enter the various stages or levels of the underworld⑥. The peoples of ancient Mesoamerica also believed that the soul would encounter many dangers after death—is this just a mere coincidence?They believe that there are nine levels in the underworld, and the soul of the dead must spend four years passing through various obstacles and trials along the way⑦.Each layer of the underworld has a creepy name, such as "impact mountain", "arrows piercing the heart valley", "knife mountain" and so on.In ancient Mesoamerica and Egypt, people believed that the soul of the dead took a boat, with the "God of the Boat" at the helm, to ferry him from one station of the underworld to another⑧.There is a mural depicting this scene in the mausoleum of Deuble Comb, the ruler of the Mayan city of Tikal in the 8th century AD.Similar images also appear in the royal tombs of Upper Egypt's "Valley of the Kings", most notably the murals in the tomb of Thutmosis III, the pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty.After the death of Egyptian pharaohs and Mayan kings, when the souls entered the underworld by boat, the entourage included a dog or a dog-headed human god, a bird or an aconite human god, and an ape or a monkey-headed god. Gods in person⑾.Is this also a mere coincidence?

In ancient Mexico, the seventh layer of the underworld was called "Teocoyolcualloya", which means "the place where the beast devours the heart"⑿. It is worth noting that the "Judgment Hall", one of the stations of the underworld in ancient Egypt, also has almost the same series of symbols.Is this also a coincidence?At a key stop on the journey to the underworld, the dead man's heart is placed on a scale, with a feather at the other end; if the heart is filled with sin, the scales will tip to it, and then, the god of knowledge and magic, Soth He would record the result of the trial on a wooden tablet and order a ferocious beast—a "corpse eater" that is half crocodile, half hippopotamus, and somewhat lion-like—to devour the heart⒀.

Finally, let's take another look at Egypt in the Pyramid Age.The special status enjoyed by the pharaoh allowed him to be reincarnated directly as a star without the torment of the underworld.Chanting was part of the pharaoh's funeral.Equally important is a mystical ritual known as "opening the mouth", which is said to be very ancient, dating back to predynastic times.The chief priest led four acolytes to attend the funeral, wielding a kind of artifact called "peshenkhef" (peshenkhef), which was like a kitchen knife, and was used to "pry open" the mouth of the pharaoh's body to ensure that his soul would be released. Fly into the sky smoothly.Existing reliefs and murals show that at the pharaoh's funeral, the mummified corpse was indeed hit hard with "Peschenkhef".In addition, recent evidence also suggests that a chamber inside the Great Pyramid at Giza may have been the venue for such rituals.

All these customs of ancient Egypt can be found in strange and distorted replicas in ancient Mexico.As mentioned above, before the Spanish invasion, sacrifice rituals of killing people and offering sacrifices to gods were prevalent in Mexico.It is worth noting that the sacrificial ceremony was also performed in the pyramid, presided over by a chief priest and four deacons; they wielded a blade-like artifact, and slammed the victim's body to ensure that his soul escaped the torment of the underworld. , soar directly to heaven⒂.Is this just a random coincidence? The more "coincidences" of this kind we find, the more reason to believe that there may be some deep-seated connection between the cultures and customs of the two regions.Another strong evidence is that various ethnic groups in ancient Mesoamerica called "sacrifice" "Pachi", which means "open mouth"⒃.

We are therefore compelled to ask the question: Is it possible that these cultural practices, although they arose in two distant regions and at different historical times, were not merely a series of amazing A shared, vague, distorted tradition and memory?We cannot say that the Egyptian "mouth-opening ceremony" directly influenced the similar ritual in Mexico (and vice versa), since there are fundamental differences between the two.Nonetheless, there is reason to believe that there are many similarities between the two, possibly due to a cultural heritage that the two regions inherited from a common ancestor.Although the Mesoamerican peoples and the Egyptians handled this legacy differently, some common symbols and terms were preserved by both sides.

Due to space limitations, we do not intend here to explore further the ancient and elusive connection between Egyptian and Mesoamerican cultures.However, before discussing other subjects, we should point out that a similar "connection" existed in the belief systems of ancient Mexico and Mesopotamia and Sumer.Again, the reader is reminded that the evidence here does not point to any direct influence, but rather to a shared, ancient cultural legacy. Take the god Oannes, for example. "Onnis" is the Greek name for the Sumerian god "Uan".In Part 2 of this book we discussed the amphibious god who is said to have brought civilization and art to Mesopotamia.According to the myth handed down from 5,000 years ago, Wu'an lived on the bottom of the sea at night, drilled out of the water of the Persian Gulf every morning, and engaged in the work of educating mankind.In the language of the Mayans in Central America, "Uaana" means "people who live in water"⒅.This can't be a mere coincidence, can it?

Let's look at another Sumerian deity, Tiamat, the goddess of the sea who represented primitive violence.According to legends in Mesopotamia, this female demon, who is cruel and greedy by nature, once, for some reason, turned against all the gods and caused an earth-shattering riot in the world. Gram (Marduk) kills: He summoned a blast of kamikaze to keep her mouth shut. The kamikaze poured straight into her stomach, making her heart ache. She opened her mouth desperately. He shot an arrow through her stomach. He eviscerated her and tore her heart in two. He repaired her so badly that he destroyed her life.

He threw her down, jumped, and stood on her body⒆. What to do with Tiamat's body? Marduk had a brilliant idea.While staring at the body of the female monster, he "conceived artistic creation"⒇, and the great blueprint for creating the world began to take shape in his mind.In the first step, he split Tiamat's head and severed her arteries.He then tore her whole body in half, "like a dried fish," and used one half for the roof of heaven and the other for the ground.Her breasts were turned into hills by him; her saliva was turned into clouds by him.He guided the two great rivers Tigris and Euphrates, which flowed from her eyes. This legend is really strange, full of bloody violence, and very old. The ancient civilizations of Mesoamerica had similar myths.In this version, the role of the monster-slaying hero is Quetzakotel as the creator; the role of Tiamat is replaced by the "land banshee" Cipactli.While Chipaktri was swimming in the water, Quetzakotel reached out and grabbed her limbs, and tore her body in half, using one half to make the sky and the other half to make the earth.Her hair and skin were transformed into various flowers and plants by him. "Her eyes became wells and springs; her shoulders became mountains". The myths of Sumer in the Middle East and Mexico in America are so similar.Is this pure coincidence, or is it a cultural "fingerprint" left by a civilization that has disappeared?If it is the latter, then the hero of this ancient civilization may be the protagonist of those statues.Their faces were preserved on stones and passed down from generation to generation, sometimes appearing and sometimes concealing. After thousands of years, they were finally excavated by our archaeologists in this century, endowed with "Olmec Head" and "Sam Uncle" and the like. The faces of these ancient heroes also appear in the ruins of Mount Alban.But there, they told a sad story. Mount Alban: The Fall of a Hero The ruins of Monte Albán, believed to be 3,000 years old, sit on a flattened hill overlooking the city of Oaxaca.At the center of the ruins is a rectangular "Great Plaza" surrounded by several pyramids and other buildings, all arranged in precise geometric relationships.At the beginning, the whole site was obviously built according to a well-designed blueprint, and there was an atmosphere of harmony, symmetry, and order everywhere. Before leaving Via Hermosa, I visited the "Olmec and Mayan Culture Research Center and consulted the experts there. After arriving at Mount Alban, I followed their instructions and first went to the southwest corner of the ruins to have a look. Here, I saw the artifacts piled up next to a low pyramid. These are the things I came to see: dozens of steles, carved with black and white portraits... equal in life... after death lie flat here... If these statues really belong to a great civilization that has been obliterated by time, then, from the characters they depict, we can see that this civilization emphasizes "racial equality".The black heads unearthed from the ruins of La Venda have such a dignified and confident expression on their faces that it is hard for us to believe that these figures were once slaves during their lifetime.The portraits of white men with thin faces and beards that we see in Lavendar also exude a kind of dignity.This kind of person will not easily bow to others. However, the statues in the ruins of Mount Alban seem to record the fall of these noble figures.The statues unearthed in the two places are obviously not the works of the same craftsmen.Compared with the statue of Ravendar, the statue here is much rougher.But one thing is certain: whoever they were, however poor their work, the sculptors of Mount Alban presented the same figures I saw on the statue of La Venda with the negroes and goats. Bearded white man.Statues unearthed from the ruins of Ravendar are vibrant and authoritative.The statue of Mount Alban depicts dead bodies.The black and white people on the statue are all naked, and most of them have been castrated.Some curled up like fetuses, seeming to avoid the enemy's pursuit; others stretched out their limbs and lay on their backs. Archaeologists believe the statues show "the bodies of prisoners of war." A prisoner of which war?Where was it captured? This is Central America before the birth of Columbus, located in the Western Hemisphere. However, the statue of Mount Alban depicts the tragic casualties on the battlefield, but there is not a single Native American. The victims are all whites and blacks from the Eastern Hemisphere.Isn't this weird? For some reason, orthodox scholars are reluctant to explore this question, although according to their calculations, these statues are very old, even dating to between 1000 and 600 BC.Like other cultural relics unearthed from the ruins, the age of these statues was determined by examining relevant organic materials.The statue itself is difficult to date objectively because it is engraved on a granite stele. weird word maze A set of exquisite, complex and complete hieroglyphs was discovered in the ruins of Mount Alban, and scholars have yet to decipher its meaning.Most of these texts are engraved on stelae, juxtaposed with crude portraits of whites and blacks.It is recognized by experts as "the oldest script ever found in Mexico".Evidence shows that the ethnic groups living in the area of ​​Mount Alban had very advanced construction technology and were especially good at observing astronomical phenomena.The arrowhead-shaped observatory stands out of the ruins at a 45-degree angle to the central axis, which itself is deliberately set several degrees off the north-south line.Drilling into this observatory, I discovered that it is equipped with a cobweb of narrow tunnels and steep steps; through these tunnels and steps, various regions of the sky can be observed. The ancient inhabitants of Mount Alban, like the inhabitants of Triszapot, left conclusive evidence that their mathematical knowledge was quite advanced, and they knew how to use "point and line calculations".They also used a curious calendar invented by the Olmecs and improved by the Mayans. If this calendar, and the Maya's uncommon attention to time, were part of the cultural heritage of an ancient and forgotten civilization, the Maya would be the most faithful and devoted to that legacy guardian.As archaeologist Eric Thompson pointed out in 1950: "Time is the supreme mystery of Mayan religion. It dominated the entire thinking of the Maya with a degree of influence arguably unprecedented." I continued to visit other ruins in Mesoamerica, gradually being drawn into this strange and awe-inspiring cultural maze. Notes: ① See the following books: "Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt", pages 69-7O; "Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Mayans", page 82; Harley's case "Kidab the Dwarf", pages 84-106. Jean Pierre Hallet, Pygmy Kitabu, BCA, London, 1974, pp. 84-106． ③ "Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt", page 85, and "Mythology of Mexico and Central America", page 148. ③ Gotez and Morize, "Bobowu Sutra: The Sacred Books of the Ancient Queche Maya", pp. 163-164. Delia G Goetz and Sylvanus G． Morley, trans, Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Ancient Quiche Maya, University of oklahoma press, 1991, p. 163-64． ④ Ibid., page 181, and "Mexico and Mesoamerican Mythology", page 147. ⑤ Boknadze's "Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts", page 155, paragraph 466. RO． Faulkner, trans, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, Oxford University press, 1969, p. 155．There are many references to Pharaoh in the scriptures collected in the book. "Star reincarnation", eg, paragraphs 248, 264, 265, 268, and 57O ("I am a star that lights up the sky"). ⑥ Interested readers can refer to the British Museum Publishing, Borknadze's "Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead", 1989. R． O． Faulkner, trans, The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, British Museum Publications, 1989. ⑦ "Mexican Gods Before the Spanish Invasion", p. 37. ⑧ "Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and Maya", pp. 128-129. ⑨This mural was published in "National Geographic Magazine" (National GeograhicMagazine), Volume 176, Issue 4, published in October 1989, page 468: "Student boat gods are important gods in Mayan mythology; under their guidance, Shuang Comb entered the underworld in a canoe. Accompanied by the king of Daxing was a large lizard, a monkey, a parrot and a dog." In Part 5 of this book, we will further explore "dogs" Significance in the mythology of various peoples. ⑩The details of this mural were published in Rommel's "Valley of the Kings", page 167, and Henwest's "Guidebook to Ancient Egypt", pages 282-297. J0hn Romer, Valley Of the KingS, Michael OMaraBooksl Limited London, 1988, p.167, and JA. West, The Trauellers Key To Ancient Egypt, Harrap Columbus london, 1989, pp. 28297． ⑾In ancient Egyptian mythology, the dog represents the "road god" Upuaut (Upuaut), the bird (usually a vulture) represents the sun god Horus (H0rus), and the ape represents Thoth, the god of knowledge and magic. ).See "Ancient Egypt Travel Guide", page 284, and "Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead", pages 116-130, for the part of ancient Mesoamerica, see note ⑨. ⑿ "Mexican Gods Before the Spanish Invasion", p. 40. ⒀ Butch's translation of "The Egyptian Book of the Dead", p. 21. E.A. Wallis Budge, The Egyptian Book Of The Dead, Arkana. London and New York, 1986, p. twenty one. ⒁Bauval and Gilbert "The Mystery of the Orion Constellation", pp. 208-210, 270. Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert, The Orion Mystery, Wm. Helnemann, London, 1994pp. 208-10, 270. ⒂ "Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and Maya", pp. 40, 177. ⒃ "Mayan History and Religion", 175 pages. ⒄ "Mesopotamian Mythology" by Stephanie Daly, pp. 326; "Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia" by Jeremy Blake and Anthony Green, pp. 163-164 . Staphonie Dalley, Myths Forom Mesopotamia, Oxford University Press, 1990, P.326. Lereonv, Black and Anthony Green, Gods, Demons and Sym Bols of Ancient Mesopotamia, British Museum Press, 1992, pp.163-4. ⒅ "Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids", page 169; "God Kings and Giants", page 234. ⒆ "Lalus Latest Myth Encyclopedia", pp. 53-54. ⒇ Same as above, page 54. (21) "Mexican Gods Before the Spaniards Invasion", page 59; Inge Grostenen's "Aztecs", page 177. Inga Glendinnen, Aztecs, Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 177．See also Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya, p. 144. (22) "Mexico", 669 pages. (23) "Cities of Ancient Mexico", p. 53. (24) "The Ancient Kingdom of Mexico", page 53, and "Mexico", page 671. (25) "The Ancient Kingdom of Mexico", page 54. (26) Eric Thompson, "Mayan Hieroglyphs", 155 pages. 1. Enc ThomPSon, Maya Hieroglyphic Writing, Carnegie Institution, Washington DC, 1987, P.