Chapter 52
Like a Thief in the Night (cont)

For the benefit of future generations of mankind

Here is a scenario:

Suppose that we had calculated, on the basis of sound evidence and beyond any shadow of a doubt, that our civilization was soon to be obliterated by a titanic geological cataclysm - a 30° displacement of the earth's crust, for example, or a head-on collision with a ten-mile-wide nickel-iron asteroid travelling towards us at cosmic speed.

Of course there would at first be much panic and despair. Nevertheless - if there were sufficient advance warning - steps would be taken to ensure that there would be some survivors and that some of what was most valuable in our high scientific knowledge would be preserved for the benefit of future generations.

Strangely enough, the Jewish historian Josephus (who wrote during the first century AD) attributes precisely this behaviour to the clever and prosperous inhabitants of the antediluvian world who lived before the Flood 'in a happy condition without any misfortunes falling upon them':

They also were the inventors of that peculiar sort of wisdom which is concerned with the heavenly bodies, and their order. And that their inventions might not be lost - upon Adam's prediction that the world was to be destroyed at one time by the force of fire, and at another time by the violence and quantity of water - they made two pillars, one of brick, the other of stone: they inscribed their discoveries upon them both, that in case the pillar of brick should be destroyed by the Flood, the pillar of stone might remain and exhibit these discoveries to mankind; and also inform them that there was another pillar of brick erected by them ...

Likewise, when the Oxford astronomer John Greaves visited Egypt in the seventeenth century he collected ancient local traditions which attributed the construction of the three Giza pyramids to a mythical antediluvian king:

The occasion of this was because he saw in his sleep that the whole earth was turned over, with the inhabitants of it lying upon their faces and the stars falling down and striking one another with a terrible noise ... And he awaked with great feare, and assembled the chief priests of all the provinces of Egypt ... He related the whole matter to them and they took the altitude of the stars, and made their prognostication, and they foretold of a deluge. The king said, will it come to our country? They answered yes, and will destroy it. And there remained a certain number of years to come, and he commanded in the mean space to build the Pyramids ... And he engraved in these Pyramids all things that were told by wise men, as also all profound sciences - the science of Astrology, and of Arithmeticke, and of Geometry, and of Physicke. All this may be interpreted by him that knowes their characters and language ...

Taken at face value, the message of both of these myths seems crystal clear: certain mysterious structures scattered around the world were built to preserve and transmit the knowledge of an advanced civilization of remote antiquity which was destroyed by a terrifying upheaval.

Could this be so? And what are we to make of other strange traditions that have come to us from the dark vault of prehistory?

What are we to make, for example, of the Popol Vuh, which speaks in veiled language about a great secret of the human past: a long-forgotten golden age when everything was possible - a magical time of scientific progress and enlightenment when the 'First Men' (who were 'endowed with intelligence') not only 'measured the round face of the earth' but 'examined the four points of the arch of the sky'.

As the reader will recall, the gods became jealous at the rapid progress made by these upstart humans who had 'succeeded in seeing, succeeded in knowing, all that there is in the world.' Divine retribution quickly followed: 'The Heart of Heaven blew mist into their eyes ... In this way all the wisdom and all the knowledge of the First Men [together with their memory of their] origin and their beginning, were destroyed.'

The secret of what happened was never entirely forgotten because a record of those distant First Times was preserved, until the coming of the Spaniards, in the sacred texts of the original Popol Vuh. The abuses of the conquest made it necessary for that primordial document to be concealed from all but the most highly-initiated sages and replaced with a watered-down substitute written 'under the law of Christianity': 'No longer can be seen the book of Popol Vuh which the kings had in olden times ... The original book, written long ago, existed - but now its sight is hidden to the searcher and to the thinker ...'

On the other side of the world, among the myths and traditions of the Indian subcontinent, there are further tantalizing suggestions of hidden secrets. In the Puranic version of the universal flood story, shortly before the deluge was unleashed, the fish god Vishnu warned his human protégé that he 'should conceal the Sacred Scriptures in a safe place' to preserve the knowledge of the antediluvian races from destruction. Likewise, in Mesopotamia, the Noah figure Utnapishtim was instructed by the god Ea 'to take the beginning, the middle and the end of whatever was consigned to writing and then to bury it in the City of the Sun at Sippara'. After the waters of the flood had gone, survivors were instructed to make their way to the site of the City of the Sun 'to search for the writings', which would be found to contain knowledge of benefit to future generations of mankind.

Strangely enough, it was the City of the Sun in Egypt, Innu, known by the Greeks as Heliopolis - which was regarded throughout the dynastic period as the source and centre of the high wisdom handed down to mortal men from the fabled First Time of the gods. It was at Heliopolis that the Pyramid Texts were collated, and it was the Heliopolitan priesthood - or rather the Heliopolitan cult - that had custody of the monuments of the Giza necropolis.