Dec 23, 2007
Ancient Pyramids
As is well known there are literally hundreds of pyramids of various styles scattered over the Earth, in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Far East, Southeast Asia and South Pacific, and in North and South America.
A few of these sites demonstrating the different styles are:
Iraq: The reconstructed ziggurat-pyramid at Ur, in ancient Sumer.
Egypt: The step pyramid at Saqqara.
Egypt: The smooth-walled pyramids at Giza.
Hancock and Bauval (1996) suggest that the ‘ground plan’ of the three great pyramids was physically established in 10,500 bc, but that the pyramids were built around 2,500 bc. This supports the notion that the pyramid base rock with its underground chamber was an early AA terminal, and the Sphinx was the associated landmark easily identified from space.
Mexico: The highly decorated step pyramids at Chichen-Itza, Monte Alban, and elsewhere.
In the Temple of Inscriptions at Palenque, a shaft runs from the tomb up to the temple floor, similar to some of the Egyptian pyramids. There was initially a 40 ft "comb" on the top. Was this an additional identifying marker?
Mexico: The unusual elliptical pyramid at Uxmal.
Mexico: The huge, unexcavated pyramid at Cholula (Fig 4-1), in the shadow of the volcano, Popocatepetl ("El Popo"). Its ancient name, Tlachihualtepetl, means "man-made mountain".
On Quetzalcoatl’s pilgrimage his first stop was Cholula, which means ‘the place of flight’ in Nahuatl. The huge "Piramide Tepanapa", 200 ft high and 1300 ft on a side, is the largest ancient pyramid in the Americas, and possibly the largest in the world. The earliest construction has been traced to 200 bc. It was covered with dirt to hide it from the invading Spaniards and a small shrine was placed at the top, which the Spanish replaced with a church (Fig 4-1). The small portion which has been excavated reveals remarkable masonry.
Mexico: Tres Zapotes, an Olmec site (1300 – 400 bc), was the first adobe-brick pyramid site in Mesoamerica. (Mystery buffs please note: Before the arrival of Cortez ALL of the Olmec sites were destroyed, except El Tijin, which had been abandoned!)
Mexico: The truncated cone pyramid of Cuicuilco. In 1917 Manuel Gamio, excavating off the road from Mexico City to Cuernavaca, found an overgrown hill called ‘Cuicuilco’ enveloped by pre-historic lava streams. It turned out to be an enormous ancient pyramid or truncated cone with four galleries and central staircase. It is one of the few remaining round stepped pyramids. The base is 370 ft and it is about 60 ft high now, although it was originally much higher. Archeologist Paul Heinrich reports the age to be 800 to 600 bc, not 6000 bc as reported by others. (Miller, 2000)
Mexico: The beautiful miniature pyramid at Cecilia, D.F.
Mexico: The platform-pyramids at Teotenango, Tenayaca, and Tula.
Mexico: The multi-platform style of the Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuacan.
In his discussion of Teotihuacan, John Michel (1995) quotes another researcher: "During the 1970s Hugh Harleston, Jr …established that ‘the basic unit of measurement at Teotihuacan was 1.0594 meters, the same unit which represents the ‘Jewish rod’ of 3.4757 ft., the same unit which represents the width of the Stonehenge lintels, a six-millionth part of the earth’s polar radius…’"
Guatemala: The huge pre-classic (150 bc-150 ad) Mayan site of El Mirador with its dozens of pyramids, including the Tigre Pyramid rising 18 stories high, probably the largest pyramid ever built by the Maya.
Peru: Moche Temple of the Sun. The earlier Moche built this temple-pyramid style pyramid from 140 million adobe bricks.
Peru: Sipan Pyramid. This Moche pyramid-tomb near the town of Sipan proves that some of the early SA pyramids were tombs, as in Egypt and Mesoamerica.
Peru: Pyramids of Cahuachi. A ceremonial site comprised of six pyramids, the highest being about 70 ft, overlooking a walled court of 4050 sq yards. (Morrison, 1988). Hadingham (1987) mentions that the "great temple" was a stepped pyramid. He quotes Helaine Silverman’s estimate that the period of most activity at Cahuachi was short lived, about 200 years, and the site was mysteriously abandoned around 200 ad, along with other several other important sites.
Peru: The pyramids of Tucume. "Covering over 540 acres and including 26 major pyramids as well as myriad smaller structures…first built around 1100 ad by people of the Lambayeque culture…" The largest of the adobe brick pyramids, Huaca Larga, is 2300 ft long, 910 ft wide and 65 ft high. (Heyerdahl, 1995). Robert Schoch (1999) writes, "The largest of the pyramids, called Tucume…was only a little over 200 feet high, but it contained one-third more volume that the Pyramid of Khufu at Giza."
Peru: Huaca del Sol, Moche Valley. This is a 120 ft high pyramid on the Peruvian north coast. The 1.5 million mud brick pyramid is the largest man-made mound in SA. Facing Huaca del Sol across the main plaza was a smaller mound, Huaca del Luna. The site lies at the foot of Cerro Blanco, an obvious landmark from space for this ceremonial/feeding center (Hadingham, 1987)
Bolivia: The Akapana platform-pyramid at Tiahuanaco. The Bolivian archaeologists date the site to 1580 bc. The Akapana measures 688 ft on a side and is 49 ft high. "The earthen interior was shaped like a stepped pyramid and faced with fitted stones." (Demetrio, 1983)
Java: Cani Sukuh pyramid, resembling the Mexico pyramid style (Childress, 1996). Who carried this style across the Pacific?
Ryukyu Islands: The Yonaguni underwater pyramid. This unique step-pyramid-platform, 240 ft long and 90 ft high, resting 75 ft underwater, has been dated to 8000 bc! (Dopatka, 2000)
China: The White Pyramid, near Xi’an. Hartwig Hausdorf (1998) says there are 90-100 pyramids in China, near Xi’an, the tallest being about 200 ft. Xi’an incidentally is the site of the amazing ‘Terracotta Army’ of Qin Shi Huang.
Polynesia: "modest pyramids" at Tongatabu; a temple-pyramid on Tahiti; the Langi stepped pyramid-platform at Tauhala (a large stone, 24 x 7 ft and weighing 30-40 tons, is in the wall).
Ancient pyramids are also found on Samoa and Java. (Childress, 1996)
Greece: Pyramid of Hellinikon, near Argos. The author writes, "…built in the style reminiscent of cyclopean walls…" Its base is 15 x 13 meters, and the tallest wall still standing it only 14 ft. From the photos it probably would have stood about 10 meters high when completed. Thermoluminescent analysis of the pyramid in 1997 yielded a construction date of 2720 bc, older than the archeologists state for the Cheops pyramid! (Tsoukalow, 2000)
Canary Islands: The pyramids of Guimar. Thor Heyerdahl writes, "…They were painstakingly built step-pyramids, constructed according to similar principles as those of Mexico, Peru, and ancient Mesopotamia."
United States: Monk’s pyramid-mound at Cahokia, Illinois, a mud brick platform-pyramid. A large stone wall or room has recently been discovered inside the mound, but has not been excavated as of Oct 2000.
Yonaguni: Situated between the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea, about 300 miles from Okinawa, is the island of Yonaguni-Jima. Off it's coast is a huge apparently manmade (god-made?) monument about 100 ft below the surface. Its a platform pyramid 600 ft wide, 90 ft high constructed of precisely hewn megalithic stones. The pyramid, apparently a part of a ceremonial center, has been dated to 8000 bc, 5000 years before the oldest pyramid in Egypt!
The best clue we have that the gods orchestrated the pyramid building is the tale of Gudea who built the temple-ziggurat at Lagash (apparently the god Kothar-Hasis was the only one authorized to design the temples. He was likely the same "Greek divine craftsman Hepahaestus" who built the temple-abode of Zeus, and the Egyptian god Thoth). For Ninurta’s temple at Lagash Gudea was given elaborate and continuous instructions by the gods. He built a seven-tier ziggurat, named Eninnu, referring to a ingenious tablet which gave a plan view and 7 scales – one for each tier (Zecharia Sitchin describes this story in detail in his 1976 and 1993 books. See also figs 748, 749 of Pritchard, 1969).
Zecharia Sitchin makes an interesting connection with his statement that the three great pyramids of Giza are at 52 degree, but the later pyramids collapsed at this angle and were built at 43.5 degrees, and he maintains that the pyramids at Teotihuacan are also at 43.5 degrees. Furthermore "although the 2nd pyramid at Giza is shorter than the Great Pyramid, their peaks are at the same height above sea level because the 2nd one is built on higher ground; the same holds true at Teotihuacan where the smaller Pyramid of the Moon is built on ground some thirty feet higher than the Sun Pyramid, giving their peaks equal height above sea level." We should note here also that both the Great Pyramid at Giza and the Sun Pyramid at Teotihuacan have a descending shaft burrowed into the bedrock on which the pyramids were built.
One of the problems in choosing a landing site for a vertical-lift aircraft is the dust and dirt generated by the exhaust. Before pyramids were built this problem was apparently minimized by landing on large rock outcrops. The problem is better solved however by landing on step pyramids, or step platforms, since the tiers at each level would effectively deflect the exhaust.
The ziggurats at Urand Babylon, the Zoser pyramid in Egypt (Fig 4-4), the Canary Island pyramids, and most of the Mexican pyramids and South American pyramids, employed this design.
Interestingly some of the Egyptian pyramids have multiple chambers which seem to have been built over periods of time, e.g. Sneferu’s pyramid has an underground chamber, a 2nd chamber near the surface, and a 3rd chamber up in the pyramid, as if the site was in use before, possibly long before, the pyramid was erected, probably as a landing and feeding site. The chambers of the Great Pyramid also follow this pattern; the 1st one being deep underground, then the 2nd (‘Queens’) chamber built low in the center of the pyramid, and the 3rd (‘Kings’) chamber higher up. This pattern suggests that one goal was to provide continuous and increasing degrees of protection from above.
The pyramids of Mycerinus, Unas, Teti and most others also had underground chambers. In fact the pyramids of Mycerinus and some others did not even have chambers in the pyramids themselves - all chambers were underground! Obviously this design would make excellent bomb shelters, and I suspect that the large pyramids, and any hapless occupants, if they had been located at "ground zero" at Hiroshima or Nagasaki, would have survived. The pyramidal shape would have effectively deflected most of the blast wave and fireball, and the neutron and gamma-ray pulses would have been attenuated to negligible levels by the stone mass.
Zecharia Sitchin (1985) offers a rather fantastic function for the pyramids of Giza: that they were built by the Nefilim, not by mankind, as part of a guidance grid for "the Tilmun spaceport". He develops a theory that ties the pyramids and the "sacred cities" into a guidance and communication grid for two approach corridors, one west-to-east over Mesopotamia and one west-to-east over the Sinai. "Built by the gods (Anunnaki), they were landmarks and beacons for the spaceport in Sinai, and existed long before kingship began in Egypt." The great pyramid was "…the mountain by which Utu ascends…".
Regarding the Giza pyramids some scholars argue that the stones were pulled up long ramps on sleds, referencing the familiar painting from the tomb of Djehutihotepe of 204 workers moving his 60 ton statute on a sled (Fig 4-5). But this only proves that this statue was moved on a sled. I am not aware of a single image or inscription which depict the methods used to construct the great pyramids. We simply do not know how it was done.
Incidentally Mark and Richard Wells (2000) have discovered an amazing similarity in the alignment and size of the three stars in Orion's belt and the alignment and size of the major pyramids at Giza, Egypt; Xi'an, China; Teotihuacan, Mexico. Don't miss their essay.
So we have pyramids of heights ranging from 30 ft to over 400 ft, lengths from 100 ft to 2300 ft; some with inner chambers and some solid throughout; stepped and smooth walled; square, round and elliptical bases; stone, mud and adobe brick construction; highly decorated or plain; some topped with small buildings.
From these various styles, sizes, and composition I think we can conclude that the pyramids had several functions: burial sites, landmarks, landing sites, feeding stations, bomb shelters, and ceremonial sites; and there is evidence that many of them served several functions simultaneously. But one thing seems certain – the pyramids, platforms and mounds around the world were places where the gods and mankind came together.
Giants Upon the Earth
Working from the same archaeological discoveries, artifacts, and recovered records as archaeologists and linguists have for two hundred years, Sitchin propounds – proves, in the opinion of this author -- that the Anunnaki (Sumerian: “those who came down from the heavens”; Old testament Hebrew, Anakeim, Nefilim, Elohim; Egyptian: Neter), an advanced civilization from the tenth planet in our solar system, splashed down in the Persian gulf area around 432,000 years ago, colonized the planet, with the purpose of obtaining large quantities of gold. Some 250,000 years ago, the recovered documents tell us, their lower echelon miners rebelled against the conditions in the mines and the Anunnaki directorate decided to create a creature to take their place. Enki, their chief scientist and Ninhursag their chief medical officer, after getting no satisfactory results splicing animal and Homo Erectus genes, merged their Anunnaki genes with that of Homo Erectus and produced us, Homo Sapiens, a genetically bicameral species, for their purposes as slaves. Because we were a hybrid, we could not procreate. The demand for us as workers became greater and we were genetically manipulated to reproduce.
Eventually, we became so numerous that some of us were expelled from the Anunnaki city centers, gradually spreading over the planet. Having become a stable genetic stock and developing more precociously than, perhaps, the Anunnaki had anticipated, the Anunnaki began to be attracted to humans as sexual partners and children were born of these unions. This was unacceptable to the majority of the Anunnaki high council and it was decided to wipe out the human population through a flood that was predictable when Nibiru, the tenth in our solar system and the Anunnaki home planet, came through the inner solar system again (around 12,500 years ago) on one of its periodic 3600 year returns. Some humans were saved by the action of the Anunnaki official, Enki, who was sympathetic to the humans he had originally genetically created. For thousands of years, we were their slaves, their workers, their servants, and their soldiers in their political battles among themselves. The Anunnaki used us in the construction of their palaces (we retroproject the religious notion of temple on these now), their cities, their mining and refining complexes and their astronomical installations on all the continents. They expanded from Mesopotamia to Egypt to India to South and Central America and the stamp of their presence can be found in the farthest reaches of the planet.
Around 6000 years ago, they, probably realizing that they were going to phase off the planet, began, gradually, to bring humans to independence. Sumer, a human civilization, amazing in its “sudden”, mature, and highly advanced character was set up under their tutelage in Mesopotamia. Human kings were inaugurated as go-betweens, foremen of the human populations answering to the Anunnaki. A strain of humans, genetically enhanced with more Anunnaki genes, a bloodline of rulers in a tradition of “servants of the people” was initiated (Gardner). These designated humans were taught technology, mathematics, astronomy, advanced crafts and the ways of advanced civilized society (in schools, called now “mystery schools” but there was no mystery about them). Gardner has brought to light the fact that there exists a robust, highly documented, genealogical, genetic history carrying all the way back to the Anunnaki, possessed by the heterodox tradition of Christianity, which is only now coming forward, no longer gun-shy of the Inquisition. This tradition, preserving the bloodline, is the one branded “heretical” and murderously persecuted by the Roman Church. There were no Dark Ages for this tradition, only for those whom the Church wanted to keep in the dark about the real nature of human history and destroy the bloodline, a direct threat to the power of the Bishops.
What evidence supports the Sitchin thesis?
The Astronomical Evidence
“...no concrete problem is going to be solved as long as the experts of astronomy are too supercilious to touch "mythical" ideas -- which are firmly believed to be plain nonsense, of course -- as long as historians of religion swear to it that stars and planets were smuggled into originally "healthy" fertility cults and naive fairy tales only "very late" -- whence these unhealthy subjects should be neglected by principle -- and as long as the philologists imagine that familiarity with grammar replaces that scientific knowledge which they lack, and dislike.”
Giorgio de Santillana, Ph.D.& Hertha von Dechend, Ph.D.Hamlet's Mill
A key underpinning of the Sitchin paradigm is the existence, now or in the past, of the tenth planet in our solar system, the home planet of the Anunnaki with the size, orbit, and characteristics described, as Sitchin has demonstrated, in the Enuma Elish and corroborated by Harrington, former chief of the U.S. Naval Observatory, now deceased.
Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930. Christie, of the U.S. Naval Observatory, discovered Charon, Pluto’s moon, in 1978. The characteristics of Pluto derivable from the nature of Charon demonstrated that there must still be a large planet undiscovered because Pluto could not be the cause of the residuals, the “wobbles” in the orbital paths of Uranus and Neptune clearly identifiable. The IRAS (Infrared Astronomical Satellite), during ’83 -’84, produced observations of a tenth planet so robust that one of the astronomers on the project said that “all that remains is to name it” -- from which point the information has become curiously guarded. In 1992 Harrington and Van Flandern of the Naval Observatory, working with all the information they had at hand, published their findings and opinion that there is, indeed, a tenth planet, even calling it an “intruder” planet. The search was narrowed to the southern skies, below the ecliptic. Harrington invited Sitchin, having read his book and translations of the Enuma Elish, to a meeting at his office and they correlated the current findings with the ancient records.
The recovered Enuma Elish document, a history of the formation of our solar system and more, says that, at the time when Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus and Saturn were in place, there was a Uranus sized planet, called Tiamat, in orbit between Mars and Jupiter. Earth was not in place yet. A large wandering planet, called Nibiru, was captured into the system gravitationally. As it passed by the outer planets it caused the anomalies of their moons, the tilting of Uranus on its side, the dislodging of Pluto from its being a moon of Saturn to its own planetary orbit. Its path bent by the gravitational pull of the large planets, first its satellites collided with the large planet Tiamat and, on a second orbit through, Nibiru collided with Tiamat, driving the larger part of it into what is now Earth’s orbit to recongeal as Earth, dragging its moon with it to become our Moon with all its anomalies. The shattered debris of Tiamat’s smaller part became the asteroid belt, comets, and meteorites. The gouge of our Pacific basin is awesome testimony to the collisional event. Nibiru settled into a 3600 year elliptical retrograde (opposite direction to all the other planets) orbit around our sun, coming in through the asteroid belt region between Mars and Jupiter at perigee and swinging far out past Pluto at apogee. Harrington acknowledged that his information agreed with all these details and the maps they each had drawn of the orbits were almost indistinguishable. The current probable location of Nibiru (Planet X, our tenth) estimated by both was the same.
It is the opinion of this author and others that, in light of the evidence already obtained through the use of the Pioneer 10 and 11 and two Voyager space craft, the Infrared Imaging Satellite (IRAS, ‘83-84) and the clear and unequivocal statements of Harrington when consulting with Sitchin, that the search has already been accomplished, in fact that the planet has already been found.
We need to force the issue of the tenth planet being in our solar system, not just to demonstrate the validity of the new paradigm but for a very practical reason. The ancient records are very clear. The passage of the tenth planet, Nibiru, once every 3600 years, through the inner solar system effects the Earth, sometimes in catastrophic ways. It is very probably the cause of pole shifts, pole reversals, changes in the precessional movement, perhaps even catastrophic bombardment by asteroid size space debris that it may drag along with it. Since it passes through the asteroid belt area between Mars and Jupiter and its orbital path may vary depending on the position of the other planets when it comes though, it may have been responsible for the devastation of Mars. A rigorous, detailed computer modeling of the solar system, including the tenth planet needs to be done urgently for our own planetary safety. Remember that the Vatican maintains an astronomical observatory and Msgr. Balducci may have access to information that prompts him to make the amazing statements he has ---- no doubt as voice of the Vatican.
The Technological Evidence
Ooparts is the term used to describe the purportedly out of place in time artifacts, toys, tools, technical devices, depictions and documents which have come to light through archaeological excavation or discovery. Almost everyone is familiar, through published works or documentaries, with the clay pot batteries still containing the electrodes from the Iraqi desert dated at 2500 B.C., the flyable model airplane from a pyramid tomb, the sophisticated machining of stone requiring the most advanced techniques we know today, the 1000 ton precision cut blocks of stone in a temple foundation that we could not even handle, an ancient relief frieze from an Abydos temple depicting rockets, airplanes and even a helicopter, etc. The most recent and quite amazing oopart is the rediscovery of monoatomic gold by David Hudson (Monoatomics are superconductors at room temperature, have anti-gravitic properties and are only now being investigated by the advanced physics community) Hudson’s discovery, correlated with the bringing to light, by Gardner, of the suppressed discovery of the Anunnaki gold processing plant on Mt. Horeb by Sir Flinders Petrie in 1889 demonstrates that the monoatomics were already known at least 3000 years ago. These ooparts coupled with evidence from many disciplines and the historical records indicate that an advanced civilization existed in those times possessing a high technology and that that civilization was indeed the Anunnaki.
The Documentary Evidence
The recorded historical documentation for the existence and deeds of the Anunnaki has become gradually available to us only since the early 1800’s. The excavation of the ancient sites of Mesopotamia brought to light the amazingly advanced civilization of Sumer and, with it, thousands of clay tablets containing not only mundane records of commerce, marriages, military actions and advanced astronomical calculation systems but of the history of the Anunnaki themselves. It is clear from those records that the Sumerians knew these aliens to be real flesh and blood. The library of the ruler, Ashurbanipal, at Nineveh was discovered to have burnt down and the clay tablets held there were fired, preserving them for our reading. One of the most impressive finds, in very recent time, has been a sealed, nine foot by six foot room in Sippar holding, neatly arranged on shelves, a set of some 400 elaborate clay tablets containing an unbroken record of the history of those ancient times, a sort of time capsule. The evidence is so overwhelming and robust that, if it weren’t for those with power enough to suppress, it would have been accepted and our world view changed a century ago or, perhaps, sooner.
The Genetic Evidence
The recovered records place the location of the Anunnaki laboratory where the first humans were literally produced in east central Africa just above their gold mines. This falls precisely on the map where the mitochondrial DNA “search for Eve” places the first woman Homo Sapiens and in the same period. (The gold mining engineers of Africa have found 100,000-year-old gold mines in that area.) The evidence for, and description of advanced genetic engineering is all there in the ancient documents. Our rapid progress from inception to going to Mars soon, after only 250,000 years, does not correspond to the million year periodicities of slow evolutionary development of other species such as Homo Erectus before us. As so many thinkers have pointed out, we are radically and anomalously different, as discussed in part three.
Scientific Objections to the Thesis
How could the Anunnaki, clearly described as comfortable in earth gravity and atmosphere, very similar to current humans in all ways, have evolved on a planet within our solar system whose orbital apogee takes it into the deep cold of space for much of its orbit?
The ancient records repeatedly describe Nibiru as a “radiant” planet. This may be understood as having a high core temperature. Although controversial, there is also astrophysical opinion that a large body in elongated orbit is constantly tending toward circular orbit and this causes stresses in the body that could generate a good deal of heat. That their planet is gradually cooling, may be indicated by Sitchin’s interpretation of their colonizing Earth (contains most of the gold identifiable in the solar system) for the purpose of obtaining large quantities of gold for molecular seeding of their atmosphere with a reflective gold shielding. Pertinent here is Harrington’s confident statement to Sitchin that it is “a nice, good planet, could be surrounded by gases, probably has an atmosphere and could support life like ours”. The sunlight level there might be quite different than on earth. The Anunnaki were often depicted or sculpted with what seem to be obviously sunglasses.
If, however, the Anunnaki evolved on a radically different planet from earth under quite different conditions to which to adapt, why should they have turned out to be so identical to human species? Sitchin’s answer is based on the collisional event between the intruder planet, Nibiru, and the planet Tiamat, the residual part of which recongealed into the Earth after being driven into current Earth orbit. That the two, or at least one, of the colliding planets was sufficiently developed to have evolved basic organic compounds, perhaps even simple life, the cross-seeding of everything from amino acids to more complicated organic compounds or even primitive organisms, could account for the evolutionary similarity. Although this author finds it a reasonable hypothesis, even trivial, that advanced civilizations would be capable of crossing extremely different genomes, perhaps with even radically different bases, the cross-seeding theory can account for the apparent relative ease with which the Anunnaki impinged their genes on the genes of Homo Erectus. The Anunnaki skill level, 200,000 years ago, is indicated well by the recorded fact that, in early trials, they succeeded in crossing animal genes with Homo Erectus genes, obtained living hybrids but never a satisfactory product which led them to modify Homo Erectus genes with their advanced genes.
If our genome is estimated as 98% to 99% similar to the chimpanzee, how could there be a melding of the Homo Erectus and Anunnaki genomes, or impingement of the advanced code on the lesser advanced one detectable? The author suggests that this is a major question probably answerable only by the geneticists open-minded enough to attack it. The resolution of that question should provide rich additional clues in itself.
Early depiction of the Wheel
This agate cylinder seal is engraved with a scene showing the Persian king standing in a chariot and shooting arrows at lions. The scene is framed by date palms and above the king's head floats a figure in a winged disc, who is usually thought to be the Persian god Ahura-Mazda, but who may represent the spirit of the dead king or divine glory (khvarneh or farr) that was bestowed on the living ruler.
The cuneiform inscription written along one side is in three languages: Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian, and translates 'Darius the great king'. This is presumably Darius I (reigned 521-486 BC) who reorganized the administration of the Persian Empire and was the first Persian king to mint coins. He also introduced cuneiform for recording inscriptions in Old Persian and built a canal linking the Nile with the Red Sea. During Darius' reign, Egypt was part of the Persian Empire with its former capital at Memphis now a seat of Persian administration. This seal is said to have been found in a tomb at Thebes which was the cemetery of Memphis. It is the most famous Persian-period object found in Egypt.
J. Curtis, Ancient Persia (London, The British Museum Press, 2000)
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