The Forbidden Legacy of a Fallen Race

Mesopotamia

By 5500 BC the inhabitants of the Kurdish foothills were beginning to descend in great numbers on to the plains of Mesopotamia. It was around this date that Eridu (the biblical Erech), the Fertile Crescent’s first city, was established with its own temple complex that included an underground ritual pool.

Sometime around 5000 BC saw the arrival on to the northern plains of Mesopotamia of a new culture who are known today as the Ubaid (after Tell al’Ubaid, the mound-site where their presence was first detected during excavations by the eminent Near Eastern archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley in 1922). They brought with them their own unique artistic style and funerary practices, including the habit of placing very strange anthropomorphic figurines in the graves of the dead. The statuettes were either male or female (although predominantly female), with slim, well-proportioned naked bodies, wide shoulders, and strange reptilian heads that scholars generally refer to as ‘lizard-like’ in appearance. They bear long, tapered faces like snouts, with wide, eye-slits - usually elliptical pellets of clay pinched to form what are known as ‘coffee-bean’ eyes - and a thick, dark plume of bitumen on their heads to represent a coil of erect hair (similar coils fashioned in clay appear on some of the heads found at Jarmo). All statuettes display either female pubic hair or male genitalia.

Each Ubaid figurine has it own unique pose. By far the strangest and most compelling shows a naked female holding a baby to her left breast. The infant’s left hand clings on to the breast, and there can be little doubt that it is suckling milk. It is a very touching image, although it bears one chilling feature - the child has long slanted eyes and the head of a reptile. This is highly significant, for it suggests that the baby was seen as having been born with these features. In other words, the ‘lizard-like’ heads of the figurines are not masks, or symbolic animalistic forms, but abstract images of an actual race believed by the Ubaid people to have possessed such reptilian qualities.

In the past these ‘lizard-like’ figurines have been identified by scholars as representations of the Mother Goddess - a totally erroneous assumption since some of them are obviously male - while ancient astronaut theorists such as Erich von Daniken have seen fit to identity them as images of alien entities. In my opinion, both explanations attempt to bracket the clay figurines into popular frameworks that are insufficient to explain their full symbolism. Furthermore, since most of the examples found were retrieved from graves, where they were often the only item of any importance, Sir Leonard Woolley concluded that they represented "chthonic deities" that is, underworld denizens connected in some way with the rites of the dead.

In addition to this realisation, it seems highly unlikely that they represent lizard-faced individuals, since lizards are not known to have had any special place in Near Eastern mythology. Much more likely is that the heads are those of serpents which are known to have been associated with Sumerian underworld deities such as Ningiszida, Lord of the Good Tree.

Since the heads of the Ubaid figurines appear to be styled on the much earlier examples found at Jarmo in the Kurdish mountains, were they highly abstract representations of viper-faced Watchers?

That these figurines were found specifically in grave sites suggests that they were connected with some kind of superstitious practice involving rites of the dead. What were the Ubaid attempting to achieve by placing such strange images alongside their deceased relatives? Were they trying to ensure the safe passage of the soul into the next world, or were they attempting to protect the corpse once the burial had taken place?

In later Babylonian tradition there was a true fear that if the dead were not interred in the correct manner, then their souls would be taken down into the underworld to become blood-sucking Edimmu. Is this what the Ubaid feared - that their departed would be made into vampires if the viper-faced Watchers were not appeased in the current manner? Did this include the burial of figurines bearing abstract features connected with their distorted memory of the fallen race?

The Underworld

Although no trace of any underworld domain can today be found in Mesopotamia, chthonic citadels of extreme antiquity do exist in the Near East. For example, beneath the plains of Cappadocia in eastern Turkey there are no less than 36 underground cities, the most famous being the one at Derinkuyu which is estimated to have housed some 20,000 inhabitants. Those cities explored so far penetrate downwards for anything up to a quarter of a mile. They have streets, complex tunnel systems, living quarters and communal rooms and areas. Each one can be sealed off from the outside world by rolling into place huge circular doors, while on the surface the only visible sign of their presence are upright megalithic stones marking the positions of deep wells that double-up as air shafts to the various levels.

No one knows who built these underworld domains. They are at least 4000 years old, while tentative evidence suggests they were constructed as early as 9000 BC, when the final thrust of the last Ice Age was about to bring arctic-style conditions to the Middle East. At the same time rains of fire spewed out of active volcanoes, and when the Ice Age finally receded floods comparable with the deluge of the Bible wreaked havoc in low-lying areas. Moreover, Persian myth records that the ancestors of the Iranian race had escaped the long winter of snow and ice by building a var, a word denoting an underground city (curiously, the word ark means "city" in the Persian language).

The memory of such subterranean worlds are also likely to have been behind the Judaeo-Christian belief in Gehenna and Hell - the fiery realm into which the fallen angels were cast as a punishment for their interference in the affairs of mankind.

Cappadocia’s Lunar Landscape

In the same general vicinity as the underground cities of Cappadocia is a virtual lunar landscape made up of thousands of enormous rock cones whittled into shape by fierce winds over many thousands of years. Local tradition refers to them as peri bacalari, the fire chimneys of the Peri - beautiful fallen angels born of Iblis, the Arab-Persian form of Satan. These ‘fairy chimneys’, as they are inappropriately referred to in English, are today said to be haunted by the djinn, spectral relatives of the angels who also once lived in heaven before their fall.

Many of these ‘fairy chimneys’ were occupied during early Christian times, while a number of them were actually fashioned into rupestral or troglodyte churches from the sixth century onwards. The oldest contain many fascinating images beyond the accepted iconography of the Early Church. These include recurring geometric designs and, in one case a stylised bird-man, which may well reflect an art-style found in the 8000-year-old vulture shrines at Зatal Hьyьk. The close proximity of both this unique ‘Christian’ art and the site of Зatal Hьyьk to the underground cities cannot be overlooked. Remember too that in the story of Ishtar’s descent into the underworld the goddess encounters beings "like birds covered with feathers", who "from the days of old ruled the earth".

Is it possible that the dwellers of the underground cities were indeed the forerunners of those who built the sub-surface citadel of Зatal Hьyьk? Might they have been connected with the shamanistic Watcher culture of the Kurdish highlands, which lay some distance to the east of Cappadocia?

Children of the Djinn

If so, then where might these strange shamanistic cultures have originated? Did it simply develop in Turkey and Kurdistan shortly after the end of the last Ice Age, or had its original ancestors migrated from some foreign land? The angel-worshipping cults of Kurdistan see themselves only as descendents of the patriarch Noah, the saviour of humanity whose direct family settled in their land. In contrast, the Kurdish Jews preserve a very curious story concerning the origins of their gentile neighbours, whom they refer to as "children of the djinn". They say that long ago King Solomon ordered 500 djinn to find him 500 of the most beautiful virgins in the world. They were not to return until every last one was in their possession. The djinn had set about their immense task, going to Europe to seek out the maidens. Finally, after gathering together the correct number, the djinn were about to return to Jerusalem when they learnt that Solomon had passed away. In a dilemma, the djinn decided what to do. Should they return the girls to their rightful homes in Europe, or should they remain with them? Because the young virgins had "found favor in the eyes of the jinn, the jinn took them unto themselves as their wives. And they begot many beautiful children, and those children bore more children... And that is the way the nation of the Kurds came into being".

In another version of the same story, 100 genies are dispatched by Solomon to search out 100 of the world’s most beautiful maidens for his personal harem. Having achieved this quota, Solomon then dies and the 100 genies decide to settle down with the maidens amid the inaccessible mountains of Kurdistan. The offspring of these marriages result in the foundation of the Kurdish race, "who in their elusiveness resemble their genie forefathers and in their handsomeness their foremothers".

As non-sensical as these legend may seem, they attempt to explain the inexplicable foreign features of certain Kurdish communities and point to their origin in the biblical kingdom of Solomon, in other words modern-day Israel.

Mountain of the Madai

The Mandaeans of Lower Iraq are more specific about the origin of their race. Although their direct ancestors are said to have come from a mythical location known as the Mountain of the Madai in Iranian Kurdistan, before that their most distant ancestors apparently originated in Egypt. Even though this might seem a mere fantasy on the part of the Mandaeans, it is a fact that their language contains various words that are undoubtedly of ancient Egyptian origin. More importantly, they believe that after death the soul flies north (i.e. towards the mountains of Kurdistan) where it enters a mythical domain known as Mataratha, the place of judgement. Here the intelligences of the neter, the watch-houses, can be found. The term neter can be used as a noun in some Near Eastern languages to mean ‘watchers’, the very name of the first angels given in Enochian and Dead Sea literature, while in the ancient Egyptian language this same word is used to define the semi-divine beings who lived in a golden age known as zep tepi, the First Time. Was it possible that the Watchers of Kurdistan were descendents of the neter-gods of Egypt?

The First Farmers

Although the neolithic explosion is known to have begun in the mountains of Kurdistan sometime around 8500 BC, this was not the genesis of early agriculture, animal domestication, precision tool manufacture and structured community lifestyles. There is strong evidence that they were all present at various sites along the Nile in southern Egypt and northern Sudan as early as 12,500 BC. These advanced communities continued to develop at a steady pace until 10,500 BC, when suddenly they ceased farming for no obvious reason. Scholars have put this complete and utter cessation of a sophisticated agricultural-based lifestyle among the Nilotic peoples down to the extremely high Nile floods which occurred during this epoch. Yet in my opinion there was something more behind this extraordinary U-turn on the part of these communities.

It almost seemed as if those who had taught the Nilotic peoples the rudiments of an agricultural lifestyle had suddenly departed the scene, leaving their obedient pupils to return to primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyles more familiar to the age in question. It is therefore interesting to note that after its apparent disappearance from Egypt c.10,500 BC, agriculture does not reappear again until it blossoms in Kurdistan a full 1500 years later. Is it therefore possible that the teachers of the Nilotic communities departed Egypt for Kurdistan sometime between 10,500 and 9000 BC? Who exactly were these hypothetical agronomists and what made them leave the cultivated steppes of palaeolithic Egypt for pastures new? More importantly, were they the ancestors of the Watchers, the human angels of Enochian and Dead Sea tradition?

Redating the Sphinx

Sphinx

Hard evidence now emerging from Egypt strongly suggests that the Great Sphinx of Giza was not carved during Pharaonic times, as has always been believed, but much earlier instead. As has been widely publicised over the past few years, the geological profile of this most ancient of monuments suggests that it was fashioned before the gradual desiccation of the Middle East in the fourth millennium BC. The intense weathering on its body would appear to have been induced, not by sand erosion, but by rain precipitation over the course of many thousands of years. The last time that rain fell in such profusion was during the period known to climatologists as the neolithic sub-pluvial which occurred between 8000 and 5000 BC. This suggests that the Sphinx was carved either during or before this time.

The Sphinx is quite obviously a lion, the head of which was re-carved in Pharaonic times to represent a king wearing the nemes-headdress. Orientated exactly due east, it gazes out towards the point on the horizon where the sun rises each spring and autumn equinox. Its function is like that of a time-marker, a minute hand on a clock, recording the return of the solar orb as it passes through its 365-day cycle. Yet it also possesses a less obvious, though perhaps more important ‘hour’ hand, and this one marks the minuscule shift in the starry canopy as it turns about its 26,000-year cycle of precession. This visual effect is caused by the extremely slow wobble of the earth, which might be compared with the swaying action of a child’s spinning top if revolving at a snail’s pace.

Built in the Age of Leo

In astronomical terms the phenomenon known as precession causes the 12 zodiacal constellations to shift backwards in line with the ecliptic, the sun’s path, in a regular sequence. In simple terms, this means that the stars rising alongside the sun make way for another constellation every 2160 or so years until all 12 signs have completed this astronomical merry-go-around. To ‘read’ precession as a long-term time-cycle the ancients noted which sign rose with the sun on the spring equinox, the zero-point of the yearly calendar in many Middle Eastern cultures. If we look today towards the eastern horizon just before sun-rise on 21 March we will see the stars of Pisces. When Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire in 330 BC, the stars of Aries the ram were seen rising with the equinoctial sun, and when the Pyramids of Giza were built in c.2500 BC, it was the stars of Taurus the bull that rose with the sun on the spring equinox.

If the Great Sphinx was carved as an equinoctial marker at the same time the neighbouring Pyramids were constructed in Pharaonic times, then surely it would make more sense if it was a bull. Making it a lion hints at a connection with the stars of Leo, suggesting that it marked an age when the constellation of Leo rose with the equinoctial sun. The last Age of Leo occurred between 10,970 and 8810 BC, suggesting that the construction date of the Great Sphinx fell somewhere within this time-frame. This is not a new idea by any stretch of the imagination. As far as I am aware, this theory was first put forward by British astro-mythologist Gerald Massey in 1907. In an extraordinary work entitled Ancient Egypt - The Light of the World he boldly concluded that "... we may date the Sphinx as a monument which was reared by these great (Egyptian) builders and thinkers, who lived so largely out of themselves, some thirteen thousand years ago (i.e. in the age of Leo, its astronomical counterpart)."

More recent astro-mythological evidence presented by Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval in their 1996 book Keeper of Genesis, convincingly demonstrates that the Great Sphinx, as well as the ground-plan of the Giza plateau as a whole, must date as early as 10,500 BC, the very time-frame given for the sudden cessation of proto-agriculture along the Nile.

Since we know that the great stone blocks removed from the sunken enclosure around the leonine monument at the time of its construction were used to build the nearby Sphinx and Valley Temples, then these too must date from the same distant epoch of human history. All this indicates the presence in Egypt around 10,500 BC of an advanced culture adept in agronomy, engineering, building technology, as well as astro-mythology and geomythics that included a profound knowledge of the earth’s 26,000-year precessional cycle.

Who were these people? Were these builders of the Great Sphinx really the ancestors of the tall, viper-faced Watchers of Kurdistan? Folklore, legend and the spread of Old World agriculture would appear to support this view. Yet if this was the case, then what happened to make this Egyptian Elder culture want to migrate to the highlands of Kurdistan?

Global Destruction

As has already been adequately demonstrated elsewhere (Hapgood, 1958 & 1970; Hancock, 1995; Flem-Ath, 1995), there is ample evidence that as the last Ice Age came to a close in the eleventh and tenth millennia BC, the world was shaken by a series of severe climatic changes and geological upheavals. Volcanoes erupted, earthquakes shook the ground, floods poured across the landscape and long periods of darkness blotted out the sun. This led to the destruction of countless millions of animals and the outright extinction of dozens of individual species.

Cataclysm legends across the world appear to record these events in colourful and often symbolic detail.

Egypt’s proposed Elder culture would have been right in the thick of this global destruction. Certainly it is known that the climatic changes during this epoch caused wide-spread flooding along the Nile, the reason scholars have suggested for the cessation of its proto-agriculture.

Father of Terrors

It seems likely that these troubled times forced Egypt’s high culture to fragment and disperse, hence the sudden cessation of proto-agriculture among the various Nile communities. This supposition is supported by vivid accounts of fire and flood from Egypt itself. For example, surviving Coptic-Arab texts speak of the land being devastated both by floods and a great fire that came from "the constellation of Leo" - a reference not necessarily to some astronomical boloid coming from this part of the heavens, but to the time-frame in which these events occurred, in other words during the Age of Leo.

More telling is the myth of Sekhmet, the lion-headed deity in the Egyptian pantheon. Because the human race had turned its back on the ways of the sun-god Ra, or Re, whom it saw as "too old", the fierce goddess unleashed an all-consuming fire. Her mass genocide would have resulted in the destruction of humanity had it not been for Ra’s personal intervention. He sent an intoxicating brew to cover the earth. Consuming this mixture made Sekhmet drunk so that she fell asleep.

Assuming that Sekhmet’s fierce fire was in some way representative of an all encompassing conflagration that devastated Egypt, then might the intoxicating brew that covered the earth be a memory of a subsequent flood that also overwhelmed the land? If so, then was Sekhmet herself simply an allegorical allusion to the Age of Leo? The indications are that the lion of Leo came to symbolise the age of chaos and destruction that surrounded the end of the Ice Age, perhaps the reason why the Arabs referred to the Great Sphinx as the "Father of Terrors".

In the story of Sekhmet the survivors of the human race attempt to escape the goddess’ devastating fire either by climbing a mountain or by hiding in ‘holes’ like ‘snakes’ or ‘worms’. Similar means of protection against the cataclysms that raged during the Age of Leo are found in mythologies around the globe, while the presence of such stories in Egyptian legend point towards the break-up of the Elder culture and its subsequent re-establishment in other regions. Might this have included Cappadocia, where underground cities would appear to have been built as early as 9000 BC, and the mountains of Kurdistan, where the Watchers may well have catalysed the beginning of the Neolithic revolution as early as 8500 BC?

The date for this apparent diaspora of the Elder culture towards the end of the last Ice Age can actually be pinned down with some degree of accuracy. For instance, a ninth-century Coptic-Arab text known as Abou Hormeis records that the astronomer-priests of Egypt, having realised the imminent destruction of their race, conceded that: "The deluge was to take place when the heart of the Lion entered into the first minute of the head of Cancer." The ‘heart of the lion’ was the name given in classical times to the star Regulus, Leo’s ‘royal star’, which lies exactly on the ecliptic, the sun’s perceived daily course across the sky. Since the constellation of Cancer follows Leo only in the precessional cycle (Leo follows Cancer in the yearly cycle), then this appears to confirm that this legend preserved, not just the memory of probable historical events, but also the approximate date in which they occurred.

At my request, electronics engineer Rodney Hale punched the astronomical information contained in the Abou Hormeis account into a computer using a Skyglobe 3.5 programme. He ascertained that the last time Leo’s ‘royal star’ would have risen and been visible on the eastern horizon just prior to the equinoctial sunrise, was around 9220 BC. When the star Regulus, the ‘heart of the lion’, no longer rose with the sun on the spring, or vernal, equinox, this would have been seen by the astronomer-priests of Egypt as a signal that the Age of Leo had come to an end, and the age of Cancer was either about to commence, or that it had already entered its ‘first minute’ of arc across the sky. This information therefore suggested that it was at this point that the Elder culture had departed Egypt in anticipation of a major deluge that was about to over-run their land.

Kosmokrator

If we now turn to Iranian tradition we find that various Zoroastrian texts, including the Bundahishn, speak of world history beginning 9000 years before the traditionally accepted date for the coming of its great prophet, Zoroaster, in 588 BC. This gives a date of 9588 BC. It was at this time, so one text states, that the faith’s dualistic deities, Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu, were born from "the fire of the air" and "the water of the earth" - cryptic references once again to fire and flood during the age of Leo.

The twin deities vie for superiority over heaven and earth, a battle that is only settled when Zoroaster is said to have vanquished the daeva-worshipping Magi priesthoods during his own life-time. Ever since this time the ‘Good Spirit’, Ahura Mazda, has ruled supreme.

Did all this imply that the ancestors of the Iranian god-kings had first inhabited their mythical homeland, known as the Airyana Vaejah, the Iranian Expanse, around 9585 BC? Give or take a few centuries, this date was remarkably close to the timeframe in which the Egyptian Elder culture would appear to have broken up. Since the Airyana Vaejah is equated with the Kurdish highlands, might this tradition also record the arrival in the region of those Elders who went on to establish the proposed Watcher culture?

According to Iranian mythology, the dualistic forces of Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu were born to a supreme being known as Zurvan, who symbolised ‘infinite time’. In the Roman cult of the god Mithras, which developed from primary Iranian sources, the concept of ‘infinite time’ was symbolised by a lion-headed deity. Statues depicting this leonine figure show the twelve signs of the zodiac on its chest and a snake curling up over the top of its mane. Although the deity is not identified by name (although it is occasionally linked with Aeon, a gnostic god of time), scholars of Mithraism describe it as a kosmokrator, the controlling intelligence behind the phenomenon of precession.

To find a lion-headed kosmokrator that originated in a tradition that saw world history as having begun in 9588 BC, during the Age of Leo, was impossible to ignore. Could it be possible that although knowledge of the precessional cycle was understood by the Elder culture of Egypt, later cultures who inherited this tradition failed to comprehend its mechanics. So instead of Leo making way for the age of Cancer, and then Gemini, and then Taurus, the symbol of the lion became the one and only kosmokrator, or guardian of infinite time, in much the same way that the Great Sphinx became a precessional time-marker on the plateau at Giza.

Tragedy of the Fall

Egypt’s Elder culture never made it into the pages of history. The memory of their apparent descendents, the Watchers of Kurdistan, is but a hollow victory on their part. Being remembered as beautiful angels who fell from grace, or as immortal gods and goddesses, or as lustful demons who corrupted the minds of mankind, hardly befits their incredible achievements in astronomy, agriculture, geomythics, building technology and structured society. It was almost certainly the descendents of the Egyptian Elder culture who paved the way for the growth of civilisation in the Old World.

Yet these individuals did much more than this, for they would also appear to have left the world an important legacy. It can be traced in the astro-mythology and geomythics of the Giza plateau as well as in the universal myths and legends concerning global cataclysms and precessional data. It transcends all language barriers and can be ‘read’ by all. It is a simple message repeated again and again, like a recurring SOS Mayday signal, and it suggests that what befell their race could one day happen again. For whatever reason, we as a race could sink into oblivion without trace and be wiped clean from the pages of history, unless, that is, we wake up from this collective amnesia we seem to have been experiencing for the past eleven thousand years and realise that we were never the first.

Free thinkers, mystics and maverick scholars have been telling us that civilisation is much older than science would like us to believe for the past hundred years or more. Often their books repeat almost exactly the same evidence time after time. The Pyramids, Tiahuanaco, the Maya, Piri Reis, Hapgood, Plato and the Baghdad battery are just some of the buzz-words repeated again and again. Yet no one other than believers has ever taken these matters seriously.

With the re-dating of the Great Sphinx in particular, there is now too much evidence to deny that at the end of the last Ice Age a high culture existed in this world. Where these people came from is completely unknown. Some might suggest Atlantis, others will say they came from the skies, but to be honest we simply do not know. What is far more important is that we take each step at a time, and stick to hard facts, in the hope that this time the whole world will share in these greatest revelations of our time.

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Selected Booklist

Bauval, Robert, and Graham Hancock, Keeper of Genesis, Wm Heinemann, London, 1996

Boyce, Mary, A History of Zoroastrianism, 1975, 3 vols., E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1989

Charles, R.H., The Book of Enoch or 1 Enoch, Oxford Univ Press, 1912

Eisenman, R., and M. Wise, The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered, Element, Shaftesbury, Dorset, 1992

Flem-Ath, Rand and Rose, When the Sky Fell - In Search of Atlantis, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1995

Fix, William R., Pyramid Odyssey, Jonathan-James Books, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 1978

Hancock, Graham, Fingerprints of the Gods - A Quest for the Beginning and the End, Wm Heinemann: London, 1995

Hapgood, Professor Charles, The Path of the Pole, Chilton, New York, 1970

Hapgood, Professor Charles, Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, 1966, Tumstone Books, 1979

Izady, Mehrdad R., The Kurds - A Concise Handhook, Crane Russak, London, 1992

Massey, Gerald, Ancient Egypt - The Light of the World, 2 vols., T. Fisher & Unwin, London, 1907

Milik, J.T., The Book of Enoch - Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4, OUP, 1976

Morfill, W.R., edit and intro R. Charles, The Book of the Secrets of Enoch, Oxford Univ Press, 1896

Ulansey, David, The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries - Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World, OUP, 1989.

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