Atlantis and the Ten Plagues of Egypt: The Secret History Hidden in the Valley of the Kings (4 page)

CHAPTER TWO

Prelude to Heresy

When Tomb 55 was so mysteriously sealed sometime in the late fourteenth century
BC
, the Egyptian kingdom had already been in existence for almost 2,000 years. The great pyramids of Giza had been standing silently for over a millennium, but there was still another thirteen centuries before Egypt's last pharaoh, Ptolemy XV, the son of Cleopatra, was murdered on the orders of Caesar Augustus and Egypt became the personal estate of the Roman Emperors. Ancient Egypt was by far the longest-lived civilization the world has known; yet for nearly all its three-thousand-year history, its religious beliefs remained fundamentally unchanged. The one occasion the nation did experience a religious revolution, however, just so happens to have occurred during the lifetime of Tutankhamun and Smenkhkare. Before we can ascertain if there is any correlation between this and the enigma of Tomb 55, we must first appreciate the extraordinary nature of Egyptian culture.

During the European Renaissance, when interest in the ancient world was rekindled, Egypt's wondrous ruins refused to surrender their secrets. Unlike the language of the Greeks and Romans, ancient Egyptian had not been a living language since Egypt came under the sway of the Arab world in the second half of the first millennium
AD
and Arabic became the national tongue. The land of the Nile was filled with the imposing monuments of a once-mighty people: temples, pyramids, tombs and palaces, covered with tantalizing inscriptions that no one could understand.

Egyptian writing, in the form of simple pictograms, first appeared around 3000
BC
and was soon developed into a system of decorative hieroglyphics, used to inscribe monuments, together with hieratic script, a simplification of hieroglyphics used for speed of writing on papyrus. For years the translation of these exotic symbols defied all attempts, and it was not until the end of the eighteenth century that it was at last made possible by the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. This slab of black basalt, found near the town of Rosetta at the mouth of the Nile in 1799, bore a lengthy inscription dating from 197
BC
. As the stone carried the same text in Egyptian hieroglyphics and in a known language, Greek, it enabled the French scholar Jean François Champollion to work towards a complete decipherment of hieroglyphics by 1822.

Even though the myriad inscriptions that still survived could now be read, it soon became clear that day-to-day records of ancient Egyptian life were few and far between. Only from 332
BC
, when Alexander the Great annexed the country and made it a satellite nation of the Greeks, is there a clearly documented history of ancient Egypt. The Greeks brought a new concept to the culture, recording contemporary events for historical posterity; something which the Egyptians themselves appeared to have considered pointless. Egyptian writings had almost exclusively concentrated on commercial, commemorative or religious matters. Even those historical events which the translation of hieroglyphics did reveal were found difficult to date or to fit into a chronological framework.

Ultimately, five inscribed monuments were discovered to
reveal the names and order of succession of many of Egypt's pharaohs. The Palermo Stone, a black diorite slab dating from around 2470
BC
, recorded a series of early kings; a Royal List from the temple of Karnak included the names of those who preceded Tuthmosis III around 1500
BC
; and a Royal List from the city of Abydos, made by Seti I around 1290
BC
, named the seventy-six kings who proceeded him, as did two duplicates made by his son Ramesses II. Unfortunately, as an historical chronology these lists are almost useless on their own, as they fail to provide the length of each reign. Luckily, however, one ancient text still survives which does: a list of some 300 kings written in hieratic script on a long sheet of papyrus dating from around 1200
BC
. Now in the Turin Museum, the so-called Royal Canon not only gives the order of succession, but also provides the exact period of each reign, right down to the months and days. The problem, however, was that at the time it was rediscovered there was no way to determine how the list related to the modern calendar. Which year did it start and which year did it end? Consequently, the dating of Egyptian history proved a nightmare, with scholars disagreeing with one another sometimes by centuries. Historians needed points of reference: other datable events with which to link the pharaohs' reigns. It was no use looking to ancient Egypt's contemporary neighbours. Until the time of the Greeks their historical records were little better. It fell to astronomy eventually to resolve the matter. Some of the pharaohs' reigns could be precisely dated due to ancient astronomical observations and a lucky mistake in the Egyptian calendar.

The ancient Egyptians knew that the year consisted of 365 days, but they made no adjustment for the additional quarter day, as we do now by adding a day every fourth year. Civic activities, administrative meetings, tax collections, censuses and
so forth were arranged according to a 365-day calendar, but religious activities were tied to celestial events, such as the midsummer sunrise, or the spring equinox, that occur at the same time each 365-and-a-quarter-day solar year. Accordingly, the Egyptian civil and solar calendars gradually moved out of synchronization by a day every four years until, after 730 years, midsummer's day fell in the middle of winter. Because they had no idea that the year was determined by the length of time it took the earth to orbit the sun, this discrepancy perplexed the ancient Egyptians, who every few centuries would find the seasons apparently reversed. On one papyrus dating from the thirteenth century
BC
, a mystified scribe records: 'Winter has come in summer, the months are reversed, the hours in confusion.' It would take a further 730 years for the solar calendar to catch up with the civil calendar, so only every 1,460 years would the two calendars properly align.

As the brightest star in the sky, Sirius was considered to be of great magical importance, and each year on the day of its heliacal rising – its annual reappearance in early July – an important religious festival took place. Accordingly, when this festival coincided with the first day of the civil calendar, every 1460 years, it was considered a particularly special time: the beginning of a new eon called the Sothic Cycle (after Sothis, the ancient name for Sirius). Such an occasion is known to have been celebrated by the Roman occupiers of Egypt in the second century
AD
. A coin was issued to commemorate the event during the reign of the emperor Antoninus Pius in
AD
139. As this only occurred every 1,460 years, by counting backwards we can work out that the same thing had also happened in 1321
BC
and 2781
BC
.

Against these important dates, specific years in the reigns of kings from the Royal Canon of Turin could be determined. One
of the kings included III the list was Senusret III, and a contemporary inscription records that in the seventh year of his reign the heliacal rising of Sirius occurred on the 226th day of the civil calendar. As it took four years for the calendars to move out of alignment by one day, then for the calendars to be out of alignment by 226 days meant that 904 years (226 X 4) must have transpired since the beginning of the last Sothic Cycle in 2781
BC
. Accordingly, the seventh year of Senusret III's reign must have been in 1877
BC
. Another such sighting is recorded in the ninth year of the reign of the pharaoh Amonhotep I. It happened on the 309th day of the civil calendar, meaning that 1,236 years had transpired since the beginning of the Sothic Cycle in 2781
BC
, making the ninth year of Amonhtep's reign 1545
BC
. With these and other such recorded sightings it was possible to date the reigns of a number of kings recorded in the Royal Canon. As this list gave both the successive order of the kings, together the length of their reigns, by counting backwards and forwards from the known dates, it was possible to work out when each king's reign began and ended. For example, if the seventh year of Senusret III's reign was 1877
BC
, his reign must have begun in 1884
BC
; the recorded nineteen-year reign of his predecessor, Senusret II, must therefore have begun in 1903
BC
; the recorded thirty-four-year reign of this king's predecessor, Amenemhet III, must have begun in 1937
BC
, and so on.

There was a problem with this procedure: as it took four years for the calendars to move apart by a day, the heliacal rising of Sirius would occur on the same day for four consecutive years. Consequently, unless a specific hour was recorded from which to calculate on which of these four years the sighting was made, any date determined from this point of reference could be out by four years. However, this was a minor difficulty compared to problems arising from the Royal Canon itself, in
that it was badly damaged, leaving many gaps in the chronology. Even the surviving sections were questioned. Could a list of kings prepared around 1200
BC
really be an accurate record of events occurring over a period spanning some two thousand years into the past? Although the eventual scientific dating of archaeological discoveries tended to tally with the dates derived from the Royal Canon, these techniques, such as radiocarbon dating, allowed for a considerable margin of error. From a combination of all these procedures, however, a rough chronological framework of Egyptian history has now emerged. All the same, academic arguments continue. Even recognized authorities can disagree with each other by thirty years or so concerning events in later Egyptian history, and sometimes by as much as a century regarding earlier times.

The only actual history of ancient Egypt to be written in pre-Roman times was compiled by King Ptolemy I's chief adviser, a priest named Manetho, when the Greeks annexed the country in the late fourth century
BC
. Although, among other things, it provides the names of kings who reigned after the period covered by the Royal Canon of Turin, much of the detail of Manetho's work has been lost. Only selected extracts now survive in the work of later writers, such as the Jewish historian Josephus, who quoted widely from it in the in the late first century
AD
. From these selected extracts, however, we can gather that the ancient Egyptians divided their history into separate epochs, each beginning once a new royal family, or dynasty, attained the throne. Most modern historians, wishing to avoid being drawn into arguments over specific dates, utilize these historical divisions and refer to events having occurred during a particular dynasty, of which there appear to have been thirty-one before the Greek annexation of 332
BC
. With each dynasty being referred to in numerical order, events are ascribed
to the First Dynasty, the Second Dynasty, the Third Dynasty, and so on. Today historians further group these dynasties into seven separate periods, each being an era with specific historical characteristics:

With a comprehensive list of Egyptian pharaohs, a knowledge of their place in the sequence of events, and an approximate chronology of their reigns, scholars were able to piece together the archaeological and textual evidence and reconstruct the long-lost history of ancient Egypt.

Egypt was a land of stark natural contrasts, the so-called Black Land, a rich, narrow agricultural strip running along the Nile, and the aptly named Red Land, the inhospitable desert to either side. Originally, there was also a political division; an imaginary line drawn roughly through what is now Cairo divided the country into two separate kingdoms: Lower Egypt, around the Nile Delta to the north, and Upper Egypt which stretched to the south as far as modern Aswan. (The Lower and Upper refer to the course of the Nile.) The oldest surviving
historical record from Egypt dates from around 3100
BC
. Known as the Narmer Palette, it is an inscribed piece of dark green slate showing a victorious king in two separate scenes. Identified as King Narmer, he is shown in one scene wearing the crown of Upper Egypt (known as the White Crown), and in another wearing the crown of Lower Egypt (known as the Red Crown). It is now believed that the palette commemorated the unification of the two kingdoms and the birth of the Egyptian nation. It fell to Narmer's successor, Hor-Aha (a name meaning 'Fighting Hawk') to establish the First Dynasty and found the capital city of Memphis, just south of the Delta apex. It was not until around 2686
BC
, however, that Egyptian civilization really came of age with the beginning of the Old Kingdom. During the four dynasties which it comprised, the power of Egypt expanded considerably, due to the increasing centralization of government and the creation of an efficient system of administration.