[MUSIC PLAYING]
Why were the ancients so
interested in the motion
of the stars?
Why was cosmology
sacred to the ancients?
Pondering the history
of Ancient Egypt,
we typically think of the
mysteries of the pyramids
and the grandeur of the temples.
But where did it all start?
Do we know how long
ago the ancients
began tracking the stars?
Could there be lost worlds
buried beneath the sands?
[MUSIC PLAYING]
>>Cosmology is the study of
the universe in its totality.
We think of
cosmology as science,
whereas the Egyptians
considered it sacred.
>>There's one thing we know
about the ancient Egypt
for certainty, is that they
observed the star Sirius.
We are sure when they
speak of that star.
>>Everything that comes
out of the ancient world
has to have a spiritual
and metaphysical base.
>>The ancients-- and
the ancient Egyptians,
in particular, but probably
ancient civilizations,
more generally-- saw
themselves-- humanity, us-- as
tied in with the
bigger environment,
the cosmos, the bigger picture.
>>They built monuments
in alignment.
But what for?
And do their belief systems
have validity today?
>>If we want to decode
Egyptian symbolism,
we should look for clues
in the ancient language
that Hakim learned as
a child from his elders
living along the Band of Peace.
Looking at the many images
left by the Egyptians,
we have assumed that they
were obsessed with death.
Turning to the
ancient Suf language,
however, we learn
that they didn't even
have a word for death.
They called it "westing."
>>We have no word the death in
our culture-- no word "death."
And to express this
operation of death,
we say "westing"--
going towards west,
like the Sun rise from
the east, and westing.
So there is no
word "death" here.
Well, they believe
in resurrection.
If the Sun sets in the
west, the resurrection
happen the next day, when
the Sun rise in the next day.
So the deceased believe
that it's just like the Sun.
>>The Egyptians obviously had
a very different world view
from ours today.
They believed in the afterlife
and the soul's immortality.
>>Was it possible
at all that they
had found some sort of science
of immortality, for example,
we call it.
As crazy as it may
seem, they seem
to be very, very
convinced that they
knew how to send the
king to his cosmic world.
Those stellar gods-- of
whom the king believed
that he, himself, would
become one stellar god
after his death-- constructed
monuments and performed rituals
that mimicked the events
that they saw in the sky.
It sounds against all the tenets
of our scientific beliefs.
But we have to see why
they were so convinced.
The ancient Egyptians
perceived the land
as a cosmic environment,
that it followed
the activities of the sky.
Because they believed them
to be running in parallel.
And they had reasons
to believe that.
One of the main reasons
was the cycles of the Nile.
The Nile was the
lifeblood of Egypt,
and it performed a
cycle, which followed
the cycle of the
Sun and the stars.
It's not surprising at
all that they associated
the reappearance of the stars
with the rebirth of the Nile.
Essentially, this star
religion, if you like,
boiled down to one
important aspect--
that it somehow could help the
king become a spiritual being
and return to the cosmic
world in a specific place
with Orion, and so forth.
How they thought
they were going to do
it is by looking very,
very carefully at what
happened to the stars.
The stars perform a
annual cycle that those
who've seen this
in Orion give us
a curious cycle in
that they disappear.
Or they appear to disappear.
But if you watch a star
over the course of the year,
you'll find that there
comes a time when
it is very low in the
west at time of sunset.
So the Sun sets.
And as it gets dark,
the star appears just
for a few seconds over the west.
If you come the next day,
you would not see that star.
And for 70 days or
so, the star has gone.
It seems to have
gone under the Earth.
But after those 70 days, it
appears by this time at dawn,
rising just before the Sun,
which we call the heliacal
rising, whereas
the Egyptian called
it the rebirth of the star.
So in their mind,
something happened.
In their mind, the star went
in the underworld, stayed
in the underworld for 70 days,
and then, by magic, popped
up again-- was reborn
again in the east.
That's the Pyramid Texts.
The Pyramid Texts
mimic this cycle.
>>At the ancient
site of Saqqara,
we find the Pyramid Texts, the
oldest known religious texts
in the world.
Covering the inner walls
of these small pyramids
are thousands of hieroglyphs
showing knowledge
of celestial mechanics
and cycles of time.
Although we've come a long
way in our understanding
of hieroglyphs, it is
possible that many layers
of meaning in the symbols
remain hidden-- until now.
When we approach
hieroglyphics, we
do so from our
own point of view.
And we assume that the
letters of our alphabet
correspond with
certain hieroglyphs.
There are 4,000 Egyptian
hieroglyphs, but only
26 letters.
In order to crack
the code, we need
to open our minds to
different levels of meaning.
>>I think it's just a
familiarity with the way
modern languages work.
No one expects that a word
would work differently.
Our mindset is that a letter is
the carrier of a kinetic value,
and that a word is a
carrier of a concept.
To understand the
Egyptian words,
you have to start
from the approach
that the letter is the
carrier of the concept.
And the word is an
extended sentence.
There are nuances of
meanings to the words
that you don't get if
you don't understand
what the individual glyphs mean.
For instance, there's
an Egyptian word
that is translated
as "diving duck."
But when you read
the glyphs, it really
reads, "pool of water,
place of diving duck."
>>In 1822, French scholar
Jean-Francois Champollion
and British scientist
Thomas Young
deciphered the hieroglyphics
from the Rosetta Stone.
The stone was created in 196 BC.
It showed the same text
in hieroglyphic, Greek,
and demotic Egyptian
on the one tablet.
Scholars have used
Champollion's translations
as the basis for
deciphering hieroglyphs.
Could Champollion have missed
subtleties or even withheld
some information?
>>One biographical
study of Champollion
said that he delayed for
a very long period of time
before producing his
translation because
in the words of the study, he
clung stubbornly to the idea
that an Egyptian glyph
might mean something more
than just a phonetic value.
>>Laird Scranton is a
computer software engineer
who has interpreted a new
aspect of hieroglyphics.
His research is revolutionizing
the way hieroglyphic
is understood.
>>Basically, Egyptian
hieroglyphic words
work more like an acronym in
English-- like the phrase FYI
or an acronym such
as CIA or CBS--
where anyone who reads
English understands
that you don't try to
pronounce this word.
This is not a word that you're
going to read for its meaning,
in terms of the letters
all put together.
It's one letter at a time
stands for one word at a time.
And you put the words
together to get the meaning.
>>If we think of each
hieroglyphic word
as an acronym, rather than
having a phonetic value,
a new layer of
interpretation appears.
Hieroglyphs reveal in
symbolic terms the way
the ancient Egyptians
thought the universe works.
>>I can show that certain
key glyph shapes came out
of cosmology, which describes
how the universe was created.
And because the shapes
came out of cosmology,
it makes sense that the meanings
that attach to the shape
are associated with
cosmology, also.
They would have meanings
related to the creation
of the universe.
Once you agree that the Sun
glyph means what it means--
and that's all traditional
meanings-- it's
hard to argue that the
word "month" doesn't say,
the moon makes an orbit.
Or it's hard to argue that the
word "year" doesn't say, time
of the Earth's orbit
around the Sun.
>>The ancient Egyptians were
almost obsessive keepers
of records.
And one thing that they observed
most was the celestial objects.
But we'd expect them to
pay attention and record.
Now how far back--
that's a big question.
Well, we now have some
sites that go at least 6,000
or 7,000 years before.
There's a megalithic
site that has
been found in the
early '70s, but not
understood until lately, that
has astronomical language.
And strangely, the astronomical
language that it has
are precisely the ones you
find in the Pyramid Age.
So Orion, Sirius, the summer
solstice-- they're all there.
It's no more theory.
We have evidence
that they did it.
>>For decades,
author Robert Bauval
has been studying the
alignment of Egyptian monuments
to key stars.
>>Muhammad's out guide.
We've come here.
And what we're trying to do
is get to the Nabta Playa.
The most important
thing is we get there.
>>Yeah.
>>He is now planning an
expedition across the desert
to a site called Nabta Playa,
100 kilometers west of the Nile
and 30 kilometers north
of the Sudanese border.
It is the location of Egypt's
oldest astronomical measuring
device.
>>And when we're there, how
do you know we're there?
It's all desert.
>>Yes, it's desert.
Every place here in
Western Desert, I know it.
>>If you can, we're
going to need a GPS.
>>Yeah.
>>If you can get one.
>>Yes, I have one.
>>That makes me
feel a lot happier.
>>The team finds out
that permits from Cairo
have been delayed.
>>Now we wait.
You tell us we wait for
the answer from Cairo.
So in the meanwhile, let's
go and see the sights.
Let's go and see some
of the temples here.
>>OK.
>>Let's do it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
>>The key to decoding
Egypt is in the alignments
of the temples, which
changed in different epochs
to match the majestic drift of
the procession of the stars.
>>We're now here at the
Karnak Temple in Luxor.
On this wall, we
can see the ritual
of the stretching of the cord.
On the right-hand side
is the goddess, Seshat.
She's represented by a priestess
holding a rope and a mallet.
On the other side
is the pharaoh.
There's the cord
looking between them.
And what they're
doing is that they're
aligning the monuments
to the stars.
>>We know from inscriptions
at the Temple of Karnak
that they aligned monuments
with the circumpolar stars,
principally, the Big Dipper.
>>They also aligned to the
stars of Orion, very similarly
to what we also have at Nabta.
The Karnak Temple,
the very center
of Egyptian religious
activity, is
aligned to the sunrise
at the winter solstice.
So as we look down the axis this
way, on the winter solstice,
the Sun will rise
along the axis.
And in the summer
solstice, it will
be aligned with the
sunset of the summer.
So as we have at
the Nabta Playa,
and the circle of the
calendrical circle, where there
is the summer
solstice alignment,
here we have another example
of the similar alignment
3,000 years later.
>>On the expedition
into the open desert,
Robert Bauval hopes
to see for himself
that these alignments exist
in the remote region of Nabta
Playa.
The team prepares by mapping a
route they will access via GPS.
Jeeps are equipped with supplies
for the dangerous journey.
The team arrives at the
first stop on their journey
through history.
In the heart of
the El Kharga Oasis
lies a Christian
settlement dating back
to the third century AD.
Original paint graces the
ceiling of the chapel,
telling the stories
of Adam and Eve.
>>What is important here
is that at Nabta, we
have a settlement that
is 6,000 BC, at least.
And here, we have
a Roman settlement,
which is of the
first-- second century.
Surely, the people here
were aware of some sort
of origins in the desert.
They must've moved around here.
And this is a big world
that anthropologists
have to get into-- cultural
anthropologists-- people who
understand how to look for
clues within a lost culture.
We're looking for
a lost culture.
And it could be the origins
of our civilization.
That's what we're
talking about here.
>>Off in the distance,
the Christian settlement
can be seen.
In the valley below, we
can see the old riverbed
of the Nile, which has migrated
over 60 kilometers to the east.
How many thousands
of years would it
take to wind back
the geological time
clock to when the
Nile flowed here?
>>The Nile we know
there was here.
>>Yeah.
>>Before, we didn't know.
Realize what this is.
Almost surely, the
ideas of these people--
their beliefs, the way they
look at the stars, the way
they look at the Sun, the
way they buried people--
comes from here through.
Influenced the
following civilization.
Imagine 2,000 years ago.
It was a Roman garrison, with
Centurians walking about,
and priests, and Roman
ladies in carriages.
And it's amazing to think
that this was like this.
People have been here
for thousands of years.
We know that.
But now you have
to show us caves.
You're going to show us
prehistoric caves, where there
are drawings that tell
us that people were here
even longer than we thought--
maybe 10,000, maybe 15,000
years ago.
And that's incredible.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
>>Now we're on a
30-40-meter-high dune,
right in the middle of
the path of the road.
The old road, as you can
see-- it's quite amazing.
The old road actually
strikes a dune.
This is a new dune.
It's been formed, what, in
the last 30 years or so.
It shows you how
the sand moves fast.
>>The team test the
Jeeps in the open desert
by heading off to an
ancient desert monastery.
Along the way, the team stumbles
across a large outcropping
of stone with obviously
layers of stratification.
The guide tells the team that
the area is an ancient ocean
bed.
There is water-like ripples,
and seashells are still
embedded in the hard
rock, indicating
a vast change in
geology and climate
over the past several
thousand years.
>>That is very
petrified timber that's
from a much later period.
But you can see the shells here.
The shell is encrusted.
They're millions of years old.
We're walking on terrain that
is millions of years old.
>>The Western Desert
today is rainless.
But in the past, it received
as much as 500 millimeters
of precipitation per year.
There were permanent
lakes, large springs,
and seasonal streams.
The most recent wet period
was between 130,000 and 70,000
years ago.
Then, it was thorn
brush savanna.
At that time, the area
supported many large animals:
gazelles, giraffes, buffalo,
camels, and antelopes.
After that period, it was hyper
arid until 12,000 or 13,000 BC.
Before 12,000 years ago,
the summer tropical monsoons
reached southern Egypt.
Precipitation was
limited and fell mostly
during the summer months.
It was sufficient to support
small animals and cattle.
The small animals
could live off the dew.
The climate resulted in highly
mobile human populations.
There are ancient cave paintings
in a remote location that
may provide clues
to human settlements
from the distant past.
Is this crucial
evidence being protected
by Egyptian authorities?
>>It's terrible.
It's priceless
prehistoric evidence.
Look here.
What's this?
A dog or a gazelle.
A man-- do you see the man here?
He's wearing pharaonic clothes.
It's terrible what
scribbles are over.
The evidence that
we're looking for
is being destroyed by
irresponsible people coming
here.
The site is unprotected.
And the irony is that
people who are responsible
are prevented from coming
here and driven crazy
with licenses, and
papers, and-- look here.
Oh, there's a beautiful
Hathorian cow.
Look at this.
This is an artist.
This is not a primitive carver.
>>Predynastic Egyptian
belief systems
originated with cattle
cults linked to the Nile.
A cow was seen as the
mother of the the Sun.
Cattle were deified
and were considered
earthly representatives
of the gods, an enduring
ideology with Hathor
as the center figure.
Images of bulls were shown
with depictions of stars.
And this dates to before
predynastic Egypt.
Cattle pasturalists
were in the Sahara
several thousand years
before predynastic Egypt.
Gilf Kebir, which
means "large plateau,"
is another large ceremonial
center a further 600 kilometers
west, near the borders of
Libya, the Sudan, and Egypt.
The cave of the swimmers--
made famous by the movie,
"The English Patient,"
is located here.
Prehistoric rock art shows
people and their cattle.
Since Gilf Kebir is
600 kilometers away,
it seems as though
cattle cults were
prevalent throughout North
Africa in ancient times.
Could this be another clue
that the nomadic tribes
were connected?
Could they have influence
the ancient Egyptians?
Arriving at the
monastery, we can
see it has never been
accessible by road.
Once occupied by Christians,
it lies upon an ancient camel
trail, 40 days from its
closest neighboring site.
It still shows evidence
of having been an oasis,
with a huge acacia tree that
is more than 800 years old.
The team has a picnic on
a carpet of yellow acacia
flowers.
>>This is a wonderful oasis.
I'm very pleased.
We tested the cars.
Everything's working fine.
The drivers are fine.
And it was a good idea
to come and rest here.
I needed the rest.
Because after all this tense
of waiting for the permits,
everything is ready.
The permits are ready?
>>Yeah, but you must
be to leaving now,
this place, to go to the
hotel, and stay overnight.
And then we start tomorrow
up early at 3 AM morning.
>>I'm ready.
>>Yes, I know you're ready.
But you don't know it's a
hard way, hard, hard way
to arrive to Abu Simbel.
>>Let's do it.
We wait a long time.
Let's do it.
Let's have a good night's sleep.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
>>The team gets an early start,
armed with long-awaited permits
granted by the Supreme
Council of Antiquities
and the Egyptian Army.
They will enter the dangerous
region of the Western Desert,
to the south of El Kharga Oasis.
>>Well, after days of
waiting and of uncertainty,
we're finally on the road.
We've got the permits.
And we're ready to go out
in the desert to Nabta.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
>>[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
>>[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
>>After driving south for
hours along an old road covered
by occasional sand dunes, there
is nervousness in the air.
The team will be traveling
blind in the open desert
for the last part of the
journey, relying solely on GPS
equipment to locate the
ancient site of Nabta Playa.
>>Yeah, I would--
>>No, this is very good.
This is going to tell us.
>>See, we can do this.
>>No.
>>I'm sure.
>>That's good.
>>What clues will be
uncovered at Nabta Playa?
How have these
influences drifted
across the African continent?
More than 3,000 kilometers
further west in Mali,
there is a living culture with
a surprisingly similar world
view to that of the
ancient Egyptians.
The Dogon live in Mali,
largely in isolation.
Studies of the Dogon
culture mirror the ideology
of the ancient Egyptians
with uncanny precision.
>>I realized through
my Dogon studies
that there were relationships
between Dogon words
and Egyptian words.
And I noticed that
Dogon drawings turned up
as glyphs in those
Egyptian words.
>>Laird Scranton's
radical reinterpretation
of Egyptian hieroglyphs
came directly
from his studies of Dogon
cosmological symbols.
Their priests use cosmological
drawings-- symbols
they have used for
thousands of years.
While it is impossible to
ask the ancient Egyptians
to explain their
beliefs, Dogon priests
can explain their
cosmology and how
their symbols are
written and pronounced.
>>The Dogon lay things
out in such detail
that it's like
having the teacher's
copy of the manual
of the book you're
studying, with the answers
to the questions written down
in the back.
You can go to a
Dogon priest, or you
can go to the
anthropological studies that
were taken in relation
to the Dogon priests,
and they flat out tell you
what their symbol means
and what they're
trying to talk about.
The general pattern I could
say is that Dogon cosmology
tells us how a concept
should be expressed--
how the words should
be pronounced,
what multiple levels
of meaning the word
should be associated with,
and what kind of a drawing
it should be associated with.
That predicts for us what
we ought to find in Egypt.
And so when I go to
Egyptian studies,
I look at the Egyptian
hieroglyphic dictionary,
or go to a book about
Egyptian cosmology,
sure enough, I
find the same word
expressing the same
meanings, written
with the same drawing or
the same drawn character.
And I say, I've got a match.
>>How is it possible
that the Dogon culture
in present-day Mali is connected
to the ancient Egyptians?
What is the link?
>>The Dogon seem to have come
out of a class of priests
who had very
specialized knowledge
and who, for one
reason or another,
were not happy with the way
things were going in Egypt
and deliberately left.
I would say that
sounds like it's true.
I can't prove it's
true, but it doesn't
contradict anything I know.
The fact that there's a match
between the Dogon drawing
and the Egyptian glyph in the
context of the same word--
pronounced the same way,
carrying the same meanings--
is just another
level of validation
that I'm on the right track--
that these words really
do correspond to each other.
>>Using this new
interpretation of hieroglyphic,
what can we learn about
the ancient Egyptian view
of sacred cosmology?
[MUSIC PLAYING]
>>I had some
concerns originally,
as I began writing
some of the books,
about what right did I have
to be revealing secrets that
had been kept for 3,000 years.
But when I realized that
cosmology is about science--
it's about the creation of
matter and things like that--
and I realized how close
our science is right now
to being caught up with what
the ancient cosmology seemed
to know, I realized
that if anybody's going
to get any benefit
out of it at all,
that it has to come out now.
It can't wait any longer.
We're only about 50 years away
from discovering all the things
that I've found in the Dogon
and Egyptian cosmology.
>>Is it possible the
ancient Egyptian cosmology
was more advanced
than today's science?
>>I'd say there is information
in the ancient cosmology that
would be a benefit to
the string theorists
and to the modern cosmologists
if they'd pay attention to it.
I think the Dogon
and the Egyptians
explain to us how it is that
a mere act of perception
can cause the wavelike
behavior of matter
to turn into particles,
that scientists don't know.
When you ask Stephen Hawking
how many fundamental particles
there are, he says,
more than 200.
If you ask a Dogon
priest, he says 266.
>>Science is on the verge
of understanding things
that ancient civilizations
seemed to know long ago.
How is this possible?
>>You're very, very
close-- within a couple
of hundred meters.
>>The excitement builds
for the real destination
of the expedition-- the
ancient site of Nabta Playa.
>>Is that it?
>>Yeah.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
>>Here we have this
bunch of huge megaliths
that they dragged from God knows
where and placed in a pattern--
a sort of center point
of the whole area.
It's essential that
we do not disturb
the stones-- we
not touch anything.
We just look at them.
Because the
alignments are there,
and they've been there for
thousands of years undisturbed.
And we can use them
to date this place.
>>A group of archaeologists
led by Fred Wendorf, called
the Combined Prehistoric
Expedition, by chance
found some pottery
shards at Nabta Playa.
They thought that the megaliths
were just outcrops of rock.
And then they started
to realize, well,
these are sitting on top of
playa sediments-- sediments
that were built up during
the Neolithic time.
And so how did they get there?
So they had to get
there from man.
These are man-made
objects, these megaliths.
One of the possible links
to Egypt before the pharaohs
is that Nabta Playa
became climatically hyper
arid, like it is
today, around 3800 BC,
and it has not been
lived at or used since.
>>It has been
assumed by historians
that Egypt borrowed its complex
society from Mesopotamia.
However, it is now
generally recognized
that a process of
social complexity
is not diffused from
one location to another
but, rather, develops locally.
>>3400 BC is when you see
predynastic cultures building
up on the Nile Valley, just 100
kilometers east of Nabta Playa.
If that's the
case, then a lot of
the great dynastic Egyptian
stuff we're all familiar with
had some aspect of origin
in the Nabta Playa people's
cultural development.
>>Dr. Nicole Douek
is an Egyptologist
who lectures at
the British Museum
and at the Metropolitan
Museum in New York.
By strange coincidence,
she happened
to be at Nabta Playa on
the same day as our team.
>>From what I
understand from her,
she also believes
that this could
be the source of
Egyptian civilization.
>>This is just amazing.
I've wanted to come here since
the first publications came
out.
>>What are the odds of
meeting on the same day?
>>None.
>>Exactly.
>>The coincidences, for
me, are astonishing.
Last year, the same people-- we
went to Gilf Kebir and Uweinat.
We spent two days roaming
around Karkur Talh
and looking at the graffiti, and
all the bovids, and the cattle,
and the people moving
around with their animals.
And it's the same dates as here.
>>These people had what
today we'd call a calendar.
They'd use the
position of the Sun
to mark the specific
days of the year.
And the main stations
of the year, of course,
are the summer solstice,
the winter solstice,
and the two equinoxes.
No doubts they tracked
the Sun through the year.
And therefore, they
had a calendar.
>>This structure may not appear
significant above ground.
Looking beneath the
surface reveals an enigma.
>>These complex structures are
the most enigmatic remaining
aspects of Nabta Playa.
When they estimated
the central one--
the largest one-- underneath
the surface, down in the playa
sediments-- the playa sediment
is about 10 feet deep--
they found this
megalithic sculpture.
Some people call
it the Cow Stone.
It has, perhaps, a vague
resemblance to a cow.
But it also seems, maybe, to
have an astronomical meaning,
because it's in this
astronomical complex.
And then underneath
the sculpted stone,
on the bedrock-- underneath
all the sediments
that were laid
down earlier-- they
found another sculpture sculpted
out of the living bedrock,
sort of like the
Sphinx is sculpted out
of the bedrock itself.
>>The bedrock
sculpture was carved,
and sediment filled it in
over thousands of years.
Then the Cow Stone was
carved and placed there.
And then sediment
filled it in again.
We are looking at three
subsurface layers of sediment.
This is a clue to the
extreme age of Nabta Playa.
>>What makes all this
far more exciting
is that they also
align to stars.
Now that's a totally
different ballgame here.
Because aligning to stars means
that they tracked the seasons.
The climatic conditions
were very important to them.
There was the beginning
of the monsoons.
And therefore, the stars
would be the signal to them
that the monsoons had started.
They would start migrating here.
And they would arrive here
when the water-- the monsoons,
the rainfalls-- had
filled the lakes.
It was essential that they get
here when the lakes have water.
It would have been a fatal
mistake had they come here
20 or 30 days before the event.
From the central
complex radiates
three series of lines east
and a series of lines north.
According to Wendorf and
the check-ups by Rophie,
we've got alignments to
the rising of certain stars
here and here.
>>A double alignment of
blocks 250 meters long
points to the brightest
stars in the belt of Orion.
The second line points to the
rising position of Sirius.
Another long line of stones
aligns to the brightest star
of the Big Dipper, which
later Egyptians represented
as a cow thigh or leg.
The stelli faced the
circumpolar region
of the heavens, which the
Pyramid Texts describe
as a place where
the stars never die.
>>They've got Orion's
Belt and Sirius.
What's interesting is that
they seem to be tracking them,
not just aligning to.
But they seem to be tracking
them over the movement,
over the long period of time.
>>So they knew the stars moved.
And they knew that the Sun
moved the same every year,
on an annual cycle.
Maybe the whole
ceremonial complex
had something to do with the
Age of Gemini and transition
to the Age of Taurus.
>>The constellation of Taurus
is represented by a bull.
If we are talking
about the transition
to the Age of Taurus,
was the symbolism
of cows in Ancient
Egypt connected
to the nomadic cattle cults
prevalent in the area?
>>So astronomy is telling
us that there's a link.
Now we need the anthropologists
and the Egyptologists
to find that link.
>>The problem is that
most of these disciplines
are so entrenched in
their own little world
that it's very difficult to move
people one side or the other.
I don't know how it is
in the United States,
but in Britain, everyone
is in his own little world.
And people who deal
with texts won't
talk to people who deal with
sites in the same discipline.
>>It's becoming more
than obvious now--
>>I think it is.
>>That there are--
>>There are connections.
>>Connections.
>>Of course there are.
And they're very, very
important connections.
Because there are no other
answers, for the moment,
anyway.
And this is as good as any.
>>Yeah.
>>Better.
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