Unearthing Ancient America: The Lost Sagas of Conquerors, Castaways, and Scoundrels
288
Unearthing Ancient America: The Lost Sagas of Conquerors, Castaways, and Scoundrels
288Paperback(First Edition)
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Overview
Did the Vikings beat Columbus to the New World using a fiber-optic navigational instrument?
Who built a colossal water reservoir in Iowa long before the first European settlers arrived?
What secret have the "Giants of the California Desert" preserved for more than a thousand years?
These are just some of the intriguing questions posed and answered by expert researchers in Unearthing Ancient America. They go on to tackle a broad variety of archaeological enigmas shunned as too heretical for consideration by conventional scholars—a Roman figurine found off the New Jersey coast, North African gold in Illinois from a long-vanished kingdom, an Egyptian knife removed from a centuries-old tree in California, a fifth century Christian church in Connecticut, a prehistoric harbor underwater in the Bahamas, Easter Island's cultural connections with pre-modern Japan, and voyagers to Maine from Stone Age Scotland.
Unearthing Ancient America contains a wealth of fresh, occasionally suppressed evidence documenting the tremendous impact made on our continent by overseas visitors hundreds and even thousands of years before Columbus. The disclosures presented here re-write the prehistory of our country and provide a dramatic panorama of the past you never imagined before.
The distinguished list of contributing writers to Unearthing Ancient America includes:
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781601630315 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Red Wheel/Weiser |
| Publication date: | 10/15/2008 |
| Edition description: | First Edition |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Sales rank: | 532,673 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Anomalous Artifacts
Mainstream scholars scoff at the very notion of ancient Egyptians sailing to our shores. Yet, a ritual grave object could be physical proof of visitors to the American Midwest from the Nile Valley some 2,600 years ago. This potentially revealing find is described by Wayne May, the founder and publisher of Ancient American magazine. He is also the author of This Land, his series of books describing a period in North American prehistory known as "Hopewell," from 200 BC to AD 400.
AN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN STATUETTE FOUND IN ILLINOIS
By Wayne May
News occasionally surfaces of persons claiming to have uncovered a dynastic Egyptian presence in prehistoric America. Unfortunately, their "proofs" for pharaonic visitors here are, at best, theoretically possible, or, at worst, patently erroneous. Far less often, a piece of exceptionally persuasive evidence emerges. Such was a statuette featured on the front cover of Ancient American's 64th issue, in 2006.
Little is known of the object's modern origins, save that it was found in Libertyville, Illinois, some 20 miles north of Chicago. During the time of its discovery in the early part of the 20th century, Libertyville was a sparsely populated, agricultural community with only a few dirt roads, in sharp contrast to the sprawl of upper-class suburbia that mostly blankets the area today just off the I-94 tollway. But before World War II, only several dozen families — mostly farmers — were spread over some 12,000 acres of largely pristine prairie.
As a young man, the discoverer (whose widow has requested anonymity for her late husband) developed an abiding interest in collecting Indian artifacts — mostly arrowheads — he found in the vicinity of his home. But the richest sources for prehistoric materials were along the banks of the Des Plaines River and nearby Diamond Lake. Otherwise seldom visited, its 5-mile shoreline featured a number of Indian burial mounds he rifled for whatever grave goods might be dug out. These were usually limited to small pipes, spools, bones, flints, and other typical items.
From one earthwork, however, he allegedly extracted a most atypical statuette. He never attempted to have his discovery professionally evaluated, and showed it to only a few fellow collectors, perhaps for fear of criticism, either for having removed the object without informing the archaeological authorities in Chicago, or because such finds were automatically condemned as the forgeries of conmen trying to defraud money from collectors. Time passed, and, by the turn of the 21st century, his assemblage of more conventional Native American artifacts reached prodigious proportions. Only then did word of the strange statuette reach me, and I, thanks to the generosity of a loyal subscriber, was able to purchase it.
The well-crafted object stands 9 inches high, weighs approximately half a pound, and appears to have been sculpted from a single piece of off-white soapstone. It portrays a man wrapped in a kind of body-stocking, from which his emerging hands hold a shepherd's crook in the left and a flail in the right. The flail was an agricultural tool used in dynastic times by Nile Valley farmers to separate wheat from chaff by beating stacks of grain on a stone floor for threshing. Pharaohs were commonly depicted in sacred art holding such a device as the emblem of judgment: separating the good from the bad subjects. The shepherd's crook stood for political guidance over his flock (people).
The Libertyville figure wears a stylized wig behind the ears, together with a long beard. Beginning at the waist and descending to an area corresponding to the ankles are eight lines of hieroglyphic text, with a single, additional line composed of four glyphs running top to bottom from the ankles to the unexposed toes.
Other than what is probably some minor erosional damage at the front-left side between the hand holding the flail and the top line of script, the object is in perfect condition. Small accumulations of white material in some of the glyphs, and particularly between the vertical lines of the wig, are perhaps residues of clay. More puzzling is the appearance of dark orange pigment found mostly on the wig, but also in the eyes of the face, and in some of the glyphs and the horizontal lines separating them. The ochre-like coloration may have been caused by an unknown powdery substance ritually sprinkled on the figure prior to burial, or caused by reaction with the soil after interment.
The artifact's overall workmanship is exceptionally fine. Particularly outstanding are its hieroglyphs, which, for their individually crafted details, betray the hand of a master scribe intimately familiar with his subject. Everything about the object, quite obviously, bespeaks Pharaonic Egypt. So much so that its provenance may be easily traced to a specific dynasty; namely, the 26th Dynasty, or "Saite," after the Nile Delta city of Saiis, where the royal house was founded in 664 BC, enduring for another 139 years. This era brackets a time frame when such images were portrayed wearing the body-stocking described earlier; numerous, comparative specimens are displayed at Britain's Fitzwilliam College, in Cambridge.
The figure's identification as an ushabti is no less apparent. Ushabti were small statuettes placed in ancient Egyptian tombs to act as servants for the soul of the deceased. Imbued with ceremonial magic during his or her funeral, the figures were supposed to come alive after the mummy had been sealed inside its tomb. The term ushabti means "the answerer," from the verb wesheb, "to answer." Inscriptions on a 26th Dynasty ushabti typically read, "If it is decreed that Osiris [the god of resurrection] is to do work in the Afterlife, cast down the obstacles in front of this man. Behold me whenever you are called. Be watchful at any moment to work there, to plow the fields, to carry water. Behold me whenever called."
Another commands, "Oh, ushabti, allotted to me! If I be summoned or detailed to do any work which has to be done in the realm of the dead; if, indeed, obstacles are implanted for you therewith, you shall detail yourself for me on every occasion of making arable the fields, of flooding the banks. 'Here I am!' you shall say." If the Diamond Lake object is indeed an ushabti, its hieroglyphic text almost certainly carries a similar message, or other analogous lines from Chapter 6 in The Book of the Dead, a collection of sacred texts aimed at guiding the human soul successfully through the terrors of death into the Afterlife; it was likewise interred with the deceased.
As mentioned, the Libertyville object stands 9 inches tall, the same height for most ancient Egyptian ushabti. They were made in a variety of media, including stone, wood, and faience (from a glass-ground paste), so the fact that the Northern Illinois specimen is soapstone means nothing.
For all its apparent authenticity, there is a problem with this find. Although most ushabti were meant to stand in as servants for the deceased in the Afterlife, a few of the statuettes represented his or her own soul-essence. The Diamond Lake figure appears to represent one of these ritual personifications of the grave-owner's soul, and therein lays the rub. The Northern Illinois item clearly depicts supreme royalty, which means it belonged in the tomb of a king. All mummies of the 26th Dynasty's nine monarchs are accounted for in Egypt, so the Libertyville ushabti could not have come from the burial of a Saite leader who somehow ended up in America.
Even though it does not bear a cartouche encircling the name of the king to whom it was consecrated, the figure's hands grasp the crook and flail, emblems of the highest authority. In Egyptian temple art, a cartouche was a stylized loop of rope knotted at one end to contain two of Pharaoh's names. Although many royal ushabti, such as those belonging to the famous Amenhotep III, are more easily identified by the inclusion of a cartouche, others possessed none, such as several "answerers" serving the still better known Tutankhamun.
Yet the Diamond Lake statuette did not necessarily have to come from the grave of a king. Similar images were available for general purchase, even by common people, to be interred with their own burial, as a means of continuing their veneration of the king. Pharaohs were, after all, considered gods before and after death. It is therefore conceivable that such an ushabti could have been carried in an ancient ship that made landfall in North America, even though its owner was not the pharaoh himself. If the Libertyville find does indeed represent such a ruler, then its inscription cannot call upon the ushabti to serve the deceased, but rather, according to other, more relevant passages in Chapter 6 of The Book of the Dead, it enables the soul of the person interred to honor his or her god-king. This would have been particularly important for anyone venturing far from the land of his or her birth.
Ancient Egyptians traveling beyond the Nile Valley always carried religious symbols of their homeland with them in case of death. Burial outside the holy land of Egypt was thought to imperil the human soul, which could not find its way to the Afterlife, itself hardly more than an idealized version of Nile Valley civilization. Hence, a 26th Dynasty ushabti personifying the royal soul of Egypt discovered in distant Illinois fits the arrival of an ancient Egyptian who required just such a religious object in the event that he or she died too far away for burial in native ground.
What makes the Diamond Lake object's Saite provenance especially cogent was one 26th Dynasty ruler in particular. In 610 BC, Wehimbre Necho became Pharaoh Necho II, and 10 years later commissioned the first known circumnavigation of the African continent, as documented by the sixth-century Greek historian Herodotus, in his famous Histories. An expedition of Phoenician ships with mixed Punic-Egyptian sailors was commissioned and fitted out in July, successfully docking at the Nile Delta in the opposite direction from which they disembarked three years earlier. They returned minus a few vessels with their crews, who were driven out to sea, probably as they entered the Canary Island current. It sweeps off North Africa's west coast near the Canary Islands to run straight across the Atlantic Ocean and into the Gulf of Mexico. It also brought Christopher Columbus to the New World more than 2,000 years after Necho launched his own maritime enterprise.
The Diamond Lake item's identifiably Saite configuration, together with Necho II's contemporary Atlantic expedition, suggest that the figure is indeed a 26th Dynasty ushabti. It probably belonged to an Egyptian crew member in one of the Phoenician ships swept across the ocean by the Canary Island current, depositing his vessel in the Gulf of Mexico at a place along the southern coasts of North America. Somehow, his ushabti came into the possession of native Indians, who learned at least enough about the statuette to understand that it was a valuable grave good, judging from its alleged discovery in a burial mound. The little "answerer" passed, perhaps as a trade item, from hand to hand up the Mississippi Valley, until its last owner interred it in the Northern Illinois earthwork, where it was found in the first decades of the last century.
Of course, Necho's sailors could have sailed all the way up the Mississippi River to the western shores of Lake Michigan, which are just 5 miles inland from Libertyville. There, the corpse of one of his crew members was buried, along with his ushabti, under a simple mound of earth. Before the installation of "wing-dams," little more than 100 years ago, raising the river's current to 7 miles per hour, the Mississippi was sluggish to the point of stagnation, and easily navigable by sailing vessels, particularly if they had the advantage of summer winds blowing up from the south. As late as Mark Twain's day, canoeing up the Mississippi was a popular pastime. In any case, either scenario tends to emphasize the object's Saite identity.
Such interpretations, though perhaps credible, are undermined by the entirely anecdotal account of the Diamond Lake object's removal under undocumented, unscientific conditions by an anonymous, amateur artifact collector. The exact location and time of its supposed discovery are unknown. Beyond the few, sketchy, unverifiable details of its early- 20th-century origins, all investigators are left with to establish its true identity are the elements of the item itself. They are, however, compelling.
Suspicions that the find may have been a relic from the Chicago World's Fair, which took place in 1930, or some similar, recent source, are doubtful, because the artifact was not mass-produced; it is handmade. The glyphs particularly, as already cited, are exceptionally well done — not the usually sloppy workmanship seen since the fall of Dynastic civilization, and superior to most modern replicas.
I also mentioned the apparent residue of dried clay and/or pigment of some kind. If these materials or stains are the organic substances they appear to be, they might lend themselves to radiocarbon testing, which could at least provide a time frame for the item's burial, if not its manufacture. A reliable date before the 19th century would help establish its historic authenticity. In fact, the Diamond Lake item is presently undergoing examination by a certified antiquities investigator. Until he has made his final determination, the jury is still out on Mr. X's find. For the present, at least, it is an attractive, intriguing object that may yet turn out to be far more valuable than its inherent beauty.
Dr. Gunnar Thompson writes, in his encyclopedic American Discovery: The Real Story,
"Insatiable curiosity and the growing demand for copper were the driving forces behind Egyptian voyages to America. Egyptian pharaohs demanded knowledge of foreign kingdoms, and they dispatched explorers across the oceans in search of new worlds, exotic imports, and metal ores. Copper was the sine qua non of their dreams to build a lasting memorial to Nile civilization. According to the oldest Egyptian legends from the early third millennium BC, explorers and geographers knew about continental land to the west beyond the Atlantic. The land was thought to be the resting place of the sun, and so it was called both 'the Abode of the Sun' or 'the Land of Immortals.' It was also referred to as the Underworld, because on the spherical Earth it was situated beneath Egypt on the opposite side of the globe. As early as 2600 BC, pharaonic fleets sailed into the Atlantic Ocean, returning four years later. No report has survived to reveal what the voyagers discovered across the seas. Later records tell of similar expeditions without reporting any results. The funeral text of Pepi II (dated 2180 BC) claims the pharaoh sailed across the 'Two Parts of Heaven' manned by 'inhabitants from beyond the western horizon.'"
Dr. Thompson's observations demonstrate the possibility, at least, of Egyptian voyagers to North America in Dynastic times. He was supported by Dr. Barry Fell, another unconventional scholar, who uncovered evidence for an ancient Egyptian written language among Native Americans. At Harvard's Widener Library, he, with the help of a fellow researcher, located copies of 300-year-old papers composed by a Jesuit missionary in Canada's eastern provinces. The priest had apparently put together a teaching aid for his Micmac Indian students, who copied out the Lord's Prayer in hieroglyphs. On closer examination, about half were recognizable hieratic, a simplified form of Egyptian hieroglyphs. More surprisingly, the Micmac characters corresponded to the meaning of the Egyptian glyphs. Dr. Fell concluded that someone familiar with Egyptian hieroglyphic writing very long ago had contrived the Micmac writing system of hieratic symbols.
More evidence for Egyptian influence in pre-Columbian America surfaced in the Michigan tablets during the 1840s. Most of these inscribed artifacts display an unfamiliar written script that nonetheless include several Egyptian hieroglyphs. Additional examples of Nile Valley effect on prehistoric America came from Burrows Cave in southern Illinois. Of the 7,000 inscribed stones removed from it since 1982, few bare traces of Egyptian hieroglyphs, although many do depict persons dressed in Nile Valley garb. Josiah Priest, in his book American Antiquities: Discoveries in the West, was one of two mid-19th-century explorers who documented the rock art illustrations of similarly costumed men and women adorning the walls and ceiling of a site now known as "Cave in Rock State Park," again in southern Illinois.
(Continues…)
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Copyright © 2009 Ancient America Magazine.
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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION: Welcome To The New History!,
CHAPTER 1: Anomalous Artifacts,
CHAPTER 2: Messages From The Past,
CHAPTER 3: Strange Structures,
CHAPTER 4: Subterranean Mysteries,
CHAPTER 5: Underwater Discoveries,
CHAPTER 6: Enigmatic Effigies,
CHAPTER 7: Lost Kingdoms,
CHAPTER 8: Forgotten Seamanship,
CHAPTER 9: Bones, Skulls, And Dna Rewrite History,
BIBLIOGRAPHY,
INDEX,
ABOUT THE AUTHOR,
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