Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries by Brian Haughton (beginner reading books for adults txt) 📕

the possibility that it is the sole surviving scale model of an Egyptian aircraft seems unlikely. Rather, the available evidence of well-crafted Egyptian game boards and toys would point to the object being a model of a bird, or perhaps a child's toy.

@ David Hatcher Childress

Wooden model, probably of a bird, from Saqqara, Egypt dated to the fourth or third century B.C.

Probably the most controversial evidence for ancient flight comes from the puzzling carvings on a panel from the 19th Dynasty Temple of Seti I, at Abydos, Egypt. These incredible glyphs appear to show a helicopter, perhaps a tank, and what looks similar to either a space ship or a jet plane. In fact, one of these glyphs has achieved legendary status as "The Abydos Temple Helicopter." So do these amazing hieroglyphs show that the Egyptians of the 13th century B.C. possessed 21st century technology?

Unfortunately, some of the photos of the glyphs doing the rounds on the Internet have been digitally altered to emphasize the aircraft-like features. Nevertheless, there are still some untouched photos in existence showing these extraordinary hieroglyphs of apparently modern aerial vehicles.

However, Katherine GriffisGreenberg of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, as well as many other archaeologists and Egyptologists, maintain that the extraordinary carvings are palimpsests-newer writing inscribed over old. The Egyptologists theory is that, in this particular case, plaster has been added over the old inscription and a new inscription made. The plaster subsequently fell out due to time and weathering, leaving bits of the old and new glyphs overlapping and causing images that resemble modern aircraft. It is certainly a fact that a considerable amount of recarving of inscriptions took place in ancient Egypt, as ruling pharaohs attempted to claim the work of previous kings, or to destroy their reputation. It seems that in the case of the Abydos Helicopter panel what has happened is that King Ramesses II, well known for appropriating the work of his predecessors, has covered the panel of his predecessor, King Seti I, with his own inscription. More specifically, the hieroglyph text actually consists of part of the title of Ramesses II, translated as "The one of the Two Ladies, who suppresses the nine foreign countries." This overlies the royal title of Seti I that was originally carved into the stone.

Nevertheless, believers in the Abydos Helicopter argue that overlying inscriptions resulting in such striking images of modern aircraft would be too much of a coincidence. But there are other factors which make ancient airplanes in Egypt improbable. One is the complete lack of any flying machines whatsoever in the entire ancient Egyptian corpus. There should be more related inscriptions, but there's nothing. In addition-and this applies to all the ancient aircraft theories-there is a complete absence

of evidence for the necessary support technology required of a flight industry. If Egyptian and South American cultures had developed and assembled such things as helicopters and airplanes, they would have needed a huge manufacturing industry for the vehicles themselves, not to mention provision for fuel production, mines to obtain metal, and storage facilities. Where is it all? If the ancients were flying around in modern airplanes and helicopters, surely there would be more evidence than a collection of dubious models and a solitary panel of hieroglyphs carved over a temple doorway. There is no denying that the idea of human flight must certainly have occurred to many ancient cultures, as witnessed by the literature of India, for example, and perhaps this was part of the inspiration for the enigmatic South American models. However, at present, the physical evidence that they ever achieved it is debatable at best.

the Dead Sea Scrolls

Photograph by Grauesel (GNU Free Documentation License).

Caves at Qumran, in the area where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are, without doubt, the most significant and exciting manuscript find of the last 100 years. The cache of scrolls and scroll fragments were discovered in 11 caves in the area of Qumran, 13 miles east of Jerusalem, close to the Dead Sea in Israel. This extraordinary library of Jewish documents dates from between

the third century B.c. and A.D. 68, and consists of scrolls made from animal skins (parchment), a few of papyrus, and one extremely unusual example in copper. The texts are written using a carbon-based ink, and are written mostly in Hebrew, with some in Aramaic (a Semitic language allegedly spoken by Jesus), and a small number in Greek. Research into these mysterious documents and their authors has been ongoing since their initial discovery in the late 1940s and has thrown some fascinating light, not only on the Bible, but also on a shadowy brotherhood of men and women known as the Essenes.

In 1947, Bedouin goat hearders were searching for a stray goat among the cliffs overlooking the Dead Sea when they came upon a hitherto unexplored cave. Inside the cave, the Bedouins discovered a number of ancient clay jars along the walls, which were filled with manuscripts and wrapped in linen. In all, seven clay jars were recovered from the cave (known as Cave 1) and thus began the nineyear-long investigation of the caves around the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. During the search for scrolls, archaeologists often had to deal with the problem of local Bedouins plundering the caves, eager to make a profit by selling the manuscripts to Arab antiqities dealers in Bethlehem. Eventually, however, the investigations produced approximately 800 documents from 11 different caves at Qumran. A few of these caves, particularly Cave 4, appear to have functioned as permanent libraries with built-in shelves.

Although some of the Qumran Scrolls were written during the time of Jesus, none of them refer directly to him, or to any of his apostles. This may be because the scrolls as a whole only consist of a fraction of what was probably once a huge library of manuscripts, most of which is now lost. One of the most fascinating aspects of the scrolls is that