The Abydos
Mystery
by Lumir G. Janku
1996
from
AnomaliesAndEnigmasLibrary Website
Is this for real? Yes the picture is
authentic. No post-production manipulations (with an exception of
the line added by the author) or tweaking by graphic manipulation
software.
The question is: "What do you see?"
Some people have suggested that in the upper left is a shape
reminiscent of a helicopter or cessna type of airplane;
in the upper right it may be a boat or a submarine;
below that may be a UFO or a disc shaped type of airplane;
continuing further below might be a track of a bigfoot (or even a
Roswell type of alien--four fingers!) and at the bottom the whole
glyph seems to end with a jet airplane.
It is my personal opinion that the textbook type of history is not
exactly in sync with numerous finds and hints in the ancient
literature and core of myths. According to these sources, in the
remote past there have been people flying in all sorts of devices,
going under the water in submersibles, you name it. Sumerian
and Indian literature is quite stunning with its descriptions
of many devices, going sometimes into great detail, especially in
the Indian epics. Traces of awareness of similar devices are
apparent in Greek mythology, or in much earlier Hittite
literature, but also in the modern remnants of ancient
mythologies, as in the myths of Australian or New Guinean
aborigines, American Natives, myths of European
nations, Yakuts -- simply wherever you look.
Or, as some suggest, the apparent linearity of the flow of time is
an illusion. It may as well be...
But is it true in this case? Do we see either evidence of some
highly technologically advanced culture (relatively speaking, from
our point of view), or is some sort of time anomaly grinning at us
from the Egyptian glyph?
There may be quite a mundane explanation at hand, although it
involves a little bit of knowledge about the Egyptian culture, its
writing system and the well known tendency to "correct" (alter)
previous inscriptions whenever a monarch desired to do so. Plaster
mixed with a pigment to match the stone color was an ideal material
for modifications. It is just a chain of coincidences that the
Abydos samples carry an uncanny resemblance to modern
transportation devices, though Jungian thinkers may claim that there
is no such a thing as that much sheer coincidence. Maybe the
Abydos inscription is, on some deeper level, a type of message
hinting at the uncertainty of our perception of time, with a meaning
we are only able to discern in an archetypal or other sense. But I
would rather leave the philosophical aspects of the inscription
alone for now and try to make sense of it by conventional means.
The
first thing which attracts attention of someone who has studied
Egyptian literature, at least to a degree which enables one to
decipher single hieroglyphs and the meaning of some combinations,
are the two leftmost symbols. The two letters are a part of a
standard determinative. These two letters mean "king". On a
snapshot taken by Sheri Nakken (although it is not a very
clear image), additional glyphs are discernable—the determinative
for Lower and Upper Egypt and another determinative followed by a
royal cartouche. The picture I was supplied (courtesy Amargi)
for use in deciphering the name in the cartouche was a
low-resolution image, thus the deciphering of the king's name is not
guaranteed, but it seems to belong to Senworsets. The first symbol
in the cartouche was in use since IX dynasty by all kings, and means
Ra (the Sun-god). From these glyphs it is fairly obvious that
the whole series of glyph is one of the standard laudatory epithets,
possibly describing the loftiness of the king.
Not being trained in the "Khemt"
language, the deciphering of the meaning of the glyphs is not
possible without help from an egyptologist (see a reply from
Serge Rosmorduc, an author of a web introduction to Egyptian
hieroglyphs). What I did was to identify the glyphs, trying to match
the components of the overlayed glyphs with standard hieroglyphs, as
seen in the image on the left. Most of the characters are
decipherable easily; there are only a few which are obscured by
corrections to such a degree that the identification is not possible
without a knowledge of the semantic sense of the inscription. The
part of the glyph on the right side of the original image is
unclear. Unfortunately, a part of the stone on which the glyph was
made developed a crack and a small piece of it fell off. The symbol
is vaguely familiar; possibly I have seen it used on some other
inscriptions in the Abydos complex. I tried to compare it
with about 4,800 hieroglyphs in my library, but I was unable to find
a close match.
There is one aspect of the inscription
which is puzzling. The temple in Abydos (or Abdjou, as
the location was called by Egyptians), is quite a remarkable
edifice, especially as far as the quality of glyphs is concerned.
They are all very precise and as far as I can judge, there's no
trace of sloppy workmanship anywhere in the temple, bare the above
inscription. The temple was build by Seti I and finished by
his son, Ramses II, during an era of classical revival. The
obvious corrections on the inscription in question are thus
seemingly out of place. But without the translation of the
inscription, it is difficult to propose a hypothesis for why the
original inscription was changed, apparently twice.
We can conclude that the inscription is not a record of ancient
knowledge of machines similar to our modern transportation devices.
The seemingly modern pictographs are a coincidental
combination of quite common symbols.
Are there other artifacts or records that would suggest the
opposite? To answer that question, we have to look at numerous
enigmatic objects and inscriptions. These are usually interpreted by
archeologists in the same way they explain away practically anything
which does not fit into preconceived notions about the knowledge
base of ancient cultures -- as mere "religious symbolism." A
new look, and a new outlook, may provide future insight into the
past.
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