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Quote by Elenore Smith Bowen

“Everyone knew Ava and her wives. They were the model household for the community, one every husband cited when his wives disagreed. Ava was a tall, rather light-skinned woman who was . . . the senior of five wives. . . . She saved up 40 or 50 shillings (about $55 to 67 in 2020 values) every few years, searched out an industrious girl of congenial character, and presented her to her husband: “Here is your new wife.” Ava’s husband always welcomed her additions to his household and he always set to work to pay the rest of the bridewealth, for he knew perfectly well that Ava always picked hard-working, healthy, handsome, steady women who wouldn’t run away. Many men envied him.”

Quote by Elenore Smith Bowen

Book:Return to Laughter: An Anthropological Novel
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Return to Laughter: An Anthropological Novel

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Elenore Smith Bowen

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“The men who had inhabited prehistoric Egypt, who had carved the Sphinx and founded the world‘s oldest civilization, were men who had made their exodus from Atlantis to settle on this strip of land that bordered the Nile. And they had left before their ill-fated continent sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, a catastrophe which had drained the Sahara and turned it into a desert. The shells which to-day litter the surface of the Sahara in places, as well as the fossil fish which are found among its sands, prove that it was once covered by the waters of a vast ocean. It was a tremendous and astonishing thought that the Sphinx provided a solid, visible and enduring link between the people of to-day and the people of a lost world, the unknown Atlanteans. This great symbol has lost its meaning for the modern world, for whom it is now but an object of local curiosity. What did it mean to the Atlanteans? We must look for some hint of an answer in the few remnants of culture still surviving from peoples whose own histories claimed Atlantean origin. We must probe behind the degenerate rituals of races like the Incas and the Mayas, mounting to the purer worship of their distant ancestors, and we shall find that the loftiest object of their worship was Light, represented by the Sun. Hence they build pyramidal Temples of the Sun throughout ancient America. Such temples were either variants or slightly distorted copies of similar temples which had existed in Atlantis. After Plato went to Egypt and settled for a while in the ancient School of Heliopolis, where he lived and studied during thirteen years, the priest-teachers, usually very guarded with foreigners, favoured the earnest young Greek enquirer with information drawn from their well-preserved secret records. Among other things they told him that a great flat-topped pyramid had stood in the centre of the island of Atlantis, and that on this top there had been build the chief temple of the continent – a sun temple. […] The Sphinx was the revered emblem in stone of a race which looked upon Light as the nearest thing to God in this dense material world. Light is the subtlest, most intangible of things which man can register by means of one of his five senses. It is the most ethereal kind of matter which he knows. It is the most ethereal element science can handle, and even the various kind of invisible rays are but variants of light which vibrate beyond the power of our retinas to grasp. So in the Book of Genesis the first created element was Light, without which nothing else could be created. „The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the Deep,“ wrote Egyptian-trained Moses. „And God said, Let there be Light: and there was Light.“ Not only that, it is also a perfect symbol of that heavenly Light which dawns within the deep places of man‘s soul when he yields heart and mind to God; it is a magnificent memorial to that divine illumination which awaits him secretly even amid the blackest despairs. Man, in turning instinctively to the face and presence of the Sun, turns to the body of his Creator. And from the sun, light is born: from the sun it comes streaming into our world. Without the sun we should remain perpetually in horrible darkness; crops would not grow: mankind would starve, die, and disappear from the face of this planet. If this reverence for Light and for its agent, the sun, was the central tenet of Atlantean religion, so also was it the central tenet of early Egyptian religion. Ra, the sun-god, was first, the father and creator of all the other gods, the Maker of all things, the One, the self-born [...] If the Sphinx were connected with this religion of Light, it would surely have some relationship with the sun.”

Ancient EgyptAtlantisAncient CivilizationsSphinxPaul BruntonPerennial PhilosophySecret EgyptAtlantean ReligionReligion Of Light
Book:A Search in Secret Egypt
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“The Sphinx, so old that it had watched the childhood of the world, plunged in unbroken contemplation, had seen civilizations rise to glory and then slowly droop like withered flowers, had watched shouting invaders pass and repass, come and depart, come and stay. And yet it stood its ground, so utterly calm, so utterly removed from all human emotions. Something of that stony indifference to the mutations of fate seemed to have crept under my skin during the night‘s darkness. The Sphinx relieves one of all worry about the future, all burdens of the heart; and it turns the past into a cinema film, which one may watch in detachment, impersonally. (p. 34)”

Ancient EgyptAncient CivilizationsSphinxPaul BruntonPerennial PhilosophySecret Egypt
Book:A Search in Secret Egypt
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“Egyptologists claim that Khufu began construction of his pyramid so it would be completed in time to accept his corpse. I should imagine that while he was considering what style of pyramid he wanted, he would have been consulting his architects and engineers to see what was feasible. He also might have been interested in knowing how long it would take to build and how much it would cost. Using today's technology, modern stonecutters have estimated that it would take at least twenty-seven years just to quarry and deliver the stone. I wonder how long it would have taken Khufu's men using simple, primitive methods?”

HistoryPyramidsArchaeologyDeep Human HistoryAncient CivilizationsMegalithic Monuments
Book:The Giza Power Plant: Technologies of Ancient Egypt
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“There are, however, explicit engineering qualities associated with the pyramids that do not support the theory that it was a temple, a tomb, or a mausoleum. The redundancy of masonry in these structures is only one good argument against the tomb theory. More persuasive is the fact that Egyptologists woefully lack the material evidence to support it—there are no bodies! It is a widely held popular belief that Egyptian pyramids contained mummies, and that these mummies were actually discovered inside the pyramids. This is simply not true. These beliefs are only inferences that are reinforced by inaccurate documentaries that link the pyramids closely with the Valley of the Kings, where there are no pyramids, but where the mummies actually were found. In reality, the Giza Plateau and the Valley of the Kings are two vastly different sites, separated by hundreds of miles of desert. It is now becoming widely recognized by people who research the pyramid issue that of all the pyramids excavated in Egypt, there was not one that contained an original burial. Considering that more than eighty pyramids have been discovered in Egypt, this fact alone practically negates the tomb theory.”

HistoryPyramidsMasonryDeep Human HistoryAncient CivilizationsMegalithic Monuments
Book:The Giza Power Plant: Technologies of Ancient Egypt
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“Rudolph Gantenbrink's important discovery [of a door with metallic handles found with a robot inside a shaft in the Great Pyramid] has forced many Egyptologists to finally accept that their theories are flawed. This is an interesting development. Academic mores normally dictate that when a theory contains flaws, or unsubstantiated data that supports critical elements on which the theory is built, the entire theory must either be thrown out or revised. Instead of the tomb theory being dismissed, however, Gantenbrink himself was dismissed from the project. He discovered the "door" on March 22, 1993. A week later, he was told to pack up his robot and leave Egypt. Gantenbrink has the technology to go beyond the so-called door but, presumably because of political reasons, has been refused permission to resume his research in Egypt. Gantenbrink, with an engineer's typical pragmatism, stated, 'I take an absolute neutral position. It is a scientific process, and there is no need whatsoever to answer questions with speculation when these questions could be answered much more easily by continuing the research. Yet because of a stupid feud between what I call believers and non-believers, I am condemned as someone who is speculating. But I am not. I am just stating the facts. We have a device [ultrasonic] that would discover if there is a cavity behind the slab. It is nonsensical to make theories when we have the tools to discover the facts.”

PoliticsHistoryEngineeringPyramidsAncient CivilizationsMegalithic MonumentsEgyptology
Book:The Giza Power Plant: Technologies of Ancient Egypt
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“This chamber held a mystery for the early explorers who entered its confines, a mystery that has baffled people for decades. The chamber was coated with a layer of black dust, which, upon analysis, turned out to be exuviae, or the cast-off shells and skins of insects. There were no living insects found in the Great Pyramid, which made this discovery even more mysterious. What prompted hordes of insects to single out this one sealed chamber and shed their skins? It is a mystery that has never been satisfactorily explained. In fact, there has not been any attempt to explain it, and because there is no logical answer that fits in with any previously proposed theory, no one has given it much attention.”

MysteryDiscoveryPyramidsAncient Civilizations
Book:The Giza Power Plant: Technologies of Ancient Egypt
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“Current theories regarding the function and construction of the pyramid fall short. A credible theory would have to explain the following conditions found inside the Great Pyramid: -The selection of granite as the building material for the King's Chamber. It is evident that in choosing granite, the builders took upon themselves an extremely difficult task. -The presence of four superfluous chambers above the King's Chamber. -The characteristics of the giant granite monoliths that were used to separate these so-called "construction chambers." -The presence of exuviae, or the cast-off shells of insects, that coated the chamber above the King's Chamber, turning those who entered black. -The violent disturbance in the King's Chamber that expanded its walls and cracked the beams in its ceiling but left the rest of the Great Pyramid seemingly undisturbed. -The fact that the guardians were able to detect the disturbance inside the King's Chamber, when there was little or no exterior evidence of it. -The reason the guardians thought it necessary to smear the cracks in the ceiling of the King's Chamber with cement. -The fact that two shafts connect the King's Chamber to the outside. -The design logic for these two shafts—their function, dimensions, features, and so forth.”

MysteryEngineeringPyramidsDeep Human HistoryAncient CivilizationsEgyptology
Book:The Giza Power Plant: Technologies of Ancient Egypt
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