Aliens Did Not Build the Egyptian Pyramids

Though I find much admirable and compelling about the ‘ancient astronaut’ hypothesis of Erich von Daniken and a host of other converts, I just cannot accept the idea that ‘ancient astronauts’, that is aliens or extraterrestrials if you prefer built the Egyptian pyramids however difficult it may appear for ‘primitive’ humans without benefit of the wheel or the pulley to have constructed them.

Aliens, ‘ancient astronauts’ or perhaps the ancient Egyptian ‘gods’ (really extraterrestrials) may have helped inspire the building of the Egyptian pyramids (like God inspires the building of cathedrals), but it was your basic human blood, sweat and tears that did the actual construction despite all the hardships. Here are some thoughts on why we have to pat ourselves on the back and not the backs of aliens for these impressive structures, one of which is the last one standing of the seven original ancient wonders of the world.

*One common theme in creation mythology is that the ‘gods’ created humans to serve them and do the hard yards in terms of sweat and toil. That alone is suggestive that the so-called ‘gods’ (that is, the ‘ancient astronauts’) did not sweat and toil and build the pyramids using whatever high-tech at their command; rather humans erected these massive structures as tombs (and as a stairway to the heavens in the afterlife) to honour their ‘gods’, of which the pharaoh was considered to be as one after death. So a tomb for the departed king was also a monument erected to the ‘gods’.

*Archaeological digs within sight of the Great Pyramids at Giza have uncovered ‘towns’ and cemeteries where the human labour force that planned and built the pyramids, and provided the required infrastructure (like food) lived and died and were buried, including, of course, the skeletal remains of those workers.

*Detailed medical analysis of those skeletons reveals the sorts of anatomical conditions and accidental injuries that would be commonly associated with; that which would result from the backbreaking sort of work associated with stonework; moving and positioning massive stone blocks.  

*Images or reliefs in various temples, tombs and other structures depict scenes of large groups of men hauling massive stone blocks and/or doing the sorts of things that stonemasons do.

*Graffiti has been uncovered inside numerous ancient Egyptian pyramid sites left behind by the work gangs who did the hard yards. It’s a sort of ancient equivalent of the WWII “Kilroy Was Here” sort of thing.  

*The pyramids show a natural evolution in styling from the simple mastaba to the more complex as in mastabas piled one on top of the other (the Step Pyramid), then finally to the true pyramid shape now so familiar to us in their design and structure, starting with the Red Pyramid at Dahshur. Pyramids are not all near identical clones that those at the Giza necropolis might suggest.

*Associated with that evolution, we find pyramids that ended up in an ‘oops’ condition; pyramids that suffered construction mishaps like the Pyramid of Meidum where the outer bits just sort of collapsed in a heap revealing the inner core. The Bent Pyramid was “bent” because it was realised half-way through that the original angle was too steep and the top half was constructed at a lesser angle. The pharaoh concerned was an unhappy camper about that ‘oops’ and so the Bet Pyramid was then abandoned unused. Aliens wouldn’t have made such trail-and-error mistakes.

*The pyramid shape is hardly something out-of-this-world. It’s a fundamental geometrical shape well known to the ancients.

*Looking at images of the pyramids, both external and internal, you’d be pretty hard pressed to think of these as something high-tech. If ‘ancient astronauts’ can get from there to here in high-tech spaceships, and when they arrived they then built these pyramids, then you’d expect something a bit more futuristic ‘gosh-wow’, ‘golly-gee’, with flashing lights and lots of glass, chrome-and-steel, ceramics-and-plastics, all incorporated into that sort of architectural engineering that we employ today. Pure stone might be impressive, but high-tech it’s not.

*Modern scholars and Egyptologists have shown plausible ways ancient humans could have used ‘primitive’ techniques that oriented the pyramids and levelled them with respect to the ground and constructed them to high levels of precisions of length and slope. No high-tech was required.

*What possible motive could ‘ancient astronauts’ have had to construct such things in any event? They weren’t tombs for aliens; they certainly weren’t apartments or office blocks for extraterrestrials.

*No out-of-place artefacts have been discovered in or around the pyramids that can be associated with the time of the pyramids and the pyramid builders, the sort of tools and equipment you might find in any modern hardware store. And certainly nothing that looked like it should belong among the props on the “Star Trek” film or TV set has been documented.  

*The only real out-of-place artefact I’m aware of that’s suggestive of some odd goings on is that little wooden ‘bird’ found within an ancient Egyptian tomb at Saqqara in 1898, dated to several centuries BCE, now at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo [1]. Alas, it’s labelled a “bird” because it would be silly to label it an “airplane”, yet that’s exactly what it looks like, and scaled up models fly like a plane and are aerodynamically sound. That’s hardly evidence, far less proof, aliens were in ancient Egypt and therefore must have built the pyramids, but the game is afoot and explanations are required. 

*Ancient Egyptians left behind an awful lot of images on the walls of tombs, temples, obelisks, stele, etc. of their gods, pharaohs, their everyday life at work and play, their family activities, warfare scenes, etc. Nothing leaps out as anything obviously ‘out of this world’ as in depictions of ‘The Greys’ or of flying saucers or any sort of celestial scenes like say the planet Saturn complete with rings or an accurate pictorial depiction of say our solar system. Some of their ‘gods’ do look more than just a little bit strange with their animal heads, but at least they are the heads of terrestrial animals depicted. 

*However, an interesting image or relief at the Temple of [the goddess] Hathor at Dendera, Egypt shows two ancient Egyptians, apparently priests, each holding up what appears at first, second and even third glance to be an enormous light bulb complete with cable attachments at the rear end [2], though judging by other humans in the petroglyph nothing really is to scale. However, a light bulb by itself is useless. To be effective and do its light bulb thing, a massive infrastructure is required behind it. You’d need an electric power plant, or generator, or large batteries and electric wiring. There’s no power source shown and there’s no such electric generating infrastructure uncovered in the archaeological record. This image appears to be a one-off and the objects probably aren’t what they seem to be to our modern eyes. Only those depicted in the image, and perhaps the one who carved it and the intended audience would know what it really signifies. 

*However, that image does raise an interesting question, and, IMHO, a bona-fide mystery. How were passageways in tombs (like the pyramids) and temples, sometimes kilometres in length when taking into account all the twists and turns; often tunnels (with multi side chambers) descending down to depths equivalent to a 30-story building, lighted? Experiments with reflecting mirrors using outside natural light fail after several hundred feet. There are all sorts of highly detailed inscriptions/hieroglyphs chiselled on the walls and ceilings; ditto paintings. Yet, if all was lite by burning torches, where’s all the smoke soot? Can you construct such elaborate passageways/chambers from solid rock and highly detailed paintings and carvings and inscriptions in total darkness except for candles/torches without leaving soot behind and ruining your eyesight to boot? Could you? I couldn’t. Somewhat related is a viable oxygen supply in some of those really deep tombs. There just wouldn’t have been enough to support many workers. Even archaeologists descending down today can find themselves in difficulty.

*Finally, much of what applies here applies equally to the pyramids associated with the various cultures of Mesoamerica. I see no evidence at all that humans couldn’t of constructed these structures. 

Now don’t get me wrong, there are indeed many, many unsolved (but not unsolvable) anomalies or mysteries associated with the Egyptian pyramids (like lighting) that will keep Egyptologists and archaeologists and historians busy for generations yet, but invoking ‘ancient astronauts’ doesn’t seem to be very helpful in pushing forward such solutions that research will eventually solve and pin the handiwork where it belongs, on the human being. That said, I’m more than willing to concede that aliens might be associated with one or more reasons for humans building the pyramids, but that’s a far cry from saying aliens actually built the pyramids or gave humans our modern even futuristic (by our standards) technology to accomplish same.

P.S.: Contrary to typical and stereotyped Hollywood (and similar) depictions, slaves didn’t build the pyramids either. You had a voluntary labour force (in service to the pharaoh), a well fed, housed and looked after workforce.

[1] Corliss, William R. (Compiler); “The little wooden airplane” (in) Ancient Man: A Handbook of Puzzling Artifacts; The Sourcebook Project, Glen Arm, Maryland; 1978; pages 454-455:

[2] Sanderson, Ivan T.; “Frightfully ancient electrics” (in) Investigating the Unexplained: A Compendium of Disquieting Mysteries of the Natural World; Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey; 1972; pages 179-196:

Mythology’s Hybrids: Human Imagination or Alien Genetics? Part Two

Various mythological beasties, associated with the polytheistic gods include a generic type commonly referred to as hybrids, but which I term the ‘half-and-halves’. That is to say, these mythological beasties are a composite of two (sometimes more) distinct life forms.  There are the half-and-halves that are half human–half animal, and the half-and-halves that are half animal–half some other form of animal.  My premise is 1) these half-and-halves weren’t mythological; neither were the gods. The gods were really extraterrestrials, and the half-and-halves among the end products of ET’s genetic engineering experiments.

There are many puzzling features in mythology, if taken as purely mythology, regarding the so-called gods. I say so-called because to my way of interpreting things, the gods weren’t mythological but flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials with advanced technology, especially in the field of bioengineering or genetic engineering. A puzzling feature regarding the ‘gods’ and related tales, or even tails, are the half-and-halves (my phrase – you probably won’t find it lasted in any index in any mythology text). But these half-and-halves, some of which I’m going to cite, are just scratching the surface of the sum total of those represented in our ancient mythologies. The interesting point is that these hybrids are universal within that collective mythology. That is, they appear across all cultures; all geographies. Anytime something supposedly mythological, is represented everywhere, it’s time to sit up and take closer notice that things might not be quite as mythological as things first appear.

Continued now from yesterday’s blog…

Now if two (or seven) heads are better than one; if many arms and hands make for lighter work, then rest assured we had many beasties, and ‘gods’ that had many heads and/or arms.

For starters, well the Hydra comes immediately to mind, ditto the Greek multi-headed dogs (Cerberus with three heads and Orthrus with two heads; collectively each with a snake for a tail). The Amphisbaena (Greek) was a serpent with two heads – one at each end. That’s sort of like the Mesoamerican ‘god’ Quetzalcoatl, often depicted as a feathered snake with a head at each end. The Scylla was a multi-headed sea monster with a woman’s torso attached to a dog’s body with a (cheaper by the) dozen legs! Not quite as bizarre was the Azhi Dahaka who was an ordinary run-of-the-mill triple-headed serpent (perhaps the inspiration for Godzilla’s nemesis, the Ghidorah).

That’s just a sample, but there are lots of others, especially from the Indian (as in subcontinent) mythology. For those, see the India section below.

Were some of the ‘gods’ themselves half-and-halves? Most of the Egyptian ‘gods’ tended to have had an animal head but a human body. For example:

 * Amon (or Amun) had the head of a ram.

* Anubis had a jackal head placed on a human body.

* Bastet had a cat’s head atop a human body.

* Harakhte was another falcon-headed deity.

* Hathor was often depicted as a cow-headed goddess.

* Horus had a falcon head placed on a human body. Of the four sons of Horus, three had animal heads (Duamutef – jackal; Qubhsnuf – hawk; and Hapi – dog).

* Khnum was another ram-headed god.

* Ra (or Re) had the head of a falcon.

* Sebek (or Sobek) was one of their gods who had a crocodile head.

* Seker (sometimes known as Sokar) had a hawk’s head.

* Sekhmet had the head of a lioness placed on a human body.

* Then there was the ancient Egyptian God Seth (Set) – a really one off. See below for more nitty-gritty details.

* Sokar (sometimes known as Seker) had a falcon head placed on a human body.

* Thoth had the head of an ibis placed on a human body.

It’s interesting that several ‘gods’ have falcon heads on human bodies. If Horus, Sokar, Ra and others depicted as falcon-headed were figments of the ancient Egyptians’ imaginations, you’d think there would be enough animal heads to go around without duplicating. I mean it would make things easier in terms of who’s who. However, there’s more than one ‘god’ with a jackal’s head, a hawk’s head or a ram’s head as well.

Speaking of strange non-terrestrial appearances of the ancient Egyptian ‘gods’, let’s take the ancient Egyptian ‘god’ Seth (or Set). Here’s how various mythology texts tend to describe him.

* He [Seth] was often depicted as a tall beast – perhaps a jackal or donkey – with a long muzzle. 

* Seth (Set) was mostly depicted as a fabulous creature, with a curved snout, square ears, forked tail, and canine body, or sometimes as a human with only the head of the Set animal. It has no complete resemblance to any known creature, although it could be seen as a composite of an aardvark, a donkey, a jackal. Some early Egyptologists proposed that it was a stylized representation of the giraffe due to the large flat-topped 'horns' but the Egyptians themselves distinguished between the giraffe and the Set animal. In the late period Set is depicted as an ass or with the head of an ass.

* When depicted in animal form, the god Seth was a very odd creature, with a long snout, short ears, and a pointy, upright tail. There have been many attempts to try to identify this creature with a known animal. The possibility remains that it was purely a mythological creature. To Egyptologists, it was known as ‘the Seth-animal’.

* [Seth was] depicted with floppy ears and an erect and divided tail. 

* Set was represented as having the features of a fantastic beast with a thin, curved snout, straight, square-cut ears and a stiff forked tail. This creature cannot with certainty be identified and was commonly called the ‘Typhonian animal’. Sometimes Set was depicted as a man with the head of this strange quadruped.

* Seth had a bizarre appearance. His human-form body is topped by a head that appears to combine the rounded snout of an aardvark (unknown to the ancient Egyptians) with curious, straight, flat-topped donkey ears. When represented in fully animal, four-legged form, he also displayed a long neck, a dog-like body and an erect, curiously forked tail.  Egyptologists have struggled to identify Seth’s component features: the more imaginative include camel, long-nosed mouse, hare, antelope, pig, giraffe and boar.

If Seth (Set) was an ‘ancient astronaut’, and extraterrestrial ‘god’, then by implication all his kin were too and by implication so were all the ancient Egyptian ‘gods’ (noted above), and by implication the whole lot of the polytheistic ‘gods’.  

If the physical appearance of the ‘gods’, or at least one representative ‘god’ can not be reconciled with that of any living thing known to man, then that alone is suggestive of something not-of-this-Earth; an extraterrestrial in other words, or the catch phrase, an ‘ancient astronaut’.

Let’s now take as examples some other geographical regions and their half-and-halves.

Mesopotamia (Persia) had several hybrid ‘gods’: Mithra had the head of a lion on the body of a human – with wings; Ahura Mazda on the other hand had a human head, but, like Angels, they had bird wings.

Half-and-halves were common throughout nearly all cultural mythologies, not just European and Egyptian ones, and other combinations from other mythologies have been realized. Here’s a small sample:

India: As noted above, when it comes to multiple body parts, you had the many headed hydra. However, one culture in particular seems to revel in multi-headed and/or multi-armed gods or creatures – ancient Indian (as in subcontinent) mythology. For example, the Nagas of India were multi-headed cobra-like snakes. Brahma had multi-heads; Shiva had multi-arms; ditto Durga, Kali, Lakshmi, and Yama. Agni and Ravana had multi-heads and multi-arms.

Then as noted above, there was the Indian elephant-human hybrid ‘god’ called Ganesha.

Peru: Ancient Peru had a pot-load of half-and-halves. There were owl-headed supernatural folk healers; unreal monsters shown flying through the air with falcon wings and tails attached; sculptures of half-human half-feline beings. In fact you had the flying felines known as the Ccoa, somewhat larger than a domestic cat with a winged body. The Ccoa was one of many frequent appearances of flying creatures containing human, feline and bird characteristics.

There must be something about Mesoamerica that has a thing about felines. The mysterious Olmecs showed images of a human body but with feline facial features. Unfortunately, the Olmecs vanished mysteriously leaving only the images for us to speculate on.

To be continued...

Mythology: The Physiology and Appearances of the Extraterrestrial Gods

Let’s start off with some basic assumptions. Mythology is not purely an invention of the human imagination out of whole cloth. There are grains of truth or reality within the tales. Humans are intelligent enough to separate basic facts from basic fictions, even if the facts are often embellished to make a good tale better, or misinterpreted. The mythological gods (including God) really existed. However, they weren’t really supernatural beings or deities. That’s the misinterpretation part. They were extraterrestrials. Now what did they look like? 

*The ‘gods’ are, as far as we’re concerned, as close to immortal as makes no odds so they had no trouble getting from there to here.

*However, the ‘gods’ do age, and they can be hurt and killed. They are not invincible, nor invulnerable. Jesus Christ’s execution is proof of that; ditto Apollo killing the first generation of the godly Cyclopes.

*One trait, apart from quasi-immortality the ‘gods’ have is shape-shifting abilities.

*Is shape-shifting even possible? While it’s a common concept and ability within the pages and images of science fiction, it’s not exactly an ability you have. How often have we wished to be the proverbial ‘fly on the wall’? Yet, a newborn infant looks quite different from an 80 year old; a flounder undergoes a shape-shift to having both eyes on one side of the head; a caterpillar looks quite different than a moth or butterfly; an egg doesn’t resemble a chicken; a tadpole doesn’t look like a frog; a plant doesn’t resemble the seed from which it came, our embryo undergoes quite a shift in forms between fertilization and birth; a chameleon can undergo some drastic changes in appearance too. Then too, a human female of 18 has shape-shifted considerably from that of a human female of 8 – much to the appreciation of most males! Finally, baby faces in nearly all mammals are shaped differently (cuter?) than their adult counterparts. We’re attracted more to baby faces across the mammalian kingdom. So, no, I couldn’t rule out shape-shifting as an alien ability, especially if it might have been artificially augmented.

*Another puzzling feature regarding the ‘gods’ and related tales, or even tails is the half-and-halves.

*Most of the Egyptian ‘gods’ tend to have an animal head but a human body. Then you have the harpies (half human; half bird); centaurs (half human; half horse), the Minotaur (half human; half bull), satyrs (half human, half goat), the sphinx (half human; half lion), mermaids (half human; half fish). With no fossil evidence of any such hybrids, perhaps this is where mythology overrides reality. Perhaps it is just a natural pondering to wonder ‘what if’ human abilities could be combined with some other animal’s abilities.

*Half-and-halves are common throughout nearly all cultural mythologies, not just European and Egyptian ones, and other combinations have been realized.

*Are the ‘half-and-halves’ further evidence of shape-shifting? That’s probably unlikely. Perhaps they are further evidence of genetic and bioengineering experiments by the ‘gods’, the ‘gods’ own version of “The Island of Dr Moreau”.  There are some accounts in mythology of half-and-halves involving the pairing of two differing animals.

*If the physical appearance of the ‘gods’, or at least one representative ‘god’ can not be reconciled with that of any living thing known to man, then that alone is suggestive of something not-of-this-Earth; an extraterrestrial in other words, or the catch phrase, an ‘ancient astronaut’. Let’s take as an example…

The Ancient Egyptian God Seth (Set):

*Speaking of strange non-terrestrial appearances of the ‘gods’ take the ancient Egyptian ‘god’ Seth (or Set). Here’s how various mythology texts describe him: “He was often depicted as a tall beast – perhaps a jackal or donkey – with a long muzzle”.  

*”In art Seth (Set) was mostly depicted as a fabulous creature, referred to by Egyptologists as the Set animal or Typhonic beast, known as a Typhon, with a curved snout, square ears, forked tail, and canine body, or sometimes as a human with only the head of the Set animal. It has no complete resemblance to any known creature, although it could be seen as a composite of an aardvark, a donkey, a jackal. Some early Egyptologists proposed that it was a stylized representation of the giraffe due to the large flat-topped 'horns' which correspond to a giraffe's ossicones, but the Egyptians themselves distinguished between the giraffe and the Set animal. In the late period Set is depicted as an ass or with the head of an ass”.

*”When depicted in animal form, the god Seth is a very odd creature, with a long snout, short ears, and a pointy, upright tail. There have been many attempts to try to identify this creature with a known animal. The possibility remains that it is purely a mythological creature. To Egyptologists, it is known as ‘the Seth-animal.’”  

*[Seth is] “depicted with floppy ears and an erect and divided tail”.  

*”Set is represented as having the features of a fantastic beast with a thin, curved snout, straight, square-cut ears and a stiff forked tail. This creature cannot with certainty be identified and is commonly called the ‘Typhonian animal’. Sometimes Set is depicted as a man with the head of this strange quadruped.”

*”Seth’s bizarre appearance reflects his confusing nature. His human-form body is topped by a head that appears to combine the rounded snout of an aardvark (unknown to the ancient Egyptians) with curious, straight, flat-topped donkey ears. When represented in fully animal, four-legged form, he also displays a long neck, a dog-like body and an erect, curiously forked tail. It seems highly likely that this fantastic appearance is deliberately chaotic; composite deities such as Taweret might display a selection of body-parts culled from different species, but they are the recognizable parts of known animals, not of invented creatures. Nevertheless, Egyptologists have struggled valiantly to identify Seth’s component features: there is not enough space here to list all the suggestions, but the more imaginative include camel, long-nosed mouse, hare, antelope, pig, giraffe and boar.”

*If Seth (Set) was an ‘ancient astronaut’, by implication all his kin were too and by implication so were all the ancient Egyptian ‘gods’, and by implication the whole lot of the polytheistic ‘gods’