RE: Ancient Egypt Survey Boundary Stelae "Like the Sky" - LexiLine Journal 393

Dear Andis ,

What a wonderful presentation. The ancient Egyptians were so fortunate to have such wonderful skills in various fields and recorded them for posterity.

We also thank the painstaking research done by the scholars in unearthing such masterpieces and also to your sharing its beauty with us.

We hope you will share such wonderful knowledge with the readers , for a long time to come.

Thanks and

Regards M.S.Reddy

M.S.Reddy

The Nebra Sky Disk Revisited - LexiLine Journal 391

Although I have clearly deciphered the Nebra Sky Disk as marking a solar eclipse

- see http://www.megaliths.co.uk/nebraskydisk.pdf

there is no end to preposterous attempts by people with no experience in astronomical decipherment trying to come up with other solutions.

One of the more ridiculous attempts has now been presented here
http://archlsa.de/aktuelles/presse-daten/1LDA%20Halle.pdf
by counting the number of objects on the disk and claiming that this is signficant for calendration, which is nonsense. There is no precedent for this kind of confused calculation anywhere.

Modern astronomers think that ancient astronomers thought the way that they think today. Thankfully, that was not the case. People in ancient days had a clear, straightforward approach to things, both in their astronomy as well as in their art. The mangled, convoluted explanations proposed by mainstream astronomers are of our troubled and tangled era, and not of the era of nearly 4000 years ago.

We repeat that the decipherment of the Nebra Sky Disk is determined by the fact that the Sun is NOT in the solar boat, where it is found only by night, according to the clear evidence of the Latvian Dainas. Hence, the Nebra Sky Disk can only represent the day sky and thus it can only be the representation of an eclipse, since the stars, sun and moon are all visible at the same time.

On to the next mystery.

RE: England Ancient Astronomical Land Survey - LexiLine Journal 390

Here are the two comments that normally would have been admitted as moderated comments but did not get through due to faulty moderator settings which I have since corrected:

**********

From jmh150@yahoo.com

A point of curiosity--The ancients may have used these sites as
reference points but I would think that due to the distances involved
from site to site there "should" have been intermediate sites possibly
as yet undiscovered.
The question I would pose is --Have you ever interpolated between
monuments to predict a possible intermediate point consistent with the
logic that derives the far points? Possibly along ley lines or earth
longitudinal lines?
I enjoy your work--it expands one's thinking process.
Regards
JMH

**********

From wibliom@yahoo.co.uk

We're dovetailing in an excellent way here. I had an article published
in the Northern Earth journal about how the Cerne Giant is himself
based upon a pentagonal framework - which fits contextually with what
you are saying. I also have an article coming out soon which is a
summary of something I have been working on for about three years and
shows how the chalk figures of Cerne, Wilmington and the Whiteleaf
Cross in Bucks are part of an ancient Egyptian geodetic scheme based
on the concept of the Balance of the Two Lands which is primarily
geodetic/geometric and accounts also for the position of Memphis in
Egypt - will send articles soon!

**********

Here is my answer to Comment 1.

In making my analysis of the megaliths in the UK, I have restricted
the megalithic sites which I use for my analysis (with few exceptions)
to megaliths and megalithic sites which the Ordnance Survey map of
Ancient Britain (ISBN 0-319-29029-X) identify as being from the
"Neolithic Age".

My geodetic astronomical analysis accounts for many of these Neolithic
megalithic sites. You only have so many groups of stars in the heavens
and there are really few intermediary points between the
constellations, as the main groups of stars already mark the brightest
stars.

Besides, just as in land survey today - and I surveyed land while
still in college in the USA while working one summer for the Nebraska
State Surveyor's Office out in the field - your sightings are
temporary and only the corner stones are placed permanently. I do not
not doubt that there were intermediary stones but single megaliths
have often been moved from fields and their original locations so that
use of such singular or smaller stones is fraught with difficulty. We
already have enough trouble proving that the large megalithic sites -
most of which are still demonstrably in situ - were used as I allege
they were used. As a result, I shy away from "intermediary" locations.

**********

Here is my answer to Comment 2.

Yes, the pentagonal form around the Cerne Giant is of interest.
I will be interested to see your articles on that and related subject.

Midsummer Hill from the Air - LexiLine Journal 389

At Multimap.com select as country (left menu frame) Great Britain & NI and then enter the location SO760377 in the box under "GB postcode or place"

This will give you a nearly blank map with a red circle

Then click "Aerial" in the menu above that circle and you will get an aerial photo of the area.

Move the zoom out to 1:25,000
and then move your mouse so that the transparent rectangle moves over this location
and you will see the underlying overlay map showing the outlines of Midsummer Hill

Lost Knowledge and the Hermetic Tradition - LexiLine Journal 388

In connection with Midsummer Hill and the Center of Ancient Britain, I have received a post regarding "lost knowledge".

Athough it is clear that many still-existing religious locations were built on top of ancient pagan sites to "replace" the old beliefs, I am very sceptical about the idea of "lost knowledge" being carried forward by the moderns. How woud they know about it in the absence of records? We have no evidence of oral tradition, except in legend and mythology. After all, even the Hellenistic tradition of Gods is astronomical but came down to us as myth .

My own view is a straight-forward one. I think you had a people in ancient days - a small group of seafaring priests - who had some rudimentary mathematical knowledge and applied that knowledge to rudimentary astronomy and land survey. At some point in history, this knowledge was lost in northern Europe because that culture had no developed writing system and all that survived were ancient legends and myths, carried forward over millennia, e.g. in Ancient Britain, the tales of Merlin and King Arthur, which I am sure reach back to megalithic days.

I see my task to continue to try to prove how the ancients did their astronomically-based geodetic measurements and to get others interested in this quest.

Essentially we are talking here about the hermetic tradition - as on Earth, so in Heaven, or, more accurately, as in Heaven, so on Earth. In days before writing, you could not go down to the local store and buy maps. Still, people had to be able to get around on land and to navigate by sea. Hence, the ancients took a "fixed known map" - the map of the heavens, which was not only freely available but in ancient days probably known by most everyone - and then used that map - projected on the Earth - as a model for mapping the Earth below. Anyone having knowledge of the heavenly stars could thus find his way around on Earth by means of the megaliths, which served both as boundaries and landmarks.

We find the following written about Hermes at Gnosis.org :

"The name Hermes appears to have originated in the word for "stone heap." Probably since prehistoric times there existed in Crete and in other Greek regions a custom or erecting a herma or hermaion consisting of an upright stone surrounded at its base by a heap of smaller stones. Such monuments were used to serve as boundaries or as landmarks for wayfarers."

In Gaelic tradition it is known that heavenly locations had their earthly counterparts, although this knowledge is now submerged in Gaelic myth.

When I view the megaliths, the hermetic explanation is the only logical explanation for the existence of the most ancient megalithic sites, and I am very surprised that mainstream scientists "don't get it". The archaeologists are too busy digging up old pots (their principle seems to be that truth is only found underground) and the telescope-spoiled astronomers involved with the history of astronomy summarily reject anything which takes away from the glamour of modern astrophysics (as if modern astronomers seem to fail to understand that everything, including astronomy and physics, had humble origins, and that the origins of astronomy were inextricably tied in with what we today might call horoscopy or astrology). Both camps prefer overly modern convoluted, complex explanations for things which in my view were quite simple in ancient times.

Midsummer Hill and Shire Ditch - LexiLine Journal 387

I read the following at the English Heritage website in writing about the Malvern Hills:

"One of the most significant and exciting results of our research has been a complete re-assessment of the origins of the 'Shire Ditch', also known as 'Red Earl's Dyke', a boundary earthwork which runs along the crest of the hills. According to the history textbooks, the accepted story is that this earthwork was built by Gilbert de Clare, the 'Red Earl' of Gloucester, in about 1287, during a boundary dispute with the Bishop of Hereford. Careful examination and survey of the form of this earthwork and, more particularly, of its relationship with the defensive ramparts of the prehistoric hillfort on Midsummer Hill tells a very different story, however [emphasis added]. To the north of the hillfort, the Shire Ditch seems to have been built in two separate phases. While one phase overlies the ramparts, and must therefore post-date them (as expected), the other phase underlies them, and must therefore be of earlier origin. In other words, the Shire Ditch, or at least part of it, must be prehistoric - possibly dating to the late Bronze Age (about 1000 BC). The 'Red Earl', it seems, just refurbished an existing boundary earthwork, rather than starting from scratch....

The relationship of the Shire Ditch to the other hillfort on the Malverns, known as 'British Camp', is not so clear. There is no sign of an earlier phase to the Ditch here. Nevertheless, the discovery that the Shire Ditch may be of much earlier date than has previously been realised does have implications for understanding the story of the medieval 'ringwork' castle which crowns British Camp."

That passage confirms that it was Midsummer Hill that was the older of the ancient sites in the Malverns, and Midsummer Hill does in fact fit in better with the survey data as marking the center of Ancient Britain.

We refer in this connection to Moel-Bryn & the Eastnor Vale , a blog which is devoted to:
"The geology, history, folklore, superstitions, tales and images of the Malvern Hills and Eastnor vale." We refer particularly to the posting on "Midsummer Camp, Hollybush Hill & Dyn Mawr ".

On the English grid map, Midsummer Hill is found at SO760375 which can be accessed
at the wonderful geographic photographic site at

http://www.geograph.org.uk

Herefordshire Revisited - Center of England - LexiLine Journal 386

Due to a recent exchange of posts with a reader of my web pages, I have largely rewritten http://www.megaliths.net/kingsstone.htm as follows:

The King Stone at the Rollright Stones (the Rollrights) is one of the most remarkable of all the megaliths in Ancient Britain. Mainstream archaeologists have claimed that the King Stone at the Rollrights has its funny shape because souvenir gatherers had chipped many pieces from it. What a foolish explanation, and how greatly lacking in actual observation of the stone. Many websites, books and news articles about the King Stone, the Rollright Stones and the Whispering Knights just gullibly repeat such foolish tales, showing a puzzling lack of critical judgment which is, however, necessary to have in order to view the King Stone, the Rollright Stones and the Whispering Knights objectively - or, for that matter - to view any megaliths.

Most likely is that some mainstream archaeologists have become psychologically confused by the name of the nearby inhabitations, "Chipping" Norton and Chipping Campden.

But of course the shape of the King Stone has nothing to do with people chipping pieces from it.

The shape of the King Stone megalith is intended to be in the basic form in which it is found today. The King Stone is carved in relief as birds of various kinds, depending upon the angle from which the King Stone is viewed. In fact, in spite of its great age (ca. 3000 BC), the King Stone is a masterpiece of Stone Age art.

As we have discovered, the King Stone at the Rollright Stones represents the star Deneb in Cygnus in the ancient survey of Britain by astronomy and the Rollright Stones represent Cygnus (our current constellation of the Swan) generally. This megalithic site is located on a line which runs through Midsummer Hill (the Center of Heaven - near Wynd's Point) to Arthur's Stone, Dorstone, which in turn marks the stars of Boötes [Arthur = Arcturus] on the other side of Heaven's center. When we wrote our book, Stars Stones and Scholars, there were no usable photos availabe of Arthur's Stone Dorstone, at least, I had none and found nothing useful online. Now, we see that there are good, large photos available at http://www.wyenot.com/arthurstn01.htm.

That group of stones clearly represents the stars of Boötes with the size (width) of the stones under the capstone perhaps showing the relative brightness of the outer perimeter of stars of that constellation. What is especially great about the Arthur's Stone, Dorstone megalithic site is that it is unusual in containing additional stones inside the outer perimeter, directly under the capstone. These of course are the prominent stars in the middle of the Boötes constellation, a rare phenomenon among the constellations. From the side, Arthur's Stone, Dorstone, looks to us like a bird on eggs (?), i.e. those stones in the middle directly under the capstone.

Midsummer Hill is right next to Wynd'sPoint (the Winding Point ?) and to Herefordshire Beacon, any of which potentially marked the center of the survey of ancient Britain, each perhaps in a different era (?), being separted from one another by just a few miles. I am currently in contact with someone who appears to be very good at surveying calculations and thus far Midsummer Hill is the closest to such a calculated central point. All three locations give evidence of having been important in ancient days.



To get the above figure, one merely has to place a compass on that central point in the map and run a circle with a radius at Land's End in Cornwall and this will cut Hadrian's Wall (Eridanus) exactly. If there was a direct line running from the King Stone (Deneb) at the Rollright Stones (Cygnus) to Arthur's Stone (Boötes), Dorstone, then the ancients at that time must have seen the center of heaven as marked by Draco, and indeed, as we have written in our book Stars Stones and Scholars at p. 113

"The top of Herefordshire Beacon is known as the iron age "British Camp" with its center at the 'Citadel' which as we have discovered marked the North Ecliptic Pole in the Neolithic Survey of Ancient Britain. The British Camp is the oldest such "camp" in Britain. At the south end of the camp is Clutter's Cav (6 feet wide, 6 feet high and 10 feet deep, hollowed out of volcanic rock), thought - erroneously - by mainstream scholars to be associated with solar worship. In fact, as we have discovered, Clutter's Cave marks the North Celestial Pole, i.e. the Pole Star...."

The drawing below is based on No Through Road, the AA Book of Country Walks, Walk 117, where an aerial view of the British Camp is presented



Given that preliminary discussion, we can fully appreciate the magnificent art of the King Stone at the Rollright Stones, which must be about 5000 to 6000 years old, as we calculate a date of anywhere from 3800 B.C. to 2300 B.C. for the ancient survey, having provisionally selected 3117 B.C. However, dates back to 3800 B.C. have been suggested at the Rollrights by the archaeologists, which would also match some of the oldest dates suggested for the related site of Wayland's Smithy. The King Stone represents Deneb in the group of stars known today as Cygnus, the Swan. The ancients would not necessarily have seen groups of stars just as we do today, but their groupings would probably have been similar in many cases, since such groupings are guided by the brightest stars in the heavens, and these have surely not changed much.

Looked at from the thin side of the King Stone (the photo below), the thin wavy form of the King Stone megalith clearly shows the head and beak of a bird, we think it is a goose (see the "side view" in the drawing below - not likely to be a swan's head).
The beak shows upward at the top of the King Stone and has a typical bump like a goose's beak.

Looked at from the wide side-front the entire King Stone megalith is carved as the head of an eagle and a smaller bird head can also be seen carved at the top.




From the side-back (see the drawing above the photograph, at the small insert to the right), the King Stone megalith at the Rollright Stones represents a young chick. Moreover, the King Stone megalith, in addition to showing as cupmarks the carved main stars of Cygnus, which it represents in the geodetic astronomical system, it perhaps also shows the stars of Cepheus, Lacerta, Cassiopeia, Pegasus and Aquila carved into the stone.



When we were at the Rollrights in 2002, we discovered that there are remnants of a circle of stones around the King Stone at the cardinal directions, marked in red in the above photograph of the King Stone (that is the author in the photo).

We also stepped off the distances to the degree that field conditions and in part imposing fences allowed and found the following triangulation (provisional result - the site should be surveyed properly to see if the triangulation is true):



In addition, the King Stone is 44 kilometers from Uffington Castle and the White Horse and the site of Wayland's Smithy nearby, which marks the stars of Andromeda in the ancient survey by astronomy of Ancient Britian.

See in this regard megaliths.net at Wayland's Smithy http://www.megaliths.net/wayland1.htm
We are not sure, however, whether the Wayland's Smithy megalithic site points to the Pole Star (i.e. the North Celestial Pole) or to the North Ecliptic Pole, something that could be determined by survey.

This knowledge is, in our view, the key to understanding the ancient survey of Ancient Britain.

Photographs copyright © 2002 by Andis Kaulins
Note that both "King Stone" and "Kings Stone" are variants in megalithic sources but that King Stone appears to have become the official name.

Go to
The Rollright Virgo Stone
The Probable Rollright Survey Triangulation
Fallen Stones at the Rollrights
The Circle of Rollright Stones
King Stone
Whispering Knights
Rollright Stones Entrance

England Ancient Astronomical Land Survey - LexiLine Journal 385

I recently received a letter which stated as follows: "Cheers. I like the site. Was it you put a dodecagon round Wynd's Point tied to Newgrange and Long Man of Wlimington?"

Here was my answer (slightly amended from the original):

The answer to your question is yes.

As you know, the pioneer in this field was ley line hunter Alfred Watkins, who wrote the book, The Old StraightTrack.

In my work, I first showed how a pentagon (five-sided polygon) and a decagon (ten-sided polygon) may have been used in ancient days for surveying.

I followed this with analysis by dodecagonal divisions (twelve-sided) as well.

AT http://www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi205.htm I wrote under the title The Pentagon, Pythagoras, Scotland & Triangulations:

"Angus and Patricia MacDonald, write in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland, Weidenfeld & Nicolson,Great Britian, Rizzoli International, New York, 1991 (p. 48 of the international edition):

"[Groups of stones in Scotland] point to the existence of a Neolithic people who had developed a sophisticated mathematics which was in advance of those of contemporary Mediterranean cultures. They may also have been aware of the properties of the right-angled triangle many hundreds of years before Pythagoras propounded his famous theorem."

Triangulations and the Pentagon

This Pentagon shows how the ancients produced Golden Sections (ratio of 1.618) for surveying - by geometric means.

An Extended Surveyor´s Triangulation

This triangulation was used for Ancient Geodetic Survey.



The Triangulation at Salisbury Plain

Figure turned to show Salisbury Plain triangulation.


and at http://www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi233.htm I wrote:

"The Legend of King Arthur: The Prehistoric Survey

KING ARTHUR and the relation to GEODETIC SURVEY

The Name King ARTHUR is probably rooted in an Indo-European term found in Hindi ARTI and Sanskrit ARATRIKA, signifying rites of honor for men or gods; celebrated by circling a lighted lamp (fire) three times in a clockwise direction with protection given "by the deities of the directions of the compass". See the Encylcopaedia Britannica under "arti".

This ancient feast is similar to the "3-times around" feast of the early Pharaohs of Egypt and the thrice-around "threshing feast" of the Indo-European Latvians in the Dainas:

In the Latvian "rotala games" [ROT-ala = ARIT] (Dainas, Vol. 11, p. 546) "rot-ational games" relating to the Sun, Moon [and Pleiades] the participants stand in a line and chase each other thrice around in a circle [just as in the feast of Narmer, first king of Egypt, see p. 19, Clayton's Chronicle of the Pharaohs, German version] the leader carrying a stick with a braided cloth end [torch?] or live blossoms on it trying to catch up to the last person in the round."

If ARTHUR relates to a feast of the deities of the directions of the compass, then King Arthur´s Twelve Knights were 12 divisions of the heavens, perhaps also marked hermetically on a map of the Earth. Can we find the MID-POINT of such a circle on Great Britain, as would it correspond to the Heavens?

Let us take the official British Ordnance Survey historical map and guide of Ancient Britain, on which we find "Peddars Way", lines possibly of an outer circumference of a circle. Where would the "mid-point" of that circle be??

The possible importance of "Wynd's Point" to the UK was shown by me at http://www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi234.htm

The Geodetic Center of England and Wales at Wynd's Point

The Mid-Point Center (for Britain) of the Round Table of King Arthur was at Midsummer Hill and WYND'S POINT near Great Malvern and the Herefordshire Beacon.

This gives results shown below as "Knights of the Round Table although "nights ?" (sectioning the night-sky ecliptic of the Zodiac) or "knots" (surveyors crossings) probably is closer to the original term than "knights", which gave rise to the legends of King Arthur, who probably existed, albeit far, far further back in time than currently assumed.

However, that diagram is more of a possible hypothesis than anything that I had measured directly, nor do I have the requisite maps or resources to do such measurements exactly. I merely point to these things as measurements that professional surveyors should check to see if the ancients might in fact have done such triangulations.

A more widespread triangulation with a dodecagonal trianguation involving the mr triangulation, the Long Man and New Grange is takn from http://www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi228.htm.

The extension of this measurement line to Teotihuacan may be pushing the hypothesis a bit far, but I thought the ancients might have done this, so I think it is OK to refer to this possibility. Robin Heath in his book Sun, Moon and Stonehenge has an independenty derived but similar line which he has running through Preseli, the quarry for the Stonehenge bluestones, but I think that line is not quite correct, although his book is good. Beyond being a quarry, Preseli was surely not a geodetic marker. David Furlong in The Keys to the Temple also struggles with ancient triangulations in the UK. There is also a book by Danny Sullivan called Ley Lines. All of these books proceed from the basic hypothesis that the ancients were measuring the landscape in some manner, probably by astronomy, which I am sure is true.

Jeffers Petroglyphs Minnesota Americas Ancient Survey - LexiLine Journal 384

To our LexiLine Files I have added a new graphic that I have prepared on the Jeffers Petroglyphs of Minnesota and their position in the ancient survey of the Americas.

See
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LexiLine/files/North%20America%20-%20USA%20Canada/

I had previously not been aware of the Jeffers Petroglyphs and herewith thank an anonyomous reader who recently alerted me to the existence of this large and highly interesting rock art site.

As you can see from the uploaded graphic, there is little doubt according to my analysis that the Jeffers Petroglyphs are an integral part of the land survey by astronomy of the Americas in prehistoric days.

As I have discovered, this site in Minnesota forms a Pythagorean isosceles triangle with the Miami Circle in Florida and with Altata (Culiacan) in Mexico where the measuring marker may have been the giant mound of El Umbligo near Guasave, although this is not certain.

Both the Miami Circle and Altata (Culiacan, El Umbligo near Guasave) are cardinal corner triangulation points on my previously published map of that ancient survey. See in this regard page 373 of my book, Stars Stones and Scholars http://www.trafford.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-000167707 and see also the map at megaliths.net
http://www.megaliths.net/northamericasurvey.htm).

When I write Pythagorean, I mean that the surveying angles used for triangulation by the ancients are those which result from the basic angles in a pentagon, see http://www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi205.htm

These angles for the Jeffers Petroglyphs in combination with the Miami Circle and Altata are 54 degrees at each lower corner for a total of 108 degrees and 72 degrees at the top for a total of 180 degrees. (Note that these are also the angles which were used to build the pyramids of Egypt, which surely also marked ancient geodetic survey by the stars.)

One side of that triangle is formed by a line that runs from Altata to Clovis, New Mexico,
http://archaeology.about.com/od/mesolithicarchaic/a/archaicwells.htm
the oldest of all known ancient US prehistoric sites, to the Jeffers Petroglyphs. Clovis is exactly half-way on that line. But this could be chance since nothing on that line can be regarded as a marker with certainty.

The other side of that triangle is formed by a line that runs from the Miami Circle through Cahokia, Illinois, the largest of all known ancient US prehistoric sites and runs to the Jeffers Petroglyphs. That is surely not chance since all of these are important ancient sites. See http://www.cahokiamounds.com/cahokia.html

For good measure, the 90 degree perpendicular from Altata runs through Cahokia directly to the Peterborough Petroglyphs in Canada, forming a 90 degree angle with the Jeffers Petroglyphs and the Miami Circle. Also that can not be chance.

In addition to that, the Peterborough Petroglyphs are at almost the same exact latitude as the Jeffers Petroglyphs, which in turn are exactly 15 degrees of longitude removed from the Miami Circle. And that, for certain, is not chance, but is an intentional measurement of 1/24h (one -twentyfourth) of the Earth's 360-degree circumference.

In order to interpret the Jeffers Petroglyphs completely I need a complete map of the site with petroglyphs in their resepctive locations, i.e. a map such as http://www.megaliths.net/peterborough.htm. However, I have no such map, so that if anyone comes across one in a book or publication, please let me know. Thank you.

I see regarding the Jeffers Petroglyphs that an Ioway has already suggested that the Jeffers Petroglpyhs represent the stars. But of course that interpretation is surely correct, tied in with the use of astronomy for land survey.

http://www.ajmiller.net/images/4thJuly2002/20020706-jeffers-petroglyphs/HPIM0038.JPG

I am also working on an article about just who these ancient surveyors were, but that will take some time yet.