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7,000-YEAR OLD CITY FOUND IN EGYPT
A Report by Andrew Collins
Map of the Faiyum Oasis, showing the Birket Qarun lake and the site of Karanis beyond its east-north-eastern shoreline.
Egypt's prehistoric city is arguably one of the most extraordinary and far-reaching discoveries in the country for decades. That Egypt possessed elements of a high culture going back to Neolithic times has long been surmised. The advanced microblade technologies and rock art of the Nilotic peoples in southern Egypt, along with the 6,800-year-old astronomically aligned stone calendar circle of Nabta Playa in the western desert, all demonstrate that something special was going on here long before the rise of the first pharaoh in around 3100 BC. However, the implications of the Neolithic city of Karanis are far reaching, and might prove difficult for Egyptologists to take on board.
The SCA announcement this week states that among the 'artefacts' of the city are 'walls' and 'houses' of 'dressed limestone'.
Houses of dressed limestone! This is one hell of a statement …
The Egyptology News website goes further claiming that there are 'settlement structures made of mudbrick and decorated blocks of granite.'
One of the reasons why Egyptologists are unable to accept that any monuments on the plateau at Giza are older than Egypt's Old Kingdom period, c. 2600 BC, is that the use of stone masonry in building construction evolved from humble beginnings just a few hundred years earlier.
Now, however, with the discovery of the Neolithic city of Karanis, Egyptologists will have to come to terms with the fact that 'dressed limestone', and seemingly even 'decorated blocks of granite', was being used in Egypt to build walls as much as 2,000 years earlier than previously thought. This realisation also makes it likely that more substantial stone structures, such as temples with boundary walls, were being constructed long before the advent of the first stone-lined tombs and mastabas of the Early Dynastic period. c. 3100-2700 BC.
The use of 'decorated blocks of granite' within the Neolithic city is something that becomes virtually impossible to believe, until confirmation of exactly what has been found is announced by the SCA. However, if the reports are correct, then their presence immediately brings to mind the decorated walls of some of the earliest cities of Mesopotamia, such as Eridu in Lower Iraq, dating to c. 5500 BC, or even the high relief birds, animals and insects carved on the stone pillars and T-shaped standing stones found amid the cult complexes of Gobekli Tepe and Nevali Cori in southeast Turkey, which date back to c. 9500-8000 BC.
In addition to these facts, we have also to conclude that by the commencement of the Pyramid age Egyptian stone masons were able to draw upon a tradition of building construction in dressed stone that was already thousands of years old. Thus a gradual evolution in style and size from more simple stone walls and houses in 5200 BC might easily have led to the creation of pyramids some 2,500 years later.
Most amazing of all about the Faiyum Oasis's Neolithic city is that its settlement structures were, according to the Egyptology News website, found to have been covered by a layer of calcium carbonate, indicating that the city has spent some time beneath the waters of the Birket Qarun lake, which today is much smaller than it was as antiquity's Lake Moeris, which was more like an inland sea.
Map showing the location of the Faiyum basin.
No one knows the full extent, or true age, of the Neolithic city in the Faiyum, which might prove to be larger and even older than the estimates so far, but it is now right to start asking whether the prehistoric city builders of the Faiyum Oasis were active a little further north in the area of Giza pyramid field, some 40 miles (65 kms) away.
Neolithic chert and flint tools have been found on the slopes of the Maadi rock formation immediately south of the Pyramids, hinting at the possibility of very early settlements in this area. On top of this, several examples of funerary pots belonging to the prehistoric Maadi-Buto culture, that thrived c. 3500-3200 BC, have been uncovered at sites in and around Giza, including one close to the Sphinx. Thus there is every reason to begin looking again at the evolution of the Giza plateau to see whether its more familiar monuments emerged as a result of much earlier activity stemming from the age of Egypt's oldest city.
Does the Neolithic city of Karanis help us better understand mysteries that have so far eluded the spade of the archaeologist? What about the age of the Sphinx, the hunt for the Hall of Records, the search for Atlantis, or the Watchers and Nephilim? What can the discovery of the city tell us about these and other enigmas of the past? Andrew Collins answers those questions that are going to be asked.
Does the Neolithic city confirm that Giza's Sphinx monument is older than previously thought?
No, not at all. Sound geological clues demonstrate that the weathering of its body, as well as that of the surrounding enclosure walls, were caused primarily by sand erosion and water run off, following heavy rain storms over a very long period of time. Such rain storms have been occurring on and off in Egypt for the last 10,000 years, so this knowledge cannot in itself provide an true age for the construction of the Sphinx.
Theories put forward by Egyptological writer John Anthony West, working with Boston geologist Dr Robert Schoch, proposing that the water erosion on the body of the Sphinx proves that it is thousands of years older than its conventional dating of 2550 BC remains unconfirmed. The existence of the Neolithic city at Karanis only provides for a high culture in northern Egypt as early as 5200 BC, with the ability to cut and dress limestone and granite. Nothing here yet suggests that these 'first farmers' were in the habit of carving leonine monuments 240 feet long! That said, see below for more on this topic.
Does the city help us find the Egyptian Hall of Records of Edgar Cayce?
The American psychic Edgar Cayce predicted in the 1930s that beneath the sands of the Giza plateau existed a 'Hall of Records', an underground complex used as a repository of knowledge for an antediluvian civilisation. He spoke of the Sphinx marking its entrance, and of its discovery in some future generation.
An underground complex of this nature is certainly alluded in ancient Egyptian records, such as the Edfu Building Texts and Coffin Texts, and within the writings of Roman and Arab travellers. Further stories of underground cities at Giza have been preserved among the inhabitants of nearby villages. However, confirmation of the existence of this structure still eludes us, as does any specifics regarding its possible nature or age. If it does exist, and does predate the Pyramid age, then the discovery of the Neolithic city at Karanis might well provide a realistic framework for the construction of the Hall of Records. It is very likely that underground structures await discovery at Giza, and if so then they probably do date back to this epoch, and might well have been carved out in Neolithic times.
Does the existence of the city help prove that Atlantis existed, and that its survivors ended up in Egypt?
No, this is far removed from what little evidence has been released so far on the Neolithic city. Plato's Atlantis is likely to have been a memory of an island landmass devastated by earthquakes and floods caused by the fragmentation of a comet over North America at the end of the last Ice Age. Its survivors most probably reached the Central American mainland, where they lived to tell the tale. However, until evidence emerges to suggest otherwise, there is no reason to conclude that any survivors reached the African continent, or were responsible for the Faiyum's Neolithic city.
Who might have built and inhabited the Neolithic city of Karanis?
Egyptologists suggest that those who constructed the Neolithic city were among Egypt's 'first farmers'. This alludes to the first accepted agriculturists who began settling in the Faiyum Oasis around 5500 BC. They came from Palestine and the Sinai and were descended from a people known as the Natufians, a semi-nomadic peoples who thrived in the Levant (Palestine, Lebanon and Syria), where they emerged on to the scene around 14,500 year ago, and stayed around until around 10,000 years ago. Interestingly, the so-called Helwan point, a particular type of stone tool found at Neolithic sites in Egypt, has been discovered at much earlier Natufian settlements stretching as far north as Syria, and only in the past 15 years examples have been found at the Pre-pottery Neolithic (PPN) settlement of Nevali Cori, near Urfa in southeast Turkey, which dates to c. 8400 BC. This shows a line of transmission of stone blade technology that most probably began in southeast Turkey and spread eventually to the Nile Valley.
Early Natufian peoples were accomplished stone masons, responsible for the construction of the Neolithic city of Jericho, with its famous stone defensive tower built sometime between 8350 BC to 7370 BC. Agriculture in this region goes back to 12,000 BP (before present), although the key nerve centre for the spread of advanced technology in the Near East was unquestionably southeast Turkey, where Pre-pottery Neolithic sites such as Gobekli Tepe and Nevali Cori catalysed an unprecedented epoch of art, architecture and technological advancement on a level not seen before.
Thus the most likely builders of the Karanis Neolithic city were Natufian settlers from Palestine, who had migrated to Egypt between 5500 and 5000 BC. Extensive evidence of their presence was first uncovered in the Faiyum Oasis during the 1900s by the grand daddy of Egyptology William Flinders Petrie (1853-1942). His work there was followed in the 1920s by that of the British Egyptologist Gertrude Caton-Thompson (1889-1985).This said, the Neolithic settlements of the Faiyum Oasis have never before included roads, walls and houses of terracotta and dressed limestone, as well as 'dressed blocks of granite', and so some more advanced elite or ruling dynasty might have been responsible for the creation of an organised society unique to Egypt. They are likely to have been seen as Egypt's first rulers, or 'kings', a tantalising possibility since ancient Egyptian records speak of an age when gods ruled Egypt, prior to the rule of an age of demigods, known as the Shemsu-hor ('Followers of Horus'). Only after this time rose the first pharaoh around 3100 BC. Were the ruling elite of Karanis the god-kings or demi-gods of ancient Egyptian legend? This now becomes a very likely scenario indeed.Yet if the Neolithic city of Karanis is of post-Natufian construction, then it is as well to remember that it was these people who were responsible for the building of the city of Jericho 2,500 years beforehand. Writer Michael Baigent in his book ANCIENT TRACES (1998) speculated that it was descendents of Natufian peoples from Palestine that were responsible for the construction of the Sphinx, a theory that now becomes very attractive indeed.
Could anyone else have constructed the Neolithic city at Karanis?
The best bet so far is that it was founded by a ruling elite attached to the Natufian culture. However, there might well have been an influence from Lower Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), long thought to have had a hand in the establishment of dynastic Egypt. Among the earliest cities there were those of Eridu, c. 5500 BC, and Uruk, c. 4400 BC. Their builders used stone and mudbrick walls, and so there might have been some influence on those responsible for the construction of the Karanis city during roughly the same epoch.There might also have been an influence from the south, via the peoples of the Sahara, which then experienced an equatorial climate like that of Kenya today; the onset of the desert only coming sometime around 4,500-5,000 years ago. Here was situated the land of Yam, which is known to have traded with Egypt through until Old Kingdom times. Along this trade route might have come peoples from as far away as Mali, where today thrives the Dogon peoples, who unquestionably preserve ancient cosmological knowledge that is unique and difficult to interpret in modern terms.
In addition to this, those peoples responsible for the construction around 4800 BC of the stone calendar circle at Nabta Playa in the Western Desert of southern Egypt might also have come into contact with the builders of the Neolithic city of Karanis. If so, then we might expect to find here further calendar circles reflecting the astronomical influences found at Nabta, which include a profound interest in the stars of Orion and Sirius.It is also possible that there are links with the Nilotic peoples of southern Egypt, who in Palaeolithic times left behind beautiful cave art at places such as Qurta, near Kom Ombo. As early as 13,000 BC they are suspected of having a primitive form of agriculture (although this is hotly contested), and so they might have spread their influence through to Karanis in northern Egypt. This, however, seems less likely at this time, with the descendents of the Natufians of Palestine and the Near East being the best candidates by far for the building of the city.
Might the city have been ruled by descendents of the Watchers and Nephilim of the book of Genesis and the book of Enoch?
Egypt's Neolithic city would have possessed a ruling elite, a dynasty of individuals, who were most probably among the country's earliest rulers, or kings. If they were of Natufian stock, then it is possible that this elite were descendents of those who constructed the Pre-pottery Neolithic cult complexes of Gobekli Tepe and Nevali Cori in southeast Turkey, which was the site of the biblical Garden of Eden. The Watchers, and their ledendary offspring the Nephilim, are said to have lived in 'Eden', and there is overwhelming evidence that they were in fact a shamanic or ruling elite attached to southeast Turkey's earliest cult centres. The descendents of these earliest Neolithic peoples of the Near East were also responsible for Catal Huyuk, the ancient world's oldest city near Konya, in southern-central Turkey. It dates to c. 7000-5500 BC, and here we find depictions of its priestly or ruling elite as shamans in coats made from the feathers of the vulture, a bird associated with the transmigration of the soul into the afterlife.It is possible that similar influences might have permeated through the Natufian peoples into Egypt, c. 5500 BC, meaning that, yes, the descendents of the Watchers and Nephilim might well have constituted the ruling elite of Karanis's Neolithic city. Once again, it is important to recall the origins of the Helwan point, which was first used by those who built the Pre-pottery Neolithic site of Nevali Cori, c. 8400-8000 BC, but ended up being in the tool kit of the Neolithic peoples of Egypt some 3000-4000 years later. This demonstrates clearly a line of transmission from southeast Turkey, the biblical land of Eden, to ancient Egypt.
Where can I find out more about Egypt's Neolithic city?
I am sure that before long the nature of importance to the origins of Egyptian civilisation will be discussed on many online forums dealing with the subjects of Egyptology and ancient mysteries. I will provide updates on this subject as and when they become available. Please don't assume I will see them, either. If you notice anything yourself online, or in print, or you come across any information that might throw further light on this extraordinary discovery, please email me by clicking here.
In the meantime, I suggest checking out the following online forums for further news:
Hall of Maat http://thehallofmaat.com/index.php
Graham Hancock forum http://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/default.htm
Guardian's Egypt Discussion Board http://egyptologist.org/cgi-bin/discus/discus.cgi
Don't forget to tell them where you read about this first.
Further reading
A Collins FROM THE ASHES OF ANGELS
A Collins GODS OF EDEN
A Collins THE CYGNUS MYSTERYM Baigent ANCIENT TRACES
R Bauval THE SECRET CHAMBER
M Lehner THE COMPLETE PYRAMIDSR Schoch VOICES OF THE ROCKS
J A West SIGNS IN THE SKY
