David Rohl

 David introduced the theme of Atlantis, showing that the view of the academic community that its location was either an island in the Mediterranean or a site on the Turkish mainland is deeply flawed. Following the arguments presented in the Introduction to my new book GATEWAY TO ATLANTIS, he pointed out that there are clear references in Plato’s works the TIMAEUS and CRITIAS, written c. 350 BC, to places located on the western Atlantic seaboard. They include somewhere referred to as the Opposite Continent, which lay beyond the Atlantic Ocean (seemingly a reference to the Americas), the Shallow or Impassable Sea of mud shoals (the Sargasso Sea and Bahaman shallows) and `other islands’ (perhaps islands on the western Atlantic seaboard). There are clear indications therefore that in describing his island paradise Plato was in fact alluding to someone in the vicinity of the Caribbean Sea. David proposed that we try taking Plato at his word and assume that when he said that Atlantis was located in the Atlantic Ocean, he actually meant the Atlantic Ocean.

Yet accepting the reality of Atlantis comes with certain stigmas that have thwarted Atlantean research since the publication of Ignatius Donnelly’s book ATLANTIS: THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD in 1882. One is the idea that Atlanteans founded Egyptian civilisation around 10,500 BC – a date promoted by Bauval, Hancock, West, etc., as the zero point for the original ground-plan of the Giza plateau. David pointed out that while there is no hardcore evidence to link the monuments of Giza was such an early time-frame, there is ample evidence to suppose that the Sphinx, the Sphinx temple, the Khafre causeway, and the Valley and Mortuary Temples of Khafre do not conform to the Fourth Dynasty building phase which includes the three main pyramids. The positioning of these structures, the weathering of the Sphinx and the various core walls of the megalithic temples and the nature of their construction using blocks up to 100 tonnes a piece are all sure indications that parts of the necropolis predate the Fourth Dynasty. He spoke too of the Inventory Stela found during excavations in a small structure called the House of Isis, found near the Great Pyramid. It speaks of Khufu making repairs to the Sphinx, even though the structure is conventionally believed to have been carved at the instigation of his successor Khafre around 2550 BC. Conventional Egyptologists dismiss the evidence presented by the stela since it dates only to the Twenty-sixth dynasty, c. 600-500 BC, the so-called Saite period when kings ruled from the Nile Delta city of Sais. However, it is most probably a copy of a much older text that goes back to Old Kingdom times. Even if the inscription does only date to the Saite period, why should the priests have spoken of Khufu repairing the Sphinx when they would surely have known that it was constructed by Khafre? There is a clear mystery here - one which I was pleased to see an Egyptologist of David Rohl’s calibre take on board.

Drawing heavily on the work of Cambridge Egyptologist Kate Spence, David showed how the precession of the equinoxes can help us to determine the exact age of the Great Pyramid. The descending shafts of each pyramid were aligned to true north by the original architects using the position in the sky of the circumpolar stars, most partcularly Alpha Draconis. Yet due to the slow movement of the stars through the phenomenon of precession, the alignments of each individual shaft varies in accordance with the date it was constructed. Having studied all the main pyramids of the Old Kingdom period, Kate Spence has been able to determine that they were built in the time-frame allotted to them by conventional Egyptologists. When it comes to the Great Pyramid calculations made by Spence suggest that it was constructed around 2550 BC, making it a few years younger than has previously been thought. Yet such a date conforms very well with Bauval’s own calculations for the construction date of the Great Pyramid which he places around 2560 BC. Findings of this nature show convincingly that the ground-plans of the Giza pyramids could not have been laid out around 10,500 BC, as has been proposed by Bauval et al, or that they were the product of Atlantean settlers during this same time-frame.

What then was Egypt’s true relationship to Atlantis? This was a matter I addressed in my own lecture which followed next…