egabriel's blog

Even with the invention of printing

Yet, there was another reason for the loss of all those invaluable scrolls. Generally, papyrus scrolls don’t last more than a couple of centuries. Those scrolls that were chosen not to be copied on parchment  during the times of Christianity did not survive.

Even with the invention of printing European hand-written manuscript writing kept on going for another century. Printing was expensive and not accessible for everybody at those times.  Each time when a copy of a document was created more and more errors were introduced with each copy. That is why, specialists have to compare different versions of the same document to figure out the most authentic parts of a document.  As for private and governmental documents, they remained handwritten until the invention of the typewriter in the 19th century.

First ancient manuscripts

Originally, all documents and books were written by hand.  This type of manuscripts lasted until the invention of printing in China in the 7th century and later in Europe in about 1450.  The material used for hand-written ancient manuscripts differed depending on the geographical location.  The ones that were preserved till our days included papyrus, various parchments, and even palm leaves and birch bark documents.

First ancient manuscripts were discovered in Egyptian tombs and mausoleums. They were either located inside the sarcophagi or even reused as  mummy wrappings.  Archeologists and adventurers were discovering scrolls of manuscripts in bizarre places like dry caves, desert burials, or within the secretly buried jars.

The world of antiquity was famous for its large libraries, the most famous and largest of which was the  Library of Alexandria.  There is a certain irony that most of the scrolls that were kept in these huge storage all over the ancient world were lost forever. They were either burnt in fire or destroyed during wars and turmoil.

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Famous Book of the Dead

In the middle of 19th century European learned about very complex and sophisticated concept of afterlife that existed in ancient Egypt.  In 1842 when German Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius published the selection of texts that included Egyptian collection of funeral hymns, spells, and instructions to allow the deceased to pass through obstacles in the afterlife. The book became an instant bestseller and part of its fame belongs to the title that Lepsius gave to the selected manuscripts. He simply called them - "The Book of the Dead", deriving the name from the one of the most important spells in the ancient texts.

The original texts that were included in the book of the dead were most commonly found in the coffin or burial chamber of the deceased ancient Egyptian. There were written on the papyrus scrolls. Archeologists learned that these "prequels" of funeral poems were created in advance with with spaces being left for the name of the deceased to be written in later.

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Another mystery

All goddesses have different titles and clothes but they all wear a five pointed star above their heads.  The appearance of these goddesses is astounding and up to this day remains a mystery. They are not mentioned in any other texts of Egyptian mythology.  They are completely unique as they are not depicted anywhere else in Egypt, except in the Book of Gates.

Another mystery that still bothers scientists is of another origin. Although Book of Gates was reserved only for pharaohs and aristocrats, archeologists found it in the tomb of a common man named Sennedjem. He was an ordinary worker in the ancient village of artists and craftsmen who built pharonic tombs in the New Kingdom.

Natural science versus occultism or superstition

Magic and study of occult arts successfully survived Renaissance and entered the Baroque era. And even more. ”Study of the occult arts remained intellectually respectable well into the seventeenth century”. It only gradually divides into the modern categories of natural science versus occultism or superstition. My research shows, that brilliant Age of Reason was on the rise in the seventeenth century, while belief in witchcraft and sorcery, and consequently the irrational surge of Early Modern witch trials, receded. This process only completed at the end of the Baroque period, somewhere around 1730s.

Contemporary scientists still met resistance, though. Christian Thomasius encountered fierce opposition as he argued in his 1701 Dissertatio de crimine magiae that it was meaningless to make dealing with the devil a criminal offence, since it was impossible to really commit the crime in the first place. In Britain, the Witchcraft Act of 1735 established that people could not be punished for consorting with spirits, while would-be magicians pretending to be able to invoke spirits could still be fined as con artists.

Several decades later, from 1756 to 1781, Jacob Philadelphia performed feats of magic, sometimes under the guise of scientific exhibitions, throughout Europe and Russia. Baron Carl Reichenbach’s experiments with his Odic force appeared to be an attempt to bridge the gap between magic and science.

Between Heavenly and Earthly Realms

As I already mentioned before, magic as part of ancient history became one of most popular object of study and multiple researches for many scientists and enthusiasts, especially, in the last two decades. Magic is generally seen as a ritual or supernatural practice to influence the world, but distinct from religion or science.

In the ancient world of the Greeks and Romans, the public and private rituals associated with religion are accepted by historians and archaeologists to have been a part of everyday life. Ready examples of this phenomenon are found in the various state and ancient cult temples, Jewish synagogues and in the early Christian cathedrals and churches. These were important hubs for the ancient peoples of the Greco-Roman world that were representative of a connection between the heavenly realms and the earthly planes.

Theory of the common ancestry

Famous Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl wanted to test the legends and sailed the Kon-Tiki, a balsa-wood raft, from South America into the Pacific in 1947. By that expedition Thor tried to show that humans could have settled Polynesia from the eastern shores of the Pacific Ocean, with sailors using the prevailing winds and simple vessels.

Soon by using DNA, linguistic and archaeological evidence, scientists began to realize that the Austronesian-speaking peoples, including the Polynesians, probably originated from islands in eastern Asia, possibly from Taiwan, and moved southwards and eastwards through the South Pacific Ocean. The common ancestry of all the Austronesian languages supports this theory. At least some of the migration occurred against the prevailing winds and was deliberate migration rather than just accidental. Austronesian and Polynesian navigators may have deduced the existence of uninhabited islands by observing migratory patterns of birds.The possibility of such migration seems more likely in the view of recent research. More and more boat builders construct vessels by using traditional materials and techniques, sail them using ancient navigation methods.

Beyond the comprehension of modern science

According to "Secrets", one of the underground colonies, was also the seat of government for the network. While the whole place is an inner continent, its satellite colonies are smaller enclosed ecosystems located just beneath the Earth’s crust or discreetly within mountains. Cataclysms and wars taking place on the surface drove these people underground. The Sahara, Gobi, the Australian Outback and the deserts of the southwestern US are said to be but a few examples of the devastation that resulted. The sub-cities were created as refuges for the people and as safe havens for sacred records, teachings and technologies that were cherished by these ancient cultures.

The inhabitants of Agartha are said to have scientific knowledge and expertise far beyond that of the people who live on the surface of the planet, and lost technology from the days of Atlantis. They all follow what is known as the Ancient Path and do not interfere in the lives of humans that live above the surface. Nor is there any interaction between them. All entrances to Agartha from any other part of the planet are hidden safely. They are secured by illusory technology that is beyond the comprehension of modern science.

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The idea of subterranean worlds

Agartha is a legendary city that is said to reside in the Earth core. My coworkers from from web analytics company told me that today the word Agartha is related to the Hollow Earth theory and is a popular subject in esotericism. Agartha is one of the most common names cited for the society of underground dwellers. While once a popular concept, in the last century little serious attention has been paid to these conjectures, and the theory is not supported by modern science. The idea of subterranean worlds may have been inspired by ancient religious beliefs in Hades, Sheol, and Hell. For several centuries, there appeared theories that named various locations of the entrances to Agartha. Among them Great Pyramid of Giza, Brazilian Mato Grosso and Manaus, North and South poles, Gobi Desert in Mongolia.

Since 19 century, the myths of Agartha tricked into fictional works. An early source for the belief in underground civilizations is the book The Smoky God written by Willis George Emerson in the beginning of 20th century. It claims to be the biography of a Norwegian sailor named Olaf Jansen. The book explains how Jansen’s sloop sailed through an entrance to the Earth’s interior at the North Pole. For two years he lived with the inhabitants of an underground network of colonies who, were a full 12 feet tall and whose world was lit by a “smoky” central sun. Their capital city was something like the original Garden of Eden. While Emerson does not use the name Agartha, later works such as "Agartha - Secrets of the Subterranean Cities" have identified the civilization Jansen encountered with Agartha, and its citizens as Agarthan.

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Hypothetical Lemuria

Lost continent ”Lemuria. Did it really exist? For centuries people pinpointed the location of this lost land either in Indian or Pacific oceans. All accounts share a common belief that a continent existed in ancient times and sank beneath the ocean as a result of geological cataclysmic change. Current specialists think that although sunken continents do exist, there is no geological formation under the Indian or Pacific Oceans that corresponds to the hypothetical Lemuria. The name of this land was adopted by occult writers and some Tamil writers of India.

Where did the name Lemuria come from? Modern lemurs are only found in Madagascar, several surrounding islands and nowhere else. Nevertheless, archaeological evidence shows that other extinct lemurs used to inhabit the area from Pakistan to Malaysia. In the 19th century geologist were really puzzled by the presence of fossil lemurs in both Madagascar and India, but not in Africa nor the Middle East. That is why they proposed a theory that Madagascar and India had once been part of a larger continent, which they named “Lemuria” for its lemurs. Other scientists hypothesized that Lemuria had extended across parts of the Pacific oceans, explaining distributions of species across Asia and the Americas.

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