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reign and commanded him to celebrate the said anniversaries for six times a hundred thousand years. Need I add that when the god Ptah came to give the king the models he appeared in a gleaming heavenly chariot and afterwards disappeared over the horizon in it. Today representations of the winged sun and a soaring falcon carrying the sign of eternity and eternal life can still be found on doors and temples at Edfu. There is no known place in the world where such innumerable illustrations of winged symbols of the gods are preserved as in Egypt. Every tourist knows the Island of Elephantine with the famous Nilometer at Asswan. The island is called Elephantine even in the oldest texts, because it was supposed to resemble an elephant. The texts were quite right—the island does look like an elephant. But how did the ancient Egyptians know that, because this shape can only be recognised from an aeroplane at a great height? For there is no hill offering a view of the island that would prompt anyone to make the comparison. A recently discovered inscription on a building at Edfu says that the edifice is of supernatural origin. The ground plan was drawn by the deified being Im-Hotep. Now this Im-Hotep was a very mysterious and clever personality— the Einstein of his time. He was priest, scribe, doctor, architect and philosopher rolled into one. In this ancient world, the age of Im-Hotep, the only tools the archaeologists allow its people for working stone are wooden wedges and copper, neither of which is suitable for cutting up granite blocks. Yet the brilliant Im-Hotep built the step pyramid of Sakkara for his king, who was called Zoser. This 197-ft-high edifice is built with a mastery that Egyptian architects were never quite able to equal afterwards. The structure, surrounded by a wall 33 ft high and 1,750 ft long, was called the 'House of Eternity' by Im-Hotep. He had himself buried in it, so that the gods could wake him on their return. We know that all the pyramids were laid out according to the position of certain stars. Is not this knowledge a bit embarrassing in view of the fact that we have very little evidence of an early Egyptian astronomy? Sirius was one of the few stars they took an interest in. But this very interest in Sirius seems rather peculiar, because seen from Memphis Sirius can only be observed just above the horizon in the early dawn when the Nile floods begin. To fill the measure of confusion to overflowing, there was an accurate calendar in Egypt 4,221 years before our era! This calendar was based on the rise of Sirius (1st Tout= 19th July) and gave annual cycles of more than 32,000 years. Admittedly the old astronomers had plenty of time to observe the sun, moon and constellations, year in, year out, until they finally decided that all the constellations stand in the same place again after approximately 365 days. But surely it was quite absurd to base the first calendar on Sirius when it would have been easier to use the sun and the moon, besides leading to more accurate results? Presumably the Sirius calendar is a built up system, a theory of probabilities, because it could never predict the appearance of the star. If Sirius appeared on the horizon at dawn at the same time as the Nile flood, it was pure coincidence. A Nile flood did not happen every year, nor did every Nile flood take place on the same day. In which case, why a Sirius calendar? Is there an old tradition here, too? Was there a text or a promise which was carefully guarded by the priesthood? The tomb in which a gold necklace and the skeleton of an entirely unknown animal were found probably belonged to King Udimu. Where did the animal come from? How can we explain the fact that the Egyptians had a decimal system already at the beginning of the First Dynasty? How did such a highly developed civilisation arise at such an early date? Where do the objects of copper and bronze