John North Stonehenge: A New Interpretation of Prehistoric Man and the CosmosNew York: the Free Press, 1996 thinks that Stonehenge is measured with Megalithic yards. One MY = 0.829 meters which equals 2.72 feet. Now, I quote him: "Many will be horrified at my defence of Alexander Thom's Megalithic Yard (0.829), and even more so by its occasional use in plans. By this I do not mean to prejudge the question of whether it was in use, but merely to simplify the task of judging whether it might have been so. Of one historical truth one may be quite certain, when adding a scale to one's plan: the metre was not in use in the Neolithic period."
I might also add that he starts off his preface by saying that "To the Greeks, the primary sense of cosmos was that of order, harmony, and proportion. When the word was applied to the universe as a whole it was to insist that those properties -- appropriate to a well regulated state, a finely decorated vase, a formally beautiful building-- belonged to the universe too. [/i]

Hi Barbara,
thoughts on measurement

How long is a piece of string?
A fixed measurement is only useful to civilised society and only in human scale-to cut, carry, to size etc.

so a basic measure could be any give universial length and work.

I suspect the meter, the foot, the cubit, are all based on human anatomy,
makes sense, H
however, we are not all the same size so a universal value is what's important.

Two such systems exist in the world today

the (SI) Systeme international
(USCS) formally called the British imperial system

The metric system originated by French scientists after the french Revolution 1791 and because of its orderliness is ideal for scientific work

Strangely enough, the standard of length, the Meter, was defined in terms of the distance from the north pole to the equator, this distance was thought to be close to 10,000 Kilometers. One ten millionith of this, the meter was carefully determined and marked off by means of scratches on a bar of platinum-iridium alloy. p 685 P G Hewitt, Conceptual Physics

Note how it is related to earth measures!

According to Graham Hancock in Fingerprints of the GodsNapoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt with his revolutionary armies. He brought with him 175 scholars plus mathematicians,cartographers,and surveyors.
The great Pyramid was found to be more that an excellent reference and triangulation point. They no doubt found phi related earth measurements
encoded in the structure. (p 456-461)

To me, this study, seems to be the basis of the metric system, its certainly around the same time.

according to Hancock the language of the pyramids is mathematical and phi related. The reason this language was chosen by the ancients was to inform us today, the reason, I think, was so we would not lose sight of our true past and by implication our future.

More on Measurement

'Plutarch stated that the Egyptian priests carried three sacred rods dedicated to Osiris, Isis, and Horus, they were ascribed the numbers 3, 4, 5,= 12 and brought together formed a right angle triangle.
- In Britain, this mystery was embodied in a devise known as the druids cord or ‘Snor.’
A rope with 12 knots dividing it into 13 equal parts, used in land and building measurements.

The Pictish proportion of 1:3/4 is better known in the craft of ‘Masonry’ as the ‘Egyptian diamond,’ a lozenge shaped figure composed as four 3,4,5, triangles, so it measures eight ‘units’ in length and six ‘units’ wide, with a perimeter of 20 units. Thus the Egyptian mystery of the three holy rods of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, is embodied in Celtic art.'

Pg 82,84 Nigel Pennich, The Celtic Cross,

I would like to know just what the unit was ?

I was delighted to find this next bit of information; and now share with you:

This Christmas my kids got a new Text book from Santa called ‘ Discoveries and Inventions, from prehistoric to modern times’ edited by Jorg Meidenbauer, Rebo Publishers, Netherlands 06. Finally referenced under the ‘Pyramids; mysterious monuments for god –kings was this statement;

'The four sides squarely face the four points of the compass and are 365.24 ‘pyramid meters’ long. The number of days in a year.

(those of you that read this stuff will know the significance of this, and for those that don’t I can’t do it justice here but the true length of the year is 365.2422; the Egyptians kept a 360 day calendar year and added 5 days and just let the calendar slip out of time with the seasons. Egyptologists’ accuse them of not knowing the true length of the year. However every 1461 years, the Sothic cycle returned the calendar to a perfect beginning. And the above 365.24 is more accurate than the Julian 365.25 days)

A pyramid meter is about 2 feet, which is one ten millionth part of the polar radius of the Earth. Some of the corridors are also placed in precise relation to the stars, for instance the North Star. Were the Pyramids therefore astronomical observatories?
The astronomical features are not to be denied, and it is quite likely that the Egyptians had a profound knowledge of astronomy. Their builders must also have been skilled in
Mathematics.
The circumference of the area of a pyramid is almost identical to the circumference of a circle whose radius equals the height of the pyramid. So if the circumference of the pyramid is divided by twice the height, the result is 3.14. Were the ancient Egyptians perhaps familiar with the factor Pi?'

This goes a long way to validate writers like Hancock and Bauval and co.

Any thoughts out there?

Anthony, I got a book at Christmas too, The Egypt Code by Robert Bauval (still waiting for Island of the setting sun)

Based on that work it strongly points to the fact that the Osiris triune was pre-eminent and in existence thought out the entire history and prehistory of Egypt. Here is the kicker,
The most ancient monument, the Sphinx was originally called and worshiped under the name of
Horemakhet Horus in the Horizon

Or Horakhti Horus of the Horizon

Mithras as a single solar god

Mitra was a most important solar divinity of the Indo-Iranian pantheon. In modern Persian this means Sun, love, friendship and oath. This may well be the oldest one god. In 1500 B.C. Zarathushtra delegated Mithras to the row of angels and established Ahura Mazda, supreme intelligence, as the single god. But it seems as through Mithras still kept his favor with the people.
The Greeks identified Mithras with their sun god Helios.
There was much mixing and trading with people especially around 400 B.C. to 275 B.C. There were lots of Celtic mercenaries working in Greece and in Asia Minor. There were also Celtic settlements in Asia Minor. There seems to be strong evidence that these Celts held to their own customs and ritual formulas and also were very proud of their ways.
There is evidence through the stones everywhere that before Mithras and Helios the reverence was not for the sun, nor the supreme intelligence, but for the rays of the sun, the reach of the sun. Indeed, Mitra can mean to bind and his birthday is the winter solstice and birth place was under a rock or in a cave.
The one god seems to have spread from Mithras into Christianity with Christianity using much of Mithraism in its rituals and days of importance.
The Celts are known for starting their time at night rather than by day. And indeed their holidays today are in fact nights.
It might be important to note that Mitra was a part of a trinity of ahura -- protectors of truth. It seems it was the Greeks who identified him with their sun god Helios who was only one of their goddesses and gods.
“The Celts had a whole pantheon of goddesses and gods from whom they claimed descent. This is a fascinating point, for the Celts did not believe in their deities as creators of humankind but as ancestors. They believed in a Mother Goddess. In this respect the Mother Goddess was Danu, the divine waters which flooded to earth from heaven, and from which Danuvius (the Danube) takes its name. The waters fertilized the sacred oak, Bile, and from the joining of these two came forth The Dagda, the good god who was the progenitor of all the gods and goddesses, the children of Danu, from which the Celts descended. Danu, in Irish mythology, has her cognate in the Welsh Don. The name is also identified as Anu in Irish, and Ana in British Celtic, and the word Anoniredi, 'the chariot of Anu', occurs in Gaulish. Numerous river and stream names throughout the Celtic world bear the stem of this name.” quote from Peter Berresford Ellis. Celt and Greek, Celts in the Hellenic World, London: Constable and Company, 1997

Hmmm. Sounds familiar!! Newgrange??

Thanks Barbara,
In Bauval's The Egypt Code there is a section,appendix 2, by Giulio Magli, A physicist at Politecnico di Milano, who gives us some interesting information on the Mystery Cult of Mithra.
He discusses the Gundestrup Cauldron, and hints that it may be far older than the 1st century BC. He draws on the work of French scholar Paul
Verdier(2000) who proposed the idea that,
' the symbolism of the cauldron has an astronomical content'...' and that the central plaque is probably a representation of the death of the Taurus Era, as in the Mithras main iconography, and in fact if we take a look at the sky in 2000 BC we can actually see in clockwise direction Lacerta, the lizard,Canis Major, the dog, Orion, the warrior,and Taurus, the Bull'....'In my opinion the warror in the scene might well be Perseus, and not Orion'......'In this case the analogy with the Mithras cult would become striking. In any case the astronomical interpretation of the scene is clear'. (pg306)

Barbara and Anthony, for me what is interesting is the astronomical dating of the Gundestrup Cauldron, puts it, the celtic culture, back almost in the pyramid age. Now from my research so far I am certain there existed worldwide astronomical observation from which both science and religion was drawn. The religion was either taken from the zodiacal constellations or otherwise, the pre-existant ancient religion was imprinted on the zodiac constellations, whatever, it was a stellar
religion, the purest form of which can be found in Egypt.

Measurement revisited

Her are the ancient measurement systems so far

Hugh Harleston, Jr, STU, Standard Teotihuacan Unit 1.059 Metres
‘is equivalent to the ‘Jewish rod’ of 3.4757485 feet which represents the width of the Stonehenge lintels, a six-millionth part of the earth’s polar radius…..(The Mars Mystery pg172)

The royal cubit, 0.525 Metres (The Egypt Code pg 387)

Barbara’s ‘Megalithic yard’ 0.829 Metres

And the Pyramid Metre ‘about 2 feet’ (Discoveries and Inventions; from prehistoric to modern times)

I think we need a Mathematician to take a look at it? None seem to have any relationship.

Dividing by the longest distance, an earth measure, seems to come up a bit, and also makes some sense…

Bauval, in The Egypt Code gives us another interesting ‘starting point’, he takes surveyed distances between Sun Temples and Pyramids and divides them by the ‘angular distance’
‘Astronomers measure apparent distances between stars in degrees known as the angular distance.’
His idea is that all the Pyramids and Temples belong to a singular schema locating the stars on earth; Heaven on Earth, as above so below. The Orion Correlation Theory.
For instance the distance between Pleiades and Leo is 90deg ….Using Starrynight Pro V4 he can find the angle in 2781BC or any other time.

Then he gives some figures; ground distance between Sun Temple Abu Ghorab to Heliopolis, (which represent Pleiades and Leo) 27,000 M / 90 deg = 333m actually I did the sum and it was 300!
Distance between outermost Giza Pyramids 928.33/2.75= 337m
Distance between Giza Pyramids and pyramids at Abusir, 11,420/35=326m

Bauval argues for an average (I think) of these say 300m = 1deg of the full possible 360degs on the ground. (pg 134)

If I were an ancient Egyptian and I had some figure like this to work with how would I break it down to a usable size?

I would use the figure Pi!

That’s what I did, I divided by Pi and got down to, 1.048m, half of which is equal to the Royal Cubit, 11mm short of STU, 48mm long of modern Metre,
And / Pi = .333M, 14mm long of 1ft

So Bauval is possibly correct, what do you think? Any math genius out there?

One of the best researcher of ancient mathematics, that I know of is Martin Doutre. He is also from New Zealand. His web site is www.celticnz.co.nz. You might go looking around here to find out what he has to say.
I found some more on Mitra. This is from Clyde Hostetter: “Apparently I had stumbled onto the origin of the Zodiacal symbol for Leo. The symbol seemed to be closely connected with the horned goddess . . . But how did the symbol come to be used in connection with worship of a male Persian god, Mithras, whose origins could be traced back to well before the time of Christ.”
“I found a clue in the works of Herodutus, an important Greek historian who visited the Middle East late in the Fifth Century B.C. and reported on religious customs of the area. The Persians, he wrote, much earlier had begun to worship an Arabian fertility goddess whom the Arabs called Alitta and the Persians called Mitra.” . . . “Alitta, . . . was a garbled translation of Al-Lat, one of the three goddesses . . . Al-Lat was a direct descendent of the Sumerian fertility goddess Inanna and her Semitic successor Ishtar, . . . Herodutus was correctly reporting on the worship of a Middle Eastern goddess, symbolized by a lion. At some earlier time she had been transformed into a male Persian god who would be worshipped by Roman Legions all over the Empire as Mithras. When or how the transformation had occurred was unclear.”

Thanks Barbara, I been busy reading up and haven't had time to reply. You know sometimes history just seems like one long string of names and dates, I find that I need to cut through all that to find the essence, which I am sure is quite simple, for us to understand what is really at the heart of the problem.

So the yet to become Samatra highlanders Batak and Polynesians, as well as New Zealand Maori left Mesopotamia about 2400 BC, long before Abraham had got to Ur. Mesopotamia was taken over by Semitic Babylonians from the Sumerians about this same time.
Indus River Civilization suddenly disappears about 1500 BC at the time of the Aryan invasion. This suggests a mass emigration.
The following is from Barbara Hand Clow: “The Island Calliste, known in later Greek times as Thera (today called Santorini), erupted around 1500 B.C. with a massive volcanic explosion which resulted in a collapsing caldera of monumental proportions and a tsunami or tidal wave which swept the shores of Greece, Asia Minor, and probably Egypt, with waves reputed by modern oceanographers to have been 300 feet high. Based on research on the earliest Delphic Oracle, which establishes that the Oracle was moved after Deucalian’s Flood. Most of the cataclysms around 1500 BC, such as the destruction of Crete and the rise in the Red Sea which possibly blocked the Egyptians during the Exodus, are probably tied in with the largest eruption of Thera. It is also very probable, based on archaeological and oceanographic records and legends, that the Aegean area was troubled with frequent earthquakes and climatic stresses for quite a while before the final cataclysm which we know from science devastated the geographical area. From the human perspective then, as the Aegean basin was subjected to seismic stress, it was up to the Goddess religion to guard fertility and planetary balance. In 1500 BC, all the religious rites that worked for thousands of years were failing as the cataclysm intensified.
The planetary instability around 1500 BC has a critical relationship to our time because an inner memory of the 1500 BC cataclysm is responsible for the blind fear and excessive protectionism against disaster in our culture today. The 1500 BC event was gigantic, and it revived the inner memory of the earlier Atlantean destruction.
Back in 1500 BC, from the human perspective, the Goddess got blamed for the cataclysm, and women have been persecuted for their power for the last 3500 years.” I think this is as far back as one can go to come to the rise of a one solar god.