Egypt, Image of Heaven

Reviews

Neuendorff wrote:
Atlanta Georgia, september 11, 2010

You know it is sad that you have not continued to translate further information into English. Your one of ten authors who really get that there is a method and plan to the layout in Egypt. I really have to say that your book was exciting and I re read it often. Few understand that it will ultimately lead to greater discoveries. But you need to get out your information since few understand how important your views are.
Many others are slowly adding the plan to get to the goal of the hall of records. Some think that is crazy but it is only a matter of time before it appears. Let me know of other English writings that are as exciting and understand the Egyptian viewpoint to point out why these were built.

Don Neuendorff

Keep up the good works.

Read "Egypt: Image of Heaven" -- incredible...
(By Damon Casale, Redshift.com, may 10, 2009

I just finished reading your book and I'm frankly amazed. It's incredibly dense reading and extremely difficult to understand for a lay reader.
Nevertheless, one of the things I did pick up on right away is that you don't make overly simplistic leaps in attempting to "prove" the origins of Egypt. Popular, pseudoscientific books like Graham Hancock's "Fingerprints of the Gods" might be more often read, but are much less credible than what you've written.

A few years ago, a friend of mine encouraged me to read a series of books on King Arthur and the Grail legend by Norma Lorre Goodrich. Whereas other, more popular authors (such as Geoffrey Ashe) might claim that King Arthur was entirely a myth, Dr. Goodrich cites a document contemporary to his time which mentions him.

I've seen online "debunking" of the Piri Reis map and other maps as accurately showing Antarctica in an unglaciated state. I do tend to think that Antarctica was *not* the cradle of ancient civilization and was never unglaciated, but on the other hand, the article debunking the Piri Reis map also mentioned that Hapgood never cited the explanations Admiral Reis gave for what his source maps were. I haven't been able to read Hapgood's book yet, but when I read your own citation of Admiral Reis' explanations, that convinced me that you weren't just making an intuitive leap without enough supporting evidence.

In any case, I'm working on my own research now which ties into yours and attempts to provide the proper cultural setting for the biblical account in Genesis 1-3. It interprets the biblical Creation story as a literary style, akin to the allegorical Creation literature of Egypt and Sumer (as expounded on in your book), albeit with some literal elements. Basically, Adam and Eve may have been literal people (since they have a genealogy of descendants), but they were most definitely not the first humans.

Good luck with your future research. I'm also curious to see more details on Sumerian/Babylonian religious literature and its historical origins, in the same way that you deduced the historical origins of several Egyptian practices. If your research takes you in that direction, I very much look forward to it.

Damon Casale

A Tough, but Excellent Read
(By Jason A. Voss "Ptah", july 29, 2009 (Santa Fe, NM United States)

"EGYPT: Image of Heaven" is divided into two parts. The first part argues convincingly that ancient peoples, especially the Egyptians and Sumerians, systematically associated their maps of the heavens with places on the Earth. In other words, its as if a god projected light through the celestial sphere onto the surface of the earth. Willem H. Zitman, the author, provides ample evidence of his theory. He demonstrates that the ancient Egyptians believed that the Nile and the Delta corresponded with the constellation scorpio/Osiris. Zitman believes that Robert Bauval is correct that the 3 main pyramids of Giza correspond to Orion's belt. But he goes further and shows that the ancient Egyptinas laid our their entire pyramid field in accordance with the constellation Orion/Horus. Zitman also provides evidence that the pyramid served a number of other functions for the ancient Egyptians as well. Rather than spoiling it for other readers I will not go into the details.

While mapping the star patterns on the earth's surface is interesting, Zitman connects up legends from original sources, as well as ancient artifacts (a Sumerian planisphere) to show the likely source of ancient Egyptian and Sumerian culture. This conclusion relies very strongly on two sources of absolute precision: 1) That the Egyptians and Sumerians were unbelievably anal retentive in laying down their system of latitude and longitude, and more importantly 2) That the ancient Sumerian planisphere is absolutely perfectly proportioned such that it points accurately to the source of both cultures. I do not have the necessary technical background to evalute the strength of either of these two critical assumptions. However, as a critical thinker, Zitman has met, and exceeded, my threshold of skepticism. In other words, I believe he is right. The final critical assumption of Part I is that Zitman has interpreted all of the evidence effectively and objectively. I am an amateur egyptologist and am familiar with almost all of the source materials and feel that he is not grasping or reaching unnecessarily.

Part II of the book discusses some of the archaeological and geological findings that support Zitman's placement of the source culture of the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians. Additionally, he backs up this portion of the book with further original source quotes from both cultures. Eventually, Zitman traces the root culture off of the coast of Africa and into the ocean.

I enjoyed the second half of the book more than the first. The first half is written for an audience of Egyptological non-believers and so drags through many tedious proofs. While dull, I absolutely appreciate Zitman's need to prove his points. However, I did have to read and re-read certain sections. Ultimately though, every shred of evidence proves necessary for his thesis. That is, there is nothing extraneous and pointless in his data.

Of the 50+ books I have read about ancient Egypt, this book ranks among my top 5 favorites. I look forward to seeing Zitman's theories explored by other authors and archaeological explorers.

The Constellation of Horus
(Review in Newsletter Ex Oriente Lux 18, 2001)

Billions of stars and a handful of pyramids. Everyone is amazed by the precision with which the ancient Egyptians constructed the pyramids. The question is often asked: when and why did they build those colossal pyramids? The theories are both diverse and inconclusive. The theory of Bauval (The Orion Mystery), in which he states that the Belt of Orion correlates with the three pyramids of Gizeh, is not accepted by scientists. The scientific theory states that the constellation Orion contains more stars. Indeed, the theory of Bauval is incomplete because he starts from an incorrect projection.
In mid November 2,000, Egyptologist Kate Spence offered a new theoretical model based on the orientation of the pyramids. This should allow the dating of the construction of the pyramids (ca. 2,480 BCE). Her vision and the result of two recent C-14 investigations into the precise age of the pyramids are at odds with each other (a difference of approx. 450 years). Could the precise orientation of the pyramids have possibly been the result of observations between 3,001 and 2,851 BCE of a Pole star, which, as Alpha Draconis in Thuban, happened at that time to coincide exactly with the true north of the celestial sphere?

The remarkable correspondence between ancient Egypt and the stellar sky is indeed so special that no-one has ever discovered it. In point of fact, the ancient Egyptians did create an enormous constellation on earth, like a scale model. Not only does the Pyramid field (twelve pyramids built during the 3rd and 4th Dynasties, and the pyramid-city of the 5th Dynasty) correlate with the stars of the main outline of Orion, the pyramids also depict the iconographic representation of the famous Horus pose, “the Constellation of the King”. That depiction is now known under the term “smiting the enemy”. However, reconstruction has shown that the royal Horus pose is the invincible icon of ancient Egypt. This is substantiated by the locations of the pyramids of the 6th Dynasty. The pyramids of the 12th Dynasty added a further dimension. The temple-cities of Memphis, Letopolis and Heliopolis correlate with certain stars, which conforms to the fact that the constellation of Horus is made up of sixteen stars.

Zitman’s research is not only based on existing texts and source material, but also on traditional, ancient knowledge about the origin and significance of the names of stars and constellations. His study furthermore revealed ancient Egyptian geographic and planning knowledge, with which they controlled the geographical order of their territory. After all, according to ancient sources, geometry and surveying were their speciality. Even in predynastic times, the Egyptians used the heliacal rising of the star Sirius and therefore built settlements on the points of observations, thus dividing their territory according to a planned model. Even the form of the river Nile (from Thebes up to and including the Delta) played a crucial role in the division of their territory. He discovered that the river Nile (mirrored image) with its sixteen important settlements correlated with the sixteen stars of Scorpio, the constellation of Osiris.

In the 17th century, John Donne stated that one could tie meridians and circles of latitudes into a network. By projecting this network onto the stellar sky, the Egyptians realized this 5,000 years earlier; they used the observation of the heliacal rising of the star Sirius as an indicator to measure the length of the solar year (365 days). The geographical latitude of Hieraconpolis and Buto are separated by 365 minutes of arc. This is the reason why these places became the prehistoric capitals of Upper and Lower Egypt. They were the places of observation where the first annual heliacal rising of the star Sirius could be witnessed . Zitman draws an observation line between the settlements, ‘die Thronstätten’, of ancient Egypt. After the reign of the third Dynasty, the locations where the observations occurred were replaced by others. In the course of the centuries, first from the South of Edfu to Saïs/Xoïs, and later, during the reign of the fourth Dynasty, from Philaë to Heliopolis. The geographical latitude between the above locations were in all cases separated by 365 minutes of arc (see also Subpage 1: Astro-geodesy and the Planological Infrastructure of Egypt).

Zitman claims that the Egyptians were aware of the earth’s precession, and that they observed its effects. The remarkable correspondence with the length of the solar year became the foundation for his study into the territorial division of ancient Egypt. He states that the Egyptians and Sumerians used the nocturnal sky as a grid to “map” the earth. This offered him the key to solve the riddle of a round clay tablet on display in the British Museum and known as a planisphere. This Sumerian Planisphere, which shows the above-mentioned Egyptian observational pattern, is divided into sections and constellations. This division was used by the Egyptians and Sumerians as a grid. Its analysis and projection on a map reveals the homeland of the mutual ancestors of the Egyptians (the population of Lower Egypt) and the Sumerians. His theory is confirmed by a prehistoric rock painting (ca. 6,500 BC) of an ancient Egyptian depiction of Nekhet (Strong Arm) and the recent discovery in that area of the oldest (ca. 7,500 BC) piece of ceramic in the world.

The revolutionary discoveries concerning the Pyramid field and the Starmap, the Observation line of Sirius, and the knowledge which the ancient Egyptians possessed of the effect of precession, millennia before Hipparchus, might well change our entire view on human history.