What the evidence says, what visible proof says, cannot be so absurd! Drawings and sagas actually indicated that the 'gods' promised to return from the stars in order to awaken the well-preserved bodies to new life. That is why the provisioning of the embalmed corpses in the burial chambers took such a practical form and was intended for a life on this side of the grave. Otherwise what were they supposed to have done with money, jewellery and their favourite articles? And as they were even provided in the tomb with some of their servants, who were unquestionably buried alive, the point of all the preparations was obviously the continuation of the old life in a new life. The tombs were tremendously durable and solid, and almost atom-bomb-proof; they could survive the ravages of all the ages. The valuables left in them, namely gold and precious stones, were virtually indestructible. I am not concerned here with discussing the later abuses of mummification.
I am only concerned with the question: who put the idea of corporeal rebirth into the heads of the heathen? And whence came the first audacious idea that the cells of the body had to be preserved so that the corpse, preserved in a very secure place, could be awakened to new life after thousands of years?
So far this mysterious reawakening complex has only been considered from the religious point of view. But supposing the Pharaoh, who certainly knew more about the nature and customs of the 'gods' than his subjects, had these possibly quite crazy ideas? 'I must make a burial place for myself that cannot be destroyed for millennia and is visible far across the country. The gods promised to return and wake me up (or doctors in the distant future will discover a way to restore me to life again).'
What have we to say about that in the space age?
In his book The Prospect of Immortality, published in 1965, the physician and astronomer Robert C. W. Ettinger suggests a way in which we twentieth-century men can have ourselves frozen so that our cells can go on living from the medical and biological point of view, but slowed down a billionfold. For the present this idea may still sound Utopian, but in fact every big clinic today has a 'bone bank' which preserves human bones in a deep-frozen condition for years and makes them serviceable again when required. Fresh blood—this too is a universal practice—can be kept for an unlimited time at minus 196° C and living cells can be stored almost indefinitely at the temperature of liquid nitrogen. Did the Pharaoh have a fantastic idea which will soon be realised in practice?
You must read what follows twice to grasp the fantastic implications of the result of the next piece of scientific research. In March 1963 biologists of the University of Oklahoma confirmed that the skin cells of the Egyptian Princess Mene were capable of living. And Princess Mene has been dead for several thousand years!
There have been finds in many places of mummies which are preserved so completely and intact that they seem to be alive. Glacier mummies left by the Incas survived the ages and theoretically they are capable of living. Utopia? In the summer of 1965 Russian television showed two dogs which had been deep-frozen for a week. On the seventh day they were thawed out again and—hey presto I—they went on living as cheerfully as ever!
The Americans—and this is no secret—are seriously concerned, as part of their space programme, with the problem of how to freeze astronauts of the future for their long journeys to distant stars.
Professor Ettinger, often scoffed at today, prophesies a remote future in which men will not be consumed by fire or eaten by worms—a future in which bodies, frozen in deep-freeze cemeteries or deep-freeze bunkers, await the day when advances in medical science can remove the cause of their death and bring their bodies to new life. Following up the implications of this Utopian idea one can see the terrifying vision of an army of deep-frozen soldiers who will be thawed out as necessary in case of war. A really horrifying idea.
But what connexion have mummies with our theory of space travellers in the remote past? Am I dragging proofs in willy-nilly?
I ask: how did the ancients know that the body cells continue to live slowed down a billionfold after special treatment?
I ask: where did the idea of immortality come from and how did people get the concept of corporeal reawakening in the first place?
The majority of ancient peoples knew the technique of mummification and the rich peoples actually practised it. I am not concerned here with this demonstrable fact, but with solving the problem of where the idea of a reawakening, a return to life, originated. Did the idea occur to some king or tribal prince purely by chance or did some prosperous citizen watch 'gods' treating their corpses with a complicated process and preserving them in bomb-proof sarcophagi? Or did some gods (= space travellers) transmit their knowledge of how corpses can be reawakened after a special treatment to a quick-witted prince of royal blood?
These speculations require confirmation from contemporary sources. In a few hundred years mankind will have a mastery of space travel that is inconceivable today. Travel agencies will offer trips to the planets, with precise departure and return dates, in their brochures. Obviously a prerequisite for this mastery is that all branches of science keep pace with the development of space travel. Electronics and cybernetics alone will not do the trick. Medicine and biology will make their contribution by finding out ways of lengthening the vital functions of human beings. Today this department of space research is also working in top gear. Here we must ask ourselves: did space travellers in prehistory already possess knowledge that we must win anew? Did unknown intelligences already know the methods with which to treat bodies so that they could be revived in X thousand years? Perhaps the 'gods' being shrewd, had an interest in 'preserving' at least one dead man with all the knowledge of his time so that some day he could be questioned about the history of his generation? Who can tell? Is it not possible that such an interrogation by 'gods' who came back has already taken place?
In the course of the centuries, mummification, originally a solemn matter, became the fashion. Suddenly everyone wanted to be reawakened; suddenly everyone thought that they would come to new life so long as they did the same as their forefathers. The high priests, who actually did possess some knowledge of such re-awakenings, did a great deal to encourage this cult, for their class did good business out of it.
I have already mentioned the physically impossible ages of the Sumerian kings and the biblical figures. I asked whether these people could not have been space travellers who prolonged their life-span through the effect of the time shift on interstellar flights just below the speed of light.
Are we perhaps getting a clue to the incredible age of the men named in the texts if we assume that they were mummified or frozen? If we follow this theory then the unknown space travellers would have frozen leading personalities in antiquity—put them into an artificial deep sleep, as legends tell us—and taken them out of the drawer, and thawed them out and conversed with them during subsequent visits. At the end of each visit it would have been the task of the priestly class appointed and instructed by the space travellers to prepare the living dead again and preserve them once more in giant temples until the 'gods' returned.