Impossible? Ridiculous? It is mostly those people who feel that they are absolutely bound by the laws of nature who make the most stupid objections. Does not nature herself display brilliant examples of 'hibernation' and reawakening?
There are species of fish which, after being frozen stiff, thaw out at milder temperatures and swim around again in the water. Flowers, larvae and grubs not only go into hibernation, but also reappear in the spring in lovely new garb.
Let me be my own devil's advocate. Did the Egyptians learn the possibility of mummification from nature? If that were the case, there ought to have been a cult of butterflies or cockchafers or at least a trace of such a cult. There is nothing of the kind. Underground tombs do contain gigantic sarcophagi with mummified animals, but given their climate the Egyptians could not have copied hibernation from animals.
Five miles from Helwan lie more than 5,000 tombs of different sizes and all date to the time of the 1st and 2nd dynasties. These tombs show that the art of mummification is more than 6,000 years old.
In 1953 Professor Emery discovered a large tomb in the archaic cemetery of North Sakkara that is attributed to a Pharaoh of the 1st dynasty (probably Uadyis). Apart from the main tomb there were 72 other tombs, arranged in 3 rows, in which lay the bodies of the servants who wanted to accompany their king in the new world. No trace of violence is visible on the bodies of the 64 young men and 8 young women. Why did these 72 allow themselves to be walled up and killed?
Belief in a second life beyond the grave is the best known and also the simplest explanation of this phenomenon. In addition to gold and jewellery the Pharaoh was provided with grain, oil and spices in the tomb, which were obviously intended as provisions for the life to come. Apart from grave robbers, the tombs were also opened by later Pharaohs. In such cases the Pharaoh found the provisions in the tomb of his ancestor well preserved. In other words the dead man had neither eaten them nor taken them into another world. And when the tomb was closed again, fresh supplies were placed in the vault, which was shut up, protected against thieves and sealed with many traps. It seems obvious that the Egyptians believed in a reawakening in the distant future and not in an immediate reawakening in the hereafter.
In June 1954, also at Sakkara, a tomb was discovered that had not been robbed, for a chest containing jewels and gold lay in the burial chamber. The sarcophagus was closed with a sliding lid, instead of a removable one. On the 9th June Dr Goneim ceremonially opened the sarcophagus. It contained nothing. Absolutely nothing. Did the mummy decamp, leaving its jewels behind?
The Russian Rodenko discovered a grave, known as Kurgan V, 50 miles from the frontier of Outer Mongolia.
This grave takes the form of a rocky hill that is faced internally with wood. All the burial chambers are packed with eternal ice, and as a result the contents of the grave were preserved in a state of deep-freeze. One of these chambers contained an embalmed man and a similarly treated woman. Both of them were provided with everything that they might have needed for a life to come: foodstuffs in dishes, clothes, jewels and musical instruments. Everything was deep-frozen and in an excellent state of preservation, including the naked mummies. In one burial chamber scholars identified a rectangle containing four rows of six squares, each of which had a drawing inside it. The whole could be a copy of the stone carpet in the Assyrian palace at Nineveh! Strange sphinx-like figures with complicated horns on their heads and wings on their backs are clearly visible and their posture shows them to be aspiring skywards.
But motives for a second spiritual life can scarcely be based on the finds in Mongolia. The deep-freezing used in the graves there—for that is what the chambers faced with wood and filled with ice amount to—is too much of this world and obviously intended for terrestrial ends. Why, and this question keeps on worrying us, did the ancients think that bodies prepared in this way achieved a state which would make reawakening possible? That is a puzzle for the time being.
In the Chinese village of Wu Chuan there exists a rectangular tomb measuring 45 by 39 ft; in it lie the skeletons of 17 men and 24 women. Here too none of the skeletons shows signs of violent death. There are glacier tombs in the Andes, ice tombs in Siberia, group and individual graves in China, Sumeria and Egypt. Mummies have been found in the far north and in South Africa. And all the dead were supplied with the necessities for a new life and all the tombs were so planned and built that they could survive for thousands of years.
Is it all mere coincidence? Are they all merely individual fancies, strange whims on the part of our ancestors? Or is there an ancient promise of corporeal return that is unknown to us? Who can have made it?
Some 10,000-year-old tombs were excavated at Jericho and a number of 8,000-year-old heads, modelled in plaster of Paris were found. That, too, is astonishing, for ostensibly this people did not know the techniques of pottery-making. In another part of Jericho whole rows of round houses were discovered. The walls are curved inwards at the top, like domes.
The omnipotent carbon isotope C 14, with the aid of which the age of organic substances can be determined, gives dates with a maximum of 10,400 years in this case. These scientifically determined dates agree pretty well with the dates which the Egyptian priests transmitted. They said that their priestly ancestors had discharged their duties for more than 11,000 years. Is this only a coincidence, too?
Prehistoric stones at Lussac (Poitou, France) form a particularly remarkable find. They show drawings of men dressed in completely modern style, with hats, jackets and short trousers. The Abbe Breuil says that the drawings are authentic and his statement throws the whole of prehistory into confusion. Who engraved the stones? Who has enough imagination to conceive of a caveman dressed in skins who drew figures from the twentieth century on the walls?
Some really magnificent Stone Age paintings were found in 1940 in the Lascaux Caves in the South of France. The paintings in this gallery are as lively and intact as if they had been done today, and two questions immediately spring to mind. How was this cave illuminated for the laborious work of the Stone Age artists and why were the walls decorated with these astonishing paintings?
Let the people who consider these questions stupid explain the contradictions. If the Stone Age cavemen were primitive and savage, they could not have produced the astounding paintings on the cave walls. But if the savages were capable of paintings these pictures, why should they not also have been able to build huts as shelter? The foremost authorities concede that animals had the ability to build nests and shelters millions of years ago. But it obviously does not fit into the working hypothesis to concede homo sapiens the same ability as long ago as that.
In the Gobi Desert, deep down below the ruins of Khara Khota—not far from those strange sand vitrifications which can only have taken place under the influence of tremendous heat—Professor Koslov found a tomb that is dated to about 12,000 years B.C. A sarcophagus contained the bodies of two rich men and the sign of a circle bisected vertically was found on the sarcophagus.
In the Subis mountains on the west coast of Borneo a network of caves was found that had been hollowed out on a cathedral-like scale. Among these colossal finds there are fabrics of such fineness and delicacy that with the best will in the world one cannot imagine savages making them. Questions, questions, questions... .