Was Atlantis an Exploded Planet?
by Alan Alford
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In an Atlantis Rising Exclusive the Author of Gods of the New Millennium Offers a Startling New Take on Our Ancient Origins
For the last two hundred years, ancient Egypt has captured the imagination of scholars and laymen alike, resulting in a deluge of books on this most mysterious of civilizations. But despite these intensive investigations, scholars have failed to recreate the mind-set of this ancient people, and arguments continue to rage concerning the exact purposes of the Egyptian pyramids and temples. At the heart of this stalemate lies a failure to comprehend what possible religious motivation could have compelled the Egyptians to build such enormous pyramids, the largest comprising several million tons of stone. Hence Kurt Mendelssohn's recent reference to the pyramids as "magnificent madness" is little different from the puzzlement felt in Roman times, when Pliny dismissed the pyramids as "that idle and foolish exhibition of royal wealth".
Might the experts have taken a wrong turn and overlooked the essence of the ancient Egyptian mystery? I believe that they have indeed missed a deeper level of significance, for which signposts are everywhere to be found. In this article, I will draw on some of this evidence to present a radical new interpretation of the Pyramid Texts and other Egyptian myths.
Regular readers of Atlantis Rising will know that the background to my interest in Egypt lies in my fascination with the "gods" of ancient civilizations, largely inspired by the works of Zecharia Sitchin (see interview in AR Number 13). Having written my first book Gods of the New Millennium in support of Sitchin's thesis of flesh-and-blood "gods", it was to ancient Egypt that I turned to seek further confirmation of this theory. If Sitchin was right, the Egyptians had lived alongside the "Anunnaki"—a race with space-faring technology, who had built an underground space center in the Sinai and two pyramids as navigation beacons at Giza. I was thus confident of finding numerous eye-witness accounts of aircraft and rockets scattered throughout the ancient Egyptian texts. To my great disappointment, however, I could find no such references in the Pyramid Texts, nor in any other Egyptian texts.
But as I plunged deeper and deeper into the Egyptian religious beliefs, the veil began to lift on a cosmology which reminded me of Sitchin's planetary battle theory in "The Twelfth Planet". In a similar style to the appearance of the god Marduk in the Babylonian epic "Enuma Elish", so did the Egyptian god Seth appear as a "spear from the abyss", an intruder planet which emerged from the depths of space and proceeded to encounter one of the inner planets (equivalent to the Babylonian "Tiamat").
According to Sitchin's interpretation of the Enuma Elish, the vanquished planet Tiamat was split into two parts, with one part becoming the asteroid belt, and the other part becoming the Earth, in a new orbit much closer to the Sun. The Egyptians, however, had a very different understanding of this cosmic event. The god Osiris, for example (a Sky-god until his murder by Seth) was said to have fallen from the Sky and "split open the Earth", indicating that the Earth was already in its existing position before the catastrophe. Similarly, when the god Geb was forcefully separated from Nut and fell to the Earth, he did not become the Earth, but lay upon its surface and, according to one legend, carried out construction and renovation work to the Earth in "thousands of foundations and millions of places".
During 1997, by one of those strange twists of fate that often happens, I was contacted by Tom Van Flandern, one of the few astronomers to embrace the evidence that an intruder planet had disrupted our solar system. Van Flandern is better known, however, for his theory that the asteroid belt and comets are the remains of two planets and a moon which suffered catastrophic explosions. And it was this theory, generally known as the "exploded planet hypothesis", which was to prove vital in my decoding of the ancient Egyptian belief system.
One of the most prominent deities in Egyptian religion was Osiris, a Sky-god who had been murdered by Seth, and fallen to Earth. According to the Pyramid Texts, Osiris was "laid low" or "drowned" (in the watery abyss of space), but there is another famous legend which alleges that he was dismembered, with his body parts being buried all over Egypt. This legend of the dismemberment of Osiris has always confounded the experts, but it makes perfect sense if Osiris was an exploded planet, fragments from which impacted the Earth. Numerous details support this interpretation, such as the legend that Osiris fell with fire and "split open" the Earth, coming to rest in deep, dark subterranean caverns. Many texts also speak of the Earth becoming an "Island of Fire" in this primeval time. Another remarkable detail, in the light of evidence that the exploded planets were watery, is the statement in the Pyramid Texts that Osiris brought forth a flood of cold waters to the Earth. This is confirmed by the Book of Genesis which states that the waters of the Deluge fell to Earth from an aperture in the heavens.
The idea that Osiris was an exploded planet is backed up by this god's well-known association with meteorites. Spell 1080 of the Coffin Texts states that: "This is the sealed thing which is in darkness, with fire about it, which contains the efflux of Osiris, and it is put in Rostau; it has been hidden since it fell from him, and it is what came down from him on to the desert of sand." A similar legend spoke of a "stone from heaven" kept at Abydos. Both of these descriptions are evocative of meteorites (i.e., fallen asteroids), an identification which is supported by evidence relating to the cult of the Benben Stone at Heliopolis. Egyptologists are fairly certain that the Benben was a conical meteorite, which was raised atop a pillar symbolizing its resurrection to the heavens whence it came.
The example of the Benben Stone illustrates very clearly the concept of death and rebirth, which was the fundamental cornerstone of Egyptian beliefs. Egyptologists insist that these beliefs were inspired by mundane forces of nature, such as the rising and setting Sun, or the rise and fall of the River Nile. The cult of the Benben Stone, however, points to a cosmic death and rebirth, since the meteorite was an asteroid which had fallen to Earth in a fiery death, and was then raised back towards heaven for its future resurrection. The same symbolism can be seen in the obelisks and pyramids, which were similarly raised to the heavens, with the latter representing an ascension vehicle ("mer") for the soul and body-double of the deceased king.
This cosmic solution might seem fairly obvious, but Egyptologists have failed to conclude the obvious as a result of their poor understanding of Egyptian architecture, religion and mythology. For example, some of the religious myths, such as the battles of Horus and Seth, are seen as a historical record of warfare in the Nile valley, whilst other myths, such as the "primeval mound" creation myths, are thought to have been inspired by the receding floodwaters of the Nile. And those religious beliefs which are recognized as essentially cosmic in nature are undermined by an apparently confusing mixture of references to the Sun, the Moon, certain stars and meteorites.
Now the problem with all these orthodox interpretations is that they simply do not fit together by any stretch of the imagination. One might draw an analogy to a cocktail of substances that won't mix together, but settle into distinct and irreconcilable layers. Such is the position advocated by Egyptologists today, who dismiss the Egyptians as having a confused set of contradictory beliefs.
But was this really the case? In The Phoenix Solution I have added one simple magic ingredient to the cocktail, which enables all of the layers to intermingle into one coherent and meaningful religious potion. This magic ingredient is the exploded planet hypothesis. My proposition, in a nutshell, is that the Egyptians were obsessed with a planetary death and rebirth, but since this planet could no longer be seen in the real heavens, they adopted the Sun and certain stars as visible symbols of the invisible. The Sun in particular served as a powerful daily reminder of this planetary death and rebirth.
Egyptologists say that Ra was a Sun-god, and nothing more than a Sun-god, but this is simply not true. In the Book Am Duat, the Book of Gates and the Book of Caverns, Ra was described undertaking a subterranean journey in which he reunited with the body of Osiris, the chief god of the underworld. Egyptologists turn a blind eye to this, nor are they able to explain the intimacy between Ra, the alleged Sun-god, and Osiris, the god of the dead. But the texts clearly state that Ra was the soul and Osiris the body, and that the divine combination of body and soul, Ra-Osiris, would ascend into the Sky and be reborn "in the body of Nut". This has nothing to do with the Sun, but sounds very much like a planetary rebirth, with Ra and Osiris being the body and soul of the exploded planet. Indeed the body of Nut was depicted as an island and described as "Osiris, whose circuit is the Duat".
The resurrection of Osiris to his heavenly aspect began with a descent and ended with an ascent - an exact reverse of the "act of creation" which had caused his fragments to penetrate the Earth's crust in primeval times. But what was this "act of creation"? The Egyptians described it with many different metaphors, such as the Sky-goddess Nut giving birth to her "children of chaos", or Geb laying a Great Egg from which the Phoenix (the Light-Bird) emerged at the beginning of time. More generally, this catastrophic act was known as "the Day of Slaying the Oldest Ones", a day when numerous gods were "decapitated" and "ascended to the Sky", which became "choked and stifled", a day when "the Sky was separated from the Earth", a day when there was a loud shriek and a flash of light. All of these metaphors are evocative of the exploding planet(s) envisaged by Tom Van Flandern, which would date the Egyptian "First Time" (zep tepi) to tens of millions of years ago.
Many of these creation myths involve primeval "mounds" or "islands" which appeared in the primeval ocean. If these mounds and waters were inspired by the River Nile, as Egyptologists propose, why is it that the Egyptians described the primeval ocean as everywhere, endless and without limit, with no up, no down and no surface? Why is it that Nut, a Sky-goddess, claimed in the Pyramid Texts that "I am the primeval hill of the land in the midst of the sea" - a statement in keeping with the Egyptian belief that a "Field of Reeds" existed in the Sky? What could have inspired these countless references to a planetary homeland in the eastern side of the Sky, where the ascended king would rule the Ennead of Nine Gods from a throne made of iron?
The answer would appear to lie in the legendary battle between Seth and Elder Horus (alias Osiris), which Egyptologists assume is a record of warfare in the Nile valley. On the contrary, these battles took place in the Sky or in the waters of space, and were identified as occurring in primeval times.
These legends, moreover, bear amazing correlations with Van Flandern's "intruder planet hypothesis". For example, the result of the battle is that Seth and Horus captured from each other an "eye" and "two testicles", a plausible description of a 2:1 satellite exchange between two planets, in full accord with the laws of celestial dynamics. This is one of sixteen extraordinary parallels which prompted Van Flandern to comment on my thesis: "The convergence of the latest astronomical data and the ancient Egyptian writings make it considerably more difficult to ignore these writings as anything less than an actual recording of our solar system's history."
Such a conclusion will seem "impossible" to many people, but so does the precision engineering of the Great Pyramid, and its existence at Giza cannot be denied. In fact, the anomalies of both the Pyramid and the exploded planet cult lend support to one another, and strengthen considerably the hypothesis for a lost race with a fantastic scientific capability.
In fairness, it must be stated that Van Flandern's theory remains controversial, and is not accepted by the majority of modern astronomers, who run for the hills at the mention of catastrophism. But dogma must yield to new scientific data sooner or later. Within the next decade, space probes will enable us to assess whether the exploded planet theory is correct or not, and this will afford the opportunity to test our 20th-century scientific consensus against the knowledge of astronomers from at least 6,000 years ago. A most exciting prospect.
But even if the ancient astronomers turn out to be wrong, the Egyptians' belief in an exploded planet still provide us with valuable insights into modern-day legends and myths. A classic example of this is Plato's account of Atlantis, which originated from Egypt. Until recently, I had assumed that Plato was describing a terrestrial cataclysm whereby an "island" literally sank into the "sea" following an "earthquake" and a "flood". But once I began to think like an Egyptian, I immediately recognized "island" as a common metaphor for "planet" (hence the belief that Planet Earth became an "Island of Fire"). This metaphor was strengthened by the idea that space was an ocean of water, in which primeval mounds emerged at the beginning of time. Hence the Egyptians imagined planets as "islands" floating in the cosmic waters, the latter surely being the "true ocean" described by Plato.
Is the legend of Atlantis being destroyed by earthquake and flood simply a repeat of the tales of Osiris being dismembered or drowned? Was Atlantis an exploded planet? Support for this theory is found in the etymology of "Atlas", the first of the ten kings whom Poseidon appointed in charge of this fabled island. It is a common misconception that Atlas supported the world on his shoulders. In fact he supported the Sky. Hence the name Atlas, in Greek, meant "the one who could not withstand" (referring to the Sky). Atlas was regarded as a "pillar" which reached to the heavens but then collapsed, allowing the Sky to fall. This collapse supposedly buried Atlantis - an identical idea to the Egyptian god Osiris falling to Earth, splitting it open, and becoming buried in the underworld. In other words, Atlantis fell from the Sky.
This example of Atlantis illustrates how the implications of an exploded planet cult in ancient Egypt extend well beyond the boundaries of Egyptology itself, leading to a radical reappraisal of the so-called "gods" which came down from heaven to Earth. The identification of these gods (the Anunnaki, the Nephilim, the Builder Gods of Edfu, for example) as meteoric planetary fragments inevitably begs the question of whether God, the son of God and the angels of God are also echoes of this ancient and profound inter-planetary creation cult.
For the last two hundred years, ancient Egypt has captured the imagination of scholars and laymen alike, resulting in a deluge of books on this most mysterious of civilizations. But despite these intensive investigations, scholars have failed to recreate the mind-set of this ancient people, and arguments continue to rage concerning the exact purposes of the Egyptian pyramids and temples. At the heart of this stalemate lies a failure to comprehend what possible religious motivation could have compelled the Egyptians to build such enormous pyramids, the largest comprising several million tons of stone. Hence Kurt Mendelssohn's recent reference to the pyramids as "magnificent madness" is little different from the puzzlement felt in Roman times, when Pliny dismissed the pyramids as "that idle and foolish exhibition of royal wealth".
Might the experts have taken a wrong turn and overlooked the essence of the ancient Egyptian mystery? I believe that they have indeed missed a deeper level of significance, for which signposts are everywhere to be found. In this article, I will draw on some of this evidence to present a radical new interpretation of the Pyramid Texts and other Egyptian myths.
Regular readers of Atlantis Rising will know that the background to my interest in Egypt lies in my fascination with the "gods" of ancient civilizations, largely inspired by the works of Zecharia Sitchin (see interview in AR Number 13). Having written my first book Gods of the New Millennium in support of Sitchin's thesis of flesh-and-blood "gods", it was to ancient Egypt that I turned to seek further confirmation of this theory. If Sitchin was right, the Egyptians had lived alongside the "Anunnaki"—a race with space-faring technology, who had built an underground space center in the Sinai and two pyramids as navigation beacons at Giza. I was thus confident of finding numerous eye-witness accounts of aircraft and rockets scattered throughout the ancient Egyptian texts. To my great disappointment, however, I could find no such references in the Pyramid Texts, nor in any other Egyptian texts.
But as I plunged deeper and deeper into the Egyptian religious beliefs, the veil began to lift on a cosmology which reminded me of Sitchin's planetary battle theory in "The Twelfth Planet". In a similar style to the appearance of the god Marduk in the Babylonian epic "Enuma Elish", so did the Egyptian god Seth appear as a "spear from the abyss", an intruder planet which emerged from the depths of space and proceeded to encounter one of the inner planets (equivalent to the Babylonian "Tiamat").
According to Sitchin's interpretation of the Enuma Elish, the vanquished planet Tiamat was split into two parts, with one part becoming the asteroid belt, and the other part becoming the Earth, in a new orbit much closer to the Sun. The Egyptians, however, had a very different understanding of this cosmic event. The god Osiris, for example (a Sky-god until his murder by Seth) was said to have fallen from the Sky and "split open the Earth", indicating that the Earth was already in its existing position before the catastrophe. Similarly, when the god Geb was forcefully separated from Nut and fell to the Earth, he did not become the Earth, but lay upon its surface and, according to one legend, carried out construction and renovation work to the Earth in "thousands of foundations and millions of places".
During 1997, by one of those strange twists of fate that often happens, I was contacted by Tom Van Flandern, one of the few astronomers to embrace the evidence that an intruder planet had disrupted our solar system. Van Flandern is better known, however, for his theory that the asteroid belt and comets are the remains of two planets and a moon which suffered catastrophic explosions. And it was this theory, generally known as the "exploded planet hypothesis", which was to prove vital in my decoding of the ancient Egyptian belief system.
One of the most prominent deities in Egyptian religion was Osiris, a Sky-god who had been murdered by Seth, and fallen to Earth. According to the Pyramid Texts, Osiris was "laid low" or "drowned" (in the watery abyss of space), but there is another famous legend which alleges that he was dismembered, with his body parts being buried all over Egypt. This legend of the dismemberment of Osiris has always confounded the experts, but it makes perfect sense if Osiris was an exploded planet, fragments from which impacted the Earth. Numerous details support this interpretation, such as the legend that Osiris fell with fire and "split open" the Earth, coming to rest in deep, dark subterranean caverns. Many texts also speak of the Earth becoming an "Island of Fire" in this primeval time. Another remarkable detail, in the light of evidence that the exploded planets were watery, is the statement in the Pyramid Texts that Osiris brought forth a flood of cold waters to the Earth. This is confirmed by the Book of Genesis which states that the waters of the Deluge fell to Earth from an aperture in the heavens.
The idea that Osiris was an exploded planet is backed up by this god's well-known association with meteorites. Spell 1080 of the Coffin Texts states that: "This is the sealed thing which is in darkness, with fire about it, which contains the efflux of Osiris, and it is put in Rostau; it has been hidden since it fell from him, and it is what came down from him on to the desert of sand." A similar legend spoke of a "stone from heaven" kept at Abydos. Both of these descriptions are evocative of meteorites (i.e., fallen asteroids), an identification which is supported by evidence relating to the cult of the Benben Stone at Heliopolis. Egyptologists are fairly certain that the Benben was a conical meteorite, which was raised atop a pillar symbolizing its resurrection to the heavens whence it came.
The example of the Benben Stone illustrates very clearly the concept of death and rebirth, which was the fundamental cornerstone of Egyptian beliefs. Egyptologists insist that these beliefs were inspired by mundane forces of nature, such as the rising and setting Sun, or the rise and fall of the River Nile. The cult of the Benben Stone, however, points to a cosmic death and rebirth, since the meteorite was an asteroid which had fallen to Earth in a fiery death, and was then raised back towards heaven for its future resurrection. The same symbolism can be seen in the obelisks and pyramids, which were similarly raised to the heavens, with the latter representing an ascension vehicle ("mer") for the soul and body-double of the deceased king.
This cosmic solution might seem fairly obvious, but Egyptologists have failed to conclude the obvious as a result of their poor understanding of Egyptian architecture, religion and mythology. For example, some of the religious myths, such as the battles of Horus and Seth, are seen as a historical record of warfare in the Nile valley, whilst other myths, such as the "primeval mound" creation myths, are thought to have been inspired by the receding floodwaters of the Nile. And those religious beliefs which are recognized as essentially cosmic in nature are undermined by an apparently confusing mixture of references to the Sun, the Moon, certain stars and meteorites.
Now the problem with all these orthodox interpretations is that they simply do not fit together by any stretch of the imagination. One might draw an analogy to a cocktail of substances that won't mix together, but settle into distinct and irreconcilable layers. Such is the position advocated by Egyptologists today, who dismiss the Egyptians as having a confused set of contradictory beliefs.
But was this really the case? In The Phoenix Solution I have added one simple magic ingredient to the cocktail, which enables all of the layers to intermingle into one coherent and meaningful religious potion. This magic ingredient is the exploded planet hypothesis. My proposition, in a nutshell, is that the Egyptians were obsessed with a planetary death and rebirth, but since this planet could no longer be seen in the real heavens, they adopted the Sun and certain stars as visible symbols of the invisible. The Sun in particular served as a powerful daily reminder of this planetary death and rebirth.
Egyptologists say that Ra was a Sun-god, and nothing more than a Sun-god, but this is simply not true. In the Book Am Duat, the Book of Gates and the Book of Caverns, Ra was described undertaking a subterranean journey in which he reunited with the body of Osiris, the chief god of the underworld. Egyptologists turn a blind eye to this, nor are they able to explain the intimacy between Ra, the alleged Sun-god, and Osiris, the god of the dead. But the texts clearly state that Ra was the soul and Osiris the body, and that the divine combination of body and soul, Ra-Osiris, would ascend into the Sky and be reborn "in the body of Nut". This has nothing to do with the Sun, but sounds very much like a planetary rebirth, with Ra and Osiris being the body and soul of the exploded planet. Indeed the body of Nut was depicted as an island and described as "Osiris, whose circuit is the Duat".
The resurrection of Osiris to his heavenly aspect began with a descent and ended with an ascent - an exact reverse of the "act of creation" which had caused his fragments to penetrate the Earth's crust in primeval times. But what was this "act of creation"? The Egyptians described it with many different metaphors, such as the Sky-goddess Nut giving birth to her "children of chaos", or Geb laying a Great Egg from which the Phoenix (the Light-Bird) emerged at the beginning of time. More generally, this catastrophic act was known as "the Day of Slaying the Oldest Ones", a day when numerous gods were "decapitated" and "ascended to the Sky", which became "choked and stifled", a day when "the Sky was separated from the Earth", a day when there was a loud shriek and a flash of light. All of these metaphors are evocative of the exploding planet(s) envisaged by Tom Van Flandern, which would date the Egyptian "First Time" (zep tepi) to tens of millions of years ago.
Many of these creation myths involve primeval "mounds" or "islands" which appeared in the primeval ocean. If these mounds and waters were inspired by the River Nile, as Egyptologists propose, why is it that the Egyptians described the primeval ocean as everywhere, endless and without limit, with no up, no down and no surface? Why is it that Nut, a Sky-goddess, claimed in the Pyramid Texts that "I am the primeval hill of the land in the midst of the sea" - a statement in keeping with the Egyptian belief that a "Field of Reeds" existed in the Sky? What could have inspired these countless references to a planetary homeland in the eastern side of the Sky, where the ascended king would rule the Ennead of Nine Gods from a throne made of iron?
The answer would appear to lie in the legendary battle between Seth and Elder Horus (alias Osiris), which Egyptologists assume is a record of warfare in the Nile valley. On the contrary, these battles took place in the Sky or in the waters of space, and were identified as occurring in primeval times.
These legends, moreover, bear amazing correlations with Van Flandern's "intruder planet hypothesis". For example, the result of the battle is that Seth and Horus captured from each other an "eye" and "two testicles", a plausible description of a 2:1 satellite exchange between two planets, in full accord with the laws of celestial dynamics. This is one of sixteen extraordinary parallels which prompted Van Flandern to comment on my thesis: "The convergence of the latest astronomical data and the ancient Egyptian writings make it considerably more difficult to ignore these writings as anything less than an actual recording of our solar system's history."
Such a conclusion will seem "impossible" to many people, but so does the precision engineering of the Great Pyramid, and its existence at Giza cannot be denied. In fact, the anomalies of both the Pyramid and the exploded planet cult lend support to one another, and strengthen considerably the hypothesis for a lost race with a fantastic scientific capability.
In fairness, it must be stated that Van Flandern's theory remains controversial, and is not accepted by the majority of modern astronomers, who run for the hills at the mention of catastrophism. But dogma must yield to new scientific data sooner or later. Within the next decade, space probes will enable us to assess whether the exploded planet theory is correct or not, and this will afford the opportunity to test our 20th-century scientific consensus against the knowledge of astronomers from at least 6,000 years ago. A most exciting prospect.
But even if the ancient astronomers turn out to be wrong, the Egyptians' belief in an exploded planet still provide us with valuable insights into modern-day legends and myths. A classic example of this is Plato's account of Atlantis, which originated from Egypt. Until recently, I had assumed that Plato was describing a terrestrial cataclysm whereby an "island" literally sank into the "sea" following an "earthquake" and a "flood". But once I began to think like an Egyptian, I immediately recognized "island" as a common metaphor for "planet" (hence the belief that Planet Earth became an "Island of Fire"). This metaphor was strengthened by the idea that space was an ocean of water, in which primeval mounds emerged at the beginning of time. Hence the Egyptians imagined planets as "islands" floating in the cosmic waters, the latter surely being the "true ocean" described by Plato.
Is the legend of Atlantis being destroyed by earthquake and flood simply a repeat of the tales of Osiris being dismembered or drowned? Was Atlantis an exploded planet? Support for this theory is found in the etymology of "Atlas", the first of the ten kings whom Poseidon appointed in charge of this fabled island. It is a common misconception that Atlas supported the world on his shoulders. In fact he supported the Sky. Hence the name Atlas, in Greek, meant "the one who could not withstand" (referring to the Sky). Atlas was regarded as a "pillar" which reached to the heavens but then collapsed, allowing the Sky to fall. This collapse supposedly buried Atlantis - an identical idea to the Egyptian god Osiris falling to Earth, splitting it open, and becoming buried in the underworld. In other words, Atlantis fell from the Sky.
This example of Atlantis illustrates how the implications of an exploded planet cult in ancient Egypt extend well beyond the boundaries of Egyptology itself, leading to a radical reappraisal of the so-called "gods" which came down from heaven to Earth. The identification of these gods (the Anunnaki, the Nephilim, the Builder Gods of Edfu, for example) as meteoric planetary fragments inevitably begs the question of whether God, the son of God and the angels of God are also echoes of this ancient and profound inter-planetary creation cult.
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