disinfo/2013/09/imhotep-african-architect-cosmos/ A few kilometers outside the modern city of Cairo, on a large, flat elevation at the edge of the Sahara overlooking the Nile, is the world’s very first architectural complex. Nearly 5,000 years old, the centerpiece of this mind-boggling complex is a huge stepped pyramid surrounded by strange temple-like structures, the lot contained inside a giant perimeter wall whose length is more than 1,500 meters. Aligned conspicuously toward the four cardinal directions, this strange place evokes a mood, for lack of better words, of “sacred architecture”—or, perhaps more aptly, “sacred astronomy.” No doubt something extremely potent took place here— certainly rituals of the highest order that somehow involved the cycles of the celestial bodies as seen through the eyes of a holy man or shaman. Amazingly, when one considers the extreme antiquity of this complex, Egyptologists know for sure who conceived it: Imhotep, the high priest of Heliopolis and vizier of King Netjerykhet/Djoser of the 3rd Dynasty in c. 2650 BC. And that, if the truth be told, is just about all they know with certainty. All else is educated guesses, speculation, and even fanciful thinking derived from later sources when Imhotep the man had been mythologized and even deified beyond recognition.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Oct 2013 15:46:19 +0000
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