Pros: interesting but bizarre; some ideas are out of this world (literally)
Cons: gets very technical
The Bottom Line: An excellent choice if you like ancient culture/prophecy reading. Failed to make the impression that we only have 10 years left, call me in 11 years and I'll confirm it.
en7489's Full Review: Maurice Cotterell - The Tutankhamun Prophecies: Th...
I was given this book as a gift because I have somewhat of a fascination with ancient cultures (I watch a lot of Discovery and History Channel). At first glance, I thought it had great reading potential, then I opened the cover.....
Maurice Cotterel makes an attempt to link the ancient Egyptians, Mayans, and Freemasons to a series of times on earth when "supergods" inhabited the bodies of a man and imparted divine knowledge upon mankind. He even throws Jesus into the mix for good measure, though he's not discussed much. Perhaps I should have read the books he has written prior to this one, because he kept referring back to his earlier books, and truthfully, because of this, I got lost in a few places.
The book, if I understood it right, puts the world into a 5,000 year cycle - every 5,000 years the earth experiences a cataclysmic destruction. He further breaks this down into 1250 year periods where a supergod visits earth in the form of a man and gives the divine knowledge of the stars and sun to man. These supergods leave their encoded prophecies behind, but it seems that man keeps forgetting after the supergods depart. Ultimately, the veiled prophecy is that we are fast approaching the end of the 5,000 year cycle and face destruction of all that we know.
Call me skeptical, but I had a hard time making the same connections that the author did. But, I am neither a scientist, historian, nor mathemetician, so who am I to criticize?
Cotterell starts off by talking about the Mayan Lord Pacal's tomb. In the tomb are supposed to be numerous items, drawings and carvings that show us how the Mayans had the divine knowledge and prophecized the end of the world. Cotterell shows this through a series of pictures of the items found in the tomb and links them to numbers and formulas that spell disaster, but also prove(?) that they knew far more about the world than we do now. Though fascinating, I find some of his connections hard to believe. I understand that numerology have ruled many a past culture, but while reading this, I found the sources for his numbers bizarre at best.
I really don't have a lot of space here to describe them all, but here's one example: take the lid to the tomb that Pacal is buried in - it is a huge stone lid and weighs about 2,000 lbs (that's from memory, I don't have the book with me right now to confirm that number, but it makes the point). On this lid are numerous carvings. What Cotterell wants us to believe is that if you take a photograph of the lid, transfer it to two transparencies, flip one over, rotate it through various angles and overlay it on the first transparency, then you will have a symbolic picture that when decoded, proves the Mayans knew all about celestial bodies, end of the world, or the destruction cycle. Now, I'm no genius, but I know the Mayans didn't have copy machines, photographs, or transparencies. Cotterell's claim is that the Mayans were able to encode this knowledge into the carvings because they had the divine mind to be able to line it up mentally.
We next travel backward in time to Egypt, Tutankhamun's time to be exact. Tut was supposedly another of these supergods. Cotterell's link to this is through examination of his tomb, and explanation of what everything in the tomb signified and how it meant that Tut had the divine knowledge. Conveniently, much of this related to what the Mayans supposedly showed much later. In-depth detail about many of the Egyptian gods and how they related to Tut is given, but again, I failed to understand a lot of how each representation in the tomb linked back to the divine knowledge of the supergod Tutankhamun.
For good measure, and to fit a divine being in the right spot between the Egyptians and the Mayans, Jesus fits right in there. Not a whole lot is discussed about his symbology or prophecies, but enough is there to make the cycle connection.
Next we move on to the Freemasons. From what I could follow, the freemasons are the keepers of some of this divine knowledge, and Cotterell traces their origins back to the Egyptian era. There's really a good bit of information about the Freemasons, but I failed to make the ultimate connection of how they relate to the divine knowledge, except their link to sun-worship...maybe I'm just too stupid to get it.
What is ultimately fascinating about this book is contained in the appendices. Cotterell makes connections between the cycles of the sun and things that happen in the world - world fertility problems, how horoscopes affect personality, famine, etc. Some of the appendices are mind-blowing charts and calculations that try (but failed - on me at least)to show the cycles that will lead to our destruction. Some are pretty simple and really make you sit up and say "oh, that makes sense". The ultimate prediction I got from this book is that some time around 2012, the cataclysmic destruction of life on earth will come, probably as a result of the sun's magnetic fields reversing, possibly resulting in the earth literally flipping upside down (north Pole becomes South Pole, etc).
Overall, the book was fascinating to read, and most likely I will go to my local library and look for his previous books. But, since the predicted date of cataclysmic destruction is around 2012, I'll have to make sure I do it in the next 10 years. If he proves his predictions to me in his other books, then I'll cash in all my investments and start partying like it's 2011. Until then, I'm going to keep building on my nest egg and hope the world doesn't turn upside down.
Again, I'm no scientist, engineer, or mathemetician, but I found this book to be fascinating. I don't believe all that it says, but the research and discussion is truly worth reading.
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