Computer from ancient Egypt: Russian mathematician has solved the mystery of Stonehenge

Andrey Zlobin, mathematician, candidate of technical sciences

The majestic and mysterious Stonehenge - "the eighth wonder of the world", an ancient stone structure in the south of England. The complex with a diameter of more than a hundred meters consists of a round chalk rampart, ditches, embankments, deep holes and megalith stones installed in the center. The largest stones, as high as a three-story building, amaze the imagination. Installed vertically, they are covered from above with massive stone beams and weigh fifty tons ...

Many scientists have tried to solve the stone puzzle, but the most successful was the mathematician and astronomer Gerald Hawkins. Using a computer, he proved that a number of directions at Stonehenge are related to the rising and setting of the Sun and Moon on the solstice days. Calling Stonehenge "the calculating machine of the Stone Age", the scientist was not mistaken. Looking at the building from a bird's eye view, it is difficult to get rid of the thought that you have a huge "computer diskette" before your eyes. Having spent more than thirty years studying Stonehenge, I managed to read and decipher this floppy disk. The conclusions of J. Hawkins suggested that the structure is most likely associated with the ancient solar religion. Indeed, I found the key to the Stonehenge cipher in the writings of the founder of Egyptology, Jean François Champollion.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, J.F. Champollion proceeded from the fact that the names of the kings Ptolemy and Cleopatra, written in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs on the Rosetta stone, are surrounded by a special contour line - a cartouche. Following the same logic, I suggested that the name of the main sun god of the Egyptians should also contain a cartouche, since the Egyptian king (pharaoh) was equated with god. The assumption was confirmed. As it turned out, the Egyptian hieroglyph "sun" really was a point enclosed by a circle. And the hieroglyph, denoting the name of the god Ra, additionally contained a small dash next to the symbol of the sun. It became obvious that the outline of Stonehenge in plan is nothing more than a giant Egyptian hieroglyph of the sun god Ra.

Having before my eyes examples of ancient Egyptian writing, I discovered several more hieroglyphs on the Stonehenge plan. For example, the horseshoe-shaped figure in the center of the structure is also a hieroglyph. This is how the ancient Egyptians designated the number "ten". There was even a signature of the person who created this ancient digital stone diskette. In the most prominent place at the entrance to Stonehenge, from where the sunrise is observed on the day of the summer solstice, a strange ten-meter dotted line is located literally underfoot. Having traced this dotted line along the contour, I immediately recognized the hieroglyph "to write". This is undoubtedly the signature of an ancient Egyptian scribe. This signature cannot be confused with anything, since the hieroglyph "to write" is an image of an ancient Egyptian writing device.

This is how the prominent Soviet Egyptologist, Academician MA Korostovtsev, describes this device: “The instrument with which the Egyptians wrote on papyrus and leather is well known to us, since the writing instruments of Egyptian scribes have come down to us from different times. They consisted of a plank in the recesses of which red and black ink was kept dry, a miniature stone mortar with a pestle for rubbing ink, a brush, a case for storing it, and a small vessel for water in which the brush was moistened. The board, case and vessel were connected with a cord".

The presence in Stonehenge of hieroglyphs and the signature of the Egyptian scribe unambiguously indicated that this is a stone message, and it contains some text, information.

For further decoding, I had to compile a dictionary of Stonehenge hieroglyphs and get to know more deeply about ancient Egyptian mythology and religion. The more I learned about Ancient Egypt, the more I realized that Stonehenge is the temple of the sun god and contains the most intimate secrets of the ancient Egyptian priests. The mythology of the Egyptians is found in Stonehenge literally at every step, from the symbolism of the birth of the sun to the names of the Egyptian gods.

The real shock was the realization that the ancient Egyptians had a brilliant knowledge of mathematics and combined text recordings with digital ones. This amazing writing system completely eliminated the possibility that the written was read by an uneducated person. Even today, in the age of mathematics and cybernetics, few people with higher education would be able to unravel the mystery of the sacred Egyptian writing. It corresponds well to the laws of writing established by J.F. Champollion and, at the same time, is more mathematically complex. It took me, a candidate of sciences with a triple higher education, including mathematics and technical, to decipher thirty years.

Anticipating possible criticism, let me explain right away. The creators of Stonehenge were not so naive as not to duplicate their message in different ways. Accidental coincidences are thus excluded. This also shows the tradition of the scribes of Ancient Egypt, which was characterized by a kind of rebuses, the writing and reading of which differed depending on the context. Stonehenge also has such puzzles, and they include hieroglyphic, mythological, mathematical and astronomical symbols. Therefore, for example, if we read the name of the sun god Ra in Stonehenge, then by another method, the second name of the solar deity is written here - Atum. Egyptologists are well aware of the mythological relationship of these two names.

So what is contained on a huge stone diskette that was left in Salisbury Plain four thousand years ago? I managed to read the phrase "Eternally living Atum", the names of the ancient Egyptian gods, as well as mathematical formulas, one of which has not yet been known to any modern person.

This unknown and very beautiful mathematical expression can be easily formulated in the words: "the diameter of a circle of unit length is equal to the ratio of the golden ratio to its exponent".

For skeptics, I would recommend the works of famous Egyptologists. They confirm that mathematical knowledge reached astonishing heights in ancient Egypt. The ancient Egyptians not only owned the decimal number system and had special characters for writing numerical values. They used addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, had an idea of fractions, arithmetic and geometric progression, knew how to raise to a power, extract a root, solve algebraic problems and find unknowns by solving equations.

Stonehenge's Egyptian origins provide a compelling explanation for two more prehistoric structures nearby. This is the so-called Alley directly adjacent to Stonehenge and located just north of Kursus. Together, they correspond so well to ancient Egyptian myths that the state of the pharaohs can be confidently considered their homeland. Let's look at the curved shape of the Alley. If we draw next to the image of the Egyptian goddess of the sky Nut, one cannot fail to notice a clear similarity. The feet of the goddess Nut are located near the entrance to Stonehenge. The goddess's hands are directed to the banks of the Avon River. The middle part of the Alley symbolizes the body of the goddess. The line from Stonehenge along the legs of the goddess is directed to the belly, where the sun rises (is born) on the day of the summer solstice. The head and hands of the goddess are directed to the place on the banks of the Avon River, where, in the direction of Stonehenge, the sunset is visible on the summer solstice. Thus, we have a complete analogy with the myth of the sky goddess Nut, who gives birth to the sun in the morning and swallows it in the evening.

No less convincingly one can explain the Kursus - similar to the Alley, but a rectilinear structure next to the burial grounds, reminiscent of a road. The courseus certainly symbolizes the border between heaven and the underworld. The ancient Egyptians named this underworld - Duat. Taking into account the Egyptian mythology, the western point of Kursus indicates from Stonehenge the direction of the sun's entrance into the Duat, and the eastern point - the direction of the exit of the star from the "dungeon". Thus, the symbolism of the Alley and the Course is the same. It means the path of the sun god Ra. In the case of the Alley, the mythical boat Ra floats across the daytime sky. In the case of Kursus, a boat with a god floats in the underworld at night. The mythology of the journey of the god Ra in the day and night boat is well described in the book of the Soviet Egyptologist M.E. Mathieu.

The fact that the idea of building Stonehenge belonged to the Egyptians is no longer in doubt. It is also desirable to understand how this unique structure was built? How did the ancient builders move giant stones of many tons and set them on top of each other with great precision? How did heavy stone beams rise to the height of a three-story building four thousand years ago? The answers to these questions should also be sought on the banks of the Nile.

Being both a mathematician and an engineer, I found a solution by imagining that I would have to build Stonehenge myself. It immediately became clear that hydraulic devices for lifting weights were indispensable. The builders of Stonehenge reasoned the same way, having built huge hydraulic "jacks".

These were three man-made concentric basins, separated by thick embankment walls-ramparts and sluices. By placing stones on log rafts, and consistently raising the water level in the pools, the builders hydraulically raised the stones to the required height.

The same hydraulic technology made it possible with high accuracy to bring rafts with stones to the places where the megaliths were installed. To install the stone in place, it was enough just to lower the water level in the pool. The source of water was probably the nearby Avon River. The lintels between the pools were subsequently removed.

Many researchers have puzzled over why the builders of Stonehenge made three rows of deep holes arranged in circles. These holes just confirm the design of the three concentric pools. In each hole, an Egyptian water-lifting device of the type of a well crane, which was called "shaduf", was installed. The people who worked with the shaduf controlled the water level by scooping up water from one pool and pouring it into another. Now we can say for sure why the topmost stone rung at Stonehenge was located at a height of about seven meters. The fact is that the "standard" Egyptian shaduf raised the water two meters. That is why the chalk rampart around Stonehenge was two meters high. It was the wall of the shallowest pool, two meters deep. The second row of shadufs ensured the rise of water in the second pool already to a height of four meters. Finally, the third row of water lifts made it possible to lift rafts with stones to a height of six meters. Adding about another meter of the thickness of the crossbar itself, we finally get a height of seven meters (2 + 2 + 2 + 1). Over the millennia of farming on the banks of the Nile, the Egyptians have accumulated vast experience in working with water and irrigation systems. This experience was used in the construction of Stonehenge.

Our contemporaries are too poorly informed about the scientific and technological achievements of ancient man. Today's historians and archaeologists still believe that the ancient man was an uneducated savage. Such views are categorically inconsistent with the facts. I argue that Stonehenge could only be built by a person with a college degree. And if you take a closer look at the works of authoritative Egyptologists, you can learn about the so-called "houses of life" - educational institutions, which in Ancient Egypt roughly corresponded to the level of higher education. “Be a scribe and, visiting the house of life, become a sage like a chest of books” - these words belong to Amennakht from the house of life. The activity of the houses of life was very versatile, one might even say universal for that time. In fact, these were ancient universities that gave higher education to Egyptian scribes. Unfortunately, many humanitarians today know less than graduates of the homes of life, so their understanding of early civilizations is downright primitive. It will be very funny if in the future archaeologists find a piece of a slide rule and declare it a tablet for counting the number of animals killed in a hunt. Alas, you need a certain level of education to understand that thanks to such a "plaque" a person flew into space, and an atomic bomb was created.

It is worth thinking deeply about the fate of humanity. It must find the strength to admit that the history of the Ancient World, the history of science, require a radical revision. It is quite obvious that already in ancient times, thousands of years ago, there was a system of higher education. It was thanks to highly educated graduates of ancient universities that such huge and complex structures as the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge were built. Thanks to the ancient higher school, observations of the sun, moon, planets and stars were carried out, the positions of the luminaries in the sky were calculated, and even (!) Differential equations were solved. The theoretical and mathematical training of modern historians and archaeologists must be raised to a qualitatively new level. Only in this case will historical science be able to adequately assess the intellectual level of an ancient man and the beauty of his thought. In the meantime, the history textbooks of the Ancient World, figuratively speaking, teach "to hammer nails with a microscope".

Returning to Stonehenge, we can conclude: millennia ago, the influence of Ancient Egypt spread much further than it was considered until now. As an Egyptian temple and an ancient university at the same time, Stonehenge has certainly contributed to the growth of the intellectual potential of the native inhabitants of England. The care with which the British treat the ancient stones of Stonehenge evokes great respect. Of course, this "eighth wonder of the world" will tell a lot about the life of the British in antiquity and at the same time give a new impetus to the development of Egyptology. Stonehenge demonstrated for the first time that the Egyptians had a special language with which sacred secret knowledge was recorded. Today we begin to understand this language and the greatness of the ancient sages can only be envied.