The moving hand writes, and, having writ,
Moves on. Nor all thy piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.
—Omar Khayham, untitiled quatrain
Egypt as a symbol
The connection between ancient Egypt and UFO realm is well established. There is ongoing speculation of alien intervention with pyramid construction and design, theories surrounding time traveling aliens and Egypt, and especially within our popular media, there are many such affiliations-who could forget Ra’s outrageous and cool pyramid-as-spaceship in Stargate?
Whether or not the connection is “real,” that is, whether or not some tie exists between the UFO phenomenon, aliens, and Ancient Egypt as an objective reality, it is certainly provocative. Egypt is enigmatic in that many of its most sacred objects are still available to us in an amazing bright states of preservation, including the sphinx, pyramids, tomb artifacts, jewelry, and objects used in daily life. There’s also a great sense of urbanization involved with ancient Egypt. The culture is a pleasant mix of the exotic mystic “Other,” combined with a sense of contemporary tangibility–“Us.”
It’s easy to somewhat romanticize the culture as a whole, and look to it as a desirable but unfortunately lost civilization. Further, Egypt’s geography may hold a key to its attraction. The African continent itself –the seat of humanity and perhaps the most mysterious place on earth within the overall Western psyche: we have terms such as “the dark continent,” “darkest Africa,” etc. The horrific appropriation and enslavement of Africa’s inhabitants by Westerners until the latter 1800s may also play some part in our almost century long Egypt-attraction and fascination.
We can address Africa and its mysteries and relevant difficult social issues via ancient Egypt, under the guise of glamour. That ultimate savage-mystic glamour is well ingrained in the western collective soul, and perhaps represented and embodied physically by a few things: King Tut’s gleaming mask, the Great Pyramid, the Sphinx, and hieroglyphs.
Egyptian hieroglyphs as a symbol
Hieroglyphs are intriguing as a cultural symbol; it is a somewhat holographic idea that folds back on itself, making it doubly powerful. Hieroglyphs are obviously symbols, in that they are literary characters within a logographic-alphabetic writing system. They carry meaning intrinsically, as any such system does, but even within that idea, the characters contain meanings on several levels.
A quote from the man who was to finally decipher the Rosetta Stone, the language savant Jean-Francois Champollion, describes the layer-upon-layer, internal ‘pun’ nature of the Egyptian hieroglyphs: “It is a complex system, writing figurative, symbolic, and phonetic all at once, in the same text, the same phrase, I would almost say in the same word.
Interestingly, another savant (actually, a mega-savant,) Salt Lake City resident Kim Peek, (who many might recall is the person on which the Rain Man character is based) employs similar linguistic dynamics in making connections. In a documentary, The Real Rain Man, there is some insight into Peek’s most sublime mind; when presented with Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, he sings the familiar first notes as “dot dot dot…dash,” which is morse code for the letter V, which also represents the “fifth” in the title. He then states “V for Victory,” a reference to the outcome of World War II, in which Germany was defeated; note too, that Beethoven himself was German.
While this same connection was also made by others during the war, with other examples, it’s clear that Kim Peek makes use of such holographic style, self-referential puns within language, memory, and expression. That the Egyptian written language employs similar dynamics, and that it took a savant to finally recognize such, may point to some inherent genius and profundity within the language system itself.
So, Egyptian hieroglyphs are a very sophisticated and intelligent writing system, and mysterious in itself. It’s also the tip of the iceberg in regard to occult-magickal-spiritual-cabalistic dynamics within written language. For an intense, esoteric, difficult but enormously brilliant study of this topic, interested readers will be happy to find William Eisen’s book, The Essence of THE* Cabala: Tarot Hebrew English.
Hieroglyphs, perhaps because they are so intrinsically meaningful, are also serve as a wider cultural symbol, when found anachronistically and out of context in the modern world. Because of their basic function, they represent communication, but also because of their Egyptian origins, they represent all that the place itself represents to us: ultimate or impenetrable mysteries, human origins, general spirituality, and social idealism.
So, at the core, it can be said that hieroglyphs can be seen to contain somewhat of an oxymoron within their symbology-they are a communication of questions. The UFO realm is notoriously onion like in nature-very often, it is the case that all questions lead only to more puzzling questions. It might not be surprising then, that many modern UFO narratives, from their very beginnings, contain accounts of the presence of Egyptian-style hieroglyphic writing, usually adorning the spaceship itself.
I want to clarify that my observations are reliant and speak to only the witnesses’ inferences and descriptions of the symbols as Egyptian and/or hieroglyphic in nature, and that I do not assert that there are or are not any such symbols objectively speaking; my focus in within the narrative structures only.
Examples of hieroglyphs within UFO narratives, then and now, famous and obscure
1865 Mystery Airship
The newspaper The Missouri Democrat, October 19, 1865, carried a story entitled, A Strange Story-Remarkable Discovery, which detailed the experience of “an old Rocky Mountain trapper”, Mr. James Lumley. The article describes Lumley’s experience:
“Just after sunset one evening, he beheld a bright luminous body in the heavens, which moved with great rapidity in an easterly direction. It was plainly visible for at least five seconds, when it suddenly separated into particles, resembling, as Mr. Lumley describes it, the bursting of a sky-rocket in the air.”
And, according to the account, Lumley was compelled to report the incident because of a bizarre discovery two days after the sighting: “…he discovered, at the distance of about two miles from his camping place, that, as far as he could see in either direction a path had been cut through the forest, several rods wide-giant trees uprooted or broken off near the ground- the tops of hills shaved off and the earth plowed up in many places.”
The account continues: “Great and widespread havoc was everywhere visible. Following up this track of desolation, he soon ascertained the cause of it in the shape of an immense stone driven into the side of a mountain. An examination of this stone, or so much of it as was visible, showed that it was divided into compartments that in various places it was carved with curious hieroglyphics. More than this, Mr. Lumley also discovered fragments of a substance resembling glass, and here and there dark stains, as though caused by a liquid.
He is confident that the hieroglyphics are the work of human hands, and that the stone itself, although but a fragment of an immense body, must have been used for some purpose by animated beings.”
The article goes on to theorize the object Lumley saw was most likely a meteorite, but in somewhat of a dramatic twist (owing perhaps to the presence of those hieroglyphs, and Lumley’s insistence of the artificial aspects of the “stone”) also goes on to theorize that meteors could be a vehicle on which aliens explore earth.
Roswell
Perhaps the most famous UFO case of all time also happens to contain perhaps the most famous instance of hieroglyphs within the UFO realm. Egyptian style hieroglyphs were reported as being on objects within the saucer’s debris. There is much speculation that the hieroglyphs were in fact, a printed flower design pattern on some tape that was used on the debris (this assuming obviously, that the debris was a weather balloon or other similar terrestrial object.)
There have also been attempts at the decipherment of Roswell witness Jesse Marcel’s sketch of the hieroglyphs. In his website, “the wanderling” asserts there are similarities between Marcel’s sketches and the newly-theorized (in 1947) electron clouds surrounding hydrogen atoms.
In Ray Santilli’s notorious Alien Autopsy 1995 hoax film, the hieroglyphs were actually shown gracing some of the metal debris; they turned out to be a composite of Greek, Hebrew and Egyptian characters.
The Kecksburg Incident and the Bentwaters Incident
Hieroglyphs are also reported in connection with another crashed UFO. In the 1965 incident in rural Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, witnesses described strange writing around the base of the acorn shaped craft. There are descriptions of simple, Egyptian-like pictoral characters, such as stars and lines. There are other reports of backwards letters, which gives at least some credence to the theory that the object was actually some type of downed Russian probe.
Hieroglyphs have also been reported in connection the the RAF Bentwaters/Rendelshem Forest case in England. Recently, on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory, Bentwaters witness Jim Penniston described and provided sketches of the symbols he claims to have seen on the craft. In addition, in an article at UFO Casebook, he describes, “On the upper left side of the craft, was an inscription. It measured six inches high, of symbols. They looked familiar, but I couldn’t ascertain why.”
The CARET Documents/ Drone Craft
The most recent example of hieroglyphic and symbolic writing within the UFO realm is a doozy. In the spring 2007, a photo of a strange craft was sent in by an anonymous person named “Chad,” and posted at the Coast to Coast website. Much was made of the photo, and the consensus was divided. Many believed the story a fabrication and the photo to be a model and/or photoshopped. However, other, more intricate-looking and similar photographs emerged quickly, from supposedly different people, and accounts and witnesses began appearing all over the place. The status of these so-called “dragonfly drones” is still a hot debate within the UFO communities.
One of the most striking features of the crafts, from the very first photograph, were the curious symbols on the blades and bodies. There was all manner of speculation; it was said to resemble everything from Japanese to Klingon.
As the controversies went on, a document surfaced claiming to be penned by someone named Isaac, claiming to have been part of a private techno-oriented grand enterprise during the 1980s in Silicon Valley. Isaac claimed to have worked on technology that he felt might be represented by these surfacing drone photos.
The CARET documents are interesting, in that they provide quite a bit of insight (whether real or fake) into the potential power of words and language. I highly recommend reading the entire CARET text, and especially the paragraphs entitled Language in the introduction, and the Linguistic Analysis Primer. Note on page 119, there are symbols that look very much like the crop circle formations that have been likened to the approaching Holmes Comet.
Isaac asserts the symbols on the craft and within this alien technology are somewhat of a self-contained power supply, that even when understanding the principles, and applying this symbol-technology, it seemed magical.
Whether Isaac’s magic symbols are real or faked, whether the hieroglyphs on the Roswell craft were proof of alien identities present in Egypt, or are just happy flowers on Scotch Tape, these recurring details of hieroglyphs and symbolic writing within UFO narratives, along with their deepening importance and value, may suggest at least a bit of progress in our collective questions, and ultimately, the answers.
Sources:
The recent outburst of Comet 17P Holmes, Crop Circle Connector, http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/anasazi/time2007g.html
The Kecksburg UFO Incident, PittsburgLIVE.com, http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/dailycourier/news/s_401174.html
The Decipherment of Hieroglyphic Writing, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decipherment_of_hieroglyphic_writing#_ref-1(Jean-Francois Champollion’s quote)
Historic UFOs, Rense.com, http://www.rense.com/general16/histufocrashing.htm
(Reporting a story that originally ran in the Missouri Democrat October 19, 1865)
“Isaac,” My Experience with My the CARET Program… http://isaaccaret.fortunecity.com
the Wanderling, Roswell I-Beam Hieroglyphs, http://www.angelfire.com/indie/anna_jones1/roswell_hieroglyphs.html
Jim Penniston, The Rendleshem Forest Landing, UFO Casebook, http://www.ufocasebook.com/Rendlesham2.html
Discovery Health, The Real Rain Man
