From: Tom Simms Reply-To: tsimms@nbnet.nb.ca Subject: Re: oral traditions Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 21:36:14 AST This be private, arrh! On Thu, 12 Jun 1997 14:23:35 -0500, jpman@accesscomm.net writes: > >Vernon K. Robbins wrote: > >> bruce@fantek.org,Internet writes: >> > The problem is to try and figure out what is "genuinely" about >> Jesus >> >Christ and what is not. Correct? >> I would like to state first that it is important to >> distinguish [... delete ... data already seen ...] Jack, I take for granted you have a tongue firmly in your cheek. I haven't the skill to take on Robbins but I see Ian is on him. I'll sit back and watch. I DID fire a very heavy missile across Vernon's bow. He was VERY uppity in response, especially privately. When you work at Emory you have to keep putting out stuff for the SB churches to buy or you're suspect. He has NO idea how to deal with the gospels as History. But then, I assume too much too. Meanwhile: Here is the beginning of why I, a mere 67 year old 190 lb. 5'11", can call myself a blond haired double of Tut Ankh Amen. I got this chapter keyboarded by computer in 1984, which is when I had made my last contact with the SRI people who did some of the prelims to the Seismic Subsurface Imaging I show on my page. I 18 JANUARY, 1977, the impossible happened. Bob Irving and I had started the day early. We were checking out new underground sensing gear at the Sakkara pyramid field, south of Cairo. One technical glitch after another had frustrated us for days. The early start brought us luck. Everything worked and kept on working, giving us priceless data every time we set up. We worked past Ra's blinding high point in the sky right into the choking heat of a desert afternoon. Bob stands six foot five and more, deep brick red hair shading to copper in the searing light. Milky skin goes with such hair. He has it. To make your head turn more, he has steel grey eyes. He freckles only lightly where his floppy sun hat and loose safari gear lets in the light. Then he burns. So he suffers. In the heat of Egypt's deserts he'd likely die if he had any fat on his frame. I'm five foot eight, maybe less. A skinny, hazel eyed blond of that dark skinned sort that soaks up the sun and tans to deep gold. Even still, the sun had baked me silly. Bob was past caring when we stepped into the oven of our motorhome to leave. This time, I knew my heat felt worse than fire. Bob pointed at the air conditioner's controls, "High!" His look would fry eggs. I slammed all switches. We groaned with relief at the cool blasts. The cure I knew lay ahead on a turnoff near a small village. We'd done this before. The road led into a small palm grove on the bank of mighty Nile. I went in well over speed. The motorhome fishtailed to a stop. Luck landed us in a perfect parking space. We took short moments to pull out the awning and pull down the table and settees. Then we scrambled down the steep bank into the cool depths. Ah, total relief! Nile water in winter can feel like ice. We must have raised a cloud of steam so hot we were, unnatural hot, out of this world hot. Minutes of bliss later, like hours of heaven, saw us pour water from our gear all the way up the bank. I led the way back to the motorhome. I had just reached the awning of the motorhome, ready to collapse into the settee. Bob's roar from behind snapped my intent, "What the hell happened?" "Waddayamean?" "Your skin! It's black!" I looked. It was. Not tanned, but black. Not ink, but dark brown. The hair on the back of my hands looked gold! When I turned over my hands, the palms looked pink, the creases looked black. I couldn't move. I couldn't speak. All I could do was look at my hands, turn them over, look again. And again, look at my hands, turn them over, and look again. My brain froze. I glanced at Bob. He had his hands on his temples. Something was wrong with his head. Fingers like tentacles into his hair, he arched upwards, whispering in agony, "Oh, no, oh no, oh no." I saw why. Horns. Like Moses. Like Zeus. Like Alexander on his coins. Good grief! Good unbearable grief! My voice came back, "Let's get outta these clothes." What else, we were mud and water to our unlaced Adidas. I stepped to the door of the motorhome. The air conditioner had done its work. We stripped at the door, hustling to keep out of sight, bombing into the shower. Neither of us spoke under the running water. My new dark skin, his horns rearing through the wet auburn tangle, both unmentioned. We had moved so fast we could hardly speak anyway. While we were still towelling off, Bob pulled a package from the entry closet. Unwrapping it, he showed me a shorty T-shirt and a pair of white shorts. I glanced at the horns. They told me to get on. Unfolding the shirt I recognized it at once as a drawing of the collar and shirt worn by Tut Ankh Amen in the hunting scenes on one of the boxes from his tomb. Bands on the ends of the sleeves looked like the bracelets he wore. The maker had drawn knotted ends of his shirt on the centre of my shirt. Slipping it on, I laughed when I saw my black reflection in the bathroom door mirror, "It would fool you from twenty feet. Where did you get it?" "I had the pattern made by one of the draftsmen in the Antiquities Service. Then I took it to the T-shirt Shop that rips off American stu- dents. Wait'll you see mine," he smiled, eyes glinting below the arching horns. He slipped it on. Mesh ended in a patterned band all around just below his armpits and held up by two similar bands, one over each shoulder. His grin widened. I glanced at the horns. In the mirror, I saw my blond hair. It looked brass against my black skin. I looked down. Jesus, pink toenails. Again, I looked in the mirror. Good God, my eyes are green. They're not hazel, they're green, my God, what else? I laughed, suppressed hysteria really, then I pointed at his shirt, ready to say anything rather than deal with what had happened, "Hey? That's a god's tunic. What are you trying to do, pose for some temple relief? They stopped hiring models some time back, you know." Bob must have felt the same way. He answered my distracting comment, "I dunno. My Daemon made me do it." He was trying too, for sure. Our work in Ancient Greek and Egyptian antiquities had deepened. In the last several weeks we had both dug into their mythologies. Daemon, Fravishi, Ka, Ba, Bennu and such ideas had become part of our common talk. Bob made it serious business. For me, the greenhorn, the dig was sort of fun. Bob handed me the shorts, and his face turned serious. "Two weeks ago the idea came to me. They were my thoughts but I didn't think them." He paused. "They kept coming back ..., and until I started getting organized they wouldn't stop." "You've been digging into Egypt too much. You're starting to get a Ka, and a bossy one, too," I unfolded the shorts. They had a striped band in maroon, green, red and gold around the top. A wide printed panel hung from the waist down over the fly, sort of like the towel a quarterback hangs from his waist. The print duplicated an XVIIIth dynasty pharaonic lappet or sporran. It even had flared cobra heads at the bottom and royal cartouches and titles down the sides. "Neb Ä Kheperu Ä Ra, yes, Tut Ä Ankh Ä Amen. Hey, that's funny." It was more than funny. `How fat headed can you get? It's not funny, it's dead serious.' Bob had always kidded me about looking like a blond Tut. My hazel eyes, snub nose and high cheek bones made it so. Being just about 5'8" and skinny, I always conceded him the joke. This time, looking quickly in the mirror, I saw the look was more than true. The angle of bedroom and bathroom door mirrors was just right so I saw my reflection reflected. I remembered the first time I saw the reflection of my reflection. Then I had laughed and said, "If you can't meet him in person maybe you can meet his pale imitation." Then I'd shaken my blond hair out over my shoulders to reinforce the pun. This time I knew it was no joke. This time I was no pale imitation. I pulled off my towel and stepped into the shorts. Bob had pulled on his. They had a decorated lappet, too. I knew the hieroglyphs at once. They read: King of the Gods, Living Forever. I looked at the horns. I looked at my palms. I looked at the lappet. I tried to be light, "Oh man, have you got dreams." He answered in kind, "It pays to let the world know you really have the clout." We both laughed, one stage away from hysteria, and he turned back to the package. We continued to try to ignore the change. "There's more to come." He threw over a pair of sandals. "These are from the shop that sells the superb fakes." "Oh yeah, I know the place, what's his name Ä ah ... hey, these are beautiful." Made of leather, patterns tooled with gold on the thong with a perfect drawing of the nine bows, Egypt's ancient enemies, on the insole. "These are too good to wear." "Go ahead. I've got a pair just like them, and there are more where they came from. What's his name has dozens. He probably got them in Taiwan." Now he reached into the closet. "Look at this. It's really neat. Beautifully made." He handed me a circlet. It looked made of gold, red rosettes pinned to it all the way around with gold studs. A pair of stiff gold ribbands hung from a gold disk fastened in the middle of the ring of rosettes. As I turned it in my hand, I saw a pair of hanging loops on opposite sides. As I turned it, I faced a golden cobra rearing its spitting head. The work was perfectly done, glittering eyes rearing above a flaring neck. The tail wiggled over the top of the circlet to the gold disk and ribbands at the back. I thought to ask if he'd bought it ready made. The thought died. Only Bob could get approval to specially commission a duplicate of the boatman's circlet found on Tut's mummy. The piece stunned me. "What's wrong? Don't you like it?" "It's, it's beautiful ... but, but it's for a king," I stammered. My face must have shown my shock. "Maybe you'd like one for a queen." Bob smiled his arch look, continuing to keep up the front. He sobered at my face. "Here, here. Don't get unstrung. We're not going to walk down the street this way. Wait `til you see what I've got," as he drew on a gold embroidered headband. He pulled it down to his eyebrows and then pushed it back. This let his deep copper-bronze sun-tipped hair fall over the band. When he took down his hands, I saw the pair of horns rise as if from his temples. They curled back, the ends coming in just behind and below his ears. I gaped. He looked seven feet tall. I couldn't speak. I thought, `My God, they're real. They come out of his temples, they do.' Since he's a strong 6'5" and I'm 5'8," I backed away into the hall door. The jolt loosed my tongue, "Lord Jesus!" My eyes caught the cartouche in the centre of the headband. `King of the Gods', it read in hieroglyphs. "You scared me." I ran on, "Is this what your Daemon told you to do?" He nodded bleakly. He was losing his cool too. I ran on, "Mine has had me checking every medicine chest we've got ... " Bob started. "You too?" "What d'ya mean, me too?" "I mean, I mean is someone talking to you too?" I took a long breath, my eyes flickering at everything except his staring grey ones. He spoke again, "You've been thinking thoughts that ... that aren't your own." His eyes blazed. I couldn't look back. I stammered, "Unh ... yes.. Yes. No one spoke to me, I mean you know, you know, I Ä uh Ä didn't hear voices ... ," I swallowed trying to think. "I'd think of an accident, or someone suddenly dumped on us with, with pneu- monia, or ... a high fever or an infection. I even thought of bugs." "Bugs?" "Uh. Worms y'know, parasites." "Me too. Me, too. I checked each box. We've got oxygen, resus- citators, I.V.'s. Everything but blood. My father was very careful on his ships Ä yeah, almost like an emergency room, sutures, sprays, even those new inflatable casts. What we don't have here on the boat, the Doc's got, uh," He gulped. I knew he was thinking of the crash that had claimed his folks, the engine swallowing a bird on takeoff. His eyes turned to me, "The casts are on order." "Now this. What the hell? Real horns? They're really real, ayuh? Super black, me? What the hell. Jesus." "They feel real. They do. I don't dare look." "They're real. I can see. I'm sure." "Holy jeholaphuss, bejesus. I knew it." His eyes looked blank. I went on mindlessly, "I've been working on our translation computer. 'Glyphs are almost second nature ... " His voice ran over mine, "Don't talk. Organize your thoughts. Let's have a drink," and he turned, horns and all, to the refrigerator. He pulled out a big collins pitcher. Ice rattled in the glasses. I stepped out the door under the awning, coronet in hand, to stand next the door and beside the table. Bob moved right around me, glasses at the ready, to stand at the far side of the table. His hand shot out with a glass. "Here, have a cool one." I took it with my free hand, closed my eyes and took a long draught, "Oh, that's good," I said as I sat down. The glass and circlet I carefully placed on the table between us. My eyes went to the ram's horns framing his head. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying all the while to put my thoughts in order. Opening my eyes and fixing them on his, I said, "O.K. I've thought, uh Ä there's something been going on. Not just now, but something's been happening to both of us. I thought it was just me, mixed up over this new country and this new work." I hesitated. He started to speak, but I raised my hand, saying, "The Isles of Greece didn't affect me this way and now I'm sure you're getting messages, too." "Like from outer space, or, uh, somewhere else?" Eyebrows curled in question. My head nodded in agreement. "From somewhere or someone, well, something else." "You're right. Dead right." With his answer, Bob turned his gaze away blankly. I toyed with the thin strips of the circlet. A trout darted through a sunlit pool. A thought fluttered, `Put it on.' I didn't move. The idea flashed again, stronger this time with will included, not inclination. My new black hand gripped the circlet. I saw Bob's hands, one gripped within the other strong enough to bring up the veins on his biceps. I saw the horns. His gaze was back onto me. He whispered, eyes locked into mine, "Put it on," I did. My hands turned it, flicked the stiff ribbons out of the way and lowered it on my head as if I'd done it for years. Bob smiled and relaxed. "That's perfect, Son of the Sun." He raised his hands as the walls of the temples and tombs show. The humor of it struck me. "Homage to thee, Oh Hidden One, the Mighty." I raised my glass, the ice almost gone, and drank deeply. He did the same. My face flushed with the cold and the gin. Somehow all this was right and natural. I spoke, "I suppose that was our Daemon." He nodded. I went on, "And I suppose every time you've talked about how Alexander died and how we could have saved him was your Daemon, too?" "Yes." He ran his thumb and forefinger down the laugh lines of his face, before he said, "Remember now, he was Alexandros." "Sure, I know that, the Greeks don't know our Roman name for him. Alexandros is right to me, Alexander is just habit. However, I checked the kit manual for him, too. Infections with fever. Right?" "Right." "And for pneumonia?" "Yes." "Pleurisy?" His gaze wandered before he asked, "With a chest wound?" "Healed, but as a site of invasion." He grinned, "You really have checked." "My Daemon told me," I laughed. Inside I knew the thoughts weren't my own. Bob brought me up with, "You know, when you raised your glass to me a moment ago, uh, to the Hidden One, you said it in Ancient Egyptian, don't you?" I gaped, "I couldn't. I don't know how." "You did." "Holy Smoke!" I stared at my glass. I tried to think. I had no recollection I'd done anything different. Bob broke the spell, going back to our Daemon talk, "You know, Cyrus the Great had a Fravishi." "Alexandros the Great had one, too," I added. "And Tut had his Ka." Bob cleared his throat before he went on, "But a Ka would terrify an Egyptian to meet. He'd be sure he was dead. Only by keeping him in sight or touch could he be sure of living." "According to you, if Tut ever met me he'd think me his Ka ... " "His Golden Ka ... " reaching out to touch my hair. "One of the fourteen golden ones. Think of it." "And, I suppose he'd fall down in fright at the sight of me," I laughed, but stopped at the sober look on his face. "Yes, yes, he would." Then he paused, took a deep breath. "Some- thing's telling me all sorts of thoughts." He chewed his lip. "No, I am telling myself ideas I never knew or, even thought of." He twisted in his chair, pushed his elbows forward on the table and cupped his chin in his big palms. "The horns tell me it's all real." He shook his head slightly, a tremble more than a shake. He went on, "Did you ever think of beings made up just of energy Ä no matter, just energy?" I blinked. "Yes. Only I thought of them as pure force." "Balls of active information, right?" I nodded to his words. "And capable, Rob, of in Ä corp Ä er Ä at Ä ing," he emphasized each syllable, "every piece of genetic information, memory trace, and chemical makeup of a complete human being in one burst of energy." I grimaced, "Maybe not more than on one of those new video discs, or two or three of them." "You've been thinking, too!" I nodded and turned the sweating glass between my thumb and forefinger, the other hand tracing the rings I'd left. The ice had melted. He continued, "Suppose some creature in a galaxy a thousand light years away analyzed you or me. It would take two thousand years, one thousand out to us, a thousand back, for that creature to get back the info. So then after they've heard our tale they can't reconstruct us there because their galaxy doesn't allow our chemistry. Where does that leave us, Rob?" "We may not have known anyone had scanned us in the first place, Bob." I hesitated before I went on, "We'd go on living just like nothing had happened." "Yes, but what about the coded signal? What would these force or energy creatures do with it? File it away, destroy it?" "Maybe file a copy and send back the original." I made the right smart crack for the moment. "Yes," he solemnly answered. "But one, two," counting on his fingers as he sat up, "three thousand years later." "And they only send back the coded message." "Suppose, just suppose, they programmed the force to change back into matter!" I chimed in on the last two words. He went on, "That's it. That's it. Someone out there has been fooling around. Not with us, but with someone in the past!" "Then we're gonna have a visit, ...?" "What else? What else? Nothing else makes sense. Someone is setting us up to look after them." He twisted on his seat in excitement. "Look, in the last two weeks why, of all people, have you spent every minute on the boat reading up about the XVIIIth dynasty?" "Yes, well, I did catch fire. But, y'know, I had all sorts of reasons. Like you about Alexander the Great. You've cruised the Aegean since you were a kid. So how come two or three hundred dollars worth of books delivered in Cairo, what, three weeks ago? Your Daemon? And you were quoting Cyrus the Great just a few minutes ago? And you tell me I was speaking Ancient Egyptian? Something must be up!"