The Serpent in the Sky The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt by John Anthony West   Paperback 266 pages (July 1993) Quest Books ISBN: 0835606910 Bookshelf Categories Egypt

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Synopsis:

This revised edition of West's revolutionary reinterpretation of the civilization of Egypt challenges all that has been accpeted as dogma concerning this ancient and enigmatic land. It features a new introduction linking Egyptian science with the perennial wisdom tradition and an appendix updating the author's work in redating the Sphinx. Illustrations.

Reviews:

This Is Great!	12/20/1999
Reviewer: Kara from Im in Maine...but I'd rather be in Egypt
This is the greatest book! I love to learn about Egypt and this is a great eye opener. I've watched John Anthony West's Mystery of The Sphinx like 700 times! I know it all by heart! I recomend any book he's ever written! I wish I could have gone on the tour of Egypt that he had last January but it was cancelled. -_- Kara

EGYPTOLOGY RE-INVENTED	10/8/1999
Reviewer: A reader from AUCKLAND,NEW ZEALAND
A MARVELLOUS INTRODUCTION TO THE WORK OF R.A.SCHALLER DE LUBICZ. A MUST READ FOR ANYONE CONTEMPLATING THE STUDY OF "THE TEMPLE OF MAN" WELL DONE JOHN WEST!

Good, bad and ugly	6/14/1999
Reviewer: Michael from Seattle, WA USA
"Serpent in the Sky" is primarily concerned with popularizing the otherwise inaccessible work of R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, who spent a great deal of time making exhaustive measurements of the Temple of Luxor and subsequently incorporated his findings into a comprehensive reinterpretation of ancient Egypt known as "Symbolism." A final chapter and a pair of appendices summarize West's investigation of an offhand comment of Schwaller de Lubicz that the Sphinx appears to be weathered by water, with the conclusion that such weathering necessitates a redating of the Sphinx's carving to at least 5000-7000 BCE and perhaps much further in the past. As tracts of alternative archaeology go, this is not an easy read, and so the casual reader should be forewarned. The content of this book falls rather neatly into "good, bad and ugly" classifications. On the good side, I found the application of "Symbolism" to the Egyptian hieroglyphics intriguing. West shows rather nicely (though I would like to see more conventional views in their original context) how literal translations of Old Kingdom pyramid texts seem like complete gibberish, and most likely do not do justice to the people who wrote them. The symbolic translation appears more believable. On the bad side, West is not reticent about engaging in rants against what he terms the "Church of Progress," meaning the belief in technological and scientific advancement as the measure of human accomplishment, and the depradations of modern society (which, he boldly asserts, is not a civilization) on the human soul. One does not have to be a Luddite to have some sympathy with this view, but its application to studies of ancient Egypt, with the conclusion that this long-lost civilization was far more advanced (in a non-technological sense) than our own, seems misplaced. It is odd, after all, that after castigating modern Egyptologists for the "flimsy" reasoning behind, for example, the conventional dating of the Sphinx, West should use evidence even more flimsy to claim that the ancient Egyptians were healthier than "Western" man, or that they had knowledge of pi, phi, and the zodiac. At best, West's harping on the "Church of Progress" is simply annoying. At worst, he seems unable to recognize when his own prejudices are coloring a too-rosy picture of the past for which there is no evidence. As for the ugly, West's creationism prompts him to unleash several baseless attacks on Darwinian evolution. Usually, his rants concern the application of evolutionary principles, which were really only meant to apply to the origin and extinction of species over great spans of geological time, to human societies. Certainly, Darwinian evolution has been overextended in non-biological arenas, but the fact of evolution is simply not contestable on rational grounds. West's scientific credentials are compromised further by his claim that astrology has some basis in observable phenomena. It is in these subjects that "Serpent in the Sky" degenerates into complete drivel.

Highly recommended	3/3/1999
Reviewer: A reader from Maine
Though not an easy read, this book is quite rewarding. It makes a nice companion volume to Graham Hancock's "Fingerprints of the Gods."