John Anthony West's revolutionary reinterpretation of the civilization of Egypt challenges all that has been accepted as dogma concerning Ancient Egypt. In this pioneering study West documents that: Hieroglyphs carry hermetic messages that convey the subtler realities of the Sacred Science of the Pharaohs. Egyptian science, medicine, mathematics, and astronomy were more sophisticated than most modern Egyptologists acknowledge. Egyptian knowledge of the universe was a legacy from a highly sophisticated civilization that flourished thousands of years ago. The great Sphinx represents geological proof that such a civilization existed. This revised edition includes a new introduction linking Egyptian spiritual science with the perennial wisdom tradition and an appendix updating West's work in redating the Sphinx. Illustrated with over 140 photographs and line drawings.

The Wisdom of Egypt examines the sources of evidence about Ancient Egypt available to scholars, and the changing visions of Egypt and of Egypt's role in human history that they produced. Its scope extends from the Classical world, through Europe and the Arabic worlds in the Middle Ages, to writers of the Renaissance, to the work of scholars and scientists of Early Modern Europe.

This collection of essays gives a vivid impression of Egypt as background and stage of Jewish, Christian, and Gnostic thought and life in antiquity. It demonstrates Egypt’s important role in the history, literature and culture of these religions.

An Egyptologist who reads Egyptian hieroglyphics firsthand examines the esoteric tradition of Egypt in remarkable detail, exploring the dimensions of the language, cosmology, and temple life to show that a sacred mandate--the transformation of the human condition into its original cosmic substance--formed the foundation of Egypt's endeavors and still has great relevance today.

A monumental eight volume set which contextualized ancient Egypt in both its own historical setting and its role in the modern world.

A radical reinterpretation of the Pyramid Texts as shamanic mystical wisdom rather than funerary rituals • Reveals the mystical nature of Egyptian civilization denied by orthodox Egyptologists • Examines the similarity between the pharaoh’s afterlife voyage and shamanic journeying • Shows shamanism to be the foundation of the Egyptian mystical tradition To the Greek philosophers and other peoples of the ancient world, Egypt was regarded as the home of a profound mystical wisdom. While there are many today who still share that view, the consensus of most Egyptologists is that no evidence exists that Egypt possessed any mystical tradition whatsoever. Jeremy Naydler’s radical reinterpretation of the Pyramid Texts--the earliest body of religious literature to have survived from ancient Egypt--places these documents into the ritual context in which they belong. Until now, the Pyramid Texts have been viewed primarily as royal funerary texts that were used in the liturgy of the dead pharaoh or to aid him in his afterlife journey. This emphasis on funerary interpretation has served only to externalize what were actually experiences of the living, not the dead, king. In order to understand the character and significance of the extreme psychological states the pharaoh experienced--states often involving perilous encounters with alternate realities--we need to approach them as spiritual and religious phenomena that reveal the extraordinary possibilities of human consciousness. It is the shamanic spiritual tradition, argues Naydler, that is the undercurrent of the Pyramid Texts and that holds the key to understanding both the true nature of these experiences and the basis of ancient Egyptian mysticism.