With over 200 photographs, the author draws on historical fact to reveal the spiritual aspects of a unique architecture and building technique.

Presents conclusive evidence that ancient Egypt was originally the remnant of an earlier, highly sophisticated civilization • Supports earlier speculations based on myth and esoteric sources with scientific proof from the fields of genetics, engineering, and geology • Provides further proof of the connection between the Mayans and ancient Egyptians • Links the mystery of Cro-Magnon man to the rise and fall of this ancient civilization In the late nineteenth century, French explorer Augustus Le Plongeon, after years of research in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, concluded that the Mayan and Egyptian civilizations were related--as remnants of a once greater and highly sophisticated culture. The discoveries of modern researchers over the last two decades now support this once derided speculation with evidence revealing that the Sphinx is thousands of years older than Egyptologists have claimed, that the pyramids were not tombs but geomechanical power plants, and that the megaliths of the Nabta Playa reveal complex astronomical star maps that existed 4,000 years before conventional historians deemed such knowledge possible. Much of the past support for prehistoric civilization has relied on esoteric traditions and mythic narrative. Using hard scientific evidence from the fields of archaeology, genetics, engineering, and geology, as well as sacred and religious texts, Malkowski shows that these mythic narratives are based on actual events and that a highly sophisticated civilization did once exist prior to those of Egypt and Sumer. Tying its cataclysmic fall to the mysterious disappearance of Cro-Magnon culture, Before the Pharaohs offers a compelling new view of humanity’s past.

In Rosalie David's hands, the Egyptian builders of the pyramids are revealed as simple people, leading ordinary lives while they are engaged on building the great tomb for a Pharoah. This is an engrossing detective story, bringing to the general reader a fascinating picture of a special community that lived in Egypt and built one of the pyramids, some four thousand years ago.

Mysteries associated with ancient Egypt are not confined to the pyramids of Giza. For example, consider these: One Egyptian hieroglyph is patterned after a bird known as the jabiru; another is an image of a saguaro cactus. Both the jabiru and the saguaro are found only in the Western Hemisphere, so how did they become hieroglyphs? Tutankhamen is referred to as the boy-king by Egyptologists. Why then were statues found in the tomb portraits of a young woman? Hatshepsut is said to have been a female pharaoh who reigned for 22 years but then disappeared from the scene. What happened to her? And why was her image expunged from the walls of temples? Senenmut, a favorite of Hatshepsut, wrote that he had access to all the writings of the prophets. Which prophets did he mean? Why does the face of the mummy of Ramesses II not match the statues of this great pharaoh? Also, why did the embalmers remove the stomach and place the heart on the right side of the thorax? And why were diced tobacco leaves from the Western Hemisphere used to line the chest cavity? Why was Yuya, supposedly the father of the great Queen Tiy, buried with three coffins while his wife had only two? Moreover, why did the mask that covered his face, along with the face on the innermost coffin, look totally different from the mummy and from each other? Death masks were found not just in Egypt but in Greece as well. The most famous of these came from grave # 5 at Mycenae. Each eye of this gold mask has double eyelids. In addition, like the Sphinx at Giza and the Shroud of Turin, the left eye is higher than the right and the mouth is not centered. How can such similarities be explained? Turning to Italy, on the underside of the right wrist of the Prima Porta statue of Augustus there is the distinct impression of the head of a spike. According to historians this statue depicts the first emperor of Rome, but what if it is instead a portrait of a man who was crucified? These mysteries, along with many others, are examined in detail and then convincingly explained in this first of two volumes to explore crucial links between Egypt, Israel, Greece and Italy.

Traces the history of Egyptian civilization, which began in the Eastern Desert over six thousand years ago.

Originally published in 1975 as The Horizon Book of Daily Life in Ancient Egypt, this revised edition includes a new chapter as well as full documentation of the sources.