Some sceptics have attempted to explain away the Dogon’s knowledge of Sirius by ascribing it to itinerant Christian missionaries who felt the urge to pass this piece of somewhat anachronistic and highly specialist knowledge on to the Dogon. In turn, the Dogon felt compelled to add it to their religion. In fact, the first Christian mission in Mali was not established by American Protestants until 1936, when the Sirius-based religion was already deeply embedded in Dogon culture.
13
Some, such as Robert Bauval,
14
have suggested that perhaps, in the recent past, Sirius B was brighter and therefore visible from the Earth. But astrophysicists have established that this ceased to be possible tens of millions of years ago. Even if that were the case, the two stars are so close together that at this distance they would have appeared as one.
15
The Dogon also believe that their ancestors were taught the arts of civilisation by gods called the Nommo - or rather demi-gods, because the Nommo were believed to have been emissaries of the one god, Amma - who descended to Earth in an ‘ark’ in the remote past. The Nommo were described as water spirits, who inhabited all bodies of water, from the seas to the smallest ponds. Dogon depictions of the Nommo show them to be fishlike.
Temple argues that the myths of the Dogon actually preserved the memories of the visit of an amphibious, extraterrestrial race, who came from a planet in the Sirius system, thus explaining both the legend and the Dogon’s otherwise inexplicable knowledge about that star. And it was the Nommo, he suggests, who were behind the development of human civilisation. Temple also tries to show that the knowledge of the Dogon originated in the ancient civilisations of Egypt and Sumer, and that this once widespread knowledge about the civilising aliens from Sirius had somehow been passed on to the Dogon alone. In an immensely detailed, closely argued and apparently scholarly book, Temple produced evidence from the myths and legends of ancient Egypt — besides those of Sumeria, Babylonia and Greece — to support his case. Because of his sober and academic-sounding tone, Temple’s work was taken much more seriously than the work of Erich von Däniken of a few years before.
However, problems remain with
The Sirius Mystery,
which became the grandfather of almost all recent books of the New Egyptology. For a start, the Dogon themselves do not specifically link the Nommo with Sirius. This is Temple’s interpretation. It could be, for example, that the Nommo came from some other star system, and simply told our ancestors about the true nature of the Sirius system, perhaps because they were particularly interested in it as the brightest star in the night sky. The Dogon, in fact, claim to have knowledge of fourteen solar systems with planets, and also say that there are many other ‘Earths’ that are inhabited.
16
In fact, astrophysicists consider it very unlikely that the Sirius system could support planets of any kind, let alone one capable of supporting life, given the complexities of coping with light, heat and gravitational pulls from at least two, and possibly three, suns.
17
As far as Temple is concerned, Sirius C is an established, scientific fact. He cites a paper by two French astronomers, D. Benest and J.L. Duvent, published in the journal
Astronomy and Astrophysics
in July 1995, entitled ‘Is Sirius a Triple Star?’ But as the question mark suggests, the two authors are less certain than Temple implies. Benest and Duvent review the previous claims for Sirius C — almost entirely based on observations available in 1976, when the first edition of
The Sirius Mystery
was published — and try to calculate whether or not such observations are compatible with the presence of a third star, and then speculate on its likely properties. They conclude that measurements of anomalies in the movements of Sirius A and B could be explained by the presence of a third star of about one-twentieth of the mass of our sun, making it about as small as a star could be, orbiting Sirius A every 6.3 years. They do not claim, though, that this proves the existence of Sirius C, pointing out that this can only be determined conclusively by observing the star itself. These properties of Sirius C - the only ones possible according to the laws of celestial mechanics - are completely different from those accorded it by the Dogon and by Temple. And there are other problems: the measurements of the movements used by Benest and Duvent are all ground-based, so obviously there is great potential for error - the new observations from the Hipparchos satellite should prove more accurate.
18
We checked with the European Space Agency, but it appears that the new data about Sirius has not yet been examined for signs of Sirius C by astrophysicists. However, we did talk to Martin Barstow, an astrophysicist at Leicester University, who has made a special study of the Sirius system (particularly Sirius B, as he is a specialist in white dwarf stars). He told us that, although the idea of Sirius C was intriguing and could not be ruled out, there was insufficent evidence for its existence as yet.
So, although it is impossible to say categorically that Sirius C does not exist, neither is it true to claim emphatically that ‘the existence of Sirius C has now been confirmed’, as Robert Temple does.
19
And even if its existence is eventually proven, its characteristics could not be remotely similar to those ascribed to Dogon belief by Temple.
Undeniably, Sirius was deemed to be a very important star by the ancient Egyptians, for reasons that are not entirely clear, despite the confident assertions of Egyptologists. The usual explanation is that, because the heliacal (dawn) rising of the star occurred just before the annual, life-giving inundation of the Nile, the Egyptians made a simplistic connection between the two events, and believed that Sirius somehow caused the flood. This explanation is easily revealed to be nonsense. While it is true that the heliacal rising of Sirius marked the beginning of the ancient Egyptian year, the onset of the flood was not a regular event, and it could happen at any time within a period of over two months.
20
In some years the flood would have started before Sirius’s heliacal rising. As the yearly rising and setting of the stars fell out of step with the seasons, the two events ceased to have any correlation early in Egypt’s recorded history. It is assumed by Egyptologists that the calendar was fixed at a period when Sirius’s dawn rising coincided with the inundation, but there is no proof of this. There is no way of knowing for sure why Sirius was so important to the ancient Egyptians but there could be a very mundane explanation: it is, after all, the brightest star in the sky.
Temple may claim that the ancient Egyptians hailed Sirius as important because beings from that solar system bestowed the art of civilisation upon them, but his theory depends entirely on establishing that the Egyptians, like the Dogon, knew of the existence of Sirius B. In our view, the case he presents is by no means conclusive.
Much of Temple’s case for the ancient Egyptians knowing the ‘Sirius secret’ is based on the alleged relationships between words in various languages and the interpretation of myths, but these often prove to be unsatisfactory. His information about ancient Egyptian myths relies too heavily on classical writers, rather than the ancient Egyptian sources themselves, which leads to several errors. Perhaps his greatest mistake is in making too much of the fact that Sirius was known to the Greeks as the ‘Dog Star’. This name arose because it was found in the constellation of Canis Major (the Great Dog), which follows behind Orion as the constellations rise each night. To the Greeks, Orion was the hunter, so the small constellation at its heels was taken to represent his hunting dog, hence the name given to the main star of the constellation.
21
This is entirely a classical Greek concept, and emphatically not one that was shared by the ancient Egyptians, for whom Sirius/Sothis was firmly the star of the goddess Isis, as well as sometimes also being associated with Horus, her son.
22
However, the Dog Star epithet leads Temple to link this with Anubis, the dog- or jackal-headed god of the underworld, and to draw conclusions concerning Sirius based on the myths connected with him, as well as with dogs in Greek and other mythologies. Here we have a whole series of connections made by Temple to support his hypothesis, but they are, in fact, based on a faulty premise.
Such is the influence of Robert Temple that his ideas, even if they are, as we have shown above, sometimes based on flawed reasoning, often surface in the work of others. For example, Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert, in their
The Orion Mystery
(1994), also state that Anubis was connected with Sirius, giving as their source Robert Temple’s
The Sirius Mystery
!
23
No other source makes this claim for the simple reason that the ancient Egyptians themselves never made any such connection.
Temple’s desire to incorporate all things doggy into his argument extends to his claim that the Great Sphinx of Giza was not intended to represent a lion, but a recumbent dog - Anubis once more.
24
That indisputably canine god is indeed frequently depicted lying down, but the ancient Egyptians were very specific and conservative about their iconography, and took pains always to represent them in a strictly standard way. One of the main features of representations of Anubis was his long, bushy tail, resembling a fox’s brush. Try as we might, we cannot distinguish the Sphinx’s tail as anything other than that of a lion.
Temple makes one particular assertion that we are surprised has gone unchallenged for many years. He brings into his argument certain connections with the Greek god Hermes and sections of the Hermetic literature, the highly prized books of arcane wisdom that emerged from Greek-dominated Egypt in the late centuries BCE or the first centuries CE. Temple’s justification for making connections with the Hermetica is the supposed ‘fact’ — repeated several times in his book — that Hermes was the Greek equivalent of Anubis.
25
This is completely wrong. Hermes was unequivocally identified with Thoth, the ibis-headed ancient Egyptian god of wisdom and learning.
26
And to make a connection with Sumerian mythology, Temple states that ‘Anubis was not entirely a jackal or dog, he was merely jackal or
dog-headed’
27
(having apparently forgotten the connection he had made between Anubis and the Sphinx!). Again, this is simply inaccurate. Anubis was often depicted as a complete dog, lying down with a watchful expression, most famously as found in Tutankhamun’s tomb.
Such mistakes and flawed logic, of which there are many examples in
The Sirius Mystery,
seriously weaken Temple’s overall thesis that the true nature of the Sirius system was known to the ancient Egyptians and somehow transmitted to the ancestors of the Dogon. Temple argues that the ‘secret knowledge’ of Sirius B and of contact with its inhabitants reached the Dogon through the Garamantes, a North African people who were in contact with the Greek-speaking world and passed on the Sirius secret, having themselves learned it from the Egyptians, when they migrated through the area that is now occupied by the Dogon in the 11th century CE.
28
However, anthropologists consider it likely that the Dogon did not arrive in their new homeland until the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries CE, coming from further to the south-west, across the Niger.
29
Temple makes another error, which in itself may appear to be minor and excusable, but which is of major importance to this investigation. He analyses the origins of the word ‘ark’, which he connects with the Egyptian
arq,
meaning ‘end’ or ‘ completion’, and states that
arq ur
was the ancient Egyptian name for the Sphinx,
30
a meaning that has been taken up by many of those with another agenda. But
arq ur
does not mean ‘Sphinx’. The idea that it does is a mistake, which originally came from Temple’s misreading of Sir E.A. Wallis Budge’s An
Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary.
It is true that, against the entry for
arq ur,
31
it says ‘Sphinx, 2, 8’, but this is not the definition of the word, but a reference to Budge’s own source — a French Egyptological journal called
Sphinx: Revue critique embrassant le domaine entier de l’Egyptologie.
So ‘Sphinx, 2, 8’ really refers to page 8 of volume 2 of this publication.
Arq
ur actually means ‘silver’, and in any case, as Budge’s source shows, the word entered into the Egyptian language very late, being borrowed from the Greek
argyros
(and not, as Temple claims, the other way round).
32
This slip, which seems so trivial, has serious repercussions for the beliefs of many thousands of people today.
One very curious aspect of Temple’s
The Sirius Mystery
is that it attracted the attention of not only both the American and British security services, but also the Freemasons. In the 1998 edition, Temple describes how the Dogon mystery was first brought to his attention by his tutor and friend, the American philosopher Arthur M. Young, in 1965.
33
In 1968, when Temple decided that he wanted to study the mystery further, Young provided him with a privately made translation of Griaule and Dieterlen’s
Le renard pâle,
their main work on the Dogon. Temple tells how this copy was stolen from him in London by someone whom he later learned worked for the CIA, presumably in an attempt to interfere with his research.
34
(Temple is an American, but he has lived in Britain since the late 1960s.)
This is puzzling. Why should the CIA have wanted to stop Temple researching the Dogon enigma? Or did they simply want to acquire a rare English translation of the French work because they somehow perceived the Sirius mystery to be a matter of national security? Surely the CIA are not short of reliable translators.