LOST LESSONS
From dusk to dawn , year after solar year for interminable aeons down the tunnel of time , successive generations of the priestly caste of ancient Egyptian astronomers – known as the Followers of Horus – stared into the star-studded night sky , observing the constellations of the Milky Way until the glare of the rising sun ’ s rays made further vigil futile . To the distant barking of crocodiles they studied the celestial bodies as they wheeled across the equinoctial skies and , like prophets to the uninitiated , learned to predict the annual flood of the Nile while recording the subtle progress of the unrelenting precessional drift in what we now refer to as the myths of Ra , Osiris , Thoth and Seth ; even to be found , so it is said , in the hieroglyphics of the Book of the Dead . Some believe that wed to and embodied in these annals are messages warning posterity of cataclysms which accompany periodic changes and shifts in the Earth ’ s axis , archaic faxes from history ’ s infancy . As epochs passed , time blunted memory of previous catastrophes ; frescoes faded , parchment crumbled , archives were looted and lost ; inquiry and scrutiny degenerated into ritual re-enacted without comprehension until , when the Priest of Neith told Solon about the loss of Atlantis , his words were dismissed as fantasy , their origin and import long forgotten … Now , as the earth quakes underfoot , the lessons must be learnt anew .