Andrew Collins: Sobekneferu, The First Female Pharaoh

This week, we had an Egypt and learned about a new female pharaoh known as Sobek Nepharu, who lived during the Middle Dynasty, the Middle portion of the Great dynasties of the ancient Egypt. What is unique about her is that she rises out of the death of her brother. We don't hear a great deal about her, and her reign was only for four years. She takes her own life, and what happens is her death creates a cult, an unusual cult that lasts for over five hundred years into the time of Nefertari and

had shipsit, who was also a noted ruler of Egypt. Our guest today is Andrew Collins, who's written this new book, and we're going to hear about not only the discovery of this ancient pharaoh, but also the unusual circumstances of her rise to power. All this and more for you today on the program for Saturday, April twenty second, twenty twenty three. This is Earth Ancients. I'm your host, Cliff Dunning. Hey, how are you. I gotta tell you I am getting excited our Grand Egyptian tours coming up in

a couple of weeks. I leave on the thirtieth of April, and I'll be meeting our group this year in Cairo the second of May. And so it takes a day to get I'm in San Francisco, it takes a day to get there from where I'm located. And we have people coming from New Zealand, from Australia, from Germany everywhere to gather and as a group see the great sites of Egypt. And you hear me talking about it all the time. It's probably, in my estimation, it's the best tour I've ever

done. And thankfully Sabba tours with the host and Egyptologist Muhammad Imbrium is world class. And we used to joke and say, well, hey, this is a diplomatic tour, and you know it's a VIP across the board. We don't say diplomatic anymore, but I gotta tell you it's VIP. And if you ever get a chance to come with us, we'll see what I'm talking about. And to a person, everybody has a great time. On that note, today's program is featuring a new book called The First Female Pharaoh,

so Beek Nephru Goddess of the Seven Stars. It's by author Andrew Collins and This is a brand new book. In fact, it's a couple of weeks before it's being launched, so we're doing a kind of a preview of this book, and this interview today is with Andrew and his research into what is probably the first woman anointed I guess you could call a pharaoh ship, which is a ruler of the Upper and Lower Egypt at that time. And this is Twelfth dynasty, so it's about eighteen hundred BC, which is wow,

that is over three thousand years ago. Wait a minute too, Yeah, it's closer to years ago. And this is a very strange period. We don't have a great deal of knowledge about exactly what is going on, and this woman pharaoh who shows up and for a short period of time keeps

things pretty tight and functional until things ultimately shift. So what makes these stories, these these chronicles of these individuals is the fact that you know, these dynastic periods are so long ago, and we're in many ways blessed to have hieroglyphs, tons of statuary, tons of written material about these people, and it's just very curio. It's very very curious because they're in a whole different

paradigm. They're building these megalithic temples. They're cutting and shaping and smoothing the hardest stone in the world. In some cases, we don't actually know how they cut some of this granite. And you know the typical answers are copper chisels and mallets. Well, you cannot cut granite with copper, you just

can't. And you can chip away at it, but you can't cut it in the precision that we see in buildings like the Osyrian or the columns at Hathor, or the blocks of stone on the outer and inner chambers of the

Cheops pyramids. So there's something that is missing in our knowledge. And without the available machines, which are you have turned to death over the thousands of years since they were used, or any knowledge or not our writing left to us, we are at a complete loss for understanding who the inventors were and just how sophisticated these dynastic artisans were the story of this pharaoh, this woman pharaoh, so Macnifferu, is a unique one. I have never heard of

her. She came before hat ship Suit, who was a noted ruler. In fact, hat ship Suits Temple is a place that we go to each year on our tour because it's magnificent, it's huge, it's ornate, and there's a lot of special characteristics. There's acoustic property that's built into the temple.

And I got to mention this that I am bringing this year. I am bringing a tri filled meter to measure geomagnetic and different types of radiation that is coming out of the ground into these buildings and in places where we can get quiet time. You know, I'm going to suggest the group, you know, do some intention work, do some meditation. And this is what I love about our tourist. It's not about just the sights and these megalists

and these beautiful statues. It's also about the energy that is permeated throughout these temples, pyramids and buildings. And so we don't know exactly how sophisticated they were in their sacred sciences. We know that there are sacred sciences. They're written about out but Orthodoxy does not acknowledge subtle energy. They don't acknowledge geomagnetic

energy coming through the ground into these temples. And somehow the temples accessing that energy and either intensifying, magnifying, or distributing it in such a way. We have no clue. Now, what makes our tours so great is the fact that Muhammad does understand this fact, and he is in touch with the indigenous people that still live and commune with these temples, pyramids and buildings and know exactly when to go and sit and meditate and in some cases get healing

from the energetic forces of these temples, so buildings and pyramids. So hard to say exactly what's going on. But I'm gonna bring my trifiometer. I'm gonna actually take photos of it. And in the past I was kind of quiet and said, oh yeah, check a look, take a look at this. With this time, I'm gonna go, hey, stand here,

stand here and see how people feel. So looking forward to it. Okay, So I am going to play a short audio that introduces so back Nafuru to you and give you a sense of just who she is before we have Andrew Collins join us. So here's a quick audio to listen to. During the nineteenth century BC, ancient Egypt was experiencing a time of great prosperity and stability under the rule of the Twelfth Dynasty. This stability was threatened when the

reigning pharaoh Amenum hats the fourth died without a male lair. Amenem Hats the Third brought Egypt the greatest heights it would ever reach during the Middle Kingdom period. After a lengthy rule spanning over forty years, a menem Hats the Third died and was succeeded by his only living son, a menem Hats the Fourth, who ultimately ruled for only nine years before dying without an heir, leaving

his sister Sobek Nephru with the strongest claim to the throne. According to the king list compiled by the third century b C. Egyptian priest and historian Manetho, Sobek Nephru was not only a menem Hats the fourth is sister, but his wife as well. Ancestuous marriages were common among ancient Egyptian royals in order to keep power and wealth within the family and away from ambitious rival families.

The devastating consequences of incestuous unions left offspring with shorter than average lifespans. This meant that the kingdom frequently underwent periods of instability as power transferred from one ruler to the next. Much of what we know about Sobek Nephru comes from the limited monuments and artifacts that have been discovered, which include statues, scarabs, seals, beads, and other records. This glazed cylinder seal and stetite scarab

inscribed with Sobek Nephru's name provide evidence of her rule. Sobek Nephru is also mentioned in both the Karnak king list and the Sakara Tablet. However, her name was notably absent from the Abydos king list, along with every other female pharaoh, including Hadchepsut, who is widely regarded as the most powerful and successful female pharaoh in all of ancient Egyptian history. The name Sobek Nephru translates to the beauty of Sobek. This was the first instance of a pharaoh choosing a

regnal name associated with the ancient Egyptian crocodile god Sobek. The deity was viewed as the creator of the night River and associated with faronic power and military prowess. Sobek was also known as the Lord of the waters and believed to have

the power to provide inundation and fertility to the land. The crocodile god grew to great prominence during the Middle Kingdom period and was the central deity of several cults at the time, sobek Nephru adopted to the complete royal titulary traditionally reserved for pharaohs, which consisted of five names symbolizing both worldly power and spiritual might.

This is significant because while other women before sobek Nephru are believed to have held positions of power such as queen regent, none were previously granted the full royal titles that effectively made sobek Nephru a fully fledged pharaoh in her own right. It's interesting to note that there is no tomb, nobody, no buildings that are dedicated to Sobec Nafuru, and what small statuary we do have has been defaced, and it makes it really really a challenge to know just when

she died and also where she's buried. If there's no sarcophacus, if there's no crypt or temple or pyramid or anything that was used as kind of a place to lay her to rest, we just don't know about it. So we'll find out more today in our program. So today's program is the first female pharaoh, Nafuru Goddess of the Seven Stars of My guest today is Andrew Collins. Each year, Earth Ancients heads to Mexico for a private tour of

some of the most intriguing ruins from the Maya and other Mesoamerican cultures. This year, November tenth to the seventeenth, we'll be heading to Vera Homosa in southern Mexico to see the site of the omec Ruins at La Venta. This includes a visit to the world famous outdoor museum where there are megalists of all sizes and shapes. We then head to Palak in Chiapas and visit this jewel

of the Maya Empire with doctor Edwin Barnhardt as our host. We'll be there for two days, and then we head out to Bottompeck, site of one of the largest murals left to us from the Maya Classic period. For more information and details on this tour, go to earth Ancients dot com forward slash tours and you will see the entire itinerary and more details. This is a one of a kind tour with doctor ed Barnhart and yours truly. For more

information, Earth Ancients dot com Forward slash Tours. I'm heading to Egypt in a couple of weeks and I am fascinated by this ancient location we've been there. We're doing our Earth Ancient Annual Grand Egyptian Tour, and anything happen to do with Egypt is a fascination of mine. And I just got a copy of Andrew collins new book, The First Female Pharaoh, a couple of weeks ago, and I thought it appropriate that we have him on the program.

And it's an interesting story on a lot of different levels. When we talk about the ruling class of Egypt is so steeped in history and intrigue, and it's a very very very ancient place obviously, with these different dynasties. But we've had Andrew Collins on before. He's a prolific writer. I don't know how to how he keeps putting these books up. He does, and this is a good one. And actually it's on a woman pharaoh, the first female Pharaoh. Her name is Sobek Nepheru, who I have not heard of

before. We're gonna hear about her today and it's very very interesting on a lot of different levels. And it's also a look into the hierarchy of these ruling class of men and women who were fascinating individuals on their own right, but have they're all steeped in great mystery. So hey, Andrew, Welcome to Earth Ancients. Great to have you on the program. PLA, yeah, ye place to be here. Talk about this subject, Nephru. How

did she turn up in your research? Were you down in the Egypt and you found a well fragment something that was a trigger on this Well, I mean it's a long, long story, and some of the people out there probably know it, but my interest in her really started in the early eighties, and in particular, somebody I know who started receiving these, you know, dreams or visions about this Egyptian female ruler, and although they didn't come

up with the name Sara, they mentioned the date that this person was supposedly ruling, and it was eighteen hundred BC, and you know, I quickly looked it up and it was quite obvious that the person was talking about Sobeknofro. Well, I'd never heard of her at all at this time, but you know, the implications right from the start is that she was somebody who was very, very important, but that had been completely forgotten about by history.

So I started to take an interest in her and examine, you know, every piece of evidence, whether it be from history, whether it be from archaeology, whether it be from contemporary traditions like the Jewish tradition with Arabic tradition and the Greek tradition. To try, if week, to see if we could actually put together, you know, quite literally her biography, which is what I've done with this book. But how can we really introduce her

well, I think it's important to look at Egyptian pharaohs. I mean not sorry, not just the Egyptian pharaohs, but of female pharaohs. I mean we all know about hatsp Shoot, I mean she ruled around fifteen hundred and fifty BC as part of the Eighteenth Dynasty or the New Kingdom. We obviously have Nefertiti. She was the wife of Aknatum and possible the mother of Twoton

Common. We're not sure about that. It's possible she may well have actually even ruled in her own right at the very end of her of the of Aknatam's reign, certainly for a very short period of time, I've one to two years. And then of course we've got people like Cleopatra, you know, somebody who we know very well, particularly from you know, films like the one featuring Liz Taylor, of course, you know, for Elizabeth Taylor in the nineteen sixties, which, to be honest, almost gave us a

stereotype of Egyptian female pharaohs. You know, some of that was right and some of it was definitely wrong. And I would say that there's a good chance that all of these women would have been very much aware of subect no Offrom and would have seen her as some kind of spiritual mentor particularly hatsep shoot, because there are a number of indications from the statuary architecture texts that she used in death, you know, on her in her tomb, that they

were copied almost exactly from subec Nofro. And I would not be the first writer researcher to point out the fact it's quite clear that had ship Soot saw subec Nofro as her role model. And I think that's really really important, because you know, you've got here a woman whose life changed Egyptian history and may well have changed the history of the world, because I think that without her reign, which lasted for four years, this world would have been completely

different. Now how different, I don't know, but all I do know is that the great period of success and prosperity in Egypt, which we call thee that the New Kingdom, which began with the eighteenth dynasty, where he had lots of great you know, kings like that. You know, the topmost is obviously akin Artan, you know, something to the come on horam heap, you know, people like this, and then obviously making way for the nineteenth dynasty with Rameses the second and people like this. None of that

would have happened without her. And obviously I'll tell you for why, because her father was a very successful king of the twelfth dynasty by the name of amenem At third, and he ruled for you know, fourth to five decades

and was very very successful. He had quite a tolerant policy towards you know, people coming in from outside of Egypt and settling in and of course most of these were Semitic people's coming in from Canaan and the area of the Sinai, and they grabbed He took different positions of of um, yeah, power say power not so much at the beginning, but you know, jobs basically u and whether this was in the the navy, in the the Egyptian army,

whether it was as as officials, whether it was like butlers in houses and stuff like this. And what gradually happened is that, you know, there was quite a large um Semitic population in Egypt and everything was going well. But then what happened was that he dies and his son takes over. Now his name is Imanemet the fourth. Now, um you know, the fact that he was also going to rule with his sister, whose name was Nefertar, is something that comes into this, but we'll maybe come back to

that. Yeah, And what happens is that I'm the fourth reigns for about nine years, and he becomes even more progressive in his policies and starts not just allowing more and more people to come into Egypt, but also to allow

them to influence decisions that were being made by he himself. And he basically turned away from the religions that were important at this time, which was mostly surrounding the cult of armand the cult of Subbek the crocodile god, and started embracing very specifically the priesthood of rah Teleiopolis, but also decided that he would create a brand new kingdom in the Sinai region and almost turn his back on existing centers of power. In Egypt, and this was unquestionably being done through

Semitic influence. And so what seems to have happened is that there was quite a lot of people in Egypt in power who didn't like what was going on and realized that unless something changed, then Egypt was going to fall. And you know, their concerns were real, very very real, because within a couple of generations of here, Egypt did essentially fall to the what's known as the hike Sas warlords or the Hyksos kings who came in and took over large

parts of Egypt. Now, what happened was that it would seem as if these you might call them nationalists, you know, those that wanted to keep the sovereignty of Egypt I think sided with his sister, who, to start off with, I think ruled virtually alongside him. Now want to say his system. I'm now talking about Tobeic Nofra, Because what happens is that the

other sister, Nefertar, disappears. I want I mean by that is that she dies mysteriously, probably between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, and initially she's buried alongside her father at the third who basically dies around the same time and is then her remains taken out and putting in a separate small pyramid. This is a hawara in the Foam region of Egypt, and Sobek Nofrou suddenly

takes power. Now, she couldn't have done it on her own. She must have had an awful lot of support, most obviously from the priesthood that was most closely related to her, which was that of Sobek, the crocodile god. And she would seem to have started off as a co regent to her brother. I'm at the fourth and they would seem to have been really

close to start with. And it even seems possible that when he came to the throne, he actually commit in the building of two pyramids, one that was going to be for her, one of which was going to be for him. And these were at a place called Meskoona, which is just south of Dashore. That's them, I think the Bad Pyramid and the Red Pyramid pyramids attributed to him. The Black Pyramid is one of the two pyramids of Aminem. The third by the way, you know, that's something Dad.

And so what happens is that eventually her brother dies. Now what I say in the book and will come onto this, is that he was almost certainly murdered. I think he was murdered by the nationalists who were supporting his sister by now that was Subek Nofro, and that basically she then rose to power

for that for the next four years and changed everything she became. She closed the borders, did not have the same time wareance towards you know, Semitic peoples, even though and I showed this in the book that in her early years she almost certainly was brought up in the Delta in an area that was very strongly Semitic in origins. In other words, she would have had that

as part of her own background. And I think that this was one of the things that got her into some of the more spiritual side of life, which I think related to the goddess Hathor, and particularly I think her more Semitic or kind of night Fall, which generally went under the name of Balat, which means the lady. Exactly which goddess she was, we're not sure it could have been. Let me stop you real quick for a second, Andrew. So when she took power, was she made a pharaoh of the

Upper and Lower Egypt. So yeah, she was so Actually documentation that she was Maine made the ruler of Egypt. Yeah she was. Yeah, she was the first to to basically be crowned with both of the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt. And you know that basically is the sign that you know, you rule the whole of the country. Um. Now, I mean some people might say at this point, we'll hold on. You know,

surely that women had had ruled before this time. Well, yes, there were a few, but they either did it by default in other words, you know, their their husband, the pharaoh had vanished, possibly on a war for a bit so she could go, or she may have been a regent, you know, for for a younger Um. You know, key, but this was the first time that a full blown pharaoh who was female

actually ruled the country. And as I said, she she ruled only for four years, but it was a very traumatic time, I think, and at the end of it, I think that they came after her. I mean, just in the same way that her brother had died mysteriously. I think that they came after her. And you know, she knew that her time was up, and one of the problems was is that we know that in the third year of her reign, the Nile floods were particularly low.

Now this is really no good because what it means is that if they're not high, they will not flood the plains of the Nile Valley and obviously bring that that rich black soil that is needed with all the chemicals in it that allows full growth, you know that the following growing season, you know,

so that you can grow your crops. Now we don't know what was going on in the other three years of her reign, but the fact that this was happening would have been just the excuse that her opponents needed to say, yeah, look what this woman is doing. You know, it was everything was when her brother was on the throne of her father. But now you know, look that the gods are abandoning in us because you know, we we haven't we haven't got any Nile floods um and you know this means famine

and disease and whatever else. And what's interesting is that certain Egyptologists have actually speculated that during this period, when something like this would happen, a king could either abdicate or commit suicide. Basically, and I think that's exactly what she did. But I don't think it's suicide in in the way that we would perceive suicide. It's suicide in the way that Cleopatra achieved the self. You suggest snake or poison or spo I mean that whole story in connection with

Cleopatra is is just pure symbolism. I mean, the snake is a symbol of medicine and magic. It was also a symbol of the goddess Isis, who was the platron of Cleopatra. I mean, Cleopatra was very heavily into the cult of Isis. She wore a pendent around her neck, you know, from that particular cult, and so she adhered to the ways of Isis, and that was dealing with magic and medicine, of which, as I

said, the chief symbol was the snake. And the whole story relating to her being bitten by an ass probably covers up the fact that she would have ingested I would say, hallucinogens that would have both connected her with the other world almost immediately, but then obviously when the overdose took effect, this would have allowed her to quite literally walk into the afterlife. Now we're talking about Cleopatra here. But I think that exactly the same thing happened with never Tt.

And the reason I say that is that there is almost certainly an account of her preserved in Greek tradition, and this is in the works of Herodotus, the father of history, who wrote about four hundred and fifty BC, and he talks about a female pharaoh, you know, king of Appera,

lohead Egypt, whose name was Nito Chris. And the story that he gives is that her brother ruled before her, and that he was murdered, and that she took revenge on those that murdered her brother by supposedly tricking them all into this this this building and allowing the waters to come in from the nile

and drown them all. But the interesting fact is that it says that so as she herself did not suffer the same retribution she throws, she repaired, in other words, went into um, you know, a room full of ashes and killed herself, you know, hot ashes, And you think, well, what the hell is all that about? Well, these hot ashes, I'm pretty certain we're talking about incense. The burning of incense on sensors that would almost certainly have had hallucinogens on them, and you know, would

have put people into an altered state of consciousness. So if you add that with the idea that you could have also ingested orally other hallucinogens, you know clearly it's going to kill you if it's not monitored. And and you know, these people were not just dealing with things like cannabis here. I mean, you know, they would have been dealing with hallucinogens which you know, the toura for instance, that if you took in the rock amount would would

kill you instantly. Almost yeah, you know. But the thing is that if you allowed it to happen, you know, if you allow to take you from this world into the afterlife, I think that you know, they'd have done it basically. So I think that's exactly what happened to her. But let's let's say what happened after she died, because she was able to pass on the baton of sovereignty of Egypt onto the next dynasty that ruled. Now, this was one of two dynasties, right, because this is where

it all starts falling apart. You've got the Thirteenth dynasty, many of which many of the kings of which all bore the name, Sobek Sobek was the deity, which she very clearly because of her name, you know, centrally focused around and they would seem to have carried the you know, the torture sovereignty of Egypt, you know, throughout the next let's say, one hundred

hundred and fifty years. And what happens is that they then passed past that torton to their next dynasty, which is the seventeenth and they are the ones that will eventually get rid of the hike saus kings that have overridden Egypt. Now, without subec Nofrey establishing the thirteenth dynasty, there would have been nothing to stop the other dynasty that rose up at the same time, which is the fourteenth dynasty that went hand in hand went parallel with the thirteenth, and

this was a very clearly Semitic based dynasty. You are, there's various evidence within the names of the kings, and evidence has been found to suggest that firstly they their seat of powers in the Delta, which was now a stronghold of the Canaanite people, but secondly that they themselves were almost certainly Canaanites, and that they paved the way for the entry into Egypt and the taken over of Egypt bya the hike saus Kings, who were also known as the Shepherd

Kings, and what they did was just essentially, you know, raise most of each to the ground. They allowed this almost like this sort of puppet dynasty to continue on in the south of the country the thirteenth you know, not realizing that it had any power, and you know, not considering it

any kind of threat. But you know, they were a threat. As I said, they passed on the Batnes's sovereignty to the seventeenth and there were kings like Amos and Carmos who eventually would rise up and you know, create an army that would defeat the Hikesos. And let's look at the situation. If this hadn't have happened, if the hikes Kings had continued to rule Egypt, the chances are that Egypt would simply have become a part of the Canaanite

Empire. In other words, it would be simply another vassal state of the overall Canaanite Empire that stretched all the way from Syria, you know, and obviously right the way down into Egypt point and the world would have been a different place. I mean, Egypt would never have recovered. Um So without her reign, without her actions, which you know, some people might you know, consider to be um you know, unprogressive as it were, Egypt

would have fallen. And I mean some Egyptologists have even suggested that that there's slim evidence to suggest that her family may have even known that something bad was on the horizon. Um you know, almost like premonitions. I mean, this is the word that works to use. In other words, that they knew that something bad was about to happen to Egypt. And this period is known as the Second Intermediate Period. But unfortunately, something not fruit was not

given credit for any of this. She it would seem, was blamed for what had happened. That's that's that's what I want to talk to you about. She doesn't come up on the King's list number one, number two, and I find this fascinating. This we don't know where she is laid to rest, that's correct. We don't have a tomb for her, we don't have any kind of writing regarding her her, that's right. Yeah, I

mean, well we don't even know how old she was. Well, no, but I mean all of the estimations that given the book, based on a number of different factors, would suggest she was probably around thirty to thirty five when she died. Oh, I thought she was much younger than that. Okay, no, No, she was probably about that. I mean, you know, remember that before her there was basically about a nine year

reign of her brother where she would have been involved with that. That means that, you know, she would have come to the four probably in her about twenty, So that really doesn't make sense. And she her sister who was never Ta, who seemed to have been the product of the same father

but a different mother. She was unquestionably being groomed to become the next pharaoh of Egypt by her father i'm an m At the third who and that she was going to rule alongside her half brother i'mann em At the foulth, So they were at Now the thing is you have to say to yourself, you know, if that had happened subect Nofru, who obviously eventually becomes king of

Egypt, what would her role have been And the answer is nothing. She would have been nothing because all the indications are that her initial route was basically to become a priestess in a temple, possibly a priestess of Hathorte in her early years, but something happened that changed her destiny and what I speculate, and this is based on the fact that one of the statues that actually appears to show her has her dressed in a what's known as the heb said cloak

and her hands in a position which suggests that she's gone through this so called

heab said festival. But this is impossible because the heb said festival was something that a king would only undergo after they ruled for about thirty years, you know, And the idea of it was that a huge great court would be built, as head said cult for instance at Sakara, and that they would have to undergo a series of physical you know, you know, trials and tribulations to prove that they were worthy both in body and mind to continue ruling

the rule in the country. And then once you did one he said festival, then you have to redo them every few years after that. Now, why the hell was she wearing a heab said cloak at her coronation because that appears, is what the statue shows, and the and the and the only answer is that she obviously decided that she'd done enough for her to be able to wear it. And what I find interesting is that the divine influence that

essentially presides over the he Said festival is the goddess Hathor. She's the one that basically sort of says, you know, yeah, you've done a good job. You know, I'll give you the right signs that the king can continue on. But it seems as if Sobek Noofu had a personal connection with her, and I think underwent some kind of initiation involving either half or or

her Semitic counterpart Ballad that gave that convinced Heurn. It was probably people around her convincing her that it was her destiny to rule Egypt and that if she accepted this, they would help her become ruler of Egypt. Now, who were these people? I think that they're going to be obviously court officials that are associated with her father Ian at the fourth but sorry third, but also they're going to be the priests of the Temple of Sebek. Sobek was arguably

the most important cult religious cult during this period. It had risen up throughout the whole of the dynasty, to which she belonged, which was the twelfth dynasty, and was in a really powerful position by the time of her father Ian at the third her brother I'm in there at the fourth ignored it completely, ignored Sobek completely, and in personal inscriptions would ally himself to the god Amen, sorry, God artum Ra. You know that the forms of the

sun God. And he aligned himself with the Temple of Heliopolis, not the temple or Sobek, which was in the Fium, And this seems to be part of his plan to create this new kingdom in the Sini. This is what he was trying to do. So basically, I think that her supporters were definitely the priests of Sabek and another number of other people who clearly had clubbed together to support her and said, look, you know, if we

take out your brother, will support you. Basically, Now, when she was directly or indirectly involved with his death is a matter of speculation, but I think that that she certainly knew what was going a new yet to be taken out. Basically, the few statues that we have of her show are very uh. The characteristics are very male and female. Yeah, and she seems to have these big ears too. Orr is reminiscent of other statues. Why are why are there so few statues statues of her? And the ones

we do have her somewhat defaced. Yeah, I think well, I mean some of that is going to be icanocalism, you know, in other words, the deliberate smashing of them for religious or political reasons. But there's no question that she was suppressed. I mean, you're going to Egypt, aren't you? Yeah? Yeah, are you going to Abydos? Always right, Well, when you're in when you're in Abydos, as you walk through the temple on the walls, there is all of the kings that ruled Egypt.

As you're going out to the Assyria at the back, have a look there at the first temple. Yep, said Seti the first. You know Seti the first, and the Ramesis. Look, these are all the kings that rolled for us. Yeah. Now you look, you have arman Emet the third, you have I met and met the fourth, you know the Cartou Shehes and then nothing until the beginning of the eighteenth dynasty. The next king on that list would have been Sobek no Offro. Why is she missing when

we know full well that she rolled for four years? And the answer is that for some reason she got blamed for the fall of Egypt immediately after a time when all the indications are that she was the one that kept it going, and she was the one that was able to pass on the baton of sovereignty to the next dynasty, the thirteenth, because she was in the twelfth

dynasty. And well, I think that therefore her story was suppressed, so you know, with other than a few mentions here and there, in for instance, the Labyrinth, which is something that she unquestionably completed at Hawara in the fium which originally started as the Molktrie temple of her father and the third, but she then transformed it into essentially the central religious center of brit of of of of Egypt. Quickly you mentioned the labyrinth. Yeah, that's a

that's a myth. Still we still haven't found the labyrinth. No, now we have, of course we have. It's no, no, it's it's a it's a Hawira in the fium Um. If you go to the one of the two pyramids of M and m at the third, which is the one at hawarra Um, it's immediately to the south of there. I mean, it's a huge, great complex that's described by Hereditus. That is going to say he described because I mean he says that it was more impressive than

the Pyramids of Geezer something. I mean, this is Hereditus in around four hundred and fifty BC. Yeah, it's there. I mean M. Paul Lepsius was the first, you know, Western archaeologists to excavate it in the early part of the nineteenth century, and then Flinder's Petrie investigated it towards the end of the nineteenth century, and then obviously, you know, work has

been done since that time. But they found not only inscriptions in the name of subek Nooffer his father, but also in the name of subek Nooffer herself. And it's quite clear that this whole complex was begun by her father and completed by her. But she didn't use it just as a moultry temple to father. She used it as a center almost like an omphilos of sacred center

of Egypt. And all the indications are that there were at least forty two or quite specifically forty two different chapels, each of them dedicated to one of the local gods of the different noms ms or districts of Egypt, and that the idea was that Sobek was becoming a monotheistic god basically, And what she insisted was that the priests of all of the district different gnomes visit the labyrinth one, let's say, once a year maybe more, to pay offerings to

Sobek, who was being seen by her as the living spirit of all of these other local gods. So all these other local gods had their own names, you know, and you know that some of their coats were probably extremely ancient. But what she was saying is yes, but they're all aspects of Sobek. So what she was actually doing, for the most part was creating a type of monotheism most around Sobek. And I think that she was trying

to centralize the whole of the country. But it wasn't just Sobek involved that her Sobek's mother was very important as well, and this was the goddess Nith. Now Nith is a standing hippopotamus basically with large grouping breasts, and she's seen as like a sort of mother of all. And when she's depicted with her son Sobek, the crocodile god, you see the standing hippopotamus and the crocodiles on the back of the hippopotamus. And this is not just shown in

ancient Egyptian tradition, but it's also shown as a sky figure. In other words, it's in the sky as well and occupies the area of the sky that we know today as the Draco, the constellation of the serpent, right you know where the turning point of the Evans are, you know, the polar axis, the ecliptic, the celestial pulp, but also the stars of Ursa Minor, and it would seem involved with this, this this little group was the stars of Ursa Major as well, you know, the Plow the

Dipper, and that these three constellations formed part of a a miscycle involving nath As, the mother of Sabak, and Sabek himself. And amongst these, it would seem like the most important star was one in Draco, an orange star called Eltonan, and this seems to have formed the eye of the crocodile, you know, as a sky figure in the sky. And it would seem as if both the pyramid that was being prepared for her at Masgoona,

which is known as Masgoona North, which has been destroyed. Some people suggest that it was never even completed. Masgoona south was for him, which it would seem you know, her brother, I'm Gonnamet the fourth, but also just on the north side of the Fim Lake, which is a huge inland sea in the fire, which seems to have been very important to why the became so important, you know, during her age, is that there is a very strange megalithic temple there. It's one of the most enigmatic buildings in

the whole of the Egypt. It's made of huge stone blocks, polygonal blocks, very similar to the temple that the Valley temple of Kaffrey at Gezer, very very megalith and the Assyrian at Abydos, and her name or fragments that seems to suggest that she was associated with that temple, which was dedicated according to tradition, to Sobek, would seem to suggest that she was involved not so much with its building, because it does seem to be a building that

dates at least to the Pyramid Age, you know, the Old Kingdom period, but that she redecorated it or redesigned the interior because the actual internal architecture is almost identical to another temple on the south side of the foam lake at a place called Medanit Mardi, and this is a temple dedicated to Sobek but

also to the snake goddess reninute It. Now, she seems to have very little to do with that temple, But whoever designed that temple designed the interior design of the megalithic temple at Kastel Saga, as I say, on the northern side of the fiam so and that is also orientated, as I show in the book, towards the setting of the star Altinum, just as her

pyramid at Masguna is also orientated towards the same star. So you know that this this shows her astral beliefs in the importance of the stars and the importance of the cult of Sobek and his mother Nith. You know, two very very very ancient traditions. And these were ideas that were carried on, it would saying, by the thirteenth dynasty. The dynasty that followed her, they

also seemed to have followed this sign religious tradition. We're gonna take a short commercial break to let our sponsors identify themselves, and we will be right back with Andrew Collins presenting information on this new book, The First Female Pharaoh. We'll be right back. My guest today is author Andrew Colin, who has released a new book called The First Female Pharaoh, Sobek Nepheru Goddess of the

Seven Stars. This is a in depth research piece on a unknown pharaoh, a female pharaoh from the Middle Kingdom period, and we're getting an insight on just what she accomplished during her reign. Talk a little bit about your belief that the women who followed her more like hats Chepst and others. Perhaps we're interested in her magic technique and her because she apparently and you hint at her using magic, and maybe this is what developed into a cult. Yeah,

yeah, I think, As I said, there is some evidence. It's not strong, but I build up as much as I can in the book to suggest that she was actually brought up in the Nile Delta, a place called telll Darba, where there was a temple where at least three statues of her in a very poor condition were discovered at the beginning of the nineteen fourties, and the archaeologist that did the work there, you know, said that she must have had a personal connection with this town, and it was even

suggested that she may well have been brought up there. Well, what's so interesting about that is that telll Darba was the main center for the settlement of Semitic or Canaanite people's in Egypt from quite an early stage, and my colleague David Roll, for instance, wrote a whole book basically showing the biblical character

of Joseph Um. You know, not only was around at the time of Amenemt, the third fourth subec Nofrwy and the first couple of kings of the thirteenth dynasty, but that his house was in Tell el Daba, and that a statue that was found at the site may well actually even show Joseph because obviously Joseph, Yeah, this is a guy who you know, had a load of brothers, you know, because we all know the biblical story, and they sort of, you know, leave him for dead. They don't

like him, and eventually he sold as a slave into Egypt. But then he wrote that. But then, you know, he becomes a servant to a priest of Ra the iliopolis Um and eventually the wife of this you know, this high ranking official accuses him him of trying to come on to her, which was a trumped up charge. He's ran into prison, and you know, it's realized eventually that he has this ability to be able to translate

or interpret dreams. And of course, you know, Pharaoh has these dreams about these seven lean years and seven fat years and you know, cows and whatever, and they call for Joseph and he says, basically, look, your dreams mean you've got to stock up over the next seven years because you're gonna have seven years of famine. And he then rises to become Visier of

Egypt, I mean quite literally, the second in command of Egypt. Well, I mean I tackle this in the book because there are a number of Arabic stories that seem to continue this story of Joseph's involvement in Egypt, and they pad out what the Bible doesn't say, and it's very very clear that Joseph. Yeah, and when I say Joseph, I mean we're not necessarily

dealing with one single guy. I think that he represents, you know, the importance of the Semitic community in Egypt at the time of these particular pharaohs, and he's he's become condensed into a symbol, a single composite figure.

I would say personally myself, I'm not saying there wasn't somebody called Joseph, But what I'm saying is that I think that some of the stories connected with him are probably based on more than one person, but that you know, according to Arabic tradition, he's involved with the building of this canal between the Nile and the Fame Lake, you know, which basically allowed the waters from

the Nile to come in and feel the Fame Lake. Well, in Greek tradition, these same stories are all connected with Sobekna for his father, I'm an em At the third, He's the one that said to have built this canal that goes into the Fame Lake. So we're dealing with the same time frame, and there's no question that these activities did take place, and they

did take place around the reign of Amenemic the third. But also interesting about the Arabic accounts, which come from much earlier Coptic sources, is that they talk about Pharaoh's daughter and how one of the reasons why Joseph takes on this job of creating this canal but also building a new palace is so that it is for Pharaoh's daughter. Now she's not named, but I am certain that this is Sobet Nofro. And for some reason these clearly originally Semitic, then

Christian accounts her once again try to whitewash her involvement with it. But anyway, coming back to what you said about, you know, the other female pharaohs seeming to take set as a kind of mentor well, it's Hapset Shot that seems to have mostly been interested in her. And not only is there various statues that mimic almost exactly those that we have of Sobek Noofri, that exactly the pose and style everything. And again it's not just me, other

people, you know, Egyptologists have said this is too coincidental. She clearly is trying to mimic the style of Sobek Nofri. But beyond that is that in hap Set Shots early two, there's a psychophagus with a whole load of lines of like a sort of book of the dead if you like, okay, like you know that the words and sayings that you need to be able to transition from this world into the next world at the point of death. Now, these have been found to match almost word for word. The text

was on the side of one of the two coffins. There was an inner and out of coffin of sobek Noofru's sister, which were found in a sealed tomb in the mid nineteen fifties in the Fim, in fact, very close to the the labyrinth that Hawara. And the problem here and I mean, you know, the Egyptologists have noted this, and you know, called to

question what's going on here? How is it that Hapset should uses these unique funerary texts, you know, on her sarcophagus when they're not discovered until the nineteen fifties, and there is no other examples of them around, certainly not

in the same order and certainly not with the same completeness. And I mean, clearly there's no absolute answer, but the suspicion is that that Hapset should and these texts from subek Nofro in other words, they were part of the family of Subet Nofro and ad obtusly been used by the sister, and we're

probably also going to be used by subbekt Noffer herself. And perhaps that Should wanted to go into death in the same why and possibly you know, with the belief that she would even meet Sobekner in death, you know, so that she put these on her own sarcophagus. In other words, if I take exactly the same route into the afterlife as a subec nofro, maybe I'll meet her when I get there. Um, And as I said, there's I mean, I think it's almost certain that hands steps should you know,

saw Sube as her role model, No question at all about that. That's funny that you mentioned that. Perhaps yet so we're we're clothing or trying to emulate subject enough for his look and appearance. Yeah, what what do we know? You mentioned at the beginning her reign was basically at the end of

the Twelfth Dynasty, ending basically the Middle Middle Kingdom. Yeah, in the four years that she reigned, it was something of note recorded that you found that would make her, you know, an important transition figure from the twelfth onto the other dynasties. Well, I mean when she died, very clearly there was no clear successor for her. In other words, you know, there was not a sound being lined up daughter obviously to take take over from

her. The thirteenth dynasty suddenly appears and him right, Holt, who is you know, a very studious, very clever Egyptoley just has studied this period very carefully, and he reckons that the first two kings of the thirteenth dynasty, which both have the name Armon in one of their names, were probably the sons of arma At the fourth In other words, her sbet through his brother. Okay, in other words, he had two children with somebody.

We don't know who. They could have been subect no, through his children, but there's nothing to prove that at all. They probably were the children of of of of of another wife, probably, but you know, there is absolutely no, you know, hard and fast answer. Now, the question is did she groom these two children to become the next two kings after she has killed her own brother? And I think there is a possibility that

the answer is yes. I mean, I mean, as I said, some people could even suggest that these two children were hers, but we don't know. But but whoever they were, I think that she did prepare them. And what's so interesting here is that if she was involved with the killing of her brother, these two children who would become Kings one and two of

the thirtieth dynasty supported her. They supported the cult Sabek, you know, they they deified her, you know, they clearly saw her as a mentor, you know, in fact, to the point of creating a cult in her name, you which would continue on throughout the Thirteenth dynasty, and I show as I show, probably continues all the way through to the New Kingdom. And so that's an interesting situation. If she killed their father, I mean, you know, either they didn't know that or somehow they accepted that

this was the right thing to have happened. Um, so you know, that's that's what basically happened. But she, as I said, got blamed for this, and because of it, her name was stricken from I think various of the king lists. I mean, the most obvious that I've said the one Abydos Now, I don't get me wrong. She is mentioned here and there. I mean there's a king list from Sakara, for instance, that mentions her. She has mentioned also on a king list from Karnak that's

currently now I think in the Louver in Paris. So you know, in other words, that there seemed to be differences of of opinion relating to you know, the importance of her role or or you know, whether she could or could not be blamed for certain things. But he definitely was suppressed. And I think this is one of the reasons why we have so many, so little statuary from her reign. It's also why we have so little inscriptions outside the Labyrinth or from the film. I mean, there are some,

but very very few. And also why you know that there's very little about her. I mean, man Etho talks about her. He's the guy who writes around two hundred and fifty b c. He was a priest of rah If, I remember rightly, and I think I'm getting this right. And yeah, he's a guy that gives us the chronology of the kings of Egypt,

the one that essentially everybody, every other classical writer uses. And he does mention a female ruler at the end of the twelfth dynasty, who he calls Schemiophris, and it says, basically, she was the sister of the previous is king, and the previous king clearly is i'm an Emez, who is fourth, so she is mentioned by Menetho. But what's so important about this is that this tells us very clearly that those two were brother and sister.

And this is a crucial thing because some Egyptologists suggest that they had no relationship with each other at all. But you know, the evidence is unquestionably there. And so when you look at Herodotus and the story of Nito Chris, you know you have to look at a female pharaoh who had a brother that ruled before her, who she you know, took revenge on those that

killed him. And I go into this in detail, and firstly, there cannot be any other brother and sister in Egyptian history that have this same role. And secondly, if you look at Herodotus the way that he refers to all of the different kings in book two of his histories, they're all in an order, and they start with with nightA Chris, and obviously a brother, the king, and then her father, and then before that father's father, and there's a list that are all quite clearly from the same dynasty,

and that's the twelfth dynasty. And to me, this is good circumstantial evidence that she and thus her father, sorry, her brother the king, were Twelfth Dynasty kings. Now, some of the you know, the viewers out there are going to say, well, hold on nightA Chris, I thought that she ruled in the sixth dynasty. You know, I've read that,

I've seen this mentioned in king lists. Well, this was a mistake that was based on what Manetho wrote, he placed her in the sixth dynasty, but also it seems to have been a mistake that he hopped from a much earlier king list, which is the Turin canon. We're very famous Papaye Rye king list, which you clearly as the name suggests, in Turing in Italy. And this was this was a king list which when it was found was complete, but by the time it was transported to Italy where they opened it,

it all completely fallen to pieces. And it's taken you know, a hundred years or more to try and piece the whole thing together. And they're still doing it, and they're still arguing where different bits, you know, should go to this day. Um and kim Ryholt, you know, I mean, look look at at the page on Wikipedia for Nito Chris. It talks about this that Kim Ryholt has shown conclusively that the king which the name Nito Chris comes from, actually is a male to man, there's no question

about that whatsoever. You know, you know, it's it's not even a female. Because we know that this particular person and his the name the throne name relate to a man we've got, you know, and there can be no doubt of that. It's a confusion that's come about, probably that in a very late New Kingdom period or maybe slightly later, and that it's something that confused man Etha himself. And in other words, there was never any

female ruler in the sixth dynasty of Egyptian Egypt. But I think what we all to get onto is the fact that we probably know sobekn Off through under a different name. That even though most of the viewers out there are going to be saying, well, I've never heard of her, you know you

do know her, and I'll tell you for why. Because in the nineteenth century, when you know that archaeology began in Egypt and this name sobek Nofer who started coming up, some of the early Egyptologists started to speculate that this woman was very very important. One particularly Egyptologist called Heinrich Bruge, for instance, who wrote quickly a thick double volume sat on the Kings of Egypt, wrote about her extensively, basically saying that it's quite clear that she created almost

like a cult that continued on in her name afterwards. Because many of the kings of the Thirteenth dynasty also bore the name Sobakbak Hotech, which means basically

servant of Sobek or follower of Sobek. And these ideas were picked up by a more speculative writer of Egyptology by the name of Gerald Massey, who had this great interest in the sky religion of ancient Egypt and wrote various really interesting books on ancient Egypt, like Egypt, Ancient Egypt, Light of the World, The Natural Genesis, various other I can't remember that there's another one at least, and he talks about Sobek offer when really bigs her up in there

and basically says, this woman quite clearly was the revivalist of this age old cult to do with Sobek, the gods set you know, who can also be seen as a crocodile, and that you know this this kick started a revival of this cult that was picked up by the thirteenth dynasty and continued on probably into the New Kingdom period. Now, one of the people that read, well, I mean, I show the evidence why read Gerald masses books was the Irish writer Ram Stoker, who obviously we know as the writer of

drac Killer. Yeah. Now, shortly after he wrote Jacula, he wrote what might be described as his Egyptian novel, and this was called The Jewel of Seven Stars, and it featured this ancient Egyptian female ruler who comes back from the dead and rics havoc in the modern world, essentially in Britain.

And of course this becomes the main theme for every horror movie that's ever occurred since that time, where an Egyptian royal female rises from the dead and creates havoc, the last of which, of course, was twenty seventeen's The Money featuring Tom Cruise. In none of these, In none of these is the

name Sabecofrou mentioned. But in some of them it's quite clear that the scriptwriters have done their homework and realized that that bram Stoker's queen, as he calls it, he calls a queen tear tr A is obviously based on Sobek Nofru, and have given nods to that fact, you know, in the films, so we do know her, or certainly we've seen her. But the other important thing is that another person who was inspired by the works of Gerald

Massey was the occultist Kenneth grant. Now he writes a series of three trilogies called the Typhonian Trilogies, which are incredibly influential in modern day occultism. That again, seriously big up Sobek Nofru as this, you know, this founder of this ancient cult that goes back in many thousands of years, involving the

crocodile, involving the hippopotamus. You know obviously the gods Sobek and Nith and that you know, she create creates this cult that then you know, snowballs throughout time and is a current, a magical current that is important to occultists today. And he also acknowledges in the last of these books before he died that Queen Tira, the antagonist in the book July seven Styles by Bram Stoker,

is indeed Sobek Noferum. He states this, And I mean, going beyond this, I mean there's the books by a guy called Nicholas de Vere who's as a historian, a genealogist, a member of various different sort of like Shilric orders. He wrote various books about what he called the Dragon Kicks that throughout all of the European history there was like this sort of secret cabal

of you know that like sort of supporting the kings. The kings were part of it, and that this goes all the way back to ancient Egypt, the founder being Sobek no Offerum, and he calls it the groul line is the ground Kings. Now I'm not supporting this. I'm not saying that you know this is correct, But what I am saying is this is how strongly this woman, this first female pharaoh of Egypt, yeah, remembered. In other words, her revival is coming in a way quite unlike that of let's

say Cleopatra, Nefertiti or Hatset Shure. It's almost like she's had to come into our world through the back door, as it were. She's stronger in death than she is in life. It's amazing. Absolutely. The book we're talking about is the first female pharaoh, subject Nephreu, Goddess of the Seven Stars. My guest today has been Andrew Collins. Tell me where I mean it's a big deal to be a pharaoh. Where was she immediately anointed a

pharaoh when her brother died? I mean that is that the language that you are able to find that she was pharaoh of the upper and and Lauren. Yeah, yeah, I mean there's no question that she was, you know, the ruler of both of those. I mean that, you know, inscriptions do tell us that there's no question about that whatsoever. So yes, we can only assume that on the point of the death of her brother,

um, you know, she was chosen as his successor. And as I said, with all of these people, they yeah, they have their they have their the people surrounding them, you know, whether they be court officials, whether they be priesthoods, you know, other important maybe vassal kings from other country, who knows, and you know, they're going to be behind somebody, and if they're doing what they want them to do, they will

continue to support them, you know. I mean it's it's like the monarchy today or whatever, you know, But as soon as they start putting a foot wrong, they may well change sides, you know, the words still start supporting another contender. And I think this is exactly what happened, you know, with the brother and the sister. And I think all the evidence is that, to start off with, I think the brother insisted ruled Egypt

together. I mean, whether it was in an official capacity or an unofficial capacity, not sure, but you know, he was a brother, you know, I mean, you know, I mean obviously that there may have been a certain amount of sibling rivalry or whatever, but they were brother and sister and they were ruling the country together. But that something went wrong, probably within a few years of him ascending the throne, and it got to

the point where communications between them broke down completely. And it is unquestionably to do with the direction that he wanted to take Egypt. And the various people was seeing this and said, look, we continue down this colt, Egypt's going to fall. You know, I think it needs to be done. You know, your progressive policies are going to destroy Egypt, and you know, so they turned to her and said, look, you know you've been ruling the country with him. You know, we will support you and you

alone, you know, if we can get rid of him. And I think that's exactly what happened, that she was involved with his death. As I say, whether it's direct or indirect, I don't know. And this story, I'm pretty certain is what Herodotus tells us in the account of Nito Chris. But there's obviously one little twist there because it said that that NTO Chris seeks revenge on those that have killed her brother. So if she was involved with killing him in the first place, why would she need to do

that. The answer is clear, I mean clearly, she wouldn't have been announced that either she or the people involved with this con spirity we were you know, we the people that killed her brother. But she would have used it to clamp down on everybody that she saw as opposing her rhyme. In other words, you you, you, and you and you. We're going to blame you for for for the death. You're gone, You're into the next life basically. Now. I mean, I know this all sounds pretty

harsh, but you know, we're dealing with a different world. I mean, you've only got to look at the Caesars or the ptolemy Is, you know, or any other royal family, and I do show that, you know, there was quite a lot of this um um you know, this this this you know sort of in fighting between the dynasties going on even during the Twelfth dynasty, in which she was a part of, you know,

from what we can tell. So I don't think it's any different to any other part of history where you know, if a king is ruling, well, there'll be allowed to continue on. If something starts going wrong, someone's going to want to remove them. Hm. This book's going to be out

in about a month, a couple of weeks from now. I just side on Amazon, which means it will be on other electronic bookstores or probably your local bookstore like Barnes and Robal. Give us your website, Andrew, and also let us know what you're going to be up to in the next few months. Okay, Well, obviously, as as you said, the book is available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Simon and Schuster. I had to say. All this sort of stuff and anything that you need to know

about the book can be gained from my website Andrew Collins dot com. There's links on there to all my social media. As to me, I'm off next month to Turkey because the absolutely the big exciting thing that I'm working on. I'm just finishing a book now on Karahan Tepe, which is the most exciting archaeological discovery of twenty first century, no question about it. I'm just doing finishing a book there. We're going there again next month. I've been

there several times in the last year. And we're going to Egypt in November this year and we will be going in quest of Sabek Nofro. We're going to the Poem, We'll go to the Kazarell Saga Megalithic Temple, We'll go to Medinet Mardi Temple, will go to the labyrinth, and yeah, please join us. All the details are on Andrew Collins dot com. You'll see the events upcoming there. And yeah, I mean, you know, come along and let's talk about her, and let's try and find her too,

because nobody knows exactly where she is buried. I mean, she was meant to have been buried in the Mescoona North Pyramid, but she definitely didn't reach that. That means she must have been buried in secret somewhere. So where was she buried? Hey, real quickly, this labyrinth, I've heard about it, but I I've never heard any of the public gaining any entrance to

underground. Uh, you know, like like the it's not like the serapeum, which you can actually go and it's it's designated to go and visit. This labyrinth, which has been reported by a lot of important individuals over the over the ages. Have they actually taken pictures of it? I haven't seen anything. Well, I mean it was clearly completely trashed at some point um, and most of the masonry tyken and used you know for buildings elsewhere.

I mean Herodotus and other classical writers, as I say, talk about this place being more impressive than the Pyramids himself. Now we can only but you know, what does that mean that well, we don't know obviously. I mean the classical writers describe it. I go into detail about what they all say in the book. But Herodotus tells us that essentially that there's as much underground as there is above ground, that there's you know, hundreds of secret

chambers with crocodiles and ords of it. Now, um, this has not really been found, and the only reason why it's not been found is very clearly because we've not dug deep enough. There must be something underground there to be discovered. Otherwise Herodotus and these other writers must have been completely wrong. And I think that's unlikely because I mean Hereditus when he goes there in four hundred and fifty BC, I mean he's clearly got guides. You know,

he's obviously talking to the local priests. I mean, it was still in operation. Remember it wasn't just a ruin. And you know, he's talking to the caretakers, so he's saying, won't tell me about it, you know, and they're obviously describing it, they're walking them around it, and he's and you know, he's saying, well, what's down there, what's underneath? And they describe what's underneath, and he says, can I go down there? And they basically say no, you know, that's that's the

sacred part. You know, we can't take you down there. That's what he says in his accounts, So these are the words he uses. We haven't found those underground structures of the labyrinth, so we can only but speculate what's down there and how much of what these classical writers wrote is actually the truth. We don't know, Okay, I want to mention that in the

Pyramid Code, the author mentions them. And then I had a guy on the program a couple of years ago who believes that actually he had some kind of scanning technology on a satellite pierced the area around this pyramid and apparently found

canals that are in the ship of a labyrinth. And I didn't know if that was a true labyrinth or that, So, I mean, I would love to see those scans because I mean, you know, obviously I studied that whole landscape as I was doing the book, and there's a reconstruction of where the pyramid of i'm Emet the third days in relationship to the labyrinth, in relationship to the local canals. So I'd love to see that. What I do know is that there have been a couple of expeditions of people who

have been out in that area and pinpointed other locations to the labyrin. Now I'm going to stick with the Egyptologists and say that it is exactly to the south of the Pyramid of Amenemic the third at hawara Um, you know the areas there. I mean, I mean Petree himself, you know, Flinders Petrie, the great British egyptologist at the end of the nineteenth century, described the labyrinth as as being bigger than Tarnak luck Saw and the Ramasseum, you

know down in the area of life. Did he actually go under and see it? He excavated it there? Yeah? Yeah, so Petrie actually excavated problem. Yeah yeah, yeah, you can, you can, I mean his book is online, just look up archive dot organ. Yeah, we do everything, and yet there's no resources to look at it right now, I guess or it's not of great interest that we would go down and find it. So when you say it, you mean the actual structures and the

underground labyrinth, you know. I mean, look, you know that the problem with Egypt as opposed to any other country is that you know, you've got to have the right permits to do any dig in concessions to to to dig in a particular area. And you know, somebody like me can any report on what evidence that we've got there and try and put the whole picture

together. I would encourage I mean, I hope obviously this book will not only allow people to better understand subec Nofro and her family, but also I hope that it will encourage further archaeology in the vicinity of the lab Branth to really try and understand what was there. But from my point of view, it's very clear that this was being created to be the center of Egypt,

where the Upper and Lower Egypt come together. Basically, you know, in other words, this was the point of demarcation of Upper and Lower Egypt, or certainly from an efficient in an official capacity at least. So so that's it, really, but fascinating lady. And if anybody has any information about that so I may have missed, then I would love to hear from him. And then your email is on that website, right, it tastes Yeah, yeah, I'm not gonna try and say it now. I'll probably get

it wrong anyway. Yeah, yeah, there's a there's a click throw well Andrew Colleens dot com. Okay, excellent, Andrew, much success on this book. Fascinating is always a true detective story, and it surely leaves the

door out open from more inquiry. You know, It's like, I was fat uh curious that there was so little statuary of this person, and it kind of reminds me of what happened to Akanatan when he tried to move the city to another location exactly and his whole uh rain was destroyed and all the statues were just there's already a handful of statues left of him, that's right,

because they didn't they want to know memory of him. Yeah. I think what she was doing, which was what eighteen hundred BC akin Artem, was what thirteen fifty let's say, so, what's that five hundred and fifty years later, It's the same thing. They were both creating an essentially monotheistic religion. I mean, he was doing it a little bit more thorough, I think, than what she was doing. But look what happened to him. You know, eventually the Armaan priesthood right up against him, and you

know, they get rid of him. And I think it was the same thing as what happened with Sobek Noofro. But it wasn't the Armaan religion this time. They were okay, they were they were they were okay with what was going on. I think that it was the priesthood of Heliopolis, the priests of artem Raw. They were the ones that rose up against her. Fascinating. Hey, best of luck, stay in touch and we'll catch you the next time. Will this time next year we'll be oh, we'll be

talking about Karahan, I promise you. Okay, take care, right chased it. It's always good to hear from Andrew. He travels extensively into the Middle East, and he will be coming back to give us a report on another book that he's releasing probably in the next few months. On Karen Tepi, which is this new site in Turkey that is older than go Beckley Teppi,

which I find fascinating. I mean, they've only uncovered a few of these subsurface temples, and each time they uncover one of the dating comes back older and older and older. I'm waiting for them to uncover a temple that's

like twenty thousand years old, not just twelve. And as you remember, we had doctor Steeves on the program a few weeks ago and she's you know, they're unveiling one hundred thousand, one hundred and fifty thousand year old Pleisticine settlements and these are Ice age settlements that are inhabited by it looks like Homo sapiens, you know. And so this is the kind of news that I love. This is the kind of news that flies in the face of Orthodox

thinking. And you know, it's not to beat up on the Orthodox the archaeologists. We have a lot of them on our program that our friends. It's just the fact that they're just so closed down. And this is the real problem with Egyptological views Egyptology. It's backwards and it doesn't really move forward. That they're struggling under the weight of new revelations, new discoveries, and I think in a mini way anyways, some of these dynastic ideas that are

in our history book need to be revised. And this is not going to happen anytime soon. This is going to take, you know, the kicking and screaming of archaeologists and egyptologists to finally release this data and the story being retold, rewritten. It may be a new generation. We've had doctor Karakuney on the program that flat out says Egyptology is dead. And if you don't believe she said that, go back to I think it was July or June

of twenty twenty eighteen or twenty nineteen. Just look up Karakuney under Earth Ancients dot com. And that first introduction to her work was not only eye opening, but she's a professor of ancient studies at UCLA in California, and she's telling it like it is. So it just takes time. It takes time for these things to shift. By the way, I am leaving in a couple of weeks, I leave April thirtieth and will be two weeks in Egypt.

I am making a special point of recording some of these megalithic temples look sore. For one, I didn't have enough time. I was not feeling

well when I was there. I just didn't have the energy. But we're gonna film some of the megaliths, the statuary, some of the flooring, and then we're gonna spend a good deal of time, probably half a day at half Or, which is in Dendera and in this one complex in this where the half Or Temple is. It's on a major lay line an energy geo magnetic field, and there's the half Or Temple, there's the best temple

that nobody talks about. There's the Isis Temple, and they all sit on this megalithic, extremely old, heavy duty granite floor or foundation, and it's all held together by these keys. And the keys are these metal locks that pull these blocks together, but they're also used for conducting and when energy is passed through the stones, these keys keep it moving from one to another,

so there's no offset. I am bringing my Trifield recorder, my Trifield meter with me, and we're gonna measure and I'm going to record the higher fields. The other thing I'm very excited to announce about the Half or temple at Dendera Is there's a new crypt that's been opened up, and some of the figurines are very anomalous. They look like they're wearing some kind of headgear that isn't really well noted. They always say, well, it's shy monistic clothing

analogy. A lot of times. I've shown that in Mexico with the Maya, so that look look for that, look for that in Um when I come back, I'll be back at the third week of May, and this is all going to be on Earth Ancients dot Com, but it's also going to be on our Facebook page, and I want to mention our Facebook page is constantly being updated with the latest reporting articles. Many of our authors, many of the people who are on this program send us photographs, graphics,

images, a wide variety of content support that supports their presentation. And this is where you can see these what we do what they call show notes for each of the presenters, and there's usually a gallery between five and in some cases are like twenty images that are from books from research and you should definitely

check it out because it's some of the materials and just fascinating. So so yeah, I'm looking forward to our Egypt, to our I'm getting excited and we're gonna have like thirty plus people to join us, and I will document as much as I can. We're also going down a new shaft. I didn't mention this. We're going down a new shaft. It's not new, it's been open for a few months at the Sakara Dojor Pyramid and they're opening up a whole labyrinth inside of the pyramid itself, but underneath it there's a

whole group of canals which are kind of like walkways. I call them canals, but they're walkways that lead to these unusual rooms. We don't know what there was used in these rooms, what was the purpose. Sometimes we find mummies in there, sometimes we find artifacts. But it's a low process to unopened, to open these canals, these shafts, and to discover these rooms. And we're going to go into a whole section that's just recently been discovered,

so I'll be filming that. We're gonna film the South Tomb container, which is actually some kind of a box that held some technology, megalithic box. And then we're gonna go and we're gonna drive take the bus a few miles down to Memphis and see this megalithic sculpture known as the Ramsey two sculpture. And this thing weighs eight hundred tons single block of granite. And this is one of these very very very finally cut sculptures that Chris Dunn believes is

cut from technology of some kind. And I'm gonna do what I can to get real close to it and allow you to see it too. So lots to it, are lots to film, lots to enjoy, and you're you're there with me because I'll be recording a lot of this and you will make it available on our website or the Ancients dot com, but will also make an available on Facebook. And we have two Facebook pages. It's go to Facebook. You can go to the group page, and then we have an

international page with serious researchers. We've got a lot of students, a lot of professionals on that page. That's there are fan page. I think we have in total about one hundred and fifty thousand people on that. The fan page tends to have the white papers, the technical papers that are submitted to publications like Nature other journals. So if you're interested in really drilling down on a lot of the data that our presenters are talking about. That's where you

want to go. The other site I'm in is the group page that tends to be very light most photos, mostly photos and interactions with other fans and people who are really into the archaeological views of the past. So there you go. Hey, we also have an Instagram page. Two. I don't follow Twitter because I'm just I don't. I'm not interested. Sorry, But

Instagram tons of really cool photographs. Hey, if you're enjoying Earth Ancients in our other podcast, Destiny and Earth Ancient Special Edition The Archives, please consider supporting us through our Patreon page For as little as five dollars a month, you support the work we do here at Earth Ancients, Destiny and the Archives. It takes a lot of work, a lot of energy, and I gotta tell you, we got a lot of really really great material coming up.

We have some shows that I've been mentioning. We have doctor John Branden Brooks coming back on a program called Confessions of a NASA Scientists that is an eye opener. He's going to spill the beans on Mars. We have a new series called The Alien Experience with a number of people who have had physical interactions with aliens, and this will include Whitley Strieber. He's got a new book out, and a number of people who were featured in Bud hopkins book

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Many of our authors are gracious enough to allow us to post their latest books and so you can download those. We have some unpublished interviews and some galleries and it's really thank you from you to help us keep things going. So Patreon dot com forward slash Earth Ancients, I'd really appreciate your help. All right, that's it for this week. I want to thank my guest

today, Andrew Collins and his new book, The First Female Pharaoh. As always, the team of Ruth Thomas and Mark Foster and everyone else who makes this thing happen. You guys, Yeah, you guys rock. All right, take care of you well and we will talk to you next time.