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to emerge, which opened the door for trade and a diversification of skills.
    Despite the apparent evolution from nomads to farmers and then to city builders over a period of 1,500 years, ancient Egyptian texts recall a lost period in deeper history when there had been an advanced civilization which, for some reason, regressed. They called this lost golden age Zep Tepi, meaning ‘The First Time’. The Egyptians associated the first appearance of the phoenix, the mythical bird that regenerated from its own ashes, with this distant epoch. R T Rundle Clark, former professor of Egyptology at Manchester University, commented on the meaning of this First Time:
    Anything whose existence or authority had to be justified or explained must be referred to the ‘First Time’. This was true for natural phenomena, rituals, royal insignia, the plans of temples, magical or medical formulae, the hieroglyphic system of writing, the calendar – the whole paraphernalia of the civilization … All that was good or efficacious was established on the principles laid down in the ‘First Time’ – which was, therefore, a golden age of absolute perfection … 7
    Why did the Egyptians have to invent Zep Tepi? Maybe it is simply a romantic attempt to explain how they came to exist – or possibly it really is a cultural memory of some previous period of advanced development that crumbled for some reason. We would later come across new evidence that points, very powerfully, to the second of these options.
    But what about the possibility of input of astronomical knowledge from a source other than the Egyptians’ own abilities? A nation that lacks technical ability can always buy in special skills. According to tradition, Solomon, the second Jewish king of Jerusalem, had to bring in Phoenician expertise to build his famous temple. He paid Hiram, King of Tyre to provide an architect who could design this edifice as a functioning astronomical observatory that connected Earth with heaven. 8 Could the ancient Egyptians have done something similar 1,500 years before Solomon’s time? And, if so, where could they have gone to get the skills required?
    The inspiration for our journey to Egypt had begun nearly 4,000 km away, in the quiet fields of northern England. We definitely had an answer that begged a question.

Chapter 3
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THE SILENT STONES SPEAK
An Engineer Makes a Breakthrough
    From the gaunt and impressive standing-stone circles of the island of Orkney in the far north of Scotland, right down to the giant avenues of stones in their frozen march across the fields of Brittany in France, Alexander Thom (1894–1985) spent each and every summer for almost five decades carefully measuring and making notes. Together with family members and a small but staunch group of interested friends and associates, he gradually built up a greater database, regarding megalithic achievement in building, than anyone before or since.
    It is thanks to the tenacity of this quite extraordinary individual that we have been privileged to embark on an adventure that has taken up well over a decade of our lives. It remains one of our primary objectives to encourage supposed experts in ancient British archaeology to accept, as we are convinced they must do one day, that Thom’s findings regarding megalithic measurements are absolutely correct. The evidence we have amassed over recent years makes it certain that Thom was right all along and only ignorance of the available facts is holding back the development of a new paradigm of understanding regarding Western Europe in the Neolithic period.
    Thom identified the use of a standard unit he called a ‘Megalithic Yard’ (MY), which he specified as being equal to 2.722 ft +/- 0.002 ft (0.82966 m +/- 0.061 m). He claimed that there were also other related units used repeatedly, including half and double Megalithic Yards and a 2.5 MY length he dubbed a Megalithic Rod (MR). On a smaller scale he found that the megalith builders