The scientific project is ultimately modest: it doesn’t seek universal truths and it doesn’t seek absolutes, it simply seeks to understand – and therein lies its power and value. Science has given us the modern world, of that there can be no doubt. It has improved our lives beyond measure; increased life expectancy, decreased child mortality, eradicated many diseases and rendered many more impotent. It has given many of us the gift of time, freed us from the drudgery of mere survival and allowed us to open our minds and explore. Science is therefore a virtuous circle; its discoveries creating more time and wealth that we can, if we are wise, invest in further voyages of exploration and discovery. But for all its undoubted usefulness, I maintain that science is fuelled not by utilitarian desire but by curiosity. The exploration of the Universe and its wonders is as important as the search for new medical treatments, new energy sources or new technologies, because ultimately all these valuable advances rest on an understanding of the basic laws that govern everything in nature, from atoms to black holes and everything in between. This is why curiosity-driven science is the most valuable of pursuits, and this is why we must continue our journey into the darkness
Armed with a greater knowledge and understanding of our universe, and also with new technology and modern approaches to science, we can discover wonders of the Universe that would have remained hidden to us centuries ago. Galaxies such as the spiral-shaped Dwingeloo 1 have recently been found hidden behind the Milky Way. This discovery supports what we already know: that there are many more wonders out there in the Universe that we have yet to discover.
CHAPTER 1
MESSENGERS
THE STORY OF LIGHT
Throughout recorded history humans have looked up to the sky and searched for meaning in the heavens. The science of astronomy may now conjure thoughts of telescopes and planetary missions, but every modern moment of discovery has a heritage that stretches back thousands of years to the simplest of questions: what is out there? Light is the only connection we have with the Universe beyond our solar system, and the only connection our ancestors had with anything beyond Earth. Follow the light and we can journey from the confines of our planet to other worlds that orbit the Sun without ever dreaming of spacecraft. To look up is to look back in time, because the ancient beams of light are messengers from the Universe’s distant past. Now, in the twentieth century, we have learnt to read the story contained in this ancient light, and it tells of the origin of the Universe.
The spectacular remains and towering pillars of Karnak Temple are a testament to the Egyptian belief in the power and importance of the Amun-Re, the Sun God, in their daily life, and of the Sun itself.
Karnak Temple, home of Amun-Re, universal god, stands facing the Valley of the Kings across the Nile in the city of Luxor. In ancient times Luxor was known as Thebes and was the capital of Egypt during the opulent and powerful New Kingdom. At 3,500 years old, Karnak Temple is a wonder of engineering, with thousands of perfectly proportioned hieroglyphs, and an architectural masterpiece of ancient Egypt’s golden age; it is a place of profound power and beauty. Ten European cathedrals would fit within its walls; the Hypostyle Hall alone, an overwhelming valley of towering pillars that once held aloft a giant roof, could comfortably contain Notre Dame Cathedral.
Religious and ceremonial architecture has had many functions throughout human history. There is undoubtedly a political aspect – these monumental edifices serve to cement the power of those who control them – but to think of the great achievements of human civilisation in these terms alone would be to miss an important point. Karnak Temple is a reaction to something far more magnificent and ancient. The scale of the architecture forcibly wrenches the mind away from human concerns and towards a place beyond the merely terrestrial. Places like this can only be built by people who have an appropriate reverence for the Universe. Karnak is both a chronicle in stone and a bridge to the answer to the eternal question: what is out there? It is an observatory, a library and an expression carved out of the desert of cosmological curiosity and the desire to explore.
Egyptian religious mythology is rich and complex. With almost 1,500 known deities, countless temples and tombs and a detailed surviving literature, the mythology of the great civilisation of the Nile is considered the most sophisticated religious system ever devised. There is no such thing as a single story or tradition, partly because the dynastic period of Egyptian civilisation waxed and waned for over 3,000 years. However, central to both life and mythology are the waters of the Nile, the great provider for this desert civilisation. The annual floods created a fertile strip along the river that is strikingly visible when flying into Luxor from Cairo, although since 1970 the Aswan Dam has halted the ancient cycle of rising and falling waters and today the verdant banks are maintained by modern irrigation techniques. The rains still fall on the mountains south of Egypt during the summer, and before the dam they caused the waters of the Nile to rise and flood low-lying land until they cease in September and the waters recede, leaving life-giving fertile soils behind.
The dominance of the great river in Egyptian life, unsurprisingly, found its way into the heart of their religious tradition. The sky was seen as a vast ocean across which the gods journeyed in boats. Egyptian creation stories speak of an infinite primordial ocean out of which a single mound of earth arose. A lotus blossom emerged from this mound and gave birth to the Sun. In this tradition, each of the primordial elements is associated with a god. The original mound of earth is the god Tatenen, meaning ‘risen land’ (he also represented the fertile land that emerged from the Nile floods), while the lotus flower is the god Nefertem, the god of perfumes. Most important is the Sun God, born of the lotus blossom, who took on many forms but remained central to Egyptian religious thought for over 3,000 years. It was the Sun God who brought light to the cosmos, and with light came all of creation.
The power of the supreme god Amun-Re is felt everywhere at Karnak. Representations of him cover the walls; the carvings mostly depict him as human with a double-plumed crown of feathers alongside the Pharoah, but also in animal form as a ram.
The location and alignment of this impressive building, like everything else about it, has meaning. Egyptologists have evidence to support their belief that it was constructed as a sort of calendar; two columns frame the light of the sun as it rises on the winter solstice.
At Karnak, the Sun God reigns supreme as Amun-Re, a merger between the god Amun, the local deity of Thebes, and the ancient Sun God, Re. This tendency to merge gods is widespread in Egyptian mythology, and with the mergers comes increasing theological complexity. Amun can be seen as the hidden aspect of the Sun, sometimes associated with his voyage through the Underworld during the night. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Amun is referred to as the ‘eldest of the gods of the eastern sky’, symbolising his emergence as the solar deity at sunrise. As Amun-Re, he became the King of the Gods, and as Zeus-Ammon he survived into Greek and Roman times. Worship of Amun-Re as the supreme god became so widespread that the Egyptian