Category Archives: Ancient Relics

The previous post examined James Churchward’s discussion of the Egyptian Book of the Dead or the Book of Coming Forth by Day and ended with:

James then proceeds to elaborate and provide further interpretations on the next several pages. Before we go down that rabbit hole, let’s examine his previous statements in the next post.

In the chapter’s second paragraph, James says the Book of the Dead “contains many records that prove that the motherland of man was the original habitat of the race of men.”

The Egyptian Book of the Dead or the Book of Coming Forth by Day is really an Egyptian funerary text consisting of magic spells to aid deceased ancient Egyptians to overcome the pitfalls of the journey through the underworld. The illustration shown above from a well-known version of the Book of the Dead is described as follows:

A Section of Plate 3 from the Papyrus of Ani.
The Papyrus of Ani is a version of the Book of the Dead for the Scribe Ani.
Plate 3 contains half of the first (and longer) instance of Chapter 30B in Ani’s Book of the Dead.
The title of Chapter 30B is: Chapter For Not Letting Ani’s Heart Create Opposition Against Him, in the Gods’ Domain.

According to Wikipedia, this collection of spells was mostly written on papyrus scrolls and followed the tradition of previous writings such as the Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts. Some of these earlier Texts reach back to the 3rd millennium BCE and similar versions are contained in the Book of the Dead. The first funerary texts, the Pyramid Texts, were engraved on the walls and sarcophagi of the Pharaoh alone. The Coffin Texts allowed common people the opportunity to access the spells which would lead them through the underworld to the afterlife. The later Coming Forth by Day became popular during the New Kingdom (1570 – 1069 BCE.) Apparently, each copy was tailored to the deceased as there was no standardized version until the eighth century BCE.

The Book of the Dead is recognized as a collection of spells. There are no separate interpretations of the hieroglyphs and illustrations accepted by Egyptologists today. It does not contain “many records that prove that the Motherland of Man, the submerged continent of Mu, was, indeed, the original habitat of the race of men” nor is it a “a sacred commemorative memorial to the 64,000,000 people who lost their lives at the destruction of Mu.”
If the Book of the Dead was a commemoration, why did it wait ten thousand years to be drafted? (According to James the continent of Mu sunk 12-14,000 years ago.) Why didn’t James’ reference the Pyramid Texts, the earliest form of funerary texts, instead of something a thousand or so years later?

James’ subsequent interpretations of images in the chapter are meaningless because they both are predicted on his assertion and are evidence of the importance of the document as a commemoration of the sinking of Mu or as a collection of long-forgotten records, of which it is neither. His only claim to have the authority to properly “decipher and translate” the vignettes is because he ‘knows’ the true meaning of the name of the book and the experts do not. I should underscore the fact the images in the translated Papyrus of Ani actually agree with the translated hieroglyphs.
Additionally, the chapter doesn’t maintain focus on the Book of Coming Forth by Day but jumps to discuss symbols found in Canada, New Zealand, and Central America and then onto the Great Uighur Empire of 17,000 years ago as final proofs of Mu being the motherland of men.

I think the Uighur records will be all that is necessary to convince the most skeptical mind that it is clearly proven by symbols alone that Mu was the motherland of man; but, as an old Hindu saying goes:
“It is easier to snatch a pearl from the teeth of a crocodile, or to twist an angry, venomous serpent around one’s head like a garland of flowers, without incurring danger, than to make an ignorant or an obstinate person change his mind.”
Lost Continent of Mu Motherland of Men, page 106

James Churchward writes about the Egyptian Book of the Dead in his 1926 Lost Continent of Mu Motherland of Men. In chapter 5 aptly entitled “The Egyptian Sacred Volume Book of the Dead” he begins with:

“In the preceding chapter I have referred to the Egyptian Book of the Dead. It contains many records that prove that the Motherland of Man, the submerged continent of Mu, was, indeed, the original habitat of the race of men, and that other countries were merely orbits for bodies that moved about a center of attraction, which was the highly civilized continent of Mu, colonizer of the worlds that lay beyond its immediate ken; consequently it does not appear to me to be out of place to say a few words about the Book of the Dead at this point.”

James then provides the different translations from different Egyptologist for the name of the document:
Dr. Pleyte         – Going Forth from the Day
Brugsch Bey         – Book of the Outgoing by Day
Lefebure, Maspero, Renouf   – Coming Forth by Day

Despite the “comings” and “goings” or “from” or “by,” all these really mean the same, just different word choice. However, James uses the disagreement of the Egyptologists to assert his interpretation. James changes the “m” to mean “Mu,” his sunken Pacific Ocean continent. His interpretation then becomes “Mu has gone forth from the day” and the Egyptian Book of the Dead becomes a “sacred commemorative memorial.”

“Mu has gone forth from the day.” This is in accord with what I have previously said: The Book of the Dead is a sacred commemorative memorial to the 64,000,000 people who lost their lives at the destruction of Mu.”
My many years of study in the Orient with some of the most capable of Oriental scholars have enabled me to read many of the esoteric meanings appearing in the Book of the Dead; for it must be remembered that there is a very close connection between the ancient learning of India and that of Egypt. Upper Egypt was colonized and settled by Mayas from India, and when their settlement Maioo was firmly established, a party of Naacals left India and went to Egypt, to establish the teachings of the “Seven Sacred Inspired Writings,” religion and the sciences; thus it is seen that the teachings I received in India, to an extent, applied also to Egypt.
At what date the Book of the Dead was first formed is unknown; apparently, however, the first copies contained only a few chapters, which were subsequently added to until it assumed the proportions in which we now find it. In this respect it has been a duplication of the Hindu book, Maha-bharatta, which commenced small and grew large with time.
Every chapter in the Book of the Dead either directly or indirectly refers to Mu, and the book is permeated with symbols which were assigned to Mu before the foot of man trod the soil of Egypt.
As already stated, Mu was first torn to pieces by earthquakes and then sank through the flames of the underneath into a fiery abyss or caldron.

James then proceeds to elaborate and provide further interpretations on the next several pages. Before we go down that rabbit hole, let’s examine his previous statements in the next post.