In June 2026, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) engineer claimed to have cracked the code of Linear A, a script written on a clay tablet by the Minoans approximately 3,500 years ago, and the viral news story demonstrated how ML technology impacts archaeological research as well as its limitations.

However, before sharing the results of the engineer’s work with the world, it would be prudent to first understand how this project was accomplished; that is, by examining what the AI engineer did to create the Linear A ‘crack,’ and how his training in linguistics and language development helped inform the final outcome of his work.

As you may be aware, the majority of Linear A tablets found to date are located on the island of Crete and have been studied by scholars for over one hundred years; however, no one has been able to translate them. What does this mean for the potential future of AI technology in archaeology? The answer lies in understanding how the AI engineer approached the problem of Linear A and then how he subsequently used this knowledge to create the AI’s version of Linear A.

The debate that followed tells you everything you need to know about what artificial intelligence can and cannot do when it comes face to face with a genuinely unsolved mystery.

A Script That Has Defied a Century of Scholarship

Minoan Linear A, a writing system used on the Mediterranean island of Crete by the Minoans from approximately 1800 to 1450 BCE, served as the main script for official and religious documents of the Minoan civilization. It was one of the most progressive civilizations of the Bronze Age and is thus considered one of the most advanced cultures of the Mediterranean Sea area at that time. To date, no known Linear A documents have been deciphered since their “rediscovery” by Sir Arthur Evans through an archaeological study conducted in 1900.

The term “Linear” was given to the character sets of the Linear A writing system because they were created through the process of inscribing directly into clay rather than through drawing the character shapes as done with Cretan hieroglyphs, which had similar inscribing dates, but are not decipherable today. As a member of an independent writing family of scripts called Linear A were developed independently of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian writing systems; therefore, Linear A has been identified as the parent of a second script called Linear B (which was the script used by the Mycenaean Greeks) after they captured the island of Crete around 1450.

Linear B was deciphered in 1952 by Michael Ventris, a British architect who had taught himself ancient languages as a hobby. He demonstrated that Linear B was an early form of Greek, a revelation that transformed the study of ancient history. The problem is that Linear A and Linear B, while sharing many of the same symbols, do not lead to the same place. Applying the sound values from Linear B to Linear A produces sequences that do not match any known language. That single fact has blocked every attempt at decipherment for more than seventy years.

The reason Linear A is so hard to crack is that it has no anchor. Every ancient language that has ever been successfully deciphered needed one. The Rosetta Stone gave scholars the key to Egyptian hieroglyphs because it contained the same text in three scripts, one of which was ancient Greek. The Behistun Inscription unlocked Old Persian cuneiform for the same reason. Linear B was cracked because researchers could compare it to known Greek vocabulary. Linear A has none of that. It is classified as a language isolate, meaning it has no confirmed relationship to any known language, living or dead.

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The Engineer Who Said He Found the Key

Tom Di Mino is not a professional linguist. He lives in New York’s Hudson Valley, has no formal academic training in ancient languages, and has taught himself classical history and linguistics since he was eighteen years old. Over the years he developed working knowledge of eight ancient languages, including Attic Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Arabic, and Ugaritic. He first became interested in Linear A seven years ago and has traveled to Crete twice to study the inscriptions firsthand. His concentrated work on the script began in January 2026, and he says the breakthrough came on May 22.

The starting point was a prayer text that appears repeatedly at five sanctuary sites across Crete. Most of the words in the prayer were already partially understood by scholars, but one verb had no known meaning. Di Mino traced that verb to a root shared with Hebrew and Akkadian, tied to the idea of living in or settling a place. Once he assigned that reading, he suggested the passage reads much like a later Hebrew prayer, but directed at a goddess rather than a god.

In order to verify that these values derived from this reading are applicable throughout the entirety of the record, DiMino took advantage of an artificial intelligence-based coding assistant to create Python scripts for comparing the proposed word values to two digital repositories of Linear A text called GORILA and SigLA, which collectively constitute nearly all remaining Linear A writing. DiMino states the results resulted in: 40 unique signs being proposed to have sound value previously unknown; 408 Linear A translated word candidates; and 9 pages of drafted Grammar of the prayer text.

Currently, DiMino’s dissertation research is being reviewed by Linguistic scholars at both Rutgers University and The University of Cambridge. It should be noted that DiMino was not the original proposer of a possible Semitic link to Linear A. A researcher named Cyrus Gordon suggested a similar connection back in 1957 when he posited that the Minoan civilization was composed of people speaking some form of Semitic language. At that time and even today, very few linguists were supportive of his hypothesis, and thus the controversy surrounding it has continued to exist.

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What AI Actually Did, and What It Could Not

It is worth being precise about what role artificial intelligence played in this story, because the headlines tend to blur a crucial distinction. The AI did not have the idea. Tom Di Mino did. The AI was a research assistant. It rapidly cross checked a human hypothesis against thousands of characters, work that would have taken a human researcher months by hand. That division of labour is the pattern worth paying attention to, far more than any single claim that is still under review.

Jane Adkins, a PhD candidate at Dublin City University’s School of Computing who studies computational approaches to undeciphered scripts, described the situation clearly in a July 2026 analysis. AI is genuinely strong at large scale pattern testing, she noted. It can check whether a hunch about one sign or word holds up across an entire archive in minutes instead of years. It can spot repeated sequences a human eye would miss, and restore damaged or fragmentary inscriptions by predicting likely missing characters.

AI also does something distinct called cross lingual transfer, where a model trained on a known language can sometimes infer patterns in a closely related unknown one. This approach has already been used successfully on scripts such as Ugaritic, an extinct Semitic language spoken during the late Bronze Age in what is now Syria, where the language family was known and provided the necessary anchor.

But there is a hard ceiling. Statistical pattern matching cannot manufacture meaning out of nothing. It needs an anchor to tell it which patterns are meaningful and which are coincidence. Linear A is hard precisely because that anchor is missing, and no amount of computing power invents one from scratch.

The Problem With a Dataset of 7,500 Characters

The number 7,500 is the most significant figure when discussing this issue. 7,500 is the approximate total number of characters contained in the entire known corpus of Linear A, which can be compared to the length of an extensive magazine article. This number easily fits on one screen. With such limited data available, you can find an abundance of hypotheses that have at least some support based on this relativistic evidence.

This is not merely a theoretical dilemma. Researchers who specialize in computational linguistics have continually illustrated this problem in their studies. When you utilise a small corpus of a given language and apply hypothetical sound value assignments to the written symbols in that corpus and then run algorithms against a large database of known languages to search for matches, you will nearly always discover matches somewhere within that database. The algorithm is functioning accurately, as it was specifically programmed to perform. However, the primary uncertainty with the utilisation of these algorithms lies in determining if the posted matches posted represent coincidental or meaningful findings, and this cannot be determined by the algorithm itself.

As a result, verifying any of these machine-generated allegations about these languages is incredibly challenging, and the issue extends well beyond any individual example. Ordinarily, in order to verify a proposed translation, you could compare it with the opinions of native speakers, with other written materials, or with the conclusions reached by experts over generations. For a language that has yet to be deciphered, none of these possibilities are viable, and unless we develop a time machine, there is no way to confirm our findings.

Consequently, evidence and claims in this field rely heavily on external independent expert opinions and peer-reviewed publications, rather than statistical confidence levels. As a result, the claims of “AI detected a pattern” and “AI discovered the correct interpretation” are sometimes easily intermingled, yet represent fundamentally different assertions.

The Road Ahead

There’s nothing to suggest that using AI will mean that Linear A has reached a dead end. In fact, it’s actually going to speed up many of the years of research that will take place with traditional methods of cross-referencing by combining years of work together in as little as a few minutes, and allows more people to participate in solving the mysteries surrounding Linear A than what was possible through institutional means. The work carried out by Di Mino shows that a motivated person who has access to modern technology can now tackle issues that previously required a university department.

The field of study of Linear A has not stopped growing and developing, as demonstrated through the ongoing research at the University of Melbourne. Research at that university is examining how to use deep neural network models to assist in the decipherment of Linear A. Their focus is on a machine-assisted method of analysing the structure of the written form of Linear A as opposed to performing an analysis to translate it. Their approach is a more conservative and slower approach, but is being done using the same methodology that all of the other Linear A scholarly work is using.

The honest conclusion is that AI will play the same role in deciphering languages as the role it currently is expected to play until one of two things occur. The first possibility is if there is a future discovery on Crete or in another location that uncovers a bilingual text between a Linear A inscription and an inscribed language that is known. The second alternative is if there can be enough validated comparative data to prove that the Minoan language is part of the same family as a known language. There is only so much that AI can do to identify patterns in Linear A until that time comes.

Top Image: Interpretive visualization of an ancient script resisting digital analysis. Image generated for Ancient Origins Unleashed.

By Aris Manus

References

Adkins, Jane. “Cracking the Code: Can AI Help Us Decipher Ancient Languages?” The Conversation, 27 July 2026. https://theconversation.com/cracking-the-code-can-ai-help-us-decipher-ancient-languages-288238

Moeed, Abdul. “AI Engineer Claims to Have Deciphered Linear A.” Greek Reporter, 30 July 2026. https://greekreporter.com/2026/07/30/ai-engineer-claim-decipher-linear-a/

“AI Engineer Claims to Have Cracked Linear A.” Hacker News, 19 June 2026. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48600107

“Linear A.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_A

“Linear B.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_B

Rendsburg, Gary A. “Cyrus H. Gordon and Minoan Linear A.” Rutgers University, 1996. https://jewishstudies.rutgers.edu/images/documents/faculty/Rendsburg/Rendsburg-SomeoneSucceedDeciphering-1996.pdf

University of Melbourne. “Using Deep Neural Network Models to Aid in the Decipherment of Linear A.” Melbourne Disability and Archaeology Project, 2024. https://www.unimelb.edu.au/mdap/research/2024-collaborations/using-deep-neural-network-models-in-the-decipherment-of-linear-a

Mystery surrounds the Vatican for centuries now. The Church’s extensive archives, as well as the high-placed basilicas within the walls of the Vatican City, have long provided fodder for speculation. However, while many secrets of the Church may remain locked within Inquisition era vaults in Rome, one of the most fascinating truths regarding the Vatican is located high upon a mountain in the state of Arizona. The Pope’s astronomical observatory resides on this sacred mountain, which also has a contentious history with the development of what was known as LUCIFER.

What information do the Church’s astronomers hope to find in the far depths of space?

The answer may lie somewhere between the Church’s millennia-long philosophical traditions regarding the universe and the modern-day research in astrobiology. A growing number of people believe the Church is preparing for an intergalactic revelation. Are they simply observing the stars as they have done for centuries, or is there a much larger theological purpose for these celestial observations?

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The ancient fraud detection toolkit: a Lydian touchstone for testing gold, a Hellenistic lead weight, a Roman bronze modius grain measure, and a Mesopotamian cylinder seal.

To many, financial fraud, scams, and counterfeit products are considered modern dilemmas brought upon by complicated global supply chains and anonymity made possible by technology. In truth, however, the combat between dishonest merchants and enforcers of market integrity is a story as old as civilization. Thousands of years prior to barcoding, consumer protection agencies, and blockchain technology, ancient societies were in constant struggle to fight against fraudsters. From the bazaars of Babylon to worldwide shipping systems of the Roman Empire, the ancient authorities established extensive quality control, weight standards, and official inspections for the economies to remain stable.

Ancient “detectives of fraud” acknowledged a very important fact that is still valid nowadays: trust is the vital currency of every economy. Without any method to ensure the genuineness of gold, amount of grain, and source of olive oil traded from different regions, the long-distance trade would be impossible.

By examining the physical evidence left behind, we can reconstruct the fascinating history of how ancient civilizations fought back against deception and forgery.

The Birth of the Immutable Ledger: Mesopotamian Cylinder Seals

An Akkadian cylinder seal (left) and its modern clay impression (right), depicting a hunting scene. Mesopotamia, ca. 2250–2150 BCE. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Gift of Nanette B. Kelekian, in memory of Charles Dikran and Beatrice Kelekian, 1999. Public Domain.

In the ancient Near East, the first protection against fraud was cylinder seals. First found in Mesopotamia at approximately 4000 BCE, this small stone cylinder that was carved was used as a signature, a corporate stamp, and a security device.

When a contract, loan, or receipt was written on a clay tablet, the parties would roll their distinct cylinder seal over the wet clay leaving an unbroken raised impression leaving it near impossible to forge. As soon as the clay was baked in the oven, the contract became permanent. In order to guarantee further protection against modification, scribes would sometimes wrap the primary tablet in a thin clay bulla and seal it once more. In the event of a dispute, the envelope could be opened in front of a judge to show the unaltered original document within. This process is similar to modern cryptographic hashing in that any manipulation of the external envelope would be obvious.

A cuneiform clay tablet impressed with a cylinder seal, recording a receipt of glue - a routine commercial transaction authenticated by an official seal impression. Neo-Sumerian (Ur III period), ca. 2049 BCE. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Purchase, 1986. Public Domain.

The seals were not only used by the elite but rather by everyone in society to authenticate trade and protect assets. The Code of Hammurabi, enacted in Babylon in 1750 BCE, makes mention of fraud and the repercussions for it indicating that merchants using false weights and shepherds reporting false returns on entrusted livestock must suffer serious consequences for their misdeeds. The reliance upon these physical tokens of identification illustrates the fact that the ancient Mesopotamians knew the dangers inherent with forgery.

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The Quest for Standardization: Weights and Measures

Standardized cubical stone weights from the Indus Valley Civilization (c. 2600–1900 BCE), displayed alongside a balance scale at the National Museum, New Delhi. These weights followed a precise binary ratio system consistent across hundreds of miles of trade routes. Photograph courtesy of the National Museum, New Delhi.

A cornerstone of any functional market is a standardized system of weights and measures. Without it, every transaction is an opportunity for deception. The Indus Valley Civilization (c. 2600–1900 BCE) provides one of the earliest and most impressive examples of rigorous standardization. Excavations at sites like Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro have uncovered numerous cubical stone weights made of chert. These weights followed a precise binary and decimal system, allowing for highly accurate measurements. The uniformity of these weights across a vast geographical area suggests a centralized authority dedicated to maintaining market fairness and preventing the shortchanging of customers.

A 2,150-year-old Hellenistic lead weight inscribed with the name of the agoranomos (market inspector) “Heliodorus son of Apollonius,” seized by the Israel Antiquities Authority. The weight served as an official one-mina standard measure. Image: Israel Antiquities Authority / Greek Reporter.

In ancient Greece, the responsibility for preventing fraud fell to the agoranomos, a market inspector tasked with maintaining order and verifying weights and measures. A remarkable artifact recently seized by the Israel Antiquities Authority highlights this role: a 2,150-year-old lead weight from the Hellenistic period. Inscribed with the name “Heliodorus son of Apollonius, agoranomos,” this weight was a standard one-mina measure (equal to 100 Greek drachmas). The presence of the official’s name served as a guarantee of accuracy, and the penalties for using fraudulent weights were severe.

A Roman bronze modius (grain measure) inscribed with the name of Emperor Germanicus and a statement of its official capacity. 1st century AD. This vessel bears the inscription “AUG GERMANICO EXACTUS AD S HABET P,” confirming it was officially calibrated under imperial authority. Image: Google Arts & Culture / Museum collection.

The Roman Empire also recognized the critical importance of standardized measures. In the forum of Pompeii, the Mensa Ponderaria (public weights and measures table) allowed citizens to check the accuracy of the goods they purchased against official standards. Local magistrates, known as aediles, were responsible for enforcing these standards and punishing those who used “smaller measures” (quid minus mensura). Bronze grain measures, known as modii, often bore inscriptions acknowledging imperial regulation, ensuring that the vital grain supply was not compromised by dishonest merchants.

Testing the Incorruptible: Gold and the Touchstone

Stone samples suitable for use as touchstones for assaying gold, Czech Republic. The dark lydite stone (top) and a prepared touchstone with gold streak test marks (bottom) demonstrate the ancient method of colorimetric gold purity testing. Science Museum Group Collection. © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum, London.

Gold has always been a target for counterfeiters and debasers due to its high value and relative softness. In the ancient world, distinguishing pure gold from an alloy of gold and silver or copper was a significant challenge. The solution came in the form of the touchstone, a simple yet highly effective assaying tool.

The touchstone, typically made of a dark, hard stone like slate or lydite (often called Lydian stone), allowed merchants to quickly test the purity of a gold sample. By rubbing the gold against the stone, it left a visible streak. The color and reflectivity of this streak were then compared to the streaks made by standard gold needles of known purity. This colorimetric method was relatively non-destructive and surprisingly accurate in the hands of an experienced assayer. The Lydians, who are credited with inventing the first gold and silver coinage (electrum) around the 6th century BCE, relied heavily on the touchstone to ensure the integrity of their currency.

When more precise verification was needed, ancient scientists stepped in. The most famous example is the story of Archimedes and the golden crown. According to the Roman architect Vitruvius, King Hiero II of Syracuse suspected that a goldsmith had embezzled some of the gold intended for a votive wreath, replacing it with cheaper silver. Archimedes was tasked with determining the wreath’s purity without damaging it. While the popular legend involves Archimedes discovering the principle of displacement in his bath, historians suggest he likely used a more precise method involving a balance scale suspended in water, utilizing his laws of buoyancy and the lever to detect the lighter density of the adulterated crown.

The Great Olive Oil Scams of Rome

A conceptual investigator’s evidence board connecting the key artifacts and systems of ancient commercial oversight - from Mesopotamian cylinder seals to Roman amphorae labeling.

The sheer scale of the Roman Empire created unprecedented opportunities for logistical fraud. Olive oil, a vital commodity used for food, lighting, and bathing, was imported to Rome in massive quantities, primarily from Baetica (modern Andalusia, Spain). The evidence of this massive trade, and the rigorous quality control systems implemented to manage it, can be found at Monte Testaccio in Rome, an artificial hill composed entirely of an estimated 53 million broken olive oil amphorae.

These amphorae were not just containers; they were labelled as documents. They bore painted inscriptions known as tituli picti, which recorded the empty weight of the amphora, the weight of the oil inside, the names of the merchants, the origin of the oil, and the signatures of the officials who verified the contents. This detailed tracking system was designed to ensure accountability and prevent fraud within the annona, the state-run distribution system. The officials needed to guarantee that the oil was of the correct quality and that merchants were not shortchanging the state by underfilling the vessels or substituting inferior products.

Recent archaeological research has even uncovered potential evidence of “wine scams” in the Roman era, where producers may have added honey to wine to mimic the taste of highly prized, labor-intensive raisin wines like passum, deceiving consumers who believed they were purchasing a premium product.

Conclusion

The ancient fraud detectives may not have had access to mass spectrometry or digital ledgers, but their methods were remarkably sophisticated and effective for their time. From the unforgeable cylinder seals of Mesopotamia to the labeled amphorae of the Roman Empire, these early systems of quality control and inspection laid the foundation for the complex regulatory frameworks that govern our global economy today. The artifacts they left behind, touchstones, standardized weights, and official seals, serve as testaments to the struggle for fairness and integrity in the marketplace.

By Aris Manus

References

Collon, Dominique. Cylinder Seals in Ancient Mesopotamia. World History Encyclopedia, 2 September 2014. www.worldhistory.org/article/846/cylinder-seals-in-ancient-mesopotamia/

Ancient Origins Editorial Staff. “How Babylonian Fingerprints and Clay Seals Prefigured Modern Blockchain Technology.” Ancient Origins, 2018. www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/ancient-blockchain-0022307

King, L.W. (trans.). The Code of Hammurabi. The Avalon Project, Yale Law School, 2008. www.avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp

Kenoyer, Jonathan Mark. “Uniqueness of the Ancient Indus Weight System.” Harappa.com, 2010. www.harappa.com/blog/uniqueness-ancient-indus-weight-system

Tsangin, Ido. “A Looted Hellenistic Weight.” Biblical Archaeology Review, Biblical Archaeology Society, 2025. www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/ancient-cultures/ancient-israel/a-looted-hellenistic-weight/

Smither, Philip. “Roman Weights and Measures.” Lucius’ Romans, University of Kent, 13 December 2017. www.blogs.kent.ac.uk/lucius-romans/2017/12/13/roman-weights-and-measures/

Moore, D.T., and W.A. Oddy. “Touchstones: Some Aspects of Their Nomenclature, Petrography and Provenance.” Journal of Archaeological Science, vol. 12, no. 3, 1985, pp. 169–176. See also: “Touchstone (assaying tool).” Wikipedia. www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchstone_(assaying_tool)

Decent Group Editorial. “How Did Ancient People Test the Purity of Gold? They Used a Touchstone.” Decent Group, 2022. www.decent-group.com/how-did-ancient-people-test-the-purity-of-gold-they-used-a-touchstone/

Rorres, Chris. “The Golden Crown: Introduction.” New York University Department of Mathematics, 2004. Citing Vitruvius, De Architectura, Book IX, Introduction, c. 15 BCE. www.math.nyu.edu/Archimedes/Crown/CrownIntro.html

Mattingly, David J., and John Salmon (eds.). Economies Beyond Agriculture in the Classical World. Routledge, 2001. See also: Remesal Rodríguez, José. “Monte Testaccio and the Roman Olive Oil Trade.” Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1998.

Broekaert, Wim. “Joining the Dots: Evidence for Brokerage in Roman Trade.” Ancient Society, vol. 42, 2012, pp. 247–284. Leuven University Press.

Trainor, Conor. “How I Uncovered a Potential Ancient Rome Wine Scam.” The Conversation, University College Dublin, June 2025. theconversation.com

Portus at its height in the 2nd century AD - grain ships, warehouses, and the Trajanic hexagonal basin. AI-generated reconstruction based on archaeological data from the Portus Project (Simon Keay, British School at Rome / University of Southampton). Reference plans: Keay et al., 2005, Portus: An Archaeological Survey of the Port of Imperial Rome.

Consider a city with a million residents. If you took away electricity, refrigeration, freight rail systems and gasoline engines, how long would it take that city to starve?

For the ancient Romans, the answer used to be a matter of weeks. By the 2nd century AD, Rome was an uneasy giant with a voracious appetite that outstripped the agricultural productivity of the entire Italian peninsula. Rome consumed around 650 million pounds of wheat yearly just to stay alive. With no continuous, massive influx of grain, a famine would kill the city due to riots and political unrest.

In order to solve such an impossible issue, the Romans did not create new technology; they developed a new type of logistics for states. They transformed the entire Mediterranean Sea into a conveyor belt. They put up such huge artificial harbors that they sometimes even looked like big towns. They also designed warehouses that “breathe.” They formed a state-supported supply chain called Annona to transport grains grown in North Africa straight to the bakeries in Rome.

Nevertheless, the system was not as effortless as it seems. This was a very unstable, risky gamble that could work well only due to the exploitation of dockworkers, sailors, millers, and slaves.

If you want to understand how the Roman Empire actually worked, you have to look past the marble temples and the legions. You have to follow the grain.

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In a secluded monastery high in the Himalayas, lit only by the weak flicker of butter lamps, a monk sits next to the body of a recently deceased man, and whispers in his ear. The monk does not give a eulogy; nor does he provide consolation to the man’s grieving family. Instead, he provides instructions to the dead man that are detailed and immediate in nature.

“Noble One,” the monk advises, “It is the moment for you to pursue the Path. You are on the verge of death. You previously have met the Clear Light through your Teacher; and now you will experience this Light in Reality.”

For more than one thousand years, Tibetan Buddhists have used this text, commonly referred to as The Tibetan Book of the Dead in Western cultures, to help guide a person’s consciousness through the trip of death, with its uncertainty and wonder. Yet calling this text the Book of Death is incredibly misleading.

This text is a profoundly comprehensive guide concerning the human mind in the broadest sense, and while the text provides urgent guidance to the deceased, it is not primarily intended for the dead. Instead, it provides guidance and direction to the living.

The Treasure of the Second Buddha

Buddhist Handmade Thangka of Padmasambhava, Guru, Hand Painted , The lotus-born master, wisdom beyond time (Source: Handmade Handicraft)

Bardo is translated into Liberation Through Hearing in the Intermediate State. In Tibetan history it is said to have been written in the eighth century C.E by Padmasambhava (Guru Rinpoche), a great tantric master who brought Buddhism to Tibet. Padmasambhava and his consort, Yeshe Tsogyal, recognized that people were not yet ready to understand this deep psychological understanding, so they buried it as a terma (treasure) buried either physically in the earth or mentally in the minds of people. Six hundred years later, Bardo was rediscovered by the mystic Karma Lingpa.

When Bardo was first brought to the West in 1927, it created a tremendous stir since it was translated by Walter Evans-Wentz. Carl Jung, whose work we looked at last week, was so affected by this that he wrote a psychological commentary for a later edition of Bardo. Jung understood that the terrifying demons and glowing gods in the text are not real entities waiting for you after death, but rather archetypes that represent projections from the depths of the human mind.

The Six Bardos: The Spaces In-Between

In Tibetan Buddhism, the word bardo means “intermediate state” or “gap.” We tend to think of life and death as two distinct, solid things. But the Bardo Thodol teaches that existence is a continuous series of transitions.

The text outlines six specific bardos. Only three of them occur after death; the other three are happening to you right now.

1. The Bardo of Living

The intermediate state of living exists between physical birth to death, providing a sense of permanence yet, according to Tibetan teachings, it is equally a dream. Every moment we experience, when we are awake in life, is considered an intermediate state of existence; transitioning from the past moment to the future moment.

2. The Bardo of Dreams

When individuals enter sleep, they then experience an intermediate state through dreams. During our dream periods, our minds create an entire world around us consisting of people and monsters that we perceive as reality until we wake up. The Tibetan practice of “Dream Yoga” allows individuals to develop the ability to recognize that this world of dreams is not real, to prevent them from experiencing the illusions created by death.

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3. The Bardo of Meditation

The intermediate state of meditation is characterized by a state of deep concentration resulting from meditation. In this state, we learn how to quiet the noise from our minds and rest in the state of pure awareness, which prepares us for the ultimate dissolution of the ego.

4. The Bardo of the Moment of Death

During the death process, the individual’s physical body is gradually dismantled. The elements of the body, represented as earth, water, fire and air, all dissolve into space, and, ultimately, at the final moment of death, the ego dissolves and is replaced by the Clear Light of the Dharmata. The Clear Light of the Dharmata represents the unlimited luminosity of true self. For those who recognize the Clear Light without experiencing fear, instant liberation is achieved.

5. The Bardo of Reality

If an individual does not recognize the Clear Light of the Dharmata, which is usually caused by fear created by the ego, then the individual experiences the Intermediate State of Reality for a period of 49 days, during which time they are bombarded with visions. Initially, there will be encounters with 42 Peaceful Deities, characterized by brilliance. This is followed by 58 Wrathful Deities who create terror and demonic fear in the mind of the deceased. The Tibetan teachings again warn individuals not to fear these beings because they are projections created by the deceased’s own mind.

6. The Bardo of Rebirth

For those who still do not recognize their own true nature and fall victim to the winds of karma, their consciousness will be drawn to the darkness of the seductive lights of the six realms of samsara in pursuit of finding a physical body so that escape can occur from the intense nature of the intermediate state.

The Ultimate Lesson: Recognition

The Bardo Thodol serves as an excellent example of the bridge between many of the traditions that we have looked at throughout this series. It parallels the alchemical transformation of the soul, the shamanic journey to the underworld, the Gnostic ascent into heavenly realms, and the Jungian confrontation with the Shadow.

However, its essential message is the most uncomplicated: All that you experience, be it in your life, your dreams, or after your death, is a reflection of your own mind.

When the terrifying and wrathful deities appear in the Bardo, they are just a projection of the anger, guilt, and fear that you have been keeping within yourself. When the peaceful deities appear, they represent your own natural compassion and wisdom. If you run away from the demons, they will pursue you. But if you look at them as manifestations of your own mind, they will be transformed into the Clear Light of your own awareness.

This is why the Bardo Thodol is a guide for living. You don’t have to wait until after you die to practice the teachings of the Bardo Thodol. Every time you feel a feeling of anger, jealousy, or anxiety, you are living in the Bardo. You have a choice. You can be carried away by that emotion and think it has a solid reality, or you can see that emotion for what it is: a temporary projection of your own mind. When you know that, then you can stay in the Clear Light of your own awareness.

The Journey Culminates

For 29 weeks, we have traveled across time and geography, exploring the greatest spiritual traditions of human history. We have sat with Hermeticists in Egypt, shamans in Siberia, Kabbalists in Spain, and Zen masters in Japan.

We have discovered that despite their different languages and symbols, they were all pointing to the exact same truth: the divine is not outside of you. It is within you.

Next week, we reach the Season 1 Finale of Ancient Wisdom. We will synthesize everything we have learned into a single, unified framework.

And for those who are ready to stop reading about these traditions and start living them, I will be making a major announcement. The Ancient Origins Academy is finally opening its doors.

The bardo of reading is ending. The bardo of practice is about to begin.

By Dr Ioannis Syrigos

Recommended Reading

The Tibetan Book of the Dead translated by Gyurme Dorje

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche

Inside an ancient Egyptian embalming workshop, where eternity was a booming business.

Somewhere in the Valley of the Kings, a family is bargaining with a man who has a mild scent of cedar oil and natron. The family head has just died. He was not a pharaoh; he was just a scribe, a medium-ranked official who lived a life hoping for good eternal life. The widow of the heads is now in the embalming section, watching the wooden model of the dead man, and the man who is doing the embalming is explaining things to her. The pricing of the different types of embalming is tremendous.

This has been occurring throughout ancient Egypt for thousands of years. Mummification was not just for rulers but a worker’s trade. Ancient Egyptians believed that a body is very important for a person to go to afterlife. If the person does not have a body, then the soul has no other place to go to during the afterlife.

What did that payment actually look like? How much did the linen cost? What did the embalmers charge? Who could afford the gold amulets, and what happened to those who couldn’t? The answers, drawn from ancient records, recent archaeological discoveries, and the painstaking work of Egyptologists, are more specific, and more surprising, than most people realize.

The Three Tiers of Eternity

The Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BC, was the first to document the commercial structure of Egyptian mummification in any detail. In Book II of his Histories, he described how embalmers operated much like modern funeral directors, presenting families with a choice of packages based on their financial means. The embalmers, he wrote, showed “wooden models of corpses made like reality by painting” and asked which method the family desired. Having agreed on a price, the family left, and the work began.

The Elite Package was the most expensive and most complete. The brain was extracted through the nostrils using a crooked iron hook. The embalmers then made an incision in the flank with a sharp Nubian stone and removed the entire contents of the abdomen. The cavity was washed with palm wine and then with bruised aromatics, before being filled with pure ground myrrh, cassia, and other spices — frankincense notably excluded. The body was then packed in natron for exactly 70 days. After washing, it was wrapped head to foot in fine linen bandages smeared with gum. The result was returned to the family, who enclosed it in a painted wooden coffin shaped like a human figure.

The Middle-Class Option was cheaper and considerably less invasive. Embalmers filled a syringe with cedar oil and injected it into the abdomen without making any incision. The body was sealed and left in natron for the prescribed period. When the cedar oil was finally drained, it brought out the liquefied internal organs with it. The natron had dissolved the flesh in the meantime, leaving only skin and bones. The family received what remained, and that was that.

An unwrapped ancient Egyptian female mummy with remnants of linen bandaging, Yale Peabody Museum. The quality of preservation depended heavily on how much a family could afford to spend. (Photo: Yale Peabody Museum)

The Budget Burial was blunt. The intestines were cleared with a purge. The body was placed in natron for 70 days. It was then returned to the family. No wrapping, no spices, no ceremony beyond what the family could arrange themselves.

Modern research has complicated Herodotus’s account in interesting ways. Researchers analyzing mummies through CT scanning found that contrary to Herodotus’s descriptions, the trans-abdominal incision was common across social classes — not exclusively reserved for the elite. The cedar oil enema, meanwhile, left little physical evidence in the mummies they examined. Herodotus was writing as an outsider, and embalmers were famously secretive about their methods. What he documented was likely the commercial pitch, not the full technical reality.

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The Currency of Death

The main issue of figuring out what all of the previous things look like in terms of cost rests on understanding the currency used. The currency used in New Kingdom Egypt (approximately 1550–1070 BC) was the deben, which was a weight of copper weighing approximately 91 grams. The value of one deben was approximately the cost of two loaves of bread. For five deben, one could buy a goat, a pair of sandals, or a woven linen shirt. A skilled craftsman at Deir el-Medina earned pay of approximately 5 to 7.5 deben per month in grain and goods.

The ruins of Deir el-Medina, the craftsmen’s village that produced the Valley of the Kings tombs. The ostraca and papyri found here contain the most detailed surviving price records for ancient Egyptian funerary goods. (Photo: World History Encyclopedia)

The records at Deir el-Medina, the village where the craftsmen who built the tombs for the kings of Egypt lived, provide the best record for funeral goods prices. Egyptologist Kathlyn M. Cooney was able to analyze 168 different prices recorded from this village, thus making it truly a display of the extreme variability of prices reflecting stratified social levels.

Approximate costs of key funerary items based on Deir el-Medina records (New Kingdom). All figures are interpretive estimates. (Image: Interpretive infographic based on Cooney, 2008)

A blank roll of papyrus was relatively cheap, about one-fifth of a worker’s monthly salary. But a papyrus inscribed with funerary texts could cost the equivalent of half a year’s income for a skilled artisan. For a full set of decorated coffins, a worker might pay more than his entire annual wage. As Egyptologist Edward Wente noted, a decent tomb and burial tended to be more important economically than high living. The ancient Egyptians saved for death the way modern people save for retirement, except the stakes felt considerably higher.

The Interpretive Funerary Invoice

Based on the Deir el-Medina records, Herodotus’s accounts, and the research of Kathlyn M. Cooney, we can reconstruct an approximate itemized invoice for each tier of mummification. The following visual is clearly labeled as interpretive, prices fluctuated across centuries, regions, and individual negotiations, and no single “price list” survives from antiquity.

An interpretive itemized invoice showing the estimated costs of the three tiers of ancient Egyptian mummification based on Deir el-Medina records.

The gap between tiers is striking. An elite burial could easily cost 150 to 200 deben or more, the equivalent of two to three years of a skilled craftsman’s wages, before accounting for the tomb itself. A middle-class burial might run 30 to 50 deben. The budget option, stripped of almost everything, cost a fraction of that. And for the truly destitute, there was no mummification at all: the body was washed and placed directly in the desert sand, where the dry heat would do the work of natron for free.

The Coffin: The Single Biggest Expense

For most families, the coffin was the most visible and most expensive single item in the funerary budget. A painted anthropoid coffin, shaped like a human figure, covered in hieroglyphic texts and images of protective deities, was a masterwork of craftsmanship that could take weeks to produce. The wealthiest could afford nested sets: an inner coffin, an outer coffin, and a stone sarcophagus, each layer adding both cost and spiritual protection.

The nested anthropoid coffins of Khonsu, New Kingdom, Ramesside Period. A set like this represented the equivalent of months of a craftsman’s wages — and was considered essential spiritual armor for the journey through the underworld. (Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The sarcophagus of Tetet, shown below, illustrates the sheer investment the elite were willing to make. Stone sarcophagi of this quality required quarrying, transport, and months of skilled carving, costs that dwarfed even the most expensive wooden coffins.

The Embalmer’s Workshop

The embalming workshop discovered at Saqqara, dating to the 26th Dynasty. Its drainage channels, ventilation systems, and labeled ceramic vessels gave researchers the first direct physical evidence of how a professional embalming operation was organized. (Photo: Archaeological Mission)

Although the embalmers worked with priests, they were not priests in that sense of the word. An embalmer (wt) was a highly skilled craftsman whose trade secrets were handed down from father to son. As Diodorus Siculus remarks in the 1st century BC, “They were treated with all forms of respect and honor, being in company with priests and going into the temples freely”.

The embalming workshop, or wabet, was usually positioned close to the necropolis. The finding of an embalming workshop of the 26th Dynasty at Saqqara, which was well preserved, announced in 2020 and analyzed in a paper published by Nature in 2023, gave the first physical evidence of this workplace. They established the presence of drainage channels for fluids, aeration systems, and a large incense burner. Some jars had inscription in hieratic, which said how to use various items (e.g., “put on his head,” “bandage or embalm with it,” “dry antiu”).

More revealing was the information resulted from analysis of the residual materials of the jars. Mahmoud Bahgat of the National Research Center in Cairo and Philipp Stockhammer from Ludwig Maximilian University Munich found aromatic plants, including juniper oil, cypress oil, cedar oil, pistacia resin, animal fat, beeswax, and bitumen among many other substances used in embalming.

The Supply Chain of Eternity

The Wadi Natrun, source of the natron salt that was the foundation of the mummification process. Natron was one of the few embalming ingredients that was locally sourced, almost everything else had to be imported. (Photo: Wadi Natrun)

Not every ingredient that led to mummification was indigenous. Natron, a critical desiccant, was mined from the Wadi Natrun in the Egyptian desert. However, the oils and resins that imbued the elite mummies with fragrance and preservation properties originated far out of the Nile Valley.

Myrrh and frankincense were derived from the Horn of Africa and Arabian Peninsula via, and cedar oil originated from the cedar forests of Lebanon. The resin from pistacia travelled from the eastern Mediterranean. The dammar resin found at Saqqara, which was used for the protective covering on the body, was probably from tropics of southeastern Asia and made its way to Egypt through different intermediaries in the Indian Ocean and land routes.

This implies that the global supply chain had a direct effect on price. Garry Shaw pointed out…that, “less wealthy individuals had limited access to these costly imported resins, especially in the volumes necessary to create a cocoon around.” In contrast, less affluent individuals devised creative alternatives. A mummy from the Chau Chak Wing Museum in Sydney was discovered to have had a painted mud shell surrounding it under the wrappings instead of resin used by more affluent people.

What the Poor Got Instead

The economics of ancient Egyptian death were, at their core, deeply unequal. The same religious beliefs applied to everyone — every soul faced the judgment of Osiris, every heart was weighed against the feather of Ma’at — but the material preparations available to the poor were a pale shadow of what the wealthy could afford.

For those who could not afford mummification at all, the desert itself was the embalmer. Bodies buried in shallow sand graves in the predynastic period were naturally desiccated by the heat and aridity, and some of these natural mummies are among the best-preserved in the world. The irony was not lost on later Egyptians: the poorest burials sometimes produced the most durable results.

For those who could afford the basic package, the 70-day natron treatment provided at least some preservation. But without the linen, the amulets, the coffin, and the inscribed spells, the soul had far less protection on its journey through the underworld. The Book of the Dead was not just a religious text — it was a practical guide, and owning a copy was a form of spiritual insurance that cost money.

The Priests and the Maintenance Fees

If there was an expense, it was not concluded with the burial. The family often paid ka-priests who were mortuary priests with the duty of making daily offerings at the tomb. This was arranged in contracts, which were funded by endowments. After the food was ritually consumed by the spirit of the deceased, it went to the ka-priest as part of his payment. So, in effect, it was a perpetual care fee.

These arrangements could fail. Tombs were sometimes robbed, endowments sometimes ran out, and families sometimes forgot. The ancient Egyptians were very aware of this risk, and that is why they often had tomb inscriptions asking people who passed by to make the offering formula even if there was no food. As one scholar remarked, “The dead became dependent upon the generosity of the living.”

Final Thoughts

The economics of ancient Egyptian mummification tell us something profound about the civilization that produced them. A culture that invested this much, financially, logistically, and spiritually, in the preparation of the dead was not morbid. It was, in its own way, deeply optimistic. The afterlife was real, it was attainable, and it was worth saving for.

The elite spent the equivalent of years of wages on coffins, amulets, and imported resins. The middle class made careful compromises. The poor did what they could. And the embalmers, the amulet-makers, the linen merchants, and the ka-priests all built their livelihoods on the universal human desire to survive death.

The ancient Egyptian funeral industry was, in the end, the world’s first and most enduring luxury market. The product? It was eternity. And the price was whatever you could afford.

Top Image: Inside an ancient Egyptian embalming workshop, where eternity was a booming business.

By Aris Manus

References

Herodotus. The Histories, Book II. Translated by A. D. Godley. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1920. Available at: https://www.livius.org/sources/content/herodotus/mummification/

Cooney, Kathlyn M. “How Much Did a Coffin Cost? The Social and Economic Aspects of Funerary Arts in Ancient Egypt.” In To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum. Brooklyn Museum, 2008. Available at: http://karacooney.squarespace.com/s/Cooney-offprint-To-Live-Forever_color_Bleiberg.pdf

Rageot, Maxime, et al. “Biomolecular analyses enable new insights into ancient Egyptian embalming.” Nature 614 (2023): 287–293. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05663-4

Wente, Edward F. “Funerary Beliefs of the Ancient Egyptians.” Expedition Magazine 24, no. 2 (1982). University of Pennsylvania Museum. https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/funerary-beliefs-of-the-ancient-egyptians/

Wade, Andrew D., and Andrew J. Nelson. “Evisceration and excerebration in the Egyptian mummification tradition.” Journal of Archaeological Science 40, no. 12 (2013): 4198–4206. Referenced in: Tia Ghose, “New Analysis Sheds Light on Ancient Egyptian Mummification,” Christian Science Monitor, March 22, 2013. https://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/amphtml/Science/2013/0322/New-analysis-sheds-light-on-ancient-Egyptian-mummification

Shaw, Garry. “Ancient Egyptians who could not afford expensive embalming resin may have used mud instead.” The Art Newspaper, February 3, 2021. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/ancient-egyptians-who-could-not-afford-expensive-embalming-resin-may-have-used-mud-instead

Ionescu, Diana. “Ancient Egyptian Funeral Home Catered to All Budgets.” Connecting Directors, July 7, 2020. https://connectingdirectors.com/56993-ancient-egyptian-funeral-home-catered-to-all-budgets

Arnold, Michael. “The Magic Amulets of Ancient Egyptian Mummies For Eternal Life.” The Collector, October 20, 2020. https://www.thecollector.com/egyptian-magic-amulets-and-mummies/

Diodorus Siculus. Library of History, Book I. Translated by C. H. Oldfather. Available at: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/thayer/e/roman/texts/diodorus_siculus/1d*.html

The Complaint Tablet to Ea-nasir (c. 1750 BC) - a palm-sized clay tablet inscribed in Akkadian cuneiform, now held at the British Museum (object W 1953-0411-71). It is the oldest written customer complaint on record.

If you have spent any time on the internet over the last decade, you have likely encountered Ea-nasir. He is the ancient world’s most infamous scammer, a Bronze Age copper merchant who delivered substandard ingots, insulted his customers, and kept their angry letters in his house until it burned down. His primary victim, Nanni, penned a furious clay tablet circa 1750 BC that Guinness World Records officially recognizes as the oldest written customer complaint in history.

The story is hilarious, relatable, and seemingly perfect for the digital age. We all know the frustration of ordering a high-quality product and receiving garbage. We all know the sting of terrible customer service. The memeification of Ea-nasir, casting him as the original shady online marketplace seller, has introduced millions of people to ancient Mesopotamian history.

But when you strip away the memes, the Tumblr posts, and the modern projections, what is the actual truth about Ea-nasir, Nanni, and the copper trade of Ur?

As it turns out, the real story preserved in the clay of “No. 1 Old Street” is far more complex, more regulated, and ultimately more fascinating than the internet legend suggests.

To uncover the true scale of Ea-nasir’s fraudulent empire, we must look beyond Nanni’s famous letter and examine the entire archive found in his home. What archaeologists discovered changes everything we know about this ancient merchant.

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A viral video claims that a dusty clay tablet housed in a drawer at a museum in Philadelphia contains an exact account of dying that modern-day neuroscience accurately documented. While the science is viable, what about the tablet?

Think of this scenario: Your heart stops beating, and the formal medical narrative indicates that the brain simply turns off-the lights are turned off for good.

However, in 2017-2018, physicians at the Charité University Hospital in Berlin, studying patients who were dying with electrodes still attached to their heads, discovered something unexpected. Rather than fading, the dying brain produced a large-scale wave of brain activity known as “terminal spreading depolarization”-a type of slow-moving, tsunami-like wave of electrical energy moving across the entire cortex of the brain minutes after the heart has stopped pumping blood.

At about the same time, researchers at the University of Michigan observed the emergence of organized gamma-wave storms in a dying brain, a type of brain activity that traditionally has been associated with high-frequency activity in a conscious state of awareness, visual processing, and even with certain types of out-of-body experiences.

The fact that cardiac-arrest survivors were able to recall specific events occurring in the room while the brain was expected to be quiet was documented in AWARE, an article published in 2014, written by researchers from various hospitals.

Now, a YouTube video that appears to have tens of thousands of views claims that a Sumerian tablet approximately 3,800 years old, that has been catalogued in the Penn Museum as CBS 15167, describes this exact sequence of events in sufficient detail. The information contained in the tablet includes such things as: “seven breaths have been taken after the last breath,” “there was an explosion,” “there was an experience of life review,” “a corridor where the choice of two doors was offered,” “one door is recycling,” and “the other door is a permanent exit.”

In addition, the video suggests that this tablet has been suppressed and has not been adequately researched, and therefore is still sitting in a drawer.

So is the video telling the truth? Let us try to investigate this subject further.

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Around 1200 BC, the lights went out across the civilised world.

Within the span of a single human lifetime, almost every major palace civilisation in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East collapsed. The Mycenaean kingdoms of Greece burned. The mighty Hittite Empire of Anatolia shattered into fragments. The wealthy trading hub of Ugarit on the Syrian coast was wiped off the map. Even the New Kingdom of Egypt, the superpower of the age, survived only in a severely weakened state, never to fully recover its former glory.

For centuries, historians blamed this catastrophic event on a single, terrifying cause: the “Sea Peoples.” According to Egyptian records, a mysterious confederation of seaborne invaders swept across the Mediterranean, destroying everything in their path. It was a simple, dramatic story of civilisation overwhelmed by barbarism.

But modern archaeology has revealed a truth that is far more complex and far more unsettling for our own time. The Late Bronze Age was not a collection of isolated kingdoms. It was a highly globalised, hyper-connected world, bound together by an international supply chain. And when that supply chain broke, the entire system tore itself apart.

What the cargo of a single sunken ship reveals about the fragility of the ancient world, why the tin trade was the Bronze Age equivalent of modern rare earth minerals, and what the real evidence shows about the true cause of the collapse.

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Nestled quietly in the small Swiss hamlet of Bollingen, sits a hand-crafted stone tower overlooking beautiful Lake Zurich. Inside the tower near the warmth of the fire, along with many alchemical texts, mandalas, and ancient texts, is a wise old gentleman with a snow-white mustache and intelligent piercing blue eyes. He is not a magician from medieval times nor a mystic practitioner of antiquity; he also happens to be one of the most important scientists of last century.

This gentleman has held on to a very big secret for many years - his secret journal bound in red leather with many detailed and beautiful drawings of a dark, terrifying and beautiful journey through the different layers of his mind. In this dark and terrible place within him, he did not discover the repressed sexual desires of his mentor Sigmund Freud, but instead he unearthed the gods, demons, wise elders and universal symbols that haunt humankind from the beginning of time.

The ancient wisdom systems studied throughout the last 27 weeks: the Hermeticists in Egypt, Shamans in Siberia, Kabbalists, Tantrics, etc. are more than just primitive superstitions; they form the road map for understanding the human Psyche.

His name was Carl Gustav Jung, and he proved that the divine is not just out there in the cosmos. It is inside of us.

Who Was Carl Jung?

Carl Gustav Jung (Source: Wikipedia)

Carl Gustav Jung was born in 1875 in Kesswil, Switzerland. He was an analyst, psychiatrist, and was the founder of what has become known as Analytical Psychology. He began his professional career by working at the Burghölzli Hospital for the Mentally Ill in Zurich, Switzerland, where he quickly developed into one of the most creative and talented minds of his time.

During this time, Jung began to receive recognition from others in the field, including the founder of Psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. Freud believed that Jung would become his intellectual successor, and that he would take the new science of Psychoanalysis into the future. This relationship, however, did not last forever. Jung could not accept the insistence of Freud that all unconscious drives were sexual. Jung believed that there was something deeper than sexuality, there was a spiritual and collective subconscious that permeated human consciousness.

In 1913, Jung and Freud had a dramatic split that sent Jung into a personal crisis of epic proportions. He underwent what he termed a Confrontation with The Unconscious, where he forced himself into a trance-like state and brought forth images and ideas that were later compiled into his famous Red Book. Through this painful and transformative experience, Jung developed a new way of thinking and created a model that connected Ancient Mysticism and Modern Psychology.

The Architecture of the Soul

Jung’s genius lay in recognizing that the human mind is not a blank slate, nor is it only a repository for personal memories and traumas. He proposed a radically different architecture of the psyche, one that not surprisingly echoes the teachings of the ancients.

1. The Collective Unconscious

Underneath our personal unconscious lies our deeper layer; namely, the collective unconscious. This is a psychic layer that has been built up by generations of man and is therefore considered to be a form of psychic inheritance from our ancestors, and is believed to be the collective psyche of the human race. Just like our bodies inherit our physical traits from our parents, the universal patterns of thought and feeling have been passed down through generations. This gives us insights into why there are so many common myths, symbols and religious motifs found in the cultures of all the nations of the world. These symbols are called archetypes and are expressed through the collective unconsciousness.

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2. The Archetypes

The collective unconscious expresses itself through archetypes, which are universal images or themes that occur repeatedly. These archetypes are not memories but rather tendencies for humans to experience the same events in a similar fashion. Here are some examples of key archetypes:

The Shadow: This archetype includes the darker aspects of our personalities that we do not acknowledge.

The Anima/Animus: The unconscious feminine side of the man and the unconscious masculine side of the woman.

The Hero: The drive to overcome, kill the dragon and bring about transformation.

The Self: This is the archetype that represents “wholeness.” It is the merger of the conscious mind with the unconscious mind.

3. Individuation

According to the theory of Carl Jung, achieving individuation is the primary purpose of humanity and that the process of individuation, in itself, is an ongoing effort to combine the conscious and unconscious aspects of our mind into one complete unit (i.e. the full realisation of who we are).

Individuation involves becoming aware of our unconscious thoughts, addressing our ‘shadow-self’, and unifying our ego with our ‘higher self’. Jung believed that individuation was the same as the modern day alchemist attempting to transmute (transform) base metals into precious metals or the mystical seeker seeking spiritual awakening (enlightenment).

Practical Applications: Navigating Your Inner World

Jung left society with not only theories, but practical exercises through which to explore the shadow realm within us.

1. Shadow Work

You must go through the darkness before you reach the light. Shadow Work is the practice of finding, accepting, and assimilating all of the things you refuse to acknowledge about yourself. This includes all of your anger, self-interest, hidden desires, etc. Whenever you project your shadow onto another, you create conflict with them. By absorbing and integrating your shadow; you reclaim your lost energy and become complete. A good way to identify your shadow is to consider what kind of people irritate You the most. The characteristics you find irritating can often be traced back to your own inner workings.

2. Active Imagination

Active Imagination is a method of actively engaging in the unconscious instead of passively observing it. The images, figures, and emotions rising in your mind can all be engaged directly. You can interact with any enlightened inner figure, as well as face down a scary monster. You can work with these unconscious images to form structures and negotiate with them through conversation, or even seeking their wisdom.

3. Dream Analysis

For Jung, dream content was not random electrical impulses nor the product of an individual’s mind; they are significant messages from the collective unconscious. Dreams have symbolic meanings and can provide insight, guidance, and warning about your conscious or waking life. Keeping a dream journal and identifying reoccurring themes or mythic motifs are ways of interpreting what your dreams are communicating to you about your process of individuation.

The Bridge to the Finale

Carl Jung offers a foundational connection between our study of classical sources of wisdom, like Hermeticism, Buddhism, Kabbalah and Jungian Psychology, and the modern scientific worldview. Through his work, he has shown that the alchemical, Gnostic, and shamanistic traditions speak not only about concrete external phenomena, but they document the transformative, internal evolution of the human psyche.

In our Season 1 Finale of Ancient Wisdoms next week, we will review and bring together all that we have learned over the past 28 weeks, including the interconnections of the Hermetic, Buddhist, Kabbalistic and Jungian traditions in order to arrive at a common understanding of the spiritual journey of humanity.

Next week I will also present to you my special gift for those of you willing to go beyond just reading and now actually begin to practise these traditions. The journey is just beginning!

By Dr Ioannis Syrigos

Recommended Reading

Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C.G. Jung

Man and His Symbols by C.G. Jung

Are you ready to take the next step on your journey? The Ancient Origins Academy is opening its doors soon. Prepare to transform ancient wisdom into lived experience.

Worker procession at the Valley of the Kings, based on public-domain ostraca and tomb imagery

It is year 29 of the reign of Ramesses III. Somewhere around 1157 BCE. The sun is brutal and the limestone cliffs of the Valley of the Kings trap the heat like a furnace. In the village of Set Maat, the “Place of Truth,” known today as Deir el-Medina, the most elite craftsmen in the ancient world have put down their tools.

Why? Because they are starving and they have decided that a god-king’s empty granaries are not their problem to solve alone.

What follows is not myth, not speculation, and not a later embellishment. It is documented, in the workers’ own words, on a papyrus that still exists. It is the first labor strike in recorded human history and the people who staged it were not slaves. They were literate, skilled artisans who understood exactly what they were worth, and they used that knowledge as a weapon.

They marched out of their walled village, bypassed the necropolis guards, and occupied the sacred mortuary temples. They demanded to speak to the vizier. They accused the state of violating the cosmic order. And in doing so, they exposed the rotting foundations of the New Kingdom.

The story of the Deir el-Medina walkout is a masterclass in leverage, survival, and the breaking of the social contract. And the thousands of scrap notes they left behind reveal a community unravelling into corruption, scandal, and eventually, the very crime they were hired to prevent: tomb robbery.

The Village That History Forgot

The walled village of Deir el-Medina, nestled between desert cliffs

To understand why this moment was so radical, you have to understand what Deir el-Medina actually was.

The village was purpose-built, probably during the reign of Thutmose I around 1500 BCE, and it housed the men and their families who carved, plastered, and painted the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. At its height, roughly sixty-eight houses lined a single narrow road, walled off from the wider world. The workers were called Servants in the Place of Truth, and the secrecy of their work was so paramount that the village was deliberately isolated from the fertile Nile floodplain.

This isolation had a profound consequence: unlike ordinary Egyptians, these men could not grow their own food. They were entirely dependent on the state. In exchange for their labor and their silence, the government supplied them with everything. Housing. Water, carried in by porters because there was no natural source nearby. And most critically, monthly rations of emmer wheat and barley, because in a society without coinage, grain was money. Grain was survival.

The workers were organized into two gangs, left and right, like the crew of a ship, each led by a foreman. They spent eight-day stretches working in the valley, sleeping in crude huts near the tomb entrances, then returned to the village on the ninth and tenth days. Their lives were recorded. We know when they were absent and why, surviving ostraca list reasons ranging from “embalming my brother” to “brewing beer” to “bitten by a scorpion”. One worker, Huynefer, was frequently noted as “suffering with his eye.”

These were not anonymous laborers. They had names, families, disputes, and opinions. Many were literate, and they used that literacy to write letters, file complaints, and record the events of their community with a frankness that is startling even now. Deir el-Medina has yielded more written records of ordinary life than almost any other site in the ancient world, thousands of papyri and ostraca that give us an unparalleled window into what it meant to be a working person in pharaonic Egypt.

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The Breaking Point

The reign of Ramesses III was supposed to be a triumphant one. He had defeated the Sea Peoples in a famous naval battle in the Nile Delta, repelled multiple Libyan incursions, and presented himself as the last great warrior-pharaoh. The reliefs on his mortuary temple at Medinet Habu showed him as invincible, a living god crushing his enemies underfoot.

But wars are expensive. The campaigns had drained the treasury, depleted the workforce on Egypt’s farms, and disrupted the agricultural output that underpinned the entire redistributive economy. Grain prices were rising. The elaborate chain of officials who were paid first - soldiers, priests, high administrators - consumed what was available before it ever reached the artisans at the bottom of the queue.

The delays at Deir el-Medina had been building for years. There is evidence of late rations as far back as the 18th Dynasty, but the situation under Ramesses III deteriorated into something chronic. The workers had complained before, and the system had patched itself with emergency grain drawn from nearby temple storehouses. But by year 29, the patches were failing.

The scribe Amennakht, whose records form the backbone of what we know, noted the growing crisis. Early in the year, he had personally gone to the temple of Horemheb to procure 46 sacks of emmer as a stopgap. The workers accepted it, though it was less than they were owed. They returned to work but the problem did not go away.

Day Ten: They Pass the Walls

The Turin Strike Papyrus (P.Turin Cat. 1880), the primary record of the world’s first labor strike

On the tenth day of the second month of the growing season, the workers passed the five guard-posts of the necropolis. The guards could have stopped them but they did not, or could not. The entire crew walked out together, and their declaration, preserved verbatim by Amennakht in the Turin Strike Papyrus, was three words that would echo across three thousand years: “We are hungry.”

They had not been paid for eighteen days of the month. They marched down from the valley and settled at the rear of the mortuary temple of Thutmose III. It was a deliberate choice. Temples in ancient Egypt were sanctuaries of non-violence, no blood could be shed within or immediately adjacent to their walls. By occupying sacred ground, the workers made themselves untouchable.

The scribe of the tomb, the two foremen, the deputies, and the police chiefs came out and shouted at them to return. The workers refused and officials swore great oaths and promised that a message from Pharaoh was coming. The workers spent the night at the temple.

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The next day, they moved again - to the Ramesseum, the vast mortuary complex of Ramesses II. There, they stated their full grievance to any official who would listen: “The prospect of hunger and thirst has driven us to this; there is no clothing, there is no ointment, there is no fish, there are no vegetables. Send to Pharaoh, our good lord, about it, and send to the vizier, our superior, that we may be supplied with provisions.”

The rations for the previous month were released to them that same day. The workers returned to the tombs and the crisis, it seemed, had been resolved, but it had not.

“Evil is Done in This Place”

Workers occupying the temple wall at night

Within weeks, the rations were late again. The workers walked out a second time. Then a third. By the seventh month, something had shifted in the tone of the protests. Two workers, Kenena son of Ruta and Hay son of Huy, refused to return even when the foremen came to fetch them personally. Their statement, recorded in the papyrus, marks a turning point in the entire dispute:

“We will not come back. Tell your superiors. Truly, it was not because of hunger that we passed the walls. We have a serious charge to make. Truly, evil is done in this place of Pharaoh.”

They were no longer simply hungry, they were making a moral and political argument. The failure to pay them was a violation of maat, the sacred principle of cosmic order, justice, and truth that the pharaoh was divinely obligated to uphold. A pharaoh who could not feed his own workers was a pharaoh who had broken his covenant with the gods.

This was an extraordinary thing to say in a society built on the absolute authority of a living deity. And yet they said it, and Amennakht wrote it down.

The Vizier’s Empty Granaries

The strikes continued through the ninth month. The vizier eventually came in person - a significant concession, given that the vizier was the second most powerful person in Egypt. But even he could not conjure grain from nothing. His message to the workers was blunt: “It so happens that there is nothing in the granaries. But I shall give you what I have found.” And what he found was half a ration.

The workers accepted it, then threatened to take their grievances directly to Pharaoh through their own channels. They were given two sacks of emmer for the month, a fraction of what they were owed. They went on strike again on the thirteenth day.

The final entry in the strike records shows the workers sitting at the rear of the temple of Merenptah, shouting at the mayor of Thebes as he passed. A gardener named Meniufer, acting on behalf of the mayor, promised them fifty sacks of emmer as a stopgap “until Pharaoh gives you rations.” And there the papyrus ends, with another temporary fix, another promise, another patch on a system that was coming apart at the seams.

What the Ostraca Tell Us

The Turin Strike Papyrus is the central document, but it is far from the only voice from this community. The thousands of ostraca recovered from Deir el-Medina fill in the texture of daily life around the strikes with remarkable intimacy.

There are attendance records that read like modern HR documents, listing workers absent for reasons that feel startlingly human across the millennia. There are letters between family members, legal disputes over property, love poetry, and religious hymns. There are records of workers bartering surplus grain for furniture, clothing, and livestock. There are notes about tomb robberies, adultery, and corruption among the very officials who were supposed to protect the community.

One ostracon, now in Berlin, records the moment Amennakht first announced the crisis to the crew in year 29: “Twenty days have passed in the month, and rations have not been given to us!” He then went to the temple of Horemheb and procured the emergency grain himself. He was not just a scribe recording events, he was an active participant in managing the crisis, a community leader trying to hold things together.

The ostraca also reveal that the strikes were not the only form of resistance. Workers threatened to rob tombs and some apparently did. The breakdown of rations was directly connected to the later wave of tomb robberies that scandalized Thebes in the final years of the New Kingdom, a connection the papyri make explicit.

The Legacy of a Hungry Village

The strikes of year 29 were not the last. They recurred throughout the remainder of Ramesses III’s reign and with increasing frequency under his successors, Ramesses IX through XI. Each wave of strikes marked another step in the slow dissolution of New Kingdom Egypt. The palace’s inability to pay its workers was a symptom of a state in terminal decline - one that would eventually fragment into the chaos of the Third Intermediate Period.

But the legacy of Deir el-Medina is a story about what ordinary people do when the social contract fails them. The artisans of Set Maat did not have unions, labor laws, or political representation. They had grain, and the knowledge of what happened when they withheld their labor. They used that knowledge with precision, occupying sacred ground to protect themselves, escalating their demands through the chain of command, and framing their grievance not as rebellion but as a demand for justice.

They won, repeatedly, in the short term. They forced the vizier to negotiate and the mayor of Thebes to intervene. They extracted rations from temple storehouses that would otherwise have remained untouched. And they did it without violence, without weapons, and without any of the institutional frameworks we associate with labor organizing.

Three thousand years before the word “strike” was coined by English sailors in Sunderland, the tomb builders of the Place of Truth had already invented the concept and left us the paperwork to prove it.

By Aris Manus

References

“Deir el-Medina.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_el-Medina [2] Antoine, Jean-Christophe. “The Delay of the Grain Ration and its Social Consequences at Deir el-Medîna in the Twentieth Dynasty: A Statistical Analysis.” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology95 (2009): 223–234.

British Museum. Ostracon EA5634 (Attendance Register, Year 40 of Ramesses II).https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/Y_EA5634

Osborne, James. “3,100 years ago, ancient Egyptian workers defeated a God-King — without using any weapons.” HistoryExtra, February 21, 2026. https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-history/egyptian-workers-defeated-a-god-king/

Cromwell, Jenny. “The First Recorded Strike in History.” Papyrus Stories, March 15, 2022. https://papyrus-stories.com/2022/03/15/the-first-recorded-strike-in-history/

Turin Strike Papyrus (P.Turin Cat. 1880). Translation via Libcom.org. https://libcom.org/article/records-strike-egypt-under-ramses-iii-c1157bce

Millions of tourists visit the Acropolis of Athens every year, marvelling at the Parthenon perched atop its sheer, rocky cliffs. But what if those cliffs are not the result of millions of years of slow, gentle erosion? What if they are the battle scars of a sudden, catastrophic deluge that stripped the very soil from the rock in a single night? More than two millennia ago, an Egyptian priest told the Greeks that their most sacred hill was once a broad, fertile plateau, until a terrifying flood washed the land away, leaving only a “bare skeleton” behind. Orthodox geology insists such rapid, apocalyptic erosion is impossible. Yet, when a professional geologist examines the boulders, conglomerates, and sedimentary basins surrounding Athens, the physical evidence points to an unthinkable conclusion: the ancient myth of a world-ending flood might be cold, hard, geological fact.

About This Series

This article is Part 3 of a four-part series derived from the book series The Legend of Atlantis and the Science of Geology by Joe O’Donoghue—a professional geologist who challenges the exclusively uniformitarian paradigm of modern earth science. Part 1 examined Plato’s original description of Atlantis against the geology of the Azores. Part 2 tested the geological record of ancient Greece and the Aegean Sea for evidence of a catastrophic flood. Part 3 (this article) narrows the focus to the Acropolis Hill and the Athens Basin, scrutinising the erosion and sediment evidence to see if it matches the ancient Egyptian priest’s account of a great deluge. Part 4 will dive into the submarine geology of the Azores Plateau, examining the oceanographic evidence for a former large landmass in the central North Atlantic.

Introduction

In Part 2, we discussed the basins of the Aegean and those of the Greek mainland, and we’ve seen that they are all filled to a great extent with coarse, clastic sediments, which require large amounts of fast-moving water for their transportation and deposition, a major flood essentially, and, given the coarseness of this material, up to boulder size, it must have been a very extraordinary flood, and far greater than anything that could be considered in any way “normal.”

As noted, the river valleys and associated alluvial plains also contain the same coarse, clastic sediments, including boulders and conglomerates in many places, and huge alluvial fans debouche from the mountains. The priest also focuses especially on the Acropolis Hill and gives a description very much at odds with its present, heavily eroded, condition, but very much in keeping with an ancient flood catastrophe as seen over much of the rest of mainland Greece.

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In this exclusive Ancient Origins interview, we sit down with Pastor Maria Miculic, a theologian and missionary whose groundbreaking 20-year research challenges everything we thought we knew about the origins of Israel. Triggered by a divine revelation in Bolivia and backed by the rare medical phenomenon of superfecundation, Pastor Maria presents a compelling case that Jacob was not an imposter, but the true biological firstborn all along.

Join us as we explore how modern genetics, biblical clues, and unwavering faith converge to transform a narrative of betrayal into one of divine justice. Watch the full interview to discover why the past is far from irrelevant and why we must have the courage to ask uncomfortable questions.

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There is a file sitting in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris right now. It is catalogued under the reference number 4° LM1 249. It is called the Dossiers Secrets d’Henri Lobineau.

If the documents inside this file are genuine, they rewrite the history of Western civilisation.

They claim that a secret society called the Priory of Sion was founded in Jerusalem in 1099, immediately after the First Crusade. They claim that this society created the Knights Templar as its military arm. They claim that the society has been guided by a succession of Grand Masters that includes Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Isaac Newton, and Victor Hugo.

But the most explosive claim in the Dossiers Secrets is not about who ran the society. It is about what the society was created to protect.

According to the documents, the “Holy Grail” was never a cup used at the Last Supper. The term San Greal (Holy Grail) was a deliberate medieval misspelling of Sang Real, Royal Blood. The Priory of Sion exists to protect a bloodline. Specifically, the bloodline of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, who fled to France, and intermarried with the Merovingian kings.

This is the premise that made The Da Vinci Code a global phenomenon, selling 80 million copies. Dan Brown opened his novel with a page headed “FACT,” stating that the Priory of Sion is a real organisation and that the Dossiers Secrets are real documents.

He was half right. The documents are real and you can go to Paris and look at them.

But the truth about where they came from, who put them there, and what they actually mean is far stranger and far darker than anything in the novel.

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In the snow-covered heights of the Himalayas, in the green valleys of tenth-century Kashmir, an internal spiritual transformation was taking place. The transformation was neither led by starving monks nor rigid priests that imposes unquestioned following of rules. Instead, genius thinkers and poets were analyzing the world and arriving at the conclusion that the universe is not a machine producing consciousness. It was, rather, consciousness itself set into motion with the Spirit.

This gave rise to the Kashmir Shaivism, which is among the most advanced and complex forms of the non-dualist teachings.

Many traditions among spiritual paths claim that our physical existence and experience is merely an illusion or a prison experience from which we should escape. The masters of Kashmir Shaivism led by the philosopher Abhinavagupta maintain the opposite. According to them, the physical world is reality at its best. It is in the ecstatic play of the Absolute Consciousness exploring itself through different forms. The supreme goal of human beings is not to escape but to realize their own divine identity in the physical world.

Who Was Abhinavagupta?

For those who want to understand Kashmir Shaivism, it is essential to know its greatest master, i.e. Abhinavagupta (c. 950–1016 CE). He was not just a philosopher, but an extraordinarily enlightened man. Abhinavagupta could be studied as a theologian, mystic, aesthetician, and tantra ritual master: he was a genius born in a family of scholars living in the valley of Kashmir and received education from no less than fifteen teachers in his life, mastering all philosophical and spiritual schools of his time.

Kashmir Shaivism existed long before the advent of Abhinavagupta, tracing its root to Shiva Sutras, which were revealed to sage Vasugupta in a dream a century ago. However, Abhinavagupta perfected this school of philosophy. The Tantraloka, which he wrote, is an essential teaching on philosophy of Kashmir Shaivism and one of the greatest spiritual texts ever written!

According to legend, at the end of his life, Abhinavagupta entered a cave in the Himalayas, accompanied by 1,200 disciples. As he recited a hymn dedicated to Shiva, he was never again seen, merging with pure consciousness that he had described all his life.

The Three Pillars of Kashmir Shaivism

Kashmir Shaivism has a very complicated and deep philosophy; however, there are three main ideas that change the way we perceive reality and ourselves.

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1. Shiva and Shakti, The Divine Union

According to the tradition, the highest reality is Parama Shiva (the Supreme Shiva), which means pure consciousness, infinite being, and undivided consciousness. Nevertheless, consciousness is not a static state, and there is an active creative force in the form of Shakti. Shiva is the silent witness and pure consciousness, while Shakti is energy. Shiva and Shakti are only two sides of the same one. The principle of Kashmir Shaivism states that “where there is no Shakti, there is no Shiva, and no life.” Thus, everything around us, including our feelings and thoughts, is an ecstatic play (Lila).

2. Spanda, The Cosmic Vibration

The first question arises: if everything consists of pure consciousness, how does it transform into what we see around? The answer is Spanda, cosmic vibration. The concept of Spanda explains that everything consists not of a dead matter but of living and vibrating energy. When we feel happy, or we experience some extraordinary moment in our life, we live in the state of vibration.

3. Pratyabhijna, Recognition

The main idea of this tradition is that we are already Parama Shiva and the main true consciousness; we have just forgotten about that truth. Enlightenment comes from understanding that you are already everything, as the divine plays choose its own hiding spots, and our role is to find it.

It’s Application

The concepts taught in Kashmir Shaivism are highly relevant today because they advocate a spirituality of inclusion. In today’s world, we often hear that in order to be spiritual we need to stay away from the busy lifestyles we lead, we need to be silent and detach from our desires. This creates a painful separation between our practical, everyday life and our spiritual practice.

Kashmir Shaivism unites these two worlds. It lets us know that all things are made up of divine consciousness and therefore, nothing must be rejected. Our relationships, art, work and whatever we do in our daily life becomes a manifestation of Shakti. The essence of it is not to empty the mind, but to understand that the mind itself is a manifestation of the divine. It is a philosophy that embraces our lives fully, and teaches us to find the divine not only in the silence of meditation.

Three Practices from the Tantric Masters

The Sages of Kashmir Shaivism created various techniques (upayas), so people may be in touch with the reality offered by Kashmir Shaivism philosophy.

Some of the most useful practices for everyone are:

1. Practice of Gap (Madhya)

The Vijnana Bhairava Tantra says that one can also perceive Divinity in the gaps. Try to focus on the gap between your inhalation and exhalation. Or observe the space between two thoughts. Or feel the silence that occurs just before falling asleep. Once you become aware of these gaps you attain a view on pure consciousness which exists beneath everything.

2. Surfing on an Emotional Wave

Kashmir Shaivism teaches us to take advantage of the emotion and not to suppress it. Instead of analyzing the reason for joy or sorrow in you, stop thinking and focus on the energy of the feeling itself. Identify the energy of your emotion and you will be able to fuse it back into consciousness.

3. Practice of Wonderment (Camatkara)

Abhinavagupta believes that aesthetic experience like the perception of beauty in music, painting, or landscape gives us the experience of divinity. Enjoy the state of Camatkara, or deep wonder where everything is perceived as a miracle.

The sages of Kashmir Shaivism posed a challenge to us: Stop seeking God beyond but seek Him right now in your own consciousness. The universe is no prison for us to escape from; it just shows us the infinite face of our own being.

By Dr Ioannis Syrigos

Recommended Reading

The Triadic Heart of Siva: Kaula Tantricism of Abhinavagupta in the Non-Dual Shaivism of Kashmir by Paul Eduardo Muller-Ortega

Kashmir Shaivism: The Secret Supreme by Swami Lakshmanjoo

P.S. We are approaching the end of Season 1. Next week, I will be making a major announcement. The Ancient Origins Academy is opening its doors, get ready to take these teachings off the page and into your life.

In 1952, archaeologists exploring the limestone cliffs above the Dead Sea made a discovery that did not fit with anything else they had found.

They were excavating Cave 3 at Khirbet Qumran, the site famous for the Dead Sea Scrolls. By this point, researchers were accustomed to finding fragments of parchment and papyrus containing ancient biblical texts and sectarian rules. But at the very back of the cave, separated from the other manuscripts, lay two rolls of heavily oxidised metal.

It was copper, mixed with about one percent tin, and it was covered in hammered Hebrew script.

The metal was so brittle that it could not be unrolled. For four years, it sat in a museum while scholars debated how to open it without destroying it. Finally, in 1955, the Jordanian government sent the rolls to Manchester University’s College of Technology in England. There, Professor H. Wright Baker carefully coated the outside of the rolls in aircraft glue, baked them in an oven, and used a tiny circular saw to cut them into 23 curved strips.

When the strips were laid out and translated, the scholars realised they were not looking at a religious text but a treasure map.

The document, now known as the Copper Scroll (officially designated 3Q15), lists 64 specific locations where vast quantities of gold, silver, and sacred vessels were hidden. The total weight of the treasure described is staggering, estimated by some scholars at 26 tons of gold and 65 tons of silver.

Today, the Copper Scroll sits in a glass case in the Jordan Museum in Amman. And as far as anyone knows, not a single ounce of the treasure it describes has ever been found.

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In 1922, a British archaeologist named Herbert Weld Blundell was excavating the ruins of Larsa, an ancient city in what is now southern Iraq. Digging through the dust of Mesopotamia, his team uncovered a block of baked clay.

It was a vertical prism, about eight inches tall, covered on all four sides with dense, wedge-shaped cuneiform script. When scholars at Oxford University finally translated it, they realized they were looking at one of the most extraordinary historical documents ever found.

It was a master list of kings. It recorded the rulers of Sumer, the world’s first known civilization in chronological order.

But the list did not begin with normal human history. It began at the dawn of time, with a statement that still causes debate among historians today:

What followed was a list of eight kings who ruled before a massive, civilization-destroying flood. And according to the tablet, these eight kings did not rule for decades. They ruled for tens of thousands of years each.

Then, the tablet says, the Flood came. And everything changed.

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Between 800 and 200 B.C.E., while the great Vedas, the oldest texts of Indian thought, were still being produced, small groups of students began to gather in the forests of India to study under the guidance of their teacher and to ask the most profound questions imaginable about themselves, about the universe and about death, which had been shunned by most of society throughout history. What began as small gatherings went on to form an entire literary genre, and the composition of these writings was primarily through dialogue, song, poetry, and in-depth questions about philosophy. These writings are collectively known as the Upanishads.

The term “Upanishad” literally means “to sit close to” or “to sit together near.” A student who was physically close to their teacher to receive this knowledge gained access to some of the most radical ideas in the history of humanity, the culmination of the teachings in the Vedas, which in and of themselves were not just religious texts. They provided the foundation for an exploration of consciousness unmatched by any other civilization in the world.

So, what did the ancient sages living in the forests discover? They found that the deepest essence of every human being and the ultimate reality of the universe are not separate entities, but rather are, in essence, the same entity. By understanding that both are part of the same whole, the sages taught that this is the key to attaining liberation.

The Shift from Ritual to Reality

The Vedic Religion up until the time of the Upanishads, was mostly concerned with rituals that were performed for the purpose of pleasing the deities so that they may have successful harvests, and maintain the Cosmic Order through priestly sacrifices. The relationship between mortals and the deities was very much one of a transaction.

The sage or sages that created these Upanishads took this concept and turned it upside down. They realised that there was no amount of external ritual that would ever fix or cure the problems of suffering and ignorance that all humans have. Instead of looking to the heavens to be saved by a god (s), they began to look into themselves and their own consciousnesses. They shifted their interests from “doing” to “knowing” – from the performance of rituals to understanding what ‘is’ in reality.

Their shift in focus produced a scientific way of thinking thousands of years in advance of the current day and made predictions that current theories of Quantum Physics and Neurogenesis have not yet confirmed.

The Three Great Teachings of the Upanishads

The profound wisdom of the Upanishads can be distilled into three central concepts that completely redefine how we understand ourselves and the universe.

1. Brahman: The Ground of All Being

When you look at the universe, it appears to consist of separate objects, such as trees and rocks, or people and clouds. The Upanishads, however, explain that this apparent separation is an illusion (Maya). In reality, all the impermanent forms that change and pass away have their origin in one single, infinite, unchanging reality. This ultimate reality is called Brahman. Brahman does not refer to a personal God on a throne; rather, It refers to the pure, formless consciousness from which all things manifest. Brahman is also likened to an ocean; all the ocean’s waves represent temporary manifestations of the ocean.

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2. Atman: The Self That Was Never Born

Your true self was never born and will never die. When you say “I,” to whom or to what are you referring? Most of us identify our “self” with our body, thoughts, memories, and social roles (i.e., parent, child, employee, etc.). The Upanishads, however, emphasise the fact that everything (including your body) is constantly changing. For example, your physical body will eventually grow old and die; your thoughts will change from one moment to another; your memories may fade away entirely at some point. Thus, none of these things can define who you truly are. The Upanishads explain that underneath all these ever-changing levels of your personality exists a stillness/awareness within you that has never changed. This unchanging awareness is known as Atman.

3. Tat Tvam Asi: Thou Art That

Tat Tvam Asi is the ultimate knowledge revealed in the Upanishads, which is captured beautifully in the Chandogya Upanishad. The essential meaning of this phrase is that, at the deepest level of your being (Atman), you are identical to the ultimate reality (Brahman). You are not merely a tiny particle of consciousness floating around in a dead universe; instead, you are the entire universe experiencing itself. God is not something that exists outside of you for you to worship; rather, God exists within you; It is your true nature. Therefore, when the Chandogya Upanishad says “You Are That,” this means that you are identical to the ultimate reality (Brahman).

The Relevance Today

In the current climate, many people experience anxiety because of the relationship they have with themselves and the world around them. This anxiety stems from a feeling of being alone and not being a part of something larger than oneself, as taught in the Upanishads.

In today’s society, we are constantly bombarded with messages that tell us we need to compete against each other for limited resources. We must gain more possessions and status and create a better image of ourselves to feel good about who we are.

However, the Upanishads offer us a completely different perspective on this issue. They tell us that if we look for meaning outside of ourselves, we will never find it. If we want to be happy, we must look inside ourselves and understand that we are already complete and infinite. By understanding this, we realize that we are one with everything around us.

Three Ways to Practice Upanishadic Wisdom

Not only is the Upanishads a philosophy of abstract thought, it gives a way for human consciousness to become free. Here is how to use the wisdom of the Upanishads in your daily life.

1. The Practice of Neti Neti (Not This, Not That)

The ancient method of Neti Neti (Not This, Not That) can be used when one is overwhelmed by a very strong emotion or feeling of anxiety. When you feel those feelings, remind yourself; “I am not this feeling. I am not this emotion. I am the observer of this feeling”. By distinguishing yourself from the temporary thoughts and emotions, you become reconnected to the silent, unchanging, presence of the Atman.

2. See the Ocean, Not Just the Waves

Try to see the ocean (unity), instead of individual waves (the different people or objects in your life). When you are relating to someone else, remember that you, and the person you are using your consciousness to relate to, are all the same. Both you and that person have been animated by the same source of life. By recognising that both of you are animated by the same source, the idea of separation disappears, developing and fostering natural feelings of empathy and compassion.

3. Stop Searching, Start Realizing

Most of the activities of your life are spent attempting to be content through some future achievement or through acquiring something outside of yourself. The teachings of the Upanishads are that true contentment cannot be obtained; rather, it must be realised through the process of going deeper into the realisation that you already have everything that you need. By taking some time out of your day to simply relax and be aware of your consciousness, you can experience the realisation that you are already whole and complete.

The sages of the Upanishads did not ask us to believe their teachings on blind faith. They invited us to investigate our own minds and discover the truth for ourselves. They left us a map, but we must walk the territory.

We’ve got some exciting news to share with the community next week; stay tuned! We have a unique opportunity that will allow you to begin putting these ancient teachings into practice in your daily life.

By Dr Ioannis Syrigos

Recommended Reading

The Upanishads translated by Eknath Easwaran

The Principal Upanishads translated by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

On the night of November 1, 1507, every fire in the Aztec empire was extinguished. Hearth fires, temple braziers, torches along the causeways of Tenochtitlan, all dark. In the obsidian blackness, a procession of priests climbed Huixachtlan, the Hill of the Star, known today as Cerro de la Estrella in southern Mexico City. They reached the summit at midnight, or close to it, and turned their eyes upward to find the Pleiades.

The cluster was high in the sky but had not yet reached its highest point. So the priests waited. Pregnant women were locked inside granaries, their faces covered with maguey-leaf masks, because if the stars stopped moving, they would transform into monsters and devour humanity. Children were kept awake by pinching, lest they fall asleep and become mice. The empire held its breath in genuine terror. The 52-year Calendar Round, the Xiuhmolpilli or Binding of the Years, was ending, and there was no guarantee the cosmos would grant another cycle.

When the Pleiades finally passed through the zenith overhead, the priests knew the heavens had not ceased their motion. The world would continue. A new fire was kindled on the chest of a sacrificial captive, and runners carried the flame to every temple, every hearth, every corner of the empire. The cycle was renewed. Life went on.

This scene is reconstructed from Book 7 of the Florentine Codex, the encyclopedic account of Aztec life compiled by the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún from interviews with Nahua elders in the decades following the conquest. It remains the single most detailed surviving description of the New Fire Ceremony.

That was 519 years ago. The calendar is still running. The current 52-year cycle ends on September 27, 2026.

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The Courtoy Mausoleum (1853), located in London’s Brompton Cemetery, has stood at the center of an urban legend regarding a Victorian time machine or teleportation chamber, popularized by the media between 1998 and 2015 due to its striking parallels with H.G. Wells’s 1895 masterpiece, The Time Machine.

This granite structure, adorned with rich Egyptian hieroglyphic motifs, serves as the final resting place of the wealthy heiress Hannah Courtoy. The mythology surrounding the machine relies entirely on the physical proximity of the graves of two other figures buried nearby:

· Joseph Bonomi the Younger: A celebrated Egyptologist.

· Samuel Alfred Warner: A controversial naval inventor.

Sensationalist theories hypothesized an unproven friendship in which Bonomi supposedly translated ancient texts containing the secrets of a lost technology, which Warner then reproduced and ultimately concealed within the mausoleum. However, new research based on digitized parliamentary records and archival metadata transcends these conjectures, documenting a real historical connection among the protagonists that is even more extraordinary than the legend itself.

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