Hieroglyphs & Symbolic Writing in UFO Narratives: An Abbreviated History

The moving hand writes, and, having writ,
Moves on. Nor all thy piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

--Omar Khayham, untitiled quatrain

Egypt as a symbol

The connection between ancient Egypt and UFO realm is well established. There is ongoing speculation of alien intervention with pyramid construction and design, theories surrounding time traveling aliens and Egypt, and especially within our popular media, there are many such affiliations-who could forget Ra's outrageous and cool pyramid-as-spaceship in Stargate?

Whether or not the connection is "real," that is, whether or not some tie exists between the UFO phenomenon, aliens, and Ancient Egypt as an objective reality, it is certainly provocative. Egypt is enigmatic in that many of its most sacred objects are still available to us in an amazing bright states of preservation, including the sphinx, pyramids, tomb artifacts, jewelry, and objects used in daily life. There's also a great sense of urbanization involved with ancient Egypt. The culture is a pleasant mix of the exotic mystic "Other," combined with a sense of contemporary tangibility--"Us."

It's easy to somewhat romanticize the culture as a whole, and look to it as a desirable but unfortunately lost civilization. Further, Egypt's geography may hold a key to its attraction. The African continent itself --the seat of humanity and perhaps the most mysterious place on earth within the overall Western psyche: we have terms such as "the dark continent," "darkest Africa," etc. The horrific appropriation and enslavement of Africa's inhabitants by Westerners until the latter 1800s may also play some part in our almost century long Egypt-attraction and fascination.

We can address Africa and its mysteries and relevant difficult social issues via ancient Egypt, under the guise of glamour. That ultimate savage-mystic glamour is well ingrained in the western collective soul, and perhaps represented and embodied physically by a few things: King Tut's gleaming mask, the Great Pyramid, the Sphinx, and hieroglyphs.

Egyptian hieroglyphs as a symbol