Former NASA consultant Richard Hoagland is convinced there may be a 'terrestrial connection' between Giza and Cydonia - the region of Mars where the mysterious structures are located - perhaps a common source that imparted the same legacy of knowledge and symbolism on both worlds. Hoagland's interest in Giza began when he met Dr. Lambert Dolphin, a scientist from the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) who had conducted radar and seismographic research to locate hidden chambers near and under the Great Sphinx.
Dr. Dolphin was captivated by Hoagland's idea of a 'Martian Sphinx' - the Face - and , in 1983, was instrumental in helping Hoagland set up the Independent Mars Investigation Project under the aegis of SRI.
Hoagland argues that the Face on Mars is 'not merely the image of an terrestrial hominid...lying where it has no business being. One half (the right) is also the perfect image of a cat; specifically a lion - the king of beasts. So the Martian sphinx is in truth the combination of two "families": hominid...and ...feline.'
The discription also fits the lion-bodied, human headed Egyptian Sphinx. Another coincidence is that the ancient Egyptians called the Sphinx Hor-em-Akhet, meaning 'Horus in the Horizon'. Horus - the hawk-god, the divine child of Isis and Osiris - is a name derived from the Egyptian word Heru, which translates as 'face'.
Helped by a mathematician, Erol Torun, Hoagland has also identified a number of intriguing mathematical and geographical connections between Cydonia and Giza. Torun was among the first to realize that one of the large; 'pyramids' on Mars, the D&M Pyramid, contains a variety of functions and constants used in a sophisticated mathematical system known as tetrahedral geometry. Evidence of such high mathematics in supposedly natural structures is strongly suggestive of a conscious design.
The most important recurring feature found in the mathematics of Cydonia is the value 0.865 - derived from the ratio of 'e' (an important mathematical constant equal to 2.7) and pi (the mathematical constant of 3.142 used to work out the properties of spheres and circles). This Hoagland terms the 'message of Cydonia'
A trigonometrical function, the arc tangent of 'e'/pi, gives the value of 40.8 which is the Mars latitude on which both the D&M Pyramid and the NK Pyramid are sited. Amazingly, another trigonometrical function, the cosine of 'e'/pi, gives the value 30 - the exact geographical latitude of the pyramids of Giza on Earth.
Hoagland has demonstrated that the Great Pyramid of Giza contains 'tetrahedral' functions identical to those of the D&M Pyramid on Mars, and Torun has shown that the positioning of the Great Sphinx, relative to the pyramids, expresses the 'Cydonian ratio 'e'/pi. 'The odds of such correlations happening by coincidence on two neighbouring planets are somewhere in the region of one in 7,000, says Hoagland. What makes coincidence look even less likely is a bizarre link to another ancient site on Earth.
One of the key angles of Cydonia, repeated again and again, is 19.5 degrees. this is precisely the latitude (19.5) degrees north) of the mysterious Mexican city of Teotihuacan, 'the place where men became gods', with its three distinctive pyramids dedicated respectively to the Sun, the Moon, and to Quetzalcoatl, the Central American counterpart of Osiris.
OPENING THE WAY
In a statement on the implications of the Martian meteorite and its fossils, President Clinton promised to launch a whole fleet of space probes to the Red Planet. The first of these, designated Pathfinder 1, left Earth in November of 2001.
Is it a coincidence that the name of the ancient Egyptian jackal-god Upuaut means 'Opener of the Pathways' - literally 'Pathfinder' - and that Upuaut was also the name given to the small robot camera that was used to explore the narrow 'star-shells' of the Great Pyramid earlier this decade?
