Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Queen Moo and the Egyptian Sphinx

Augustus Le Plongeon - Queen Moo and the Egyptian Sphinx (1896)

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Hey, you got your Mayans in my Egyptians! No, you stuck your Egyptians with my Mayans! Yep this book floats an idea of Mayan-Egyptian contact that probably still has currency somewhere in the kook fringe.  Le Plongeon had a life that could fill an entertaining biography including a shipwreck, participating in the California gold rush, becoming involved in the early days of photography and then years of original field work on the Mayans.  He became fixed on the idea of New-Old World contact even to the extent of claiming Freemasonry derived from the Maya (and managing to stick Atlantis in there somewhere).  He and his wife made extensive photographic documentation of Mayan ruins that apparently still has value but also many errors in interpretation (including "Queen Moo" who resulted from mistranslation).  This book was self-published.