This post actually belongs to the blog History of astrology, and yet it is probably best placed here, because it is about ancient Egypt. In the last two blog posts on my astro-blog, I was looking closer at the constellation known as Cetus, also known as the whale (whale fish). I did some further research on whales themselves, to see their ancient history, where I came across something rather interesting.

I have said a couple of times before, when you walk around in Egypt, you are actually walking on a ancient Sea bottom. This is a fascinating thought, so off course there must exist ancient fossils of some kind.
I was looking through the Whales history, when I came to the mysterious creature known as Basilosaurus also known as the King Lizard. This whale lived around 40 million years ago, and it is the ancestor of most baleen whales of today (as fare as I can conclude). another interesting fact about this creature, the Basilosaurus, descends from a land animal. This means that many million years ago this animal walked on land, and little by little it walked into the water, staying longer in the water each time. One day, today, this animal has become the great Blue whale, the biggest animal on earth.
In ancient days people would actually believe these creatures to be some sort of reptilian sea monster, which could have given birth to some very scary stories in mans beginning, when ever that was? (actually there are more evidence of man being around before some of the continents separated).
Back at the beginning of the 19 century an expedition went to the area known as Faiyum in Egypt, where they discovered ancient fossils of different creatures. This place was depth the Valley of the Whales, because there were so many skeletons, like an ancient grave site. There was found 250 Basilosaurus skeletons, and some of them seem to have interesting 'extra' parts.
When I visited Faiyum, , I went there to see one specific pyramid. In retrospect I find it rather interesting that a pyramid is build near this fossil area. And I could defiantly see how some people would create stories with great sea monsters, one must wonder what the ancient people thought when they saw such giant bones. Even more interesting is the fact that there is no real reproduction of such whales in the ancient Egyptian archive (of what has been found and to my knowledge). I do not believe that they did not know about these skeletons, this would be impossible, due to the fact that they worked and lived there. So why wasn't these animals depicted, could it be because they did not exist anymore? (extinct).

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