The Egyptian book of life

I picked up a book yesterday that I thought was interesting but didn't finish it because I immediately realized that there were problems with it. The title sounded good "The Egyptian book of life". I look at the author's credentials and am a little leary but the fact that she has not had any official degrees in egyptology or ancient religions can be deceiving. So giving her the benefit of the doubt, I open the book, "The ancient Egyptians' concept of neteroo was similar to our own in that they, too, recognized primordial forces that govern all matter and can be unified as One." That is quite a statement on her part- she only has a few sketchy endnotes citing sources. Hmmm...

But she goes on... In the next paragraph, the author claims that ancient egyptians had stories the correlated to what scientists have since found evidence of: that life first evolved from primordial sludge. And how the Egyptians came to this scientific find? Well, they just knew, I guess. Or they had some innate knowledge that they carried within them... who knows?

And that was when I closed the book.

It is easy to spot an imposter. Her "credentials" were related to meditation and mantras-- spiritual exercises not religious studies. Never mind that her postulations have no basis in any archeological findings. She has one short paraphrased segment which she attributes to Zahi Hawass, (a story he tells of finding a tomb) Yet he is one of the foremost Egyptologists of our time! Ignoring him as a source for some of her more historic claims, she leaps to conclusions that are highly suspect because they have more to do with the "wisdom" she claims to dispense than it does with anything we really know.

Folks! Beware those that say what you want to hear in order to make money. They are like fortune tellers- they know how to say what people want to hear with the hopes that pocket books will also open. (Some time groovygrrl should tell us about her experience as a fortune teller. It's very entertaining!)