History is Mystery

The amount of fiction mixed with fact in a factual story is directly proportional with the amount of people that the story has to go through from the mouth of the sender to reach the ears of the receiver. You know how when someone tells a story to someone else then the person who received the story goes and tells it to someone else and adds a part to it that is their pure imagination and was never told by the original sender? Then if this is repeated a few times, the story might come out as something totally different. This happens to us, we see it in our everyday lives, don't we? I won't go and generalize and say that everyone does that, but let's just say that it happens, a lot.

Now imagine the same thing happening with history, because probably it did. And imagine it happening through years that have had both mad believers of the hero of the story and enemies that hated their guts. I keep thinking how wrong our history might be and it's unbelievable. During Ancient Egypt, there had come Pharaohs that have hated their predecessors so much that they have not only ruined their temples which had their history, but also spread wrong stories about them. We've come to know our Pharaohs as tyrants, all of them, because religions tell us that Moses's Pharaoh was one. We've come to know that the Roman Empire was unfair and one of tyranny because it was against Chirstianty at some point in history, of course everything other than that, and before that, about the Roman Civilization had been forgotten, including the bridges that are still used to our present day. They think of gladiators, who were even banned sometimes, and forget that we still have wrestling which is only a bit better. But even closer history, Mohamed Naguib who has been totally forgotten although he was once loved by the people. Even King Faruk whom we don't know any truth about, I mean surely he was unjust, but we only hear of his women and poker stories.

If this is how things are then how exactly can one know the true history? I keep imagining how the time we're living in will be written in history, and I have no idea. Will there be any talk of our revolution at all in a hundred years? Or will it be just put as 18 days of protests that ended up with a coup and people did nothing afterwards? Maybe if we somehow went back to tyranny this will happen. But even if we got to a civilized state, what will the history say about us in a thousand years? Anything?

I am asking about this because I have heard the Egyptian Key of Life being called an image of a slipper from above! Because I have heard people talking about the builders of the great pyramids as slaves, no they weren't. They were people who built it because they believed in what they were doing, and they had every right to. Because the idea of the Great Pyramids right now is nothing but the social pyramid with the masses as the lowest who carry everyone else above them and the highest point is the Pharaoh who carries nothing, and of course this is part of the wrong image. The truth is so far from this, the truth is that the pyramid's idea was vertical and not horizontal. It was divided into columns and each column symbolized a group of people. The weakest were the two outermost columns that carried nothing and were carried from everybody else. And the strongest column, that carries 75% of the weight of the whole pyramid, is the inner most column. That column is an obelisk that symbolizes the true self, the one closest to wisdom, the just self,  the one with the highest awareness of the needs of the people and the state, this person was the Pharaoh. And yes, this has existed at times. How do I know? From diaries of Ancient Egyptians that have been found through history.

Another problem is that we always generalize, just because one pharaoh or emperor was unfair we think the whole empire was unfair. That is exactly why the Roman Empire was never brought justice in history books and same with the Ancient Egyptians. And even with terms, this is the same reason we mix the term dictatorship with tyranny. Dictatorship only means that a person comes in a time of crisis and dictates people what to do to get out of this crisis then leaves. And yes, this has happened in history. Probably at some point in time came a dictator who was also a tyrant and the two terms stuck together since then. Also same with Aristocracy which originally meant the rule of the noble and not of kings or princes.

And one other main problem is with archeologists and not only historians. Same as those Egyptologists who say the Key of Life is a slipper. They see only the flat picture, they think horizontally. They discover symbols but never think of their true meaning. They show you some painting or sculpture and tell you their dates, what they're made of and that's it. The thing is that every single thing that has been done during these great civilizations had a meaning behind it, and it's that meaning that is of great importance and that tells us so much about the history and lives of those people.  These meanings can be found, they're hard, but far from impossible. And once the ideals of a civilization are known it will be easier to understand the meaning of everything. Only then will one know the true history.

Again, the problem of always mixing religions with history and changing history accordingly gave us Akhnaton. We were automatically made to love Akhnaton because he made a new monotheist religion. We never knew that the original religion was a million times better, we never knew everything about it, including that the Ancient Egyptians were not polytheists either. We also didn't know that when he died he left the state in a very very bad shape, and was deeply hated by his people. They hated him to the point of not wanting to mention his name at all so he could be forgotten.

And Confucius, who was a philosopher and a very very noble man. He took his country from a dark age to a much better one. People loved him so dearly that they made a god out of him and said that his words were sent from a higher power. And of course, same with Buddha, and many others. And I do respect these religions and everything, I'm only talking about the change in history.

So the point is that if history has much more of opinions and fiction than facts, what does one do? Because history is there to learn from, so how can I learn from something that had been terribly distorted? My idea is that the best way to learn from history is to read diaries of people that were not made for the intention of publishing. If not possible, then books or teachings written by someone who lived at that time. Also to have an open mind, to try to imagine, and to connect all the dots to see if the whole story makes sense. Yes, it is hard work, but if you want to reach the truth about past events that's what you have to do.