Desert Breath: the spiral cones in the Egyptian desert
Strange cones and holes in the arid desert of Egypt appear to be a curious esoteric phenomenon. The official explanation is very simple, yet some suspect there is more. A geological oddity? An alien city? A crop circle of sand?
What are the mysterious cones arranged in a spiral over an area of 10 thousand square meters and located in the eastern Sahara desert on the border between the Red Sea and Egypt? Who is behind this mysterious formation? When was it built? And what is, or what was, the purpose of the enigmatic spiral configuration of these cones?
Although the mind immediately races to identify some esoteric and mysterious explanation, we immediately dispel any doubts by explaining that the configuration known as "Desert Breath" is an artistic installation! Yes, a work of art.
The author of this enigmatic work is the Greek artist Danae Stratou who together with her artistic D.A.ST. Arteam created Desert Breath around the mid-1990s, taking several years to bring the project to completion. Although the work was completed in 1997, almost 17 years later, Desert Breath still exists. In the idea of its creator, the work must undergo slow disintegration by atmospheric agents, so as to become a tool to remember the inexorable passing of time.
The construction of Desert Breath required moving nearly 8,000 cubic meters of sand to precise positive and negative conical volumes.
The cones form two interlocking spirals that move outward from a common center, with a phase difference of 180° degrees in the same direction of rotation. In the center there is a large basin with a diameter of 30 meters, which is normally filled with water up to the edge.
But why?
Some persons wondered why invest energy and resources for an artistic project decidedly disproportionate to its purpose and completely inaccessible to the contemplation of visitors, given that it requires venturing into the Sahara desert. In reality, it is not even possible to clearly understand who financed the immense work of art.
According to the author, the desert represents for artists the place where the infinite is experienced. In the mystical traditions of the Semitic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) the desert represents the place of encounter with divinity: the desert is the place of 'theophany', of the manifestation of God.
Furthermore, it is interesting to know that in Egyptian mythology there was a deity named Sekhmet, originally considered to be the warrior goddess of Upper Egypt.
She was depicted as a lioness or as a woman with a lion's head (like the Sphinx of Giza), and starting from the XVIII dynasty she also acquired divine symbols such as the solar disk and the uraeus, a serpent-shaped decoration originally placed on the sides of the solar disk and later on the headgear of Egyptian rulers.
Daughter of Ra, Sekhmet was a member of the triad as wife of Ptah and mother of Nefertum, also taking the epithet of “The Great, Beloved of Ptah.”
She was the terrible goddess of war who, personifying the deadly heat of the sun, embodied the destructive power of the star but also the scorching air of the desert whose winds were her fiery breath and with which she punished the enemies who rebelled against the divine will. She also represented the instrument of Ra's revenge against the insurrection of men by imposing the order of the world.
She brought death to humanity but was also the protector goddess of doctors as cited in the Ebers and Edwin Smith medical papyri and her very powerful priests were often called upon to cure bone pathologies, such as fractures.
More than five hundred statues of the goddess were found in the temple of Karnak, erected by Amenhotep III so as not to antagonize the cruel goddess. She was feared even in the afterlife where the evil Seth and the serpent Apopi were defeated by the goddess who embraced Ra with her fiery coils on her nocturnal journey.
Traditions say that Sekhmet created the desert through her breath, hence the name Desert Breath.
Could the installation have been created as a memory of a distant past, when humanity lived in the company of the gods? That is according to Ancient Astronaut theorists non-terrestrial travelers who influenced the normal evolutionary path of man?
The Sacred Spiral
Some years ago, the Crop Circle Wiltshire Study Group published an article in which the spiral-shaped structure was analyzed, comparing it with two Crop Circles which appeared respectively in 1994 in West Stowell (Galaxy formation) and in 1996 on Windmill Hill (Fractal formation).
Also in this case, the emphasis is placed on the sacredness of the symbols placed in the work of art. In particular, attention is paid to the meaning of the spiral, one of the oldest symbols that humankind has known.
What do a galaxy, the biological growth of some animal species, the spacing between leaves along a stem and the arrangement of petals and sunflower seeds have in common? All of these present patterns that can be traced back to that of the golden section and the "logarithmic spiral" also known as the "golden spiral".
Since ancient times, the existence of the "Golden Section", or also called "Divine Proportion", has always aroused great wonder, with which a proportional relationship existing in nature is expressed and on which all things seem to be modeled. In the Stonehenge megaliths, the surfaces of the two concentric circles of stones have a ratio of 1.6; the Egyptian pyramid of Cheops has a base of 230 meters and a height of 145: the base/height ratio corresponds to 1.58, very close to 1.6; the proportions of the golden rectangle were also used in the design of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and the UN Building in New York.
Many researchers believe that the spiral is the ancient symbol that represented the civilization of Atlantis. Is it possible that the creators of the work took these 'divine' proportions into consideration when they wanted to create the work?
