When the word Sheol in the Old Testament is rendered in English by “the grave,” it is inadequate times out of number. The Hebrew writers were not always speaking or thinking of the grave when they wrote of Sheol, which has to be bottomed in Amenta, the divine nether-earth, not simply in the tomb. The grave is not identical with hell, nor the pit-hole with the bottomless pit. The pangs and sorrows of Sheol, like the purging pangs of the Romish purgatory, have to be studied in the Egyptian Ritual. —from “Egyptian Wisdom in other Jewish Writings” It goes unappreciated by modern Egyptologists, but it is embraced by those who savor the concept of a “hidden history” of humanity, and those who approach all human knowledge from the perspective of the esoteric. Gerard Massey’s massive Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World—first published in 1907 and the crowning achievement of the self-taught scholar—redefines the roots of Christianity via Egypt, proposing that Egyptian mythology was the...