The Book

A new and totally unexpected explanation of the origins of civilisation has emerged from recent discoveries. Instead of the aparrently sudden flowering some 10,000 years ago, evidence of an older civilisation is being unearthed.

In Uriel's Machine, Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas offer powerful new evidence that our planet was hit by seven mountain-sized lumps of comet, creating a series of giant waves that ripped across the globe.

Putting together the latest findings of leading geologists with sensational archeological discoveries of ark-like structures, they show how this ancient civilisation was able to build a series of sophisticated calendar machines which could measure the diameter of the planet and accurately predict comet impact years in advance. The revelation that this is the true purpose of the great megalithic sites of Western Europe (in particular those of Great Britain), built thousands of years before the birth of ancient Sumerian and Egyptian cultures, and that, moreover, the Book of Enoch contains precise details on the building of such a machine to assist in the reconstruction of a shattered world, forms the revolutionary thesis of this book.

Using hard science and their own reconstruction of an ancient technology in many ways more sophisticated than our own, Knight and Lomas put forward findings here that will change the way we view man's distant past - and may help us better understand our future.

Uriel's Machine and the Masons

"Before they were deliberately censored by English Freemasons in the 18th and 19th centuries, the higher rituals of Freemasonry unequivocally stated that they preserved the arcane knowledge of the Jewish High Priesthood, which was ancient even at the time of King David and King Solomon. As we have already mentioned, these Masonic rituals, which are memorised word-for-word by Freemasons, still make frequent reference to a worldwide Flood, and an entire order is dedicated to preserving verbal traditions about Noah, the builder of the biblical Ark that survived the deluge...

The oldest records of rituals are those of the original Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, which have not been in general use since 1813. Throughout these old rituals there is frequent reference to the biblical character called Enoch, with Masonic degrees devoted entirely to him, telling his story as the man who was told by the angel Uriel that he must save the secrets of civilization from a global disaster."

Did Enoch write about Newgrange?

"As far as archeology knows, there were no other buildings on this scale anywhere in the world at this early date. And certainly none known to have been built of crystals. Could anyone doubt it? Enoch describes the building to which he was taken as 'a large house built of crystals' and 'the walls of the house were like a tessellated floor of crystals'. We have never seen a building dressed with white quartz crystal before, let alone one that is in the right place and at the right time of Enoch's visit. Furthermore, the description of the wall looking like a tessellated floor is accurate because the quartz is regularly interspersed with water-rounded black rocks that form the diamond shapes across the entire surface... We continued to inspect the site in a state of awe. Could this really be the place described by one of the ancient heroes of Jewish legend, who lived nearly 2,000 years even before Moses was born?"

More than 2,000 years before the time of King Solomon, Enoch visited some structure that embodied the technology needed to rebuild civilisation after a global flood. Knight and Lomas show that megalithic geo-mathematics was highly sophisticated. Dividing a circle into 366 degrees allowed them to relate seconds and minutes to distances on the ground based on the spin of the earth, its mass and its orbit around the sun. The Book of Enoch, rediscovered by an 18th century Freemason, describes in detail how to build a highly complex machine, which could be used to calculate many things about the earth, its movements and have long-term warnings of any comet that was on course for an Earth impact. In the story the designer of the machine is called Uriel.

The revelation that this is the true purpose of the great megalithic sites of Western Europe and that the Book of Enoch contains precise details of such a machine forms the revolutionary thesis contained in Uriel's Machine. Using hard science and their own reconstruction of an ancient technology, Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas put forward findings that will change the way we view both the origins of Freemasonry and man's distant past.

About the Authors

Christopher Knight, a graduate in advertising and graphic design, has always had a strong interest in social behaviour and belief systems, and for many years has been a consumer psychologist involved in the planning of new products and their marketing. He is the chairman of a marketing and advertising company.

Robert Lomas, electronic engineer and physicist, has worked on electronic weapon systems and has always had a keen interest in observational astronomy and the history of science. He currently lectures in Information Systems at Bradford University Management Centre.

Together, the pair have co-authored two bestsellers: The Hiram Key (1996) and The Second Messiah (1997), both published by Century.