In this video, we explore the astonishing discovery of an Egyptian temple buried in Eastern Tennessee during the construction of Norris Dam in 1934.
James Rendel Harris, a professor of ancient languages, linked the site to legends from the Cherokee about a mysterious priesthood known as the Anikutani.
Join us as we delve into these incredible findings and their historical significance.
Remember back in the 1930s when archeologists found an Egyptian temple buried in Eastern Tennessee? That's okay. Not a lot of people do, but back in 1934 they were building something called Norris Dam just North of Knoxville, Tennessee. The Tennessee Valley Authority started surveying the valley that the Norris Dam was going to flood.
They found many native mounds and started excavating a bit and found some really extraordinary things. As they started digging, they found layer after layer and went down over 20 foot until they found a 100 foot by 100 foot platform with a large raised area in the center. They called this a temple. As they dug deeper and deeper, they found multiple skeletons on the site, unlike any that they'd found in the area.
And the site itself kept getting deeper and deeper. It appeared to just keep going. At the time, it caused quite an uproar, and over 400 workers were excavating that site. They found multiple relics that were unlike anything they had seen in the area, including a pigment box that held a shade of purple that could only be found in sea mollusks, and was completely unknown in North America.
Good. The site gained the attention of James Rendel Harris, a professor of ancient
languages from Cambridge, and later Johns Hopkins University. Harris came up with some very interesting conclusions. And I quote, Who raised the mounds of earth over a much older temple built by pharaonic Egyptian emigres to the most important deities Isis the queen of heaven and her husband Osiris the god of resurrection I have his book on order as well as the 400 page book on the excavation from the Smithsonian So I'll undoubtedly be speaking about this more in a future video But for now that area has some very interesting correspondences with legends from the Cherokee The Cherokee have legends about a group of priesthood that lived in their area called the Ani Kutani.
This priesthood was wiped out. Now I'm going to read this directly from a historical source so you know it's not my words. Quote, from Cherokee Principal Chief Charles Hicks in 1826 in his manuscript, The History of the Cherokee People, The mound builders were greatly weakened by a plague. We entered the North Carolina mountains from the west and we killed and drove off the mound builders.
End We burned their temples atop the mounds and then constructed our towns and houses on the mounds. The Cherokee never built any mounds. Further on, quote, The Ani Kutani professed themselves, as stated by the traditioners, to be the teachers of heavenly knowledge from the creation, and the manner of their introduction to the assembled people is usually at night.
And it usually came with the words, I am from above. The name was a foreign word to the Cherokee, but Kutani came to mean somebody who starts a fire or a sorcerer. The end. These tales all come from the area of Eastern Tennessee, right where that temple is. And that temple is now under a lake.