Rosa Rubicondior: Bible Blunder - Archaeologists Find Evidence For a Creation Myth

Extracting drilled sediments.

Origins of Ancient Egypt’s Karnak Temple revealed – Uppsala University

An international team of archaeologists led by Dr Angus Graham of Uppsala University has shown that the temple to Amun-Ra at Karnak Temple Complex was originally built more than 3,000 years ago on an island formed when the Nile split into eastern and western channels. Their findings were published last October in the journal Antiquity.

One can easily imagine the jubilation with which Christian circles would greet the discovery of any credible archaeological evidence for Adam and Eve or Noah’s Ark. In practice, judging by the regular declarations of “proof” that appear on social media, almost any claim — no matter how tenuous or poorly authenticated — that can be retro-fitted to a biblical story is enthusiastically celebrated. It is hard to avoid the impression that this eagerness betrays a certain underlying insecurity.

Yet when archaeological discoveries appear to lend support to the origin myths of other cultures, the reaction is very different. The usual response is indifference, outright dismissal, or an appeal to the tentative nature of the evidence and the dangers of confirmation bias—precisely the same grounds on which much supposedly “biblical” evidence can be rejected, of course.

It will therefore be interesting to observe the reaction in Christian circles to this research from Karnak and its relevance to ancient Egyptian creation mythology, in which the land is caused to rise from the primordial waters by the creator. This bears an obvious resemblance to the later biblical motif of land being divided from the waters. The relatively high ground at Luxor is the only plausible candidate in the region for such a formation, and during periods of high Nile flood it would indeed have appeared as an island within a lake—an environment readily imbued with sacred significance by the temple builders.

Such parallels are not especially surprising. The ancient Near East was a densely interconnected cultural landscape in which ideas, myths, and cosmological frameworks circulated freely over centuries. Egyptian conceptions of creation—particularly the emergence of land from primeval waters—pre-date the composition of the Hebrew Bible by many centuries and would have been well known, directly or indirectly, throughout the eastern Mediterranean. When the authors of Book of Genesis framed their own creation narrative, they were not writing in a cultural vacuum, but drawing upon a shared mythological vocabulary that had long been established in the region.

The team also uncovered evidence that the eastern Nile channel was deliberately infilled with sand, accelerating a silting process that was already under way. These conclusions are based on detailed analysis of 61 sediment cores taken from in and around the temple complex, along with thousands of ceramic fragments recovered from the site.

Origin Myths from Other Cultures. Across the ancient world, societies developed creation stories to explain the origin of land, life, and cosmic order. Although culturally distinct, many of these myths share strikingly similar themes—particularly the emergence of order from water or chaos.

Ancient Mesopotamia (Babylonian)
In the Babylonian creation epic, the Enuma Elish, the universe begins as a mingling of primordial waters embodied by the deities Apsu (fresh water) and Tiamat (salt water). Creation follows a cosmic struggle in which the god Marduk defeats Tiamat and fashions the ordered world from her divided body—establishing land, sky, and the celestial order from watery chaos.

Ancient Egypt
Egyptian cosmology features several regional variants, but a common theme is the primeval waters (Nun), from which the first land—the benben mound—emerges. Upon this mound the creator god (often Atum or Ra) brings the cosmos into being. The idea of sacred land rising from water was deeply embedded in Egyptian religious thought and temple symbolism.

Ancient Near East / Hebrew Tradition
In the opening verses of the Book of Genesis, creation begins with a formless, watery deep over which God moves before separating the waters and causing dry land to appear. The structure and imagery closely mirror older Near Eastern cosmologies, though reframed within a monotheistic theology.

Indus and Vedic Traditions (South Asia)
Early Vedic hymns, preserved in the Rigveda, describe creation as arising from an undefined, dark, watery state. In some hymns, existence emerges through cosmic heat, sacrifice, or self-generation rather than divine command, reflecting philosophical speculation rather than narrative certainty.

Mesoamerica (Maya)
The Maya creation account recorded in the Popol Vuh describes a primordial sea and sky before the gods bring forth land, plants, animals, and eventually humans. Early attempts at human creation fail, emphasising trial, error, and refinement rather than instantaneous perfection.

Norse Tradition
In Norse mythology, the cosmos begins in the void of Ginnungagap, between realms of fire and ice. As ice melts, the giant Ymir forms, from whose body the world is later constructed. While less water-centred, the theme of creation from chaos and dismemberment echoes patterns seen elsewhere.

Common Themes
Despite vast cultural separation, these myths repeatedly invoke:

primordial waters or chaos,
emergence or separation of land,
sacred geography, and
creation as a process rather than a single moment.

Such similarities strongly suggest cultural transmission, shared symbolic language, and the human tendency to explain the world using familiar natural phenomena—rather than independent revelation of literal historical events.

Their work is also the subject of an Uppsala University press release.

Origins of Ancient Egypt’s Karnak Temple revealed
The most comprehensive geoarchaeological survey of Egypt’s Karnak Temple complex has been carried out by an international research team led from Uppsala University. The temple is one of the ancient world’s largest temple complexes and part of a UNESCO World Heritage site within the modern-day city of Luxor.
The study, published in Antiquity reveals new evidence on the foundation of the temple, possible links to ancient Egyptian mythology, and new insights about the interplay between the temple’s riverine landscape and the people who established, occupied and developed the complex over its 3,000 years of use.

Our research presents the clearest understanding of the landscape upon which the ancient Egyptians founded their temple at Karnak approximately 4000 years ago.

Dr Angus Graham, co-lead author
Department of Archaeology
Ancient History and Conservation
Uppsala Universitet
Uppsala, Sweden.

From Flooded Land to Temple Foundation

Karnak temple is located 500 meters east of the present-day River Nile near Luxor, at the Ancient Egyptian religious capital of Thebes, but this was not always the case.

The team analysed 61 sediment cores from within and around the temple site and studied tens of thousands of ceramic fragments to help date their findings. Using this evidence, the team have been able to interpret how the landscapes and waterscapes around the site changed throughout its history.

They found that prior to about 2520 BCE, the site would have been unsuitable for permanent occupation as it would have been regularly flooded by fast-flowing water from the Nile. The earliest occupation at Karnak would have likely been during the Old Kingdom (c.2591–2152 BCE). Ceramic fragments found at the site support this finding, with the earliest dating from sometime between c.2305 to 1980 BCE.

The land on which Karnak was founded was formed when river channels cut their beds to the west and east of a terrace, creating an island of high ground in what is now the east/south-east area of the temple precinct. This emerging island provided the foundation for occupation and early construction of Karnak temple.

A New Interpretation of the Temple Site's Role

Over subsequent centuries and millennia, the river channels either side of the site migrated, creating more space for the temple complex to develop.

Researchers were surprised to find that the eastern channel – until this study not much more than a supposition – was more well-defined, and perhaps even larger than the channel to the west, which archaeologists had previously focussed on.

What also surprised us was the longevity of this eastern channel. It remains a very minor channel until the arrival of the Romans in the first century BCE. We also have evidence of how the Ancient Egyptians engineered the landscape. They may well have been impatient to expand their temple footprint as they dumped desert sands into a minor river channel that was already starting to silt up.

Dr Angus Graham.

The Landscape Reflects the Creation Myth

This new knowledge of the temple’s landscape has striking similarities to an Ancient Egyptian creation myth, leading the team to believe that the decision to locate the temple here could have been linked to the religious views of its inhabitants.

Ancient Egyptian texts of the Old Kingdom say that the creator god manifested as high ground, emerging from ‘the lake’. The island upon which Karnak was found is the only known such area of high ground surrounded by water in the area.

It’s tempting to suggest the Theban elites chose Karnak’s location for the dwelling place of a new form of the creator god, ‘Ra-Amun’, as it fitted the cosmogonical scene of high ground emerging from surrounding water. Later texts of the Middle Kingdom (c.1980–1760 BC) develop this idea, with the ‘primeval mound’ rising from the ‘Waters of Chaos’. During this period, the abating of the annual flood would have echoed this scene, with the mound on which Karnak was built appearing to ‘rise’ and grow from the receding floodwaters.

Dr Ben Pennington, co-lead author.
School of Geography & Environmental Science
University of Southampton
Southampton, UK.

Publication:
Pennington BT, Graham A, Masson-Berghoff A, et al.
Conceptual origins and geomorphic evolution of the temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak (Luxor, Egypt). Antiquity. Published online 2025:1-15. doi:10.15184/aqy.2025.10185

The paper has built upon the project’s 2024 Nature Geoscience paper (doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01451-z), which demonstrates how climatic and environmental changes have shaped the landscape of the Egyptian Nile Valley over the past 11,500 years.

What this discovery ultimately highlights is the asymmetry in how archaeological evidence is treated by creationists. When ambiguous or misinterpreted finds appear to align with biblical stories, they are triumphantly proclaimed as confirmation. When well-documented, peer-reviewed research illuminates the mythological foundations of other cultures—and in doing so exposes the likely antecedents of biblical narratives—it is quietly ignored or dismissed as irrelevant. Evidence, it seems, is only compelling when it flatters prior belief.

The research at Karnak does not demonstrate that any creation myth is literally true. Rather, it shows how human societies anchor cosmological stories to striking features of the landscape and how sacred narratives evolve from real, observable environments. The parallels between Egyptian cosmology and the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis are best explained not by divine revelation, but by cultural inheritance, adaptation, and reinterpretation over centuries.

For creationism, this presents a familiar problem. The more archaeology, geology, and history reveal about the ancient world, the clearer it becomes that the Bible sits firmly within that world, shaped by it and dependent upon it. Far from standing apart as a uniquely inspired account of cosmic origins, it increasingly resembles what it actually is: one regional mythology among many, repackaged and retrospectively elevated to universal truth.

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