Did the priests of ancient Egypt really have knowledge of an earlier culture that they kept secret?
Absolutely, amongst many ancient cultures it was common practice for the Priesthood to be amongst the precious few groups of people in society who could read and write (this happened right up to medieaval England here!) and be the ‘keepers’ of knowledge. They revelled in this power and liked to keep the status quo because it elevated them above everyone else; therefore they were very selective who they gave out this knowledge to. Solon was obviously one of these lucky few. It is no wonder so much ancient knowledge was lost, when a precious few people tried to keep it secret for their own aims. Furthermore the ancient cultures that we know about from written history have so many similarities and there are so many ‘coincedences’ that it makes it completely implausible that they weren’t influenced by earlier cultures in some way, much in the same way Western culture is influenced by ancient Greek and Roman societies.
