Does This Make Sense To You?

From a four-part story on a Civil War photograph, I found this:

...I’ve found out, recently, that there were Egyptians in Meso-America. I had thought there were connections, but I had thought they were secondhand through an intermediate, perhaps through Phoenicians or Greeks or somebody. But I didn’t think they were directly Egyptian. But I now have massive evidence that they were.

ERROL MORRIS: And when you say massive evidence, for example?

DAVID HUMISTON KELLEY: Three different calendric types of continuity. That’s one sort. Then I’ve got over 30 deities and mythical place names, starting with Egypt itself. The Aztecs say that they came from Tlapallan, which is the ancient red land. And the Egyptians called their land red land/black land. The Aztecs actually called it Tlillan Tlapallan, which is black land/red land. And they were under the leadership of the inventor of the calendar, who was called Cipactonal. And Cipactli means “crocodile,” and Tona is “day” and is related to the word Tonatiuh, which is “sun god.” And Tona relates to Aton in Egypt. And Cipactli relates to Sebek or Sobek in Egypt. So you’ve got linguistic evidence for a very complex name...

...ERROL MORRIS: But you do believe, in principle, it is possible to recover the past?

DAVID HUMISTON KELLEY: Yes. But only in part. I don’t think we’re ever going to know how many times Egyptians sailed to the New World. I don’t think we’re going to know who the captains of any of the ships were or anything about the crews. We can say a lot about it, but we can never say the sorts of things that we can say about the Titanic. And there’s a lot we can’t say about that.

ERROL MORRIS: You use the word “similarities.” What makes one thing similar to another?

DAVID HUMISTON KELLEY: One, rarity of occurrence and two, specificity of unusual arbitrary characteristics. Arbitrary characteristics, particularly ones that are unusual, are good evidence. Things like a lion’s head with pink and white whiskers on a snake’s body. I’ve got the lion’s head in Egypt, and I’ve got jaguar heads in Meso-America, with the pink and white whiskers. I have jaguars with snake bodies, but they aren’t specifically identified with the jaguar with the whiskers. But still, when you put the two together, it makes a reasonable similarity with this Egyptian one. And it’s a very arbitrary similarity.

ERROL MORRIS: Arbitrary? In what sense?

DAVID HUMISTON KELLEY: Lions don’t have snakes’ bodies.

ERROL MORRIS: Ah.

DAVID HUMISTON KELLEY: They are very rarely thought of as having snakes’ bodies. Felines, of any sort, do not have snakes’ bodies. And neither do they have red and white whiskers.

ERROL MORRIS: Yes, it’s not something that would just happen accidentally, this kind of pattern?

DAVID HUMISTON KELLEY: That’s correct. It isn’t due to the common workings of the human mind. There are no other cultures anywhere in the world that I know of that have either a feline with a snake’s body or red and white whiskers.

ERROL MORRIS: Where can I read about this? Have you written this up?

DAVID HUMISTON KELLEY: There’s some of it in “Exploring Ancient Skies.” It’s in the last chapter, fairly near the beginning.