Alford, Alan F., 1961-

Alan F. Alford (1961 – 14 November 2011) was a British writer and speaker on the subjects of ancient religion, mythology, and Egyptology. His first book Gods of the New Millennium (1996) drew on the ancient astronaut theory of Zecharia Sitchin and became a number 11 non-fiction bestseller in the UK. In his subsequent writings, however, he admitted to serious faults in his use of Sitchin's theory and proposed an alternative, cataclysm theory of ancient myth: "I am now firmly of the opinion that these gods personified the falling sky; in other words, the descent of the gods was a poetic rendition of the cataclysm myth which stood at the heart of ancient Near Eastern religions." Alford's recent work focuses on the importance of the creation myth in ancient Egyptian religion.