Part 14 (1/2)

Becoming equipped

The Utterances conventionally numbered 471, 472 and 473 in the ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts contain information of an extraordinary nature. In view of the importance of this information, we set it out in full below: I am the essence of a G.o.d, the son of a G.o.d, the messenger of a G.o.d, [says the Horus-King]. The Followers of Horus cleanse me, they bathe me, they dry me, they recite for me the Spell [formula] for Him who is on the Right Way, they recite for me the Spell of Him who Ascends, and I ascend to the sky.

I will go aboard this Bark of Re [the Solar Bark]... Every G.o.d will rejoice at meeting me as they rejoice at meeting Re [the sun] when he ascends from the eastern side of the sky in peace, in peace.

The sky quivers, the earth quakes before me, for I am a magician, I possess magic ... I have come that I may glorify Orion, that I may set Osiris at the head, that I may set the G.o.ds upon their thrones.

O Mahaf, Bull of the G.o.ds [Taurus-Hyades], bring me this [solar bark] and set me on yonder side ... The reed-floats of the sky are set down for me by the day-bark that I [the solar Horus-King] may go up on them to Re at the Horizon. The reed floats of the sky are brought down to me by the night bark that I may go up on them to Horakhti at the horizon. I go up on the eastern side of the sky where the G.o.ds are born, and I am born as Horus, as Him of the Horizon ... I have found the Akhus with their mouths equipped ...

'Who are you?' say they [the Akhus], with their mouths equipped.

'I am an Akhu with my mouth equipped.'

'How has this happened to you,' say they, the Akhus with their mouths equipped, 'that you have come to this place more n.o.ble than any place?'

'I have come to this place more n.o.ble than any place because: The reed-floats of the sky were set down for Re [the sun disc and the emblem of the Horus-King] that Re might cross [the Milky Way] on them to Horakhti at the Horizon ...'[571]

56. Artist's impression of the unique celestial conjunction that occurred at sunrise on the vernal equinox in the epoch of 10,500 bc.

These Utterances appear to describe an important part of the Horus-King's initiatory journey-an ordeal of questions and answers based on astronomical science wrapped up in esoteric symbols. The inquisitors are the 'Followers of Horus', also known as the Akhus (the 'Venerables', the 's.h.i.+ning Ones', the 'Transfigured Spirits', etc., etc.). Moreover, as we would expect, the Horus-King's cosmic journey begins in the Taurus-Hyades region of the sky, on the right bank of the Milky Way. and proceeds along the ecliptic path to end at Leo i.e. 'Horakhti', at the horizon. Here, at 'this place more n.o.ble than any place', the Akhus greet him-indeed he claims to have become an Akhu himself-and give him the final instructions or directions that he will need to complete his quest.

What we have to consider is the possibility that these final instructions might somehow have 'equipped' the Horus-King to make the necessary journey back in time, to the 'First Time', and into the cosmic Kingdom of Osiris when sky and ground were united in perfect harmony.

Unification

As the reader will recall from the previous chapter, the 'Followers of Horus' were said to have possessed 'a knowledge of divine origin' that was to be used to 'unify the country'. It is therefore presumably of relevance that large numbers of ancient Egyptian inscriptions and papyri make reference to an event known as 'the Uniting of the Two Lands'-an event that is eloquently related in the so-called Shabaka Texts (the 'Memphite Theology') which we have reviewed in Part III.

It is the scholarly consensus that the 'Unification of the Two Lands' was a political and economic 'federation' between southern and northern Egypt, resulting from the military conquest of the latter by the former, which supposedly occurred at around the year 3000 bc.[572] This conquest, as T. G. H. James informs us, 'was effected by a King known to history as Menes. No contemporary monument bears a royal name that can with certainty be read as Menes, but he is generally identified with King Narmer who is shown wearing both the red and white crowns [respectively of northern and southern Egypt] on a great palette [now in the Cairo Museum]. With the unification of the Kingdoms begins the historic period of Egypt.'[573]

Also sometimes referred to as 'King Scorpion' (after a symbol that appears on an archaic mace-head) we have already met Menes-Narmer.[574] We have noted, too, the strange Egyptological double standard by which he is accorded the status of a genuine historical figure whilst his predecessors-mentioned with equal prominence in the king-lists and Manetho-are dismissed as 'mythical beings'.

Indeed, Egyptologists speak with such immense confidence of 'the political consolidation of Egypt around 3000 bc' and of the 'unification under Narmer'[575] that one would suppose they were in possession of bundles upon bundles of ancient treaties, land deeds and historical records. The truth, however, as James half admits, is that nothing is known for sure about the supposed first Pharaoh of the First Dynasty. On the contrary, the whole of what we read about him, including his identification with 'Narmer', is scholarly speculation based on idiosyncratic interpretations of certain scenes-some of which depict battles-that are carved on the so-called 'Narmer Palette' and on certain votive mace-heads from Hierakonpolis (an ancient religious capital in southern Egypt).[576]

In short, Egyptology's case that 'the Unification of the Two Lands' refers to the political unification of northern and southern Egypt under Menes rests on three completely uninscribed artefacts which are carved with scenes that might bear such an interpretation-but that could also be interpreted in many other ways. These curious artefacts tell us precious little about Menes-Narmer himself,[577] let alone what his political and territorial aspirations-or those of anybody else-might have been circa 3000 bc in Egypt. Semi-legendary or semi-historical, Narmer (or Menes or 'King Scorpion'-take your pick) is thus the quintessential 'King Arthur' of Egyptology. And so, too, is his supposed 'Unification of Egypt'-which is also veiled in semi-mythical, semi-historical confusion, very much like the confederation of King Arthur's Round Table.[578]

Moreover the conclusion that Menes-Narmer was the first ruler to have been involved in the 'Unification of the Two Lands' clashes rudely with the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians themselves. Their records and traditions make it clear that there had been earlier 'Unifications' in the 'Time of the G.o.ds'-all going back to the original Kingdom of Osiris, the 'Kingdom of the ”First Time” ' which was torn asunder by Seth and then unified once again by Horus.

We do not think that this talk of 'Unification' was ever entirely to do with events that happened on the ground. Although we do not dispute that some form of political unification did indeed take place at around 3000 bc, we suspect that in dualistic Egypt a wider understanding of the whole issue will not be possible unless events in the sky are taken into account as well. Building on earlier work done by Egyptologist and archaeoastronomer Jane B. Sellers,[579] we suggest that the original notion of 'Unification'-to which all later attempts to 'Unify the Two Lands' were directly related-had something to do with the precessional drift of the stars ...

High and far-off times

In her landmark study The Death of G.o.ds in Ancient Egypt Sellers sets out persuasive astronomical and textual evidence to show that the prehistoric Egyptians-at least as far back as 7300 bc-had observed and tracked the slow precessionally induced changes that constantly relocate the cosmic 'address' of the constellation of Orion. And she argues that, although political unity was credited to Menes, there was a much older notion of the 'Unification' based not on events on earth but those observed in the sky ...[580] Indeed, she goes so far as to claim that Menes merely brought to fruition a very ancient and archetypal vision of cosmic duality which so perfectly harmonized with the mentality of the ancient Egyptians 'as to appear both inevitable and perennial': 'A dual monarchy united under the rule of one was a form that came from the mists of distant antiquity. It was a form that had been created for G.o.ds in the heavens, and how inevitable it was that an imitation of the cosmic order should prevail for men on earth.'[581]

Sellers supports her case by drawing on the late Henri Frankfort's studies of ancient Egyptian kings.h.i.+p. Like her, the former Professor of Precla.s.sical Antiquity at the University of London was firmly of the opinion that it was 'possible to view the unification of Egypt, not as the ephemeral outcome of conflicting ambitions, but as the revelation of a predestined order'.[582] And he was further convinced that 'the dual monarchy centred round Memphis realized a divine plan', that the social and state order established by Menes-Narmer was presented 'as part of the cosmic order',[583] and that Menes-Narmer, in establis.h.i.+ng himself as sole ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt, was performing 'an act in harmony with the Egyptian tendency to understand the world in dualistic terms, ”a series of pairs of contrasts balanced in unchanging equilibrium” ...'[584]

What Sellers was able to add to this, as a result of her own powerful insights into ancient Egyptian cosmology and observational astronomy, was the notion that events taking place on the ground were somehow directly conditioned by observations of the sky-and also that what was observed in the sky was described more or less accurately in certain 'myths': I am postulating the creation of specific myths to deal with distressing alterations in the sky, followed by an artificial duality, or symmetry, imposed, not just on the deities, but on geographical centres of wors.h.i.+p, and this duality remained a constant in Egyptian affairs throughout its history. It was harking back to a wonderful Golden Age, now lost, an age when the skies had had a magnificent balance, and the religion had been fresh and new ...'[585]

The Golden Age to which Sellers is referring is, of course, Zep Tepi, the 'First Time'. And the 'distressing alterations in the sky' which she believes that certain myths were created to explain were caused by the phenomenon of precession-specifically the precessional drift of the great constellation of Orion away from the station that it had occupied at the 'First Time'.[586]

These are daring and dangerous steps for an otherwise orthodox Egyptologist to have taken. Nevertheless, as we shall see in the next chapters, Sellers could be wrong in understanding the myths-by which she means princ.i.p.ally the Pyramid Texts and the Memphite Theology-merely as accounts fabricated by superst.i.tious priests to 'explain' precessional drift. The possibility needs to be confronted square on that elements of these ancient traditions, and the monuments and rituals that are so inextricably linked to them, could have been deliberately contrived as vehicles to carry an elaborate and ingenious 'message' from a past epoch otherwise long forgotten to a specific epoch in the future-from the 'First Time' to an astronomically defined 'Last Time'[587]-perhaps even to the very epoch in which we ourselves live today. Perhaps both epochs thus linked together are susceptible to accurate dating and decoding if only the right key can be found. And perhaps we may yet be able to read and understand the great cosmic blueprint that the 'Followers of Horus' sought to implement ...

Who knows what might result?

There might even come, to quote the words of Giorgio de Santillana, 'some kind of ”Renaissance” out of the hopelessly condemned and trampled past, when certain ideas come to life again ... We should not deprive our grandchildren of a last chance at the heritage of the highest and farthest-off times.'[588]

Chapter 15.

When the Sky Joined the Earth 'My Kingdom is not of this world. ...'

John 18:36 'Great is the Cosmic Order, for it has not changed since the time of Osiris, who put it there ...'

Ptahotep, a high priest of the Pyramid Age According to the Creation narrative of the ancient Egyptians, Nut, the Sky-G.o.ddess, and Geb, the earth-G.o.d, joined in s.e.xual union, but were then rudely separated by the intervention of Shu, the G.o.d of air, atmosphere and dryness. Nevertheless the union did produce offspring in the form of Isis and Osiris, Nepthys and Seth. And in due course, as we have seen, Osiris became the ruler of the idealized 'Kingdom of the ”First Time” ', was murdered by Seth, experienced resurrection, and then finally ascended into the heavens where he established the cosmic 'Kingdom' of the Duat. The reader will remember that a crucial role in effecting his 'astral rebirth' was played by Horus, his son by the widow Isis, the archetype for all the historical Horus-Kings of ancient Egypt-who revenged himself on Seth and later reunified the divided Kingdom.

It can thus be said that a kind of cosmic blueprint to establish-or reestablish-a unified 'Kingdom of Osiris' on earth had been devised from the outset by the 'G.o.ds' and thus long before the advent of 'historical' kings.h.i.+p by Menes-Narmer at the beginning of the third millennium bc.

Separation