The message of the Sphinx: a quest for the hidden legacy of mankind (18 page)

35. Rising points of the sun at the solstices and equinoxes as observed from the Memphite necropolis. In the epoch of 2500 BC—the ‘Pyramid Age’—the
Duat
was observed and considered to be active only at the time of the summer solstice when the stars of Orion and Sirius rose heliacally (i.e. just ahead of the sun) at dawn.

In fact there is only one time of the year when this ‘swallowing-up’ occurs—a time that slowly alters down the epochs because of the earth’s precessional motion. The long and the short of it is that in the Pyramid Age the specific phenomena described in the texts, and addressed by Hassan (phenomena known technically as the ‘heliacal risings’ of Orion and Sirius, i.e. the risings of these stars just ahead of the sun at dawn) could only have been observed at around midsummer—i.e.
at the summer solstice
.
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The
Duat,
in other words, was considered by the ancient Egyptians to be active
only
at the time of the summer solstice when Orion and Sirius rose heliacally and not, as Hassan suggests, throughout the year.

With these facts in mind, let us attempt to reinterpret the cosmic
Duat,
this time placing it in its proper astronomical context.

Cosmic river

One of the most salient features of the
Duat,
as it is described in the ancient Egyptian texts, is its relationship to a great cosmic ‘river’ called the ‘Winding Waterway’. Several studies have confirmed beyond any serious doubt that the ‘Winding Waterway’ was the magical band of light meandering across the sky that we know as the ‘Milky Way’.
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It is also evident that the ancient priest-astronomers who compiled the Pyramid Texts identified the terrestrial counterpart of this ‘Winding Waterway’ in the sky as the River Nile and its yearly flood, the ‘Great Inundation’, which also happened to coincide with the summer solstice:
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The Winding Waterway is flooded, the Fields of Rushes are filled with water, and I am ferried over thereon to yonder eastern side of the Sky, the place where the gods fashioned me ... [Orion’s] sister is Sothis [Sirius] ...
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I have come to my waterways which are in the bank of the Flood of the Great Inundation, to the place of contentment ... which is in the Horizon ...
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May you lift me and raise me to the Winding Waterway, may you set me among the gods, the Imperishable stars ...
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As Sir E. A. Wallis Budge rightly observed: ‘the Egyptians ... from the earliest times ... depicted to themselves a material heaven [the
Duat
] ... on the banks of a Heavenly Nile, whereon they built cities.’
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And similarly the philologist Raymond Faulkner, who translated the Pyramid Texts and much of the other religious literature of ancient Egypt into English, could not avoid making the obvious correlations between the ‘celestial river’, the ‘Winding Waterway’ and the Milky Way.
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Kingdom of Osiris in the sky

The stars of Orion and Sirius are located on the right bank of the Milky Way, which—at the summer solstice in the Pyramid Age—would have appeared as a vertical ‘cosmic river’ in the pre-dawn in the east.

To the ancient Egyptians, therefore, the
Duat
could not possibly have been seen merely as some vague, blank, rose-tinted region somewhere over the eastern horizon. On the contrary, it clearly had an extremely specific address in the sky—the ‘Dwelling Place’ of ‘Orion and Sirius’ on the banks of the ‘celestial Nile’:

Be firm O Osiris-King [Orion] on the underside of the sky with the Beautiful Star [Sirius] upon the bend of the Winding Waterway ...
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Betake yourself to the Waterway ... May a stairway to the
Duat
be set for you to the place where Orion is ...
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O King, you are this Great Star, the companion of Orion, who traverses the sky with Orion, who navigates [in] the
Duat
with Osiris ...’
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36. The sky region of the
Duat
with the stars of Orion and Sirius rising heliacally just ahead of the sun at dawn on the summer solstice. It was at this time of the year, and at this moment only, that the
Duat
was considered to be ‘active’. Note that the Milky Way at this same moment appeared as a vertical ‘cosmic river’ in the east. Also shown is the trajectory of the Orion stars after their dawn rising until their culmination at the meridian.

With this starry landscape in mind, we can begin to conjure up a fairly detailed image of the
Duat,
the ‘Kingdom of Osiris’ in the sky—a distinct pattern of stars, at a specific celestial location, that comes complete with its own ‘cosmic Nile’.

But when was this cosmic kingdom ‘founded’?

‘First Time’

In their most profound and beautiful religious texts, as we noted in Part I, the ancient Egyptians spoke of ‘the time of the gods’,
Zep Tepi
(literally the ‘First Time’) with the unshakeable conviction that there had indeed been such an epoch. In other words, they believed that
Zep Tepi
had been an actual, historical event. In line with their prevailing dualism they also believed that it had been projected and ‘recorded’ in the catalogue of the starry sky. Indeed it was a story that was re-enacted endlessly in the cosmic setting by the cyclical displays of the celestial orbs and the constellations.

What they had in mind, in other words, was a kind of cosmic ‘passion play’, expressed in the language of allegorical astronomy, in which each main character was identified with a specific celestial body. Re was the sun, Osiris was Orion, Isis was the star Sirius, Thoth was the moon—and so on and so forth. Nor was the drama only confined to the celestial realms; on the contrary, as one might expect in dualistic ancient Egypt, it was also re-enacted on the ground, amidst the cosmic ambiance of the astronomical Pyramids of Giza, where the events of the ‘First Time’ were commemorated for millennia in secret rituals and liturgies.
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Very little is known about these liturgies, or about the myths they expressed. As the Egyptologist R. T. Rundle Clark explains:

The creation of the myths was founded on certain principles. These are strange and, as yet, only partially understood. The most important element seems to have been as follows:

(a) The basic principles of life, nature and society were determined by the gods long ago, before the establishment of kingship. This epoch—
Zep Tepi
—‘the First Time’—stretched from the first stirring of the High God in the Primeval Waters to the settling of Horus upon the throne and the redemption of Osiris. All proper myths relate events or manifestations of this epoch.

(b) Anything whose existence or authority had to be justified or explained must be referred to the ‘First Time’. This was true for natural phenomena, rituals, royal insignia, the plans of temples, magical or medical formulae, the hieroglyphic system of writing, the calendar—the whole paraphernalia of the civilization ...
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Rundle Clark has also recognized that Egyptian art ‘is nearly all symbolism’, that ‘the architectural arrangements and decoration were a kind of mythical landscape’ worked down to the last detail, and that everything had a meaning:

The shrine [tomb or pyramid complex] of the god [the king], for instance, was the ‘Horizon’, the land of glorious light beyond the dawn horizon where the gods dwelt. The Temple was an image of the universe as it now existed and, at the same time, the land on which it stood was the Primeval Mound which arose from the waters of the Primeval Ocean at Creation ... At the close of the daily temple service, the priests raised a small figure of
Maat
(the goddess of Law and Order) in front of the divine image. This act was meant to assert that Tightness and order had been re-established, but it was also a repetition of an event that took place at the beginning of the world ... of some mythical happening in the time of the gods ...
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Golden Age and the entry of evil

In later chapters we shall be returning to take a closer look at this ‘First Time’ of the gods. Here, however, it is sufficient to note that
Zep Tepi
was regarded as a mysterious and wonderful golden age that had immediately followed Creation. Furthermore, in the minds of the ancient Egyptians at least, this golden age had not occurred in some hard-to-find never-never land like the Biblical ‘Garden of Eden’ but in a familiar and unmistakably real physical and historical setting. Indeed it was their emphatic belief that the huge triangular region just south of the apex of the Nile Delta encompassing Heliopolis, Memphis and Giza was the actual geographical location of the events of the ‘First Time’—a real ‘Garden of Eden’, in short, with real geographical features and places. It was here, amidst this sacred landscape, that the gods of the ‘First Time’ were said in the texts to have established their earthly kingdom.
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And what was the cultural character of that Kingdom? Rundle Clark gives the best summary:

... all that was good or efficacious was established on the principles laid down in the ‘First Time’—which was, therefore, a golden age of absolute perfection—‘before rage or clamour or strife or uproar had come about’. No death, disease or disaster occurred in this blissful epoch, known variously as ‘the time of Re’, ‘the time of Osiris’, or ‘the time of Horus’ ...
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37. The huge triangular region just south of the apex of the Nile Delta encompassing Heliopolis, Memphis and Giza was regarded by the ancient Egyptians as the actual geographical location of the events of the ‘First Time’—a sort of geodetic ‘Garden of Eden’ focused on astronomical latitude 30 degrees north.

The gods Osiris and Horus, together with Re (in his composite form as Re-Atum, the ‘Father’ of the gods) were regarded by the ancient Egyptians as the supreme expressions and exemplars of the ‘blissful epoch of the “First Time” ’.
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Osiris they remembered in particular for having been the first to sit on the throne of this divine Kingdom, which he ruled jointly with his consort Isis.
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The golden age of plenty over which the royal couple presided (during which agriculture and animal husbandry were taught to humans and laws and religious doctrines were set for them) was however brought to an abrupt and violent halt when Osiris was murdered by his brother, Seth. Left without child, Isis brought the dead Osiris back to life for long enough to receive his seed. As a result of this union she, in due course, gave birth to Horus whose destiny it was to wrangle back the ‘kingdom of Osiris’ from the clutches of his evil uncle Seth.

Shabaka texts

In all its essential elements this is, of course, the story that we know as Hamlet (which has a far older pedigree than the Shakespeare play
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), and it is also, in its most recent Hollywood manifestation, the story of the
Lion King
(brother murders brother, bereaved son of the murder victim takes revenge on his uncle and sets the Kingdom to rights).

The original Egyptian version of the story—the so-called ‘Memphite Theology’—is found in texts inscribed on a monument known as the ‘Shabaka Stone’, now in the British Museum.
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Here we read how, after a great quarrel between Horus and Seth (in which Horus lost an eye and Seth a testicle) Geb, the earth-god (the father of Osiris and Isis), summoned the Great Council of the Gods—the nine-member ‘Ennead’ of Heliopolis—and with them passed judgement between Horus and Seth:

Geb, lord of the gods, commanded the Nine Gods to gather to him. He judged between Horus and Seth; he ended their quarrel. He made Seth king of Upper Egypt, up to the place in which he was born, which is Su. And Geb made Horus king of Lower Egypt, up to the place in which his father [Osiris] was drowned
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which is ‘Division-of-the-Two-Lands’. Thus Horus stood over one region, and Seth stood over one region. They made peace over the Two Lands at Ayan. That was the division of the Two Lands ...
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