The message of the Sphinx: a quest for the hidden legacy of mankind (20 page)

40. Summer solstice in the epoch of 2500 BC: the
Duat
region. Note that Orion’s belt at this crucial observational moment was
nut
at the meridian but in the south-east and thus far to the left of the point in the sky targeted by the southern shaft of the King’s Chamber. The sky seems somehow out of kilter and one has the uncomfortable feeling that the belt stars need to be drawn round to the south, and specifically to the meridian, so that they can interlock with the shaft that targets them.

Looking at the simulation, everything seems out of kilter—dislocated—and one has the uncomfortable feeling that the stars of Orion’s belt need somehow to be drawn round to the south, and specifically to the meridian, so that they can interlock with the shaft that targets them.

We suspect that for the ancient Egyptians this curious and unsettling ‘dislocation’ of the sky served as the stimulus for an esoteric journey which was undertaken on the ground by the Pharaohs themselves following celestial clues.

As we shall see in subsequent chapters their quest may have been for something of immense importance. But in order to understand why, we must first find out who the Sphinx is.

Chapter 9

The Sphinx and its Horizons

‘The Sphinx has a Genesis, and that was the lion ...’

Egyptologist Selim Hassan,
The Sphinx,
Cairo 1949

‘[The constellation of] Leo resembles the animal after which it is named. A right triangle of stars outline the back legs ... the front of the constellation, like a giant backward question mark, defines the head, mane, and front legs. At the base of the question mark is Regulus, the heart of the lion ...’

Nancy Hathaway,
Friendly Guide to the Universe,
NY 1994

Even a casual review of the religious texts of the ancient Egyptians leaves no doubt that they regarded their earthly environment as a sacred landscape which they had inherited from the gods. It was their absolute conviction that in the remote golden age called the ‘First Time’ Osiris had established a sort of ‘cosmic kingdom’ in the Memphite region which had been passed on to his son Horus and thence through him, down the cycles of the epochs, to subsequent generations of human ‘Horus-Kings’—i.e. to the living Pharaohs of Egypt.

We have seen that the essence of this sacred ‘Kingdom of Osiris’ was the peculiar dualism with which it was connected to an area of the sky known as the
Duat,
close to Orion and Sirius on the western side of the Milky Way. We have also seen how the centre of the
Duat
was called Rostau and how Rostau, too, existed in both cosmic and terrestrial realms: in the heavens it was characterized by the three stars of Orion’s belt and on earth by the three great Pyramids of Giza. Last but not least, we have seen how the ancient Egyptians of the Pyramid Age particularly observed the
Duat
as it lay along the eastern horizon in the pre-dawn at the time of the summer solstice.

The important word here is ‘horizon’. It will prove to be the key to the mystery of who—or what—the Great Sphinx really represents.

Celestial reflections

With the aid of computer simulations, and a little imagination, let us journey to the epoch of 2500 BC, when the Pyramid Texts were compiled, and set our location at Heliopolis on the observatory platform of the astronomer priests. The time of year is the summer solstice, the moment of observation is the pre-dawn, and we are looking in the general direction of the eastern horizon. This means that we have our backs turned to the Giza Pyramids which lie across the Nile some twelve miles to our west.

Looking east also means that we are looking at the
Duat.
And as our computer reconstructs the skies our eyes are drawn to that region of the
Duat
known as Rostau which manifests the celestial counterparts of the three great Pyramids—the three stars of Orion’s belt glimmering in the pre-dawn.

Having registered this image we set our direction towards the west, towards the Pyramids. The bodies of the distant monuments are still cloaked in darkness but the first hint of the rising sun lights up their capstones with an astral glimmer ...

So we can see that there is a sense in which the Giza necropolis is itself a kind of ‘horizon’—i.e. that its three pyramids form a reflection in the west of the three ‘stars of Rostau’ that observers in 2500 BC would have seen on the eastern horizon of Heliopolis in the pre-dawn at the summer solstice. Perhaps this is precisely what was meant by an otherwise cryptic inscription on the granite stela between the paws of the Sphinx which speaks of Giza not only as the ‘Splendid Place of the “First Time” ’ as we have seen, but also as the ‘Horizon of Heliopolis in the West’.
[346]

Astronomer-priests

When the Pyramid Texts were compiled in the epoch of 2500 BC, the religious centre of the Pharaonic state was at Heliopolis—the ‘City of the Sun’, called
On
or
Innu
by the ancients, which now lies completely buried under the Al Matareya suburb of modern Cairo.
[347]
Heliopolis was the earliest cult centre of the sun-god
Re
in his form as
Atum,
the ‘Father of the Gods’. The Heliopolitan priests were high initiates in the mysteries of the heavens and their dominant occupation was the observation and recording of the various motions of the sun and the moon, the planets and the stars.
[348]

Much leads us to conclude that they benefited from a vast heritage of experience based on such observations, accumulated over enormously long periods of time. At any rate, the ancient Greek and Roman scholars—who were at least two millennia closer to the ancient Egyptians than we are today—were constantly in awe at the high knowledge and wisdom of the Heliopolitan and Memphite priests and especially of their astronomical science.

For example, as early as the fifth century BC, Herodotus (the so-called ‘Father of History’) displayed great reverence for the priests of Egypt and attributed to them the discovery of the solar year and the invention of the twelve signs of the zodiac—which he says the Greeks later borrowed. ‘In my opinion,’ he wrote, ‘their method of calculation is better than that of the Greeks.’
[349]

In the fourth century BC the learned Aristotle—who was tutor to Alexander the Great—similarly recognized that the Egyptians were advanced astronomers ‘whose observations have been kept for very many years past, and from whom much of our evidence about particular stars is derived’.
[350]

Plato, too, relates how the Egyptian priests observed the stars ‘for 10,000 years or, so to speak, for an infinite time’.
[351]
Likewise Diodorus of Sicily, who visited Egypt in 60 BC, insisted that ‘the disposition of the stars as well as their movements have always been the subject of careful observations among the Egyptians’ and that ‘they have preserved to this day records concerning each of these stars over an incredible number of years ...
[352]

Perhaps most significantly of all, the Lycian Neoplatonist, Proclus, who studied at Alexandria in the fifth century AD, confirmed that it was not the Greeks but the Egyptians who discovered the phenomenon of Precession: ‘Let those, who believe in observations, cause the stars to move around the poles of the zodiac by one degree in one hundred years [meaning the Precession rate] towards the east, as Ptolemy and Hipparchus did before him know ... that the Egyptians had already taught Plato about the movement of the fixed stars ...’
[353]

Modern historians and Egyptologists, who are unanimous in the view that the Egyptians were poor astronomers,
[354]
choose to discount such statements as frivolous outcries by misinformed Greeks and Romans. These same scholars all do accept, however, that the priestly centre at Heliopolis was already remotely ancient at the dawn of the Pyramid Age and that it had been sacred since time immemorial to the supreme deity named Atum, the ‘Self-Created’.
[355]

So who or what exactly was Atum?

Living image of Atum

Addressing the first annual meeting of the prestigious Egypt Exploration Fund on 3 July 1883, the eminent Swiss Egyptologist Edouard Naville had this to say about Atum: ‘there can be no doubt that the lion or the sphinx is a form of Atum ...’
[356]

Naville went on to cite what he considered as sufficient evidence for such a conclusion:

I will cite only one proof, this is the deity Nefer-Atum. This deity can be represented with the head of a lion ... normally he has a human form, and wears on his head a lotus from which emerge two straight plumes. Sometimes the two emblems [lion and human] are united and between the head of the lion and the plume there is the bird [hawk] of Horus.
[357]

Though initially a confusing element, we shall see that the hawk symbolism of Horus crops up frequently in connection with this mystery and gradually begins to take its place in the overall pattern that will emerge. Meanwhile, much else confirms that Atum, the primordial creator god, was regarded by the ancient Egyptians as being primarily leonine or sphinx-like in form.

In the Pyramid Texts, for example, we frequently encounter the designation
Rwty,
normally translated as the ‘double-lion’
[358]
because the hieroglyphic sign shows two lions either side by side or one above the other.
[359]
It is generally accepted, however, that a finer meaning for the term is ‘the creature who has the form of a lion’ or ‘he who resembles the lion’, and that the significance of the double-lion hieroglyph is that it emphasizes the dual and cosmic nature of
Rwty
.
[360]
The Egyptologist Le Page Renouf wrote that
Rwty
represents ‘a single god with a lion’s face or form’.
[361]
And for Selim Hassan ‘
Rwty
was a god in the form of a lion’. In Hassan’s view the choice of the double-lion hieroglyph was very probably linked in some way to the fact that: ‘sphinxes are always found in pairs when guarding temple door-ways, and the function
of Rwty
is also that of a guardian.’
[362]

Moreover, in line 2032 of the Pyramid Texts, as Hassan points out: ‘it is said of the King: “He is taken to
Rwty
and presented to Atum” ... [and] in the so-called
Book of the Dead
... it says (Ch. 3, line 1): “O Atum, who appears as master of the lake, who shines as
Rwty”
...’
[363]

Indeed, there are many such places in the texts where
Rwty
and Atum are linked. One typical passage states: ‘O Atum, spiritualize me in the presence
of Rwty
...’
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And elsewhere we read: ‘Lift up this king’s double to the god, lead him to
Rwty,
cause him to mount up to Atum ... The King’s rank is high in the Mansion of
Rwty
.’
[365]

Such syncretism with
Rwty
strongly supports a ‘lion-like’ or ‘sphinx-like’ appearance for Atum. We should therefore not be surprised to discover that in ancient Egyptian religious art Atum is often depicted as a sphinx wearing the characteristic headgear of this god—a tall crown with a plume and lotus.
[366]
From such depictions many leading Egyptologists have concluded that the Great Sphinx at Giza, though allegedly bearing the face of Khafre, may also have been regarded as an image of Atum.
[367]
Indeed, as we saw in Part I, one of the most enduring of the many titles by which the Sphinx was known to the ancient Egyptians was
Sheshep-ankh Atum
(literally ‘living image of Atum’)
[368]
—so we need be in little doubt about this identification.

Atum, Re and Horakhti

Despite all of Atum’s well-known Lion-Sphinx characteristics, modern Egyptologists have a tendency to ignore his intense leonine symbolism when discussing his cosmic attributes. More often than not they confine themselves to dishing out certain vague generalities to the effect that Atum was the ‘sun-god and creator of the universe’, and that his name: ‘... carries the idea of “totality” in the sense of an ultimate and unalterable state of perfection. Atum is frequently called “The Lord of Heliopolis”, the major centre of sun worship. The presence of another solar deity on this site, Re, leads to a coalescence of the two gods into
Re-Atum
...’
[369]

Egyptologist Rosalie David informs us that at the opening of the Pyramid Age ‘the god Re [or Ra] had taken over the cult of an earlier god Atum ... [thus]
Re-Atum
was now worshipped as the creator of the world according to the Heliopolitan theology, and his priests sought to distinguish his various characteristics’.
[370]

One of these important characteristics, Davies adds, was Re’s manifestation as
‘Re-Horakhti’
.
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Since the literal meaning of
Horakhti
is “Horus-of-the-Horizon”,
[372]
it would seem that what we are to envisage in this latest piece of ancient Egyptian syncretism is a coalescence of the sun’s disc with such a deity. Furthermore, as astronomers and astrologers are well aware, the disc of the sun does, in fact, ‘coalesce’ with (or ‘enter the house’ of) certain star groups—the twelve constellations of the zodiac—at regular intervals throughout the year. So it is reasonable to wonder whether ‘Horus-of-the-Horizon’ i.e. Horakhti, could in fact be one of these zodiacal constellations.

The Egyptologist Hermann Kees also gave consideration to the subjects of Heliopolis and Horakhti. In the light of what is about to follow, his remarks are extremely relevant: ‘The particular worship peculiar to Heliopolis was that of the stars. From the worship of the stars evolved the worship of Re in the form of ‘Horus-of-the-Horizon ...’
[373]

We suggest that this conclusion is in the main correct, though not quite in the manner Kees saw it. We believe that it was not merely from a general ‘worship of the stars’ but rather from an ancient stellar image—that of a specific zodiacal constellation—that the composite deity
Re-Horakhti
was derived.

Horakhti is represented in ancient Egyptian reliefs as a man with a hawk’s head, on top of which rests the solar disc.
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In this way both the god Horus (symbolized by the hawk) and the sun in the ‘horizon’ are identified with the Pharaoh-King—regarded as the living embodiment of Horus.
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The Orientalist Lewis Spence noted additionally that the lion ‘was identified to the solar deities, with the sun-god Horus [and] Re’.
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Frequently, too, we find composite lion-hawk representations of the King in ancient depictions. For example, there is a relief from the sun-temple of Pharaoh Sahure at Abusir (Fifth Dynasty,
circa
2350 BC) which shows the King as a winged lion and also as a lion with a hawk’s head.
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