The message of the Sphinx: a quest for the hidden legacy of mankind (21 page)

41. The path of the sun (the ecliptic) passing through the twelve zodiacal constellations as they are depicted in the famous Denderah Zodiac from Upper Egypt. The sun’s disc ‘coalesces’ with (and is said to be ‘housed by’) each of these constellations, one after the other, month by month, during the course of the solar year.

42. Horakhti, ‘Horus-of-the-Horizon’, was frequently depicted in ancient Egyptian reliefs as a man with a hawk’s head on top of which rests the solar disc.

In summary, therefore, we seem to be looking at the various symbolic expressions of a lengthy process: in prehistoric times a primordial god, Atum, whose form was the lion or the Sphinx, was worshipped by the Heliopolitan priests; then, in the Pyramid Age, Atum was ‘coalesced’ with Re, whose form was the sun’s disc, and finally with Hawk-headed Horakhti—Horus-of-the-Horizon—symbolizing the Horus-King.

The result was the syncretized deity
Atum-Re-Horakhti
whose combined symbolism originated from the leonine or Sphinx-like image of Atum. Somehow this composite or ‘coalesced’ image was then made manifest in the ‘Horizon’ in the early Pyramid Age.

In that epoch, as the reader will recall, the focus of the astronomer-priests was on the summer solstice, when the
Duat
was active in the eastern sky. In what zodiacal sign, seen on the eastern horizon, did this all important ‘coalescence’ take place?

Horus, Dweller-in-the-Horizon

When Edouard Naville was excavating certain New Kingdom remains in Egypt’s delta region north of Cairo in 1882-3, he was struck by the fact that a large number of the monuments he uncovered were dedicated to a composite deity he called ‘
Atum-Harmarchis’.
Associated with these monuments there would always be a
naos,
or sanctuary, containing ‘a sphinx with a human head’ which Naville states was ‘a well-known form of the god Harmarchis’.
[378]

We are by now familiar with Atum. But who is this ‘Harmarchis’? Naville noted that in addition to his Sphinx form he was often represented as ‘a god with a hawk’s head, or as a hawk with a solar disc’—symbols with which we are also familiar—and that
‘Atum-Harmarchis
was the god of Heliopolis, the most ancient city of Egypt’.
[379]

‘Harmarchis’ is a Graecianized rendering of the ancient Egyptian name,
Hor-em-Akhet,
which means ‘Horus-in-the-Horizon’ or ‘Horus-Dweller-in-the-Horizon’.
[380]
In other words, as should be obvious by now, it is a concept that is extremely close to Horakhti, or ‘Horus-
of
-the Horizon’—as close, at any rate, as the nuance between ‘of on the one hand and ‘in’ on the other ...

Both deities are called horizon-dwellers. Both are sometimes depicted as a man with the head of a hawk. Both have a solar disc on their heads.
[381]
Indeed there is no real difference between them at all except, as we shall see, in the nature of the ‘Horizon’ in which they are said to dwell.

There is one other thing about Hor-em-Akhet and Horakhti, however, that we need to take account of first. The names of these curiously composite and syncretized lion-hawk-solar deities were both frequently, directly and interchangeably applied to the Great Sphinx at Giza.

The ‘Two Horizons’ of Heliopolis

The earliest surviving references to Hor-em-Akhet date from the New Kingdom,
circa
1440 BC, and are found on a limestone stela of Pharaoh Amenhotep II, the builder of a small temple that can still be seen on the north side of the Sphinx enclosure. On the stela Amenhotep makes reference to the ‘Pyramids of Hor-em-Akhet’ which Selim Hassan takes as a sign, ‘that he considered the Sphinx to be older than the Pyramids’.
[382]
Hassan also notes that the stela specifically names the Great Sphinx both as Hor-em-Akhet and as Horakhti.
[383]

43. Artist’s impression of ‘reconstructed’ Sphinx showing south profile.

In a similar vein, in line 9 of its inscription, the granite stela of Thutmosis IV—which stands between the paws of the Sphinx—refers to the Sphinx itself as ‘
Hor-em-Akhet-Khepri-Re-Atum’
and subsequently, in line 13, as ‘
Atum-Hor-em-Akhet’
,
[384]
but also refers to Thutmosis as the ‘Protector of Horakhti’.
[385]
And it is on this same stela, as the reader will recall, that Giza is described as ‘the “Horizon” [
Akhet
] of Heliopolis in the West’—i.e. as a ‘reflection’ in the West of what viewers in Heliopolis would have seen on their eastern horizon in the pre-dawn of the summer solstice.

It may also be of relevance that the son of Thutmosis IV, Amenhotep III, is remembered in ancient Egyptian annals as having built a temple in honour of Re-Horakhti, and that Amenhotep’s son, the notorious and enigmatic Pharaoh Akhenaten, raised a great obelisk at Luxor in honour of Re-Hor-em-Akhet.
[386]
Akhenaten was also to name his famous solar-city
Akhet Aten,
the ‘Horizon of the sun disc’.
[387]
And as Selim Hassan points out the
Aten
or sun disc was frequently identified by the ancient Egyptians with the image of the Sphinx.
[388]
Last but not least, when Akhenaten ascended the throne of Egypt he chose as his most prominent epithet the impressive title of ‘High priest of Re-Horakhti’.
[389]

It is therefore legitimate to inquire into what exactly is meant by the term ‘Horizon’ (
Akhet
) in the names Hor-em-Akhet and Horakhti. Are these twin beings known as Horus-in-the-Horizon and Horus-of-the-Horizon to be associated with the celestial horizon—where sky meets land? Or are they to be associated with the ‘Horizon’ of Heliopolis in the West, i.e. the Giza necropolis?

Or is it not more likely that the texts are prompting us to consider two ‘horizons’ at the same time?

Interestingly, Egyptologists often translate the names Hor-em-Akhet and Horakhti as meaning ‘Horus-of-the-Two-Horizons’. Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, for example, identifies Re-Horakhti to Re-Harmarchis [Hor-em-Akhet] and translates both names as ‘Ra + Horus-of-the-Two-Horizons’.
[390]
Likewise the orientalist Lewis Spence writes: ‘Horus-of-the-Two-Horizons, the Harmarchis [Hor-em-Akhet] of the Greeks, was one of chief forms of the sun-god ... thus we find Harmarchis worshipped principally at Heliopolis ... his best-known monument is the famous Sphinx, near the Pyramids of Giza.’
[391]

So if Hor-em-Akhet is the Great Sphinx in the
western
‘Horizon of Giza’, then should we not look for Horakhti, his ‘twin’, in the eastern horizon of the sky?

These are questions that we shall continue to pursue. Meanwhile, as Egyptologist Ahmed Fakhry confirms, the various stelae that we have reviewed, and numerous other inscriptions, leave no doubt that the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt knew and worshipped the Sphinx (and obviously, too, his celestial counterpart) under the names Hor-em-Akhet and Horakhti.
[392]
Fakhry also points out something else of relevance: both names are ‘appropriate’ since ‘the ancient necropolis [of Giza] was called
Akhet Khufu,
the “Horizon” of Khufu’.
[393]

Strange silence

Because the earliest surviving texts containing the term Hor-em-Akhet date from the New Kingdom, it is the present consensus of scholars that the ancient Egyptians of the Old Kingdom never spoke of the Sphinx. According to Jaromir Malek of Oxford University, for example: ‘Old Kingdom sources are strangely and surprisingly silent about the Great Sphinx of Giza. It was only some 1000 years after the Sphinx had been made ... that it was mentioned ...’
[394]

Could this really be so? How could the Old Kingdom Egyptians, having taken the trouble to construct the huge Giza necropolis and the rest of the Memphite monuments, fail to make any mention of the Great Sphinx?

One possibility which deserves to be taken seriously is that they did not mention it because they did not build it—but rather
inherited
it from a far earlier epoch. Even on this scenario, however, it strains credulity to suppose, in all their prolific texts, carved on the walls of nine royal Pyramids of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties, that they would not make a single reference to so magnificent a statue occupying so crucial a site.

The other possibility which has to be considered, therefore, is that Egyptologists could somehow have
failed to recognize
the name given to the Sphinx in the Pyramid Texts.

There is one very obvious contender.

As we have seen, the Sphinx in the New Kingdom was known not only as Hor-em-Akhet but also as Horakhti. And although the name Hor-em-Akhet definitely does
not
appear in the Pyramid Texts it is a simple fact that the name Horakhti does, many times over. Indeed these archaic scriptures contain hundreds of direct mentions of Horakhti, ‘Horus-of-the-Horizon’,
[395]
all of which refer, as scholars agree, ‘to the god rising in the east at dawn’.
[396]
What they have never suspected is the possibility that they may be confronted here by the ancient Egyptian dualistic way of referring to an earthly counterpart by means of its celestial twin.

Searching for Horakhti

‘The doors of the sky are thrown open for Horakhti,’ states one typical passage in the Pyramid Texts, ‘the doors of the sky are thrown open at dawn for Horus of the East ...’
[397]
Elsewhere, in line 928, we read: ‘go to ... Horakhti at the horizon ... I go up on this eastern side of the sky ...’
[398]

Virtually unnoticed by Egyptologists, who write off all such utterances as ‘mystical mumbo-jumbo’, the Pyramid Texts also provide us with some extremely important astronomical clues when they tell us, again and again, that the dawn rising of Horakhti in the east coincides with the time and place ‘where the gods were born’. For example:

The Winding Waterway is flooded, the Fields of Rushes are filled, that I may be ferried over to the eastern side of the sky, to the place where the gods were born, and I was born there with them, as Horus, as the Horizon Dweller [Horakhti] ...
[399]

... go to ... Horakhti at the horizon ... on the eastern side of the sky where the gods are born.
[400]

... the birth of the gods before you [Horus] in the five epagomenal days ...
[401]

Making use of the proper astronomical key, let us try to decode this alleged ‘mystical mumbo-jumbo’:

1.
       
The ‘place where the gods [i.e. the stars] are born’ is a specific direction as to where we are to observe Horakhti: the eastern horizon—where all heavenly bodies rise.

2.
       
The time of year at which we are to make our observations is also clearly specified: the so-called ‘five epagomenal days’, or five ‘days upon the year’. To understand this reference we need only remember that the ancient Egyptian calendar was based on 360 days plus five extra or intercalcary days which they called ‘the days upon the year’ (
epagomenae
in Greek). During these five days five
Neters
or gods were said to have been born, two of whom—Osiris and Isis—were identified by the ancient Egyptians with the constellation of Orion and the star Sirius (also called Sothis).

3.
       
Last but not least the Pyramid Texts also specify the time of day at which the sky is to be observed—clearly dawn, since this was when the birth of the gods was said to have occurred:

Behold Osiris has come as Orion ... the dawn-light bears you with Orion ... your third is Sothis [Sirius] ...’
[402]

Sothis [Sirius] is swallowed up [i.e. fades in the dawn] by the
Duat,
pure and living in the Horizon.
[403]

The reed-floats of the sky are brought down to me ... that I may go up on them to Horakhti at the horizon. I go up on this eastern side of the sky where the gods are born, and I am born as Horus, as ‘Him of the Horizon’ ... Sothis is my [companion] ...
[404]

The sky is clear [is lighting up], Sothis lives ...
[405]