The message of the Sphinx: a quest for the hidden legacy of mankind (34 page)

Appendix 1

The Scales of the World

‘We three kings of Orion are;

Bearing gifts we traverse afar;

Field and fountain,

Moor and mountain,

Following yonder star.

Oh! Star of wonder, Star of might,

Star with royal beauty bright!

Westward leading,

Still proceeding,

Guide us to thy perfect light.

HE is the King of Glory.’

In her thesis on the astronomical content of ancient Egyptian funerary texts, Jane B. Sellers observes that Spell 17 of the
Book of the Dead,
which is drawn from extremely ancient sources, alludes in cosmic terms to the ‘unification’ or joining of the ‘Two Lands’:
[671]
‘Horus, son of Osiris and Isis ... was made ruler in the place of his father, Osiris, on that day the Two Lands were united. It means the union of the Two Lands at the burial of Osiris ...’
[672]

Following this statement, Spell 17 also makes specific reference to the ‘sun-god’ and how he was not obstructed by the celestial river but rather ‘passed on, having bathed in the Winding Waterway’.
[673]

Sellers notes the conclusion of Yale astronomer-Egyptologist Virginia Lee Davis that the ‘Winding Waterway’ of the Pyramid Texts is to be equated with the Milky Way and that this feature of the sky ‘divides’ the cosmic landscape into two halves.
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She then adds: ‘I have contended that the joining of the two lands is a joining of sky to earth.’
[675]

In fact, both Sellers and Davis arrive at the same conclusion, namely that the ‘divider’ of the celestial landscape is the Milky Way, and that which crosses it from one side to the other is the sun. Sellers also observes that the point of ‘crossing’ of the ecliptic path is near the V-shaped Hyades-Taurus constellation.
[676]

If we seek to be precise about these matters we will discover that the point of crossing is in fact a little further east along the ecliptic path, marking a spot on the western shore of the Milky Way where today is found the M1 nebula, also known as the Crab Nebula.
[677]

Sellers, oddly, does not pursue the logical sequence of events in Spell 17, namely that the sun continues along its journey, reaches the ‘other side’ (i.e. the eastern side) of the Milky Way, and thence heads towards the constellation of Leo. Indeed, Spell 17 bids the solar ‘Horus’, i.e. the sun-disc, to ‘run, run to this’ location: ‘How well built is your House, O Atum, how well founded is your mansion, O Double Lion ...’

Atum or Atum-Re, as was shown in
The Orion Mystery,
was originally venerated as a ‘pillar’ in Heliopolis which, as many researchers have concluded, was also seen as his ‘phallus’.
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A somewhat similar ‘pillar’, the so-called Djed pillar, was also associated with Osiris.
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Bearing this in mind, Spell 17 makes a most telling statement: ‘As for the Lion whose mouth is bright and whose head is shining, he is the Phallus of Osiris. Otherwise said, he is the Phallus of Re ...’
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Earlier in Spell 17 we are specifically informed that Atum is:

... in his sun-disc. Otherwise said he is Re when he rises in the eastern horizon of the sky.

To me belongs yesterday, I know tomorrow.

What does it mean? As for yesterday, that is Osiris. As for tomorrow, that is Re in which the foes of the Lord Of All were destroyed and Horus was made to rule. Otherwise said: That is the day of the ‘We remain’ festival, when the burial of Osiris was ordered by his father Re.

The Battle-Ground of the gods was made in accordance with my command.

What does it mean? It is the West. It was made for the souls of the gods in accordance with the command of Osiris, Lord of the Western Desert. Otherwise said: It means that this is the West, to which Re made every god descend and he fought for the Two [Lands] for it.

I know that Great God who is in it.

Who is he? It is Osiris ...
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From this text we can see that a special ‘land of the gods’ was envisaged as having been established in the Western Desert at the time of the burial of Osiris—that is in the far-off epoch of the First Time. This was also the day on which Horus united the Two Lands and inherited this ‘battle ground’ or ‘land of the gods’.

70. The Djed pillar of Osiris, flanked by Isis and Nepthys. Above it is the symbol of” the Horian sun-god, probably marking the meridian-transit of the solar disc.

We have seen in earlier chapters how the Memphite Theology in the Shabaka Texts nominates the area in which these ‘unification’ events took place as Ayan near Memphis.
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Oddly, the process of ‘the Unification of the Two Lands’ is also referred to in these same sources as ‘the Balance of the Two Lands, in which Upper and Lower Egypt have been weighed ...’
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In the present work we have brought forward additional evidence in support of Sellers’s contention that the ‘Two Lands’ in question were indeed ‘sky’ and ‘earth’ and we have also shown that very specific parts of the sky and earth were meant—i.e. the ‘Orion-Leo-Taurus’ sky-region and the ‘Giza-Heliopolis-Memphis’ earth-region.

But how could these two sky-to-earth regions be ‘balanced’ and ‘weighed’?

A state of perfect order

The point of ‘balance’ is defined on the ground as: ‘... Ayan, that was the division of the Two Lands ... in the name of the “White Wall” [Memphis] ...’
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We have seen how this terrestrial location corresponds to a point in the sky along the ecliptic path marking the spot on the western shore of the Milky Way where the M1 Crab Nebula is located.

A closer look at the Memphite Theology, however, reveals that while Ayan is envisaged as the pivot or ‘balance point’ of the Two Lands, the actual process of ‘weighing’ is described as taking place somewhere else—specifically in ‘the land ... [of the] burial of Osiris in the House of Sokar ...’
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Since we have already demonstrated that ‘the land of the House of Sokar’ was Rostau, i.e. the Giza necropolis, we can conclude—by a simple transposition of sky-ground terminology—that the ‘weighing’ or ‘balancing’ of the land was somehow done at Giza, and most likely beside or within the Great Pyramid, the original ‘House’ of Sokar-Osiris.
[686]

But why should the Great Pyramid have been seen as an ‘instrument’ by which the ‘Two Lands’—sky and ground—could be ‘balanced’ at a specific spot, i.e. at Ayan-Memphis?

71. Sun-boat on the back of the double-lion hieroglyph for Aker. [Top] is a scene of revivification, showing the solar path from east to west. Note the hawk’s head beneath the solar disk at the meridian.

We must remind ourselves that the chronology and context of the ‘unification’ events was set way back in the cosmic landscape of the ‘First Time’. Let us, therefore, transfer the imagery that now confronts us back to the epoch 10,500 BC, and see how the supposed ‘perfect balance’ was achieved at the cosmic ‘Ayan’, i.e. at the location, marked by the M1 Crab Nebula that we have already identified on the ecliptic path.

The three great Pyramids of Giza, of course, become Orion’s belt at the meridian—with the Great Pyramid itself being represented by its specific celestial counterpart,
Al Nitak,
the lowest of the three belt stars.

The diagram reproduced on page 283 [#74] shows Orion’s belt with
Al Nitak
at the meridian in 10,500 BC. At this precise moment, as we saw in Chapter 17, the vernal-equinox point lay due east, just below Leo. Meanwhile the ‘opposed’ autumnal equinox point lay precisely due west (just below Aquarius). In short, this was a time when the ‘Two Skies’—one on each side of the Milky Way—were in perfect balance, perfectly divided, just as the texts describe.

Much suggests that the ‘Followers of Horus’ envisaged the ecliptic path of the sun arching like the huge beam of a scale across the visible sky. One end of this beam was marked by Leo at the vernal-equinox point, and the other by Aquarius at the autumnal-equinox point. So, when
Al Nitak
came to rest at the celestial meridian on the vernal equinox in 10,500 BC the sky could rightly be said to have been in a state of perfect order.

Maat

Cosmic Order, in the symbolic terminology of the ancient Egyptians, was known as
Maat.
The same word also means ‘justice’ and ‘law’—for example the justice that was exercised by the ‘council of gods’ of Heliopolis when they judged in favour of Horus, after his conflict with Seth, and passed on to him the legacy of the Osirian throne.

The ancient Egyptian religious texts transmit details of one of the high rituals of the Osirian liturgy—the ‘weighing of the soul’ of the dead in the Great Judgement Hall of Osiris. This is a sort of archetypal ‘Judgement of Solomon’, with the weighing being done on the Great Scales
of Maat.

The Papyrus of Ani in the British Museum provides us with a particularly vivid depiction of the Great Judgement Hall, and also of the Great Scales of
Maat.
These latter have a name—
Mekhaat
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—
which means in other contexts ‘the balance of the Earth’.
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72. The Scales of
Maat
. (Source: British Museum papyrus 9901-3).

The hieroglyphic determinative sign for the verb ‘to weigh’ shows a triangle, or builder’s ‘square’, with a plumb-bob suspended from the apex
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—a sign which can also mean to ‘balance the earth’.
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The triangle distinctly recalls the profile or cross-section of a pyramid.

As we have seen in Part II of this book, a curious stone sphere, a length of wooden rod, and a bronze hook were found inside the Great Pyramid in 1872, sealed since the time of the construction of the monument in the shafts of the Queen’s Chamber. Mr. Henry Williams Chisholm, the Head of the Standards Department of the Board of Trade in London, carefully examined these relics in the year of their discovery and concluded that the sphere was most probably a standard weight and that the rod and hook might also have had functions connected with weighing and measuring. He published these conclusions in the prestigious journal,
Nature,
on 26 December 1872.

Similar views were held by the Astronomer Royal of Scotland, Charles Piazzi Smyth, who also examined the relics in 1872.
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And a certain Mr. E. H. Pringle suggested in a letter to
Nature
that the stone sphere could have been a ‘mason’s plumb-bob’ and that the ‘bronze hook and the cedar rod may have formed part of the same tool’.
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