The message of the Sphinx: a quest for the hidden legacy of mankind (42 page)

[289]
Although their actual composition may long pre-date the third millennium BC. See
The Orion Mystery,
op. cit., pp. 69-70.

[290]
Observation stations may have been spread in a sort of ‘triangle’ extending from Heliopolis, Memphis and Giza. It seems likely that this whole region was somehow considered the original ‘land of the gods’, with its epicentre at Giza.

[291]
The conjunction of summer solstice sunrise, the rising of Sirius and the start of the flood occurred in 3400 BC and throughout the early Pyramid Age, when the Pyramid Texts were most certainly compiled.

[292]
The Orion Mystery,
op. cit., pp. 119-24.

[293]
The Milky Way appeared rising due east at the summer solstice pre-dawn along with Orion and Sirius in the third millennium BC.

[294]
Pyramid Texts,
op. cit., lines 343-57.

[295]
Ibid., line 508 and Utterance 317.

[296]
Ibid., line 1760.

[297]
E. A. Wallis Budge,
The Egyptian Book of the Dead,
Dover Publications Inc., New York, 1967, p. cxxiii.

[298]
R. O. Faulkner,
The Book of the Dead,
British Museum Publications, London 1972, p. 90. Also see R. O. Faulkner ‘The King & the Star-Religion in the Pyramid Texts’
in Journal of Near Eastern Studies,
1966, Vol. XXV, p. 154 footnote 7. Dr. Virginia Lee Davis also makes the link between the Milky Way and the ‘Winding Waterway’ in
Archaeoastronomy,
Vol. IX, JHA xvi, 1985, p. 102. The archeoastronomer and Egyptologist, Jane B. Sellers, also arrives at the same conclusion as V. L. Davis (J. B. Sellers,
The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt,
Penguin Books, London, 1992, p. 97).

[299]
Pyramid Texts,
op. cit., line 2061.

[300]
Ibid., line 1717.

[301]
Ibid., line 882.

[302]
R. T. Rundle Clark,
Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt,
Thames & Hudson, London, 1978, pp. 263-5. Clark explains how the Pharaoh’s role was to re-enact and commemorate events that were believed to have happened in a blissful golden age called ‘Tep Zepi’ [
Zep Tepi
].

[303]
Ibid.

[304]
Ibid p. 27.

[305]
Pyramid Texts,
op. cit., Utterance 600. Here the ‘pyramids’ are also placed amidst the landscape of ‘Creation’ at the first sunrise of the world.

[306]
R. T. Rundle Clark,
Myth and Symbol,
op. cit., page 264.

[307]
Ibid.

[308]
Henri Frankfort,
Kingship and the Gods,
The University of Chicago Press, 1978, pp. 24-35.

[309]
Hamlet’s Mill,
op. cit., pp. 86-7.

[310]
British Museum No. 498. The Shabaka Stone is fixed on the south wall of the ground floor of the ‘Egyptian’ wing. It measures some 135 x 92 cm. (approx. 4 x 3 feet) and is badly damaged at the centre—apparently due to it being used as a grinding millstone before its discovery by archaeologists. It contains 62 columns of hieroglyphic inscriptions. Miriam Lichtheim, who gives a full translation, wrote that ‘the language is archaic and resembles that of the Pyramid Texts’ (Miriam Lichtheim,
Ancient Egyptian Literature
Vol. 1: The Old and Middle Kingdoms, University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1975, pp. 3-57).

[311]
Miriam Lichtheim,
Ancient Egyptian Literature,
op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 52. A variation to Osiris’s death is that he was killed by his brother, Seth, and his body cut into fourteen pieces.

[312]
Ibid. Ayan must have been a sacred location immediately north of the city walls of Memphis. It is the present-day location of the village of Mit Rahin.

[313]
Where Ayan existed there remain, today, the vestiges of a ruined Graeco-Roman fort which must have been built in the Egyptian style (as the broken columns which still can be seen there attest) and which, curiously enough, is known by the locals as the ‘prison of Joseph’ (the Biblical patriarch who was kept in the ‘round tower’ by Pharaoh—see Genesis 39:21). It can be reached along the narrow canal road opposite and north of the Memphis Museum.

[314]
Miriam Lichtheim,
Ancient Egyptian Literature,
op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 53.

[315]
About 15 kilometres south of the outskirts of the Maadi suburbs of Cairo.

[316]
Miriam Lichtheim,
Ancient Egyptian Literature,
op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 53.

[317]
E. A. Wallis Budge,
The Egyptian Heaven and Hell,
op. cit., Vol. III, p. 131.

[318]
I. E. S. Edwards,
The Pyramids of Egypt,
op. cit., 1993 edition, p. 10.

[319]
R. T. Rundle Clark,
Myth and Symbol,
op. cit., p. 108.

[320]
James H. Breasted,
Ancient Records of Egypt,
Part II, Histories & Mysteries of Man Ltd., London, 1988, pp. 320-4.

[321]
Ibid., p. 323. On line 7 of the stela.

[322]
Miriam Lichtheim,
Ancient Egyptian Literature,
op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 53.

[323]
Pyramid Texts,
op. cit., line 1717.

[324]
Orion Mystery,
op. cit, 1994 edition, pp. 116-19.

[325]
Selim Hassan,
Excavations at Giza,
op. cit., pp. 278, 285.

[326]
Ibid., p. 265.

[327]
Ibid.

[328]
Ibid., pp. 302, 315.

[329]
Ibid., p. 338.

[330]
Ibid., p. 265.

[331]
Ibid.

[332]
Ibid., p. 263.

[333]
Ibid., p. 265.

[334]
Ibid.

[335]
Ibid.

[336]
Ibid.

[337]
Mark Lehner,
The Egyptian Heritage,
op. cit.

[338]
Ibid, p. 119.

[339]
J. B. Sellers,
The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt,
op. cit., p. 164.

[340]
R. O. Faulkner,
The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts,
Aris & Phillips Ltd., Wiltshire, Vol. III, p. 132, Spell 1035.

[341]
Ibid. Vol. I, p. 190, Spell 241.

[342]
Ibid. Vol. I, p. 185, Spell 236.

[343]
J. B. Sellers,
The Death of Gods,
op. cit., pp. 164-5.

[344]
Ibid.

[345]
The Orion Mystery,
op. cit., 1994 edition, pp. 116-9.

[346]
James H. Breasted,
Ancient Records,
op. cit., Part II, pp. 320-4.

[347]
Innu
means ‘pillar’ thus Heliopolis was, quite literally, the ‘City of the Pillar’. All that can be seen there today is an obelisk of Sesostris I (12th Dynasty
c.
1880 BC) and a few remains of a temple.

[348]
I. E. S. Edwards,
The Pyramids of Egypt,
op. cit., 1993 edition, pp. 284-6.

[349]
Herodotus,
The Histories,
Book II, 2-8. See Penguin Classics translation, 1972, p. 130.

[350]
Aristotle,
De Caelo,
II, 12, 2923. See translation in R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz,
Sacred Science,
Inner Traditions International, New York 1982, p. 280.

[351]
E. M. Antoniadi,
L’Astronomie Egyptienne,
Paris, 1934, pp. 3-4.

[352]
Diodorus of Sicily,
The Library of History, Book V, 57 and Book I, 81.

[353]
Proclus Diadochus,
Commentaries on the Timaeus,
IV. See translation in R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz,
Sacred Science,
op. cit., p. 286.

[354]
The Orion Mystery,
op. cit., pp. 182-4, 287 note 7.

[355]
R. T. Rundle Clark,
Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt,
op. cit., pp. 38-9.

[356]
Edouard Naville, ‘Le nom du Sphinx dans le livre des morts’ in
Sphinx,
Vol. V, 188, p. 193.

[357]
Edouard Naville, ‘Le Sphinx IIP in
Sphinx,
Vol. XXI, 1924, p. 13.

[358]
Ibid., p. 12.

[359]
Ibid.

[360]
Ibid.

[361]
Edouard Naville, ‘Le nom du Sphinx dans le livre des morts’, op. cit., p. 195.

[362]
Selim Hassan,
The Sphinx: Its History in the Light of Recent Excavations,
Government Press, Cairo, 1949, p. 129.

[363]
Ibid.

[364]
A spell from the ancient Egyptian
Book of the Dead,
op. cit.

[365]
Pyramid Texts,
op. cit., lines 2081-6.

[366]
Selim Hassan,
The Sphinx,
op. cit., p. 70, fig. 13. See Also E. Naville in ‘Sphinx III’, op. cit., p. 19.

[367]
Zahi Hawass and Mark Lehner ‘The Sphinx: Who built it, and why?’ in
Archaeology,
September-October 1994, p. 34.

[368]
Ibid.

[369]
George Hart,
A Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses,
Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1988, p. 46.

[370]
Rosalie David,
Ancient Egyptian Religion, Beliefs and Practices,
Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1982, p. 46.

[371]
Ibid.

[372]
George Hart,
Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses,
op. cit., p. 94. Hart also says that ‘the element “Akhti” can be a dual form of the noun “Akhet”, “Horizon”; there may be a play on words when the king is said to be given power over the “Two Horizons” (i.e. east and west) as Horakhti’.

[373]
Quote from Jane B. Sellers,
The Death of Gods,
op. cit., p. 89. For further details, see Hermann Kees,
Ancient Egypt: A Cultural Topography,
University of Chicago Press, 1977.

[374]
Often sitting down on a throne, holding the royal staff.

[375]
George Hart,
Dictionary,
op. cit., p. 94.

[376]
Lewis Spence,
Egypt,
Bracken Books, Myths & Legends Series, London 1986, p. 291.

[377]
Selim Hassan,
The Sphinx,
op. cit., p. 94.

[378]
Egypt Exploration Society Report, First General Meeting, 1883, p. 8.

[379]
Ibid.

[380]
Ahmed Fakhry,
The Pyramids,
University of Chicago Press, 1961, p. 164. See
Pyramid Texts,
op. cit., lines 1085, 926. See also E. A. Wallis Budge,
An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary,
Dover Publications Inc., New York, 1978, Vol. I, p. 500b.

[381]
Selim Hassan,
Excavations at Giza,
op. cit., figs. 18, 39, 40, 41, 46, 66.

[382]
Selim Hassan,
The Sphinx,
op. cit., p. 76.

[383]
Ibid.

[384]
James H. Breasted,
Ancient Records,
op. cit., Part II, pp. 320-4.

[385]
Ibid.

[386]
Lewis Spence,
Egypt,
op. cit., p. 158.

[387]
Ibid.

[388]
Selim Hassan,
The Sphinx,
op. cit., p. 104.

[389]
Lewis Spence,
Egypt,
op. cit., p. 157.

[390]
E. A. Wallis Budge,
An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary,
op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 418b, 500b, 501b.

[391]
Lewis Spence,
Egypt,
op. cit., p. 84.

[392]
Ahmed Fakhry,
The Pyramids,
op. cit., p. 164.

[393]
Ibid.

[394]
J. Malek,
In the Shadow of the Pyramids,
Orbis, London 1986, p. 10.

[395]
Pyramid Texts,
op. cit., p. 323.

[396]
George Hart,
Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses,
op. cit., p. 88.

[397]
Pyramid Texts,
op. cit., lines 525-7.

[398]
Ibid., lines 928-9.

[399]
Ibid., lines 352-3.

[400]
Ibid., lines 928-9.

[401]
Ibid., line 1961.

[402]
Ibid., line 820.

[403]
Ibid., line 151.

[404]
Ibid., lines 927-30.

[405]
Ibid., line 458.

[406]
Ibid., line 965.

[407]
E. C. Krupp,
In Search of Ancient Astronomies,
Chatto & Windus, 1980, pp. 186-90. Krupp wrote: ‘The Nile, with its annual flooding, made civilisation possible in Egypt ... even more compelling was the fact that the heliacally rising Sirius (the dawn rising) and the rising of the Nile coincided, approximately, with the summer solstice.’ Interestingly,
Pyramid Texts
lines 1131 and 1172 speak of the ‘Great Flood’ which is in the sky as seen in the east of the sky at dawn. This matches the actual celestial picture in
c
. 2800-2500 BC, when the Milky Way would rise due east on the pre-dawn of the summer solstice.

[408]
Pyramid Texts,
lines 360-3.

[409]
Ibid., line 2047.

[410]
Ibid., lines 1131-2.

[411]
Ibid., line 362.

[412]
R. T. Rundle Clark,
Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt,
op. cit.

[413]
Ibid., p. 121.

[414]
Ibid., pp. 121-2.

[415]
Ibid., p. 122.

[416]
E. A. Wallis Budge,
The Literature of Funeral Offerings,
Kegan Paul Ltd., London, 1909, p. 2.

[417]
Pyramid Texts,
op. cit., lines 1703, 1710-20.

[418]
Ibid., line 1730.