The message of the Sphinx: a quest for the hidden legacy of mankind (43 page)

[419]
Ibid., line 1860.

[420]
R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz,
Sacred Science,
op. cit., p. 175.

[421]
Pyramid Texts,
op. cit., line 632. See also
The Orion Mystery,
op. cit., pp. 132, 136.

[422]
The Orion Mystery,
op. cit., pp. 220-5.

[423]
O. Neugebauer and R. Parker,
Egyptian Astronomical Texts,
Brown University Press, Lund Humphries, London, 1964, Vol. I, p. 70. For a summarized discussion see
The Orion Mystery,
op. cit., Appendix 4.

[424]
Ibid.

[425]
Ibid. The first rising of a star after a prolonged period of invisibility is at dawn, about one hour before sunrise. Sirius has its heliacal rising today in early August. In
c.
3000 BC this occurred in late June. The ‘shift’ from a fixed point such as the summer solstice is about seven days every millennium. See R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz,
Sacred Science,
op. cit., p. 175.

[426]
Pyramid Texts,
op. cit., Utterances 606, 609.

[427]
The ecliptic passes a few degrees north of the Hyades and thus just ‘west’ or on the ‘right’ bank of the Milky Way as viewed at the meridian. In
c.
2500 BC the vernal point would have been located there.

[428]
Dr. Virginia Lee Davis seems to be convinced about this in
Archaeoastronomy,
Vol. IX, JHA xvi, 1985, p. 102. So is the archeoastronomer and Egyptologist, Jane B. Sellers, in
Death of Gods,
op. cit., p. 97.

[429]
Pyramid Texts,
op. cit., line 2172.

[430]
Ibid., line 2045.

[431]
Ibid., lines 1704-7.

[432]
Ibid., line 1541.

[433]
Ibid., line 1345.

[434]
Ibid., lines 343-6.

[435]
Ibid., lines 525-7.

[436]
Ibid., lines 928-9.

[437]
Among all modern Egyptologists it is only Schwaller de Lubicz, as far as we know, who realized the immense implications of the stellar-solar conjunction in Leo during the Pyramid Age—a conjunction that could hardly have gone unnoticed by the ancients since it occurred not only at the summer solstice but also at the heliacal rising of Sirius. Lubicz wrote: ‘It is significant also that tradition had already related the heliacal rising of Sirius with the beginning of the Nile’s flooding and with the constellation of Leo; indeed since the foundation of the calendar to the beginning of our era, in Egypt the sun was always situated in the constellation of Leo at the date of the heliacal rising of Leo’ (
Sacred Science,
op. cit., p. 176). The tradition which Schwaller is alluding to is also confirmed by several Greek and Roman chroniclers who passed through Egypt in ancient times. Harpollon, for example, who visited Egypt in the fifth century, commented that: ‘Lions were a symbol of the inundation in consequence of the Nile rising more abundantly when the sun was in Leo. Those who anciently presided over sacred works made the waterspouts and passages of fountains in the form of lions ...’ (Harpollon Book I, 21). The same is stated by Plutarch, who came to Egypt in the first century AD. Plutarch is distinguished for being the only scholar in antiquity to have compiled a full coherent account of the Osiris and Isis myth. He held a high position as a magistrate in Boeotia and also belonged to the priesthood of Delphi. In about AD 50 he compiled his celebrated
De hide et Osiride (On his and Osiris)
after consulting Egyptian priests in Egypt, who also told him of the astral rituals of the summer solstice: ‘Of the stars, the Egyptians think that Sirius, the Dog Star, is the star of Isis, because it is the bringer of water [i.e. the Nile’s flood]. They also hold the lion in honour, and they adorn the doorways of their shrines with gaping lions’ heads, because the Nile overflows “when for the first time the Sun comes in conjunction with [the constellation] of Leo” ...’ (see quote in R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz,
Sacred Science,
op. cit., p. 91).

[438]
Richard H. Allen,
Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning,
Dover Publications Inc., New York, 1963, pp. 255-6. It is the brightest star in Leo, a constellation known as the ‘Domicilium Solis’ (‘House of the Sun’). Allen makes this curious comment but gives no reference: ‘The great androsphinx [of Giza] is said to have been sculptured with Leo’s body and the head of the adjacent Virgo ...’ (ibid., p. 253).

[439]
Memphis.

[440]
For a full discussion on the ‘solar boats’ see Selim Hassan,
Excavations at Giza,
op. cit., pp. 1-156. There are various boat ‘pits’ at Giza, two of which contained actual boats (one fully assembled in a museum south of the Great Pyramid). Rudolf Gantenbrink has remarked that the size (and shape) of the Grand Gallery in the Great Pyramid would be an ideal store for such a boat.

[441]
Probably somewhere within the Sphinx Temple. This idea was, in fact, suggested by the German Egyptologist, Adolf Erman, who wrote: ‘Ro-setau, the gate of the ways, led direct to the underworld. It is possible that part of this shrine has survived in the so-called temple of the Sphinx ...’ (
A Handbook of Egyptian Religion,
Archibald Constable & Co. Ltd., 1907, p. 15).

[442]
R. O. Faulkner,
The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts,
op. cit., Vol. III, p. 132, Spell 1035.

[443]
Ibid., p. 109.

[444]
Pyramid Texts,
op. cit., lines 1128-34.

[445]
Ibid., lines 924-5.

[446]
Ibid., line 1328.

[447]
Ibid., line 1657.

[448]
Seventh Division,
Book of What is in the Duat,
E. A. Wallis Budge trans.,
Egyptian Heaven and Hell,
op. cit., Vol. I, p. 143.

[449]
Robin Cook,
The Pyramids of Giza,
op. cit., p. 42.

[450]
Pyramid Texts,
op. cit., lines 1710-18.

[451]
E. A. Wallis Budge,
An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary,
op. cit., Vol. I, p. 580a.

[452]
Selim Hassan,
Excavations at Giza,
op. cit., p. 184.

[453]
E. A. Wallis Budge,
Dictionary,
op. cit., Vol. I, p. 579b.

[454]
Selim Hassan,
Excavations at Giza,
op. cit., p. 184.

[455]
Adolf Erman,
A
Handbook of Egyptian Religion,
op. cit., 1907, p. 15.

[456]
Coffin Texts,
op. cit., Vol. III, p. 134.

[457]
I. E. S. Edwards,
The Pyramids of Egypt,
op. cit., 1993 edition, p. 286.

[458]
The causeway of the Pyramid of Unas at Saqqara has a small part of the original roof on the ceiling of which are carved five-pointed stars. The ceiling was painted blue and the stars probably gold or yellow.

[459]
Jean Kerisel (
La Grande Pyramide et ses Derniers Secrets,
scheduled for publication 1996) discusses this matter at length. The table is about 10 metres below the floor-level of the Sphinx enclosure.

[460]
Kerisel appeared on the BBC documentary,
The Great Pyramid: Gateway to the Stars,
shown on 6 February 1994.

[461]
Jean Kerisel,
La Grande Pyramide,
op. cit., pp. 196-8.

[462]
Pyramid Texts,
op. cit., lines 1195-9.

[463]
The ‘Herald of the Year’ mentioned in
the Pyramid Texts
implies the star Sirius which follows Orion. The latter, by necessity, must be near the ‘Field of Offerings’.

[464]
See fig. 11 in R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz,
Sacred Science,
op. cit., p. 97. See also various diagrams of so-called ‘Sphinx stelae’ shown in Selim Hassan,
The
Sphinx,
op. cit.

[465]
Kerisel has recently obtained a scientific licence from the Egyptian Antiquities Department to explore the subterranean chamber of the Great Pyramid and test a hunch he’s had for many years that somewhere under the chamber is an access to a hidden chamber itself connected, perhaps, by tunnel with the valley or even the Sphinx area. In July 1995 Kerisel managed to use a high-precision drill to make tiny boreholes into the wall of the horizontal passageway that leads to the chamber but so far nothing has been found.

[466]
Robert Bauval, ‘The Seeding of the star-gods: A fertility ritual inside Cheops’s Pyramid?’ in
Discussions In Egyptology,
Vol. XVI, 1990, pp. 21-9.

[467]
The Orion Mystery,
op. cit., p. 221. The ‘ritual’ was graphically recreated in the BBC documentary
The Great Pyramid: Gateway to the Stars,
shown in February and September 1994.

[468]
Pyramid Texts,
op. cit., line 632.

[469]
E. A. Wallis Budge,
Dictionary,
op. cit., Vol. II, p. 654b.

[470]
Smithsonian Contributions to Astrophysics,
Vol. X, No. 2, 5000 and 10,000 Year Star Catalogs, by Gerald S. Hawkins and Shoshana K. Rosenthal, Washington, DC, 1967, p. 154. For 2500 BC the declination for Regulus is given as +24.1 degrees. Thus for latitude 30 degrees the rising point would be very close to 28 degrees. The sun’s declination at the summer solstice in
c.
2500 BC was very near this point, at 23.98 degrees. Since the apparent angular width of the sun is about 0.5 degrees, both Regulus and the sun would have occupied the same ‘place’ in the eastern horizon at the summer solstice in
c.
2500 BC.

[471]
James H. Breasted,
Ancient Records,
op. cit., Part II, pp. 321-2.

[472]
‘Egyptians of the New Kingdom were ... in the dark concerning it [the Sphinx] and it is extremely doubtful if there ever was a single person living in Egypt at this period, who knew as much of the true history of the Sphinx as we do to-day ...’ (Selim Hassan,
The Sphinx,
op. cit., p. 75).

[473]
James H. Breasted,
Ancient Records,
op. cit., Part II, p. 323.

[474]
T. G. H. James,
An Introduction to Ancient Egypt,
British Museum Publications Ltd., 1987, p. 37.

[475]
Ibid., p. 38.

[476]
Boston Globe,
op. cit., 23 October 1991.

[477]
Labib Habachi,
The Obelisks of Egypt,
The American University Press, Cairo, 1988, p. 40.

[478]
Ibid.

[479]
Nicholas Grimal,
A History of Ancient Egypt,
Blackwell, Oxford, 1992, p. 12.

[480]
Ibid.

[481]
W. B. Emery,
Archaic Egypt,
Penguin, London, 1987, p. 23.

[482]
Michael A. Hoffman,
Egypt Before the Pharaohs,
Michael O’Mara Books Ltd., London, 1991, p. 12.

[483]
Ibid.

[484]
W. B. Emery,
Archaic Egypt,
op. cit., p. 32ff.

[485]
Cambridge Ancient History,
Volume I, p. 250.

[486]
Henri Frankfort,
Kingship and the Gods,
University of Chicago Press, 1978, p. 90.

[487]
I. E. S. Edwards,
The Pyramids of Egypt,
op. cit., 1993 edition, p. 286: ‘The high priest of the centre of the sun cult at Heliopolis bore the title “Chief of the Astronomers” and was represented wearing a mantle adorned with stars.’

[488]
Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend,
Hamlet’s Mill,
op. cit., p. 58.

[489]
See for example C. W. Ceram,
Gods, Graves and Scholars,
Book Club Associates, London, 1971, p. 26ff.

[490]
See Sarva Daman Singh,
Ancient Indian Warfare,
Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1989, p. 7ff.

[491]
Labib Habachi,
The Obelisks of Egypt,
op. cit., p. 39.

[492]
Ibid.

[493]
Cited in ibid., pp. 39-40.

[494]
For a detailed discussion see E. A. E. Reymond,
The Mythical Origin of the Egyptian Temple,
Manchester University Press, Barnes and Noble Inc., New York, 1969.

[495]
John Anthony West,
Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt,
op. cit., p. 412.

[496]
E. A. E. Reymond,
Mythical Origin of the Egyptian Temple,
op. cit., p. 4.

[497]
Ibid.

[498]
Ibid., p. 8ff.

[499]
Letter to Robert Bauval dated 27 January 1993: ‘I believe it [the mound] represented the primaeval mound on which life first appeared.’

[500]
E. A. E. Reymond,
Mythical Origin of the Egyptian Temple,
op. cit., pp. 28, 39, 46, 48, etc., etc.

[501]
Ibid., p. 42.

[502]
Ibid., p. 41.

[503]
Ibid., p. 44.

[504]
Ibid., pp. 27 and 31.

[505]
Jeremy Black and Anthony Green,
Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia,
British Museum Press, London, 1992, pp. 163-4.

[506]
Donald A. Mackenzie,
Myths and Legends of India,
The Mystic Press, London, 1987, p. 141ff; Veronica Ions,
Indian Mythology,
Hamlyn, London, 1983, pp. 120-1.

[507]
E. A. E. Reymond,
Mythical Origin of the Egyptian Temple,
op. cit., pp. 106-7.

[508]
Ibid., p. 55.

[509]
Ibid., p. 90.

[510]
Ibid., p. 113.

[511]
Ibid., pp. 109 and 127.

[512]
Ibid., p. 77.

[513]
Ibid., p. 112.