The Egypt Code (16 page)
Authors: Robert Bauval
Fortunately for the Egyptians, more often than not the flood was good and all went well. Nonetheless, the fear of a bad flood and the havoc and death it would bring was never too far away from the thoughts of the ancient Egyptians, and it hung precariously like some giant sword of Damocles over the very heart of Elephantine, where they believed the flood waters emerged. It was natural, therefore, that their astronomer-priests would pay special attention to the climatic conditions as well as the celestial events that took place around this crucial time of the year. And this entailed avid observation of the stars, especially at dawn, in order to see which constellation preceded the sun. It is beyond any doubt that the astronomer-priests of Heliopolis observed in particular the dawn rising of Orion and Canis Major, which took place at the start of the flood season, and equated these astral deities to Osiris and Isis, the harbingers of rebirth and regeneration. The question must arise, therefore, as to whether or not they also observed with which constellation the sun coalesced at this crucial time of year. To be more precise, did the ancient star-gazers of Egypt take heed that the summer solstice occurred in the constellation of Leo? It would seem very odd if they didn’t. Wilkinson’s assertion that the Egyptians
knew
the constellation of Leo as a recumbent lion must be reconciled with the fact that in the minds of the sun-priests of Heliopolis, the more primitive god Horakhti had coalesced with the sun-god Ra to become Ra-Horakhti. Egyptologists translate the name Horakhti as Horus-of-the-Horizon, but there may be a word play here with Akhet, the flood season, which would evoke a celestial figure that coalesced with the sun in the horizon
at the time of the flood
. Could it be, then, that Horakhti was originally a stellar god, a constellation if you will, that was actually seen coalescing with the sun at the time of the flood when the Ra cult rose to prominence at Heliopolis? In other words, were the ancient priests celebrating the entry of the summer solstice in the constellation of Leo?
knew
the constellation of Leo as a recumbent lion must be reconciled with the fact that in the minds of the sun-priests of Heliopolis, the more primitive god Horakhti had coalesced with the sun-god Ra to become Ra-Horakhti. Egyptologists translate the name Horakhti as Horus-of-the-Horizon, but there may be a word play here with Akhet, the flood season, which would evoke a celestial figure that coalesced with the sun in the horizon
at the time of the flood
. Could it be, then, that Horakhti was originally a stellar god, a constellation if you will, that was actually seen coalescing with the sun at the time of the flood when the Ra cult rose to prominence at Heliopolis? In other words, were the ancient priests celebrating the entry of the summer solstice in the constellation of Leo?
That the religion of Heliopolis was stellar before it was absorbed into the solar cult by the priests of Ra is a very moot issue in Egyptology. The distinguished German Egyptologist, Hermann Kees, for example, after studying the Pyramid Texts for many years, came to the conclusion that ‘the particular worship peculiar to Heliopolis was, however, that of the stars. From the worship of the stars evolved the worship of Ra in the form of “Horus of the Horizon” (Horakhti), the god of the morning sun.’
30
Kees was not alone in this way of seeing things. Already back in 1912 the influential American Egyptologist James Henry Breasted had demonstrated that the Pyramid Texts contained a stellar cult that pre-dated the solar cult at Heliopolis, and that eventually ‘the stellar notion has been absorbed in the Solar’.
31
These were also later the views of Raymond O. Faulkner, the celebrated translator of the Pyramid Texts, who wrote that ‘it is of course very well known that the Ancient Egyptians took a great interest in the stars . . . it is also realized that behind this lay a very ancient stratum of stellar religion . . .’
32
The point was driven home more forcefully by I.E.S. Edwards, perhaps the most prominent authority on the Pyramid Age, who declared that ‘on the grounds of internal evidence alone it has been deduced that the spells in the Pyramid Texts which refer to the stars have an independent origin from the solar spells and that eventually they were merged into the Heliopolitan (solar) doctrines’.
33
Now it would be logical to suppose that the coalescing of Horakhti and Ra represents the point when the stellar religion was merged or absorbed into the new solar religion of Heliopolis. This seems to be confirmed in the Pyramid Texts, where not one but two separate divinities seen rising at the same time in the eastern horizon at dawn are joined by the dead king, one being Ra (the sun) and the other being Horakhti.
30
Kees was not alone in this way of seeing things. Already back in 1912 the influential American Egyptologist James Henry Breasted had demonstrated that the Pyramid Texts contained a stellar cult that pre-dated the solar cult at Heliopolis, and that eventually ‘the stellar notion has been absorbed in the Solar’.
31
These were also later the views of Raymond O. Faulkner, the celebrated translator of the Pyramid Texts, who wrote that ‘it is of course very well known that the Ancient Egyptians took a great interest in the stars . . . it is also realized that behind this lay a very ancient stratum of stellar religion . . .’
32
The point was driven home more forcefully by I.E.S. Edwards, perhaps the most prominent authority on the Pyramid Age, who declared that ‘on the grounds of internal evidence alone it has been deduced that the spells in the Pyramid Texts which refer to the stars have an independent origin from the solar spells and that eventually they were merged into the Heliopolitan (solar) doctrines’.
33
Now it would be logical to suppose that the coalescing of Horakhti and Ra represents the point when the stellar religion was merged or absorbed into the new solar religion of Heliopolis. This seems to be confirmed in the Pyramid Texts, where not one but two separate divinities seen rising at the same time in the eastern horizon at dawn are joined by the dead king, one being Ra (the sun) and the other being Horakhti.
Who, then, was Horakhti?
The Pyramid Texts are implicit that these two divinities rose in the eastern horizon when the Nile began to flood, which, of course, was during the summer solstice:
[The king says]: The reed-floats of the sky are set in place for Ra that he may cross on them to the horizon; the reed-floats are set in place for Horakhti that he may cross on them to Ra; the reed-floats of the sky are set in place for me that I may cross on them to Ra; the reed-floats are set in place for me that I may cross on them to Horakhti and to Ra. The Fields of Rushes are filled (with water) and I ferry across on the Winding Waterway; I am ferried over to the eastern side of the horizon, I am ferried over to the eastern side of the sky, my sister is
Spdt
(Canis Major) . . .’
34The Winding Waterway is flooded that I may be ferried over thereon to the horizon, to
Horakhti
. . .
35The king will be the companion of Horakhti and the king’s hand will be held in the sky among the followers of Ra. The fields are content, the irrigation ditches are flooded for this king today . . . Raise yourself, O King, receive your waters . . . receive this pure water of yours which issues from Elephantine (the mythical source of the Nile) . . . O King, your cool water is the Great Flood which issues from you . . .’
36The reed-floats of the sky are set in place for me that I may cross to the horizon, to Ra and to Horakhti. The nurse-canal is opened, the Winding Waterway is flooded, that I may be ferried over to the eastern side of the sky, to the place where the gods were born . . .’
37
When reading these texts with the geography and ecology of the region in mind, then it is obvious that they are describing what was actually seen in the eastern horizon at dawn when the Nile waters began to rise in late June.
38
It is also obvious that the texts were written from the perspective of the Memphite Necropolis (probably Letopolis or Giza), since they present us with a vision of the Nile plains when looking towards the east; that is, towards the sacred city of Heliopolis. The time of year is confirmed by the presence in the eastern horizon at dawn of
spd-t
, i.e. Canis Major, who was the stellar counterpart of Isis, the mythical sister-wife of the departed king identified with Osiris, who, in the sky, was Orion:
38
It is also obvious that the texts were written from the perspective of the Memphite Necropolis (probably Letopolis or Giza), since they present us with a vision of the Nile plains when looking towards the east; that is, towards the sacred city of Heliopolis. The time of year is confirmed by the presence in the eastern horizon at dawn of
spd-t
, i.e. Canis Major, who was the stellar counterpart of Isis, the mythical sister-wife of the departed king identified with Osiris, who, in the sky, was Orion:
Behold, he has come as Orion; behold, Osiris has come as Orion . . . O king, the sky conceives you as Orion, the dawn-light bears you like Orion . . . You will regularly ascend with Orion from the eastern region of the sky . . .
39I go up (rise) on this eastern side of the sky where the gods were born, and I am born as Horus, as Him of the Horizon (Horakhti) . . . for Spdt is my sister, the Morning Star is my offspring.
40
From the above passages of the Pyramid Texts it is clear that the time of year is around the summer solstice, and this was when the coalescing of the departed king with both Ra and Horakhti took place in the east at dawn. With StarryNight Pro it is easily verified that these celestial events took place in conjunction during the epoch 2800-2500 BC, which perfectly coincides with the time that Egyptologists say the cult of the sun-god Ra started to predominate at Heliopolis. At that epoch and at that time of year the sun was housed by the constellation that resembled a recumbent lion. It would be truly perverse on our part to suggest that such avid star-watchers as the priests of Heliopolis would not have seen in this the combined figure of Ra-Horakhti. Let us, however, familiarise ourselves with the way the sun travels against the fixed background of constellations so that we can understand this argument better.
Seen from earth, the sun appears to travel along a circular path we call the ecliptic, also known as the zodiac. It so happens that along this circular path are 12 distinct constellations. These are the zodiacal constellations, so called because their shapes are suggestive of living creatures (‘zodiac’ comes from the Greek word
zodiakos
, meaning ‘circle of animals’). The 12 zodiacal figures or signs are: Aries the ram, Taurus the bull, Gemini the twins, Cancer the crab, Leo the lion, Virgo the virgin, Libra the scales, Scorpio the scorpion, Sagittarius the man with the body of a horse, Capricorn the deer with the body of a fish, Aquarius the water-bearer and, finally, Pisces the fish.
41
In actual fact there are only two zodiacal constellations that can truly be said to bear a resemblance to the creatures they are supposed to represent: Leo as a recumbent lion, and Scorpio as a scorpion with outstretched claws.
zodiakos
, meaning ‘circle of animals’). The 12 zodiacal figures or signs are: Aries the ram, Taurus the bull, Gemini the twins, Cancer the crab, Leo the lion, Virgo the virgin, Libra the scales, Scorpio the scorpion, Sagittarius the man with the body of a horse, Capricorn the deer with the body of a fish, Aquarius the water-bearer and, finally, Pisces the fish.
41
In actual fact there are only two zodiacal constellations that can truly be said to bear a resemblance to the creatures they are supposed to represent: Leo as a recumbent lion, and Scorpio as a scorpion with outstretched claws.
The two solstices of summer and winter and the two equinoxes of spring and autumn will denote four points on the zodiacal circle (also called the ‘zodiacal belt’) which the sun eclipses. In the Pyramid Age the summer solstice point was in Leo; the autumn equinox point was in Scorpio; the winter solstice point was in Aquarius, and the spring equinox point was in Taurus (near the Pleiades). In its yearly circuit around the zodiac, the sun disc also crosses the Milky Way at two places. In the Pyramid Age, the first crossing took place around early April and the second around early October. Also at that epoch the heliacal rising of Orion’s belt fell on 1 June (Gregorian), 70 days after 21 March (Gregorian), the spring equinox. On 21 March the sun would rise due east and would occupy a spot just below the small cluster of stars known as the Pleiades.
42
The twenty-first of March was thus the last day that Orion’s belt would be seen in the sky before its ‘rebirth’ (or heliacal rising) in the east at dawn. For 70 days Orion resided in the underworld Duat where, like Osiris, it was subjected to a magic that caused it to rise anew in the east. But during that period when Orion was invisible the sun disc could be seen travelling through the mysterious region of the underworld Duat which transited across the daytime sky. For 70 days the sun travelled eastwards from a point near the Pleiades, crossing the Milky Way to finally reach a point in front of Leo’s head. This was when the heliacal rising of Orion, i.e. the rebirth of Osiris, took place in the east at dawn. Three weeks later, on 21 June, the heliacal rising of Sirius took place, signalling the rebirth of Horus, the son of Osiris. We can easily see in these events the cosmic metaphors for the rebirth of the dead pharaoh as Osiris and the ascent of his son as the new Horus-king.
42
The twenty-first of March was thus the last day that Orion’s belt would be seen in the sky before its ‘rebirth’ (or heliacal rising) in the east at dawn. For 70 days Orion resided in the underworld Duat where, like Osiris, it was subjected to a magic that caused it to rise anew in the east. But during that period when Orion was invisible the sun disc could be seen travelling through the mysterious region of the underworld Duat which transited across the daytime sky. For 70 days the sun travelled eastwards from a point near the Pleiades, crossing the Milky Way to finally reach a point in front of Leo’s head. This was when the heliacal rising of Orion, i.e. the rebirth of Osiris, took place in the east at dawn. Three weeks later, on 21 June, the heliacal rising of Sirius took place, signalling the rebirth of Horus, the son of Osiris. We can easily see in these events the cosmic metaphors for the rebirth of the dead pharaoh as Osiris and the ascent of his son as the new Horus-king.
The heliacal rising of Sirius was the ideal New Year’s Day, which marked the official start of the flood season. Here we have another powerful metaphor, with the flood water symbolising the birth-water coming out from the womb of Isis as she brings forth Horus in the bulrushes of the Nile. Being such attentive observers of the constellations to the point of obsession, and especially so on the day of the heliacal rising of Sirius, it would be very odd indeed if the priests of Heliopolis did
not
take any particular notice of the lion-shaped constellation that housed the sun at this time of year, and which was the perfect metaphor for Ra-Horakhti, the merger of Ra with the cosmic lion. Yet this is precisely what Egyptologists want us to accept. To be fair on them, it is not that they deny that the ancient astronomers of Egypt could observe and identify the constellation that housed the sun. What they deny is that these astronomers saw in the pattern of this constellation a recumbent lion. Such a curious bias stems from their entrenched conviction that the zodiac was not known to the uncouth Egyptian astronomer-priests until the arrival of the more ‘sophisticated’ Greeks in the fourth century BC. But the Greeks themselves insist that it was the Egyptian priests who had taught the Greek scholars who visited Egypt all about the movement of the stars and the sun. For example there is the well-known testimony by Herodotus, who visited Egypt nearly a century
before
the Greeks occupied Egypt, where we see him praise the priests of Heliopolis for their astronomical knowledge, which was much more advanced than that of the Greeks:
not
take any particular notice of the lion-shaped constellation that housed the sun at this time of year, and which was the perfect metaphor for Ra-Horakhti, the merger of Ra with the cosmic lion. Yet this is precisely what Egyptologists want us to accept. To be fair on them, it is not that they deny that the ancient astronomers of Egypt could observe and identify the constellation that housed the sun. What they deny is that these astronomers saw in the pattern of this constellation a recumbent lion. Such a curious bias stems from their entrenched conviction that the zodiac was not known to the uncouth Egyptian astronomer-priests until the arrival of the more ‘sophisticated’ Greeks in the fourth century BC. But the Greeks themselves insist that it was the Egyptian priests who had taught the Greek scholars who visited Egypt all about the movement of the stars and the sun. For example there is the well-known testimony by Herodotus, who visited Egypt nearly a century
before
the Greeks occupied Egypt, where we see him praise the priests of Heliopolis for their astronomical knowledge, which was much more advanced than that of the Greeks:
. . . they were the first to discover the solar year, and to portion out its course into twelve parts. They obtained this knowledge from the stars. To my mind they contrive their year much more cleverly than the Greeks, for these last every other year intercalate a whole month, but the Egyptians, dividing the year into twelve months of thirty days each, add every year a space of five days besides, whereby the circuit of the seasons is made to return with uniformity.
For a man like Herodotus, a Greek, to say that it was not the Greeks but the Egyptians who first portioned the course of the sun in the year into twelve parts by using their knowledge of the stars is practically the same as saying that they created the zodiac. For this is precisely what the zodiac is:
the portioning of the sun’s annual path into twelve parts
. Further, confirmation is also given by Herodotus when he writes that it was the Egyptian priests who ‘first brought into use the names of the twelve gods, which the Greeks adopted from them’. Yet in spite of such affirmation by the ‘father of history’, there are Egyptologists such as Wallis Budge who admonish that ‘it is wrong, however, to conclude from this, as some have done, that the Egyptians were the inventors of the Zodiac, for they borrowed their knowledge of the Signs of the Zodiac, together with much else, from the Greeks’.
43
Why it is ‘wrong’ to do so, Wallis Budge does not explain; he seems simply to rest his case on the academic bias that favours Greek superiority in such matters. And so, most unfairly in my view, the honour for the invention of the zodiac, ‘together with much else’, he hands to the Greeks in one sweeping phrase. To be more specific, academics such as Wallis Budge claim that the Greek scholar Eudoxus of Cnidus, called ‘the founder of scientific astronomy’, was the first to identify the twelve gods with the twelve signs of the zodiac. Eudoxus probably borrowed his idea from earlier sources, although Babylonian sources rather than Egyptian are often cited by modern academics. Eudoxus, however, though he never visited Babylon, did, on the other hand, visit Egypt. Indeed he spent two years at Heliopolis during the reign of the pharaoh Nectanebo I, and was taught about the movement of the stars by the priests there. As Goyon pointed out:
the portioning of the sun’s annual path into twelve parts
. Further, confirmation is also given by Herodotus when he writes that it was the Egyptian priests who ‘first brought into use the names of the twelve gods, which the Greeks adopted from them’. Yet in spite of such affirmation by the ‘father of history’, there are Egyptologists such as Wallis Budge who admonish that ‘it is wrong, however, to conclude from this, as some have done, that the Egyptians were the inventors of the Zodiac, for they borrowed their knowledge of the Signs of the Zodiac, together with much else, from the Greeks’.
43
Why it is ‘wrong’ to do so, Wallis Budge does not explain; he seems simply to rest his case on the academic bias that favours Greek superiority in such matters. And so, most unfairly in my view, the honour for the invention of the zodiac, ‘together with much else’, he hands to the Greeks in one sweeping phrase. To be more specific, academics such as Wallis Budge claim that the Greek scholar Eudoxus of Cnidus, called ‘the founder of scientific astronomy’, was the first to identify the twelve gods with the twelve signs of the zodiac. Eudoxus probably borrowed his idea from earlier sources, although Babylonian sources rather than Egyptian are often cited by modern academics. Eudoxus, however, though he never visited Babylon, did, on the other hand, visit Egypt. Indeed he spent two years at Heliopolis during the reign of the pharaoh Nectanebo I, and was taught about the movement of the stars by the priests there. As Goyon pointed out:
In Greece, astronomy before Eudoxus was a science that was presented in metaphysical terms. The sky was not observed seriously. Eudoxus is said to be the first to have employed direct observations. But as we have seen, he had used the Egyptian observatory at Kerkasore. He made discoveries in geometry and astronomy which indicated a very advanced level of science. So advanced even, that it is impossible to think that he drew it all from within himself. Only observations and continuous recording (of the sky) during many centuries could have given them to him.
44
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