The Message Of The Sphinx Part 11

The great celestial 'journey' performed by the cosmic Horus-King along the ecliptic path therefore turns out to lead quite unambiguously to one very specific place in the heavenly landscape: between the 'paws' of Leo and right in front of its 'breast'.

The implications are obvious.

The enigmatic figure of Horakhti, whose ident.i.ty we have been attempting to establish, can be none other than the constellation of Leo-the giant cosmic lion, or sphinx, who stands at the gates of the sky-Duat and who a.s.sumes the name of 'Horus-of-the-Horizon'.

Let us now transpose the Horus-King to the land and follow his journey to the earthly 'Horus-in-the-Horizon'-by whom, of course, we mean Hor-em-Akhet, the Great Sphinx in the 'horizon' of Giza.

The High Road and the Low Road

The Horus-King stands on the east bank of the Nile, near the royal residence.[439] After completing certain rituals he boards a great 'solar boat'[440]-perhaps the very boat that was found in 1954 buried in a pit near the south face of the Great Pyramid-and is taken to the west bank of the river in the valley beneath the Giza plateau. He disembarks, makes his way up to the Temple of the Sphinx, and walks between the paws of the great statue to stand in front of its breast.

He is now at the Gateway to Rostau[441] and about to enter the Fifth Division of the Duat-the holy of holies of the Osirian afterworld Kingdom. Moreover, he is presented with a choice of 'two ways' or 'roads' to reach Rostau: one which is on 'land' and the other in 'water'.[442]

47. The 'astral' Kingdom of Osiris in Rostau. Artist's impression of the correlation of the three Giza Pyramids and the three stars of Orion's belt in Zep Tepi, the 'First Time'.

The eminent German philologist, Adolf Erman, explains: Whoever enters the realms of the dead by the sacred place of Rostau has, as we learn from a map of the Hereafter, two routes open to him, which would lead him to the land of the blessed, one by water, the other by land. Both are zigzag, and a traveller cannot change from one to the other, for between them lies a sea of fire ... Also before entering upon either of these routes there is a gate of fire to be pa.s.sed ...[443]

Having made his choice, the Horus-King demands to be taken to see 'his father' Osiris in his astral form. A mediator or priest reports to Osiris and states: It is not I who asks that he may see you in this form of yours which has come into being for you; O Osiris, someone asks that he may see you in this form of yours which has come into being for you; it is your son who asks ... it is Horus who asks that he may see you in this form ... a loving son ...[444]

48. Artist's impression of the original Horus leading the way for the Horus-King initiate into the place where the 'Seat' of Osiris is to be found in the astral Pyramid of final initiation.

Horus then declares to the council of the G.o.ds: The sky quivers, the earth shakes before me, for I am a magician, I possess magic. I have come that I may glorify Orion, that I may set Osiris at the head ...[445]

I have come to you, my father, I have come to you, Osiris ...[446]

Next, in a most telling manner, the council of the G.o.ds issues the following instruction: O Horus, the King [your father] is Osiris, this Pyramid of the King is Osiris, this construction of his is Osiris; betake yourself to it ...[447]

And further light may be shed on the ident.i.ty of the Osiris-Pyramid by a pa.s.sage from the Book of What is in the Duat which speaks of a mysterious 'district' in the Duat: 'which is 440 cubits in length and 440 cubits in breadth'.[448] Can it be a coincidence, since the Egyptian royal cubit is equivalent to 20.6 inches and 440 cubits therefore amounts to just over 755 feet, that the dimensions given are identical to those of the Great Pyramid's square base?[449]

At any rate, after pa.s.sing through more ordeals and adventures, the questing Horus-King finally reaches Osiris-Orion and finds him listless in the tenebrous underworld of his Pyramid. At this vital juncture, the questor's role is to bid his 'father Osiris' to awake and be reborn-i.e., in dualistic astronomical terms, to rise anew in the east at dawn as Orion: 'Awake for Horus! ... Raise yourself! ... The gates of the Duat are opened for you ... Spiritualize yourself ... May a stairway to the Duat be set up for you to the place where Orion is ...'[450]

Where, then, near or under the Sphinx can we find the 'two ways' or the 'two roads' of Rostau?

And why should the Horus-King be made to choose between them?

Subterranean world

One of the ancient names of the Giza necropolis, as we have seen, was Akhet Khufu-Kherit-Neter-Akhet-Khufu in full, usually rendered into English as 'the necropolis of the Horizon of Khufu'. In his dictionary of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sir E. A. Wallis Budge translates the word Kherit-Neter as 'cemetery, necropolis'.[451] Selim Ha.s.san, however, points out that Kherit-Neter can have the alternative meaning of 'under, or belonging to a G.o.d'.[452] And Budge adds that Kherit can also mean 'estate' and that the root of the word, i.e. Kher, can mean 'under something', 'the lower part' or 'downwards'.[453]

In addition, as Ha.s.san also reminds us, Kherit 'may be applied to the Underworld [Duat], perhaps as a lingering memory of the conception of Rostau as the Kingdom of Osiris in the tomb'.[454] Could such nuances imply more than a lingering memory? In other words, is it not possible, as we have already suggested in Part I, that under the necropolis-'horizon' of Giza there could be an 'estate' of some kind-perhaps a network of subterranean chambers and pa.s.sageways?

In his Handbook of Egyptian Religion, the German Egyptologist Adolf Erman wrote that: 'the celebrated shrine Rostau, the gates of the ways, led directly to the underworld. It is possible that part of this shrine has survived in the so-called Temple of the Sphinx ...'[455]

Furthermore, commenting on the word 'Rostau', R. O. Faulkner, the translator of the Pyramid Texts, says that this is also 'the term for a ramp or slide for moving the sarcophagus into a tomb, transferred to a region of the beyond'.[456] Dr. I. E. S. Edwards, on the other hand, says that the causeway which links a pyramid complex with its valley temple 'was called "place of the haul" or "entrance of the haul" (Rostau) because it was the way along which sledges bearing the body of the dead king and his personal possessions would be hauled at his funeral'.[457]

Linking the Valley Temple near the Sphinx with the central Pyramid on the Giza plateau, as the reader will recall, are the remains of an enormous causeway. Might not this causeway or 'road' be one of the 'ways' to the heartland of Rostau described in the ancient texts? Such causeways-though now in all cases fallen into ruin-were originally rectangular tunnels roofed over with limestone slabs and decorated with star-spangled ceilings.[458] It is easy to see how symbolism of this kind would have been be appropriate in the context of the Horus-King's cosmic quest to find the astral form of Osiris.

The causeway of the Sphinx runs to the immediate south of the monument at about the level of its shoulder and thence slopes gently upwards in a westerly direction towards the great 'Mortuary Temple' that stands outside the east face of the central Pyramid of Giza. Being in every sense 'dry', it makes sense to consider this causeway as being the 'road by land' to Rostau.

But where might the other 'road' be located-the 'way through water'? There may be an important clue in the Book of What is in the Duat. In this eerie text there is a depiction of the hermetically sealed chamber of the 'Kingdom of Sokar'-Sokar-Osiris-which is also the Fifth Division of the Duat. The depiction shows a tunnel filled with water pa.s.sing under the paws of a large Sphinx (see page 148). The tunnel slopes gently upwards leading, finally, to the Sixth Division.

Interestingly enough, as we saw in Part I, geologists working around the Great Sphinx in the early 1990s identified a large rectangular chamber and other 'anomalies' in the bedrock directly beneath the monument's paws. Interestingly, too, it is well known that far below the Sphinx is an underground watertable which has been constantly replenished since times immemorial by capillary action from the Nile.[459]

Tunnel

Dr. Jean Kerisel, the eminent French engineer whose work in the Subterranean Chamber of the Great Pyramid we are already familiar with,[460] has recently taken the geological evidence further by suggesting that the Sphinx may stand over the entrance to a 700-metre-long tunnel leading to the Great Pyramid-a tunnel that was once filled or partially filled with water.[461]

Could such a tunnel be the other 'way' that the Horus-King had to take to 'see the astral form of his Father', i.e. Orion? The fact that inside the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid is, indeed, a star-shaft pointed directly at Orion's belt-the 'Rostau' in the sky-adds cogency to notions of some sort of underground access route that might have been used by initiates to journey in secret from the Sphinx to the inner pa.s.sages and chambers of the Pyramid.

Furthermore, in the Pyramid Texts we often hear of a 'Causeway of Happiness' which is in the 'North of the Field of Offerings'. And in the following pa.s.sage the Horus-King seems to be standing at the entrance of such a 'causeway' at exactly the time Sirius is performing its heliacal rising, i.e. 'Heralding the New Year' 70 days after the sun's crossing of the Milky Way: I am the herald of the Year, O Osiris, I have come on business of your father Geb [the earth-G.o.d] ... I speak to you, I have made you enduring. 'Causeway of Happiness' is the name of this causeway north of the Field of Offerings. Stand Up, Osiris, and commend me to those who are in charge of the 'Causeway of Happiness' north of the Field of Offerings just as you commended Horus to Isis on that day on which you made her pregnant ...[462]

The 'Field of Offerings' had a celestial location in the Duat somewhere near Orion.[463] Dualistic logic therefore suggests that its earthly counterpart must have been a place where 'offerings' were made by the Horus-King when he was about to enter the Giza necropolis. With this in mind, it is surely of relevance that many of the New Kingdom sphinx stelae found at Giza, including the granite stela of Thutmosis IV that stands between the paws of the Sphinx itself, do in fact show the Horus-Kings making offerings in a temple in front of the monument.[464] Furthermore, as the text quoted above makes clear, the 'Causeway of Happiness' ran to the north of the 'Field of Offerings'. An underground 'causeway' running north-west from the temple of the Sphinx would lead to the Great Pyramid.

So could Kerisel's bold hypothesis be right?[465] Could such an underground system exist at Giza?

Stargate

These are questions that we shall return to in Part IV. Meanwhile what are we to make of the mention of Isis and her pregnancy that also appears in the above text?

In The Orion Mystery it has been shown that the Great Pyramid's so-called Queen's Chamber could have been used for a symbolic 'copulation' or 'seeding' ritual involving the person of the Horus-King on the one hand and the G.o.ddess Isis in her astral form (i.e. the star Sirius) on the other. In terms of sky-ground dualism the two might have been thought of as being 'connected' through the Chamber's southern star-shaft, which was targeted on the meridian-transit of Sirius in the Pyramid Age.[466] This hypothesis is strengthened by the fact that such a copulation ritual is found clearly depicted in the Pyramid Texts and that the moment when Osiris supposedly made Isis 'pregnant' is specified as being when Sirius crossed the meridian at dawn.[467] The texts also state of Osiris-Orion: 'Your sister Isis comes to you rejoicing for love of you. You have placed her on your phallus and your seed issues in her, she being ready as "Sothis" [Sirius] ...'[468]

49. Artist's impression of the 'cosmic' Great Pyramid superimposing the star Sirius over the position of the 'gate' in the Sirius star-shaft.

Was the Horus-King, then, somehow meant to find his way under and into the Great Pyramid and thence to its upper chambers with their star-shafts?

And what might really be the significance of Rudolf Gantenbrink's recent discovery, which we have considered at length in Part II, of a mysterious 'gate' or 'doorway' deep inside one of those shafts-the very shaft that targeted the meridian-transit of Sirius in the Pyramid Age?

Last but not least, is it a coincidence that the ancient Egyptian word sba, 'star', also carries the meanings 'gate', 'folding door' and 'great door of heaven'?[469]

Again, these are matters on which we shall have to postpone further conjecture until Part IV. Meanwhile let us return to the quest to unite sky and ground-thus winning the Grail of immortality-in which all the Horus-Kings of ancient Egypt partic.i.p.ated.

The Splendid Place of the 'First Time'

We left the cosmic Horus-King standing in the sky with the solar disc between the 'paws' of the celestial lion, the constellation of Leo-on the spot marked by the star Regulus.

In the Pyramid Age Regulus rose at approximately 28 degrees north of due east.[470] It is from this spot therefore that the Horus-King in the sky must somehow travel-on one of the 'roads' to Rostau-to reach Orion's belt.

Now we transpose again to the Horus-King in his earthly form at Giza, standing between the paws of the great Sphinx.

It is the moment of dawn on the summer solstice in the epoch of 2500 bc, with Leo rising at 28 degrees north of due east, and we immediately notice that something is wrong with the sky-ground pattern.

The Sphinx gazes due east, i.e. he does not gaze at Leo, his celestial counterpart.

50. Epoch of 2500 bc, the Pyramid Age: the rising of Leo at the summer solstice. Note that in this epoch the gaze of Hor-em-Akhet, 'Horus-in-the-Horizon'-i.e. the Great Sphinx-is not in alignment with Horakhti, 'Horus-of-the-Horizon', i.e. the constellation of Leo. The reader will recall that this same sense of a curious 'dislocation' of the sky-ground images at the summer solstice in 2500 bc also applies to the three great Pyramids and the three stars of Orion's belt.

51. Summer solstice in the epoch of 2500 bc. Artist's impression of the Duat region as viewed from the Horizon of Giza.

And the causeway connecting the central Pyramid to the Sphinx complex is directed 14 degrees south of due east-i.e. far to the right of the spot where the cosmic Horus-King is supposedly at his station between the paws of Leo and ready to travel to Rostau.

So why is the sky-image in the 'wrong place' on the eastern horizon? Or to express the problem the right way round, and in the correct dualistic terminology, why is Hor-em-Akhet, Horus-in-the-Horizon-i.e. the Great Sphinx-not in alignment with Horakhti, Horus-of-the-Horizon, i.e. the constellation of Leo? Why, too, is the causeway of the Sphinx not directed to the rising sun so as to 'link-up' the Horus-King with his cosmic solar counterpart?

There is, it seems, a curious 'dislocation' between the ground and the sky at the summer solstice in the epoch of 2500 bc. Moreover, as the reader will recall from Chapter 8, this sense of the entire arrangement being out of kilter is not confined to the Sphinx and Leo in that epoch but involves the three great Pyramids of Giza as well.

It may be the case that the solution to the riddle has all along been staring us in the face. Inscribed on the granite stela that the Sphinx holds between its own heavily eroded paws-a stela that was placed there in honour of Thutmosis IV, a mighty Horus-King of Egypt-we read the following impressive royal t.i.tulary: The Majesty of Horus, Mighty Bull Begetting Radiance, Favourite of the Two G.o.ddesses, Enduring in Kings.h.i.+p like Atum, Golden Horus, Mighty of Sword, Repelling the Nine Bows, King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Son of Re, Thutmosis ... given life, stability, satisfaction ... for ever. Live the Good G.o.d, Son of Atum, Protector of Horakhti, Living Image of the All-Lord, Sovereign ..., beautiful of Face like His Father, who came forth equipped with the form of Horus upon him ... Son of Atum, of his body, Thutmosis ... Heir of Horus Upon His Throne ...[471]

Does this sound like a man who did not have a clue, as some Egyptologists suggest,[472] as to what the great Sphinx and the other monuments of Giza really represented? Surely not. So what, then, did the majestic Horus-King declare this sacred domain to be?

In one simple, powerful phrase, as the reader will recall, he stated that it was 'The Splendid Place of the "First Time" '.[473]

Is it not likely, when he uttered these words, that Thutmosis, 'Heir of Horus Upon His Throne', was repeating what every Horus-King before him had declared the Giza plateau to be?

52. Artist's impression of 'reconstructed' Sphinx showing the statue of a Horus-King, which is known to have once stood between its paws, gazing at the celestial counterpart of the 'Splendid Place of the First Time' in the eastern horizon.

Is it not likely that he called it 'The Splendid Place of the "First Time" ' because that is exactly what it was remembered to be in traditions that had been handed down from remotest, almost incomprehensible, antiquity?

Could this be why the sky of 2500 bc seems to be so badly out of kilter, somehow skewed and twisted, i.e. 'in the wrong place'? Could it be not so much in the wrong place as at the wrong time?

Should we set our computer to search for another time that might match the monuments to the sky, a time long before Thutmosis, long before Khafre and Khufu, the 'time' when Osiris established his kingdom on earth-in other words, the 'First Time'?

When was the 'First Time'?

Part IV

Map

Chapter 11.

The Unseen Academy 'The Egyptians believed that in the beginning their land was ruled by a dynasty of great G.o.ds, of whom Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris, was the last. He was succeeded by a dynasty of semi-divine beings known as the "followers of Horus", who, in turn, gave place to the historical kings of Egypt.'

Selim Ha.s.san, The Sphinx, Cairo, 1949 When was the 'genesis' of civilization in Egypt? When did 'history' begin?

According to T. G. H. James, formerly Keeper of Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum, and a representative voice of orthodox opinion on these matters: 'The first truly historical period is that which begins with the invention of writing and it is generally known as the Dynastic Period. It is a period extending from about 3100 bc to 332 bc and it derives its name from the thirty-one dynasties into which the successive kings of Egypt were divided in a scheme preserved in the work of Manetho, a priestly historian who lived during the [third century bc]. The unlettered cultures which flourished in Egypt before the beginning of the Dynastic Period, and which exhibit some of the characteristics which mark the earliest phases of Egyptian culture in the Dynastic Period, are known as Predynastic ... Such traces of human life as are found in the Nile Valley dating from before the Predynastic Period are usually described in the terms used for European Prehistory-Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic.'[474]

So there we have it. Egyptian history-and civilization with it-began at around 3100 bc. Before that there were merely 'unlettered cultures' (admittedly with some 'civilized' characteristics), which were in turn preceded by 'Stone Age' savages ('Palaeolithic' means literally 'Old Stone Age').

The way James puts it, the whole picture seems very clear-cut, orderly and precise. He really makes it sound as though all the facts are now in hand concerning the Predynastic Egyptians and their forebears, and that nothing more remains to be discovered about any of them.

Such anodyne notions of the past are widespread amongst Egyptologists who again and again in their textbooks, and also in ma.s.s-market publications like National Geographic and Time-Life's misleadingly named Lost Civilizations series, convey the comforting impression that the prehistory of Egypt is well understood, organized, categorized and safely put in its place (James even refers us to one specific place in the British Museum where particular enlightenment apparently awaits us: the 'Sixth Egyptian Room' with its definitive display of 'primitive tools made by the Palaeolithic inhabitants of Egypt').[475] Likewise, on the other side of the Atlantic as we saw in Part I, Dr. Peter Lecovara, Curator of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, a.s.sures us that 'thousands of Egyptologists working for hundreds of years have studied this problem [the prehistory of Egypt] and the chronology is pretty much worked out. There is no big surprise in store for us.'[476]

But is everything really as orderly and as well worked out as the 'experts' say? And can we really be so sure that there is 'no big surprise in store for us'?

In our view Lecovara, James, and the many other scholars who share their opinions, would do well to remember the advice of the late Labib Habachi, formerly the Egyptian government's Chief Inspector of Antiquities, who warned in 1984 that 'Egyptology is a field in which chance discovery may disprove an established theory'.[477] In the light of this possibility, Habachi's suggestion was that Egyptologists should avoid making 'unqualified statements' and be honest enough to 'salt their comments with "probably" and "perhaps".'[478]