ANCIENT EGYPT
First published London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1907.
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ANCIENT EGYPT
T HE L IGHT
OF
T HE W ORLD
A Work of Reclamation and
Restitution in Twelve Books
BY
GERALD MASSEY.
AUTHOR OF
“A BOOK OF THE BEGINNINGS” AND “THE NATURAL GENESIS”
VOLUME II.
Leeds
CELEPHAÏS PRESS.
2008
CONTENTS
VOL. II
BOOK
PAGE
IX. THE ARK, THE DELUGE, AND THE WORLD’S GREAT
YEAR .
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. 545
X. THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF
AMENTA .
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. 629
The Seed of Ysiraal
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. 687
The Title of Pharaoh .
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XI. EGYPTIAN WISDOM IN THE REVELATION OF JOHN
THE DIVINE .
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. 690
XII. THE JESUS-LEGEND TRACED IN EGYPT FOR TEN
THOUSAND YEARS .
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. 727
Child-Horus .
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. 738
The Jesus-Legend in Rome .
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The Egypto-Gnostic Jesus
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Double Horus, or Jesus and the Christ .
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The Mysteries and Miracles .
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Jesus in the Mount .
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Sut and Horus as Historic Characters in the Canonical Gospels
831
The Group in Bethany .
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The Founders of the Kingdom
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The Last Supper: the Crucifixion and the Resurrection .
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The Resurrection from Amenta .
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The Sayings of Jesus
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Appendix
Index .
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907
915
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOL. II
PAGE
I. STAR-MAP OF PRECESSION
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II. THE LANDING-PLACE FOR SPIRITS, WITH THE TREE OF
POLE IN THE CONSTELLATION OF THE HIPPOPOTAMUS .
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601
THE
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603
III. THE ANNUNCIATION, CONCEPTION, BIRTH, AND ADORATION OF
THE MESSIANIC CHILD
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. 757
IV. THE FOUR FISHERS FOR HORUS
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860
THE ARK, THE DELUGE, AND THE WORLD’S GREAT
YEAR.
BOOK IX
AT first sight the general effect of the innumerable deluge-legends is
to suggest the existence of a primitive kind of catastrophobia resulting
from fear of the water-flood. The arkite symbolism originated in the
mount and tree, the cave or enclosure being a natural place of
refuge when the waters were out upon the earth; and these were
followed by the raft, the boat, or ark that swam the waters as a means
of human safety. Before the legends of a deluge could have been
formulated, the deluge as an overwhelming flood of water had become
a figure used in sign-language to express the natural fact in a variety
of phenomena to which the type might be and was applied. It
is expressed in English still by what is termed “a flooding.” But a
deluge is not only an overflow of water. There is a deluge of blood
(both Egyptian and Polynesian). Night brings its deluge of darkness,
and dawn lets loose the floods of day. The so-called deluge-legend
comprises a hundred legends and a hundred applications of the same
type, from one single origin in sign-language as the primitive mode of
representing a fact in nature. The deluge is universal because it was
not local. The human race spread out over all the earth would not have
been greatly troubled about an excessive overflow of water once upon a
time in Mesopotamia. The legend is coeval with all time, and current
amongst all people, because the deluge did not occur “once upon a
time.” On the grand scale it was the mythical representation of the
ending and submergence of an old order of things in the astronomical
mythology; but there were various distinct deluges with that meaning,
and not merely one. The Egyptian deluge in the so-called “destruction of mankind” is described as continuing for three nights and days.
The time is measured by three days’ length in navigation through a
deluge of blood (Records of the Past, 6, 103). Now, three nights and
days is the length of time that was computed for the monthly absence
of the moon in the nether-world. Hence there was a deluge of darkness on that scale in mythology. But the deluge occurred in at
least four categories of phenomena. There was a deluge of blood and
a deluge of darkness, as well as a deluge of water. There is also the
deluge that was a type of periodic time; and by no black art of
bibliolatry can these four kinds of deluge be combined in one.
A deluge being an ending of a cycle in time, we can understand the
546
ANCIENT EGYPT
language of the Codex Chimalpopoca (translated by the Abbé Brasseur
de Bourbourg) concerning the flood, when it says, “Now the water was
tranquil for forty years plus twelve.” “All was lost. Even the
mountains sank into the water, and the water remained tranquil for
fifty-two springs.” In this account, the well-known Mexican cycle of
fifty-two years is measured by means of a deluge at the end of the
period. In Inner Africa the year was reckoned by the periodic great
rain; in Egypt by the inundation; and a deluge, we repeat,
became the natural type of an ending in time in the uranographic
representation. In India, a solar pralaya, in which the waters rise till
they reach the seven Rishis in the region of the pole, is of necessity
kronian, and applies solely to the keeping of time and period astronomically. The Assyrian deluge is described as lasting seven days.
This agrees with the seven days’ silence in the Wisdom of Esdras, by
which the consummation of the age, or ending of the period, was to be
commemorated “like as in the former judgments,” deluges, or endings
of the cycle or age in time. The flood of Noah is on the scale of the year
or thereabouts. The deluge of time, as it was called by the Chaldean
magi, is a breach of continuity, a phase of dissolution. It was a
period of negation that was filled in with a festival as a mode of
memorialising the dies non or no time. It was a condition of the lawlessness of misrule, of promiscuous intercourse, of drunkenness, that
characterized the saturnalia by which it was celebrated.
There is a Kamite prototype in “the destruction of mankind” for
the woman who is the reputed cause of a deluge in the Egyptian
mythos. This is Sekhet the avenger. She is the very great one of the
liquid domain. No one is master of the water of Sekhet, which she lets
loose as an element of death and destruction. She was the great
mistress of terror in fire and flood. In “the destruction of mankind”
it is said, “There was Sekhet, during several nights, trampling the
blood under her feet as far as Heracleopolis.” Ra, the solar god,
“ordered the goddess to slay the evil race in three days of navigation.”
“And the fields were entirely covered with water through the will of
the majesty of the god; and there came the goddess (Hathor) in the
morning, and she found the fields covered with water, and she was
pleased with it, and she went away satisfied and saw no men” (i.e.,
none of the exterminated evil race). This is a form of the Egyptian
deluge designated a great destruction, but with no earthly application
to the human race. In the African legend relating to the origin of
Lake Tanganyika, that was told to Stanley by the Wagigi fishermen,
it was a woman, to whom the secret of the water-spring had been
entrusted, who was the cause of the deluge. Possibly this woman was
the earth as mother of the waters, seeing that Scomalt is the earthmother of the Okanagaus, and that she also was charged with letting in
the deluge. Scomalt is a form of the primordial genetrix, equivalent
to Apt in Egypt. Long ago, they say, when the sun was no bigger
than a star, this strong medicine-woman ruled over what appears to
have become a lost continent. Her subjects rose against her in rebellion. Whereupon she broke up the land, and all the people but two
met with their death by drowning. A man and a woman escaped in a
canoe and arrived on the mainland, and from this pair the Okanagaus
are descended (Bancroft, vol. iii, 149).
THE DELUGE AND THE ARK
547
A starting-point in various deluge-legends is from the world all
water. This originated with the firmament as the celestial water that
was called the Nnu, or Nun. Now one meaning of the word Nun
in Egyptian is the flood. Thus the water of heaven is synonymous
with the deluge. In one aspect the deluge, as a figure in the signlanguage of the astronomical mythology, was a mode of representing
the sinking of the pole in the celestial ocean which was figured as the
world of water. This is the world all water in the legendary lore.
The flood upon which Jehovah sat as king was no other than
the firmamental Nun (Ps. xxix. 10). So the throne of Osiris was based
upon the flood, that is upon the Nun. In the vignettes to the Ritual
Osiris sits upon the throne in Amenta as the great judge and ruler,
and his throne is “balanced” as it is described, upon the flood. Water
being the primary element of life, it was also based on figuratively;
and Osiris with his throne resting on the water takes the place of
the earlier Nnu, or later Noah, resting in his ark as master of the deep.
Nnu was god of the celestial water. The wateress in one form was
the goddess Nut. This, then, and nothing short of it, is the root of the
matter when, as in the Navajo-Indian legend, certain persons, who
are so often one female and one male, make their escape from the overwhelming waters by climbing up a reed to the land of life which, as a
land of reeds, was the primal paradise, or the fields where the papyrus
was in flower above the waters of a universal deluge, as represented in
the veriest drawing of mythology.
We have to learn the sign-language before we can understand the
nature of mythology. When it is said that Horus inundates the world
like the sun each morning, that is with the light as the deluge of day.
There is a white water and a black, equivalent to the white bird
of light and the black bird of night, as opposite figures of Sut
and Horus for the dark and the day. The evil Apap, who drinks the
water cubit by cubit at each gulp as the sun goes down, is slain by
Horus at daybreak, when he once more sets free the waters of light
which are designated the waters of dawn. In like manner, the waters
of day rush forth when Indra slays the serpent of darkness, who was
thought of as the swallower of the light = water of heaven. Osiris
is called the “overflower,” the “great extender,” the “shoreless
one,” who in this imagery of the deluge “brings to its fulness the
divine force which is hidden within him” (Rit., ch. 64, 13-15, Renouf).
Thus, in continuing the primitive mode of thinging the concept,
Osiris is the water-force personified, instead of being represented as a
crocodile, which was also one of the primal types of water.
“The deluge” is only single as a type. There are various deluges
known to mythology, and various agents who are held responsible for
causing them. In one legend or folk-tale it was the mischievous
monkey. In another it was the tortoise, who sank in the waters and
drowned the people who had their dwelling-place upon its back. In
another it is caused by the killing of a sacred bird, which might be
the vulture or cygnus. In a fourth the fountains of the great deep
are opened by the taking out of the star, whereupon the deluge
follows. A cause of the deluge is attributed to the star-gods, Sut in
Egypt and Bel in Babylonia. It was caused by a failure in keeping
time, and the failure is followed in a number of legends by the
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ANCIENT EGYPT
new heaven, in which the supreme time-keeper is the moon or the
lunar divinity who is Taht in the Kamite representation.
Some most precious remains of the primitive wisdom now extant
outside of Egypt are preserved by the oldest races of the world.
Much of the matter is found amongst the people of the Polynesian
islands, far more to the purpose than anything to be found in the
Hindu or the Hebrew sacred books. The Samoans have what may,
in a symbolical sense, be termed a deluge legend. Tangaloa, the
originator of the heavens, was the builder. Of old the heavens were
always falling down when they consisted of water without any
bulwark or embankment. To put a limit, to build or make any firm
enclosure, was to circumscribe the waters and secure a place of refuge
from the dreaded deluge. In the time of Ptah, their great architect,
the Egyptians were advanced enough in craftsmanship for the
enclosure formed by him to keep out the waters of the deluge
in Amenta to be made of either iron or steel, called the ba-metal.
An ark was a primitive enclosure formed in the celestial water. This,
as Egyptian, is the ark of Nnu, and Nnu is heaven, as water, also a
name for the deity of the celestial water. In the Samoan legend, an
ark is built before there was any water or water-flood, or before the
firmament had been figured as water. “Tangaloa of the heavens
and his son Lu = Shu built a canoe or vessel up in the heavens.”
When the vessel was finished there was no water to float it. Gaogao,
the ancient mother, told her son Lu to have the vessel ready and she
would make the water. She then gave birth to a lake, or the water of
life, and also to the salt water, as it is said “there was no sea at that time.”
The lake we identify with “the lake of the thigh,” or the meskhen
of the water-cow. Sea and lake imply both salt and fresh water, the
two waters of earth and heaven that were repeated in the two lakes of
Amenta. The Samoan deluge lasted until the seventh day, like the
Babylonian. As it is said of Lu, “He was not many days afloat, some
say six, when (on the seventh) his vessel rested on the top of a mountain
called Malata” (Turner, Samoa, p. 12). In a papyrus at Turin the
god who claims to be self-existent says, “I make the waters and the
Mehura comes into being.” That is heaven as the celestial water. In
a hymn to Ptah it is said, “The waters of the inundation cover the
lofty trees of every region.” These, however, are the waters of Nnu
or the Nun (Renouf, H. L., pp. 221-2), and not the overwhelming
flood of water on the earth. When the Mehura first came into
existence it was a heaven imaged as the water that was undivided by
the astronomers, the islands or other land-limits that were figured in
the aërial vast; and heaven as the celestial water was the Nnu or
Nun. A “true explanation of the world-wide deluge myths” no
longer need be sought for in the book of Genesis or in the tradition of a
great flood that swept the plains of Mesopotamia; nor in any vast
cataclysm that might have been caused by the melting of the ice at
the close of the glacial period (Huxley, Nineteenth Century, 1890,
pp. 14-15). We find by the Egyptian wisdom that “the deluge,” as
it is commonly termed, belongs neither to geography, nor geology,
nor history. Geology, the latest of the sciences, was comparatively
unknown to the early world. Geology did not furnish the kind of
fact with which the ancient science was concerned. Whatsoever
THE DELUGE AND THE ARK
549
the Egyptian “mystery-teachers of the depths” may have known of
mines and metals, mythology was not geological in the least degree.
Neither did the Kamite chronology include the computation of
geological time.
It was confidently asserted by Bunsen that the deluge legend was
unknown to the Egyptians. But they had all the deluges that ever
were, as the Hir-Seshta informed Solon, including the “great deluge
of all,” whereas the Greeks could only muster two. But in no case
were these geological catastrophes. M. Lenormant asserted that the
story of the deluge was unknown to the black race, and that “while
the tradition holds so considerable a place in the legendary memories
of all branches of the Aryan people, the monuments and original
texts of Egypt, with their many cosmogonic speculations, have not
afforded one even distant allusion to this cataclysm.” The statement
sounds authoritative, but it is not true. Professor Sayce, following
Lenormant, asserts that “no tradition of a deluge had been preserved
by the Egyptians” (Fresh Light from the Monuments, p. 47). This
comes of raking for human history, and for nothing else, in the Semitic
débris of the Kamite astronomical mythology. Both are wrong, and
both were equally misled through looking for the deluge with the
Semitic versions for their determinatives.
Bibliology has gone
perilously near to ruining Assyriology and Egyptology for the
first generations of students in this country. It is fortunate for
genuine scholarship that there are livers out of Bible-burdened
Britain.
To identify the deluge-legend in Egypt you must know how to
look for it; no use in peering through the Semitic spectacles. The
legend of Atlantis re-told by Plato in Timæus was Egyptian, and
no doubt with the legend came the name of lost Atlantis, transliterated through the Greek. As Egyptian, the word atr = atl has
several meanings in relation to water. Atru is the water, the waterflood, the water-boundary, limit, measure, frontier, embankment.
Egyptian in the early stages had no sign of l. But by substitution
of the later letter l for r the word atr becomes atl, the root of such
names as Atlantis and Atlantic. With this change of letter the
Atarantes of Africa become the Atalantes. The word antu or anti
signifies a division of land. Thus Atlanti, whence Atlantis, as a
compound of two Egyptian words, denotes the land divided by the
waters, or canals of water. Now the earliest nuit or nomes of Egypt
were seven in number, and these were seven territories marked out,
limited, and bounded by the atlu (atru) as river, canal, conduit, or
water-boundaries. In the valley of the Nile, the land was bounded
first by water as the natural boundary, and seven nomes would be
enclosed by seven atlu, long before the land limit was marked out by
the boundary-stones or stelæ. And atl-antu, we suggest, is the
original for the names of Atlantis and the Atlantic Ocean. It is
noticeable that in the Nahuatl vocabulary atl is also the water name,
and that atlan denotes the border or boundary of the water (Baldwin,
Ancient America, p. 179). Atlan thus becomes a name for the mound,
island, or tesh that was placed as a limit to the water in Egypt. This
would be the land of Atlan, as we find it both in Africa and America.
There were seven such water limits to the land in Egypt when it was
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ANCIENT EGYPT
divided into seven nomes. And seven astronomes named after these
become the seven islands of the lost Atlantis, which sank in the
celestial waters, the heptanomis of the seven lands below having
been repeated in the mapping out of heaven in seven astronomes.
The heptanomis above, like the one below, was formed of seven lands
that were divided by the seven waters, canals, or atlu (atru), and both
together constituted the Atlantis of Uranography, the only one that
could ever be lost by the celestial waters overflowing the celestial
lands. The seven rulers of the astronomes attained the status of
divine princes in the celestial heptanomis. And among the nomes of
Lower Egypt we find the nome of the Prince of Annu; the nome of
the prince of Lower Egypt; the nome of Supti (Sut); the nome of
Samhutit (Horus); the nome of Sebek; the nome of Shu; the nome
of Hapi. Here then, if anywhere on earth, we find a geographical
prototype for the Atlantis that was lost in seven islands, according to
the records kept by the astronomers, which are preserved in the
mythography. Among the many types of the heptanomis and its
septenary of powers and stations of the pole may be enumerated:—A
mount with seven caves; seven islands in the sea; the sevenheaded serpent whelmed beneath the waters; a tree with seven
branches; a fish with seven fins; a pole with seven horns; a cross
with seven arms; the seven supporting giants; the ark of seven cubits;
the boat with seven Kabiri on board; the group of seven
cities.
It is not necessary to suppose that the Egyptians were the helpless victims of their own symbolism, who lived in mortal dread of the
celestial waters falling down and overwhelming them in a deluge
once for all. But there can be no doubt that the water-flood on earth
against which the early race was powerless produced a profound and
permanent impression, so that the deluge idea became associated with
the firmamental water. This can be proved by the mythical deluge
dramatically represented in the Ritual. “I am the Father of the
Inundation,” says Anup at the northern pole, whence the waters
issued in the deluge of the Milky Way, or White Nile of the Nun.
The Egyptian Ritual affords a study of the deluge mythos in the
phase of eschatology. The passage for the soul in death has long
and universally been likened to a river or some dark water flowing
betwixt the two worlds of earth and heaven. This in Egypt was the
Nun. The way of the gods in their ascent and descent to earth was
by water. The way of souls in their ascent to heaven is equally
by water, whether in the ark of the moon, the bark of Orion, or the
boat of the sun. The manes on entering the other life thus addresses
the sailors of the solar bark, “O ye seamen of Ra, at the gloaming of
day let me live after death, day by day, as doth Ra.” That is by
means of the boat which keeps the sun or the soul of the deceased
afloat upon the drowning element (ch. 3). In the chapter for
travelling on the road which is above the earth (ch. 4), the speaker
says, “It is I who voyage on the stream which divideth the divine
pair.” These are the two sisters Isis and Nephthys, whose stations in
the Osirian solar mythos were at the western and eastern sides of the
river which ran north and south in heaven as in Egypt. Some
prophetic tableaux show the deceased in his funeral bark, speeding
THE DELUGE AND THE ARK
551
before the wind with all sail set, having started on his way to the
next world the very day that he took possession of his new abode in
death (Maspero, Egypt. Arch., p. 120). Amongst the words that are said
on the day of burial to bring about “the resurrection and the glory,”
the deceased asks that he may see the ship of the holy Sahus
traversing the sky; that is, the ark of souls represented in the
constellation of Orion.
He also pleads, “Let the divine vessel
Neshemet advance to meet me.” The Osiris tells us that the
name of his bark is “Collector of Souls.” “The picture of it is the
representation of his glorious journey upon the canal” (ch. 58).
Safe in the ark, he crosses the waters in which the helpless souls are
wrecked.
In the chapter by which the ship is sailed in the nether-world, the
speaker not only sails across the water of Nnu, for he says, “I come
from the lake of fire and flame, from the field of flame,” and he stands
erect and safe “in the bark which the god is piloting, at the head of
Aarru,” that is, on the summit of the mount, or final resting-place of
the ark (Rit., ch. 98, Renouf), which the deceased had safely reached
through fire and flood. On entering the solar bark the Osiris says,
“I have come myself and delivered the deity from the pain and
suffering that were in the trunk, in shoulder, and in leg. I have come
and healed the trunk and fastened the shoulder and made firm the
leg. And I embark for the voyage of Ra.” The leg of Osiris, like
the leg of Nut or the leg of Ptah, imaged the supporting power of
the pole. The manes pleads, “Let not the Osiris Nu be shipwrecked on the great voyage” (ch. 130). “Let not disasters reach
him.” “May the steering be kept clear from misadventure.” “Let me
come to see my father Osiris” (ch. 99). “O, thou ship of the garden
of Aarru, let me be conveyed to that bread of thy canal as my father,
the great one, who advanceth in the divine ship” (ch. 106, Renouf).
“Lo, I sail the great bark on the stream of the god Hetep. I
took it at the mansion of Shu”—the starry heaven (ch. 110, Renouf).
“I sail upon its stream and range within the garden of Hetep”
(ch. 110). When about to enter the bark of Ra, the speaker says,
“O great one, let me be lifted into thy bark. Let me make head
for thy staircase. Let me have charge of those who convey thee, who
are attached to thee, and who are of the stars which never set” (Rit.,
ch. 102). These are the seven that pull at the rope, or as we should
say, that keep the law of gravitation and equipoise; the seven arms of
the balance, or the seven bonds of the universe; the seven tow-ers
that became the later seven rowers, sailors, or Kabiri. These are
sometimes called the seven spirits of Annu, that is at the pole, the
mount of glory in the stellar mythos. Four of the seven can be
identified as Amsta, Hapi, Tuamutef, and Kabhsenuf (Rit., ch. 97).
“Said at the bark: Staff of Anup, may I propitiate those four
glorified ones who follow after the master of all things?” These
are four of the seven that pulled the bark up to the landing-stage
upon the summit with the primitive rope, who are afterwards
stationed as the four oars at the four cardinal points, in a later
heaven, and also as the children of Horus, who had previously been
his brothers. There is a great bursting forth of the floods in Amenta,
described in the Ritual as a vast and overwhelming inundation. This
552
ANCIENT EGYPT
passage of the waters shows the deluge-legend in the Kamite
eschatology. The Osiris calls upon the lord of the flood, “the great one
who is shoreless,” to save him. “Do thou save me!” “I who
know the deep waters” is my name. But “I am not one who
drowneth. Blessed are they who see the bourne. Beautiful is the
god of the motionless heart who causeth the stay of the overflowing
—or the flood. Behold! there cometh forth the lord of life, Osiris
thy support, who abideth day by day.” “The tunnels of the earth have
given me birth.”
This overflow of the great waters called
the flood also occurs in Sheol amongst the other trials and tribulations of the sufferer represented in the Hebrew book of Psalms.
“The channels of waters appeared, and the foundations of the
world were laid bare” (ch. 18).
“He drew me out of great
waters.” As one means of salvation from the overwhelming waters
the manes clings to the sycamore-tree which standeth in the lake
of Akeb. He exclaims, “I embrace the sycamore, I am united
to the sycamore-tree.” That is, to Osiris in the tree, the tat or
pole, the type of fixity to be clasped for safety amid the waters
rising round the soul in death and in the darkness of the nether
earth. Sufficient mythical matter for a legend of the deluge and the
ark may be found in the 64th chapter of the Ritual. It is recorded
in the rubrical directions appended to the chapter that it “was
discovered on a plinth of the god of the Hennu-bark by a masterbuilder of the wall in the time of King Septi the victorious.” Septi, or
Seti, was a king in the first dynasty who lived and ruled in Egypt
from 6,000 to 7,000 years ago.
At that time the chapter was
rediscovered as an ancient writing. We learn from this that the
bursting forth of the waters in an overwhelming flood was based
upon the natural fact of the inundation in Egypt. The imagery had
been reproduced in heaven, and also in Amenta, the lower Egypt of
the nether-world. A great catastrophe caused by the waters that
have broken out of bounds is more than once referred to in the
Ritual. The Osiris says to the powers, “Grant ye that I may have
the command of the water, even as the mighty Sut had the command
of his enemies on the day of disaster to the earth. May I prevail
over the long-armed ones in their (four) corners, even as that glorious
and ready god prevailed over them” (Renouf, ch. 60). The bursting
forth of the waters is described as a great disaster. In this chapter
there is an application of the deluge imagery to the sun in the mythos
and the departed soul in the eschatology. With the Egyptians, the
supreme type of helpfulness and charity, or of love to the neighbour,
was an ark or boat that offered safety to the shipwrecked amidst the
waters. Hence, when pleading in the Hall of Judgment the speaker
claims to have “done the right thing in Tamerit” (Egypt), he
clinches it by saying, “I have given bread to the hungry, water
to the thirsty, clothes to the naked, and a boat to the shipwrecked”
(ch. 125).
The subject-matter is very ancient. It belongs to that early
time when Sut was a pre-Osirian form of the Good Being, in
relation to the pole, the dog-star, and the inundation of the Nile.
Here the deluge of the inundation is a deluge of destruction
directed against the workers of evil. In short, it does what the
THE DELUGE AND THE ARK
553
inundation did for Egypt in washing away the result of drought,
in cleansing from corruption and restoring a healthy new life to
the land. Hence the deceased desires to have the same command over the waters in Amenta that Sut had when they burst
forth in a drowning flood. Thus, 6,000 years ago the so-called
“deluge legend” was ancient in Egypt, and it belonged to the time
when Sut, in command of the waters, had not lost his place in glory;
and his deluge was employed to destroy the Sebau, the Sami, the Apapdragon, the long-armed ones, and other evil enemies of God and man
who were not human beings. In the same chapter Osiris has superseded Sut as lord of the flood. Further, the two divine sisters Isis and
Nephthys were imaged as two birds. The ark of Nnu described in
the Ritual is conducted over the Nun by two birds which represent
the two sister-goddesses Isis and Nephthys. It is said to these in
relation to the inundation, “Ye two divine hawks upon your gables,
who are giving attentive heed to the matter, ye who conduct the ship
of Ra, advancing onwards from the highest place of the ark in heaven.”
It is also said to Osiris, “Thy two sisters Isis and Nephthys come to
thee, and they convey to thee the great extent (of the waters) in thy
name of the great extender as lord of the flood (Teta, 274).” These
allusions show that there was an ark to which the two birds were
attached as conductors. They are represented as hawks, but as the
birds of east and west, or the earlier south and north, are equivalent to
the dove of day and the raven of night in Semitic tradition. Isis was
the lady or bird of dawn, and Nephthys the lady of darkness. In this,
the solar phase, the passage of the ark was from west to east, where it
was conducted by the two birds or goddesses of the west and east.
Heaven was flooded with a deluge of light at daybreak, and the nether
earth was inundated with a deluge of darkness. The ark conducted
through the waters by the two birds of light and darkness, or east and
west, is described in a twofold character as the shrine of Osiris in the
centre of the earth, and also as the ark of Ra that reaches the highest
point in heaven (ch. 64, lines 5-8). It is the ark of the “lord of
resurrections, he who cometh forth from the dusk and whose birth is
from the house of death,” or, from Amenta, as the re-arising solar god.
The ark that rested on Mount Nizir in the Babylonian legend, or Mount
Ararat in the Hebrew version, and on Mount Manu in the Hindu
account, is described in the Ritual as the “ship of Ra” which attains
“the highest place of the ark in heaven,” with the mount of glory for
anchorage and the pole for mooring-post. Deceased in the character
of Nnu repulses the water of the deluge. “He is the image of Nnu,
lord of the inundation and father of the gods” (Rit., ch. 136 A). He
manœuvres the ark or bark with which he voyages in heaven. “He
turns back the deluge” that “devastates the leg of Nut,” and “brings
back strength to the fainting gods” by such means of dealing with the
waters. In this chapter of the Ritual the devastating deluge is also
alluded to (in line 1) as a mode of judgment. It is directed against
the rebels. Those who are in the ark or the solar bark are saved
from the great cataclysm which “devastates the leg of Nut” or
sweeps away the support of the celestial waters, whilst the rebels
are overthrown and reduced to non-existence. The rebels against
Ra are identical with the “men” or the “race” that spoke and plotted
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evil against him in another version of the deluge myth. After the
deluge of devastation there is a renewal, rejuvenescence, and rebirth.
Seb and Nut (earth and heaven) are pleased at heart; they grow young
again. The leg of Nut, which the deluge devastated, was a
very early type of the celestial pole, as the bulwark, prop, or mainstay
against the waters of the firmament. In one phase the ark of Nnu
is the ark of the Nun as the celestial water. In the other it is the ark
of Nnu as god of the celestial water. It is depicted in chapter 44
crossing the water of Putrata, the lake of darkness, and cutting its way
through the coils of the Apap-dragon. The speaker is one of the
manes in Amenta about to embark on board the boat of souls. He
says, “O thou who sailest the ship of Nnu across that gulf which is
void, let me sail the ship; let me fasten the tackle in peace, in peace.
Let me fasten my tackle and come forth.” “The place is empty into
which the starry ones fall down headlong upon their faces and find
nothing by which they can raise themselves up.” The ship of Nnu is
facing the west, where it has to cross the lake of darkness, or the
great gulf of the waters, by night, the lurking-place of the devouring
dragon, into which the setting stars go down, also the human souls
that have not attained salvation on board the ark. We learn previously
that the deluge is imminent. In other words, the waters of the Nun
are traversed by the ark at night with the rescued souls on board.
The shrine at the centre of the earth is one with the shrine in the ark
of earth, and the ark of earth in one character is the ship of Nnu in
the other; it is the ark of Osiris or Ptah in Amenta, and the ark of
Ra in heaven, when “it comes forth in the east.” But whether in the
depth or height, the bark of inert Osiris or the living Ra would still
be the bark of Nnu, the ark that swam the deluge of the celestial
water. It is said that the bark of Ra is in danger of the whirlwind
and storm, which affords a glimpse of the tempest commonly
associated with the deluge in the legends and traditions of the
great disaster. But the Osiris-Nu, or Nnu as god of the inundation, turneth back the water-flood, the deluge that has nearly overwhelmed the “leg of Nut” (or the pole) which supports the firmament; and he keeps the companions safe who are on board the bark
until the resting-place is finally attained upon the summit of the
mount. The land that is reached at last by the mariners in the ark
of Nnu is called the “tip of heaven,” at the place of “coming forth
from the swathings in the garden of Aarru,” and the “coming forth
in exultation.” These are the names of that celestial country for
which the bark or ark of Nnu was sailed (ch. 99). It is also called the
ship of the garden of Aarru (ch. 106). The speaker in chapter 98
says, “I stand erect in the bark which the god is piloting . . . at the
head of Aarru.” This is the Aarru of spirits perfected in the eschatology, the summit of which is in the region of the never-setting stars
at the highest point of heaven. In the various deluge legends the ark
was stranded on the top of the mount, as it was on Ararat and Nizir,
Manu and Malata. Here the ark of Nnu becomes the bark of the
blessed, whose landing-place in heaven is called Mount Hetep, at the
summit of the pole. The pole is the mooring-post to which the cable
of the vessel was made fast. The voyage cometh to an end, and praise
is uttered to the gods who are in the garden of everlasting peace and
THE DELUGE AND THE ARK
555
plenty. When the passengers approach the landing-stage, Heaven
opens its embracing arms; the lamps of heaven are lighted, the
Khabsu gods rise up to offer acclamations. The “old ones” and those
who have gone before are said to welcome the voyagers at their
arrival on the mount of assembly and reunion. These are the two
classes of spirits, superhuman and human, elemental and ancestral,
otherwise called “the gods and the glorified.” There was no need for
an altar to be raised at this landing-stage upon the summit at the
moment of debarkation to complete the parallel with the landing on
Mount Ararat or Nizir in the Semitic versions.
The Ritual preserves the astral mythos in the form of drama.
The voyagers who land upon Mount Hetep are souls of the departed,
and not human beings. The rendering in the Ritual is not historical,
not merely mythical, not simply astronomical. Sacrificial ceremonies
are performed upon the altar and offerings made at the moment of
debarkation. These are in two categories. In one Noah, Nnu, or the
Osiris-Nu presents the oblation in propitiation to the gods upon the
mount. In the second, those who have gone before as the ancestral
spirits make offerings of the sacred cakes and other forms of food to
the new-comers whom they welcome as their fellow-citizens to the
eternal city (ch. 98, Renouf) on their landing from the ark of Nnu.
Thus far we trace the deluge-legend and the ark of Nnu in the phase
of eschatology by means of the Ritual.
We now turn to representations of the subject in the astronomical
mythology which in earlier ages preceded those of the eschatology.
In several chapters of the Ritual a breaking forth of the celestial
waters in a typical deluge is alluded to or described. In chapter 136 A
it is said of the god who has the mastery over the inundation, “He
turneth back the water flood which is over the thigh of the goddess
Nut at the staircase of Seb.” The overwhelming water has here
ascended to the summit of the mount or staircase, which, like the leg
of Nut, was a figure of the pole. Thus the deluge is portrayed as
submerging the pole when this was figured as the leg of Nut, and the
water flood was then turned back by Nnu, the lord of the celestial
water, whose ark of salvation from the deluge is the ship of heaven by
name. Howsoever constellated, the bark of Nnu was the ark of
heaven on the celestial water. Now when the change was made from
a heaven of seven divisions to one of eight, as described in the very
ancient papyrus containing the hymn to the god Shu, it is portrayed
as superseding the ark of seven cubits with an ark of eight cubits, or
the heptanomis by the octonary. This also indicates a change of pole,
the pole that was imaged by the staff of Shu the giant. The hymn to
Shu includes the legend of a deluge. It is called “a chapter of
the excellent songs which dispel the immerged,” that is, those who
were drowned in the deluge as the evil creatures of darkness (Magic
Papyrus, Records of the Past, vol. x. p. 137). It is said, “Those who are
immerged do not pass along. Those who pass along do not plunge.
They remain floating on the waves like the dead bodies on the
inundation of the Nile, and they shut their mouths as the seven great
dungeons are closed with an eternal seal.” Now, there is reason to
suppose that these seven great dungeons, sealed with an eternal seal,
were a form of the superseded heaven in seven divisions answering to
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the seven caves in the Mexican mount, and to the book of seven seals
in Revelation. In the same papyrus there is “a book of magical
spells for remaining as dwellers in the country” where the great
catastrophe occurs; it is said that “Horus has given the warning cry,”
“subsidence of the country!” This, as we interpret the text, is at the
cataclysmal ending in time and space that was mythically dramatized
as a deluge or inundation which overwhelmed the land above and
effaced certain landmarks in the celestial waters. The cubit may
stand for a general measure. Four measures or cubits typified an ark
of the four quarters in space. Seven cubits were a fourth of twentyeight measures in the circle of twenty-eight lunar signs. Thus seven
cubits or measures in an ark, shrine, or tabernacle formed a figure of
heaven in seven divisions. And when the heptanomis was followed
by the heaven of Taht, the ark of eight cubits superseded the shrine
of seven cubits, and the ape became the type of Taht in the octonary
instead of in the heptanomis. The ark of seven cubits was continued
as a sacred type in the religious ceremonies. For instance, it is
commanded by the rubric to chapter 133, Papyrus of Nnu, that this
chapter shall be recited over a boat four cubits in length on which the
divine sovereign chiefs of the cities have been painted and a heaven
with its stars portrayed. But in the Papyrus of Ani the boat is
ordered to be made seven cubits in length. This, then, is a figure of
the ark of seven cubits which preceded the ark of eight cubits and the
heaven of four quarters that was imaged by the boat of four cubits.
The heptanomis had been figured as an ark of seven measures in the
waters of heaven, and this was followed by the ark of eight measures
as the shrine of the kaf-ape, a zoötype of Taht the lunar god, after
there had been “a subsidence of the country” and the “secret abysses
of the Nun” and the foundations of the deep had been laid open at the
time of the deluge.
There had been no moon established in the stellar mythos. Otherwise stated, time was not yet computed by the lunar reckoning, or by
Taht, the reckoner of time. In this sense the moon was not created
until after the deluge. Thus, in some of the legends the moon becomes
a resting-place or ark of safety riding on the waters. At Hawaii the
typical deluge was called “the flood of the moon.” Meru is likewise
shown to be a form of the mythical mount that reached up to the
moon. Also it is related in one of the Hebrew legends that paradise
was exempt from the deluge or was preserved from the great disaster
because it was planted on the summit of a mountain reaching to the
moon.
In the Egyptian inscription called “the Destruction of Mankind”
there is a rebellion against Ra, the sun-god, followed by a great
destruction and a deluge. Atum-Ra had been established as the king
of gods and men, the god by himself. There is a revolt against his
supremacy. He called the elder gods around him for consultation, and
says to them, “You ancient gods, behold the beings who are born of
myself; they utter words against me. Tell me what you would do in
these circumstances. Behold, I have waited, and I have not destroyed
them until I should hear what you have to say.” The elder gods
advise that they may go and smite the enemies who plot evil against
Ra, and let none remain alive. The rebels are then destroyed “in
THE DELUGE AND THE ARK
557
three days of navigation.” When the deluge of blood is over it is said
by the majesty of Ra, “I shall now protect men on this account.” “I
raise my hand (in token) that I shall not again destroy men.” The
rebel powers, headed by the coiling and constricting Apap-reptile
vomiting the deluge of the dark by night, were always in revolt against
the lord of light, and this legend commemorates their overthrowal in
a deluge of blood. The chief agent in the work of vengeance is
Hathor, the lunar goddess, who is aided by the solar goddess, Sekhet,
in executing the commands of Ra. The goddess started; she smote the
enemies over all the land because they had plotted evil against the
majesty of Ra. These enemies are drowned in the deluge then
poured out; “the fields were entirely covered with water through the
will of his majesty the god. And there came the goddess (Hathor) in
the morning, and she found the fields covered with water; and she was
pleased with it, and drank to her heart’s content. She saw no more
of the enemies, who were sunk in the waters that represented the flood
of light which was now poured forth by Ra at dawn, and in which the
creatures of the dark were drowned. It is said by his majesty, living
and well, to his followers, “I call before my face Shu, Tefnut, Seb,
Nut, and the fathers and mothers who were with me when I was yet
in the Nun, and I prescribe to Nnu, who brings his companions with
him”; these are the instructions given by the god to Nnu: “Bring a
small number of them (his companions), that the beings may not see
them”—these beings are the creatures about to be destroyed in the
coming flood—“and that their heart may not be afraid, thou shalt go
with them into the ark or sanctuary until I shall go with Nnu to the
place where I stand,” or to the summit of the mount on which the
legendary ark at last was safely landed. The ark or sanctuary here
indicated is the figure of a newly founded heaven which follows the
deluge by which a previous world was wrecked. The inscription is
very dilapidated, nevertheless it obviously contains a creation of “the
men,” as in the Assyrian revolt in heaven in the place of the creatures
thus destroyed. When “his majesty arrived in the sanctuary,” “the
men” were going forth and bearing their bows and shooting their
arrows against his enemies. These were not the enemies but the
defenders of Ra. Hence it was said to Ra by “the men,” “Let us smite
the enemies, the rebels.”
The celestial water was primarily assigned to the female Nu or
Nut. Her heaven was imaged as the cow. At first it was the watercow, and afterwards the milch-cow. And there was Nut (with) the
“majesty of Ra on her back”; she was carrying the god in her form
of the cow. This mode of locomotion on the cow’s back or between
the cow’s horns (see the pictures) is now to be superseded by the
building of the solar bark. “Said by the majesty of the god, I have
resolved to be lifted up.” “Who is it that Nut will trust with it?”
i.e., with the new ark or sanctuary of the god. “Carry me, that I may
see.” Said by the majesty of the god, “Let a field of rest extend
itself,” and there arose a field of rest. “Let the plants grow there,”
and there arose the Sekhet-Hetep, or fields of the papyrus-reed.
The beings who were destroyed were Sebau and Sami, representatives
of the plagues of Egypt. The men who are created in their place are
of the starry race. “The majesty of the god saw the inner part of the
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sanctuary in which he had been lifted up” (or the ark in which he
made his voyage over the celestial waters), and he said, “I assemble
and give possession of these multitudes of men, I establish as
inhabitants all the beings which are suspended in the sky, the stars,”
and Nut began to tremble very strongly. “I assemble there the
multitudes that they may celebrate thee,” and there arose the
multitudes. These are stars in one category, and in the other
souls that were collected in the ark of salvation (Rit., ch. 58) or
the ark of Nnu—that is, the ark of heaven and of the god of the
celestial water. “Said by the majesty of Ra, My son Shu, take
with thee my daughter Nut, and be the guardian of the multitudes
which live in the nocturnal sky. Bear them on thy head, and
be their fosterer.” This is an allusion to his raising overhead
the beautiful creation of the starry firmament which Shu sustains,
whether in the form of the cow of Nut, the water of the Nun, or the ark
of Nnu. After the destruction there is to be a new creation, and Ra is
in need of support from Nnu and his companions. “Said by the
majesty of the god (or his majesty) to the majesty of Nnu, My
limbs have suffered long; I cannot walk without support, or have
others to support me.” This will show that Nnu occupies the place
of Noah in relation to the building of the ark or sanctuary, and
in accordance with the instructions received from Ra. Ra informs
Nnu that he needs some other means of supporting himself than
the back of the cow. He calls upon Nnu and his three sons to
assist him against his enemies the rebels. Thus the cow of Nut
was to be superseded by the ark of Nnu when he became the
representative of the heavenly water and master of the inundation.
Nut says dutifully that she will act as it seems good to her father Nnu
(l. 30). There had been various kinds and forms of the celestial or
astronomical ark that was at first necessitated as the means of
carriage for the gods, because the heavens had been imaged as
the firmamental water. The great mother Apt, who was the image
of all firstness both by name and nature in the likeness of the
pregnant hippopotamus, was a kind of ark, and possibly the earliest
that ever crossed the waters of the Nun. She carried her young
ones in the cabin that was uterine. Child-Horus on his papyrusreed was in the ark that saved him from the waters, as the
sign was constellated in the planisphere of Denderah. The Pleiades
formed an ark as constellation for the Khuti; the Lesser Bear for
Anup and the seven voyagers round about the pole. Orion was the
ark of the holy sahus, with Horus at the look-out. The ark of Taht
was in the crescent moon that sailed the azure deep by night. Then
Ra, the solar deity, resolved on being lifted up as god alone, the only
one, who superseded all the elder powers. A new heaven was to be
his tabernacle. This was the ark of Nnu. The change from one
heaven to the other implied a great destruction of the rebels. A
deluge was the modus operandi, and the ark the means of safety for
the few just men and true, together with their consorts, who were
saved from the catastrophe. As a symbol in sign-language the
ark was built by Nnu, the master of the firmamental water, for the
means of safety in the world all water against the coming flood
and the subsidence of land, which was the land of Nnu.
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559
In space it was the ark of the four quarters that was propelled by
the four paddles of Hapi, Tuamutef, Kabhsenuf, and Amsta. Hence
Seb (or the earth) “abideth stably” by means of the four rudders or
oars (Rit., ch. 99). Hence also the four-square box that imaged the
ark of Noë on the well-known Apamean coin. In Akar, or Amenta,
it was the ark of Osiris; in earth the ark of Seb; in heaven the ark
of Ra. Its mainmast was the pole. The nightlight on the masthead
was the pole-star. In the myth it was the ark of Ra, “the bark of
millions of years”; in the eschatology it is the ark of salvation, the
refuge for eternity.
The sinking ones had looked for their deliverance from the waters
to the bark of Anup, voyaging round the pole; also to the crescentshaped arc of Taht seen in the new moon; then to the ark of Horus
and the “holy sahus” constellated in Orion; and finally they sought
salvation in the ark which Nnu and his three sons, Shu, Taht, and
Seb, were now to build for Ra, the solar god.
The Egyptian ark or ship of Nnu is the ark of heaven, or,
conversely stated, the ark of heaven is the ship of Nnu; and the ark
of heaven was the revolving sphere configurated as a sailing vessel
with two masts as we have found it figured by the mysteryteachers in their uranographic imagery of the celestial deluge. The
ark is portrayed in the act of sailing over a vast, unfathomable,
hollow void of formless space; as it is said, “the place is empty.”
Into this the helpless ones fall headlong unless they are saved on
board the ark. In a vignette to the Papyrus of Anhai, it is Nnu that
is seen uplifting the boat of the gods with seven persons on board,
besides the beetle and the solar disk. The figure of Nnu in this
drawing is both male and female, Nnu and Nut in one figure
(Budge, Papyrus of Anhai, pl. 8). Among the Assyrian fragments
there is reference to a legend which has not come down to us. In
this it is said that Ishtar counselled the destruction of mankind,
whereas in the extant account of the deluge the goddess bewails
their destruction and grieves bitterly over the loss of her children.
Now Ishtar is an Akkado-Assyrian form of the goddess Hathor, who
in the Egyptian mythos counsels the destruction of the beings, and
executes the judgment passed upon them by the gods, with no
wailing or weeping afterwards. This points back to the Egyptian
original of another Akkado-Assyrian version.
According to the Hebrew reading of the legend, the deluge was
provoked by the sins of men. “The Lord saw that the wickedness
of man was great in the earth,” and he determined to blot out and
obliterate the race; . . . . “but Noah found grace in the eyes of the
Lord” (Gen. vi. 5-8).
The Chaldean and Hindu legends know
nothing of human sin as a cause of the deluge. The sin against the
gods, however, is described as the cause of a deluge in the so-called
“destruction of men.” Ra says to Nun and others of the elder presolar gods, “Behold the beings who are born of myself; they utter
words against me.” That is, they are in rebellion against the one
true god. But these beings in this case were elemental, not mortal,
and the sin was not human. When the deluge or destruction is over
and past, Ra swears that he will not again destroy men. “Said by
Ra: I now raise my hand that I shall no more destroy men.” “I
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shall now protect men on account of this.” So the Hebrew deity
promises that he “will not again curse the ground any more for the
sake of men: neither will I again smite any more any living thing,”
as in the “deluge of destruction.”
This is the same thing, only written out large and told as if it were
a human history, whereas the original is mythological. It relates to
the superseding of the earlier gods, Nnu, Seb, Shu, and Taht, by Ra
as the supreme being, or rather these old gods and elemental powers
are to become the servants of his majesty Ra in the new heaven now
established for the keeping of perfect time, with Ra as the head over
all.
Ra had resolved to be lifted up in an ark or sanctuary. Nnu and
his small number of companions who enter the ark or sanctuary
are eight in number, four male, Nnu, Seb, Shu, and Taht, and four
female, Sekhet, Nut, Hathor, and Tefnut, who can be paired thus:—
(1) Nnu with Sekhet, (2) Shu with Tefnut, (3) Seb with Nut (4) Taht
with Hathor. Nnu was the deity of the heavenly water, and Sekhet
is in possession of the water on the night of the great disaster or the
deluge (Rit., 57, 1, 2); Sekhet is also called the “very great one of the
liquid domain” (149). These are certainly a pre-Semitic form of
the eight in the ark, and as Nnu was the first-born of these gods, he
may be called the father of the other three in the ark as represented in
the biblical version. The whole world, however, that was divided
between the three sons of Nnu, Shu, Seb, and Taht, was not on our
earth; was not in Africa, Asia, or Europe. Shu was to be the
guardian of the multitudes in the nocturnal sky, Seb of the serpents
in the cycles of time, and to Taht were assigned the nations of the
north. Taht had a double portion. Ra says, “I shall give thee to
raise thy hand in the presence of the gods. I shall give thee to
embrace the two parts of the sky. I shall give thee to turn thyself
toward the northern nations.” This looks as if Taht were the
prototype of Japheth. Shu, whose name signifies shade, and who
was to be the guardian of those who are in the sky of night, agrees
with Ham, the dark of colour or black. It was Shu who might have
seen his father Nnu by night with his person exposed, as it was his
work to lift up the nocturnal heaven or Nnu. This leaves Shem as
the representative of Seb. Seb is the father of Horus on earth, and,
as it was supposed, the Hebrew Messiah was to descend from
Shem. Thus it is possible to identify the new point of departure for
the threefold human race derived from Shem, Ham, and Japheth,
considered to be the fathers of three different and diverse races of
mankind. Ra describes the group of elder gods who preceded him
as the fathers and the mothers. “Said by his majesty, I call before
my face Shu, Tefnut, Seb, Nut, and the fathers and mothers who
were with me when I was still in Nun,” or previously to his issuing
from the lotus in the bosom of the heavenly water. Here we have
the “fathers and mothers” of the new race or races in the new world
that followed the flood ready to the hand of the “sacred historian.”
These fathers and mothers are eight in number all told, who are
mentioned by name: Nnu and Sekhet, Seb and Nut, Shu and Tefnut,
Taht and Hathor. These are eight persons in four pairs of consorts,
exactly the same as the eight consorts in the ark of Noah.
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561
The moon-god Taht becomes the enlarger of the domains of
Ra, as his lunar representative by night. Ra calls Taht before
him: “Said by the majesty of the god (or his majesty) to Taht,
Come, let us leave the sky and my abode, because I wish to
make a luminary in the inferior sky and in the deep region where
thou inscribest the inhabitants, and thou art the guardian of those
who do evil . . . . . the followers whom my heart abhors. But thou
art my abode, the god of my abode: behold, thou wilt be called
Tehuti, the house of Ra.
I shall give thee to send (lacuna)
. . . . and there arose the ibis of Taht. I shall give thee to
raise thy hand in presence of the gods, and there arose two wings of
the ibis of Taht. I shall give thee to embrace the two parts of
the sky with thy beauty and thy rays, and there arose the lunar
crescent of Taht. I shall give thee to turn thyself towards the
northern nations, and there arose the cynocephalus of Taht which is
in his escort. Thou art under my dominion.” This was written
in the Book of Atum-Ra, who was also the god Huhi = Ihuh. Thus,
in this new creation of Ra which was established after the
old heaven had been overwhelmed by the deluge, the moon-god
Taht was made the enlarger of the domains of Ra. As we read
in the texts, “Ra created him a beautiful light to show the name
of his evil enemy,” the Apap-dragon of darkness. This enlargement
turns on the moon-god becoming the ruler for Ra by night and
establishing his sovereignty over the black race in the domain of
Sut and in the inferior hemisphere. The “enlarging” in the Hebrew
version is at the expense of Ham ( = Kam, the black): “A servant
of servants shall he be unto his brethren,” but “God enlarge Japheth.”
Ham is treated in the märchen as the “evil enemy” Apap,
or the black Sut in the mythos, thus making the legend ethnical
by this perversion of the meaning. Enlargement of the world denotes
the formation of a heaven on a larger scale. Thus Taht, like Japheth
, was the enlarger or the enlarged.
Also one mode of
the enlarging was by Taht becoming a luminary in the inferior
sky and in the region of Amenta. And here we come upon the
probable origin of the cursing of Canaan in the Semitic travesty.
Ham = Kam represents the power and the people of darkness. Taht
is to enlarge the borders of light at the expense of the domain
of darkness. It is said to Taht by Ra, “In the deep region where
thou inscribest the inhabitants, thou art the keeper of those who
do evil, the followers whom my heart abhors.” These were the
darkies and the “black-heads” in the dark land of Amenta, who are
to be subject to the rule of Taht by night, which has been converted in
the Semitic perversion of the mythos into the servitude of Canaan
and the children of Ham.
When it had been discovered that the moon derived its light and
glory from the unseen sun there was a change of status for them both.
The moon was previously a mother to the child of light whom
she was unable to affiliate. And now, as it was mythically rendered,
she learned that she was a wife (hemt) as well as a mother, and
that her infant was begotten by the solar god. The transaction is
portrayed as one of the mysteries of Amenta in the Ritual
(ch. 80).
The lady who gives light in darkness by night and
562
ANCIENT EGYPT
overthrows the devouring monsters describes herself as a kind
of ravisher to Hu the solar god. She retires with him to the
vale of Abydos when she goes to rest. She seized upon the sun-god
in the place where she found him. The result of this is that the
twins Sut and Horus, the powers of darkness and light, that were
previously born of the mother alone, are now attributed to the
sun-god Hu or Ra as his children. Hathor had been the lunar
lady, the slayer of the evil powers of darkness, and now the
male god Taht is equipped in the house or ark of the moon
as the teller of time for Ra. He is designated the “teller of decrees
which Ra hath spoken in heaven” for Horus to execute on earth and
in Amenta, with Taht and Anup as his two chief witnesses.
After the deluge in “the destruction of mankind” the god Ra
establishes a covenant with those who have escaped from the flood.
He says that what he commanded is well done, and that the
destruction of his enemies removes destruction from themselves.
“Said by the majesty of Ra, It is well done, all this. I shall
now protect men on account of this. Said by Ra, I now raise
my hand that I shall not destroy men,” i.e. not again.
The
making of this covenant after the deluge is followed by the establishment of the New Year’s festival under the direction of the
young priestesses of Hathor. “Hence comes it that libations are
made under the directions of priestesses at the festival of Hathor
through all men since the days of old,” (line 25). When the lunar
orb has been converted into the abode of Ra by night it is said,
“And there arose the crescent moon of Taht.” Now the lunar
crescent is the mythological bow (Proc. Soc. Bib. Arch., vol. vi. p. 131).
The speaker in the character of the solar god issuing from the
crescent moon exclaims, “I am the lion-god issuing from the bow,
and therefore I shot forth” (Rit., ch. 132). When this was written it
had been apprehended that the moon derived its light from the hidden
sun, and shot the arrows forth with the growing, stretching crescent
that was drawn bow-like to the full with all the force of the young
lion-god. It was for this that Taht the lunar deity was wanted
by Ra as his bowman by night to shoot the arrows of his light
with the crescent of the monthly moon for his bow. For this the
bow was set in the nocturnal heaven by Ra: “And there arose
the crescent moon of Taht” = the bow. The crescent moon was
figured as the bow in heaven for a sign that there should be no
further deluge of destruction, because the keeping of time and
season did not now depend upon the setting or non-setting stars.
When time was reckoned by Tehuti the teller, by means of the
dual lunation, a power was established that no flood which had
submerged the pole or drowned the heptanomis, or the heaven
in ten divisions, could in future overwhelm. Thus the deluge in
the stellar mythos being over, and the powers of darkness being
defeated and destroyed, chiefly through the direct agency of the lunar
goddess Hathor, the bow of Taht was set in heaven with its promise
that the waters of the wrath of Ra should not again cover the earth.
This, like all that is Egyptian, was true mythos, not false
explanation of natural fact. It does not mean that the moon
was actually created there and then to give light for the first time.
THE DELUGE AND THE ARK
563
That would not be mythology, but fictitious history. The Kamite
account of this ancient wisdom is mythological; the biblical is
pretended history.
It has now to be shown that the bow in the Kamite mythos, which
we look upon as the original, was not the rainbow, which was afterwards substituted as more natural by those who knew no better.
The lunar crescent was not only the bow of the deluge and sign
of promise for all future time, it was also an ark of safety from
the waters of the Nun, in which the young child of light was
bosomed and reborn of the lunar virgin mother. In the Osirian
cult Osiris was reborn in an ark of crescent shape which was a
figure of the crescent moon. It is said to Osiris in the preparatory
pangs of birth, “Taht is a protection for thee. He placeth thy soul
in the lunar bark in that name which is thine of god Moon” or god
An, another name of Osiris (Records, vol. ii. p. 119). The ark of the
new moon was a means of resurrection for Osiris on the third night
after his death, if we count the 17th Athyr as one. The priests
brought out the sacred coffer containing a little golden ark. They
also modelled a little image of the crescent moon.
The lunar mythos followed the stellar and preceded the solar, and
in this the lunar crescent was an ark. In relation to which, the twin
birds of light and darkness meet as it were in one when the black
and white ibis is the typical bird of the dual lunation, because, as
Plutarch says, its feathers resembled the halves of the moon as the
bird of light in one half and in the other half the bird of darkness.
Now the ibis or hebi in Egyptian is the messenger by name, and
the crescent moon was the ark of the lord of light upon the
waters of night. In the “Destruction of Mankind” Ra says to
the moon-god, “Thou art my abode (his lunar ark), the god of my
abode; behold, thou art called Taht, the abode of Ra. And there
arose the ibis. I shall give thee to raise thy hand (Taht is also
the hand of the gods) in presence of the gods. And there arose
the two wings of the ibis of Taht. I shall give thee to embrace the
two parts of the sky.” The one white and black bird, as representative of the moon in the Egyptian rendering, was the white
bird of the new moon and the black bird of the old moon, equivalent to the dove of light and the raven of darkness in the other
legend. The moon was the ark on the waters as the abode of Ra
by night or during the deluge of the dark. The bird that was
given by Ra for Taht to send forth from the ark was the bird of
light and the bird of darkness. In the latter half of the lunation,
when the moon was renewed in its crescent shape, out flew the
bird as messenger of light across the waters of the Nun, and in
the dark half of the disk, the bird was of raven hue. Such, we
suggest, was the genesis of the two birds, or the double-feathered
one, that issued from the lunar ark in the original mythos, which
preserved the representation of the deluge and the ark and the
two birds of day and night in the cult of Osiris or of Atum-Ra
and Nnu. In the Chaldean account of the deluge the swallow
is sent forth from the ark in addition to the raven and the
dove. This also is a bird of the two sisters. In ch. 86 the manes
makes his transformation into the swallow, when Horus is in
564
ANCIENT EGYPT
command of the bark (line 5). But in the Vignette (Pap. Of Ani)
the bird called a swallow is a martin, another type of the white
and black bird in one, like the ibis of the lunar ark. There is a
chapter of the Ritual to be recited “when the moon renews itself on the first day of the month,” the day, therefore, on which
the lunar ark was launched upon the waters of the Nun and had
to face the deluge. As it is said, “Osiris is enveloped in storm
and rain; he is enveloped.
But the beautiful Horus lendeth
succour daily. He driveth off the storm from the face of Osiris
in the moon. Behold him coming. He is Ra on his journey. He
is the four gods who are over the upper region.” The Osiris
arriveth at his own time, and by means of his ropes is brought to
the light of day (Renouf, ch. 135).
The ark of Osiris on the
waters is described as a kind of house-boat with gable ends, and
the gable ends suggest that from this particular form of the
house and boat in one may have descended the well-known
children’s toy of Noah’s ark, as the ark of Noah in which
eight souls, four males and four females, were saved from the
deluge, and the ark of Nnu in the Kamite astronomy.
The new heaven was established on the four quarters that were
founded upon the solstices and equinoxes by the great architect Ptah.
Thus the teba or square box is a figure of the heaven that was
based upon the four quarters which followed the ark of seven
cubits, the ark of eight cubits, and other types of the ark that
floated on the celestial Nun or is said to be carried on the
back of the cow (Nut). The eight on board were not human
beings, but four gods and four goddesses, or eight heavenly
bodies. It is not the Hebrew Noah, as such, who will account for
several other Noahs in different countries, but the Kamite Nnu,
the “lord of the primordial water”—Nnu who is designated the
father of the gods. By aid of the Kamite Nnu we can more
fully identify the Hottentot Noh, who, as they told Kolben (in
1713), “had entered the world by a sort of window.” The god
Nnu of the Egyptian mythos will explain why the hero of
Polynesian legend has the same name. The story is told by both
Ellis and Fornander. The survivors from the deluge of Raiatea
were saved on an island or mount called the tree reaching to
the moon. In this version the mount and tree of the Ritual
are identical, the island being named after the tree, whilst the
tree that reaches up to the moon corresponds to the mount of
Am-Khemen and the establishment of lunar time. In the Hawaiian
version, when Nnu had left his vessel, like Noah and Xisuthrus,
after the flood, to offer sacrifice to the god Kane, he looked up
and saw the moon in the sky, and he thought this was the god,
saying to himself, “You are Kane, no doubt, though you have transformed yourself to my sight!”, so he made his offering and adored
the moon. Then Kane descended on the bow and spoke reprovingly to Nnu, but, on account of it being a mistake, Nnu was
forgiven by Kane, and the bow was left above in token of the god’s
forgiveness.
It was natural for those who knew nothing of the Egyptian
wisdom to suppose that the deluge, the ark, and the character of
THE DELUGE AND THE ARK
565
Nevid, Nav, or Nevion, in the British mythos, was derived from the
Hebrew records. But the true and final explanation is that both
were derived from the Egyptian on separate lines of descent.
The Druids were teachers of the wisdom of Egypt in the British
Isles ages before the Bible was heard of in Europe. The ark of
Nnu, Noë, or Noah was the ark of the celestial waters. An ark
with the Ali, or Ari, was an ark with the seven on board who
were rulers in the heptanomis. This is extant as the ark of
the seven Kabiri and the seven Hohgates, the seven who in
Britain were the companions of Arthur in the ark. When we
understand that the Hebrew ark of Noah (or jn) was the ark of
Nnu in Egypt, and is the ark of heaven by name in the astronomy,
we are on the track for the first time to learn how certain later
races of mankind could be said to issue from the ark of Noah
after a particular form of the deluge in which the heaven in ten
divisions was superseded by the heaven in twelve divisions, the birthplace as an ark being a geometrical figure of the contemporary
heaven. The deluge legend in the book of Genesis can be directly
traced to its Egyptian origin. Nnu was the master of the celestial
water. Under the same name, and also as Num, lord of the
inundation, he was master of the water in the Nile on earth. The
deluge, all the deluges, and the whole of the arkite imagery, together
with Noah himself in very person, are dependent on the beginning
of creation with the water of the Nun or Nnu, and on heaven
being the celestial Nnu by name in the Egyptian language. In
the Adoration of the Nile it is Nnu the deity of the heavenly
water that is invoked as mythical source of life and not simply
the flowing river. The object of religious regard as element or place
or person was the celestial Nnu or Nun, who when personified
was the giver of the Nile and all its gifts. Nun or Nnu was
the inundator of Egypt by means of the Nile. Moreover, the
god Num who is lord of the earthly inundation was preceded by
the ancient deity Nun (or Nnu), who had an ark or shrine, but
was not worshipped in any temple hitherto discovered. It appears
from inscriptions of Tahtmes III at Thebes that Nnu the deity
of the deluge and the ark had been continued in the character
of Num as the lord of the inundation of the Nile, with his ark or
teba represented by the city of Thebes, that “heaven on earth,”
as it was designated by the Queen Hatshepsu.
From these
inscriptions we learn that Tahtmes rebuilt the sanctuary of Nnu,
or rather that he built the temple of Amen-Ra at Thebes on
the site of the ancient shrine. This, we are told, had a circuit
wall of brick, and a canal which conducted the water of the
inundation “to the shrine of the god Nun (Nnu) on the arrival
of his season,” which shows that Nnu was one with Num as the
elder pre-solar god, and that Nun (Nnu) passed into the god Num
as a solar god associated with the inundation. The temple built
by Tahtmes was a shrine of Nnu and Amen, as in “No-Amen,”
the name of Thebes. In laying the foundation stone of the
new temple Tahtmes records the fact that he had to remove
the older shrine of the god Nun (or Nnu), and divert the course
of the water that flowed to the shrine of the god Nnu, because
566
ANCIENT EGYPT
it was in the way (inscription cited by Brugsch, Egypt under
the Pharaohs, p. 178, Eng. tr.).
Brugsch calls this shrine of
Nnu the temple of the god; other Egyptologists tell us that no
temple was ever raised to Nnu or Num. But whether termed a
temple or not, this ancient sanctuary was an ark-shrine and a type of
protection from the waters. The ark of Num is called his lordly
bark. It is said that with the inundation “he brings once more
his lordly bark” (verse 5). Also, “Thou art the august ornament
of the earth, letting thy bark advance before men and lifting up
the heart of women in labour”; “All is changed by the inundation; it is a balm of healing for mankind” (verses 9 and 11). Thus
Nnu as deity of the heavenly water was represented by the Nile
as river and by Num as divinity when the sun-god was united
with the water-god in Num or in Amen-Ra at Thebes. But the
main point here is the ark of Nnu that comes again with the
inundation once a year to Egypt. And if no temple of Nnu is
known, he was expressly associated with a shrine which originated
in an ark that was a means of safety to the ancient lake-dwellers
of Africa. In the Papyrus of Nefer-uben-f (Budge) the god of the
inundation is described as “the old man Nnu.” Deceased is standing
in the water and holding the sail of breath in his left hand. He
prays that he may have power over the seven divine princes who
dwell in the place of the god of the inundation—that is, of Nnu the
lord of the celestial water as builder of the ark. He says, “I have
power with my father, the old man Nnu. He hath granted that
I may live.” This is the father Nnu as Egyptian who became
father Noah in the Hebrew version.
Noah was a just or righteous man, and perfect in his generations.
This statement is put in the forefront of the Hebrew deluge legend.
In the Ritual it is granted to the Osiris Nnu that he shall “carry
maat at the head of the great bark and hold up maat among the
associate gods.” Maat stands for justice and rightfulness; and
this is borne aloft upon the bark by the spirit of the just man
made perfect, right up to the summit of the mount which is the
landing-place for those who are in the ark. “And so it cometh
that the Osiris-Nnu hath reached every one of his stations” in
the ark that rests at last upon Mount Hetep, Mount Nizir, Mount
Meru, or the Mount of Ararat. Nnu is identified with Noah by the
Arab writer Murtadi (1584), who related that Num-Kufu, the builder
of the Great Pyramid, dreamed of a coming deluge, and built the
Pyramid as his ark of safety. He then “made his abode in the
maritime pyramid along with Noah” (Nat. Gen., vol. ii. p. 226).
That is along with Nnu, the god of the ark and the inundation,
who was earlier than Num, and who had his teba in Thebes. This
points to the pyramid of Num-Kufu being also a form of the ark,
or rather to the ark of earth and heaven in several of its successive
forms that were ultimately combined in one consummate figure of the
heavens and earth as a stupendous monument and imperishable
register of the astronomical mythology. And, if so, it becomes
apparent that the sarcophagus at the centre was a co-type with the
coffin, shrine or ark of Osiris in the midst of Amenta. This may
help to show how fragments of the astronomical mythology have been
THE DELUGE AND THE ARK
567
put together in the book of Genesis without key or clue, and the old
dark sayings of the ancient wisdom repeated minus the necessary
knowledge for enlightening the world.
Earlier deluges than this of Noah are alluded to in one of the
Jewish Haggadoth, which relates that in the time of Enos, as in that
of Cain, a great tract of land was flooded by the sea. Which is but
the end of a patriarchate described in terms of the deluge. (Encyclopædia Biblica, col. 1297.)
Items from several deluges are
included in the Hebrew versions. For instance, the animals are said
to enter the ark seven by seven, and also two by two. Here the
numbers belong to two entirely different deluges, the one from which
the seven (or eight), the other from which the pair, were saved. There
is no such incongruous mixture in the Avesta. In this version Yima
the shining is commanded by Zarathustra to “make a circle to all
four corners as a dwelling-place for all mankind,” and stock and store
it against the deluge, which is the evil work of the destructive serpent
of darkness. All forms of life that enter this enclosure do so in
imperishable pairs. A lofty wall is to be made around it, and a
window that gives light within. The one window we take to be the
pole-star. The lofty wall answers to the high white hall of Ha-PtahKa. It is lighted with self-created and eternal lights that shine
above, and the created lights below (Farg. ii., l. 131).
These
correspond to the Kamite Urtu-Seku, the setting stars, and the
Akhemu-Seku, or stars that never set, the everlasting self-created
lights. The window of Yima’s enclosure in heaven is repeated in the
one light of Noah’s ark (Gen. vi. 16). It is related in a Jewish
legend that after the deluge two animals came out of the ark which
were not among the twos or sevens that went into it. These two
were the cat and the pig. And they belonged to the new creation of
Atum-Ra. The cat, as solar type, is a symbol of Atum-Iu. It is
said in the Ritual (ch. 17) the cat is Ra himself. It was in that form
of the seer by night that the sun-god overcame the evil Apap in the
darkness of Amenta. The pig or boar in the Osirian mythos is a
type of the evil Sut, the opponent of the Good Being in Amenta.
Amenta is the lower deck of an ark in which the pig of Sut was
present. This is in an ark that could not be built until Amenta had
been hollowed out by Ptah, the father of Atum-Ra, who was
represented by the cat. Thus the addition of the cat and pig to the
previous denizens will help to identify which ark it was they came
out of after the deluge of Noah. As Egyptian, it was the ark in which
Ra had resolved to be lifted up as “god alone,” and the cat
and pig were types belonging to the new creation that followed the
“destruction of mankind.”
This was the ark of Nnu.
The
description of Noah’s deluge is an agglomerate compounded from the
mythical data and the actual inundation. The waters flowed in
Egypt during a certain number of days. It is probable that the fullest
flow was reckoned at forty days and nights (see Hor-Apollo).
In a fragment of the Melchizedekian literature, found by Professor
Sokolov, and appended to the Slavonic book of Enoch, the ark of
Noah “floated forty days.” And it is added, altogether they were in
the ark 120 days. This is the exact length of the water season in
the Egyptian year of 360 days, which was first divided into three
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ANCIENT EGYPT
tetramenes of 120 days each. It may also be noted that outside of
Egypt rain took the place of the inundation, and the deluge of Noah
consists of forty days and nights of rain. Fifteen cubits of fresh water
constituted a good if not a perfect Nile, and this is the measure
applied to the flood of rain-water in the book of Genesis. Fifteen
cubits upward did the waters prevail, and the mountains were
covered (ch. vii. 20). Fifteen cubits of water, however, could be no
measure for a flood that covered all “the high mountains that were
under the whole heaven” (ch. vii. 19). The waters that prevailed
on the earth for 150 days are also equal to an abundant inundation of
the Nile, but these have been mixed up with the waters of the celestial
Nun. Also the fifteen cubits of measure on the earth would be
confused with the fifteen cubits, measures, or days in the half-circle
of the luni-solar month of thirty days, in which the lunar crescent
was the ark that is entered by Osiris, on the third day, to spread the
actual water of life and light, not that deluge of destruction which
was entirely mythical.
After the deluge, according to the euhemerizing of the mythos in
the book of Genesis, Noah began to be a husbandman, and planted a
vineyard; and he drank of the wine and was drunken; and he was
uncovered within his tent, and Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the
nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. And
Shem and Japheth took a garment and covered the nakedness of
their father (ch. ix. 20, 24). “And their faces were backward, and they
saw not the nakedness of their father.” Now in the mysteries
of Amenta Osiris is covered by his son Horus to conceal his nakedness. “I am with Horus,” says Taht, “on the day of covering TeshTesh,” one of the names of Osiris (Rit., ch. 1). It is also said to
Horus, “O thou who coverest (or clothest) Osiris and hast seen Sut,
O thou who turnest back” (ch. 28). Here the adversary of Osiris
is present with Horus in this scene of concealing the father’s nakedness, and the bad character of the black, evil-minded Sut appears to
have been given to Ham as a son of Noah. In the Chaldean account
of the deluge a sacrifice is offered at the coming forth from the ark.
Hasisadra says, “I poured out a libation. I built an altar on the
peak of a mountain. Seven jugs of wine I took. At the bottom of
them I placed reeds, pines, and spices. The gods collected at its
burning, the gods like Sumbe gathered over the sacrifice.” (Deluge,
Tab., col. 3, Smith.) The basis of the oblation in the Kamite
sacrifice is the blood of the beings that have been destroyed. “Said
by the majesty of the god, Let them begin with Elephantine, and bring
to me the fruits in quantity. And when the fruits had been brought they
were given . . (lacuna).” The sekti (miller) of Annu was grinding the
fruits, while the priestesses poured the juice into the vases; and those
fruits were put into vessels with the blood of the beings, and there were
seven thousand pitchers of drink. “And there came the majesty of the
king of Upper and Lower Egypt, with the gods, to see the drink after
he had ordered the goddess to destroy the beings in three days of
navigation.”
Instead of the Assyrian seven jugs of wine the
Egyptian has 7,000 pitchers of drink, and this is brewed from the
blood of the massacred beings mingled with the juice of the fruits of
the earth; and here, as in the later version, the gods gather over the
THE DELUGE AND THE ARK
569
sacrifice “to see the drink.” Shedding the blood of the wicked, in
this great slaughter of the evil beings, was a mode of offering the
oblation to the Good Being. Blood and the fruits of the earth were
the two primitive forms of the offering, and these are blended together
in a deluge of intoxicating drink.
A most primitive representation of this sacrifice which followed the
deluge is made by the Ovaherero, an African tribe adjoining that of
the Bushmen. They claim to have issued from the typical tree of
the beginning, which is said by the missionary Reiderbecke to be a
kind of Yggdrasil. The Ovaherero say that the sky was once let
down in a deluge, by which the greater part of mankind were
drowned. This they attribute to the Old Ones in heaven, whose
wrath was appeased by the sacrifice of a black sheep (South African
Folk-Lore Journal, vol. ii., pt. 5, p. 95). When the deluge of darkness
had passed away at dawn, the black sheep was offered to placate and
pacify the power of darkness, which exhibits the deluge and the
deluge-legend in their most primitive forms. The sacrifice does not
merely celebrate the return of light, as in a later phase, but is also a
petitionary offering for future protection from the deluge of the dark.
Before ever man appeared on earth, a feeling of joy and thankfulness
had been expressed by the apes at the return of the light, whether
lunar or solar; and when man came he followed on the track of the
monkey in feeling thankful for the return of day. In the Egyptian
hieroglyphics the word tua, to adore, is figured as a salutation to
the dawn or morrow-day, and the typical adorer is the Kaf-ape, the
saluter of the gods. Primitive worship signified salutation and sacrifice from the beginning. In various traditions, Babylonian, American,
Hebrew, and others, the deluge is followed by a sacrifice, and this
sacrifice after the flood has been configurated in the stars of heaven
in a picture of the far-off past, with the offering laid upon the altar
at a point where the actual inundation in Egyptian annually came to
an end. In the Hebrew account of the thanksgiving sacrifice it
is said, “Noah built an altar unto Jehovah, and took of every
clean beast and of every clean bird, and offered burnt-offerings
upon the altar, and Ihuh smelled the sweet savour.” The typical
imagery derived from the actual seasons in Egypt, repeated in the
planisphere, will also account for the Hebrew story concerning Noah’s
planting the vine and getting drunk immediately after the inundation.
The vine that Noah is said to have planted may be seen in the
decans of Virgo, where the star Vindemiatrix denotes the time of
vintage in Egypt. It is a version of the mythos in which the water
of the deluge was turned into wine by Horus, the ripening soul of
the sun, that has been most pitifully vulgarised in the story of Noah’s
intoxication after the deluge. According to the planisphere Noah
was on the water of the inundation, or he might have just landed
when the grapes were ripe, and he got intoxicated apparently for the
purpose of cursing Ham and consigning the dark race to the doom
of never-ending slavery. Hebraists tell us that the name of Noah
signifies rest, which leads to nothing in Hebrew. Whereas, in Egyptian,
the same word Nnu is a name of the inundation, the deity of the
celestial waters, and also for rest or repose. As natural fact this was
the season of rest or of Nnu because of the deluge, during which the
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ANCIENT EGYPT
god was resting in his ark upon the waters, or, as might be, in his
Teba of the Southern Apta at Thebes. The natural fact was formulated in a legend such as that of Nnu, Num, Noah, or Vishnu resting
on the waters during a deluge in the course of a new creation; that
is, during the Hindu period of Pralaya, when this was figured on the
grand scale as described in the Puranas. For instance, Vishnu is said
to repose in slumber during four months of every year, borne up by
the seven-headed Naga-serpent Sesha (Kennedy, Hindu Mythology,
p. 228; Moor’s Hindu Pantheon). The four months of the inundation
is historical in Egypt; the deluge in mythology is typical, and the
type was variously applied to a natural phenomenon as a mode of
measuring time. Nnu or Nu had become an Egyptian personal
name. There is a papyrus of Nu in the British Museum containing
various chapters of the Ritual. In these the speaker calls himself the
Osiris-Nu, and, as the subject-matter shows, the manes here combines
the two characters of Osiris and Nnu. Moreover, he is Nnu in the
ark or bark, as lord of the inundation and victor over the deluge
(Rit., ch. 36 A). The Osiris-Nnu is the speaker; not merely Nnu of
the papyrus, but Nnu of the celestial water, or Nnu as THE Osiris. He
says the Osiris-Nnu is strong to direct the ship of the gods, here called
the boat of the sun, in which he comes forth from Amenta into
heaven. Nnu saileth round about the heaven and “voyages along
with Ra.” Thus the mythos merges into the eschatology of the Ritual.
The water of the deluge in the Assyrian legend was not terrestrial.
It is said in the opening lines:
Then arose the water of dawn at daylight;
It arose like a black cloud from the horizon of heaven.
It was a deluge feared by the gods themselves because the waters were
celestial. Hence they sought refuge in the highest heaven. “They
ascended to the heaven of Anu,” the enclosure at the Pole. This was
the heaven of the stars that never set; the heaven, the enclosure or
ark of refuge, which is said to have rested on the mount when the
flood subsided. It was Bel, the wise one, the counsellor of the gods,
who caused the deluge, and he is a pole-star god, equivalent to Sut or
Anup the judge, whose seat was above the summit at the north
celestial pole. The deluge here was evidently the result of a change
in the pole-stars; hence the tree re-planted in a circle by the gods.
If Bel made the deluge when he represented the pole-star a change in
the pole-star would be as the letting in of waters, otherwise called the
flood. The ark was built against this contemplated change. The
Greek tradition included two legends of the great deluge or cataclysm
by which the race was destroyed. One of these was the flood from
which Ogyges escaped with a few companions in a vessel. The other
is known as the deluge of Deucalion, from which he escaped with
Pyrrha his wife. Ogyges with his few companions are equivalent to
Horus with the seven great spirits who were saved from the deluge in
the ark of Orion. Deucalion and Pyrrha are equivalent to Atum and
his consort Hathor-Iusāas. Among the Californian Indians they tell
of a great flood (i.e., heaven all water) from which only a coyote survived and a feather that was seen floating on the vast expanse of
water. As the coyote looked at it the feather became an eagle which
THE DELUGE AND THE ARK
571
joined the coyote on the “Reed-Peak,” and these two were the creators
of men (Bancroft, vol. III, pp. 87, 88). The reed-peak also answers
to the Kamite field of reeds upon the summit of Mount Hetep and
the Japanese “mid-land of the reed-expanse.” The papyrus-reed or
lotus-flower is a cradle or ark in which the Child-Horus was uplifted
from the water of the Nun and saved from drowning. This becomes
the mythical reed in various legends, which is a co-type with the
tree as a means of emergence from the flood. The Navajo Indians
have piously preserved an account of the ascent from the waters of
the deluge, not by means of the tree or tower, but by building a huge
mound of earth to make a tall mountain in the north. Their
tradition is that the men of a world before our own, on being warned
of an approaching flood, resolved to build a place of refuge. “They took
soil from the four corner-mountains (quarters) of the world, and
placed it on the top of the mountain that stood in the north; and
thither they all went, including the people of the mountains, the saltwoman and such animals as then lived in the third world. When the
soil was laid on the mountain the latter grew higher and higher, but
the waters began to rise and the people climbed upwards to escape
from the flood. At length the mountain ceased to grow, and they
planted on the summit a great Reed, into the hollow of which they all
entered. . . . At the end of the fourth night from the time it was
planted the reed had grown up to the floor of the fourth world, and
here they found a hole through which they passed to the surface” and
were saved. The great reed evidently imaged the celestial pole. It
grew by night and did not grow in the daytime. The turkey was the
last to enter the reed, and the deluge rose and rose until the water wetted
the tip of his tail (W. Matthews, American Antiquarian, 1883, p. 208).
The tree had been an actual refuge for the human race. Hence it
became a typical refuge that was figured in the astronomy and eschatology. Salvation from the deluge by means of both the reed and the
tree is a mode of escape from the waters in the Ritual. The deceased
is one who knows the deep waters. But he is not to be drowned.
He exclaims, “I embrace the sycamore-tree. I am united to the
sycamore” (Rit., ch. lxiv). The sycamore is the tree of dawn,
and the speaker escapes from the waters just as the young sun-god
escaped from the deluge of darkness by climbing the tree or mounting
his papyrus-plant; the one as solar in the mythology, the other as a
soul in the eschatology. This mode of ascent goes back to the time
when there was neither a bridge of heaven nor a boat upon the
waters of earth, nor a tower that was built to reach to heaven. In
the Norse mythos the ash-tree is called “the Refuge of Thor,”
because it caught and saved the young god when he was being swept
away by the overflowing waters of the river Vimur. This is the
same typical tree as in the Ritual, where it is the mainstay of the
Osiris, who is well-nigh drowned by the deluge of the inundation, but
who escapes by laying hold of the tree. We need to know in what
sense the reed or tree in heaven was a type of safety during the
deluge before we can interpret the Arawak version, in which it is
said the waters had been confined to the hollow bole of an
enormous tree by means of an inverted basket. The mischievous
monkey saw this basket, and thinking it covered something good
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ANCIENT EGYPT
to eat he lifted it up, whereupon the deluge burst forth from
the tree.
The monkey is charged with being the culprit in
several of the legends and märchen that we show to be survivals of
the Kamite mythos, in which Hapi was the ape that brought the deluge
of the inundation, and was also in command of the celestial water in
the mythology (Rit., ch. 57). In a Red-Indian story of the deluge,
Manabozho escaped from drowning by climbing to the top of the
tallest pine-tree on the highest mountain in the world and waiting till
the flood subsided. It is related in a Taoist legend that “one
extraordinary antediluvian saved his life by climbing up a mountain,
and there and then, in the manner of birds plaiting a nest, he passed
his days on the trees, while all the country below him was one vast
expanse of water. He afterwards lived to a very old age, and could
testify to his late posterity that a whole race of human beings had
then been swept away from the face of the earth” (The Chinese
Repository, v. 8, p. 517). In this legend we have both the tree and the
mountain used as means of escape in the same ascent. They were
distinct as Egyptian types, but afterwards were sometimes fused in
one, as the tree or reed upon the summit of the mount. The Indian
tribes of Guiana say that when the great waters were about to be sent
forth the chief Marérewána was informed of the coming flood, and
he saved himself and his family in a large canoe. In order that he
might not drift over the ocean far from the ancestral home he prepared a long cable of “bush-rope” and made his vessel fast to the
trunk of an enormous tree, so that when the waters subsided he found
himself at no great distance from his former abode. His canoe had
been tied up to the pole, here represented by a tree. The reed-type
also takes the form of the canoe as well as the tree. It is related in a
Mexican tradition that the coyote, a co-type with the jackal and the
dog, got wind of the coming deluge. To save himself from drowning he gnawed down a large cane that was growing on the bank of a
river. This he entered, and then stopped up the end of it with a
kind of gum to keep the waters out. Thus, at the time of the
Chaldean deluge it is said that the great god Nera “tore up the
Stake”—that is, the pole or mooring-post which is here represented
by a stake, and a change of pole-star by the uprooting of the stake.
Nera is a form of Nergal, the great Nera.
The legends of the deluge show that the primal paradise was an
enclosure on the summit of the highest mountain, that of the pole, as
a place of safety midst the celestial waters, which was typical of the
refuge sought for on the hill-top when the floods were out on earth.
The enclosure might be an ark, or palisade of wicker-work, a nest
of reeds, or a city, walled and fortified, an island, a group of seven
islands, or ten, or a zodiac, the idea of the deluge was ever present.
And this had been the dominant idea in the burial of old Egypt’s
dead amidst the waters of the inundation. Every figure of the ark
and every mode of arking or enclosing are extant somewhere or other
in the astronomical mythology. Take the cave for example. In the
Mexican version the seven who are saved from the deluge found safety in
the seven caves of the celestial mount, the mount which toppled over
at the summit with the changing of the pole. The cave was one of
the natural types of the ark that preceded any form of refuge made
THE DELUGE AND THE ARK
573
by the hand of man. And there were seven of these altogether as a
figure of the celestial heptanomis. The Welsh Barddas ascribe the
building of an ark to Menwyd, who is called the dragon-chief of the
world in the ancient British mythology. Menwyd is described as
forming the ark by means of serpents joined together (Nat. Gen., v.
2, p. 253). An ark is the means of safety amidst the waters
whatsoever its formation may have been. Such an ark may be seen
in the Sesha Nag-serpent with seven heads that bears up Vishnu
during the deluge. This is a figure of the fore-world which preceded a
great flood. Here the seven-headed serpent is likewise a figure of the
heptanomis, or heaven in seven divisions, which sank in the celestial
waters. The same great serpent in the waters with seven heads is
also Akkadian.
A principle of arking, so to call it, was established when the great
Bear, as the mother of the revolutions or time-cycles, and mistress of
the waters, made the circle of the year in turning round “the
Atlantean Pole.” She, as the pregnant water-cow, was herself an ark
of life that might be looked to as a divine type of safety by the
sufferers from the water-floods on earth. The mother of time and
station was the mistress of the firmamental waters; the mistress
therefore of the enclosure in the waters which in the later rendering is a
park, a garden, a paradise, or a harvest-field. In the Uganda legend
it was a palisade of reeds around a spring of fresh water, the secret of
which the women knew, but failed to keep. When the circle of the
bear was found to be untrue, and time was more correctly measured
by the moon-god Taht, she, the mother of time and the mistress of
the waters, was accused of being unfaithful to her trust, of letting in
the deluge and losing the primeval home. As we have seen, she
philandered with the moon-god Taht, who superseded Sut in her
affections and in keeping time. The twins as Sut and Horus were
re-born of her as lunar in the dark and light halves of the moon—
the light eye of Horus and the dark eye of Sut. Apt had been the
mistress of the waters in the stellar mythos from the first, and when
it was found out that she was keeping time unfaithfully and
incorrectly she was charged with betraying the secret to her lover,
with overthrowing the bulwark and with letting in the deluge. This
supplied the matter of sundry deluge-legends.
The Egyptians always kept on building closely in accordance with
some primal type like this of the ark. In the beginning the earth
itself was a mount or table-land that rose up out of the abyss as a
kind of ark amidst the waters of space, an ark of one story. But when
Amenta had been hollowed out by Ptah the opener of an underworld, there was an ark of two stories, fixed or floating. Whether
called an ark or a house, it was two-storied. It was double-decked
like a ship. It was also a house of two stories for Osiris in Abydos.
With heaven added over all it becomes three-storied or triple-decked,
with Amenta, earth and heaven answering to the three stories of the
triple-deck. Now, it is commanded that the ark of Noah, or Nnu, shall
be built “with lower, second and third stories,” like the ship with
three decks. This is a fragment of the genuine mythos which tends
to show that it was the ark here identified as the figure of three
worlds, viz., Amenta, middle-earth and heaven; a figure that agrees
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ANCIENT EGYPT
with the typical tree of the Akkado-Assyrian and the Norse
mythology which had its roots in the nether-world, its stem in middleearth and its branches high in heaven. But did the Egyptians ever
launch this three-decker, and get it afloat in space? or did it remain
a fixture in the mythical abyss?
It was argued in the Natural Genesis that the Kamite astronomers
had measured the earth and knew it to be a globe rotating in space.
It is now suggested that the ark of three stories was a compound
image of the three regions built up deck by deck and completed by
the arch-craftsman Ptah in a vessel that is called the ship of heaven
in the Ritual. In the words of M. Lieblin, the Egyptians “knew that
the earth circulated in the great ocean of heaven.” And as the earth
was the sekru-bark of Osiris in Amenta, it was the ark afloat upon
the waters of the Nnu (Nat. Gen., v. 2, pp. 60-61). In the time of
Neb-Ka-Ra of the fourth dynasty the fact must have been a familiar
one for a common peasant to call the king “the helm, or pilot of the
earth which he navigates in space as the second brother of Taht,”
who was the navigator of the lunar bark. The ark of Nnu, which Ra
commanded to be built for him when he was about to be lifted up
upon the heavenly water, may be seen on the sarcophagus of Seti, in
the Soane Museum. “The boat,” says Lefébure, the translator of
the text, “is supported by Nnu, whose bust and arms only are to be seen.
The arms issue from the water and bear up the god. The entire
scenes are surrounded by the waves of Nnu, which shows that the
Egyptians looked upon the earth as a spherical body floating through
the air. The boat is directed, as a passage made through the waves
indicates, towards a spot where a disk is represented on a band. This
band, studded with points, represents the earth as a landing-place for
which the ark is bound” (Book of Hades, Records of the Past, vol. xii.
p. 16). There is also a description of the ship of Nnu in the chapter
of the Ritual by which one saileth a ship in the nether-world. In this
the nature of the three decks as “lower, second and third stories”
is described. The vessel is described in chapter 99 as the ship in
which the abyss or void of Apap the devourer may be safely crossed.
This is an empty space into which the starry ones fall down headlong
to find nothing by which they can raise themselves up again. The
manes supplicates the god: “Oh thou who sailest the ship of Nnu
over the void, let me sail the ship. Let me be brought in as a
distressed mariner, and go to the place which thou knowest.” As
previously shown, he has to know each part of the bark by name and
to repeat the name of each before he is admitted on board. From
this examination in the judgment-hall we learn the nature of the Ark
and its three stories. The name of the lowest story is “akar,” that is,
the lower earth. The posts at stem and stern are “the two columns
of the nether-world.” The ribs, also called the four paddles, image the
gods of the four corners, Amsta, Hapi, Tuamutef and Kabhsenuf.
These are the four who row the bark, and it is said that Seb, the
earth, abideth stably by means of their rudders or oars. The “patrol
who goeth round” is “he who piloteth the double earth.” The
“mooring-post,” which represents the pole, is designated “the lord of
the double earth in the shrine,” that is, Osiris as the power of the pole.
The double earth is the earth of Amenta and the earth of Seb, or two
THE DELUGE AND THE ARK
575
of the three stories, the third of which is celestial. Hence Nut, or
Heaven, is the name of the sail. Thus the three stories are identified
with Amenta, earth and heaven, that were figured in the ark of Nnu
which floated (earth and all) upon the waters of the firmament. This,
when represented by the constellation Argo Navis, was an objectpicture of the ark upon the great stream of the Via Lactea, by means
of which the manes reached “the tip of heaven” at the pole, and
after all the rowing and the voyaging attained the realm of rest upon
the eternal shore. The Jewish Kabalists have a tradition that Noah’s
ark embodied an image of the world or was a figure of the whole
universe. This IS the ark of Nnu in the astronomical mythology, the
ark of Nnu that is described in the Egyptian Ritual as a subject of
examination in the Mysteries of Amenta.
According to the Bhâgavata Purana (1, 3, 15), the ship of Manu
was the earth itself. The “ship of the world” is a title given by the
Barddas to the enclosure of Stonehenge, which points to its including
an image of the earth as a form of the ark amidst the waters of heaven,
like that of Seb which abideth stably in space by means of the four
oars or paddles at the four cardinal points. An ark of the four
quarters is described in the magic papyrus. It is said, “There are four
mansions of life at Abydos,” the mythical birthplace of Osiris in
Amenta. In this we find another group of the four gods Nnu
and Shu, Taht and Seb. The eternal city on the summit of the
Mount of Glory was the final form of the ark in heaven. And
after the Babylonian deluge when the ship touches the shore and
its occupants have landed, as it is said, Gilgames “collected great
stones,” “he piled up the great stones.” Instead of piling the mound
of earth, or planting the typical tree, or launching the ark, the survivors now are the builders of a city with stones. They landed and
“left the ship by the shore. They journeyed a stage of twenty kaspu.
They made the stage ascent of thirty kaspu. They came to the
midst of Erech Suburi.” Then follows the building of Erech, the
ark-city on the summit; or the new heaven that was divided into three
parts; “one measure for the circuit of the city, one measure for
the boundary of the temple of Nantur, the house of Ishtar; three
measures together (for) the divisions of Erech” (Records, v. 7,
148—9). In Africa a conical hut like an ant-heap is the primeval
type of a dwelling made by human hands. This was continued by
the Egyptians in the cone of Hathor and the conical pyramid, or BenBen of Sut-Anup as a figure of Polaris or Sothis surmounted by its
star. This may be seen in the lake-dwellings of Africa, which are
conical huts built on piles in the water of the divine land of Puanta
as portrayed in the inscriptions of Hatshepsu’s temple at Deir-elBahari. The reason given for such a type of house, says Sir John
Kirk, is that the country at times is flooded (Lockyer’s Dawn of
Astronomy, p. 348, note 3), and thus the inhabitants escape the inundation. The conical hut is common in Africa both on land and water,
and this is a figure of the primitive paradise and of the celestial pole,
which was continued in Egypt as the round pyramidion, a co-type
with the circular mound and conical cairn. Thus an ark on the
firmamental water in the shape of a cone, a figure that represents the
pole, crowned with its star, is identical with the pile-dwelling of the
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ANCIENT EGYPT
African lakes, and images the same mode of escape from the waters,
according to the mythos and eschatology of the Egyptians, as does
the primitive lake-dwelling of the Inner Africans. The earliest ark
of Nnu, or heaven, is an enclosure in the water of the Nun; the latest
is a paradise on piles; we might say seven piles or poles which are
co-types with the seven mountains or seven pyramids. But an ark,
as a means of refuge in relation to a deluge of water, is not limited to
the boat-type. The ark of Noë on the Apamean coin is figured as a
box four-square. This, in Egyptian, is a Teba, Hebrew Thebah, the
name of Noah’s ark, and of Thebes as a form of the eternal city.
There was an ark of the sphere which is described in the Thlinkeet
legend as a vast floating building. At the time of the deluge it
struck on the mount, or was driven on the rock and broken in two
halves by its own weight. This agrees with the division of the
heaven into north and south between Sut and Horus, as their two
divine domains.
In several of the legends it is made known beforehand and announced that a deluge is coming, and with the warning instructions
are given to build an ark or prepare some sort of refuge and means
of escape for a favoured few. According to the Marquesan version,
the lord ocean, or Fatu-Noana, who is like Nnu, lord of the celestial
water, when about to send the devastating deluge, allows seven days
for preparation. A tall building is to be erected which will tower above
the reach of the waters.
Cattle of all kinds are collected in
pairs and marched into a vessel called the “Long Deep Wood.” In
this there is a family of four males and four females saved; the same
as in the ark of Noah, and of Nnu. The storm burst. The “sacred
supporter” of the universe slumbered during the night of dissolution,
as does Vishnu or Brahma in the Hindu version. A coffin on a
sledge was a pre-Osirian type of the ark which was periodically
drawn round the walls of the great sanctuary of Ptah the coffined
one in the Mysteries of Memphis. The sledge or raft was naturally
earlier than the boat, and the passage through Amenta, when this
was imaged as solid earth, was represented by the sun-god Sekari in
his coffin resting on a sledge. In the Ritual (ch. 100) the Osiris says,
“I clear the path of the solar orb and tow along Sekari (a form of
Ptah) upon his sledge.” The Norsemen were accustomed to bury
the bodies of their dead chiefs in boats on the hills, as a typical mode
of crossing the celestial waters after death. The Garrows of Bengal,
who cremated their dead, used to place the corpse in a dingy or small
boat on the top of the funeral pile, for the typical crossing of the
waters. The word ark in Egyptian signifies a circle, to encircle,
bands, enclosings, encirclings, also number thirty, thence a month.
Arkai is to appoint a limit, fix an end by decree. This was applied
in measuring a cycle of time, which might be monthly, as in the
Assyrian Arkhu. From this comes the arc, as part of a circle, which
in Egyptian is to encircle or to make the circle. And thus the
enclosure and ark are both forms of the circle. The enclosure made
by Yima was an ark-circle but not an ark, or bark upon the waters.
Still, the meaning is the same. It was the type of an enclosure and
of safety from the deluge whether figured as stationary or afloat;
THE DELUGE AND THE ARK
577
and the heaven built upon four corners as a circular enclosure was an
ark in space, we might say, the ark of space, when space was the
celestial water. An ark of seven cubits was a figure of the celestial
heptanomis, or heaven in seven divisions. An ark of eight cubits
was a figure of heaven in eight divisions, either as Am-Khemen or the
octonary of Taht. An ark of four cubits was a figure of heaven as
the teba, or box of the four quarters. There was an ark of twentyeight cubits reckoned as twice fourteen, based upon twenty-eight
nights to the lunar month. This was the ark of the moon in which
Osiris was reborn, or the child-Horus was preserved from the waters.
The cubit was a measure in time for a day, as well as in space for a
degree. Three hundred and sixty five cubits in circumference was
the measure of a year of 365 days, on the tomb of Osymandyas
(Diod. I, 49). Similarly, fourteen cubits were equivalent to fourteen
days, or a half-moon, a tenat in the lunar month of twenty-eight days,
and therefore equal to fourteen degrees. Thus the ark of the moon
is not limited to the orb itself as a vessel that contained the new-born
child of light. It is also the circle of a lunar zodiac, in which there
were twenty-eight measures in time and space, = twenty-eight
cubits that were divided into two fourteens, and four sevens. During
fourteen days Osiris (or Horus) grew in glory, and during the other
half of the lunation he was torn in fourteen pieces by Sut, the power
of darkness. An ark of twice fourteen cubits is equal to a circle with
twenty-eight stations, that is a lunar enclosure or zodiac. No dimensions of the ark are directly given in the Ritual, but there is an
allusion which probably underlies the measurement of the lunar month
or zodiacal circle of twenty-eight measures. One-half of the circle
was marked out in fourteen divisions corresponding to one-half of the
lunar houses. Also, the divine domain of Aarru was divided into
fourteen sections (Rit., ch. 149), or, to put it in another way the mount
of earth had fourteen steps to it: seven up and seven down. This would
be the measure of one-half the circle, which was made out in twentyeight lunar signs: fourteen in the lower and fourteen in the upper
hemisphere. Sunset and sunrise were half-way round the circle,
horizontally and perpendicularly, at the level called the summit of
the mount. Now there is a scene at sunset described in the Ritual
(ch. 108). Ra and the reptile of darkness watch each other, Ra from
his ark, the monster from the mount. The depth of water underneath
the solar bark at this, the level of sunset, is said to be seven cubits in
its liquid part. This also serves to measure the lower half of the
circle by seven cubits, or measures, downward and seven upward to
the level of the mount, or the horizon. Seven steps down, applied
either to the mount or to the lower half of the circle, would be
identical with the course of the lunar goddess Ishtar, when she made her
descent into the Assyrian Hades and was despoiled of all her
ornaments and raiment as she passed through the seven gates
downward, to be reclothed again in all her glory as she made the
ascent through the seven upward gates. The object sought to be
established here is the lunar circle divided into twenty-eight lengths
of time, whether measured vertically by the mount of the earth or by
the pathway of the moon. The seven measures answer to one-fourth
578
ANCIENT EGYPT
of the entire circle of twenty-eight cubits or measures of time;
fourteen below and fourteen above; fourteen from sunset to sunrise,
and fourteen from sunrise to sunset.
The lunar measurement and ark were earlier than the solar, and these
were afterwards applied to the luni-solar cycle of time. In the lunisolar month, the days, degrees, measures, or cubits, would be fifteen
instead of fourteen to the half-circle. Thus, if the lower half of the
circle contains fifteen measures called cubits, instead of fourteen in
the lunar reckoning, there would be fifteen measures above the
mountain-summit on which the level of the equinox was marked, and
this may be the meaning of the Hebrew and Toltec statements that
the waters of the deluge prevailed fifteen cubits above the highest
mountains; the waters being celestial, the waters of Nnu or Noë.
We hear most of the ark as a teba or box, which is a figure of the
four corners, and as the measures of twenty-eight, fourteen, and seven
show, was a type of the lunar heaven that followed the stellar; the
ark of Taht which superseded the ark of Sut; the ark of eight
cubits, or the octonary, which took the place of the heptanomis.
The lunar nature of the Babylonian ark is also indicated by its
measures. On the deluge tablet, as rendered by Smith, the builder
of the ark relates that, “in its circuit it was fourteen measures”; “its
frame fourteen measures it measured.” Now, as the cubit was the
typical measure, this was equivalent to fourteen cubits. Boscawen
has it: “Two sides were raised. In its enclosure fourteen ribs, also
fourteen they numbered above” (The Bible and its Monuments,
p. 117). In this reckoning the ark of twenty-eight measures corresponds to the circle of twenty-eight lunar measures, or stations of
the moon. Thus numerically the ark is identified as one with the
arc by the fourteen measures below and fourteen above, and the ark
of the moon was the ark of Osiris in the lunar mythos. As the lunar
circle was divided in four quarters, and these four were each subdivided into seven, that may explain the statement of the builder,
who says he divided the interior seven times and (its passages or
parts) seven times (later version by Professors Haupt and Sayce).
This ark of abode is admittedly built “in a circuit” (col. 2), which
has fourteen measures above and fourteen below, sub-divided by seven
in the interior and by seven in its parts or passages. There are two
fourteens sub-divided by the two sevens, equal to the lunar circle of
twenty-eight measures, the two lunations of fourteen days, and the
four quarters of seven days each. And if the measure of fourteen
refers to one-half the lunar circle, it is possible that the measure of
fifteen cubits applied to the rising waters in the Hebrew version is a
measure taken from the soli-lunar month of thirty measures or days,
especially as the height of Noah’s ark was to be thirty cubits. The
ark of twenty-eight measures would be lunar only, the ark in which
Osiris rose again on the third day after his body had been torn into
fourteen parts and gathered together in the sekru (or ark) chest,
coffin (teba), for the revivification and resurrection in the ark of the
moon. The ark of thirty measures (a measure in the hieroglyphics is
a cubit) would be soli-lunar in accordance with the thirty days to the
month; this, then, would be an ark of the sun and moon, which
followed the lunar ark of twenty-eight cubits. The ark of seven
THE DELUGE AND THE ARK
579
measures was the stellar heptanomis. The ark of eight measures is
the octonary of Taht, the lunar god; a heaven of four quarters subdivided by eight semi-cardinal points into stations for the four wives,
sisters or goddesses. Then followed an ark of the sun and moon and
seven stars. Now, it is said in the Persian Rauzat-us-Safa that the
Almighty fixed two luminous disks, one like the sun and the other
like the moon, on the wall of the ark, and thus the hours of the day
and night were ascertained (O’Neill, The Night of the Gods, p. 173).
This is a mode of describing the additions made in the soli-lunar
mythos to the ark of heaven, that was stellar at an earlier time, and
is solar in its final phase. The arkite symbolism culminated as
Egyptian in the ark of Nnu. This was the ark that was built “with
lower, second, and third stories” (Gen. vi. 16), because it was a threefold
figure of Amenta, earth and heaven in one, as it is represented in the
Ritual. Once it is shown that Noah’s ark is a geometrical figure of
the heaven, there is no further difficulty respecting its size or content.
The beasts of the earth, the birds of the air, the fish of the waters, and
the human beings were all represented by the four types at the four
corners, by Tuamutef, the jackal; Kabhsenuf, the hawk; Hapi, the
ape; and Amsta, the man. These were accompanied in the enclosure
by their consorts, Isis, the cow; Serkh, the scorpion; Nephthys, and
Neith. Salvation from the deluge in the under-world is sought for by
the Manes in the ark, whether called the ark of Osiris, or Ra, or Nnu.
The experience attributed to Osiris as the god in Amenta, is also
assigned to the soul of the deceased. In setting by night into the
waters, the sun-god entered into the ark of earth, which is called his
coffin or sarcophagus, in which he was enclosed by Sut, the power of
darkness. In one form this was figured as the coffin-mountain, or
neb-ankh, that was represented by the hill, Bakhu, the dimensions
of which are given in the Ritual (ch. 109). The hill Bakhu was the
place of sunrise where dawn broke on the coffin-lid; and the length
of this coffin, or ark of earth, was 300 cubits. It is stated in the
papyrus of Nebseni that the hill is 300 cubits in breadth. In other
papyri it is said to be 300 cubits in length. This is connected with
the measurement of the earth. Thus the ark of Osiris in the earth,
and the ark of Noah are identical in length. The ark being also a
figure of heaven, the 300 countries in Yima’s kingdom are an astronomical measure equivalent to the 300 cubits of Noah’s ark, and
likewise to the area of 300 cubits of the Egyptian hollow hill, or ark
of earth. It is possible to identify the constellation of Argo-Navis as
the object-picture in the nightly heaven of the ark that Nnu constructed for the great god Ra, and thence the ark of Noah in the
Hebrew version of the legend. In the pictures of the planisphere,
which still remain on the celestial globe, it may be seen that the figurehead of the vessel is a ram. This was the type of the ram-headed
Num, lord of the inundation, and Num was the later form of Nnu, the
god of the celestial water, who was the builder of the ark for Ra.
By day the solar orb was carried on the ark of Nnu, and by night the
gods and glorified were seen in Argo-Navis on its voyage, as the
“collector of souls” sailed upward for the circumpolar paradise along
the river of the Milky Way. Now, Argo-Navis is the only constellation that is figured hind-before on the celestial globe. As
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ANCIENT EGYPT
Aratos describes the vessel, “Argo by the great dog’s tail is drawn;
for hers is not a usual course, but backward turned she comes, as
vessels do when sailors have transposed the crooked stern on entering harbour; all the ship reverse. And gliding backward on the
beach it grounds sternforward, thus is Jason’s Argo drawn” (Aratos,
Phainomena, R. Brown, lines 342-348).
But, what can be the
meaning of an ark or ship that makes its voyage through the
firmamental waters in this hindward way? We can but infer that
it was an object-picture of the ark of Nnu, as “the bark of millions
of years” receding in this backward fashion as it made the circuit of
Precession.
THE WORLD’S GREAT YEAR.
Once every six-and-twenty thousand years “the world’s great age
begins anew, the golden years return” (Shelley), but in no other than
the astronomical sense of a re-beginning at the same point of departure as in the beginning. This will re-begin again and again in the
great cycle of precession, but only as a matter of chronology.
Nothing will be repeated except the cycle of time and the same
phenomena belonging to the astronomical mythology. The divine
fulfiller of the millennium in “the house of a thousand years,” or in any
other period, will no more come in person during the next 13,000 years
than it was possible for him to manifest that way in the past half of
the present cycle of 26,000 years. A knowledge of the facts constitutes the sole data of the truth, and such knowledge will ultimately
put an end to the great delusion of the false faith that was founded in
the uttermost ignorance of the astronomical facts.
In the great year of precession there are seven stations of the
celestial pole, six of which are still identifiable in the constellations of
Draconis, the Lesser Bear, Kepheus, Cygnus, Lyra, and Herakles.
The pole changes, and its position is approximately determined by
another central star about each 3,700 years. Seven times in the
great year the station of the pole was raised aloft as land-mark amid
the firmamental waters in the shape of an island, or a mound;
a tree, a pillar, horn, or pyramid. Whichever the type this was
repeated seven times in the circuit of precession, to form the compound and collective figure of the celestial heptanomis, so that the
heaven rested, or was raised, at last upon the seven mountains or seven
mounds; seven islands, seven giants, seven caves, seven trees, seven
pillars, or other structures of support, as seven figures of the allsustaining pole. Seven golden isles emerged from out the watery
vast, or wisdom reared the seven pillars of her house; the heavens
were borne upon the backs of seven giants, or the eternal city was built
upon the seven hills.
It would take some six-and-twenty thousand years to build the
heptanomis on the support of the seven poles. These were added
one by one and figured collectively as seven sustaining powers of the
heavens, such as seven hippopotami; seven crocodiles; seven bears;
seven mountains; seven mounds of earth; seven trees or a tree with
THE WORLD’S GREAT YEAR
581
seven branches; a serpent with seven heads; a fish with seven fins;
seven horns of Sesheta the foundress; seven pillars; seven giants;
seven cyclops, with polaris for a single eye; and lastly, there are the
seven divinities called “the lords of eternity.” Seven periods in precession correspond to seven stations of the pole. The length of time in each
when measured by the changing pole-stars is about 3,700 years.
Seven times the “Atlantean pole” sank in the waters of the deluge
during the great year. This was figured as the seven sunken islands
of the lost Atlantis. But there is another lost land of Atlantis, that
passed away in ten islands, imaging a vanished heaven in ten divisions.
The first was the heptanomis of the seven kings or rulers. The
second is the heaven in ten divisions which ended with the deluge of the
ten kings or patriarchs in the Semitic legends. These two vanished
heavens will account for two great years, or two-and-fifty-thousand
years of time.
The pole and equinox are travelling pari passu, one in the upper
circle of the heavens, the other in the larger lower circle of the ecliptic,
and the shifting of the equinox was correlated more or less exactly to
the changing of the pole-star. The power that presided over the pole
as Osiris was given rebirth as Horus in the vernal equinox. The
pole-star symbolized the lord of eternity. Horus in the equinox (or
the double equinox) was a traveller of eternity manifesting in the
sphere of time; in the Han-cycle of 120 years; in the house of 1,000
years; in the sothic cycle of 1,460 years; or in the change from sign
to sign, each 2,155 years. For two thousand years and more the polestar in the Lesser Bear has coincided with the vernal equinox in the
sign of Pisces. Previously the pole in Draconis coincided with the
vernal equinox in the sign of the ram or the bull. A seventh of
the ecliptic, not merely a third part, was assigned to one or other
of the pole-star gods who became the seven lords of eternity. This
will explain how the ram could be the special constellation of the god
who was at the same time the ruler of the north pole-star. So, in
the celestial drama portrayed in the book of Revelation, the fall of the
dragon, or, astronomically, the change of pole-star, when a-Draconis
was superseded, is followed by the exaltation of the lamb upon the
solar mount of glory. The longer one dwells in presence of Egypt, the
older grows the face of her unveiled antiquity. Not fifty merely, but
more like a thousand centuries look down upon us from her summit of
attainment, the pyramid of her glory, that she built for ever in the
highest heaven of her heavens. It was asserted by Martianus Capella
that the Egyptians had secretly cultivated the science of astronomy
for 40,000 years before it was made known to the rest of the world
(Lewis, Astronomy of the Ancients, p. 264). As time-keepers, the
astronomers of Egypt had thought and wrought, observed and
registered on the scale of the great year of the universe. The circuit
of precession first outlined by the movement of the celestial pole was
their circle of the eternal, or seven eternals, that was imaged by the
Shennu-ring, and likewise by the serpent of eternity, when this was
figured with tail in mouth and one eye always open at the centre of
the coil. They not only laid great bases for eternity in this way, they
built upon the basis of all time which culminated in the cycle of precession. When Herodotus was in Egypt, the “mystery teachers of the
582
ANCIENT EGYPT
heavens” told him that during a certain length of time which had been
reckoned by the Egyptian astronomers, “the sun had four times risen
out of his usual quarter; that he had twice risen where he now sets,
and twice set where he now rises. Yet, that no change in the things
of Egypt had been occasioned by this, either in the productions of the
earth ‘or the river.’ ” And he adds, the Egyptians say, they know
these things with accuracy because they always compute and register
the years (B. 2, 142 and 145). Now there is no cycle in astronomy,
save the circle of the precessional movement in which the phenomena thus unwittingly described by the faithful old chronicler could
occur. One such cycle is certain, two are not improbable, and three
are possible. After long study of the whole matter one sees perforce
that the science of astronomy in Egypt, with its observed and
registered cycle or cycles in precession, is actually older than any race
of men on earth outside of Africa.
The Book of the Dead (chs. 114 and 123) not only proves the ancient
Egyptians to have been acquainted with the precessional movement, it
also gives us an account of the actual changing of a pole-star. The
god Taht, the measurer of time, by means of the moon and the Great
Bear, is to be seen in the midst of his mysteries, which are here described as those of keeping the chronology for the guidance of
posterity. There is a change in the position of the Maat, or judgment-hall, which in the stellar mythos was at the station of the pole,
and was shifted with the shifting pole. On account of this change,
Taht comes as the messenger of Ra in the soli-lunar mythos to make
fast that which was afloat upon the Urnas (Greek Ouranos) water; to
re-adjust the reckoning and to “restore the eye” (Rit., ch. 114) by
making it “firm and permanent” (ch. 116) once more for keeping
time and period correctly on the scale of the great year. The
backward motion of precession is described when Taht says to AtumRa,” I have rescued the Atu from his backward course. I have done
what thou hast prescribed for him.” As Renouf remarks, “I do not
think any astronomer would hesitate to say that precession is meant,”
by this “backward course” (Rit., ch. 123. Notes). The Atu is a
mythical fish with some relation to the course of the solar bark; that
is to its backward course, the course of Argo-Navis. Taht has
“rescued the Atu from his backward course.” He has allowed for this
retrograde motion in precession, and has made the eye firm and fixed
once more by means of his reckonings as a guide to posterity. Taht
also says at the same time, “I have equally balanced the divine pair,
(Sut and Horus) and put a stop to their strife.” This changing of the
pole occurs once every 3,714 years, or, in the round numbers of the
outsiders, every 3,000 years. This is alluded to by Theopompus, who
tells us that “according to the Magi,” “one of the gods shall conquer,
the other be conquered, alternately for 3,000 years; for another 3,000
years they shall fight, war, and undo one the works of the other; but
in the end hades will fail, and men will be happy, neither requiring
food, nor constructing shelter; whilst the god who hath contrived all
this is quiet, and resting himself for a time” (Plutarch, Of Isis and
Osiris, 47). The conflict is identical with the battle of Sut and
Horus on the grand scale. Three thousand years in round numbers
with a surplus known to the Urshi, point to a period in precession
THE WORLD’S GREAT YEAR
583
(3,714) equivalent to a change from one pole-star to another, in the
station of the pole, only the length of time is now applied to souls in
the eschatology, passing through the astronomical cycle of the
proverbial 3,000 years. The Chinese “peach-tree of the gods” is a
magnificent image of the pole. It has seven branches that bear the
fruit of immortality, the fruit which ripens once in 3,000 years. Three
thousand, we repeat, being a round number for the cycle, where 4,000
would not have answered when the exact number is 3,714 years. The
peaches from this tree of time or knowledge were seven in series, as is
shown by the seven peaches which were brought by the mythical
Wang-Mu when she visited the equally mythical Emperor Wa Ti. Also
the seven peaches as total fruit of the tree tend to prove that the figure
was employed as a round number in thousands, near enough for the
non-initiated and the surplus allowed for in reckoning the total
combination.
It is feasible to suppose that the hanging and suspending power of
the firmament was an earlier source of wonderment than even the
revolution of the heavenly bodies. There is a passage in the Argonauticon (2, 296) which appears to show that the notion of suspension
preceded that of revolving. “And so it is that men call those isles,
the isles of turning, though aforetime they called them the floating
isles” (Pilotes). These were the islands figured in the firmamental
sea. Thus under one image groups of the revolving stars were
thought of as the golden isles afloat in the celestial waters of the
firmament. A typical floating island called Chemmis was shown
to Herodotus in the deep broad lake, near the precinct of the
temple of Buto, where it represented the place of refuge in which the
infant Horus (Apollo) was concealed and saved when sought for by
the devouring Apap (Herodotus, B. 2, 156). This place of birth was
first figured in the stellar mythos as a floating island of the pole.
The islands of Atlantis, whether seven or ten in number, would not
have become the sunken islands unless they had been floating isles at
first; and they were floating as formations in the water of heaven.
The earliest foothold in the infinite had been physically attained
amongst the stars that do not set. This was a place of refuge and of
safety from the deluge of the firmamental deep whenever the catastrophe occurred.
It may sound a paradoxical thing to say, but it is true that according to the mythical representation the earliest earth was a bit of
ground solidified in the celestial waters for the planting of a stake, or
tree, or building, raising a pile, or some kind of bulwark against the
overwhelming water-flood. The Egyptian hieroglyphic-sign of land,
locality, or station is the well-known cake, that looks like our Easter
hot-cross bun, and is a figure of the land that was caked or coagulated
amidst the waters. This first formation in the waters of the Nun was
constellated at the place of equipoise and fixity, when this was at the
pole. And in the Osirian mythos this first standing place remained as
a throne of the Eternal on the mount amid the water of the upper
deep. In what is termed the Japanese “Cosmology” there is a
primitive rendering of this beginning. Two of the Kami-deities,
Izanagi and Izanami, the brother and sister corresponding to the
Egyptian Shu and Tefnut, who lifted up the paradise of Am-Khemen,
584
ANCIENT EGYPT
are divinely deputed to make, consolidate, and give birth to the island
of Japan. For this purpose they were provided with a heavenly spear
made of a jewel; a dual figure of the pole and polaris. Thus
equipped, the pair stood on the “floating bridge” of heaven, and
churned the Isle of Onogoro from the waters. This is the earth or
ground that was constellated in an island called “the self-curdled.”
(Chamberlain (B.H.), Kojiki, 18, 19.) The matter that was condensed
around the spear or pole with which they churned the waters formed
the land of Nippon, or Japan. Onogoro, says Hatori Nakatsune, a
native commentator, was originally at the north pole, but was afterwards shifted to its present position. (E. M. Satow, Pure Shinto,
p. 68.) That is when the island which was “self-curdled” in the
celestial ocean gave its name to an earthly island in the Yellow Sea.
To see that the jewelled spear was an emblem of the pole we have but
to compare this legend with the Indian version called “the churning
of the ocean,” in which a mountain (the mount of the pole) takes the
place of the spear as the typical churning-stick. (Moore’s Hindu Pantheon.) But this was no cosmical creation of the earth itself amidst
the waters of space. Such an interpretation is only an erroneous
literalization of the legendary lore. When the primal pair of the
Japanese Kami took possession of the island which had been coagulated from the deep, they stuck the spear into the ground or earth.
This was a mode of planting the tree or establishing the pole as
a primary foundation in the water of heaven, that was now repeated
in the resting-place on earth as a likeness of the pole above.
(Chamberlain (B.H.), Kojiki, pp. 18, 19.) Garcilasso de la Vega
relates that the Inca told him how “Our Father” sent two of his
children, a brother and sister, down from heaven. He gave them a
golden rod, two fingers thick and half an ell long, and when they
desired to rest anywhere they were to stick this into the ground, and
wherever it entered the earth at one push, there they were to halt,
establish themselves, encamp, and hold their court or build the city.
Here the brother and sister are another form of Shu and Tefnut. In
a Dog-rib Indian myth a planting of the pole occurs. It is said that
the divine hero, Chapewee, stuck a piece of wood in the earth, which
became a fir tree, that grew and grew until it reached to
heaven. Then Chapewee ascended the tree, and at the summit found
a fine large plain and a beaten road to travel on.
The present writer contends that the deluge-legends of the world
are based upon the astronomical mythology of Egypt, but that in the
isolation of the primitive emigrants the ancient wisdom lapsed and
the deluge as a mode of symbolism in astronomy was more or less lost
sight of; and, from lack of knowledge, the mythical deluge was confused with the primitive concept of heaven as the water overhead.
With the knowers the deluge was a typical figure; with the ignorant
it was an actuality that might at any time recur, as did the water-flood
on earth. The chief contribution made by the Semites to the astronomical mythology was in literalizing the legends which originated
with the mythical mode of representation, and in putting forth an
exoteric version of the ancient wisdom. Thus it was natural that in a
country like Babylonia where the winter rains were held to be a curse
the typical deluge of Nnu in the celestial waters should be confused
THE WORLD’S GREAT YEAR
585
with the flood of Bel or Noah on the surface of the earth. Pliny calls
Belus the “inventor of sidereal science” (N. H. 6, 26), and Belus as
the elder Bel was a form of the Egyptian Bar, a name of Sut. As
Diodorus relates (1. 28, 29), the Egyptians claimed to have taught the
science of astronomy to the Babylonians, and declared that Belus and
his subjects were a colony from Egypt. Belus (the first Bel) being
identified with Bar = Sut, this means that the colonising of Babylonia
from Egypt was during the reign of Sut, or at least in the time of the
primordial pole-star one great year ago, when the pole-star was previously in the Lesser Bear or the male hippopotamus. In astronomy
the status of an arch-first depended on being foremost in time, and Sut
was first as bull of the mother, or the male hippopotamus with the
female.
We hold the founder of astronomy to have been the
establisher of the pole, whether as Sut, in the southern, or Sut-Apap
in the northern heaven. And the most profoundly important of all
the deluges was that which took place at the subsidence and submergence of the pole and changing of the pole-star, the star that fell
from heaven, according to the astronomical mythology. The Book of
Enoch says that, previously to the Noachian deluge, Noah saw that
the earth became inclined and that destruction approached. Then he
lifted up his feet and went to the ends of the earth, to the dwelling of
his great grandfather Enoch (ch. 64). The “Ends of the Earth”
was an expression for the two poles—the dwelling of Enoch being
equivalent to that of Sut at the southern pole. The beginning, however, was not with boats or arks as a means of crossing the celestial
water of the Nun. Islands were figured earlier. Typical heaps of
earth were raised by the mound-builders as ground to go upon, like
stepping-stones in the celestial deep. These eventually were seven in
number. The structure also ranged from seven mounds at first
to seven cities finally. Naturally the mount or mound of earth, the
tree, the papyrus-reed, or island was a type of emergence from or
amid the waters earlier than the building of a boat or an ark in the
celestial sea. The first ideas were those of suspension, fixity, and
foothold in the liquid vast.
In various primitive legends the bulwark was raised against the
waters but was overthrown because the faithless woman failed to keep
the secret with which she had been entrusted. We have already cited
one or two American and African instances. In a Muyscas myth,
Huythaca was the old first mother who ruled when there was as yet
no sun or moon. She is described as a very wicked woman who
maliciously loved to spoil the work of her husband. It was she who
caused a flood from which but a few persons escaped by seeking refuge
on the mountain-tops. Bochica, the solar god, then put a stop
to the deluge, and, being very wroth with Huythaca, drove her from
the earth and changed her into the moon. The result of the flood, in
this case, was the same as in the “Destruction of Mankind,” viz., the
establishment of solar time. When the earth was dry again Bochica
gave the year and the periodic sacrifices and the worship of the sun to
the people who survived the flood. (Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. i.,
pp. 318-319.)
Nut, the celestial wateress in the Ritual, was a keeper of the waters
which the women of the legends failed to guard. Hence “the leg of
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ANCIENT EGYPT
Nut” is a figure of the pole. In one of the legends the children of
Nut, that is the stars, have failed in keeping proper time, and been the
cause of confusion and strife. This is in an address to the moon-god
Taht, who succeeded Sut the star-god as reckoner of time by means
of the moon. “Hail, Taht! what is it that hath happened to the
divine children of Nut? They have done battle, they have made
strife, they have wrought evil, they have created the fiends, they have
made slaughter, they have caused trouble; in all their doings the
mighty have worked against the weak. Grant, O might of Taht, that
that which the god Tum hath decreed may be done. Thou regardest
not evil, nor art thou provoked to evil, nor art thou provoked to anger
when they bring their years to confusion, and rush in and disturb their
months; for in all that they have done unto thee they have worked
iniquity in secret” (Rit., ch. 175, Budge). When the pole-star changed
the bulwark would be overthrown, and the mistress of the waters
would be charged with causing a catastrophe by which the “bulwarks”
of her consort, who was Sut in the Egyptian astral mythos, were
submerged. The blame, of course, in after-times, was laid upon the
woman, that is when the woman had taken the place of the primitive
zoötype, such as the water-cow or crocodile. In Amenta Ptah is the
builder of the bulwark that was raised against the waters, or to keep
out the Apap-reptile. But Sut-Anup, as a ruler at the pole, was an
indefinitely earlier god who raised the bulwark to keep out the
deluge. In later ages, when Anup had become the son of Ra, one
name for his dwelling-place upon the mountain, that was on the solar
mount of glory, is called Ut, the “Town of the Embankment,” which
is equivalent to the pile of earth that was heaped up by the mythical
mound-builders in seven mounds that formed the bulwarks or
embankments at the seven stations of the pole in the circuit of
precession. When the deluge occurred at the celestial pole the type
of stability and fixed foothold on land was whelmed beneath the
firmamental waters. If this was an island or a tree it sank and was
lost sight of. Hence the tree of the pole had to be replanted, or the
embankment was to be raised anew when the deluge was over. It is
related by the Miztec tribe of Indians that “in the day of obscurity
and darkness the gods built a palace which was a masterpiece of skill,
and made their abode upon the summit of a mountain. The rock
was called ‘the Place of Heaven.’ It was the primary dwelling
of the gods. The children of the gods planted a garden with fruittrees. But it is the old universal tale: there came a deluge; the happy
garden was submerged, and many sons and daughters of the gods were
swept away” (Bancroft, Native Races, vol. iii., p. 71). Inevitably, at
times our earth gets substituted for the mound, the island, or the
earth-heap piled as a fixture for foothold in the celestial waters. The
mound of earth was followed by the pyramidion of brick, wood, or
stone, the earliest figure of the tower that was built to reach the sky.
Thus, when the flood of Noah came to an end, the tower of brick was
raised by the survivors in the land of Shinar. In this version we see
the tower succeeding the mountain, and the mound as a typical figure
of the station at the pole. After the Assyrian deluge the tree was
replanted in the circle or enclosure, and to replant the tree was to
re-establish the pole in its new station; the tree or wood that was said
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587
to be eternal. Noah likewise planted the tree which in his case was
the vine. In the book of Enoch it is said the portion of Noah (in
time) has ascended up to God, and now “the angels shall labour at the
trees” (or tree) and “the seed of life shall arise from it.” This may
likewise be taken to denote a replanting of the tree as symbol of the
pole. Xisuthrus, the Chaldean Noah, is called the King of Surippak,
the ship-city, the city of refuge that was represented by or as an ark
upon the waters. The building on land was earlier than the boat
upon the waters, and when the gods decide to make a deluge it
is said, upon the Chaldean tablet, “O man of Surippak, son of
Ubarratutu, destroy the house and build a ship.” Here the ship
or ark on the waters succeeds the dwelling-place on land. And both
the ark and house were united in Surippak, the ark-city, or “City of the
Ship.” After the Babylonian deluge, Hasisadra says, “I built an altar
on the peak of a mountain,” and there he offered a sacrifice to the
gods. The altar-mound, we repeat, is a figure of the pole. The
structure overthrown by the deluge is rebuilt in several ways, the
types ranging from the mound to the metropolis. Not only is the
typical altar of the pole erected on the mountain-peak, but the structure
was finally rebuilt on the scale of the eternal city. Thus, the ark-city
of Surippak is succeeded by the city of Erech-Suburi. In raising
this, “great stones” are dragged for a long distance to where the wall
of the new enclosure is to be erected, on the summit of the ascent, in
the midst of Erech-Suburi. Seven such structures were raised in the
course of precession, at seven stages of the pole, and the journey from
one stage to another is described in the legend of Gilgames (Deluge
Tablet, column 6, George Smith, Records, vol. vii., p. 133). In the
Noachian version the deluge is followed by the building of “an altar
to the Lord” (ch. 8, 20). There is also a journey made to “a plain
in the land of Shinar where the generations of Noah came to dwell.
And they said one to another “Go to . . . Let us build us a city, and
a tower whose top may reach to heaven, and let us make us a name
lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” In
this account we find three figures of the pole, the altar-mound, the
tower, and the city; also the migration of the survivors to another
station of the pole; which is a common feature in the astronomical
mythos, particularly in the Aztec, Peruvian, and Mexican legends.
So ancient was this erection and re-erection of the pole, which
signified another station fixed in the celestial journeyings, that the
erection of a pole in the earth became a sacred mode of marking the
station and the camping-place for the wanderers over the surface of
the earth, as with the two poles of the Australian Arunta, and the
stave or rod of the Inca. The Tower of Babel was a symbol of the
pole which had been overthrown or shifted by the waters of the
deluge. To build the tower, then, was to replace the pole. The tower
was the Babylonian Bab-illu, which the Hebrew writer has turned into
the tower of “babble” and confusion. The story itself is found on an
Assyrian tablet in the British Museum, with this difference: In the
older legend the structure is a mound, whereas in the Hebrew version
it is a tower built of brick. It is explained that Babylon corruptly
turned to sin. “Great and small commingled on the mound.”
There was a revolt against the great god Anu, “king of the holy
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ANCIENT EGYPT
mound.” The rebels are described as building a stronghold, but they
were confounded in their work. What they did by day was all
undone by night. The supreme god gave a command to make
strange their speech. “For future time the mountain,” or the mound,
was overthrown by Nu-nam-nir, the god of lawlessness or no rule,
and the destruction occurred, though not in the form of a deluge
(Records of the Past, vol. vii., p. 131). In the Mexican pictures there is
an earlier type of the pole as a point of departure than the tower of
brick. It has been called the starting-point of the Aztecs after the
deluge. In this the mount or mound of earth rises from the water,
like an island from the ocean, with a tree upon its summit. The
mount is thus identifiable with the pole by means of the typical tree.
It is likewise identified with the pole as the mount that topples over,
the crooked mount Culhuacan, upon which the ark of Tezpi rested
after the deluge. In one drawing the male and female pair are
portrayed with the boat waiting for them on the water. In the other
a man in the boat is paddling away from the point of departure. The
pair are known to tradition as Cox-Cox and his consort. The picture
is also said to illustrate the migration from a starting-point in Atlan,
or Aztlan, the white mountain. Without recurring for the present to
the beginning of astronomy in the equatorial regions, we look on Sut
(or Sut-Anup), the first-born son of Apt (Kep or Kefa), the most
ancient form of the Great Mother, as the founder of the celestial pole,
or the eternal tree in the paradise, the garden or cultivated enclosure
of the northern heaven. Sut and his mother became the primal pair
in the Egyptian mythology.
Although the mother of all living things, one of whose names,
Khefa, survived in Hebrew as Chavvah (Eve), the primal pair of
beings were not constellated as the human parents of the human race,
but as male and female hippopotami, or Behemoth and Leviathan,
and later as the Greater and the Lesser Bears; she as the maker of the
circle, and he as the first to plant the tree, or erect the pole, the pillar,
or the mound within the circle; Job says of Behemoth, “he is the
chief of the ways of God” (ch. 40, 19). Now, Behemoth is the
Egyptian Bekhmut, the hippopotamus. This was female as the
zoötype of the Great Mother, and male as the image of Sut her son,
who as the founders of the pole were “the chief of the ways” in
heaven as establishers of a guiding-star at the pole. When the
primal pair are represented in the book of Genesis by Adam and Eve
they are the husband and wife in a later mythos that was solar. But
in the primal legends the descent of the human race is traced to the
primal pair when these were mother and son, or the brother and sister
as represented in the Japanese creation of the pole.
The earliest flood, caused by the declination of the pole-star, set
afloat a large number of legends. One of these relates that the new
world which followed was peopled by a brother and sister. The
Chins, on the Burma frontier, preserve the tradition of a universal
deluge that was co-eval with the origin of their race. According to
the Haka tradition all the hills were submerged, and every person
was drowned except one brother and sister, who floated in a large
earthen jar, and when the waters subsided settled on the Mun Ktlang
mountain (Pioneer, Allahabad, October 22nd, 1897). The old earth-
THE WORLD’S GREAT YEAR
589
mother, who was represented as the bringer-forth of life from the
waters in the shape of a pregnant hippopotamus, was imaged
astronomically as the genetrix who brought forth her young from the
firmamental water amidst the fields of papyrus-reed which formed the
Sekhet-Aarru. The same in Apta at the northern pole as it was in
Apta at the equator. This old mother of beginnings in the waters of
earth and heaven was also repeated as the dragon-horse in the
Chinese version of the astronomical uranography as well as in the
Babylonian remains. It is recorded in the sacred books that a
supernatural dragon-horse issued from the waters of heaven and
made known the eight mystical diagrams of Tai-Hao, the first
mythical or celestial ruler, who corresponds to Sut, the inventor of
astronomy in Egypt, and Bel in Babylonia. The mother and son
were the pair that preceded the individualising of the fatherhood;
and the son was mythically represented as both the child and consort,
the adult or bull, of the mother.
According to the Indian tribes of Guiana, the primal pair were a
male and female, saved from the Deluge in a canoe. This is a legend
of the Tamaracks. It is the same representation in the ancient
British tradition. The Welsh first parents, named Dwyvan and
Dwyvach, are a male and female who found safety from the Deluge
in an ark. Also on the Apamean coin the pair as Nu, or Noë, and
his female consort are portrayed upon the waters floating in a box or
teba, accompanied by a raven and a dove. There is also a primal
pair connected with the tree in a legend of New Guinea who are
called “the man and his mother.” The man is so mighty that he
thrusts a spear through the earth right into the heart of the rock,
where the pair live in the condition of troglodytes. The spear
evidently images the pole, which is mixed up, if not identified, with the
tree, as is the spear of the male and female pair in the Japanese
legend. The man and his mother climbed to the top of the tree, and
there the strong man slew the giant, the Apap-monster slain by
Horus, and the giant slain by Jack (H. H. Romily, My Verandah,
p. 118). The giant is a co-type with the Apap-serpent of drought
and darkness; and in another legend the monster is a serpent coiled
about the tree. This may help us to understand the presence of the
evil serpent with “the man and his mother” underneath the tree in
the Assyrian garden of Edin. The mother is the old first genetrix,
one of whose titles is “mistress of the mountains” as well as of the
mount. The Samoans say that the first of the human race were a
woman and her son. Turner tells us they have many tales about the
doings of that woman and her son, from whom the race of men
descended (Samoa, p. 330-1). Thus, man and woman originated as
the mother and her son, or the sister and brother, who afterwards
became the mythical mother and father in the solar legends,
which reflect the later sociology. In one tradition of the Ainu it is
related that the race originated with a primal pair of ancestors, who
were a female bear and a dog. This is, of course, in accordance with
the totemic symbolism, only the totemic symbols were not limited to
the human groups. Totems of the nature-powers were also figured
in the planisphere. In Africa the great first mother of all was
constellated as the female hippopotamus, or as a crocodile. In
590
ANCIENT EGYPT
Greece she was imaged as the female bear. Sut, her son, was
represented by a jackal which became the dog through change of
fauna. These can now be traced to the Greater and Lesser Bears as
two surviving constellations of the Great Mother and her dog, who
constitute the primal pair of the Ainu, with the bear as the Great
Mother and the dog (or jackal) as her son or consort when the pole
was in the Lesser Bear, we might say one great year ago.
Sut, as ruler of the primal pole-star, was the Arch-First in heaven, as
a male. This is the title of Tai-Yih, the Chinese great one. It is
said that among all the shin, or spirits (the Japanese shintu gods), of
the heavens, the highest one dwells in the star Tai-Yih of the
constellation Draco (O’Neil, Night of the Gods, vol. i. pp. 513, 517). It
is not enough, however, to identify the deity with the pole in general.
There were seven of these gods, and everywhere the question is, which
of the seven stations of the pole was the seat at the time? Draconis
was the constellation of Horus-Sebek, the crocodile-dragon. Sut was
the first-born child of the great mother Apt or Khep, and those two
formed the primary duad that is sometimes called Sut-Typhon, the
nearest approach to which name in Egyptian would be Sut-Tept, or
Sut and his mother as the primal pair. According to one account of
the origins in the Book of Genesis, Seth, Set, or Sut was the first-born
child of Chavvah, as he had been of Kep or Kefa in the Kamite
mythos. Sut was the primary ruler or over-lord, the earliest representative of power in heaven figured in an image of the male, or the
lord, whose name was first called upon when Sut became the backbone
of the universe, as establisher of the pole. He was the lord as male
hippopotamus and consort to the lady who was his mother as the
female. And here we may perceive that a fragment of the true
tradition survived in the biblical statement that in the time of Seth
“Men began to call upon the name of the Lord” (Gen. iv. 26). Sut,
as male, was first of the seven brothers who in the Babylonian legend
“came as begetters.” This fact also is recognised in the text when it
is said that “a son was born to Seth,” or Sut, Egyptian, who was
the first form of the father as the elder brother with whom the
fatherhood began. It is said of Ialdabaoth that, being incensed
with men because they did not worship or honour him as god
and father, he being the oldest brother only, he sent forth a
deluge upon them that he might at once destroy them all (Irenaeus,
Book I, ch. xxx. 10). Sut acquired an evil character in later times,
and became the original form of an anthropomorphic Satan. He was
looked upon as the fallen leader of the angelic host because he had
been first in glory as the ruling power at the primary station of the
pole. This is the Satan worshipped by the Izedis in Mesopotamia,
for whom there is to be a restoration as well as a fall, which points to
an astronomical origin in both aspects of the character. Sut, in the
Ritual (ch. 175), is proclaimed as having been the first in glory. It is
said “the power of Sut which hath departed was greater than that of
all the gods.” He was first as primary power of the pole, the first to sit
upon “the mount of congregation” as the “most high” in “the uttermost parts of the north,” or at the pole of heaven. Hence he was the
reputed author of astronomy. Thus, when the pole-star of Sut in the
jackal (or the hippopotamus) had fallen away from the true pole and
THE WORLD’S GREAT YEAR
591
lost its place as guide of ways in heaven, there was matter for the
legend of a fall as a fable founded on a fact in the astronomical
mythology. When so read, the fall of man from heaven is resolved
into the fall of Sut, or Lucifer, the light-bringer, or the light that was
uplifted at the primary station of the pole, the woman who was the
foundress being charged by the Semites, the Chinese, and others with
being his accomplice and instigator, a mode of unconsciously showing
that she, the Great Mother, was the mover, which she was, but only as
the primum mobile, not as the woman urging the man to his eternal
misery. The following citation shows the primal pair as Ishtar and the
elder Bel in relation to the mount of the pole and the mountains of its
different stations. “O lady, mistress of the mountain, goodly stronghold of the mountains, mighty lock of the mountains, queen of the
land of the four rivers. O lord, the mighty mountain, Bel!” (Tablet
S. 954, B. M. Budge, Babylonian). In this imagery the Great Mother
as Ishtar, is mistress of the mountain, and Bel is the lord, identical with
the mount itself, which imaged the pole, when Bel was the star. In
one of the Assyrian hymns this enclosure of the “lady of the eternal
tree” and her comrade is spoken of as “the park of Ishtar.” Nergal,
the destroyer, is thus addressed, “O lord, the park of Ishtar thou
establishest not” (Sayce, “Hymn to Nergal,” Hib. Sect.), Nergal having
been one of the overthrowers at the time of the Deluge. In the Assyrian
hymns to the gods it is said that the lady of the eternal tree is the
comrade of the bull, the great bull, the supreme bull. The tree is the
pole; “the eternal wood” or Gis-Zida, which also seems to mean a
mast, is the pole (Sayce). Now, it is a form of this pair of founders at
the pole that we think may be dimly discerned on the Assyrian cylinder (see p. 453). The tree with seven branches represents the pole as a
figure of the total heptanomis, and is consequently late. The pair
beneath the tree are the mother and son, or male and female, of the
legend as the primal pair who fell from heaven because they failed as
keepers of the tree of knowledge at the pole. There is also a form of
this primal pair to be seen in a drawing on one of the Greek vases
which comes nearest to the Hebrew version of the woman tempting
the man. The Great Mother is portrayed in noble nudity, Greek
fashion, as divinely tall beside a youth to whom she is offering the
fruit which she has plucked from the tree of knowledge, the tree that
represented the pole when the knowledge was astronomical. The
pair, like the female and male in the Assyrian garden, are underneath
the tree, about the root of which the serpent coils.
As Kamite, or as Greek, the ancient genetrix was the teacher who in
later legend is misrepresented as the tempter.
We now claim to have recovered the natural origin of the primeval
paradise with the primal pair, the tree and serpent in the enclosure at
the station first established at the fixed point of the celestial pole, of
which so many versions and perversions are extant without one of
them being scientifically correct or verifiable from lack of the long-lost
data in astronomy. Egyptian mythology, the source and fountainhead of all the ancient wisdom and legendary lore, could not be
understood apart from this, neither can the astronomy be explained
apart from the mythology. To repeat. The garden is the enclosure
at the pole that was first figured in the circle of the ancient genetrix.
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ANCIENT EGYPT
The pole itself was represented by the tree. The evil serpent
symbolizes the drought, the darkness, and the dearth in physical
phenomena. The reptile coils around the tree or is present in all the
pictures, Egyptian, Babylonian, Hindu, Red Indian, Norse, and Greek,
also as described in divers ancient legends. The mother brought forth
her child of life as the opponent of the evil serpent and protector
of the tree, and the saviour in the Kamite mythology was converted into
a saviour in the Semitic eschatology. The Chinese have a tradition in
which original sin is attributed to a woman who overthrew her
“husband’s bulwarks through an ambitious desire for knowledge.”
As in the Book of Genesis and the legend of the wicked Huythaca,
the sin is ascribed to the woman. But we need to know what the
bulwark was before we can see how it could ever have been overthrown.
She was Primus, as builder of the bulwark or as planter of the pole,
and, above all, as mistress of the waters which were under her control,
or should have been, unless she had neglected them or entered into a
league with the Apap-reptile, which was the primary evil power that
overthrew the enclosure with the deluge of the dark or the waters of
the firmament.
We meet with a form of the primal pair in Stanley’s legend of Lake
Tanganyika, one of the oldest in the world. In this the woman had
been trusted with the keeping of the waters. But she betrayed the
secret to her lover and the waters broke forth in a deluge of
destruction, the proof of which catastrophe remains to this day in Lake
Tanganyika. The Khonds of Orissa have a divinized form of the
primal pair in their ancient goddess, Tari Pennu, and her son, Buri
Pennu, who answers to a pole-star god inasmuch as he was called
“the light.” These can be identified with the prototypal pair, that is
with Sut the establisher of the pole and his mother, because he is
credited with creating a primal paradise, and she is charged with
having maliciously caused its destruction, which is elsewhere
rendered as a deluge of water or a fall from heaven.
Amongst the mummeries still religiously performed in Rome, and
also by the English Ritualists, which are mystical at present from lack
of meaning, there is a ceremony of “the seven stations of the cross,”
which is supposed to commemorate the seven resting-places of the
cross on the way to Calvary. But the same, or a similar procession,
was celebrated at Abydos or Memphis when the tat-cross was carried
round the seven resting-places that marked and memorized the seven
stations of the pole. In one of the ancient Chaldean oracles the
seven stations of the pole are spoken of as the seven poles. “The
Chaldeans call the god (Dionysius or Bacchus) Iao in the Phœnician
tongue (instead of the intelligible light), and he is often called Sabaoth,
signifying that he is above the seven poles, that is the Demiurgus”
(Taylor, “Collection of the Chaldean Oracles,” Classical Journal, No. 22).
As Iamblichus says of the Chaldeans, “they not only preserved the
memorials of seven-and-twenty myriads of years, as Hipparchus
tells us they have, but likewise of the whole Apocatastes and periods
of the seven rulers of the world” (Nat. Gen., vol. ii., p. 321). It
certainly was so with the Egyptians. These rulers were the seven
born of the Great Mother as the seven powers of earth. They were
re-born of Nut, the mother-heaven, as the seven glorious ones, who
THE WORLD’S GREAT YEAR
593
were called the Khuti; the seven with Anup at the pole who were the
executioners for the great judge; the seven wise masters of art and
science in the lunar mythos with Tehuti; the seven sahus with Horus
in Orion; the seven as moulders with Ptah in the making of Amenta;
the seven as the souls of Atum-Ra who were the creators of man.
These are the seven that were uranographic figures in the
astronomical mythology as the seven old, old ones; the seven patriarchs
of enormous age; the seven giants of colossal stature; the seven
rulers of the world; the seven lords or masters of eternity.
In later times the seven planets have been mistaken for the seven
stars. But these ancient pole-stars we consider to be “the seven
stars” of which it is related in the tradition reproduced by Plato
that after many ages they would return and meet together again
in their old places as in the beginning, and apparently at the time of
the last deluge of all, or, as we read it, at the end of the great year.
It was these and not the seven planets that could ever return to an
original station at the starting point. The planets were but five in
number and not seven in the most ancient astronomy. The sun, moon,
and seven stars were not the seven planets of modern science. The
seven, called the first of the stars, which in the beginning were in
heaven, are connected with the great year according to the book of
Enoch, as is shown by their being cast out until the day of the “great
consummation” in “the secret year,” also called the “period of the
great judgment.”
The seven that were separate and single as rulers of the pole were
also grouped together as a pictorial illustration in the planisphere.
These are the seven in the constellation of the Lesser Bear who follow
the bier or coffin of their lord, Osiris, in the Greater Bear. These are
they of whom it is said, “Their places were fixed by Anup on the
day of Come thou hither” (Rit., ch. 17), who became the seven lords
of eternity, and who were looked up to as seven divine ancestors of
Atum-Ra. The names of seven superseded watchers in heaven are given
by Enoch as: Azazyel, Amazarak, Armers, Barkayel, Akebeel, Tamiel,
and Asaradel. Here also is evidence that the seven rishis who meditated and forgot were the representatives of seven pole-stars. Dhruva
was one of the rishis who was assigned a pole-star by Vishnu. He is
said to have meditated himself into forgetfulness of his identity (or
ceased to be a pole-star). The seven who slumbered and forgot are
also represented by the seven sleepers in the cave at Ephesus with
their dog, who answer to the seven with Anup and his jackal at the
pole. The seven who slumbered and forgot likewise recur in the
Norse mythology. These are the seven sons of Mimir who guard
the land of Odainsakr, the land of the ever-living. They are
represented as the smiths who forged the primitive weapons and who
correspond to the seven Khnemmu or divine metallurgists of Ptah.
Though sleeping till the dusk of the last day, they keep the enclosure
safe until the final conflict comes betwixt the powers of good and
evil. Then they are to wake and rise and help to establish the
new heaven and rejuvenated earth. The seven under whatsoever
name or type, watching or slumbering, are still the keepers of the
world’s great year and the enclosure of the seven never-setting stars
that marked the seven stations of the shifting pole.
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ANCIENT EGYPT
Before the building of the boat the seven had to keep their heads
above water as the seven mythical, immeasurable giants, equivalent in
the superhuman guise to seven great mountains imaging the seven
starry summits. One of these giants is Ogg in Jewish legend, who is
said to have waded through the deluge, clinging with one hand to the
ark to keep afloat. The seven giants, as figures of seven colossal
constellations, were tall enough to hold their heads, which are the
seven pole-stars, above the waters that were deep enough to drown the
other people of the heavens. But when the boat was built there was
an ark of safety that could float upon the waters, and the primordial
seven were mythically represented as being saved from the deluge in
an ark as seven companions, Ali, Kabiri, Hohgates, or other groups
of the seven which had one origin in the astronomical mythology of
Egypt. And when the boat was launched upon the water of earth
the type could be applied to the water of heaven. Seven giants, in
one rendering of the mythos, bore the world of the heptanomis upon
their backs, each standing at his station as one of seven great props
personified as giants. The unhuman hugeness of the giant was most
naturally derived from the enormous pre-anthropomorphic types or
zoötypes of superhuman power. Sut, as the hippopotamus, is a giant.
Sebek, as the crocodile, is a giant. Shu, as the lion, is a giant. An
ape of seven cubits and also one of eight cubits is described as a giant.
But the seven primal powers as Egyptian in the earliest human form
are pigmies and not giants. Moreover, the giants were not human,
whereas the pigmies are. In an Arthurian legend the Welsh Owein
comes to a side, open clearing with a great mound in it where there
is a black giant, who stands upon one foot, and has only one eye in the
middle of his forehead (Rhys, Arth. Legend). The mound, the
giant with one foot and Cyclops’ eye are perfect figures of the pole and
pole-star, which have here been grouped together in a later legend.
The Irish Crom, Cromm Cruiach, “the crooked or bent one of the
mound,” equates with the Mexican “crooked mountain” as the figure
of a falling or deflected station of the pole. The Mexican tradition
affirmed that it was in the first age of the world that the giants began
to appear on the earth. These are the giants of the constellations
who had been humanized as magnified non-natural men, and then
transferred to our earth in the märchen that took the place of the
gnosis, or science of the mythos. In the Aztec and Mexican versions
of the deluge myths we find that when the great calamity occurred the
land was peopled by giants. Seven of these who were brothers found
safety by enclosing themselves in the seven caves of the mountain
Tlaloc. The Indians of Cholula likewise relate that only seven
inhabitants of this fore-world of the giants survived the deluge. In
Southern California the Indians have a tradition of the beginning in
which Quaor, the Lord, when he created the world, or the new order of
things, placed it on the shoulders of seven sustaining giants (Nat. Gen.,
vol. ii. p. 220). This world of the giants was the celestial heptanomis
beyond the deluge. In a tradition of the American Indians it is told
that at the close of the deluge the last mammoth sprang across Lake
Superior at a single bound and disappeared for ever in the wilds of
Canada. Thus the last of the seven astronomes, or its mammothtype, disappeared in the great deluge of all with the last of the giants.
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The giants, who were seven in relation to the stations of the pole,
are curiously identified with the mountains themselves as places of
birth by Sanchoniathon. He says they were beings of vast bulk and
stature, “whose names were given to the mountains which they occupied.”
Of these, he tells us, children were begotten through intercourse with
their mothers, “the women of those times without shame having
intercourse with any man they might chance to meet.” Here the
giant and the mountain as human birthplace are identical as
figures of the pole (Cory, Ancient Fragments, 1876, p. 6). These,
then, are a form of those giants called the sons of God who “came in
unto the daughters of men” (book of Genesis, also book of Enoch).
In the Hebrew märchen, the seven old ones who were the primordial powers, the seven wise masters, watchers, judges, rishis, manus,
moulders, masi, Ali, Elohim, or Kabiri are the seven patriarchs of
Genesis who lived for such enormous lengths of time. They are
the typical old ones in the Ritual, the fathers in the first and highest
circle of the gods. The seven patriarchs were identified in the
Natural Genesis (vol. ii., section 12) with the seven rishis in the
lunar mythos of the Hindu astronomy. These, as measurers of the
precessional movement of the pole by means of seven pole-stars, were
also represented as making a revolution of the great year in the
twenty-eight asterisms or mansions of the moon. The patriarchs had
now been humanized. The Hindu patriarchate was a period of
71-2 years, or a mortal lifetime. Seven of these were the measure of
a phœnix-cycle, a period of 500 years. Seven by seven the rishis or
manus travel round the zodiac of 28 houses, in the circle of precession. Thus the time of their stay in each asterism would be a twentyeighth part of the great year of 25,868 or, in round numbers,
26,000 years. This would give the patriarchs or manus something over
900 years in each of the 28 lunar stations, which is quite near enough as
astronomical data to account for the age of the seven patriarchs in the
book of Genesis. The age of Adam is 930 years. The age of
Seth 912 years. The age of Enoch 905 years. The age of Kenan
910 years. The age of Jared 962 years. The age of Methuselah 969
years. Thus, the age of six of the seven patriarchs is over 900 years
each, and in the first list of two the patriarchs are seven in number.
No reason has been adduced for rejecting this explanation. If the
seven patriarchs, like the seven rishis, the seven taasu, or the seven
masi, were astronomical characters, it is certain their ages are likewise
astronomical. Noah, who is tenth in the second list of patriarchs, is the
man of 500 years who never could be mortal. But it can be shown
in what way he was an astronomical figure, like the rest of the seven,
or the ten, according to the mode of measuring by the typical lifetime. The human lifetime was reckoned at 71-2 years; the age of a
patriarch in human form. Seven of these periods in precession made
a phœnix-cycle of 500 years, the age, therefore, of a divine or mythical
man like Noah or the Buddha. A legend of the Jayas, in the Vayu
Purana, relates, in after times, that the astronomical rulers were
created by Brahma as his divine assistants, but that they got lost in
meditation and forgot to fulfil his ordinances. On this account they
were doomed to be continually reincarnated and reborn in each
manvantara or patriarchate up to the seventh, and thus they con-
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ANCIENT EGYPT
tinued to be reborn in successive series of sevens all through the
cycle of precession. The seventh was always reborn as a manu or a
Buddha in the Puranas, and in the Hebrew version Noah is the man
of 500 years as a typical measurer of time, and in this instance it is
the particular period of time that is ended with a deluge (Gen. v.
32). Now among the Hebrew fragments of the ancient wisdom in
the book of Genesis is the story of these patriarchs that was told
according to the measuring by the lifetime. Previous to the deluge of
Noah the lifetime of man or of the old, old ones was reckoned at
something like 1,000 years. As we are told, “there were giants
in the earth in those days.” But after the deluge, time, or the age of
man, was to be computed by shorter lengths. This is expressed in
uranographic formulæ: “Yet shall his days be an hundred and
twenty years,” which period as Egyptian is the double Han-cycle.
Thus the change from a lifetime of 1,000 years to a period of 120
years is obviously related to the double Han-period of the Sothiaccycle.
The double Han-cycle is a period of 120 years.
Consequently the lifetime of man after the deluge is measurable by the
length of this period, which was made use of in reckoning the cycle of
Sothis. And whether the lifetime is reckoned at 120 years in the
Sothiac cycle, or at 3,714 in the circle of precession, both are astronomical. The lifetime of the patriarch was a period in precession.
Noah’s lifetime was a phœnix-cycle of 500 years which ended with the
Noachian deluge. After this the lifetime of man (who takes the
place of the Bennu as an astronomical figure) was to be the Hancycle of 120 years. Thus the heaven or zodiac in twelve divisions
was probably based on the Sothiac-cycle. Twelve Han-cycles were
twelve lifetimes in the year of Sothis, round numbers being employed
and the fractions gathered up to be quoted in the total combination,
or filled in with the festivals, such as the Sut-Heb. This was a seven
days’ festival celebrated every thirty years. At the end of each Hancycle it was seen that the legal year had gained a whole month on the
actual year, and the 1st of Taht anticipated the heliacal rising of
Sothis by thirty days. But this had been measured, allowed for, and
ticked off by means of the four Sut-Heb festivals celebrated during
the Hanti period of 120 years. By this intelligible change in the
length of the lifetime the biblical text itself affords indubitable
evidence that the lifetimes of the patriarchs were astronomical. If
the Han-cycle of 120 years was a time-cycle, it is absolutely certain
that the previous periods were so likewise, the one being reduced from
the other by the Hebrew a-gnostic literalizers. The cutting up of
time into smaller portions or shorter lengths is likewise indicated in the
Chippewa legend, when the slayer of the giants is described as hacking
their bodies into little bits, and saying to the fragments, “In the future
let no man be larger than you are now” (Nat. Gen., vol. ii. p. 240).
This is equivalent to the lifetime being cut down to 120 years. Thus
the lifetime of the patriarch, which in round numbers was 1,000
years in the old, was reduced to 120 years in the reckoning of the new
cycle which followed the deluge of Noah.
The “seven rulers of the world” manifested one by one at great
intervals of time, and were a means of keeping the reckonings on a
colossal scale. The age of each, as representatives of the successive
THE WORLD’S GREAT YEAR
597
pole-stars, would be from three to four thousand years, or one-seventh
part of 25,868 years. The seven, beginning as the Kamite Khuti, are
well-nigh universal. The Japanese have seven gods of fortune and
givers of good gifts, called the Shichi Fukujin, who sail each New
Year’s Eve as passengers on board the ship called The Floating-Bridge
of Heaven, that carries the seven magical treasures, which include the
lucky coat, the hat that makes invisible, the inexhaustible purse, and
other possessions which are obviously the property of spirits promised
conditionally to mortals on the earth. The two groups of Hebrew
patriarchs which precede the deluge, seven and ten in number,
correspond to the seven and the ten in Babylonian legend, who were
rulers in the antediluvian world—that is, in the fore-world of the
astronomical mythology. The seven fish-men, ascending one by one
at vast intervals of time from the Nun or deep that was locally represented by the Persian Gulf at Eridu, we look upon as the seven
rulers of the ancient pole-stars taking their stations successively in
the circuit of precession, with the fish for their zoötype. Unquestionably
the seven fish-men are a form of the seven prediluvian kings, hence
the appearance of the Annedoti at the same time with the king, the
fish as zoötype being earlier than the title of king. Thus the seven
as fish-men, of whose “appearances Abydenus has made no mention,”
were followed by the three other rulers named Amompsimus, Otiartes,
and Xisuthrus, and “so the sum total of all the kings is ten,” seven
of whom had been figured as Annedoti, or divine rulers in the celestial
waters, who were afterwards completely humanized as kings. So in
the book of Esdras, the Son of God is seen ascending from the sea
to take his stand upon the mount, here called Mount Zion, as the man
“whom God the highest hath kept a great season,” and who was to
regain the fish-type as ichthus “within four hundred years” (2 Esdras,
vii. and xiii.). The seven Assyrian masi are known to have been
stars in different constellations, as were the pole-stars. One was “the
star of the eagle,” one “the star of the wain,” one “the star of the
shepherd of the heavenly flocks,” that might be compared with the
“key of the crown” as first of the seven pole-stars in the heptanomis
of Sut.
Tai Hao, the great celestial, was the first mythical or astronomical
ruler in the Chinese divine dynasties. With him commenced the
mystic diagrams called the Yi or changes, which were eight in
number. These were revealed to him by the dragon-horse that issued
from the Yellow river or the Milky Way (Mayers, Manual, 366,
44, 56). Tai Hao corresponds to Sut, the inventor of astronomy and
ruler of the first pole-star; the dragon-horse answers to the waterhorse that was combined with the crocodile in Apt, goddess of the
Great Bear and mother of the seven rulers. According to M. Philastre
in his version of the Yi king (p. 3), the name of the Chow dynasty
and of the Chow Yi divining-book signifies circular movement, the
revolution embracing the whole universe. This revolution, we think,
does not merely mean that of the starry spheres, but the movement of
the pole. Chow Yi would then mean the changes of the pole and
pole-stars in the circle of precession. Thus the Chow dynasty of the
sons of heaven would be the seven successive rulers of the pole, who
reigned for six and twenty thousand years as scientific fact.
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ANCIENT EGYPT
In the Vision of Scipio Cicero has preserved something of the
ancient doctrine concerning the derivation of souls from above. The
spirit of Africanus tells his son that souls or spirits were supplied to
men from the eternal fires, which are constellations and stars. Now
there are seven souls, because the elements were seven all told, and
seven primary constellations, with seven stars for souls, otherwise
called the seven great spirits or seven glorious ones. These became
the seven begetters in the creation legend of Cutha—one to each of
the seven representative constellations in which the elemental powers
had acquired their souls and thus become the typical transmitters of
souls to human beings. Sut, the soul of shade in the hippopotamus;
Horus, the soul of light; Shu, the soul of breath; Hapi, the soul of
water—such were the begetters of a soul in totemism. Thus the
Ainu are the bears, the Arunta are the emus, the Zuni are the turtles.
They have their totemic zoötypes on earth, which also imaged the
elemental spirits or souls in heaven that were represented by the constellation or the star for those who had preserved the primitive wisdom.
Thus derivation from the tree and rock, which is mentioned by
Hesiod and Homer, would, if astronomical, be derivation from the
pole; whereas derivation from the hippopotamus, bear, vulture, ape,
water-bird, jackal, tortoise, or other of the uranographic types would
denote the particular station of the pole, and be a time-gauge to the
beginnings according to the racial reckonings in the astronomical
chronology. For instance, the Khatties of Central India trace their
descent from a progenitor named Khat, who sprang from a staff that
he had fashioned from the branch of a tree (Folkard). Descendants
from a god whose hauling or towing force was represented by a rope
would naturally be the ropemen. And the Spartans claimed to be
the ropemen, from spartog = rope. As they sprang from the teeth of
the dragon sown by Kadmos, it is possible that they dated from the
ropeman who was ruler of the pole-star in the dragon from 4,000
B.C. to 1,000 B.C. in round numbers.
When Ra calls on those who
pull the rope of the solar boat in Amenta to tow him “towards the
dwelling of stable things” and free themselves upon “the mysterious
horizon,” they say to Ra, “The rope is with Ak” = the pole-star. The
upper end of the rope was fastened to the pole, whilst the bark was
being towed round the ecliptic. The imagery here does but involve
one rope and one pole-star at a time; but as the pole-stars in the course
of precession were seven, there were seven ropes or bonds, all
reckoned, and in one character the seven primal powers are called
the seven Tesu or Tasu. These are the seven who hauled at the rope
and who were the makers of the seven ties, bonds, knots, or fastenings
of the cable to the pole when the rope was a primitive link of connection that preceded Newton’s law of gravitation; the rope that
is carried in the form of a noose by Shu-Anhur, who also carries the
staff of the pole with which heaven was uplifted. The seven Egyptian
Tesu are a kind of seven ropemen, who passed into the Babylonian
mythology as the seven bonds by which the universe was bound and
held together by the seven lords at the seven stations of the pole.
In the Hindu representation the seven powers that hauled round the
solar bark by means of the rope have been converted finally into the
later seven horses which draw the chariot of the sun (Moor’s Hindu
THE WORLD’S GREAT YEAR
599
Pantheon). The seven became the first company of the gods in the
Aarru fields as the rulers of the seven pole-stars, who were the
formers or creators in the domains of space and time. These were
the seven great in glory called the Khuti or spirits, represented
by beautiful white water-birds, the prototype of Cygnus the swan.
The seven Khuti still survive in the seven swans of legendary lore,
more especially in India. The seven Khuti, as white birds on the
celestial waters, represented souls or spirits, but as star-souls, not
human souls, external to human beings, and so they became seven
souls as seven swans in the folk-tales.
At every stage of development the tree of mythology has shed the
leaves of legend that were blown about the world as the märchen of
many lands. Before the boat was built the swimmers were waterbirds, crocodiles, or hippopotami. The mode of thinking could not
have been otherwise. When Anup as eighth was added as the
power above the pole, and therefore the supreme one in the character
of the great judge, the gods of the seven pole-stars were figured as
“the seven arms of the balance” in the maat of eternal law and
justice. When the boat was built and Anup became the master over
the waters, the company of seven were placed pictorially on board
the bark of the Lesser Bear as figures of the never-setting ones that
were safe for ever from the waters of the deluge. The seven now
were typical eternals in two categories of astronomical phenomena.
They were stationary in the circle of the seven ancient pole-stars, and
seven as rowers, boatmen, or kabiri grouped in the bark revolving
round the pivot of the pole. This was in the stellar mythos. When
lunar time had been made out by Taht the measurer, the typical
seven were advanced in status. These are his assistants as the
seven Taasu, the sages or wise masters. They appear on board the
bark in the shape of seven hawks called the offspring of heaven.
The bird of air had then succeeded the water-bird as the type of the
seven souls on board the bark in the lunar mythos. In the solar
mythos the seven are pygmies or patakoi, the little sailors on board
the bark with Ptah. Martianus Capella tells us the Egyptians
painted on their ships the seven pilots who were all alike and
brothers, who are no doubt identical with the seven pygmy-patakoi
or kabiri of Ptah. These were represented in the boat of Anup that
voyaged round the pole as the seven rulers that were thus grouped
together as a picture of the stars that never set. Sydik the just and
the seven called his sons are the Phœnician form of Anup the judge
and the seven khuti. The seven were not navigators as the seven
hawks, jackals, apes, giants, planters of the tree, or builders of the
mound. Navigation began with the boat or ark, and the seven in the
boat, like the seven hohgates, were seen as seven in the Lesser
Bear, with Anup or Sydik, head over all, as an eighth to the seven.
In one character the seven stars were regarded as watchers watching
solemnly aloof. A non-setting star was imaged as a never-closing
eye. In the Ainu legend of the god upon the summit, the watchers,
who are the 6+1, are hares, and the hare was reputed to be so
watchful that it slept with its eyes open. In Babylonia the delugemakers are the seven with the ancient Genetrix, who is called “the
mother of the seven gods,” the seven that “heaped up the seat” or
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built the mounds which were overthrown, as fabled, by the deluge.
Astronomically these were the gods of the seven pole-stars whose
seats were in the never-setting stars around the throne of Anu.
Thus, and in no other way, the seven powers caused the deluge, and
then ascended to their seats in the heaven of Anu and assumed their
thrones on high as rulers in the realm of eternity. The seven survivors are exactly the same in the astronomical mythos as if they had
made their escape from drowning in a boat, like the seven hohgates
or kabiri, or any other group of the seven companions. But the boat
or ship is here employed for the use of the human survivors who are
supposed to have been carried away on board the bark of Hasisadra
“to be like the gods”—that is, as manes and not as mortals. The
seven who are charged with causing the deluge in Babylonian legend
—Bel, Ea, Rimmon, Nebo, Marduk, Ninib, and Nerra—may be compared with the Egyptian seven—Sut, Sebek, Shu, Hapi, Tuamutef,
Kabhsenuf, and Amsta.
The tradition of the seven founders of the heaven that was based
upon the water went forth to the ends of the earth. They were seven
children of the old Great Mother, seven brothers or companions
when the social status was totemic and the fatherhood was not yet
individualised.
In Egypt they are “the seven children of the
thigh”—the sign by which we can identify the ancient Genetrix with
the birthplace of beginning astronomically in the circle of the Bear
and the constellation called the Meskhen, or “the thigh.” These are
the seven brethren called “seven kings,” who appear as “begetters” in
the Cuthean legend. That is as begetters in group-marriage, who
were the totemic fathers that preceded the father as a known individual. They are the seven companions of Arthur in the ark; the
seven Hohgates of the Californian Indians, who escaped from the deluge
in a boat and were fixed in heaven as stars that never set; the seven
dwarf-sons of the Polynesian Pinga, who correspond to the seven
pygmy boatmen and builders of Ptah; the seven mound builders on the
American continent, and various other sevens in the mythos that was
astronomical and became universal in the legendary form. They were
born as seven sons of the Great Mother, and were her boys when she
was “a mither but na wife.”
No matter in what part of the world we discover this tradition of
the seven founders and seven stations of the pole, it involves at least
one bygone Great Year in the circle of precession independently of
where the astronomical mythology originated. In the later stage of
the eschatology, when Osiris was supreme as god over the pole, and
all other powers had become his powers (Rit., ch. 7), there are seven
arits or mansions in the great house of the eternal city. The seven
watchers, of the astral mythos, dwell in these; the seven who are
called the khus, the divine princes; the seven glorious ones who stand
behind Osiris, and who are called the makers of the seven mansions
for the god (chs. 17, 83-107, and 144). Before Osiris was, these were
the seven lords of law, of right, of truth, and justice: otherwise stated,
the seven lords of maat (judges), the seven arms of the balance
(executioners), the seven eyes (watchers), the seven pillars (supports);
and as they were also the makers of the seven arits, they are likewise
the seven mythical builders of the heptanomis; the seven powers that
THE WORLD’S GREAT YEAR
601
can be followed as the seven with Anup, with Taht, with Ptah, with
Horus, and with Ra, according to the series of phenomena.
It is now proposed to trace and tentatively localize the seven (or a
seven) stations of the pole on which the heptanomis was founded in
the circuit of precession. In the circle of precessional movement drawn
by Piazzi Smythe, he has filled in only six out of seven stations of the
pole—one in the Dragon, one in the Lesser Bear, one in Kepheus,
one in Cygnus, one in Lyra, and one in Herakles, or the Man. It is here
we have to reconstitute and fill in a constellation as a first one of the
seven. Various legends lead us to think that there was an ancient
pole-star in “Corona Borealis,” or the northern crown. A crown is a
symbol of the highest, which at the pole would be the highest point.
Then the star Alpha in this constellation is called “Clava Corona,”
the key of the crown; and a key-star at the crowning point is, to say
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ANCIENT EGYPT
the least, equivalent to the key-stone of an arch. Moreover, “the
crown of heaven” was an Assyrian title of the pole-star, which tends
to identify the pole-star with a constellation called the crown of the
northern heaven. Apparently the pole and crown are also connected
by an Akkadian expression concerning “the Bear making its crownship” in its revolution round the pole-star. The crown of heaven,
however, was by no means limited to a single pole-star, although it may
have originated as the crowning-point at the pivot of the pole. The
seven pole-stars in their circle formed a crown for the supreme being,
of whom it is said his diadem predominates at the zenith of the starry
heaven. This was his crown upon the summit of the stellar mount of
glory (Rit., ch. 133).
The seven pole-stars themselves did not form one constellation, but
the crown would be figured typically as a group of stars that told the
story in the customary way, even as we find it in Corona Borealis.
Moreover, to the naked eye the constellation of the Crown, consisting
of seven large stars, would present a picture of the other seven—
the crown of stars upon the summit of the mount which is so prominent in the eschatology. It is said in the Ritual, “Here is the cycle
of the gods (as the seven glorious ones), and the vultures (or kite) of
Osiris” (ch. 136B). This is where the balance was then erected at
the place of judgment in the circumpolar maat, and also at the point
where the crown of life was conferred upon the spirits perfected at the
summit of the mount. It is also said of the glorified elect, “He followeth
Shu and calleth for the crown. He arriveth at the Aged One on the
confines of the mount of glory where the crown awaiteth him” (ch. 131).
This is the eternal crown in the eschatology which had its origin in
the seven never-setting stars of the mythology. In the Kabalah it is
the crown of crowns pertaining to the Aged in which he had incised
the forms and figures of the primordial kings who reigned aforetime in
the land of Edom, but who could not preserve themselves and consequently passed away, “one after the other” (Ginsburg, The
Kabalah, 21). The pole and crown are certainly associated in the
May-pole with its framework of flowers always shaped in the likeness
of a crown at the summit of the tree or pole. Without being able at
present to prove it, we suggest that a key-stone, or key-star, to the
arch or conical mount of heaven was first laid in the heptanomis as
primary pole-star of the seven which formed the circle of the crown;
that a figure of the crown was constellated in the somewhat circular
group of Corona Borealis, and that the key to the mystery may at
last be found in the star represented by name as Clava Coronæ.
Now, if we take the island, for example, as the type of a station or
place of landing, there was a subsidence of the land in the celestial
waters, or, in sign-language, there was a deluge at each declination of
the pole-star. Otherwise expressed, one of the seven mountains was
submerged, one of the seven provinces or patalas was drowned, one
of the seven pole-stars fell, or one of the seven rulers was dethroned in
heaven. The earliest station of the pole may be assigned to Sut as
the hippopotamus, or as builder of the mound; the crown would be a
later figure of the highest position. There was a constellation of the
hippopotamus as male, to match the mother in the Greater Bear; this
was a zoötype of Sut, her first-born son, however difficult it is at
THE WORLD’S GREAT YEAR
603
present to define the group of stars—that is, to distinguish the male
hippopotamus from Draconis, which, by the bye, were two zoötypes of
Sut and Horus, the twin brothers. Though now unseen on the
celestial globe, it is certain that there was a male hippopotamus
among the circumpolar constellations, and this, as bull of the mother,
represented Sut, the son of Apt, the water-cow (see “Calendar of
Astrl. Observations,” Trans. Soc. of Bib. Arch., vol. iii. p. 400-421).
It is apparently portrayed in a miniature
drawing which was copied by Lepsius
(Lepsius, Auswald, 23).
The hippopotamus is figured in the tree, which
here, as elsewhere, proves it to be the
pole; the tree and ladder, both of which
are types of the ascent. The hawk that
mounts the ladder is a soul ascending to
the mount of glory in the country of the
The Landing-place for Spirits, with the
tree. Moreover, the hieroglyphic
Tree of the Pole in the Constellation
is a sign of land amidst the waters; the of the Hippopotamus.
land for which the hawk is bound,
which, as the eight disks show, was the paradise of Am-Khemen that
was raised on high by Shu.
As Japanese Buddhist myth, the island of Japan might be localized
astronomically by means of a legend in which it is related that an
Apsaras appeared in the clouds over a spot that was inhabited
by a dragon. An island suddenly rose up from the sea. The
Apsaras descended on the island and was wedded to the dragon,
which may be interpreted as a folk-tale of the time when the
island of the pole was in the constellation Draco. (Handbook,
Satow and Hawes.) The dragon that falls from heaven in the
book of Revelation and goeth into perdition is said to be one of
the seven who are imaged as seven kings, seven heads, seven horns,
seven mountains, seven islands, seven lamp-stands, seven stars, seven
eyes, or seven ruling powers.
The myth of lost Atlantis is Egyptian. This was told to Solon by
Egyptian priests, and afterwards retold by Plato in Timaeus. It
contains the story of two heavens that were sunken in the waters
of the deluge. The first was in seven, the latest in ten divisions;
the heaven of the ten lost tribes, ten sons of Jacob, the ten patriarchs,
and the ten Assyrian pre-diluvian kings. There is no deluge-legend
of twelve islands that were lost or sunken in the sea, because
the heaven in twelve divisions, based on the solar zodiac of twelve
signs, was never sunk nor superseded. This has not passed away
to leave the subject matter for the mythos. But there is a dragon
with twelve heads to be met with in folk-lore who evidently images
the solar god in the final heaven in ten nomes. In the Hungarian
folk-tale of Eisen Laezi, the hero is identical in character with Bata
in the “Tale of the Two Brothers,” and the wife of the twelve-headed
dragon-king is one with the false accuser in the Egyptian story,
and with Potiphar’s wife in the Hebrew version. The only point
at present is to establish the fact that there is a dragon with twelve
heads who is the king and father of the youthful hero.
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ANCIENT EGYPT
As the tree was planted anew or re-erected seven times over,
it follows that there is a typical group of seven trees, as well
as the one tree with seven branches, to be met with in the
mythological legends. Also, as the law was given at the pole or
the tree, there would be seven trees of the law established in the
course of Precession. Finally the celestial trees were twelve in
number when the zodiac of twelve signs had been established.
(2 Esdras, ii. 18). The seven trees that stood around the mount
of the pole are met with in a Chinese legend. Tradition says
they grew upon the slopes of the Kun-Lin mountains; and one of
them, which conferred the fruit of immortality, was a tree
of jade, the imperishable stone that was a type of the eternal
(Babylonian and Oriental Record, June, 1888). Seven would be
the number in precession which were afterwards unified in the tree
of seven branches. Other circles, other numbers. Seven trees
would form the sacred grove or asherah-tree which is surmounted by
the seven serpent hoods conventionalized on the Chaldean cylinders
as co-type of the seven branches (D’Aviella, Migration of Symbols,
figs. 63, 64, 79, etc.).
It is probable that the tree of the
pole-star was known in Egypt as the khabsu tree, or tree of the star,
signifying the pole. Renouf says that khabsu is the name of
a tree held sacred in various places in Egypt; and according to
one reading (Rit., ch. 133), the tree of paradise that breathed the
refreshing air of the north were khabsu trees. If so, these were
seven in number, like all other types of the heptanomis, or the
stations of the pole. There is a group of the khabsu gods who
were a form of the seven great spirits, on the mount of glory
and who receive the ascending spirits of the just made perfect
at the summit of the hill. They are identified by name as the gods
of the lamp or the light, which were seven in number in the circumpolar heaven, equivalent to the seven lamp-stands or seven-branched
candlestick upon the mountain in the book of Revelation.
The seven isles of the blessed were also known as seven forms
of the oasis. The lords of Thinis and Abydos bore the title of
masters of the oasis (Brugsch). Thus the ruler of the pole-star would
be the lord of an oasis, or later paradise. The altar-mound was also
an image of the pole. And periodically the Mexicans sacrificed
seven batches of children on seven hills that served for altars. The
Hebrews offered seven bulls and seven rams on seven altars. The
Assyrian Lu-Masi were probably represented by seven rams of
sacrifice. Blood was sprinkled seven times as an oblation. Wherefore
seven times? We answer, because the powers or gods propitiated
thus were seven in number, and there is a consensus of evidence
to prove that the seven were represented as rulers, watchers, giants,
masters, ali, elohim, or lords of eternity, in the seven pole-stars
of the great period of precession. The seven altars are also identified
by Homer with the pole when he calls the ark-city of Mycenæ “the
altars of the cyclops.” Cyclops were one with the giants, which
are seven in number, and thus the altars of the cyclops are equivalent
to the seven mountain-altars of the Phœnicians and the Mexicans,
grouped in the seven-portioned city of the ark at Mycenæ. Erech
is called the city of the seven stones (or zones), and seven stones
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605
were equivalent to the seven pole-stars (W. A. I., II, 50-55-57,
Sayce.) Seven sacred black stones, possibly aërolites, were the
images of the seven chief gods at Uruk, the great ones or
the mighties (Conder, Heth and Moab, pp. 209, 210). Herodotus
speaks of the seven stones which the Arabians smeared with blood
in making a covenant (B. 3, 8.) Naturally, the stone, as the rock
of eternity, remained a permanent figure of the pole, and
doubtless seven precious stones were among the types. Hence we
meet with the emerald mountain, the diamond mountain, the pearl
mountain, the mountain of gold, the lotus mountain, with the jewel
of the pole-star at the centre or “in the lotus.”
The Mexicans also worshipped a class of gods who had been
turned into stone. Three of these are mentioned by name as
Tohil, Avilix, and Hacavitz. And it is said of these petrified powers
that they could resume a movable shape when they pleased. These
gods were three in the group of seven which is so often divided into
two groups of three and four each, and which are the seven rulers of
the pole. Becoming petrified as stones would denote the condition
in which they stood as fixed figures of the pole, and if they were
figures of the pole it was known to the astronomers that all in
turn would again resume a moveable shape as gods of the pole-stars.
The seven stones set up at Stonehenge and elsewhere represent
the giants that were also petrified and changed into enormous stones.
These, too, stood for the seven stations of the pole in the circuit of
precession, or the circle of Sidi. Under one title “Stonehenge” was
called the circle of Sidi, or the circle of seven. These are a form
of the seven giants that were turned into stone, those who were the
builders of the heptanomis and the supporters of the universe,
and whose megalithic monuments are found as witnesses in many
lands. The seven stations sank with the heptanomis of Atlantis
in the great deluge of all, but the stones remained as monuments
called the “stones of the deluge,” and four of the seven powers
survived in the new heaven that was raised upon the four-fold foundation of the celestial tetrapolis which followed. The Roman palladium
that fell from heaven has its origin, not simply as an aërolite, but as a
copy of the stone that was a type of the divine abode established at
the pal, or pole. Palladia in various other shapes are said by
Phylarcos to have been flung down from heaven during the war of the
giants. These constituted the typical foundations of the heptanomis
that was built on high and repeated by the mound builders of many
lands and copied by those who heaped the earth or raised the stone and
shaped the pillar as the palladia of the dead. The capital of MahaBali or Great Baal, once famous on the coast of Malabar as MahaBali-puram, had a name which signified “the seven pagodas.” These
are another equivalent to the seven arits, churches, or other groups of
seven sacred structures that imaged the heptanomis according to
the period and the cult. The pole of heaven, as an image of
sustaining power, was also figured in the constellation of Uarit,
the leg. This at one time was the leg of Nut, the cow of heaven.
At another it is the leg of Ptah, at another the leg of Osiris.
As the leg of Nut, it is the leg of a cow, which may be seen in
the drawing from the zodiac of Denderah (fig. on p. 311) in which the
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milch cow and leg are blended together in one figure. This supporting
power of the pole was represented by King Hop, “lord of the
heavenly hosts” in an annual ceremony of the Siamese during
which the lord of the heavenly hosts, as the power of the pole,
stood on one foot for three hours. If he let down his foot it
betokened instability to the throne, but if he stood firm he was thought
to gain a victory over the forces of evil (Frazer, Golden Bough,
vol. i. p. 230). Many mysteries that were mythical or eschatological
when first acted peter out finally in popular pastimes and provincial
games. The writer has collected a volume of such, but will not
be able to find room for them. The game of hop-scotch is a
good example of the power that could stand upon one foot as
that of the pole in the heaven of seven divisions. It has been
suggested that the seven courts which are chalked out on the
ground in this game represent the seven planetary heavens. But
this explanation was put forward by a writer entirely ignorant of the
celestial heptanomis and the seven heavens or astronomes that were
preplanetary (paper read at the Anthropological Institute, Nov., 1885).
The seven courts thus memorized we hold to be the seven courts
which are identified with the seven divisions of heaven and seven
stations of the pole. The question, if any, can be determined
by the symbolical act of hopping on one foot. The seven footprints of Buddha also denote the seven steps in precession which are
a co-type equivalent to the seven stations of the pole. The writer
knows of no group of seven legs, or feet, but there is a giant who
strides through space as the wearer of seven-league boots. Moreover,
the Ritual positively identifies the pole with the leg by calling it
the leg of the seven non-setting stars.
Now the pole-star being a star that did not set, in the course
of the great year there would be seven of these that never set:
the seven who are the lords of eternity.
These were beyond
the ken of ordinary knowledge, but an object-picture could be constellated, as in the seven stars of the Lesser Bear. Dhruva is the
Hindu name of a pole-star; it is also the name of the power
divinized in Dhruva, the god, who maintained himself upon one foot
motionless as a stake = pole, until the earth inclined with his
weight, or the station of the pole leaned over and sank down
with the declination of the star that was Polaris at the time. Thus the
sustainer at the pole as a power was able to stand on one foot
for the period of 3,714 years on end (Bhâgavata-Purana, ch. viii.).
There are seven mountain peaks and seven footprints, and a footprint on the peak is the symbol of a station in precession. Thus
the footprint of Buddha upon Adam’s Peak in Ceylon tends
to show that this was one of the seven annular mountains in
the seven-fold system of Mount Meru. Also, when the Buddhist
footprint is represented by the sacred horseshoe it has in one
form seven gems or nails, which still preserve a figure of the
seven prints on one image.
Seven footprints were assigned
to Abraham.
These are depicted on the south side of the
Sakhrah rock at Jerusalem, and were shown to Nasir-i-Khusran
in the year A.D. 1047.
(Pal. Pilgrim’s Text Society, p. 47,
1888).
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607
The sun, moon, and seven stars are frequently grouped together on
the Assyrian monuments. The Chinese call the sun, moon, and seven
stars the nine lights of heaven. The same grouping is observable in
the nine pyramids of the Mexicans—one for the sun, one for the
moon, and seven small ones for the seven stars. The three pyramids
of Gizeh answer to those of the sun, moon, and seven stars elsewhere.
The Great Pyramid is in itself a sign of seven, comprising, as it does,
the square and the triangle in one figure. There is a tradition that
the Great Pyramid was designed by the Har-seshu, or servants of
Horus. These were the seven Khuti in the stellar mythology who
had been the rulers in the celestial heptanomis before they became
the seven servants of the solar god. The seven periods of the polestars were also imaged by seven eyes, in consequence of an eye being
a figure of the cycle. This type is presented to Joshua in the book
of Zechariah in the shape of seven eyes upon one stone: “Behold,
the stone that I have set before Joshua; upon one stone are seven
eyes.” These are the seven eyes of the Lord; also the seven lamps,
the same as in the book of Revelation (Zech. iii. 9; iv. 1-12). As
a mode of measuring time and period on the colossal scale of the
great year, the eye came to the full, “as at first,” seven times at
seven stations of the pole in the cycle of precession. As a type, the
eye might be full once a month, once a quarter, once a year, once in a
thousand years, in 2,155 years, 3,714 years, or, as the great eye of all,
the eye of the Eternal, once in 26,000 years (Rit., chs. 140 and
144). Hence the seven eyes of the Lord in the blue stone of the
firmament. The submergence of seven pole-stars involved the same
number of deluges in the cycle of precession, which culminated in
“the great deluge of all.” Apparently this was the deluge of Manu
in the Hindu version, for the Manu, whose vessel was made fast to a
stupendous horn, i.e., the pole, was Vaivasvata, the seventh Manu,
and the seventh Manu corresponds to the great deluge of all, as the
latest of seven cataclysms in the world’s great year. There were
seven stations to the pole in measuring the circuit of precession; consequently each type or symbol of the pole may be repeated seven times,
or is finally a figure of the number seven. Thus the pole, when
elevated seven times as a tree, would be represented ultimately by the
typical seven trees, or by a tree with seven branches; if by the
mound, the mound would be erected seven times over; if by the
horn, there would be seven horns—hence the dragon with seven
horns; if by the fish, there would be seven fish or fish-men, finally
symbolized by the fish with seven fins, or by the crocodile Sebek,
whose name as Sevekh also signified the number seven. If by the
star, as Stella Polaris, this would be repeated seven times and grouped
as the seven stars of a typical constellation at the pole, like that of
Ursa Minor or Corona Borealis. If the eye be a figure of the polestar as direct image or as emblem of the repeating cycle fulfilled in
3,700 years, there will be seven eyes=seven stars or seven lights in
the circle of precession. Seven eyes become the seven watchers,
jackals, judges, urshi, or rishis; and seven lights on one stand, or a
candlestick with seven branches, forms an image of the seven single
pole-stars in a cluster at the pole. If the figure is a cave, there would
be seven caves to the mount; if it was a hall, there would be seven
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halls in the great house; if a church, there would be seven churches;
if a city, there would be seven cities. Other types might be
enumerated in relation to the mystery of the seven stars. The great
deluge of all was that by which the total heptanomis was finally
submerged; “every island fled away, and the (seven) mountains were
not found” (Rev. xvi. 20, 21). In this the giants, the dogs, the
apes, the birds, the tortoises or turtles, and the “men” were drowned,
and lost Atlantis sank beneath the waters at first as the heptanomis,
and later as the heaven in ten which was succeeded by the heaven
in twelve divisions.
The seven stations of the pole were likewise marked as seven
mounds or seven mountains, each of which in turn was a type of the
birthplace on high and an image of the Great Mother who brought
forth her child upon the mount as the hippopotamus, the crocodile,
the serpent, the vulture, the water-bird, or other type that was
astronomical in heaven and totemic on the earth. One title of the
Great Mother was “mistress of the mountain” when the mountain
was the pole, and this celestial mountain was repeated seven times in
the circle of precession; hence there are seven summits in one form
or other, as mountains, mounds, altars, stones, menhirs, pillars, or
pyramids, answering to the seven stations of the pole. There is an
allusion to the seven stellar summits or mountains in one of the
Assyrian hymns. Ishtar exalts her glory in several phases of
phenomena. Hers was the glory from the beginning. She was the
goddess of the double horizon, imaged in the glory of the morning and
evening stars. As queen of heaven in the moon, her glory is said
to “glow in the clouds of heaven” and to “sweep away (or efface)
the mountains altogether,” as the flood of moonlight might put out
the stars. These mountains, therefore, were celestial; only as such
could mountains be obliterated by the glory of the goddess imaging
the moon.
The Japanese have the group of seven mountains, which were the
seats of the gods of seven pole-stars. These are Ma-Saka-Yama, Odo
Yama, Oku Yama, Kura Yama, Ha Yama, Hara Yama, and To
Yama (Kojiki, ii. 7, 8; O’Neil, Night of the Gods, vol. ii. p. 892).
“These,” says O’Neil, “seem to be alternative mythical names for the
heaven’s-vault mountain.” But as a figure of the heptanomis the
mount of heaven’s vault was also seven-fold in seven stations of the
shifting pole, determined by the seven successive stars, one for each
of the seven mountain summits. At the back of Shan-ling, about
sixty miles west of Canton, seven isolated limestone peaks abruptly
rise up from the low green plain. These are called The Seven Stars.
They were once a favourite resort for pious people, who went there to
worship at the temples and the caves (Colquhoun, A. R., Across Chrysê,
i., 37). These also we look upon as monuments of the seven ancient
pole-stars, which are identified with seven mountains in the books of
Enoch and of Revelation. There were seven mountains upon which
the ark of safety rested as the place of landing from the waters during
the vast cycle of precession; this may explain the Armenian
tradition that Noah’s ark was visible at various times, first upon
one mountain peak, then upon another, including Mount Baris,
Urdhu, Gudi, Nizir, and Ararat. Probably there were seven altogether
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609
identified, like the seven Alban Hills, with the seven rulers of the
world in their watchtowers of the celestial heptanomis. The mount,
or a mount of the pole, was known as the white mountain. The
Alban Hills are the white mountains. They are seven in number, and
equivalent to the seven stations of the pole which were imaged by
the seven mountains of the heptanomis. The Chréais or Jaray race,
who inhabit the high plateau which separates Cambodia from Annam,
preserve a curious commemorative custom in relation to the seven
mountains. They have two mysterious monarchs, whose functions are
of that mystical order which we so often find to be astronomical.
The two are known as the king of fire and the king of water. They
inhabit successively seven towers built upon seven mountains, and
every year they pass from one tower to another, never meeting each
other and never seeing a human face. The kingship lasts for seven
years, and the offices are hereditary in one or two families (Frazer,
Golden Bough, vol. i. pp. 55-56, who cites Le Royaume du Cambodge,
by J. Moura; also Aymonier’s Notes). Seven forts erected on seven
mountains are equivalent to the seven altars raised on seven mountains
by the Mexicans. The two kings of fire and water correspond to the
two different cataclysms by fire and flood, described by Berosos as
happening in the course of the Great Year.
According to the missionary Gill, the Mangaians hold that the seven
inhabited islands of the Hervey group are the body or outward presentment of another seven in the spirit-world of Avaiki (Myths and
Songs of the Pacific). These correspond to the seven sunken islands
of the lost Atlantis, and both are a localized earthly form of the
celestial heptanomis, which sank down in the course of one Great
Year. The name of Mangaia signifies peace, and Mangaia in Avaiki
was the paradise of peace, like the Egyptian Hetep. This, therefore,
was a form of the paradise lost in the form of seven islands sunk in
the Pacific as well as in the Atlantic Ocean and other waters, which
were firmamental from the first. Egypt began in the form of seven
Nui, a most ancient Egyptian name for the nomes or water boundaries.
And in Polynesia Nui or Rapa-nui is the native name of Easter
Island, where the colossal statues left by some mysterious race of
primitive builders have been found. Nui is also the name of a
group of the Nui as islands = nomes, which are found as seven in
number in the seven islands or islets of Onoatoa. Each one of these
has its own particular name, but Onoatoa embraces the whole seven.
The seven Nui as islands in a group called Onoatoa offer a parallel to
the seven islands of Avaiki, with the additional fact that they have
the same name as the most ancient nomes of Egypt, which were
seven in number.
After the septenary of pole-stars had been identified and established
in the circle of precession, six of these were ever moving with the
sphere, and there was always one remaining a fixture at the centre.
If we take them as representatives of the seven Manus or Buddhas, it
becomes evident that the condition of the motionless or sleeping
Buddha was attainable by all the six, each in turn, that moved round
the stationary one; and in the seventh stage of precession the true
Buddha, the prince, the Rishi or Manu, was re-born, and his birth
was indicated by the stationary star that showed the new position of
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the changing pole. In his visions Enoch sees the “seven splendid
mountains which were all different from each other.” These are
described as six, with “the seventh mountain in the midst of them.”
In furnishing the ark of testimony according to the pattern seen in
the mount, instructions are given for the lamp-stand to be made with
six branches going out of the candlestick. But it is added, “Thou
shalt make the lamps thereof seven” (Ex. XXV. 37); this, then, was likewise a figure of six encircling the one that was a fixture in the centre.
The six stars that kept revolving whilst the seventh stood or rested on
one foot are to be met with in a legend of the Ainu. “Suddenly
there was a large house on the top of a hill wherein were six persons
beautifully arrayed, but constantly quarrelling (always in motion).
Thereupon Okikurumi (a name connected with the wheel) seized a
firebrand and beat each of the six with it in turn. Whereupon the six
all ran away in the shape of hares” (Chamberlain, B. H., Memoirs
of Tôkyô University, p. 32).
It is stated in the Chow Ritual that the Chinese rules for divining
were contained in three books—the Lien-shan, the Kwei-Tsang, and
the Kwei-chang. The name of the first signifies “United Mountains,” a title that is said to have been derived from its first mystical
and divining six-fold sign Kăn (O’Neil, The Night of the Gods, vol.
ii. p. 892). These united mountains, determined, as stated, by the
six-fold sign, appear to be a form of the six which, with the seventh
at the centre, marked the seven stations of the pole in the circle of
precession. The Zuni Indian system of the seven mountains is the
same. These consist of six mountains which are stationed round the
central one. When Remus saw the flight of the six vultures he was
standing on the rock of the Aventine Hill—that is, the Bird-hill,
which looks as if it represented the seventh to the six stars; the one
that was stationary on the pivot of the pole, whilst the other six were
moving round it with the sphere. Thus there is a central mountain
and a central land to the seven mountains. One of the seven united
mountains is the tree-mountain. Elsewhere we meet with the stonemountain, the mount of the papyrus reed, the ever-white mountain
whence the Korean people came, the mount of the white wall, the
pearl mountain. The mount of Saturn = Sebek, in the Dragon, was one
of the seven hills in Rome. A “festival of the six” is made mention
of in the Ritual (ch. 136, Pap. Of Nu). This occurs in a chapter for
making a spirit perfect, which memorizes the birth of a god who is
called the newly-born, as the lamp in Annu at the pole. He is
described as a god of the rope. It is said, “He is born, he of the
strong cord. His cable is complete” (ch. 136, Renouf). This we
understand to be a god of the rope that was made fast at one end to
the solar boat and at the other to the star Ak at the pole. The
luminaries in Annu are addressed. They are the seven Khus. One
of these seven is newly-born, or his star is just lighted, as god of the
lamp and likewise of the rope, and the event is celebrated at “the
festival of the six”—not of the sixth. Moreover, he is called “the
Prince of the inundation.” There had been a deluge, and he has
turned back the water-flood which had risen over the thigh of Nut
at the staircase of Seb, god of the earth.
This figure of the one at the centre of the six will enable us to
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611
explain a mystery of the cyclops. These in one version of the mythos
were seven in number, therefore they are a form of the seven giants
or powers of the pole-stars—the seven that were 6 + 1. Now, it was
fabled that all the seven could see with one single eye, and the single
eye we take to have been the pole-star for the time being that was
fixed at the centre as the eye of the group. The mythical unicorn
was another figure of the horn-point at the pole. As such it was a
type of Sut, the founder of the pole. Sut being first as founder, his
was the single horn. It was as the symbol of sustaining power
stationed at the pole that the unicorn became a supporter with the
lion of the royal arms in British heraldry. The unicorn has but
one eye, and thus it became a co-type with the cyclop as a figure of
the one star of the pole. The unicorn is associated with the tree,
because the tree also stands for the pole. Sometimes its single horn
is stuck fast in the tree, which position intensifies the figure of
stability at the pole. Futile attempts have been made to show that
the unicorn was an emblem of the moon. But though the lunar orb
might be imaged as a single eye, it would not, could not, be represented by a single horn. The ancients knew the moon was doublehorned when it was figured as the celestial cow. The horn is another
of those figures which, being single at first, became seven-fold as
types of the heptanomis. Thus there is a group of seven horns to
add to the rest. This group is portrayed above the head of Sesheta,
a goddess of laying the foundations, which are seven in number, as
figured by means of her seven horns upon a pole.
In the heaven of the heptanomis the ancient Genetrix had seven
sons. The figure is repeated in the seven sons of Japheth (Gen. ch. x.),
the seven sons of the divine lady of the holy mound in Babylonia,
the seven sons of Quanwon in Japan, the seven sons of Albion, the
white land in the north, and various other groups of the seven on
board the ark, which was earlier than the foundations that were laid
in the four quarters. The heptanomis came to an end with the great
deluge of all; and in the book of Genesis the deluge of Noah is
followed by the new kingdom that was reared on a four-fold foundation, the seven cities on the other side of the flood being succeeded by
the cities of the four quarters built on this. When Nimrod or Gilgames
became “a mighty one in the earth” “the beginning of his kingdom
was Babel and Ereck and Akkad and Kalneh, in the land of Shinar,”
and out of that land he went forth and built four other cities in
Assyria. A heaven of the four quarters had then superseded the
heptanomis or heaven founded on the seven stars or astronomes, and
this was the figure followed in the building of the four cities on
earth.
After the great deluge of all had taken place and the inhabitants
of the heptanomis generally were drowned, it was seen that the seven
pole-stars kept their places in the circumpolar heaven. And thus the
seven gods sat in their circle round the tree of the pole, the fixed and
never-setting stars for ever safe from all the deluges of time, as the
seven lords of eternity. These are the seven that were saved when
all the world was drowned. The Shenin in the Ritual are a group
of spirits that surround the seat of the highest.
The name
denotes the circle of those ministers or officials that surround the
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ANCIENT EGYPT
throne of the god or the king. In one text this circle is called the
shenin of fire. They are the spirits of fire = the saluting apes in the
circle of the eternals. Their number is not directly given, but they
are the princes who elsewhere are a form of the seven great spirits
that surround the throne. Now, there is a stellar enclosure or circle
of stars in the northern heaven which the Chinese recognize in the
region of Draco and Ursa Major. These bear the names of ministers
and officers who surround the sovereign, and therefore are identical
with the Egyptian circle of the shenin. This is very probably the
constellation of the Northern Crown, in which the seven were grouped
as a numerical figure of the pole-star circle. The circle of the seven
lords of eternity was first; the throne of the highest was erected in
the centre. Thus the seven as servants (seshu), khuti, uræus-gods,
saluting apes or angels, spirits, or lamps of fire, are depicted round
the throne of God according to the mystery of the seven stars in
Revelation.
As already said, the earliest form of an enclosure in heaven called
the Aarru is depicted as a field of reeds, the habitat of the water-cow,
who brought forth Sut, her first-born bull, upon the summit in a field
of reeds that rose above the waters at the station of the pole when
this was represented by the bed of reeds. Thus the ancestral pair
that were saved from the deluge by climbing up the reed-mountain,
like the Navajo Indians, would derive their origin from the reed. The
main significance of the reed as a symbol of the pole depends upon
its being a plant that grows up through the water and flowers above
the surface to present the type of an ark or station or other means of
escape from the mythical water that flowed betwixt this world and
the other. We have now to suggest that the seven stars of the rulers
were neither in the Great Bear nor the Pleiades, but that they were
the past representatives of Polaris in the cycle of precession, and to
show that the mystery of the seven stars in the drama of
“revelation” was a mystery of the celestial heptanomis in the astronomical mythology. As we have seen, in various myths the land
enclosed in the celestial sea was lost because the woman betrayed the
secret of the waters, which then burst forth and overthrew the bulwarks that had been erected by the male, who in the Egyptian
mythos was her son, the founder Sut. In other legends paradise was
lost by the unwatchful dog. This, as the jackal, was the dog of Sut.
Thus in one case the deluge was let in by the mother, and in another
by the son, who were the primal pair as founders of the pole. Whilst
in some parts of the world it was the dog (as typical guide) who let
in the deluge, in Fiji it was the race of men that had tails like dogs
who were destroyed by the deluge. In other legends mankind were
changed into dogs after one of the several deluges. The Bonaks or
root-diggers said the first Indians that ever lived were coyotes or
prairie-dogs. The Chichimecs of South America are the dogs by
name. In Africa these would have been totemic jackals. But without going back so far in time and space as the submergence of the
southern pole and the declination and disappearance of its star
below the horizon for those who travelled northward, there is another
origin possible for the legend of the dog. The jackal or Egyptian
dog was also constellated as the guide of ways in Sothis, and as
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613
Stella Polaris at the northern pole. As the planisphere of Denderah
shows, the dog’s tail in which the pole-star Cynosura shines to-day was
the tail of the jackal. Twenty-six thousand years ago the position
was the same. The jackal of the mythos or dog of later legend
was then the watcher in the circumpolar paradise or garden of the
Tree. Now, whichever zoötype represented the pole-star of the period
—hippopotamus, jackal, ape, bird, tortoise, or dragon (crocodile)—it
might be held responsible for the loss of paradise or enclosure
through letting in the waters. This would be rendered according
to the mythical mode, and afterwards related in a legend or a folktale.
In the precessional movement the celestial pole passed out of the
jackal or dog into the group of stars now called Kepheus. There
were seven stations in the circle of precession, though one, as we
have said, is omitted or unidentified in the diagram drawn by
Piazzi Smythe, betwixt Herakles and Draconis, which we have tried
to fill in with the male hippopotamus of Sut as a group of stars that
included Clavis Corona, but only as a stop-gap. We now pass on
to the Lesser Bear. In the Egyptian eschatology (Rit., ch. 44,
2-3) the jackal Ap-uat represents a power of salvation from the
drowning deep. In crossing the gulf of Putrata into which the
helpless dead fall headlong and the sinking stars are swallowed by
the dragon, the manes says, “Ap-uat lifteth me up.” This power
is shown to be localized in the region of the pole by the speaker saying (after being saved by Ap-uat), “I hide myself among you, O ye
stars that never set”—that is, in the circumpolar paradise at the pole,
where the jackal or the dog was the guide of ways. When the pole
had passed from the constellation of Ursa Minor the power of
salvation would have gone from the jackal to whatsoever type might
represent Kepheus, and Ap-uat the guide as Cynosura would no
longer be looked up to as a deliverer from the drowning waters of the
deep. Commentators on the Korân repeat the ancient traditions concerning the Adite ancestors of the Arab race. These were the giants
or kings of prodigious size and stature, like the monstrous figures of
the primitive constellations in the heptanomis. After the deluge
these were changed into monkeys. Now the Arabs claim descent
from one Kahten or Kaften the Adite, and Kaften in Egyptian is a
name of the great ape that was one of the seven giants of the polestar constellations and a zoötype of Shu, whom we identify with
Kepheus. It is also said in the Codex Chimalpopoca that men were
transformed into monkeys as the result of a deluge or great
hurricane. As the pole was figured at seven successive stations in the
heptanomis, it is possible that the Navajo Deluge myth contains a
time-gauge. In this it is related that when “the men of a world
before our own” were warned of an approaching flood they were
living in “the third world” or station of the pole, and the place of
refuge which they raised against the coming deluge was in “the
fourth world” or station of the pole, which, according to the present
reckoning, was in the constellation of Kepheus. The turkey just
escaped, although the water was close enough after him to wet the
tip of his tail. Now, it happens that the next position of the pole is
in the constellation of the bird cygnus, also named the hen, the kite,
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ANCIENT EGYPT
and other forms of ornis. Moreover, the star Alpha was called
Dzeneb in Arabic, or the tail. And this, according to the present
reckoning, we consider to have been the fourth world or fourth of the
seven stations of the pole. When the pole passed from the constellation Kepheus into Cygnus the swan it would give rise to a
legend like that of the Gippsland blacks, who assert that the first lot
of men were turned into ducks by the wicked moon. Cygnus the
swan was known as Ornis the bird, the bird of Jupiter, and also as
the kite. The kite is equivalent to the hawk in Egypt, and the
“kite of Osiris” is mentioned in the Ritual by the speaker, who is
in the region of the glorious ones, the circumpolar gods or seven
great khus. He is at the place of the balance, “which is maat,” the
stellar point of equipoise, otherwise at the pole. He exclaims, “Here
is the cycle of the gods and the kite of Osiris” (ch. 136 B). The
name of Osiris may be a later insertion, but the kite remained, and
this is a name for the constellation Cygnus or the Swan, the fifth of
the seven pole-stars, beginning with Corona (or its equivalent) as the
first. The pole-star was in the kite some seventeen thousand years
ago. And here, says the speaker who has attained the summit of
the mount, “here is the cycle of the gods and the kite ( = cygnus) of
Osiris.”
Fourteen thousand years ago Polaris was the star Vega in the
constellation now known as Lyra. Vega or Wega = Waki denotes
the falling one.
As vultur cadens it was the falling vulture.
The Arabic name signifies the falling eagle, An-nasz-al-waki. Now,
the vulture as Egyptian can be identified with the pole and possibly
as a pole-star. The leg constellation was a figure of the pole.
It is mentioned in the Ritual (ch. 149, 11th Aat, line 8) as the
leg of the lake, and a co-type with the tree of the lake on which
the glorified spirits alighted in the form of birds, and there is
a chapter in the Ritual for assuming the form of a vulture and
perching on the leg, a landing-place equivalent to the pole. “I am
the divine vulture,” says the speaker, “who is on the leg” or the
pole. And a star known as the vulture stationed on the leg of
the pole must be Polaris. We see that some fourteen thousand
years ago the pole was in the constellation Lyra, and the pole-star was
the “falling vulture” Vega. This may have a bearing on the legend
of the vulture in the Mexican tradition of the deluge. It is related of
the American Noah, named Coxcox or Tezpi, that he made a bark
or, still more primitively, a raft, with which he saved himself, his wife,
and children from the overwhelming waters of the deluge. When the
god Tezcatlipoca decreed that the waters should retire, Tezpi sent
forth a vulture from the bark. The bird did not return, but stayed to
feed upon the bodies of the drowned. He sent out the hummingbird, which came back with a leafy branch in its beak. Then Tezpi
, seeing that land was visible and growing verdant, left his
ark upon the Mount of Culhuacan. This was the mountain of
the seven caves in which the seven giants or great spirits dwelt.
The name denotes the mountain that leans over at the summit, as
it is depicted in the Aztec documents, a picture of the pivot
toppling over with the change of pole-star. If we suppose the change
to have been made and the deluge to have occurred when the
THE WORLD’S GREAT YEAR
615
pole-star was shifted from a Cygnus to the constellation Lyra
the next pole-star would be the vulture, which afterwards became
the falling one. Thus the vulture indicated the new land that
was growing green across the water of the deluge, the mount
on which another landing-place was found; another altar was erected,
and the sacrifice was offered up upon the summit of the mount by
those who had escaped the great calamity, as it was mythically
represented, whether the mount might be Culhuacan, Tulan, Annu,
Ararat, Nizir, or Meru. And a pole-star known as the vulture would
in the course of precession become the “vulture falling” whose
“fall” is chronicled in the name of vulture cadens. If those who
followed in the wake of the Egyptians, like the Euphrateans, Greeks,
and Arabs, were not always masters of the gnosis, they could
at least transliterate the ancient names and thus bring on part
of the meaning. The Arabic name for the “falling vulture” was
also the “falling eagle.” And in some of the legends it is the
eagle that foretells the coming deluge. A myth of the Pima Indians
relates that a prophet was warned by the eagle of a vast cataclysm
or deluge then at hand; but the prophet took no heed, and the
waters came that overwhelmed the world. This also we might
call the deluge that occurred when the pole passed from its station
in Cygnus into that of the eagle or vulture. The legend of the
eagle is also extant amongst the Kamilaroi of Australia, who tell
of a deluge from which two human beings only made their escape by
climbing up a tree. And here the deluge is attributed to Pundjel, the
eagle-hawk. The tree we understand to be a figure of the pole.
Williams tells us that “the highest point of Koro Island has a
name connected with the idea of a bird sitting there and lamenting
over the submerged island.” It is said in a chant, “the quiqui
laments over Koro because it is lost” (Nat. Gen., vol. ii. p. 241).
Thus the eagle is one of the seven constellations of the pole-stars,
and in the ancient British mythology the eagle is one of the
seven Welsh old ones of the world, called the eagle of Gwernabwy,
who perched upon the rock he found there, pecking every evening
at the stars. There he is said to have remained until the rock
was worn down to the height of a man’s palm. Such legends
we suggest originated when the rock of the pole was in the constellation of the Eagle, which represented one of the old ones of the seven
pole-stars or rulers of the pole. The earth is sometimes described
as having been created on the back of a tortoise, and when the
tortoise sank in the water there was an overwhelming deluge.
A Mandan medicine-man told Catlin that the earth was a tortoise
carrying dirt upon its back (Nat. Gen., vol. ii. p. 195). The mother of
beginnings is portrayed in a legend of the Tuscarora Indians as
an enceinte female in labour = Apt the pregnant hippopotamus goddess,
who sank from an upper region and was received on the back
of a tortoise which had a little earth upon its back, and this became
an island upon which she bore twin sons, who correspond to the
Egyptian Sut and Horus, and then passed away. The tortoise
was a zoötype of the earth itself amidst the waters of space, which
was repeated as a figure of land or the landing-place in the heavens
at the pole. It was once an Egyptian sign of the balance or
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ANCIENT EGYPT
scales in the zodiac at the point of equipoise where the land emerged
from the deluge of the Nile. The tortoise was likewise a type of the
constellation Lyra, in which the star Vega was the Stella
Polaris fourteen thousand years ago (W. H. Higgins, Stars and
Constellations, pp. 22, 23). In the signs of the North American
Indians a landing after a voyage is typified by a tortoise. Those
who found safety from the deluge on the turtle’s back or on the
tortoise would reckon their descent from the mountain of the
pole when it was stationed in the constellation of the Tortoise or Lyra.
Thus the Delaware Indians gave precedence to their turtle clan
because it descended from the great original tortoise, not from any
common turtle. The Iroquois turtle clan are likewise descended from
a great fat turtle which threw off its shell and gradually developed
into a man. This is exactly what did occur when the tortoise
Lyra sank in the waters or the turtles were drowned, and the
typical man was created at the next station of the pole. If we suppose
the end of the period to have come for the pole to move out of
Cygnus into the constellation Lyra or the Tortoise, the next landingstage in the course of precession, the end was with the submergence
of the pole-star or a deluge; and those who escaped from drowning
when this station of the pole in Cygnus went under naturally
sought a place of safety on the back of the tortoise or its co-type the
turtle. Evidently this was what did occur when the deluge took
place in the myth of Manabozho. The deluge was let in by the
“black serpent monster,” the representative of evil in physical
phenomena. “At the island of the turtle or tortoise was Manabozho,
the grandfather of men and beings.” As he was born creeping, he
is “ready to move and dwell in turtle land.” Then “the men and
beings” all go forth together “on the flood of waters, moving afloat
everywhere seeking the back of the turtle.” “All together on the
back of the turtle then, the men were altogether. Much frightened,
Manabozho prayed to the turtle that he would make all well again.
Then the waters ran off: it was dry on mount and plain, and
the great evil went elsewhere by the path of the cave.” (Nat.
Gen., vol. ii. pp. 180, 181.) According to the Mexican version, there
were seven caves in the celestial mount, which answer to the seven
stations of the pole. One of these was the cave of the turtle.
In another account that was preserved in pictographs it is the turtles
that declare war on Manabozho and produce the deluge. Manabozho
first carried his grandmother to the summit of a lofty mountain. He
himself climbed to the top of the tallest pine tree and waited until the
waters had subsided. Then he created an island which supported
him and became a new world.
This was the new station of
the pole, and the tallest pine was the tree of the pole that was
planted or re-erected in heaven when the flood was over. One
of the most striking survivals is that of the tortoise and its legend
connected with the deluge in the religious ceremonies of the Indians.
They say, “The world was once a great tortoise, borne on the waters
and covered with earth. One day a tribe of white men had made
holes in the earth to a great depth whilst digging for badgers;
at length they pierced the shell of the tortoise, and it sank.” The
deluge followed, and drowned all the men but one, who saved himself
THE WORLD’S GREAT YEAR
617
in a boat, and when the earth re-emerged, he sent out a dove
which returned to him with a branch of willow in its beak. The
tortoise was a Mandan image of the ark in which people were
preserved from the waters at the time of the deluge. That is,
according to the ancient wisdom, when the pole was resting in
the constellation of the Tortoise, after the deluge that drowned the
land and submerged the mount in Cygnus or the Swan. There is no
hint of the turtle in the planisphere, but the turtle and tortoise are equivalent and interchangeable types, and there is a tortoise in the heavens.
The Arabic name of the constellation Lyra is the Tortoise, and but for
the shell of the tortoise there would have been no Lyre. Some
sixteen or seventeen thousand years ago the celestial pole passed
out of the constellation Cygnus or bird, and a new guide-star was
established as Vega in Lyra. In other words, when Cygnus sank
the tortoise or the turtle offered its broad back for a landing place
amid the waters of the deluge. Other of the American Indian
tribes claim that their primeval home was in the old turtle land
= the island of the tortoise. The Lenni-Lenape or Delaware Indians
sing the song of the flood. In this it is related that the Being
born creeping and the men all went forth from the deluge swimming
afloat in the deep or crawling in the shallow water. Taking refuge
on the back of the turtle or tortoise, when read astronomically
according to the movement in precession, agrees with the passage
of the pole out of Cygnus into the constellation of the Tortoise.
The Samoans tell a tale of the woman and child who were transformed, and afterward came to the people of the village, when called
for, in the shape of turtles (Turner, Samoa, p. 108). This is a cotype with the tortoise; and when the pole passed from the sign of
Cygnus, the new-born child would be brought forth by the old mother
in the shape of a tortoise or a turtle, in accordance with the mythical
mode of re-peopling the planisphere. Thus the primal pair would
be said to have been changed into turtles, as the folk that dated from
the period when the pole was in the tortoise or turtle and
who were affiliated to the power above, the “big brother,” the tortoise
or turtle that never died, as the totemic tortoises. The “great
original,” whether of the turtles or hippopotami, crocodiles or jackals,
apes or vultures, and finally of men, was configurated in the heavens
on one or other of the mountains or islands that represented the seven
stations, nomes, or seven heavens of the pole in the celestial
heptanomis. The Hindu drawings (Moor’s Hindu Pantheon, pl. 49)
show a form of the pole or central conical peak that rests upon the
tortoise, which, as here interpreted, denotes the pole-star in the constellation Lyra, that was otherwise known as the Tortoise. The tortoise
supporting the pole in the shape of a tree=mount or island standing
in the water is also a Japanese figure of the sustaining power
at the pole. In the temple of Meaco there is a Japanese representation
of a tortoise in the water at the bottom of a tank or artificial
well, with a tree springing up from the back of the tortoise. Thus the
abyss of the waters, the earth at the bottom of the abyss, and
the tree of the pole are uniquely imaged in one picture.
There was a tortoise-headed god in Egypt who has left his likeness
in the tombs, but nothing else is known of him. The animal itself
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ANCIENT EGYPT
was a type of immobility, therefore of sloth or fixity, as a representative of the pole. In a Chinese myth the island of Pung-Lai was
brought one day in all its mass by the tortoise. A tortoise or turtle
appearing from the waters of earth was appropriate, as it was primitive
to image the bit of land emerging from the waters of the firmament.
This, however, was the mythical not cosmical earth that was supported
by the tortoise amid the waters. The tortoise beneath the tree
or the mound shows it was not our earth that is supposed to rest
or to have been formed upon its back in the beginning. It is possible
for the tortoise or turtle as a type of the earth itself to get mixed up
in the irresponsible legends with the tortoise or turtle as an
astronomical figure. Still the earth, as turtle, never was submerged
by the mythical deluge, whereas the tortoise or turtle that was a
type of station in the celestial water did sink down when that
particular station of the pole was overwhelmed.
Some fourteen thousand years ago the pole in Lyra or the Tortoise
corresponded to the vernal equinox in Leo.
This is probably
connoted in a plate of Lajard’s Mithra, where the zodiacal lion
is found with the star Radiatartakhu or Lammergeier = Vega as
Polaris in Lyra (pl. 56, 3).
An instructive example of the way in which the astronomical
mythos may dislimn and lose its shape in later legend is apparent in the
curious narrative found on a cuneiform tablet in the British Museum.
This has been called “the revolt in heaven” which occurred at some
time before the creation of man. The angelic host has previously
existed in a state of perfect harmony. “The god of holy songs,
lord of religion and worship, had seated a thousand singers and
musicians, and established a choral band who to this hymn were
to respond in multitude.” “The divine being, god of the bright
crown, spoke three times the commencement of a psalm. With a
loud cry of contempt they broke up his holy song, spoiling, confounding his hymn of praise.” Then the god of the bright crown
“stopped their service, and sent them to the gods who were his
enemies” and prohibited their return. “In their room he created
mankind.” This is a legend of the angels so called who fell from
heaven, and of whom it is said in the book of Jude, “They kept
not their own habitations” (Jude vi). These in the book of Enoch
are the seven stars which transgressed the commandment of God
and came not in their proper season; and therefore they were
bound and cast out until the time of the last judgment (Enoch,
xviii. xxi. xxii). It is said in the cuneiform text, “May the god
of divine speech expel from his five thousand those who in the midst
of his heavenly song had shouted evil blasphemies,” and the translator argues that there were but five thousand. But another reading
is possible. There may have been six thousand altogether. For
instance, in the Cuthean story of creation there is an allusion to
another legend of the seven powers. It is said the progeny of
Tiamat “grew up in the midst of the mountains and became
heroes and increased in number.” “Seven kings who were brethren
appeared as begetters. Six thousand in number were their armies”
(col. 1), and these we take to have included the five thousand loyal
angels, “his five thousand” from whom the rebel thousand are to
THE WORLD’S GREAT YEAR
619
be excluded thenceforth and for ever as the sixth thousand. It
is said of the god Ashur that he had seen the malice of those
gods who deserted their allegiance to raise a rebellion, and “he
refused to go forth with them.” In one character Ashur is known
to have been a representative of the pole; and according to the
present interpretation he was the god of the coming pole-star, the
seventh in our reckoning, the one that had not fallen away from
the true pole. This would apply if Ashur at the time was a representative of the seventh polar power, the one that remained true
whilst one thousand of the six thousand has risen in rebellion.
As we interpret the mythos, the choral band who sang the hymn
of praise, one thousand in number, are the sixth thousand of the
six thousand corresponding to the sixth of the seven stars or
stations in precession. At the time of the change from the sixth
pole-star to the seventh the revolt of the thousand that was sixth
in the series coincided with the falling away of the sixth star from
the true eternal pole. Ashur as the seventh remained the god seven,
who is re-born as the child considered to be the eighth; he
refused to go forth with the one thousand of the past pole-star.
And now follows the statement, “In their room, he, the god of
the bright crown (i.e. the solar deity), created mankind.” This, the
seventh creation, we associate with the passage of the pole into
the constellation Herakles, or the Man. The “lyre” imaged in the
constellation Lyra had been fashioned from the muscles torn from Sut
by Horus during the war in heaven. Thus the condition of harmony
represented by the lyre, harp, or lute corresponds to the avocations
of the thousand who are expelled from companionship with the
other five thousand and who are described as “a thousand singers
and musicians.” These we now suggest were the denizens of “Lyra,”
whose lapse in allegiance is attributable to the falling away of
the pole-star when the pole was passing out of that constellation
into the sign of Herakles in which occurred the creation of man.
It is a saying of Orpheus, reported by Plato, that “in the sixth creation
closes the order of song” (Plato, Philebus, 66). That is, according
to the present reckoning, when the pole passed out of the constellation
Lyra into Herakles or the Man.
In the Bundahish, the deluge or a deluge takes place in heaven
before the creation of man on earth. This saying can be read for the
first time on the theory that man was the latest of seven creations,
and that the man figured in heaven was the seventh in the series
as a ruler of the pole and pole-star. Thus interpreted, there had been
six deluges prior to the creation of man. Both in the book of Genesis
and in the Bundahish the prototypal pair are created “man.” AhuraMazda says to Mashya and Mashyoi, “You are man.” “You are
the ancestry of the world.” They were now the ancestors with a
human soul instead of the earlier elemental soul of life in water, air,
earth, heat, plant, or animal; otherwise stated, the descent was now
traced to the divine man or father in heaven instead of to Seb
the god of earth, who was the representative of vegetation, and
the gnosis was now applied on the scale of the Great Year. The
Tlascatans say that after their deluge those who had been previously
changed into monkeys were afterwards transformed into men. Now,
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ANCIENT EGYPT
if the hypothesis here put forth holds good, that the six zoötypes and
one human being were set in the circle of precession, it follow that at
the time the pole passed into the constellation of Herakles or “the
Man,” the deluge took place when the tortoises, the apes, and other
forms of the zoötypes were transformed into human beings. This
would correspond perfectly to the seventh creation in the later
legends, which was the creation of mankind.
If we take the oldest record in the world, the Egyptian, we shall
find that in the mythology the creation of man was the latest.
Amongst the seven primordial powers one alone is human. In the
constellation-figures man is scarcely to be found. Not until the time
of Seb was the producing power of earth portrayed as male. Not
until the time of Atum-Ra is the divinity impersonated in the form of
a perfect man. Earth had been hugely imaged as a pregnant
hippopotamus, a sow as the suckler, a goose that laid the egg
for food, a sloughing serpent that was an image of self-renewal, but
not by man as the measure of all things, including the elemental
forces and powers of external nature. And not until the image
of man had been adopted as a type of divinity in place of
the totemic zoötypes could men have traced their descent from
man in the mythology. This occurs in Egypt when the hippopotamus of Sut, the crocodile of Sebek, the lion of Shu, the ibis
of Taht, the beetle of Ptah were followed by the human likeness
that was perfected and divinized in Tum or Atum, the original
of Adam. In the Egyptian language the word tum signifies man,
mankind, created man. The Egyptians also called themselves the
Ruti, or the men; the race par excellence, in contradistinction to
the bulls, lions, crocodiles, serpents, apes, jackals, hawks, and other of
the zoötypes in totemism. They had attained this stage at the
beginning of monumental times. Man, the human being, was preeminently the creation of Atum-Ra, the father-god. Various names
of races signify man, or the men. The name of the Inoit, the
Ainu, and other primitive folk means man, or the men. Descent
from woman under the matriarchate had been represented by the
zoötypes, and when the fatherhood was individualized the human
descent was from man. The birthland of man on high was figured
astronomically as the island or nome or bit of earth, which was
a station of the pole-star in the constellation of Herakles or the Man,
from thirteen thousand to eleven thousand years ago, at the end of
which time the great deluge caused the destruction of mankind.
Instead of the races that were imaged by pre-human and totemic
types, the tortoises, the apes, the birds, the dogs, it was now “the
men” who were drowned in the last great deluge of all, when the
pole-star in the Man or Herakles went under.
It is stated in the Chimalpopoca MS. that the creator produced his
work in successive epochs, man being made from the dust of earth
on the seventh day. Here again man is created or comes into
existence in the last of seven periods, whatsoever the length of time or
significance assigned to the cycle, which is one day in the book
of Genesis and three thousand seven hundred and fourteen years
in the astronomical mythology. In all the versions of the seven
creations that of man was last. This is repeated when the mount
THE WORLD’S GREAT YEAR
621
or island of man is last of the celestial seven stations in the
heptanomis. Now we can say the final word concerning “the destruction of mankind” in the great deluge of all, which put an end
to the heaven in seven divisions that preceded the eight, the nine, the
ten, and the twelve. At the ending in time when Vega in Lyra
(the vulture and tortoise) ceased to be the pole-star, there was a
deluge and subsidence of land at the pole and a change of star. The
races drowned in this and previous deluges were totemic, therefore
pre-human, therefore the predecessors of man in the astronomical
mythology, the märchen, and legendary lore. Six races had been
destroyed in half-a-dozen deluges before it came to the “destruction of
mankind” that was memorized and mythically rendered in the
Egyptian deluge when the pole-star was washed under in the constellation of the Man, the one of seven mighties, now for the first
time in the human form. This is the one star group in all the
heavens that was figured as “the man,” the last of the seven rulers of
the pole, corresponding at this point to the attainment of the human
image in the last of seven so-called creations, which is that of
Adam = Atum in the zodiac just where the Sekhet-Aarru or garden
of Eden has been localized in the solar, which followed and completed
the lunar and stellar mythos. Thus we can roughly trace the point
at which the last of seven pole-stars coincided with the creation of
man in heaven which was succeeded by the creation of Atum = Adam
(or man) at the point of a new beginning in the zodiac. Such types
of the pole-stars as the tortoise or vulture (in Lyra), the swan,
the lesser bear (or jackal and the dragon), were figures of those
creations which preceded that of the man who was mythical and
astronomical. The Samoans relate that Tangaloa was the originator
of men. He is their god in the height, or the eighth heaven. As
a primitive way of saying how plucky he was and of showing how
the eight powers, seven plus one, were all combined in him, he is called
“eight-livered Tangaloa.” A temple was built for him and termed
the house of the gods, which was carefully shut up all round, and
therefore is equivalent to Am-Khemen, the Egyptian enclosure of the
eight great gods. These characteristics identify Tangaloa as deity
of the pole and as eighth to the seven earlier powers. Now Tangaloa
is said to have come over the ocean with a crew of seven others
in a canoe, and to have taken up his abode in the bush inland of
the settlement. Here the migration is the same as that of the
7 + 1 Kami, the 7 + 1 Kabiri, the 7 + 1 Toltecs, the 7 + 1 with Arthur
in the ark. The migration in each instance is purely mythical,
and the data are simply astronomical. Lastly, descent from the mount
or mound, the tree or the papyrus-reed, the enclosure or paradise
of the pole, was followed in the Semitic versions of the deluge
legends by a descent of the human race from the ark which was
stranded on the mountain top of Nizir or Ararat. The ark of
Nnu had then been built to float upon the waters of the firmament
and to be figured in the ascending stars of Argo-Navis. This is the
ark with eight on board, four females and four males, which was
indefinitely later than the boat of the Mexican primal pair or the
papyrus-reed of the four brothers in Egypt.
When the seventh station of the pole subsided, the seventh island
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of Atlantis sank, and all the seven were reckoned then to be overthrown in the celestial waters. Under the other figure of the mount,
the seven mountains now were totally submerged. This complete
catastrophe is described by Enoch, who identifies the seven mountains
with the seven stars and the seven great spirits. He likewise gives
the reason for their overthrowal. “I beheld seven stars, like great
blazing mountains, and like spirits (the Khamite khus are spirits),
entreating me.” The stars are those which “came not in their
proper season” (ch. 18). Again, “I beheld seven stars of heaven
bound together like great mountains” (ch. 21, 3). Their crime is
that they “transgressed the commandment of the most high.”
Therefore they are bound until the time of the great judgment
and the consummation or end of all things, which we shall find
particularly recorded in the book of Revelation. From thirteen
thousand to eleven thousand years ago the vernal equinox was
passing through the Lion sign. Pari passu in the movement of
precession, the north celestial pole was leaving its station in Lyra, or
the tortoise, and passing into the sign of Herakles or the Man. Thus
the creation of man or Atum in the zodiac can be partially paralleled
in the cycle of precession at a certain station of the pole in the
constellation of the heavenly man, who is Atum or Adam in the
astronomical mythology. All the conjunctions, the mythical characters, the scenery of this beginning—the Great Bear, sun, moon, and
seven stars, together with the inundation—met in that sign and
were constituted a fixture for two thousand one hundred and fifty-five
years.
Ten thousand seven hundred and seventy-five years ago the
equinox began to move out of the Lion sign into that of the Crab,
and then and there a legendary catastrophe occurred. This was
the conclusion of an astronomical period which, like the year in
Egypt, ended with a deluge. It occurred eight thousand two hundred
and seventy-five years before the date of the conversation in Egypt
betwixt Solon and the Hir-Seshta, and seven hundred and thirtyfive years short of the nine thousand, but near enough when we
are dealing with round numbers. The astronomical facts were
so well known that in speaking of the inundation at the end
of the cycle it was foretold that the “deluge would take place
when the heart of the Lion entered the first minute of the Crab’s
head at the declination of the star”—that is, the star Regulus,
the law-giver, in the Lion sign. At this point or readjustment
the great deluge of all was marked by the submergence of the
last of the seven pole-stars in “the Man” just when the shifting of the
pole coincided with a deluge as a typical ending in the solar
zodiac. For when the heaven of Atum-Ra was established on
the four corners, the typical ending previously marked by the
changing pole-stars was duplicated in the zodiac by the precession of
the equinoxes, and both went on together in two modes of measuring
the movement. As the type of an ending in time, a mythical
deluge occurred when a pole-star was submerged in the celestial
waters, and the great deluge of all took place at the end of the cycle
in precession called the Great Year of the World. It was mythically rendered as the sinking of Atlantis in seven islands which
THE WORLD’S GREAT YEAR
623
represented the seven astronomes in the celestial heptanomis. The
last “great deluge of all” is the subject of the story told to Solon by
the priests of Sais.
Of this, and the conflagration that was
caused by the fall of Phaethon, they sagely said, “This takes
the form of a myth, but in reality it signifies a declination of
the bodies moving round the earth in the heavens.” The astronomers
knew that the deluge was mythical and the myth was astronomical,
whether the end of the particular period was represented by fire
or by flood. Moreover, this greatest deluge can be approximately
dated.
Plato’s account of what the priests of Egypt said to
Solon identifies the “great deluge of all” as having occurred
about nine thousand years before that time—i.e. about 9600 B.C.,
or eleven thousand five hundred years ago.
That date was
given by the Egyptian priests with particular precision. They said
the city of Sais had been founded eight thousand years before
the time when Solon was in Egypt. After carefully examining their
sacred registers, they told him that the city of Sais was eight
thousand years old, and that it was founded a thousand years after
the cataclysm called the “great deluge of all.” In their account
we get to the bottom of the “lost Atlantis.” According to the
present diagnosis, then, the primary pole-star in the northern heaven
may be Clava Coronae, the key of the crown, when this was in the
enormous constellation of the male hippopotamus—that is, of Sut, the
first-born of the female hippopotamus. Polaris in its second form was
the star Alpha in the Dragon. The third station was in the Lesser
Bear, the fourth in Kepheus, the fifth in Cygnus the Swan, the
sixth in Lyra or the Tortoise, the seventh in Herakles or Man. Each
of these in turn had been a station of the pole, a landing-place for
foothold in the firmamental waters; each had been the sufferer from a
deluge at the declination of the pole and consequent change of
pole-star. Hence the number of deluge legends in the astronomical
mythology, including “the great deluge of all” as the last of the
seven. If we take the length of the Great Year in round numbers
at twenty-six thousand years, and divide the total into seven equal
parts, this gives some three thousand seven hundred and fourteen
years as the time for the pole to rest in each of the seven signs. Six
thousand years ago the pole-star was in Draconis. Three thousand
seven hundred and fourteen years earlier the pole had entered the
Hippopotamus (or Crown), and three thousand seven hundred and
fourteen years earlier still it was in the constellation of Herakles
or the Man. Thus, eleven thousand four hundred and
4,000
twenty-eight years B.C. the pole was represented by the
3,714
last of the seven pole-stars in the constellation of the
3,714
Man. The end of the Great Year determined by the great
——–
deluge of all then occurred in that sign, according to
11,428
the Egyptian account, about 9600 B.C., or nine thousand
in round numbers, with various surpluses to be added in the total
reckoning. Naturally, the deluge that destroyed mankind instead
of the totemic tortoises, jackals and dogs, vultures and swans, apes,
crocodiles and hippopotami, occurred when the pole was in or was
passing from the isle of the Man. Thenceforth the deluge would
be looked on as a literal destruction of the human race, and was so
624
ANCIENT EGYPT
construed in the Semitic legends, as it still is by the Christian clergy.
This is but the rough sketch of a pioneering pen. Greater exactitude
in dates must be left to the scientific astronomer who may have
mastered the mythology. My suggestion is that one Great Year
in the circle of precession was reckoned to have been ended with
the passing of the pole from the constellation of Herakles eleven
thousand years ago, which is near as need be, for the present purpose,
to the time assigned by the Egyptian priests for the sinking of
the lost Atlantis in the last great deluge of all.
Now, the human birthplace had been localized according to the
different stations of the pole, which were seven in number altogether. There were seven countries, nomes, or cities, determined
by the pole-stars. Each race claims a particular place for a starting
point in the migration from the mount, or the tree, or the back
of the tortoise, and various races have preserved some fragments of
the stories told about the wanderings and migrations from one land
to another, as in the legends of the North American Indians, the
Aztecs, and the Arunta of Central Australia.
The so-called
“primitive cradle of the human race in Ararat or Urdhu, the district
of the mountain of the world” (Trans. Society Bib. Archaeology,
vol. vi. p. 535), had its prototype in the planisphere and the
birthplace at the pole. Ararat is but one form of the mythical
mount. We derive the name from the Egyptian root “rat,” which
signifies the ascent, the steps of ascent, the footstool, the figure
of ascent. In the developed form, Arrut or Ararat also denotes
the staircase or steps of ascent, which is the mount of seven
steps, or the staircase = the mount. In one form the ark of Ararat
was the circumpolar paradise; in another it is the eternal city,
like Thebes, which is called the “august staircase of the beginning of
time, the utat of the universal lord” which led up to the particular
region where the Eye was then at full as the figure of a period
in precession. When the pole had passed into the sign of Herakles
the Man, the typical mount which had been figured in the Hippopotamus, in Draconis, in the Lesser Bear, in Kepheus, in Cygnus,
and in the Tortoise naturally became “the mountain of mankind”
by name. This was the birthplace of the human race who descended
from Atum, Admu, or Adam as the man, and eventually the
men who descended from “the mountain of mankind.”
The giant with his staff who figures in the popular pastimes
is probably a survival of Herakles with his club, as one of those
old giants that imaged the sustaining power of the pole, the last
of whom was in the likeness of a mighty man.
The mount, as a point of emergence from the waters, is looked up to
and addressed by the manes in the Ritual (ch. 42) at the coming forth
from Amenta. It is called “the pedestal of the gods,” “the land of the
white crown,” and “the land of the rod or staff” = pole. That this is the
land (Rit., ch. 42) of the celestial pole, the mount, or the tree is proved
by the vignette in which the deceased is drawing a cord around the
tat emblem of stability, which is another figure of the pole to which
he clings for safety in the waters.
The mount of migration from which the various races claim to have
descended, like the Aztecs from the island-mountain Colhuacan, is
THE WORLD’S GREAT YEAR
625
finally the pole which had seven starting-points and stations in the
circuit of precession. According to a Norse legend, the land of the
immortals was to the north of Finland, in the neighbourhood of
the White Sea. That, however, does not signify the original home
and birthplace of an Aryan race in Europe. It is but a local representation of the paradise in the northern heaven and the white water
of the Milky Way or sea of solar light. The mythical birthplace on
the mount of heaven for the people of the pole will explain how it was
that the ancient Britons could claim that they were emigrants from
Troy. In the true tradition this would mean the celestial, not the
mundane Troy—the Troy that is still figured by seven circles cut in
the sod by children in Wales. Troy was one of the forms of the
enclosure on the summit, in the astronomical mythology which was
Terui in Egyptian as a name of Sesennu. It is a common tradition
that the human birthplace was in paradise, and the descent from
thence has been misrepresented as the fall from heaven. This in the
astronomical mythology was the enclosure of the circumpolar Aarru
around the tree upon the summit of the stellar mount, descent from
which was from the mountain, or one of the seven mountains, of the
pole. One most fertile source of confusion has been the result of the
mythical legends having been converted into ethnical traditions. This
birthplace above belonged to the astronomical mythology, and it has
been converted into the human birthplace on the mountain and high
places of our earth by the human child being laid in the cradle of the
beginnings that were not human. That is, by the astronomical tradition being made ethnical, the polar paradise being made geographical. Thus, the descent from the circumpolar paradise in the astronomical mythology has been the cause of a wild-goose chase in search
of man’s lost heaven at the North Pole of the earth, by the usual
literalizing of the legend in its Hebrew guise. The mount from which
the different races claim descent has been sufficiently identified as the
astronomical mountain of the north, the mount of paradise, the one
fixed point for landing at, or launching from, the summit of the pole.
This also is the Babylonian “mountain of the nations.” The Babylonians at first were mound-builders. The mount of heaven was
imitated in the mound, the holy mound called the mound of Anu
and Nebo and Ishtar. Afterwards they built the tower of Babilu, and
the temple called Kharsag-Kalama, the “mount of the nations.” This
shows that the name of the astronomical mount was given to the building that was afterwards reared above the mound. The “mount of the
nations” was the mount of a starting-point, and of the divisions or ways
in the heavens which we now trace to the station of Polaris in Herakles.
The starting-point of the Aztec migration is from the mythical onetree-hill of the pole. According to the picture-writing, both mount
and tree are combined in one figure. In the Boturini and Gamelli
Careri copies the mount of earth is portrayed with the tree upon the
summit. The tree on the mount (a teocallis) is very rudely represented in the Aztec picture-writing as the starting-point of the
migration by water from the mount in the beginning. From this
point also the seven Toltecs commenced their wanderings in a boat,
like the seven Hohgates, the seven Ali, Ari or Kabiri, the seven
626
ANCIENT EGYPT
dwarf sons of Pinga, and other forms of the seven in the celestial
heptanomis.
The point of departure for the mythical migration is made ethnical
in the märchen. The Navajo Indians derive their origin from the top
of the divine mountain in the north, where the pole is represented in
their mythology by the great reed which saved their progenitors from
the waters of the deluge in the region of the stars which never set
(Matthews, “The Navajo Mythology,” American Antiquarian, 1883,
p. 208). The Ainus descended from the region of the bears, which was
at the summit of the very lofty mountains in the north—that is, at the
pole. They likewise claim to derive their origin from the bear as their
mother and the dog as their father, which can be read astronomically.
The she-bear took the place of the female hippopotamus, the original
great mother of the Egyptians, whose constellation was the Great Bear.
The dog represents the earlier jackal, the zoötype of Sut or Anup, as
Apuat the guide of ways. The jackal = the dog in the planisphere of
Denderah still remains a figure of the pole. One of the mythical
Chinese emperors, Hwang-ti, was born in the bear-country and
inherited the bear, the original type of which, as male, was the hippopotamus of Sut, the first deity of a pole-star. Hwang-ti was the first
celestial builder, the first to construct an astronomical instrument.
He is said to have been the inventor of wheeled carts; hence his name
of Hien Yuan. Now Sut, in the male hippopotamus, as already
explained, was the primal power of the pole-star; he was the inventor
of astronomy, and first of the seven who heaped the mound and made
his seat upon it. He was the first of all the star-gods, and was the
fixed one at the centre of the revolution or hub of the wheel, and
therefore the inventor of the wheel. The Dyak chief whose name
denoted “the bear of heaven” may be claimed to have been a
descendant from the celestial bear, whose title was consequently
astronomical and not simply totemic (C. Brooke, Ten Years in
Sarawak, vol. I, 189). The bear and wolf clans of the Iroquois
descend from the primal pair who were represented by the great bear
as mother and the jackal = wolf or prairie-dog as her son and consort.
The types of totemism had attained to a celestial setting in the
astronomical mythology. They were no longer merely of the earth,
but also represented the “big brothers” in the sky, from whom
descent was claimed by the totemic groups. These were the bear
that lived again in future food, the serpent that renewed itself, the
panes bird that never died, the turtle of eternity, and other types of
superhuman powers that were constellated round the pole of heaven.
Thence came the races that descended from their stations in the
mount, or from the circumpolar paradise, as the bears (or hippopotami)
and crocodiles, the jackals (or dogs) and apes, the swans and tortoises,
each from the mount according to the period. In Greece the Meropes
were the people of the thigh, and the thigh or leg of heaven was a
figure of the pole: thus the birthplace of a stellar race was figured in
the meshken of the “thigh,” the group of stars now represented in
the northern heaven by the lady of the seat or chair in the constellation Cassiopeia. One title of the pole was the Mount of the Khuti,
or Mount Khuti. Thence the Khuti or Guti would supply a race-
THE WORLD’S GREAT YEAR
627
name of lofty lineage for those who dated their descent from Mount
Khuti. The Egyptian Khuti came to be looked upon as seven divine
ancestors who did not originate as spirits of human beings, but were
the ancestors of Ra. Now there is a Mount Gudi = Khuti in the
north-east of Babylonia, and an ancient widely-spread tradition affirms
that when the deluge was over the ark of Noah rested on this mount.
The name is obviously one with that of the Guti or Khuti of the
tablets; whence the gutim and the Hebrew goim as a name for
mankind, and also for the mountain of mankind. Again, Mount
Shennu is another title of the pole as the mount of the Shennin, who
were spirits or gods of the highest order, and who might be called the
upper seven, from whom we should derive the Japanese and Chinese
Shin and Shintu gods, which were originally seven, as were the Shennin round the pole or mount of the Most High in Egypt. Various
difficulties that have been felt regarding the other world of Homer
can be met and vanquished when we know from whence the system
of Greek mythology was derived. The double paradise, one in the
subterranean Amenta and one in the celestial garden of the gods,
will explain the duality of the Homeric other world. Hades proper,
like Amenta is beneath the earth; the happy other world of the dead
is across the “divine sea” or okeanos, the celestial water of the Kamite
Nun. Hesiod in the Theogony describes the Greek Tartarus as being
“in a recess of earth having broad ways,” which can be identified with
the dark parts of Amenta. The mount of the immortals called Olympus
is one with Mount Hetep in the Egyptian representation. Hence the
Kimmerians of Homer may be derived from the Egyptian Khemi or
Akhemu, the dwellers in the northern heaven, whether as neversetting stars or spirits of the glorified—that is, the Khuti. The city of
the Kimmerians in the north is described as being covered with
shadow and vapour. The sun does not behold them when he goes
toward the starry heaven, nor when he turns back again from heaven
to earth. It is always night in the land of the Kimmeroi. It was
after sunset that the vessel reached the extreme boundary where stood
the city of the Kimmerians (Odyssey, books 11 and 12). The Akhemu
are the souls of the dead, or the never-setting stars that circle round
about the northern pole of heaven, but not in the arctic regions of the
earth nor on the horizon of the north. The dead were those who
voyaged in the bark of heaven for the city of the Akhemu at the
summit of the pole. When the Osiris deceased has attained the summit
at the head of Aarru, he exclaims, “I stand erect in the bark which
the god is piloting . . . and the Akhemu (stars or spirits) open to me,
and my fellow-citizens present to me the sacred cakes with flesh”
(Rit., ch. 98). In another chapter the speaker says, “I arrive at my
own city.” This was the city of the glorious ones who had risen to
the region of the Akhemu-Seku or never-setting stars. And this, it
has now to be suggested, was the city of the mythical Kimmeroi.
The voyage was the same in the Greek, the Irish, or Assyrian legends
as in the Egyptian astro-mythos. And as the Khemi or Akhemu
were the northerners in this polar sense, the same origin may well
account for the people of the north, in Chaldea, Japan, or Britain, being
named the Kami, the Kimmeroi, or the Kymry, who derived their
628
ANCIENT EGYPT
northern name on earth from that celestial birthplace in the northern
heaven. Lastly, the dragon-mound was known to the Druids as a
type in the astronomical mythology. Thence came the Dracontiae
and the serpent-mounds of Britain, which, it may be feasibly inferred,
were heaped up as images of the pole and its station when a Draconis
became the pole-star about 4,000 years B.C.
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF
AMENTA
BOOK X
WHEN roughly classified, the myths and legends generally show
two points of departure for migrations of the human race, as these
were rendered in the stellar and solar mythology. One is from the
summit of the celestial mount, the other from the hollow under-world
beneath the mount or inside the earth. The races that descended
from the mount were people of the pole whose starting-point in
reckoning time was from one or other station of the pole-star,
determinable by its type, whether as the tree, the rock, or other image
of a first point of departure. Those who ascended from the netherworld were of the solar race who came into existence with the sun as
it is represented in the legendary lore, that is, when the solar mythos
was established. The tradition of the pole-star people found in
various countries is that they were born when no sun or moon as yet
had come into existence. That is, they were pre-solar and pre-lunar
in their reckoning of time. These are they, as was said by the
Egyptians, who issued from the eye of Sut, or Darkness, the earliest
type of which we reckon to have been Polaris, whether as the polestar in the southern or the northern heaven. These were the Nahsi
and the Blackheads of the dim beginnings in the stellar mythology.
Following them, come the people born from the eye of Horus, which
was a symbol of the moon. These were held to be the lunar race.
Lastly came the children of the sun. Thus, the eye as symbol of a
repeating period was stellar as the eye of Sut; it was lunar as the
eye of Horus; it was solar as the eye of Ra. In the stellar mythos
men descended from the summit of the mount, which was an image of
the pole. And still in legendary lore they try to tell us from which
of the seven stations they descended as a time-gauge in the prehistoric reckoning of their beginnings. But in the solar mythos they
ascended from the under-world which had been hollowed out beneath
the mount of earth for the passage of the sun. Thus there are two
points of departure in the astronomical mythography, one from above
and one from below. The oldest races that have kept the reckonings
are descended from one or other of the seven stations in the
mountain of the north, and in the later mythos men ascended from
the earth below, or from below the earth; the human ascent being
figured in the upward pathway of the sun. These were the solar race
630
ANCIENT EGYPT
who followed the lunar and stellar people of the past. These, when
born in Egypt, were the children of the sun-god Atum, who became
the Hebrew Adam as the father of the human race.
Before Amenta was created by the excavator Ptah within the
nether earth there was no typical ascent of man. Indeed there were
no men until the time of Tum, since which time the race has been
considered human. When the sun-god Ra arose up from the earth,
or from the Lotus, as the father of created man, or man the
mortal, the legend of the human ascent was established. In the
“creation” of Atum, instead of being reckoned as the offspring of the
old First Mother or the group of the seven pre-solar gods, men
became the children of Ra, who are said to have come into existence
as tears from his eye, or as germs of an elemental soul proceeding
from the solar god. Stars were the children of Ra the sun-god in
the solar mythos. Souls were the offspring of Ra the holy spirit in
the eschatology; and here we may possibly delve down to one of the
tap-roots of the legendary “Exodus.” The stars were looked on as a
race of beings having souls of light that emanated from the sun. To
these the solar race, as human beings, were affiliated by means of the
totemic types, which included the crocodile of Sebek, the beast of
Bes, the hawk of Horus, the scarabeus of Kheper. Hence it is said
by the god Ra to the righteous in Amenta, “You yourselves are tears
of mine eye in your person of superior men. I have shed abroad my
seed for you” (Book of Hades, 5th division, D). These were the seed of
Ra, who, as figured, were born like a tear from his eye, as a mode of
effluence, and being solar they were the superior race of men, the
Ruti, or men par excellence. Under the name of Khabsu in Egyptian
the stars are synonymous with souls. These in their nightly rising
from Amenta were the images of souls becoming glorified. They
came forth in their thousands and tens of thousands from the lower
Egypt of the astronomical mythos, the earliest exodus being stellar.
Thus we can realise the leader Shu, who stands upon the height of
heaven, rod in hand, and who was imaged in the constellation
Kepheus as the Regulus or law-giver at the pole.
In the “Destruction of Mankind” the stars are said to be “the
multitudes which live in the nocturnal sky.” In this under-world
Taht, the moon-god, is called the luminary of Ra “in the inferior
heaven,” and in the deep region where he “inscribes the inhabitants”;
and it is said to him, “Thou art the keeper of those who do evil,
whom my heart abhors” (pl. C., lines 65-70). Taht was the reckoner
of the stars here called the inhabitants of the nocturnal heaven, or sky
of Amenta, whose names or numbers were inscribed by him, possibly
as six hundred stars, which number was extended by the Jewish
Kabalists to their six hundred thousand souls in Guph. Be this as it
may, here are the souls in Amenta represented by stars as inhabitants
of the under-world. And in the new creation by Atum-Ra, god of the
nocturnal sun, they are spoken of as “these multitudes of men.” Ra
orders that his heaven shall be depicted as a field of rest, and there
arose the elysian fields or paradise of plenty on Mount Hetep. In
this new heaven, says Ra, “I establish as inhabitants all the beings
which are suspended in the sky, the stars! said by the majesty of
Ra (to Nut), I assemble there the multitudes that they may celebrate
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 631
thee, and there arose the multitudes.” These multitudes as stars had
been the inhabitants in the deep region of the inferior sky. Ra
having been “lifted up” as god alone in this new heaven of the
astronomical mythos, the stars that were in the lower are to be
assembled and grouped together in the upper heaven. This is
followed by the stellar exodus from “lower Egypt and the desert of
Amenta” under the leadership of Shu-Anhur, the uplifter of the sky
together with its inhabitants, the stars, called the children of Nut, or
heaven. It is said by Ra “my own son Shu, take with thee my daughter
Nut, and be the guardian of the multitudes which live in the nocturnal
sky,” or the sky in the lower Egypt of Amenta; “put them on thy
head and be their fosterer,” or sustainer. (Pl. B, line 42.) Then, as
said in the hymn to the god Shu, “Uplifted is the sky which he
maintains with his two arms” as “king of Upper and Lower Egypt”
in his new character of Shu-si-Ra, who, in the solar mythos, had
become the son of Ra. In the Ritual, ch. 110, heaven is described
as the mansion of Shu, “the mansion of his stars,” which was nightly
renewed as “the beautiful creation which he raiseth up.”
We have now delved down to an origin for the Egyptian exodus in
the stellar mythos. Shu was the uplifter of the sky under his name of
Anhur with his rod. As raiser of the firmament he uplifts the starry
host or multitude of beings known as the offspring of Nut, or later,
the seed of Ra, or later still, the children of Ra. These were previously the dwellers in the lower Egypt of the mythos who are to be
set free from this realm of darkness and gathered together in the land
of light, the starry heaven of Nut on high. Their deliverer was ShuAnhur, the leader up to Heaven, with his rod, as “repeller of the
dragon coming out of the abyss.” (p. 2, lines 5 and 6.) This exodus
belongs to the rendering in the mythology, and underlies the Periem-hru or coming forth to day according to the Book of the Dead, in
which the mythos has become the mould of the eschatology. The
resurrection of souls has taken the place of the stars in the stellar, and
of the sun in the solar mythos. The exodus was now the coming
forth of the Manes from “Egypt and the desert” as localities in the
mysteries of Amenta. This was then made geographical and practical
by literalization in that exodus of the Israelites from the land of the
Pharaohs which has hitherto passed as biblical history.
In reviewing M. Renan’s work on Israel, a recent writer asks, what
then is the origin and significance of the exodus and its attendant
plagues and prodigies? “When did they come, where or when were
they invented? The monuments are never likely to tell us.” No, not
if we are looking for the Palestinian Jews in Egypt as an ethnological
entity, or for the ancient Egyptian fables as biblical facts. But when
we get clear of that cloud of iridescent dust which the Jewish writings
have interposed betwixt us and the monuments, we shall find they do
tell us more or less what was the origin of the wonderful tale by
which the world has been beguiled so blindly through mistaking
verifiable myth for God’s own historic word. The sufferings of the
Chosen People in Egypt and their miraculous exodus out of it
belong to the celestial allegory of the solar drama that was performed
in the mysteries of the divine nether-world, and had been performed
as a mythical representation ages before it was converted into a
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ANCIENT EGYPT
history of the Jews by the literalizers of the ancient legends. The
tale of the ten plagues of Egypt contains an esoteric version of the
tortures inflicted on the guilty in the ten hells of the under-world.
We have seen somewhat of the descent of mankind from a celestial
birthplace that was constellated as an enclosure on the mountain of
the pole. We have now to trace the ascent from the regions of the
nether-earth, which, as Egyptian, is an exodus from Lower Egypt
and the “desert” of Amenta. We shall have to make the journey
through this nether-earth once more in following the exodus of the
Israelites from Egypt in the character of the manes issuing from
Amenta. The legend of the exodus or coming forth to-day, like
those of the creation, the deluge, and the lost paradise in the book
of Genesis, belongs to that mythology which underlies and is the
source of all the märchen and the folk-lore of the world. The clue,
as will be shown, has been preserved in what is commonly termed the
wisdom of the ancients, which we hold to be Egyptian in its origin and
derivative on all the other lines of its descent. We find the mythos,
the legends, and the folk-tales of the world are all involved in the
Egyptian wisdom, and the Hebrew traditions are demonstrably the
débris of Egyptian myth and eschatology. But, of all the various
versions of the coming forth or exodus from out the under-world, not
one has caused such deep perplexity as this of Israel issuing from
Egypt, in which the mythos has been misappropriated and converted
into an ethnical history. As Egyptian, it was not pretended that the
children of Ra were ethnical, or that the mysteries of Amenta were
transactions in the earth of time.
The way up from Amenta was variously portrayed as an ascent by
means of steps; by scaling a mount, or by climbing a tree, a grapevine, a reed, a bean-stalk, or a papyrus reed. In the legends of many
races we find the tradition of a deliverance from some subterranean
dwelling-place which was their primeval home. This exodus from
the under-world is common in the märchen of the red men. With
the Lenni Lenape Indians, the beginning was in a subterranean
abode up out of which they were led by the wolf as their chief
totemic zoötype. Now, the wolf is an equivalent for the jackal. In
Egyptian the wolf and jackal (Seb) are synonymous; and the jackal
was the guide of roads in Amenta who led the people through its
wilderness, and showed a way for them to ascend into the world of
light. All the myths and legends of an under-world depend upon
there being an under-world, or nether-earth, and this again depends on
there being a double-earth which was hollowed out by the God who
represented the nocturnal sun for the passage through the mount of
earth by night, and who as Egyptian was Ptah, the founder of
Amenta.
In the Mandan tradition of their origin, it is related that the whole
nation once resided in one large village underground beside a
subterraneous lake. A grape-vine extended its roots down to their
habitation, and gave them an upward view of the light. Some of
the more adventurous spirits climbed up the vine, and found themselves in a lovely region full of buffaloes, and rich with every kind of
fruit. From this they returned with the grapes they had gathered,
like the men who had gone forth to spy out the land in another
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 633
version of the mythos. Their fellow-countrymen were so delighted
with the taste of their newly-found fruit that men, women, and
children determined to leave their lower earth and ascend to the
upper by means of the grape-vine. But when the people were
about half-way, a corpulent woman who was clambering up the vine
broke it with her weight. This closed the aperture upon herself and
the rest of the nation, and shut out the light of the sun. But when
the Mandans die, they expect to return to this, the original country
of their forefathers, the good reaching the ancient village of the vine
by means of the lake which the wicked will not be able to cross by
reason of the burden of their sins (Lewis and Clarke). This land of
the forefathers was that of the ancestral spirits, the country of the tree
of life, here identified with the vine. The subterranean lake is
one with the lake in Tattu. The corpulent woman is the Great
Mother, who was the enceinte Apt or Hathor in Egypt, whose tree is
the sycamore-fig. The double-earth is the same as in the Ritual.
Consequently the vine is the tree of dawn up which the sun and
souls ascended from the Tuat by means of the tree. The exodus
from the nether-earth, or Lower Egypt, is the same as in the Hebrew
and other versions of the mythos, the original of which is provably
Egyptian. The Quiché “Popul Vuh” portrays the ancestors of the
race as wanderers in the wilderness upon their way to the place
where the sun was to rise. They also crossed the water, which
divided whilst they passed, and which they went through just as if
there had been no sea. They passed on the scattered rocks rolled on
the sands, that served for stepping-stones. This is why the place was
called “ranged stones and torn-up sands,” the name that was given
to it on their passage through the waters that divided as they went.
“At last they came to a mountain where, as they had been told, they
were to see the sun rise for the first time” (Bancroft, vol. iii. p. 51).
This was the mount of glory in the solar mythos, and the waters
which were crossed were those of the celestial Nun. The “ranged
stones” in the waters correspond to the twelve stones that were set
up by Joshua to mark the spot where the waters were held up for the
Israelites to pass dry-footed through the river Jordan. In the
Hawaiian tradition the king of the country, named Honua-i-lalo, was
the oppressor of the Menehune people.
Their god Kane sent
Kane-Apua and Kanaloa the elder brother to bring away the
oppressed people, and take them to a land which Kane their god had
given them. The legend further tells how they came to the Red
Sea of Kane, Kai-ula-a-Kane, and were pursued by Ke-Alii
Wahanui. Thereupon Kane-Apua and Kanaloa prayed to Lono,
and then they waded safely through the sea, and wandered in the
desolate wilderness until at last they reached the promised land of
Kane, called “Aina-Lauena-a-Kane.” This, says Fornander, is an
ancient legend, which also contains the story of water being made to
gush forth from a rock (Fornander, An Account of the Polynesian
Race).
The passage of the Red Sea and the destruction of those who
follow the fugitives are also found in a Hottentot fable. HeitsiEibib was once travelling with a great number of his people, when
they were pursued by the enemy. On arriving at the water which
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ANCIENT EGYPT
had to be crossed as the only way of escape, the leader said, “My
grandfather’s father! open thyself that I may pass through, and close
thyself afterwards.” So it took place as he had said, and they
crossed the water safely. Then the pursuing enemy tried to pass
through the opening likewise, but when they were in the midst of the
divided water it closed upon them and they perished. (Bleek,
Hottentot Fables, p. 75.) In this the personification of the water as
the first father, God the grandfather, is in accordance with the Egyptian
Nnu or celestial water, who is represented as the primordial male
divinity, the father of the fathers, including Ra the solar god. The
Nnu or Nun identifies the water as celestial, and it is this that divides
to let the sun-god and his followers pass through dryshod. These
in the Ritual are pursued by the Apap and the Sebau to the edge
of the horizon. Then the water of day overwhelms the powers of
darkness, and Apap the dragon with all his evil host are overthrown,
submerged, and drowned in the waters of the lower Nun (Rit., ch. 39).
They are described in the “Magic Papyrus” as the “immerged,” who
do not “pass,” or go along, but remain floating on the waters like
dead bodies drifting on the inundation; with their mouths for ever
shut and sealed (Records, vol. x, 151). In another version of the
Hottentot legend a Nama woman and her brothers are pursued by an
elephant. “Stone of my ancestors,” cry the fleeing ones, “divide
for us.” The stone opens and they pass. The pursuer used the same
words, and the rock opened for him also, but it closed on the elephant
and crushed it to death (Bleek, Hottentot Fables, pp. 64, 65). The
fable can be read by means of the Egyptian wisdom. It belongs to
the war that was waged for ever betwixt the powers of darkness and
light. In the Egyptian mythos the pursuing monster as the Apapdragon of the deep, in place of the elephant, pursues the children of
light who are escaping from the under-world. They reach the rock
of the horizon or the Tser-hill, which opens for the “coming forth”
and closes again when the pursued ones have passed through in safety.
Shu = Moses stands upon the rock to smite it with his rod, with the
result that the waters of day gush forth in light. This is the water of
heaven set flowing from the rock of the horizon for those who are
followed by the Apap-reptile of darkness and consuming drought.
The sun-god in the Ritual staggers forth upon the mount with many
wounds, but Apap is caught and crushed and cut up piecemeal in the
place appointed for the dragon to be drowned in the red lake of the
mythos (Rit., ch. 39). Through this Red Sea the follows of Ra, of
Heitsi-Eibib, or Jehovah, pass in triumph on their way to the land
of promise on the mount of glory. But the hosts of evil are continually overthrown.
The starting-point of the Mangaian migration was from Savaiki in
the shades. The natives of the Penrhyns speak of going down to
Savaiki in death, and they say their first ancestors came up as heavenbursters from the same country. All such origins are mythical, not
historical or geographical, although the mystical land gets localised
on the surface of the earth as it is in the heptanomis of the Hervey
Isles. Savaiki was known as the home of the ancestors, but the only
ancestors first known were the ancestral spirits, and it was these as
manes that sought deliverance from the under-world. In one of
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 635
the traditions the Egyptians were reputed to come from the land of
Puanta, the Ta-neter or country of the gods, the land of glory, or the
golden land. When it is said to the sun-god, “Adoration to thee who
arisest out of the golden,” it means out of Puanta, the nether-land of
dawn (Rit., ch. 15, hymn 1). This land of the gods as a mythical
locality was in the under-world, not on the surface of our earth; it is
not the Puanta that was geographical in the south. The people from
Puanta, the land of the gods, are those who had a solar origin. They
issue from the land of glory with the sun. The gods and the glorified
came up from this divine land when they emerged from Puanta in the
Orient.
One title of the first chapter in the Ritual is “The chapter of
introducing the mummy into the Tuat on the day of burial.” This
applies to the mummy interred on earth, and also to the Osiris or
manes in Amenta, who was figured in the mummy-form. The Tuat
is a place of entrance to and egress from the under-world. And in the
Pyramid Texts (Pepi, I. 185) those who are in the Tuat are called the
Tuata. Now, as the Tuat was in Tanen, the land (ta) beneath the
waters of the Nen, they are the Tuata-Tanen, in whom we propose to
identify the Irish mythical heroes or divine ancestors called the
Tuatha de Danan. In the oldest account of the Tuatha it is said
they came from heaven. Therefore their origin was not human. In
issuing from the Tuat of Amenta they came from the lower paradise
of two from which they brought the wisdom and the symbols of the
Egyptians as their sacred treasures, including the four precious things
belonging to the Tuatha de Danan. The Tuatha are described as
the gods and the not-gods, a title that exactly corresponds to the
Egyptian two classes of spirits called the gods and glorified. According to Giraldus in his Topographia Hibernia, it was a guess of the
learned that the Tuatha “were of the number of the exiles driven out
of heaven,” and if they were of those who came from the land of
promise and issued from the Tuat, they would come from the
subterranean Aarru or earthly paradise. The hills and mounds of
Erin are the places of entrance to and exit from the invisible world
of elfin-land, which answers to the hidden earth of the manes in
Amenta. When euhemerised by tradition, the Tuatha de Danan
are said to have retired into the hills and mounds after they were
utterly defeated in battle. In other legends Dagda and his sons were
once the rulers over this nether-land, and they are said to lie buried
there with “the síd or fairy-mound of the brugh as covering for their
resting-place” (Rhys). The brugh was originally the place of burial.
He who sleeps at Philae is he who sleeps in the brugh, the burgh, or
bury. The name written in hieroglyphics is Piruk = brugh, and
there the mummy slept in the burgh of Amenta, or with the
Tuata in the Tuat of the nether-world.
The divine mother
of the Tuatha is known by the name of Danan. The Tuatha are
the tribe or people of the goddess Danan, who is also the deëss
of death. Now, there is an Egyptian goddess Tanan who is a form of
Hathor = the amorous queen in the earth of Tanen, the land of the
nocturnal sun and the domain of the dead. The god Tanen is lord
of that land, and the goddess is identified with Hathor by her headdress. The name of Tanan may also be written Tann. This agrees
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ANCIENT EGYPT
with the naming of the Welsh and Irish goddess Danu or Danan.
Her names takes the form of Don in Welsh, and the deities who
descend from her, like Gwydion and Arianrhod, are called the children
of Don. The Tuatha de Danan are also termed the Fir Déa, or men of
the goddess. Hence we propose to identify the goddess Tanen with
Danan or Danu, the Great Mother of the Tuatha de Danan, who
were the people of the goddess as the souls of the dead in the divine
Neter-Kar, i.e. in Tanen, and who issued from the Tuat with the sun
or solar god as the men of the Goddess, who was Tanan in Egypt,
Danan in Ireland, and Don in Britain. The men of the goddess, as
we suggest, were the Tuata of the Pyramid Texts, who as divine
ancestors become the Irish Tuatha de Danan. The same word is
represented by the Irish Tuath for the tribe; Breton Tud, Gothic
Thiuda, Saxon Theod, for a people; the Oscan Tauta for a community;
it is also extant in the name of the Teutons. One of the chief attributes
of the Tuatha de Danan is the power they have of assuming any form
at will, and this is a supreme trait of those who come forth when the
Tuat is opened (Rit., ch. 2). Chapter 64 is the one by which the Tuata
take all forms that each desireth, whether on entering or coming forth
from this womb of Amenta. The transformation of the manes
has come to be called shape-shifting, but there is no beginning with it
as a faculty of the wizards in Ireland. There are various hints in the
Irish fairy-lore of the Tuatha de Danan being one with the spirits of
the dead. Their relation to the prehistoric mounds is the same as
that of the Tuata with the mount of Amenta. There is also a still
prevailing confusion in the Irish mind betwixt the fairies and the
ghosts, which is very natural when we know that the fairies originated
in the spirits of the elements which have got mixed up with the
manes of the dead. According to Cæsar, the Druids taught the
Gauls that they were all descended from Dis Pater, the Demiurge—
that is, from the god of Hades or Amenta, who is Tanan as consort
of the goddess, and whose name was taken by Ptah-Tanan, the better
known Dis Pater, who was earlier than Osiris in the Egyptian cult,
and from whom the solar race ascended, whether from Puanta or from
the Tuat. Thus interpreted, the Tuatha or tribes who brought the
ancient wisdom out of Lower Egypt or the Tuat may have been
genuine Egyptians after all, as the much-derided traditions of the
Keltæ and the Kymry yet allege and strenuously maintain. “The
oasis of Tuaut” is another bit of ancient Egypt still surviving in the
country of Morocco, where it testifies, like some strange boulder on
the surface, to the buried past.
The birthplace of the stellar races was in the celestial north. The
solar race were they who came forth from the East. In going down
to Amenta, as manes, they were the westerners; in coming forth they
are the easterners. Thus, when we are told that Abraham came from Ur
of the Kasdim, or the Magi, which was his birthplace, that goes far
to identify him as a solar god, just as Laban, the white one, was a
lunar deity, and Ur a mythical locality. Ur is an Egyptian name for
that which is eldest, first, great, principal. The course of the sun-god
by day is reckoned to run from Ta-Ur to Am-Ur, i.e. from east to
west. Ta-Ur then is Egyptian for the land of the east, and the migration
thence is solar, that is—mythical,—and would be astronomical when the
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 637
birthplace is designated “Ur of the Kasdim” or Chaldees. Ur of the
Kasdim is self-identified by name with the Magi, astrologers or
astronomers. Moreover, the frequent coupling of Ur and Martu in
the astrological tablets points to Ur as a name for the east being
juxtaposed to Martu for the west, “Ur and Martu” meaning east
and west, and not Ur a city on earth and Martu a quarter in the
heavens.
It has been pointed out by translators that various place-names in
the Egyptian Book of the Dead denote celestial localities, and are not
geographical. They are names in the astronomical mythology which
had been first derived from Egypt on earth, that were afterwards
applied to Upper Egypt in heaven and Lower Egypt in Amenta. The
heaven above and Amenta below were divided into Upper and Lower
Egypt. The Egyptian cities of Thinis, Hermopolis, Memphis, Thebes,
Annu, and others were repeated in the planisphere as mythical localities which furnish place-names for the eschatology in the Ritual.
When Osiris triumphs, and “joy goeth its round in Thinis,” that is
the celestial, not the earthly city (Rit., ch. 18). When the deceased
in Amenta exclaims, “May Sekhet the Divine One lift me up so that
I may arise in heaven and issue my behest in Memphis” (Rit., ch. 26),
it is the heavenly Memphis, the celestial Ha-ka-Ptah, or spirit house of
Ptah, the enclosure of the white wall on high, that is meant. When
the priest says in the first chapter of the Ritual, “I baptize with
water in Tattu, and anoint with oil in Abydos,” the scene of the
baptism is in Amenta, not on earth. Rekhet, the place where the
two divine sisters waited and wept for the lost Osiris, was a
locality in the earth of eternity, but Rekhet was also geographical
in Egypt.
At first the localities, as Egyptian, were topographical, next they
were constellated as uranographical, and finally they constituted a
double Egypt of the other world in the earth and heaven of
eternity.
The Egyptian Exodus is a mystery of Amenta. It is described in
the Ritual as the Peri-em-heru or “coming forth to day” from “the
Hades of Egypt and the desert” (Records, vol. x. p. 109). Thus
when Horus comes forth in his resurrection it is said that “Egypt
and the desert are at peace” (Rit., ch. 183). Egypt and the desert
were the two parts in the double-earth that was divided between Sut
and Horus, betwixt whom was internecine war that only ended
temporarily at the coming of the prince of peace who came to
set the prisoners free from the land of bondage, of drought
and darkness, of Apap and the plagues of Egypt in the underworld.
The sufferers depicted in the mythos were at first the stars that
fell down headlong into the abyss to be swallowed by the dragon,
of whom it is said, “Eternal Devourer is his name” (Rit., ch. 17).
This was in the astronomical mythology. In the eschatology the
prisoners are the manes or body-souls of the dead who passed into
Amenta, the earth of eternity, as it were by way of the grave.
Both were the children of light, mythical or eschatological,
otherwise the children of Ra, at war for ever with the creatures of
darkness in the nether-earth. The exodus or coming forth from
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ANCIENT EGYPT
this nether Egypt is represented astronomically on the great Mendes
Stele. On one side Horus Behutet, the great god, lord of heaven
and giver of life, is described as coming “out of the horizon on the
side of Upper Egypt,” and on the other side of the Stele “the coming
out of Lower Egypt” is spoken of instead. That is the exodus from
Kheb or Lower Egypt, which is Amenta in the eschatology (Records,
vol. viii. 91). This is the exodus from Egypt of the lower earth
according to the representation in the solar mythos that preceded
the version in the eschatology by which it was followed and enforced.
In the making of Amenta the Egyptians mapped out Egypt in the
nether-world in accordance with Egypt on earth, only on a vaster
scale. They had their Lower and Upper Egypts in the other life as
they had in this. But Khebt, the Egyptian original of the Greek
Eguptos, is more expressly the Lower Egypt, hence the lower of the
two Egypts in the mythical representation. This was the Egypt
below, through which the nocturnal sun and the souls of the
deceased passed on their way up to the land of liberty and light.
This was the Egypt where the Lord (as Osiris, or the elder Horus)
was crucified in the Tat (Rev. xl. 8), or where the solar god suffered
his mortal agony, his death and burial; the Egypt from which he
rose again. Here was the wilderness of the wanderings during the
forty days of the Egyptian Lent, which represented the forty days of
the seed that was buried in the earth to attain the new life in the
regermination of Osiris, which forty days were disguised as forty
years in the historic version of the Jewish exodus. It is unfortunate
and humiliating to us as a nation that Egyptology and Assyriology
in England should have first fallen into the hands of devout believers
in the biblical “history.” Archæology had to call itself “biblical”
in order that a society might be founded for the study of Egyptology
and Assyriology, and Egyptian exploration was for a long time
limited to looking for “biblical sites” in Egypt, which are only to be
met with as mythical localities in Amenta. Nor is this mania of the
historic-minded yet entirely extinct!
Jewish or Gentile commentators who know nothing of the astronomical mythology, or the
Egyptian origin of the Hebrew legends, have never been able to
apply the comparative method to these writings. There is but one
Egypt for them. But there was another Lower Egypt, another Red
Sea, another dragon, another deliverance from Rahab and the Apapmonster, and another exodus, which have not hitherto been taken into
account by the Hebraists. It was not to Egypt topographically that
the ransomed of the Lord were to return singing the songs of Zion.
There is another and a truer version of these mystical matters
possible, even as there was of old.
The creation of Amenta in the Egyptian mythos has been already
explained as the work of Ptah and the seven Knemmu or navvies
who were his assistants in opening up the under-world, and who in
the Hebrew rendering become the seven princes that digged the well,
referred to in one of the fragments of ancient lore (Num. xxi. 18),
which seven princes in the Semitic legends are identified with the
chariot of the Lesser Bear. Amenta was a second terra firma
for the souls of the departed, a mental fulcrum to the eye of
faith laid on the physical foundation of the solar mythology for
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 639
those who travelled the eternal road. Thus the origin of the
exodus, as Egyptian, was in the coming forth of the heavenly
bodies from below the horizon in the mythical representation.
This was followed by the coming forth of the manes from dark
to day, from death to life, from bondage to liberty, from Lower
to Upper Egypt in the eschatology. In the coming forth of the
Israelites from “the Hades of Egypt and the desert,” it is said
the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud, to lead them
the way; and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light: that they
might go by day and by night: the pillar of cloud by day, and the
pillar of fire by night departed not from before the people” (Ex. xiii.
21, 22). It is possible that the zodiacal light supplied a natural image
for the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire described in the book of
Exodus. The zodiacal light is a phenomenon visible in Egypt at
certain seasons of the year. It is seen as a conical pillar of cloud
towards the east in the morning, just before sunrise, and towards the
west at sunset. In the pale light of dawn it is a pillar of cloud, and
in the ruddy glow of sundown it becomes a veritable pillar of fire.
It is said of the Great One God, “the living one, who liveth everlastingly,” and who was Atum-Huhi in his temple at On, “He
traverseth the heavens, and compasseth the nether-world each day;
he travels in the cloud to separate heaven and earth, and again to
unite them”—that is, at morn and evening in making the passage
of Amenta. The “Lord of the Cloud” is also addressed as the
guide of navigation. The flame of the sun is the protection of
those who cross the double-earth. He who “commands heaven causes
his disk to appear in the desert” (Rit., 99). “He who purifies the
water” “appears on the liquid abyss” (101). “He marches for the
dead; for those who are overturned” (l.). The opening chapters
of the Book of the Dead are called the Peri-em-hru or coming
forth to day. In other words, this was the Kamite exodus of the
manes from Amenta in the eschatological phase of the mythos,
which has been converted by literalization into the “history” found
in the book of Exodus. The Hebrew märchen are the legendary
remains of the Egyptian mythos, whether in the book of Genesis or
the book of Exodus. The “coming forth to day” with which the
Ritual opens is the Egyptian exodus, and the Hebrew exodus is
likewise the coming forth to day.
An entrance to the mythical Amenta, previously shown, was
localized at Abydos as the cleft or the mouth of the rock, a narrow
gorge in the Libyan range of hills. Opposite this entrance stood the
temple of Osiris Khent-Amenta, a name which denotes the opening
to the interior of Amenta. Through this gorge the solar bark passed
into the mountain of the west, and bore the image of the dying solar
god on board. Once a year also there was a feast of the dead, or, as
we have it in survival, of All Souls, and there came a funeral flotilla
to the mouth of the cleft on one of the first nights of the year. This
answers in the mythos to the starting-point in time of the Jewish
exodus as history, in the first month of the year.
Two ways of entering the other world are represented in two
different categories of the ancient legend, both of which are derived
from the same fundamental origin. One is by means of the dividing
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ANCIENT EGYPT
waters, the other by means of the passage that opens and closes in
the earth at evening or in the equinox. In the Egyptian mythos the
entrance to Amenta is both by land and water. The god on board
the solar bark, or the children of Ra = Israel on board the bark of souls,
passed through the cloven rock by water. Previously the water had
to be divided for the travellers to pass. But the waters thus divided
were celestial, being mythical. They are the waters divided by
Shu-Anhur with his rod as leader of the manes from Amenta up to
heaven. It is not written in the Old Testament what the Lord did
for Israel in the vale of Arnon, but the Targum of Jerusalem tells us
that when the Beni-Israel were passing through the gorge or defile,
the Moabites were hidden in the caverns of the valley, intending to
rush out and slay them. But the Lord signed to the mountains, and
they literally laid their heads together to prevent it; they closed
upon the enemy with a clap, and crushed the chiefs of the mighty
ones, so that the valleys were overflowed with the blood of the slain.
Meanwhile Israel walked over the tops of the hills, and knew not the
miracle and the mighty act which the Lord was doing in the valley
of the Arnon. Thus the miracle of the Red Sea was reversed. In
the one case the waters stood up in heaps and were turned into hills;
in the other the solid hills flowed down and were fused, whilst Israel
passed over them as if they were a level plain. In the one miracle
the Red Sea was turned into dry ground; in the other the dry ground
was turned into a red sea of blood. The hills that rushed together
to make a level plain are a familiar figure of the equinox, to be found
in varied forms of legendary lore (Book of Beginnings, vol. ii.
pp. 356-357). This account therefore is as good as the biblical
one, and it tends to prove that both belong to the astronomical
mythos, and that the crossing here was in the equinox.
In the mythos of Amenta the promised land of plenty, the land of
corn and wine and oil, was the Aarru-field of divine harvest that
awaited the righteous who had been wanderers in the wilderness and
who fought their way to it through all the obstacles of the underworld. These obstacles can still be traced in the Jewish narrative
compared with the books of Amenta and the mysteries of Taht. All
through the journey of this Egypt underground, the objects besought
and fervently prayed for are a good passage through the waters and
all other hindrances, and a safe way out upon the eastern side, where
lay the promised land. One great object of the manes in knowing the
words of great magical power in Amenta is to obtain command over
the waters. The deceased prays that he may have command over the
waters which he has to pass through, even as Sut had command
of force on the “night of the great disaster” (Rit., chs. 57 and 62).
These waters are the Red Sea of the Jewish exodus, in which the
Apap-dragon lurks and lies in wait. The later scholiasts tell us that
the habitation of this monster was the Red Sea. Thus the Red Sea
is identifiable with the lake of Putrata in which the dragon lurked
that lived upon the drowned, the dragon that was turned into the
cruel Pharaoh in the Hebrew version of the exodus.
It is evident that the Jews were in possession of an esoteric rendering of the same mystical matter as is presented exoterically in the
books ascribed to Moses. There were two versions of the dark
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 641
sayings and the hidden wisdom, the esoteric and the exoteric,
amongst them, as there were amongst the Egyptians, and these have
doubled the confusion. The Christian world has based its structure of
belief simply and solely on the exoteric version; thus the door of the
past just now being opened anew in Egypt was closed to them and
locked; they were left outside without the key, and in the darkness
of the grossest, crassest ignorance the Christian faith was founded.
We have now to recover such “history” as is possible from the
Pentateuch by eliminating the mythos and the eschatology. Fragments of the original mythos crop up in the Haggadoth, the Kabalah,
the Talmud, and other Hebrew writings, which tend to show that in
the earlier time and lowermost strata the same matter had been known
to the Jews themselves as non-historical. Thus it is provable and will
be proved that “biblical history” has been mainly derived from
misappropriated and misinterpreted mythology, and that the mythology
is demonstrably Egyptian which can only be explained in accordance
with the Egyptian wisdom. This is not to say that the books of
Genesis, Exodus, and Joshua are intentional forgeries, but that the
data were already more or less extant as subject-matter of the
mysteries, and that an exoteric version of the ancient wisdom has been
rendered in the form of historic narrative and ethnically applied to
the Palestinian Jews. The most learned of the Rabbis have most
truthfully and persistently maintained that the books attributed to
Moses do but contain an exoteric explanation of the secret wisdom,
though they may not trace the gnosis to its Egyptian source. The
chief teachers have always insisted on the allegorical nature of the
Pentateuch. Two laws, they tell us, were delivered to Moses on
Mount Sinai. One was committed to writing, as in the Pentateuch;
the other was transmitted orally from generation to generation, as is
acknowledged by the Psalmist when he says, “I will open my mouth
in a parable; I will utter dark sayings of old, which we have heard
and known and our fathers have told us.” Parables and dark sayings
of old are the allegories of mythology and enigmas of the ancient
wisdom uttered after the manner of the mysteries. Now the subject
of this psalm is the story of Israel in Egypt and the exodus from the
old dark land. The plagues of Egypt are described. “He set his sign
in Egypt; he turned their rivers into blood.” “He sent them swarms
of flies which devoured them, and frogs which destroyed them.”
He also gave their increase to the caterpillar and their labour to the
locust. He killed their vines with hail and their sycamore-trees with
frost, and “smote all the first-born in Egypt.” The coming forth is
also described. The Psalmist tells of the marvellous things that were
done “in the land of Egypt.” How the Lord “clove the sea” and
“caused them to pass through” whilst the waters were made “to stand
as an heap.” How he led them forth with a pillar of cloud by
day and of fire by night. How he clove the rock in the wilderness
“and gave them drink abundantly as out of the depths,” and “opened
the doors of heaven” and “rained down manna upon them to eat.”
This was heard and known orally as a tale that is told in dark sayings
of old which did not originate in the biblical history of the exodus.
They are “tried as silver is tried” in the refineries of the nether-earth.
They go “through fire and through water,” and are “brought out into
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a place of abundance” in the pleasant Aarru fields. This journey is
described in various psalms. “Working salvation in the midst of the
earth, thou didst divide (or break up) the sea by thy strength; thou
breakest the heads of the dragons in the waters. Thou breakest
the heads of Leviathan in pieces” (Ps. lxxiv. 12-14). In the Hebrew
Song of Moses we are in the same nether-earth, where the matter is
eschatological. The adversaries are the same opponents of the chosen
people—the same, that is, in the book of Deuteronomy as in the Book
of the Dead. Ezekiel (xx. 36) makes an allusion to “the wilderness
of the land of Egypt,” which points to the lower Egypt of the mythos in
Amenta. Egypt itself, as the land of the living, the cultivable land,
was the very opposite of the wilderness.
Amenta in the Book of Hades, and also in the Ritual, is described
as consisting of two parts, called “Egypt and the desert land or
wilderness.” This latter was the domain of Sut in the Osirian
mysteries. One part of the domain, named Anrutef, is self-described
as the place where nothing grows. It was a desert of fruitless, leafless, rootless sand, in which “there was no water for the people to
drink” or, if any, the water was made bitter or salt by the adversary
Sut or the Apap-dragon. The struggle of Sut and Horus (or Osiris)
in the desert lasted forty days, as these were commemorated in the forty
days of the Egyptian Lent, during which time Sut as the power of
drought and sterility made war on Horus in the water and the buried
germinating grain. Meantime “the flocks of Ra” were famishing for
lack of pasture and for want of water in the wilderness. These forty
days spent in the desert of the mythos have confessedly been extended
into the forty years of the history. They were the forty days of
suffering in the wilderness of the under-world which lay betwixt the
autumn and the vernal equinox. And when it is threatened by
Ihuh that only the children shall go forth with Joshua, it is said,
“Your children shall be wanderers in the wilderness even forty days,
for every day a year” (Num. xiv. 33, 34).
The lower Egypt of Amenta was a land of dearth and darkness to
the manes. It was the domain of Sut at the entrance in the west.
Here was the typical wilderness founded on the sands that environed
Egypt. Aarru or the garden far to the eastward was an oasis in the
desert ready for the manes who were fortunate enough to reach that
land of promise. The domain of Sut was a place of plagues; all the
terrors of nature were congregated there, including drought and
famine, fiery flying serpents and unimaginable monsters. There were
the hells of heat in which the waters were on fire; there were the
slime-pits, the blazing bitumen, and brimstone flames of Sodom and
Gomorrah. The desert of engulfing sands, the lakes of fire, and the
deluge of overwhelming waters had to be crossed, and all the powers
of death and hell opposed the passage of the glorified elect, the
chosen people of the Lord, who were bound for bliss in the land
where their redemption dawned upon the summit of the mount. This
then was the land of bondage where the manes were in direst need
of a deliverer. The typical tyrant and taskmaster in the Hebrew
“history” has never been identified on earth, and it may be somewhat
difficult to identify him in Amenta, but it is not impossible. The
devourer of the people in that land takes several forms. The Apap-
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 643
monster lies in wait and has to be encountered at the entrance to the
valley of the shadow of death. But there is one typical devourer.
The Red Sea is his dwelling-place, and “eternal devourer is his name.”
Another of his names is Mates, the hard, cruel, flinty-hearted. He is
described as having the skin of a man and the face of a hound. His
dwelling is in the red lake of fire, where he lives upon the shades of
the damned and eats the livers of princes. As he comes from the
Red Sea, his overthrowal is in the Red Sea, like the overwhelming of
Pharaoh and his host. The same typical devourer has another figure
in the judgment hall, where it is named Amemit. Here it has the
head of a crocodile. Where we might speak of the jaws of death, hell,
or destruction, the Egyptians said or showed the jaws of the crocodile. Those who are condemned to be devoured pass into the jaws
of the devourer. Thus the crocodile is the devourer, the typical
tyrant, the cruel, hard-hearted monster who bars the gate of exit and
will not let the suffering people go up from the land of bondage.
When the manes seeks his place of refuge in Amenta or in the Ammah
(Rit., ch. 72), he prays for deliverance from the crocodile in the land
of bondage. He also says, “Let not the powers of darkness (the
Sebau) have the mastery over me,” and he prays that he may reach
the divine dwelling which has been prepared for him in the Aarrufields of peace and plenty, where there is corn of untold quantity in
that land toward which his face is set. This is the chapter “by which
one cometh forth to day and passeth through Ammah or the Ammah”
in seeking deliverance from the crocodile or dragon in the land of
bondage. Protection is sought in Ammah because the god who
dwells there in everlasting light is the overthrower of the crocodile.
The crocodile is the dragon of Egypt to the Hebrew scribes, who use
it as an image of the Pharaoh. When Ezekiel writes, “Thus saith the
Lord God: Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh, King of Egypt, the
great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers,” the imagery is
derived from the Egypt of Amenta, however it may be afterwards
applied. The great dragon, as typical devourer in the land of bondage, is here identified with the Pharaoh of Egypt, as it also has been
in the book of Exodus.
Amenta is spoken of at least once in the Ritual as the place
wherein the living are destroyed. It is also described as the Kâsu or
burial-place. One of the twelve divisions of this under-world was
known as “the sandy realm of Sekari,” the place of interment. The
dead were buried underneath their mounds in this domain of Sekari,
which was a wilderness of sand. This is the probable origin of the
wilderness full of buried corpses in the book of Numbers. For, after
all the promises made to the children of Israel, they are suddenly
turned upon by the Lord and told that their carcases shall fall in
this wilderness. “Your little ones will I bring in, but as for you,
your carcases shall fall in this wilderness” (Num. xiv. 31, 32).
Now, the carcases that were to rot in the wilderness are equivalent to
the mummies buried in the sandy realm of Osiris-Sekari, god of the
coffin and the desert sand. In the Kamite eschatology those who
made the exodus from Amenta to the world of day are those who
rise from the dead in the desert called “the sandy realm of Sekari”
= the wilderness. Moreover, they rise again as children who are
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called “the younglings of Shu.” And Shu was the leader and
forerunner of this new generation of divine beings, called his
“younglings,” from the “sandy realm of Sekari,” when their
redemption from that land of bondage dawned (Rit., ch. 55). The
wilderness of the nether-earth being a land of graves, this gives an
added significance to the question asked of Moses, “Because there
were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the
wilderness?” (Ex. xiv. 11), which as the domain of Osiris-Sekari was
depicted as a cemetery of sand, where the dead awaited the coming
of Horus, Shu, Ap-uat (or Anup), the guide, and Taht, the lunar
light, as servants of Ra, the supreme one god, to wake them in
their coffins and lead them from this land of darkness to the land of
day. Amenta, as the place of graves, is frequently indicated in the
Hebrew scriptures, as in the description of the great typical burialplace in the valley of Hamon-Gog. This was in the Egypt described
in the book of Revelation as the city of dead carcases, where also their
lord was crucified as Ptah-Sekari or Osiris-Tat. Amenta had
been converted into a cemetery by the death and burial of the solar
god, who was represented as the mummy in the lower Egypt of the
nether-earth. The manes were likewise imaged as mummies in their
coffins or beneath their mounds of sand. They also rose again in the
mummy-likeness of their lord, and went up out of Egypt in the
constellation of the Mummy (Sahu-Orion), or in the coffin of Osiris
that was imaged in the Greater Bear.
In the Ritual the power of darkness called “the devourer of the
ass,” which was a solar zoötype, is Am-ā-ā, the great, great devourer
by name. Am signifies the devourer, of whom it is said eternal
devourer is his name (Rit., ch. 17). This Am-ā-ā, the great, great
devourer, is apparently the Amalek of the biblical legend: Melek,
the lord of rule, being suffixed to the name of Am, to describe the
character. “Then came Amalek and fought with Israel in Rephidim,”
in the region of the Rephaim, Sheol or Amenta (Ex. xvii. 8). “The
Lord hath sworn he will have war with Amalek from generation to
generation.” These are the two great opponents, who were Apap, the
devourer of the ass, and Ra in the wars of Amenta. The wars of
the lord, as Egyptian, were waged against the adversaries of Ra or
Osiris in Amenta. These adversaries were the powers of evil, the
Apap-dragon of drought, the serpent of darkness, the Sebau, the
Sami, together with Sut and his co-conspirators in the later rendering
of the mythos. The adversaries of the Good Being are annihilated
in the tank of flame (ch. i). Osiris is thus addressed: “Hail to thee,
the great, the mighty, whose enemies are laid prostrate at their
blocks! Hail to thee, who slaughterest the Sebau and annihilatest
Apap! Thou hast utterly destroyed all the enemies of Osiris” (Rit.,
ch. 15). Chapter 18 is in celebration of the triumph of Osiris over
all his adversaries, who are slaughtered and destroyed. The great
slaughter of the adversaries is carried out in the nether-world (ch. 41)
or secret earth of Amenta, at a place called Suten-Khen. Also
the plagues of Egypt had previously been let loose by the Lord on
Abram’s account.
“And the Lord plagued Pharaoh with great
plagues” before “Abram went up out of Egypt” (Gen. xxi. 17; xiii. 1).
This is a bit of the same myth of Amenta, which was earlier than the
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 645
Mosaic exodus. The scenery of Sodom and the pits of bitumen
may be found in the Ritual, together with the night of reckoning,
which is the “night of fire against the overthrown, the night of
chaining the wicked in their hells, the night on which their vital
principles are destroyed” (Rit., 17). In the Hebrew version this
“reckoning” on the fatal night when the Typhonians (or Sodomites) were destroyed in the hells of fire and sulphur takes the shape
of “reckoning,” whether there are fifty, forty-five, forty, thirty,
twenty, or ten righteous persons to save the doomed city from
destruction (Gen. xviii. 24-32). In the legend of the monkey, the
god who reposes in Amenta and traverses the darkness and the
shadows, when he rises gives up the pig to the plague (Book of
Hades). Now the pig was a type of the evil Typhon. In one of
the pictures a pig called the devourer of the arm (of Osiris) is being
driven by the monkey, which was a lunar zoötype. Thus the pig
which is here given to the plagues shows that in the true mythos the
plagues of Egypt were let loose on the Typhonians or powers of evil,
the Sebau, the Sami, the conspirators of Sut, the children of
darkness, whether from a physical or moral point of view, and that
this was in the lower Egypt of Amenta. These in the Hebrew
version have been transformed into ethnical Egyptians who so cruelly
oppressed and preyed upon the suffering Israelites. Thus the plagues
of Egypt occurred twice over in a land which was not the Egypt of
the Pharaohs, and the people who suffered from them were not
Egyptians. This agrees with the hidden gnosis in the Wisdom of
Solomon, and also in the book of Revelation, where the plagues are
of the same mystical nature, but are only seven instead of ten in
number. The “wilderness” was obviously a place or state in which
the shoes and clothes of the people did not wear out. This was only
possible to the manes in the desert of Amenta. The two regions of
the clothed and unclothed are named in relation to the judgment
hall of Mati. The clothed and unclothed are well-known terms for
the elect and the rejected manes; the children of light and the
offspring of darkness. In the trial scenes the spirits who are
judged to be sound and pure are told that they may pass on as the
clothed, whilst the condemned are designated the unclothed. Thus
the clothed ones pass safely and freely through the desert region of
the unclothed. In the Hebrew version we read, “I have led you forty
years in the wilderness, (and) your clothes are not waxen old upon
you, and your shoe is not waxen old upon your feet” (Deut. xxix. 5).
There can be no doubt about these being the divinely clothed and fed,
as described in the Ritual, where they eat of the tahen and drink of
the water made sweet by the tree of life, and pass, as the clothed,
through the wilderness which is called the region of the naked.
To say that the clothes and shoes of God’s own people did not wear
out during a period of forty years is a mode of showing they were
divinely made for everlasting wear, but not on earth, where nowadays
they wear out all too fast for Gentile as for Jew. Apparently the
Hebrew manna represents the Egyptian tahen which was given to the
manes for food in the wilderness of Amenta. In passing through the
desert or the region of the unclothed, the manes tells of the tahen
that was given for sustenance (ch. 124). So far as the tahen is
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known, it agrees well enough with the Hebrew manna. “When the
dew that lay (on the ground) was gone up, behold, upon the face of
the wilderness a small round thing, small as the hoar-frost on the
ground,” which was “like unto wafers made with honey.” Wafers
made of tahen were also eaten sacramentally as food of heaven in the
Osirian eucharist. In the mystery of opening the mouth and of
giving breath to the breathless ones in Amenta, the Egyptians made
use of an instrument called the ur-heka, or great magical power.
It is sometimes a sinuous, serpent-like rod without the serpent’s head.
At others it has the head of the serpent on it, united with the head
of a ram. Both ram and serpent were types of the deity Khnef,
who represented the breath of life or the spirit, Nef, Hebrew
Nephesh, which was assumed to enter the Osiris when the mummy’s
mouth was typically opened to inhale the breath of future existence.
Here then is a magical rod that turned into a serpent, which may
be seen figured in the Vignettes to the Ritual as a form of the
magical rod with which the mouth of the deceased was opened in the
mysteries of Amenta. It is held by the tail in the hand of the
magician or priest who performs the ceremony of apru, i.e., opening
the mouth, in illustration of the chapters by which the mouth is
opened in the nether-world (Vignettes to chs. 21, 22, 23). The rod is
changed into a serpent at the time when the Lord is desirous for
Moses to become his mouthpiece. Moses objects, whereupon the
Lord asks, “Who hath made man’s mouth? Now therefore go, and
I will be with thy mouth and teach thee what thou shalt speak.” The
contest ends in Moses having his own way, and in Aaron becoming a
mouth to Moses. Moses is to take in his hand the rod wherewith he
is to “do the signs” (Ex. iv. 1-17).
Here then we identify the serpent-rod of the Egyptian priests that
was known by name as the great magical power, and it was sometimes
a rod, at others a serpent. This we take to be the original of that rod
with which the tricks are played in the Hebrew märchen by the Lord
God of Israel for the purpose of frightening Pharaoh. “And the
Lord said unto him (Moses), What is that in thine hand? And he
said, A rod. And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the
ground, and it became a serpent: and Moses fled from before it. And
the Lord said unto Moses, Put forth thine hand and take it by the tail.
And he put forth his hand and laid hold of it, and it became a rod in
his hand” (Ex. iv. 2-5). The type of great magical power is thus
turned to account in astonishing the natives and in giving lessons to
the magicians of Egypt. In both scenes we have the opening of the
mouth. In both we have the serpent-rod with which the signs and
wonders are wrought. And it is admitted that Pharaoh had wise
men, sorcerers, “magicians of Egypt,” who had rods which became
serpents as types of transformation. These rods are to be seen in the
hands of the wise men portrayed in the Ritual, but not for any such
fool’s play as is described in the book of Exodus.
There are two serpents in Egyptian symbolism—one is a type
of evil, the other is the good serpent. One is the Apap of drought,
darkness, and death or negation; the other is the Uræus-serpent of
life, that was worn on the frontlets of the gods and the glorified
manes as a sign of protection and salvation or safety (ch. 34). In
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 647
the chapter by which a person is not devoured or bitten to death by
the eater of the head, which is a snake, an appeal is addressed to the
solar Uræus as the source of life, the flame which shineth on the
forehead of the glorified. In the seventh abode there is a serpent
named Retuk (the cartouche in my copy reads Ruruk or Rerek),
that lives on the manes and is said to “annihilate their magical
virtue” (149). The speaker says, “I am the master of enchantments” (149).
He is the magician, the prototype of Pharaoh’s,
who worked by enchantment (Ex. vii. 11). The “fiery serpent” of
the wilderness may be traced in this great serpent of Amenta, whose
name is “dweller in his flame.” However rendered, the hieroglyphics
identify the mythical serpent of fire as the fiery serpent of the Hebrew
märchen. The lifting up of the serpent can also be paralleled in the
text when the speaker exclaims, “I am raised up to (or as) the
serpent of the sun”—that is, the Uræus, the good serpent when
compared with Apap. The serpent Aker is joined to the nocturnal
sun as he traverses the Amenta (or the wilderness) by night. Thus
Aker, the serpent of fire, is the good serpent that is raised up as the
fiery serpent in the exodus. The evil serpent Apap is then told that
he must retreat before this uplifted solar serpent (which accompanies
the orb in the Egyptian triad) and in presence of the revivifying
sun. And in this way the mythos furnished matter for the märchen
and the folk-tales about the evil serpents that bit the wandering
Israelites, and how they were saved and healed by an image of the
good serpent, which always had been lifted up in Egypt as a solar
symbol of healing and of life. In playing off the serpent of fire
against the serpent of darkness, the deceased anticipates Moses with
Nehushtan the brazen. He exclaims triumphantly, “I understand
the mystical representations of things, and by that means I repulse
Apap” (108). Also in the zodiac of Esné fiery flying serpents are to
be seen on the wing in the decans of Cancer as the sign of heat
and drought (Drummond, Œd. Jud., pl. 8). The children of Israel,
as followers of the solar god, are the children of Ra, or Atum-Ra,
under whatsoever racial name; and these are to be met with even by
name, making the passage through the lower Egypt of Amenta on
their way to the promised land. People named the Aaiu, an
Egyptian plural equivalent to our word Jews, are described in the
under-world. Their god is the ass-headed Aiu, or Iu, who was one of
the gods of Israel that led the people up out of Egypt—that is, the
ass was one of the zoötypes of the god Aiu, as the calf, bullock, or ox
was another. We had to dredge this nether-earth for much of the
sunken treasure of Egyptian wisdom that has long been lost in its
authentic shape. And in Amenta we find the ass-headed god of the
Jews, respecting whom they have been so ignorantly derided and
maligned. His name, we repeat, is Aiu, Au, Aai, or Iu, both as god
and as the ass in old Egyptian; and this name survived in the forms
of Iao, Iau, Iahu, Ieou, and others. The god was Atum-Ra in
Egypt, and Aiu the ass-headed is one of the types of the solar god.
Aiu appears ass-headed in Amenta as a god stretched out upon the
ground who has the solar disk upon his head, with the ears of an ass
projecting beside the disk. He is holding the rope by which the solar
boat was towed up from the nether-world (Lefébure, Records, vol. x.
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p. 130). The figure lying on the ground denotes the god who was
Atum-Aiu, the sun by night in the earth of eternity. The people who
are with Aiu in this scene are amongst those “who guard the rope of
Aiu, and do not allow the serpent Apap to mount towards the boat of
the great god.” These are the Aiu as the people of Iu. It is said
of them, “Those who are in this scene walk before Ra (Atum-Iu).
They charm (or catalepse) Apap for him. They rise with him towards
the heavens.”
The Book of Amenta, called the Book of Hades by Lefébure, shows
this god in his mummied form as one with Osiris in the body and with
Ra in soul; otherwise it is Atum in the body, or mummy, and Iu in
soul. And just as Ra the holy spirit descends in Tattu on the
mummy Osiris, and as Horus places his hands behind Osiris in the
resurrection, so Iu comes to his body, the mummy in Amenta. Those
who tow Ra along say, “The god comes to his body; the god is towed
along towards his mummy” (Records, vol. x. p. 132). The sun-god,
whether as Atum-Iu (Aiu or Aai) or Osiris-Ra, is a mummy in Amenta
and a soul in heaven. The imagery is quite natural: the nocturnal sun
became a mummy as a figure of the dead, and a soul or spirit in its
resurrection as a figure of the living. Atum, or Osiris, as the sun in
Amenta, is the mummy buried down in Khebt or Lower Egypt, and
Iu in the one rendering, or Horus in the other, raises the mummygod. This is the meaning of the ass-eared Aiu when he is portrayed
in the act of hauling at the rope of the sun or raising the mummy in
Amenta. The god Aiu is represented mummified upon the tomb of
Rameses the Sixth—that is, in the character of Atum the father, buried
as the mummy in lower Egypt. Thus we identify the ass-god
Aiu or Iu (an ancient Egyptian name of the ass) in lower Egypt, and
his followers, who are the Aiu by name. The followers of Iu=Aiu
then are the Aiu, Ius, or the later Jews. They fight the battle of the
sun-god in the nether-earth, where the dragon Apap was the cruel
impious oppressor; and when they do escape from this, the land of
bondage for the manes, they are the Aaiu or the Jews, who “rise behind
this god to heaven,” and their exodus is from Khebt, the lower
Egypt of Amenta. The whole story of the faithful Israelites who
would not bow down to the gods of Egypt is told in a few words
relating to the Aiu (or Jews) in Amenta. As it is said, “These are
they who spoke the truth on earth and did not rise to (prohibited)
adorations” or heresies (Lefébure, Book of Hades, Records of the
Past).
The legends of the exodus, like those in the book of Genesis
originated in the astronomical mythology, in which the making
of Amenta is followed by the Peri-em-hru or coming forth to
day from the lower Egypt of the under-world and the wilderness or desert. The story of this exodus is inscribed in hieroglyphics on the sarcophagus of Seti, now in the Soane Museum.
The Book of Hades, or Amenta, and the Book of the Dead suffice of
themselves to prove that “the Egypt and the desert” of the exodus
were in Amenta, and not in the land of the pyramids. This was
“the Egypt and the desert” in which the flocks of Ra were shepherded and fed. “Horus says to Ra’s flocks, Protection for you, flocks
of Ra, born of the great one who is in the heavens. Breath to your
nostrils, overthrowal to your coffins” (Book of Hades, 5th division,
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 649
legend D). These are the manes in Amenta called the flocks of Ra,
who are shepherded by Horus as Har-Khuti, lord of spirits. The
overthrowal of the coffins shows that this was the deliverance of the
dead, and that the exodus or coming forth to day was synonymous
with the resurrection from the dead.
Amenta had been mapped out in twelve domains, according to the
twelve astronomical divisions and the twelve gates which the sun
passed through by night. “As it is said, the great god travels by the
roads of Hades, to make the divisions which take place in the earth”
(Book of Hades). There are various groups of the twelve as divine
personages or children of Ra in this lower Egypt of Amenta.
As characters in the mythos, Jacob and the ten tribes, sons, or
children correspond to Ra the solar-god, with his ten cycles in the
heaven of ten divisions (Rit., ch. 18), whilst Israel—the same personage—with the twelve sons, answers to the same god, Ra, in the
heaven of twelve divisions or twelve signs of the zodiac.
It has now to be admitted that the twelve sons of Jacob are not
historic, and the historical exodus must follow them, for that is
founded on the twelve sons going down into Egypt as historic
characters, and the people of Israel coming out of it as their direct
descendants hugely multiplied. The twelve, as sons of Jacob, go
down to Egypt in search of corn, and in the Book of Amenta we get
a glimpse of the twelve or their mythical prototypes who make the
journey as characters in the astronomical mythology. Twelve gods of
the earth are to be seen marching towards a mountain, which shows
they are on their way to the nether-world, as it is depicted upside
down. Twelve gods in the earth of Amenta are marching towards
another mountain, and these two mountains form a sort of gorge
toward which the divine boat voyages. This is the entrance to
Amenta, and these are the twelve as sons of Ra, who are on their way
down to the lower Egypt of the mythos, the prototypal twelve who
are the sons of Israel in the Hebrew version. These are said to be
“those who are born of Ra, born of his substance, and which proceed
from his eye.” Thus Ra is the father of the twelve. Ra has
prepared for them “a hidden dwelling” in this Egypt of the lower
earth or desert of Amenta. Twelve persons called the blessed are
portrayed as worshippers of Ra. Twelve others are the righteous
who are in Amenta. Twelve mummies standing upright, each in a
chapel with open doors, are “the holy gods who are in Amenta.”
Twelve men walking represent “the human souls which are in
Amenta.” Twelve bearers of the cord with which the allotments are
measured for the glorified elect are represented by twelve persons
carrying the long serpent Nenuti. These bearers of the cord in the
Amenta are those who prepare the fields for the elect. Ra says,
“Take the cord; draw, measure the fields of the manes, who are the
elect in your dwellings, gods in your residences, deified elect, in order
to rejoin the country, proved elect, in order to be within the cord.”
Ra says to them of the enclosure, “It is the cord of justice.” Ra is
satisfied with the measurement. “Your own possessions, gods, and
your own domains, elect, are yours. Now eat. Ra creates your fields
and appoints you your food.” “The gods are content with their
possessions, the glorified are satisfied with their dwellings.” The
followers of Har-Khuti, lord of spirits, are the twelve, who take the
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place in the solar mythos of the earlier seven Khuti in the stellar
mythos, five more being added to the seven. These are the twelve
as the children of Ra, who cultivate the fields of divine harvest in the
plains of Amenta, where they reap for Ra as followers of Horus the
beloved son: “They labour at the harvest, they collect the corn.
Their seeds are favoured in the land by the light of Ra at his appearance.” Thus the twelve are the cultivators of corn in Egypt. They
give food to the gods and to the souls of the elect in Amenta.
As the bearers of food they are twelve in number. In one scene the
twelve are portrayed in two groups of seven and five persons. The
seven are the reapers. The five are seen bending towards an enormous
ear of corn. These are described as the twelve who labour at the
harvest in the land of corn which is in the earth of eternity. The
scene with the twelve in a posture of adoration suggests the sheaf of
corn in Joseph’s dream. “Behold, we were binding sheaves in the
field, and lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and behold, your
sheaves came round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf” (Gen.
xxxvii. 7). In one form the Aarru enclosure was portrayed as the
field of divine harvest, and the twelve were the typical reapers of the
corn that grew there seven cubits high (Book of Hades, Records
of the Past, vols. x. and xii.). This is sufficiently suggestive of the
twelve enormous sheaves in Joseph’s dream, and of the reapers being
a form of the twelve harvesters. The twelve as gods were also rulers
in the twelve signs which formed the final circle of the Aarru paradise.
And in Joseph’s second dream his star is greeted with obeisance like
his sheaf. “Behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven (other)
stars made obeisance to me,” he who was represented by the twelfth
star as well as by the twelfth sheaf (Gen. xxxvii. 6-9). Horus in the
harvest-field of lower Egypt has two characters, one pertaining to the
mythos, one to the eschatology. In the first he is one of the twelve as
harvesters: the twelve who row the solar boat, the twelve to whom the
stations were assigned or thrones were given in the zodiac. In the
other character he is Har-Khuti, lord of spirits, and in this phase he is
the supreme one at the head of the twelve, who are now his servants.
The pictures show the children of Ra both as the group of twelve
and also as the twelve with Horus. In one scene Horus is depicted
leaning on a staff, and eleven gods are walking towards Osiris.
These are the twelve altogether, of whom Horus is one in presence
of the father. But on the tomb of Rameses the Sixth the twelve
appear, preceded by Horus, the master of joy, leaning on his staff.
These are the harvesters: seven of them are the reapers, the other
five are collectors of the corn (Book of Hades). Thus the fields of
divine harvest are twelve in number; the cultivators are twelve in
number; the reapers and bearers of food are twelve in number; the
children of Ra = Jacob-El or Isiri-El are twelve in number. So
it was not left for the historic Israelites to map out the land of
promise in twelve allotments betwixt the twelve tribes and twelve
children of Ihuh. Amenta in twelve sections with twelve gates
represented the heaven in twelve divisions, and the chart was as old
as the solar zodiac of twelve signs that was already in existence, as
we reckon, in the heaven of Atum-Ra some 13,000 years ago. Not
only was the promised land mapped out in twelve divisions in
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 651
accordance with the twelve signs of the solar zodiac or the twelve
pillars raised by Moses round the mount—not only did the chosen
race, as children of the one god Atum, take possession of the land
allotted to them, or the land appointed them by lot, as Joshua
renders it; title-deeds were also issued to the glorified elect.
This lower Egypt, the land of corn, in the Book of Hades is not
geographical. Like Annu, Thebes, and Memphis in the Ritual, it is a
mythical locality in the earth of eternity. It is the lower domain of the
double earth, the country of the manes called Amenta that was
hollowed out by Ptah the opener. It is the lower Egypt named
Kheb, to which Isis was warned to flee by night as the place of refuge
for the infant Horus when his life was threatened by the Apapmonster. Lower Egypt is the land of death or darkness, leading to
the world of life and light. It is here that “Horus says to the flocks
of Ra, which are in the Hades of Egypt and the desert,” “Protection
for you, flocks of Ra, born of the great one who is in the heavens”
as Atum-Ra. These flocks “in the Hades of Egypt and the desert”
are the chosen people, the deified elect, as the children of Ra.
Amenta was a land of darkness until it was lighted by the nocturnal
sun. This was the origin of the typical “Egyptian darkness.” But
in the Egypt of this lower hemisphere the god prepared a secret and
mysterious dwelling for his children where the glorified elect were
hidden in the light. “Ra says to the earth, Let the earth be bright.
My benefits are for you who are in the light. To you be a dwelling.”
“I have hidden you.” (Book of Hades, 1st division.) Food is given
them because of the light, in which they are enveloped. This divine
dwelling created by Ra for the elect is entitled “the Retreat.” As
it is said, “The earth is open to Ra, the earth is closed against Apap.
Those who are in the Retreat worship Ra.”
This Retreat is
equivalent to the biblical land of Goshen, where the chosen people
dwelt in light. In the book of Exodus there is a three days’ solid darkness over the land of Egypt, “but all the children of Israel had light
in their dwellings” (ch. x. 22, 23). The land of Goshen in the
Hebrew version represents the Retreat of Ammah in the Ritual.
Ammah is a locality that is traversed in knowing the spirits of Annu
or of attaining the garden eastward. Those who belong to the state
of the elect are hidden in Ammah. They are described as being
concealed in light by Ra. Ammah is a region reserved for the gods
and the glorified spirits who are the children of light bound for the
land where there is no more night. It is a place impenetrable to the
creatures of darkness and to those who are twice dead—dead in their
sins as well as in the mortal body. These are they who do not rise
again from the lower Egypt. There is no deliverance or exodus for
them; they do not enter Ammah, or follow Shu, the lion of strength,
who leads up the elect into the land of light. Ammah is the sixth one
of fourteen abodes in the 149th chapter of the Ritual. It is an abode
of peace reserved for the blessed, where the evil dead cannot
enter. It is a mystery to the manes. The god who is there is
called the overthrower of the crocodile or dragon. The deceased in
saluting Ammah asks that he may take possession of its stuffs in
peace. “O Ammah! Reservation of the gods; mystery for the
manes where the dead may not enter. Hail to thee, O Ammah
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ANCIENT EGYPT
the august. I come to see the gods who are there. Open to me, that
I may take possession of your stuffs.” (Cf. the spoils.) Ammah is
the Goshen of the Ritual, reserved and set apart for the glorified
as a place impenetrable to the powers of evil or the dead who do not
rise again, and for whom there is no exodus or coming forth to day
(149). It is the work of the worshippers in Amenta to destroy
the enemies of Ra and defend the great one against the evil Apap.
They “live on the food of Ra, and the meats belong to the inhabitants
of Amenta. Holy is that which they carry unto the dwelling where
they are concealed.” This divine food is apparently repeated in the
quails and manna that were sent from heaven, according to the
biblical account.
Dreadful massacres are perpetrated in taking possession of this
promised land mapped out in twelve divisions. Ra says, “I have
commanded that they should massacre, and they have massacred the
beings.” He orders his followers to destroy the impious ones in a
suppression of blood. But these beings are not the human inhabitants of Canaan or any other land on earth. The wars of the
lord in these battles of Amenta are fought by his true and faithful
followers on behalf of Un-Nefer the good being. The enemies who
are doomed to be slaughtered by the invaders are the Sebau and
Sami, the creators of dearth and darkness, who were in possession of
the land, and who are for ever rising in rebellion against the supreme
god Ra. It was these dwellers in the ways of darkness who were
to be annihilated by the children of light, the glorified elect, the
chosen people, who are then to take possession of the land. Ra says
to them, “Your offerings (made on earth) are yours. Take your
refreshments. Your souls shall not be massacred, your meats shall
not putrefy, faithful ones who have destroyed Apap for me.”
Thus the massacres by which the Israelites were enabled to clear
out the inhabitants of Canaan and take possession of their lands had
been previously committed by the followers of Ra. Ra says to those
who are born of him, and for whom he had created the dwelling-place
in the beautiful Amenta, “Breath to you who are in the light, and
dwellings for you. My benefits are for you.” But the beings there
massacred were not human. In the biblical version it is said of a
mythical event, “It came to pass, when Pharaoh would hardly let
them go, that the Lord slew all the first-born in the land of Egypt,
both the first-born of man and the first-born of beast” (Ex. xiii. 15).
This insane proceeding on the part of the Lord may be explained by
reference to the original. From this we learn that amongst the beings
massacred or sacrificed were “quadrupeds and reptiles” (Book of
Hades, 1st division, legend E). The Hebrew historian has discreetly
omitted the first-born of the reptile, unless it is included as a beast.
Again, one name of the keeper of the 17th gate is “lord of the
massacre and of sacrificing the enemy at midnight!” (Rit., 145).
With this we may compare the passage, “And it came to pass at
midnight that the Lord smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt
. . . and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house
where there was not one dead” (Ex. xii. 30).
Now, amongst the glorified elect or chosen people who are the
children of Ra, the ass-god, Aai, or Iu, there is a group of his
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 653
defenders and followers who accompany him, and who are said to
rise with Ra towards the heavens to be “for him in the two
sanctuaries,” and to “make him rise in Nu” (heaven). These are
among the worshippers of the ass-headed god Iu, who are called
the Aaiu (the Ius or Jews) by name. Apap is threatened thus, “O
impious cruel one, Apap, who spreadest thy wickedness. Thy face
shall be destroyed, Apap! Approach thy place of torment. The
Nemu are against thee: thou shalt be struck down. The Aaiu are
against thee: thou shalt be destroyed.”
It is these Aaiu as
worshippers of the god Iu that we claim to be the Ius or later Jews
of the mythical legends so long supposed to have been historical.
Thus the glorified elect, the blessed, the righteous, who are in
Amenta, that is in the lower Egypt of the mythos, are the chosen
people of the most high god, who was Ra in his first sovereignty as
the ass-headed Iu = Iao, Aiu, or Iahu; Atum-Huhi as god the
father, Atum-Iu as god the ever-coming son. The Aaiu or Jews,
then, are amongst those who “rise for Ra.” “They beat down Apap
in his bonds.” Apap is stricken with swords. He is sacrificed. Ra
rises at the finishing hour; “he ascends when the chain is fixed.”
Those who are in this scene drag the chains of this evil-doer (Apap).
They say to Ra, “Come Ra; advance Khuti! The chain is fixed on
evil-face (Neha-her), and Apap is in bonds” (Book of Hades, 10th
division). This is the scene of making fast the dragon in the pit
which is preparatory to the rising of Ra. These Aiu or Jews
accompany the sun-god when he makes the journey through the
valley of darkness, the lake of Putrata, and the desert in “the
Amenta of Egypt,” where they are protected as the “flocks of Ra.”
Amidst the people that dwell in darkness and black night they are
the glorified elect, enveloped and concealed in light, and fed
mysteriously in the wilderness with food supplied from heaven. Earth
opens to let them pass when they are pursued by their old enemy, and
closes to protect them against the devouring dragon. Hence it is
said by those who render the great serpent impotent by their magic,
“Earth opens to Ra! Earth closes to Apap!” The monuments of
Egypt are as truly and honestly historical as the geological record.
Both have their breaks and their missing links, yet are perfectly
trustworthy on the whole. And these monuments, from beginning to
end, have no word of witness that the Jews or Hebrews ever were
in Egypt as a foreign ethnical entity.
They know nothing of
Abraham as a Semite who went down into Egypt to teach the
Egyptians astronomy. They know nothing of Jacob except as a
Hiksos Pharaoh, or a divinity, Jacob-El, whose name is found on one
of the scarabei. They know nothing of Joseph and his viziership,
nor of the ten plagues, nor of the going forth in triumph from the
house of bondage to attain the promised land. These and many
other wonderful things related in the Word of God are known to the
Egyptian records, but not as history. There is another Egypt not
yet explored by the bibliolaters: the Egypt of mythology and the
Kamite eschatology.
Unless we take into account the mound of the Jew in the
neighbourhood of On and the temple of Atum-Iu (W. M. F. Petrie,
Hyksos and Israelite Cities), the only way of identifying the Jews
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in Egypt is by the name of the Iu or Aiu in the lower Egypt of the
mythical Amenta, where we find the twelve sons or children of
Israel, under the name of the Ius or Aiu, as worshippers of the god
who was known in Egypt as the ass-headed Iu, Aiu = Iao, Ieou, or
Iahu, and who, as we see from the scarabei, may also have been
known in Egypt as Jacob-El, the father of the twelve who were
reapers of the corn in the harvest of Amenta.
The writer has previously suggested, in A Book of the Beginnings,
that Jacob represents the god Ra as Iu in Kheb, the lower Egypt of
Amenta. Jacob was known as a divinity in Northern Syria by the
name of Jacob-El, and Joseph by the name of Joseph-El. The El is
a Semitic suffix to the names, denoting the divinity of both, versus
the ethnical origin of Jacob and Joseph. These, according to the
present showing, were among the gods of Egypt as Huhi the father
and Iu the son, or sif in Egyptian, Iu-sif being = Joseph in Hebrew.
Thus we propose to identify the mummy of Jacob in Egypt with the
mummy of Atum or Osiris as a form of the mummy-sun that was
portrayed as being carried up from Amenta. Jacob, as we read,
was embalmed in Egypt, and the mummy in its coffin was taken
up by Joseph and carried to the land of Canaan. This was the land
of promise, which is the Aarru-paradise, the field of the tree of life
up which the sun-god climbs in his resurrection from the coffin. The
“burying-place” of Jacob is “before Mamre,” where the tree of Atum
in the garden or meadow, the Sekhet-Hetep, is represented by the
oak or terebinth under which Abraham dwelt. Joseph the son
(Iusif) is the same character in carrying up the mummy of Jacob that
Horus the beloved son is to the dead Osiris in his coffin. Horus acts
as the raiser-up of the mummy. This is expressed when the speaker
says, “I am he who raises the hand which is motionless” (Rit.,
ch. 5). Elsewhere Horus comes to raise the mummy of Osiris.
Thus the carrying up of Jacob out of Egypt by the son may be
paralleled by the resurrection of Osiris, coffin and all. One name of
the burial-place for the mummy-Osiris in the Ritual is Sekhem. The
deceased is enveloped as a mummy in Sekhem. He rises again and
goes, as pure spirit, out of Sekhem. Also the well of Jacob near
Shechem answers to the water of Osiris, and the oak or terebinth in
Shechem to the tree of life in the pool of the persea or the water of
life. The fields of Shechem correspond to the Sekhet-Hetep or
fields of peace and plenty, the oasis of fertility which prefigured the
celestial paradise. “The parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son
Joseph” was in Shechem, also called Sichem. This is a parallel to
Sekhem as place of burial given by Osiris the father to Amsu-Horus
the son, who rose again as the living mummy or sahu after the burial,
and went up from the lower Egypt of Amenta and the sandy
wilderness of Sekari as the god in the coffin or sekeru-bark. The
Egyptian Sekhem was no doubt localized as a sanctuary when Judea
and Palestine were sown over with the old Egyptian names. Osiris
was the reputed holder of property in Sekhem, unless we understand
that his mummy, the body of the lord, constituted the property that
was held in that sanctuary (Hymn to Osiris, lines 1 and 2).
The lower Egypt of Amenta is a land of bondage to the manes
who were doomed to labour in the harvest-field. Chapter 5 is
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 655
called the chapter by which work is not imposed upon a person in
the nether-world. But provision is made for the work being done by
proxy. Chapter 6 is the chapter by which the funeral statuettes
may be made to do work for a person in the nether-world. “Be thou
counted for me,” says the speaker, “at every moment, for planting the
fields, for watering the soil, and for removing the sands.” Thus
there was a system of enforced labour in the lower Egypt of Amenta.
The land of bondage is likewise alluded to as the land of rule in the
Book of the Dead. In the chapter by means of which the manes
come forth to day and pass through Ammah or the Ammehit it is
said, “Hail to you, ye lords of rule (or ruling powers), living for ever,
whose secular period is eternity. Let me not be stopped at the
Meskat (or place of punishment); let not the Sebau have the mastery
over me; let not your doors be closed upon me.” And amongst
other pleas in this invocation it is said, “Deliver me from the crocodile
of this land of rule,” or, as it got interpreted, this land of bondage in
the lower Egypt of Amenta. In this chapter the crocodile has an
evil character, and the evil crocodile is the mythical dragon, the dragon
of Egypt, a figure of the Pharaoh who kept the people in bondage and
would not let them go from out their prison-house in the Meskat where
the evil Sebau had the mastery over the manes, who plead, “Let not
the powers of darkness obtain the mastery over me. . . . . I faint
before the teeth of those whose mouth raveneth in the nether-world”
(Rit., chs. 72 and 74, Renouf).
The Apap-dragon of Amenta is the real Pharaoh who held the
people in bondage, but in certain of the Semitic legends Atum-Ra, the
great judge and punisher of the wicked, has been mixed up with the
cruel Pharaoh who would not let the people go. According to the Arab
traditions, the name of the Pharaoh who detained the chosen people,
the elect children of light, was known as “Tamuzi.” Castell gives
this as the Arabic name of the Pharaoh who hindered the exodus of
the Israelites, which name goes to the root of the matter, for Tamuzi
appears in the Ritual as Atum-Ra, commonly called Tum. The
name of this Ra or Pharaoh is derived from “tumu” to shut up, to
close. Tum as the setting sun was the closer in the western gate.
As shutter up of day or of autumn he wears the closing lotus on
his head, the antithesis to Horus rising out of the opening flower of
dawn. Atum was the closer as well as the opener of Amenta by
name. Those who were captives in his keeping down in the Amenta
were hindered from making their exodus until the plagues were
passed or the conditions of freedom had been all fulfilled.
The entrance to Amenta figured in the Egyptian itinerary was
“the mouth of the cleft,” as it was termed at Abydos. This is
apparently represented in the Hebrew legend by the mouth of the
gorge at Pi-ha-hiroth, “which is before Baal-Zephon.” Thus the
opening in the mount of the swallowing earth is at the same point as
the passage of the Red Sea which also opened for the Israelites to
pass when pursued by Pharaoh and his host. There are, however, two
starting-points in the biblical exodus of the Israelites. No sooner
had they set out on the old road that ran from Rameses to Succoth
(or Thuku) and Etham or Khetam, the border-fortress in the land
of Thuku, than they were commanded to turn back for a fresh de-
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parture from Pi-ha-hiroth, the pass or gorge which was entered by the
mouth of the cleft. At this point of divergence the local topography
is brought to confusion and serves no further use for localizing the
journey. We have to go back and start from the entrance to Amenta
by the mouth of the cleft in the rock that was figured at Abydos as
the beautiful gate of entrance to Khent-Amenta. This two-fold
starting-point at least coincides with the two modes of entrance, one
by land and the other by water. At Pi-ha-hiroth we enter the Red
Sea of the mythos, the water of the west that was red at sunset, but
not the geographical Red Sea. This was entered by the boat of the
sun and the boat of souls which passed through the cleft by water as
depicted in the vignettes (Maspero, Dawn of Civ., Eng. tr., p. 197).
We are now upon the track of the exodus from the lower Egypt of the
nether-earth, which was mythical in the lesser mysteries and mystical
in the greater, and able to show where and how and why the children
of Israel pursue the same route through Amenta as do the children
of Ra in the Book of Hades (Records of the Past, vols. x. and xii.).
At Pi-ha-hiroth the Israelites come to the mouth of the cleft and
enter on the passage of the Red Sea, pursued by Pharaoh the dragon
and his evil host. In the book of Exodus the Israelites, of course,
are treated as the glorified and the Egyptians as the powers of darkness, the conspirators against the elect, the chosen, the children of
light. Or, according to the Ritual, by the Apap-dragon and the
Sebau, whose habitat is in the Red Sea of the mythos and therefore
was not geographical. The Egyptians made the passage by water,
but by substituting the miracle for the mythos, “the children of
Israel walked on dry land in the midst of the sea.” After crossing
the waters they enter the wilderness, which is true to its character in
the Egyptian books of the nether earth.
When the land that flowed with milk and honey is promised to the
children of Israel, it is said by Ihuh, “I will send my terror before
thee—I will send the hornet before thee, which shall drive out the
Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite from before thee” (Ex. xxiii.
27, 28). Now the hornet, wasp, or bee was a type of Ra the solar god,
and thence of the Egyptian Pharaoh.
Hor-Apollo says, “They
depict a bee to denote a people obedient to their king” (B. i, 62),
the force of the creature’s sting being emblematic of the supreme
power. Also the abait or bird-fly, a bee, wasp, or hornet, was their
guide to the Aarru-garden in the Ritual. “I have made my way into
the royal palace,” says the Osiris” (ch. 76), “and it was the bird-fly
(abait) that led me hither”—that is, to the land flowing with milk and
honey. Apparently this symbolic abait or bee as guide to the Aarruparadise has been turned into the hornet that drove the people out of
the land in the Hebrew rendering of the story. When Moses sends
the explorers ahead to spy out the land of Canaan, and they come
back afraid because it is inhabited by the Anakim or giants, “Caleb
stilled the people before Moses, and said, Let us go up at once and
possess it, for we are well able to overcome it” (Num. xiii. 30). Caleb
the explorer who had been sent forward by Moses to spy out the
land of promise is another of these converted divinities. In the
Semitic languages Caleb is the dog, and the dog as Egyptian was the
jackal, apuat, the guide of ways, the zoötype which was the guide of
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 657
ways in the solar mythos, and the guide of souls to the garden of
Amenta, wherein grew the grapes of paradise in brobdingnagian
clusters which are to be seen in vignettes to the Ritual. Shu as son
of Ra is the great leader of the people to the promised land; Anup
the jackal = dog was the guide; and these two are represented in the
book of Numbers by Joshua (or Hoshea) the son of Nun, and Caleb
the son of Jephunneh. Those two, the leader and the guide, both in
the astronomy and the eschatology, are the only two in the Hebrew
version that are to go forth in the exodus from the wilderness and
burial-place of the dead. “And they came unto the valley of Eschol,
and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and
they bare it upon a staff between two” (carriers). “And they returned
from spying out the land at the end of forty days.” They showed the
fruit of the land to Moses and the Israelites, and said, “We came unto
the land whither thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and
honey, and this is the fruit of it” (Num. xiii. 23-28). The colossal cluster
of grapes seen in Eschol by those who were sent to spy out the
promised land is of itself almost sufficient to prove the mythical
nature and Egyptian origin of the land that flowed with milk and
honey and bore the grapes that took two men to carry one cluster.
Not only was the circumpolar paradise the land of the seven cows,
called the providers of plenty; as Egyptian it was also the garden
of the grape-vine by name. Not as Eden, but as Aarru the garden
of the vine or the grapes. In one of the Hebrew märchen it is said that
when the explorers of the promised land returned they related, “We
have seen the land which we are to conquer with the sword, and it is
good and fruitful. The strongest camel is scarcely able to carry one
bunch of grapes; one ear of corn yields enough to feed a whole
family; and one pomegranate shell would contain five armed men.
But the inhabitants of the land and their cities are in keeping with
the productions of the soil. We saw men the smallest of whom was six
hundred cubits high. They were astonished at us, on account of
our diminutive stature, and laughed at us. Their houses were also in
proportion, walled up to heaven, so that an eagle could hardly soar
above them” (Baring Gould’s Legends of the Old Testament Characters,
vol. II, p. 118; Weil, p. 175). These are based upon the gigantic
inhabitants of Amenta in the Ritual, who have been vastly exaggerated
in the märchen. This grand domain was constructed for the manes
who as the glorified ones have joined the powers of the east at the
point of coming forth where Shu uplifts the sky for Ra and blows off
the divine barge with favouring gales. The great or glorified ones are
said to be each nine cubits (about 18 feet) in height, and therefore
this is the land of the giants to which the Israelites were bound under
the leadership of Joshua and the guidance of Caleb the dog. This
region of things gigantic may be found in the mystical abodes of the
Ritual through which the manes have to pass on their way to the
world of light and blessedness. The second abode is called the
“greatest of possessions in the fields of the Aarru. The height of its
corn is seven cubits; the ears are two, its stalks are three cubits.” The
spirits also are said to be seven cubits in stature (ch. 149). Of the
fifth abode it is said, “Hail, abode of the spirits, through which there
is no passage. The spirits belonging to it are seven cubits long in
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their thighs. They live as wretched shades.” “Oh, this abode of the
spirits.” In chapter 109 the inhabitants are nine cubits in height.
The passage through the Hades in the eleventh abode is described as
the belly of hell. “There is neither coming out of nor going into it,
on account of the greatness of the terror of passing him who is in it.”
That is, the devouring demon, the Am-Moloch. The same fear is
reflected in the faces of the spies from the land of giants; they had
seen the same sight. The Moabites called the giants who dwelt there
in times past the Emim (Deut. ii. 11), and the Am-am in Egyptian are
the devourers. Am is the male devourer, Am-t the female devourer
in the Ritual. As said in chapter 109, “It is the glorified ones, each
of whom is nine cubits in height, who reap the Aarru fields (in the
divine domain of the promised land) in presence of the powers of
the east” (Renouf). The giants as Rephaim are also Egyptian
(Rit., ch. 149, 5th Abode). These giants of Amenta and the religious
mysteries still survive in the grotesque masks of the Christmas
pantomime, which represent the huge inhabitants of an under-world
that is the lowermost of three, the highest of which is on the mount of
glory. Emim, Anakim, Rephaim, and Zamzummim are all giants—
hence the Anakim under different names, nine cubits high; and this
land of the giants as Egyptian was in the nether-earth, the original of
the Hebrew Sheol, in which the giants are identifiable as non-human
inhabitants of a foreworld that had passed away. It is to that foreworld and its people, the children of darkness, that the writer of
Deuteronomy refers, and as its inhabitants were altogether mythical
(or eschatological), the children of Israel, and of Lot, who drove them
out and destroyed them utterly, could not be human nor the transaction humanly historical. The land of the mythical giants can be
localized in Amenta, but not elsewhere.
The lower or sub-terrestrial paradise, otherwise called the garden
of Aarru, was the garden eastward, the garden of the mount in
Amenta, which was in prospect throughout the journey.
This
was the paradise to which Shu-Anhur was the leader from the
western mountain and Anup-Ap-Uat was the guide as dog or jackal.
It was the paradise of all good things, including the gigantic grapes
and grain, the milk and honey, as types of food and drink in everlasting plenty.
The point of emergence from Amenta was at the double gate of
glory on the summit of the eastern mount; otherwise expressed, this
was the place of exit from the lower to the upper Egypt of the
mythos as celestial localities. Anhur was the uplifter and supporter
of the heaven and its inhabitants by night. Shu was the deliverer by
day who brought the solar orb to the horizon. In the Hebrew
rendering Moses sustains the rôle of Anhur, and Joshua that of Shu,
the halves of the whole round being extended to the circle of the
year. The earthly paradise was planted as the Allu or elysian fields
to the eastward of the nether-earth where stood the tree of life, and
where the mountain of the double earth was climbed to get a glimpse
of the land of promise that was visible over-sea. Upon this mountain “Moses stood, to view the landscape o’er,” or rather the skyscape. The lower paradise was but a picture and a promise for the
wanderers in the wilderness of Amenta. The upper was the paradise
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 659
of all the ancient and pre-solar legends. Thus far the deliverer as
Anhur or as Moses was the conductor of the children of Ra or Israel.
High on Mount Hetep, in the heaven of eternity, was the paradise of
spirits perfected. This was the land of promise and final fruition
both in one, the land overflowing with milk and honey. The milk,
called “the white liquor which the glorified ones love,” was supplied
by the seven cows, providers of plenty in the meadows of the upper
Aarru. Here also was the land of corn in limitless abundance. No
words could say how much. Lower Egypt was a land of corn, but
the legendary promised land of corn, honey, and oil was in the Aarru
fields of the mythos. These were the fields where the corn grew
seven cubits high, with ears three cubits long and in eternal plenty
for all comers. The landing-place upon Mount Hetep at the summit
of attainment is called “the divine nome of corn and barley” (Rit.,
ch. 110).
The Egyptians were already tillers of the ground when Ptah laid
out and planted the lower Aarru-paradise, as their other field of work,
in an earth that was ruled or tyrannized over by the powers of evil,
headed by the Apap-dragon. This was the earth of the abyss,
the primeval desert which had to be reclaimed by the pioneers and
planters of that under-world. It was laid out strictly on the allotment
system. Each one of the manes had a portion in which to plough
and sow and reap. The seed grown in the harvest-field of life on
earth was garnered up to sow and bring forth a hundredfold in this,
the field of divine harvest, which was so magnified by tradition
because its bounty had been divinized. The Egyptian authorship of
a paradise of peace and plenty is pre-eminently shown by their
converting the “earth of eternity” into a world of work, the harvestfield that was cultivated by the manes, who dug and hoed and sowed
in it, and reaped the corn according to their labours (Rit., ch. 6).
Amenta was made from sand converted into fertile soil well watered
by the all-enriching Nile. It was like lower Egypt, the land of
honey, the land of the sycamore fig-tree, which was a veritable tree of
life to the Egyptians. It was the land of the grapes that grew in
clusters of prodigious size. It was the country of abundant corn.
Not that the Egyptians thought the other world a replica of this,
but such was the natural plan on which they wrought in making
out the unknown by the known. They dramatized another intermediate state, and acted the eschatological drama in accordance with
conditions familiar to them in this world. The Aarru-paradise in
Amenta is copied from Egypt in the upper earth. The fulfilment of all
blessedness was in its being a likeness of the dear old land made
permanent and perfect in the spirit-world. It was the promised land
for those who were prepared to take possession of it and to drink of the
sacred Nile at its celestial source. Its tree of life was the same sycamore
fig-tree that had always been the tree of life and food in season.
The journey from the lower Egypt of the mythos through the
deserts of Amenta was from west to east, from the place of sunset to
the point of sunrise which was called the solar mount of glory. At
sunset Anhur-Shu upraised his mansion of the starry firmament
which he uplifted nightly, standing on the steps of Am-Khemen.
This presented a stellar picture of the upper Egypt or the upper
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paradise for which the wanderers in the wilderness were bound. At
dawn the mount of sunrise in the garden eastward was attained.
This was the mountain of Amenta, also called Shennu or Shenni =
Sinai. Shena in Egyptian signifies the point of turning in the orbit
of the solar course. This point was figured on the mountain where
the lions rested as supporters of the solar disk at dawn, or Shu uplifted
Ra from out the darkness of Amenta and held the orb aloft with his
two hands. At this point Anhur’s place as leader of the chosen
people was taken by his alter ego Shu. The Magic Papyrus describes
the warrior-god as “king of upper and lower Egypt” in his two
characters of Anhur and Shu-si-Ra. By night Shu-Anhur was the
uplifter of the firmament for the Egyptian exodus or coming forth
to day from out the darkness of Amenta or of “Egypt and the
desert” (Rit., ch. 110). (See the figure of Shu as the uplifter, p. 315.)
Under the name of Anhur he is the leader of the upper heaven, rod
in hand. His starry image probably was seen as Regulus in the
constellation of Kepheus, the ruler there, arrested with the rod or staff
still lifted in his hand. He repels the crocodile or dragon coming out
of the abyss, the crocodile that is the dragon of Egypt and the
Pharaoh of the Hebrew writers. This repelling of the crocodiles that
issue from the abyss corresponds to the overthrowal of Pharaoh or
the dragon and his host in the Red Sea. Anhur is the lord of the
scimitar.
He is designated “smiting double horns”; “the god
provided with the two horns,” like Moses. “Uplifted is the sky which
he maintains with his two arms,” like Moses.
This two-fold
character of Anhur is indicated when he is described as “the king of
upper and lower Egypt, Shu-si-Ra.”
This was the Egypt of
Amenta. Thus, as the king of lower Egypt he was Anhur the
uplifter of the firmament for the chosen people to come forth. At
daybreak he assumed the character of Shu, the son of Ra, who lifted
up the solar disk at dawn on the horizon, otherwise upon the mount
of sunrise. As Regulus on the horizon in the zodiac the leader of
the manes changed to Shu, who is then called “the double abode of
Ra.” The Magic Papyrus, which contains “the hymn of the god
Shu,” is called “the chapter of the excellent songs which dispel the
submerged.” It is the celebration of the great victory over the Apapreptile and all dangerous animals lurking in the depths of the
mythical Red Sea. It is said to Shu in the hymn, “Thou leadest to
the upper heaven with thy rod in that name which is thine of Anhur.
Thou repellest the crocodile coming out of the abyss in that name
which is thine of repeller of crocodiles.” The crocodile, of course, is
the dragon of Egypt. The wicked are overthrown by Anhur the
valiant as the lord of events. His sister Tefnut accompanies him.
She is a form of Sekhet, “the goddess in her fury,” the “chastiser
of the wicked.” “She gives her fire against his enemies, and reduces
them to non-existence.” She is the Kamite prototype of Miriam, the
sister of Moses. Tefnut accompanies her brother in his battles with
the Sebau and the submerged. Elsewhere she changes her shape into
a weapon of war. She shouts her defiance against “the wicked
conspirators,” exclaiming, “I am Tefnut thundering against those who
are annihilated for ever!” and against those that “remain floating on
the waves, like dead bodies on the inundation,” just as it was on that
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 661
day when “Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea-shore” (Ex.
xiv. 30). Tefnut, the prototype of Miriam, “gives her fire” against
her brother’s enemies to reduce them to non-existence by their being
submerged in the waters, where “Miriam the prophetess, the sister of
Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after
her with timbrels and with dances. And Miriam answered them, Sing
ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his
rider hath he thrown into the sea” (Ex. xv. 20-21).
Moses
corresponds to Anhur. He is the leader of the children of Israel
during the first part of the journey towards the promised land. He
conducts them through the Red Sea where Israel saw the Egyptians
dead upon the sea-shore; through the sandy wilderness, the waterless
wastes, and the ways of darkness. “Then came Amalek, and fought
with Israel in Rephidim.” This, as we reckon, was the great battle
of the autumn equinox. It was not a battle fought by human beings
once for all on mundane ground, but a war betwixt the Lord and
Amalek, that went on for ever, from generation to generation, because
it was periodic in the phenomena of external nature, and not a duel
betwixt the Lord of heaven and an earthly potentate or people. The
description of holding up the hands of Moses to maintain the
equilibrium shows the equinoctial nature of the conflict. The going
forth at the equinox is further identified by the month of the year.
The Jewish new year still begins about the time of the autumn
equinox, a little belated in consequence of its not having been carefully
readjusted. “And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land
of Egypt, saying, This month shall be unto you the beginning of
months: it shall be the first month of the year to you” (Ex. xii. 1, 2).
This was the year that opened with and was determined by the full
moon nearest to the autumn equinox. For six months thenceforth
the moon was ruler of the year as the great light in the darkness of
the double earth. Again, at the time of the vernal equinox there is
another poising of the scales, if not a standing still of sun and moon,
and another great battle in which the sun-god finally overcomes
the dragon of darkness and all the evil powers that war against
the light of life and welfare of the world; also against the children
of Ra on their journey as souls or manes from the lower Egypt
of the mythical Amenta to the upper heaven on the mount of
glory.
The present writer has previously suggested that the name of
Moyses, or as some Hebrews pronounced it, Mouishé, was derived from
the dual name of Shu, one of whose names as Ma, the other Shu,
and Ma-Shu denotes Anhur, who manifests in the two characters of
Ma and Shu. In the address to the god it is said, “Thou blowest the
divine barge off with a favourable wind in that name which is thine
of the goddess Ma.” Thus Ma, the goddess of truth, law, and
justice, is here identified with Shu in a feminine character. The
feather of Anhur also reads both Ma and Shu—Ma as light and Shu
as shade. But, after all, the origin of the name is of little importance
compared with the traits of character. This female character of MaShu has also been assigned to Moses. There is a tradition, reported
by Suidas, that the Hebrew lawgiver and author of the Jewish laws
was a Hebrew woman named Musu, which is equivalent to Ma-Shu
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in Egyptian. Shu is the very personification of light and shade. The
name reads both light and shade. This dual character of the
god is to be read in the face of Moses, who wears the glory on it when
in presence of the Lord upon the mount, and who covers or shades
his face when he turns to speak with the people in the valley. He
likewise is the personification of light and shade: Moses under the
veil is Shu in the shade; Moses wearing the glory of God upon his
face is Shu who “sits in his father’s eye,” the eye of the sun; Shuari-hems-nefer—who keeps his residence radiant—which is a title of
Shu at Philae. (Pierret, Le Panthéon Egyptien, pp. 22-3.) “When
Moses had done speaking with the people, he put a veil on his face.
But when Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he took
the veil off until he came out.” And when he came out and spake
unto them that which he was commanded, they saw the skin of Moses’
face. “And Moses put the veil upon his face again until he went
in to speak with him” (Ex. xxxiv. 35). The glory on the face of
Moses is described as sending forth horns, which is a way of portraying
the god provided with “two horns,” that is a title of Anhur. Moses
performs the same act as Shu the supporter of the firmament, but in
the heaven with twelve supports instead of the earlier four erected by
Shu-Anhur, which followed a readjustment that was made by the Hirseshti of On in the heaven of Atum-Ra. Anhur was the elevator and
supporter of the heavens, and Shu-si-Ra is the upholder of the solar
disk. Moses with his arms uplifted on the mount, or with the “rod
of God” in his hand, is the Hebrew version of Anhur the sustainer of
heaven standing on the mount. Joshua, who becomes the supporter
of Iah the solar god, is identical with Shu when he is the son and
supporter of Ra upon the horizon east and west. Shu was at first
the son of Nun, the deity of the celestial water, who was also called
the father of the gods. He afterwards became the son of Ra as
the supporter of the solar disk on the horizon “with his two hands.”
Joshua also had a double character, like Shu. In the first he is called
Hoshea, the son of Nun. In his later rôle Joshua becomes the
upholder of Ihuh and his change of name is connected with the
change in character.
The name of Joshua or owcwhy contains
the name of Ihuh united to a word signifying assistance or help.
In the form a;wc it denotes a lifting up, an upholding, as in the Egyptian
name of Shu, to uphold, which describes him in the character
of the uplifter to Ra the solar god. This should suffice to demonstrate
the identity of Joshua, the son of Nun and the supporter of Ihuh, with
Shu, who became Shu-si-Ra as the uplifter of the solar disk. Thus
Shu, the son of Nun and supporter of the firmament as an elemental
power, was afterwards personalized as the supporter of the sun-god Ra.
Ra is Ihuh. The name of Shu denotes the supporter, and the deity whom
he supported on the mount was Atum-Huhi; and in this character Shu
became the leader of the children of Ra (or of Israel) as Io-Shua,
who proclaims himself to be the supporter of Ihuh in the book of
Joshua (xxiv. 15, 16). The firmament is the Nun by name, and Shu
the uplifter of the firmament is called the son of Nun. Thus Shu in
his uplifting of the firmament is the uplifter of his father. Now, to
show once more how widely fragments of the Egyptian wisdom were
scattered to become the later legends of many lands, let us glance for
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 663
a moment at “the exploits of Maui,” a Polynesian form of Shu. Shu
was the son of Nnu (Nun), and in Mangaia the name of Nnu is
rendered by Ru. Ru is the father of Maui, and one of the exploits
of Maui is to hurl his father Ru aloft, sky and all, to a tremendous
height, so high indeed that the sky could never get back to earth
again. Now for the conversion of the Kamite myth into the Mangaian
märchen. Nnu or Nun was also the firmament upraised by Shu. Nnu
as firmament was personalized in Nnu the father of Shu; and where
Shu uplifts the sky, now personalized, Maui is humorously described
as assuming gigantic proportions, and exerting prodigious strength to
toss his father so far aloft that he was for ever entangled and suspended
among the stars of heaven, and never could come down again (Gill,
Myths and Songs, p. 58).
Various legends derived from the Egyptian mythology were
compounded in the Hebrew book of Exodus.
One of the most remarkable of all the parallels to be adduced is to
be seen in the fact that in one particular type there is a blending of
Shu with Horus in Horus-Shuti, and that this is repeated in the story
of Moses, who represents the deliverer as Horus in the ark of papyrus,
and Anhur in other aspects of the character. Moses is the waterborn. Josephus explains the name as signifying one who was taken
out of the water. Pharaoh’s daughter called the name of the child
Mosheh, and said, “because I drew him out of the water” (Ex. ii. 10).
Shu-Anhur likewise is the water-born. He is addressed in the Magic
Papyrus as “the unique lord issuing from the Nun,” which is the
firmamental water, and from which Shu as the breathing-force was
born as the son of Nun.
The growth of a legend from its source in the primitive representation or mythicizing of natural phenomena down to its becoming
humanized at last as biblical and historical may be exemplified by
the story of the child who was saved from the waters in a little ark of
bulrush or papyrus-reed. It is told of Sargon in Assyria, of Maui
in New Zealand, and various other children who were drawn forth
from the water at the time of their birth. It is the myth of the childHorus, first and far away the oldest in the world. The story has to
be read backward in Hebrew a very long way before its primal
meaning can be comprehended. In going back we meet at first with
the child-Horus floating in an ark upon the waters. The speaker in
the Ritual at the time of his re-birth says, “I am coffined in an ark
like Horus, to whom his cradle is brought.” This cradle is often
represented as a nest of papyrus-reed = the ark of bulrushes in the
biblical version (Rit., ch. 130). This in its most primitive Egyptian
form was the flower of the papyrus-plant, or later lotus. On this childHorus is upborne from out the waters, which led to the Egyptian
ark or boat that was made of papyrus-reeds. When the legend of
child-Horus on his papyrus, or in his nest of reeds, took its Hebrew
form, the little ark in which the child was saved is made of bulrushes,
or some other form of rush called amN, which probably represents
the Egyptian kama, a reed, the reed of Egypt, therefore the papyrusreed. According to the legendary lore, repeated with a wise word of
caution by Josephus, the young child Moses, saved from the river in
the ark, was adopted and named by Thermutis. This name is a title
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of the Great Mother Mut in Egyptian, the consort of Amen-Ra. But
the genesis of the name from Mut the mother and Ta-Ur, which
signifies the first and oldest, she who was personalized in Ta-Urt,
shows that the Mut or mother, Thermutis, in her primordial form was
Ta-Ur-Mut = Thermutis. Again, we learn from the same source that
the black or Ethiopian woman who became the second wife of Moses
was named Tharuis or Tharvis. In the Greek rendering of the
Egyptian Ta-Ur (or Ta-Urt) this name becomes Thoueris, and in
Ta-Ur(t) we can identify the prototype of Thermutis and the original
of Thoueris or Tharuis (Antiq. B. 2, 10, 2). Both the foster-mother
and the wife of Moses are here traced back to the old First Mother as
Taurt and Thermutis, who are one and the same, in the Egyptian
goddess that first brought forth the divine child from the waters or
from the marshes and the bulrushes, as Uati or as Apt, the water-cow,
the most ancient form of the Great Mother in Egyptian mythology.
In the Hebrew legends the same old mother, under two names which
are resolved into one, supplies two characters as the foster-mother and
the consort of Moses. Now, the old First Mother Ta-Ur-Mut, who
saved the young child from the waters in her primitive ark, is designated
“the mother of him who is married to his mother.” In like manner
the mother (or foster-mother) and wife of Moses are one and the same
in Taurt, who was both mother and spouse of Sebek, the youthful solar
god. Moses is saved from the water by Thermutis (Ta-Ur, as Mut,
the mother), and he was married to Thaueris, who is the same by
name and nature as Thermutis. Thus Moses also was both the child
and the consort of his mother, which had been the status of the
young sun-god from the time when the human fatherhood had not
been individualized. Lastly, the two characters of the old First Mother
were represented by the two mothers in the Osirian mythos. These
are the two divine sisters, Isis and Nephthys, into which the old First
Genetrix was divided as the water-mother and the mother-earth. Isis
is the wateress. Hes, her name, signifies the liquid of life. Nephthys
is an earth-mother who carries the basket of seed on her head. As it
is said in the Ritual, Horus the child is produced by Isis (from the
water) and nourished by Nephthys (on the earth) (Rit. 17). And
these two forms of the divine mother can be detected even in their
biblical guise as the mother and the foster-mother of the young child
Moses, one of whom saves him from the waters in the ark of bulrushes,
just as Isis mothers Horus in the element of water and Nephthys
nourishes and mothers him on land.
There is nothing human or historical about the young child saved
from the waters under any name whatsoever, in any kind of ark, no
matter in what language the legend may be told or in what waters
the little ark may float. The same legend is related of the mythical
Sargon in the cuneiform tablets. He says, “My mother the Princess
conceived me; in a secret place she brought me forth. She placed
me in a basket of reeds; with bitumen my exit she closed; she gave
me to the river, which drowned me not.” When Sargon says, “My
mother knew not my father” (Records of the Past, vol. v. p. 3, First
Series), he is claiming to be that divine child whose only parent was
the divine virgin mother, like Neith, the bringer-forth of Horus (or
Helios) without the male progenitorship.
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 665
The hidden birth of the Child-Horus is also repeated for the
Hebrew infant, of whom it is said that when his mother saw that he
was a goodly child “she hid him three months” (Ex. ii. 2, 3), to
preserve him from the death decreed by the cruel Pharaoh. The time
may not be given in any known hieroglyphic text, but the length
is correct according to the astronomical data. Child-Horus at a later
time was born in the winter solstice and the concealment in the nether
earth came to an end in the vernal equinox. Therefore his mother
hid him in the marshes and the rushes of Amenta for three months.
When the babe was placed in the ark of bulrushes and laid in the
flags by the river’s brink his sister was in charge of him. “And his
sister stood far off to know what would be done to him” (ii. 4, 5).
And in the Hymn to Osiris it is said of the Child-Horus, “His sister
took care of him by dissipating his enemies and repelling bad luck. She
is wise of tongue, and beneficent of will and words” (Records, vol. iv.
p. 101), as was the sister of Moses in her suggestion to the daughter of
Pharaoh. Horus on his papyrus is the youthful god uplifted from
the dark waters and saved from the coils of the Apap-reptile—a
salvation that is effected by the two divine sisters Isis and Nephthys,
one of whom was the conceiver of the child, the other being the nurse.
Here as elsewhere it is the same in the mythos as in the “history.”
In the biblical version the daughter of Pharaoh and the sister of
Moses take the place of Isis and Nephthys.
Here the cruel
Pharaoh in the book of Exodus plays the same part as Herod and
other tyrants who massacre the innocents, inasmuch as he commands the
two midwives to kill all the male children at the time of their birth by
drowning (Ex. i. 22). The human innocents were to be murdered en
masse so as to include the divine child in the massacre. Only two
midwives were appointed to deliver all the parturient women of
Israel in Egypt. The mythos will also answer for this limited
number. In the Osirian system the divine child was brought forth by
the two sisters Isis and Nephthys. In an earlier rendering these were
Sekhet and Neith. Josephus states that the two midwives given to
the Jewish women by the Pharaoh were Egyptians (Ant. ii. 9, 2). And
as the midwives were but two for all the multitude of the children of
Israel, they are evidently a form of the two mythical bringers-forth,
who were Isis and Nephthys in the Osirian religion and Iusāas and
Neb-hetep in the cult of Atum-Ra.
In certain of the extra-biblical features of the Mosaic mythos the
lower Egypt of Amenta is plainly indicated as the real land of the
exodus. For example, when Moses went into India, he and his army
enjoyed the light of the sun during the night-time, and this could only
occur in the lower earth which the sun illuminated by night—that is,
the land of Amenta. India, Sindhu and Hendu each represent the
Egyptian Khentu, which is a name for the interior. Thus, we identify
the mythical India with Khentu, and Khentu is the interior within
the earth where the sun shone at night for Moses and his warriors in
the Osirian Khentu-Amenta. Also when Moses is identified with
Shu-Anhur this may account for his legendary reputation outside the
Bible history as a mighty warrior. Anhur in Egypt is Har-Tesh, the
red god Mars, or Arês, who passed into the Greek mythology by name
as the great warrior Onouris = Anhur. Shu-Anhur is addressed under
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various names connected with his deeds. “Thou wieldest thy spear
to pierce the head of the serpent Nekau, in that name which is thine
of the god provided with horns.” “Thou seizest thy spear and
overthrowest the wicked (the Sebau), in that name which is thine of
Horus the striker!” “Thou destroyest the An of Tokhenti in that
name which is thine of Double abode of Ra.” “Thou strikest the
Menti and the Sati in that name which is thine of Young-elder!”
“Thou strikest upon the heads of the wicked in that name which
is thine of Lord of Wounds!” (Mag. Pap., pp. 2 and 3).
In one of the Rabbinical legends it is related that when Moses
was condemned to lose his head for killing an Egyptian, the Lord
permitted that his neck should become as hard as a pillar of marble,
which caused the sword of the executioner to rebound and kill the
wilder of the weapon. This in the mythos is the state of the justified
manes in Amenta, who prays that his neck may be invulnerable at the
block of execution. In the Hebrew märchen the Manes becomes a
man called Moses.
Fragments of the ancient wisdom survive in many foolish-looking
legends. The Rabbins relate that Moses was born circumcised. So
the kaf-ape is said to have been born in the same condition. “It
is born circumcised, which circumcision the priests adopt.” (HorApollo, B. i. 14.) Now Shu in one of his divers characters is said to
have taken the form of a kaf-ape (Magic Papyrus, p. 8, Records, vol.
x, p. 152). Thus Shu, or Ma-Shu, as the ape in the mythos becomes
the man Moses or Mosheh, who is said in the märchen to have been
born circumcised, when the anthropomorphic type had taken the place
of the zoötype. In another legend Shu the giant is portrayed as
acting the part of a crazy man. The two characters are coupled
together when it is said, “Though didst take the form of a kaf-ape,
and afterwards of a crazy man” (Magic Papyrus, pp. 8, 9). This
may possibly supply a gloss to the action of Moses when he waxed
angry and smashed the tables of the law (Ex. xxxii. 19). For this
reason: Shu in this character is called “the giant of seven cubits” (or he
represents a shrine of seven cubits), and he is then commanded to make
a shrine of eight cubits. And Moses, after breaking the tables of the
law and acting uncommonly like a crazy man, is commanded by the
Lord to hew two other tables of stone like unto the first, so that the
Lord might write upon the second tables the words that were on the
first set which the crazy man had broken.
Shu-Anhur is described as he “who putteth a stop to them whose
hand is violent against those who are weaker than themselves” (Rit.,
ch. 110). This is the character in which Moses begins his personal
history. The first thing he does is to slay an Egyptian whom he saw
oppressing a Hebrew (and bury his body in the sand). On the
“second day” “behold two men of the Hebrews strove together, and
he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow?”
(Ex. ii. 11-13). This contention in the Ritual is betwixt the twinbrothers Sut and Horus when Shu-Anhur reconciles the two warrior
gods where Moses tries to reconcile two fighting men who were
fellow-Hebrews.
Moses is said to have built and altar, and to have called it “JehovahNissi, the Lord is my banner.” This, to say the least, is suggestive
of a title of Anhur, to whom it is said, “Thou comest here upon
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 667
thy stately stand in that name which is thine of being in thy
stately stand,” or on the standard (Am aat). Here there is the
same dual rendering possible as in the Hebrew, the stately stand
and standard being equivalent to the banner. Moses carries the
“rod of God” in his hand. With this rod he divides the Red
Sea for the people to go over on dry ground. With this he smites
the rock in Horeb, and causes the water to spring forth abundantly.
The plagues descend on Egypt at the stretching forth of Moses’s
wonder-working rod. Shu-Anhur is likewise the bearer of the rod.
He is represented with the rod in his hands, and is designated
“Lord of the rod.” In the Hymn to Shu it is said, “Thou leadest
the upper heaven with thy rod in that name which is thine of
Anhur,” the uplifter of heaven (Magic Papyrus, 2, 5). The origin
of smiting the rock to make the water come forth is connected
with the rock of the Tser Hill, the mount of sunrise. The first
waters that issued out of this rock were the springs of dawn and
the floods of day. In the Ritual we meet with the hero who
causes the water to gush forth. He says, in the character of the
great one, who has been developed into a chief, “I make the water
to issue forth,” or “I make water to come” (117). The striker
of the rock with his rod or staff was Shu-Anhur, the impersonator of
the force that burst up out of the rock at sunrise when the waters
of day were once more set free. The water of dawn is called
the “water of Tefnut,” she who is the twin-sister of Shu, and
of which water the children of light “drink abundantly.” As one
of these—who are the prototypes of the children of Israel—says,
“I drink abundantly of the waters of Tefnut.”
The waters of
dawn (or the tree) were ascribed to the female source, whether
as Tefnut or as Hathor. And it is noticeable that in the Hebrew
version the first to make the water come forth by miracle for the
people to drink is Miriam, whose relation to Moses is identical
with that of Tefnut to Shu. The legend of the one god who
reveals himself upon a summit of a rock, whether to Shu or Moses,
is a matter of mythology, not a subject of human history, and
as such the mythos is Egyptian. “And God spake unto Moses
and said unto him, I am Iahu, and I appeared unto Abraham,
unto Israel, and unto Jacob as El Shaddai, but by the name of
Iahu I was not made known to them” (Ex. vi. 3).
In the
original rendering of the mythos Ra reveals himself to Shu and
the elders as the deity in spirit, living in truth. He has become
greater than the god who created him.
He tells them that
although later in point of time, he is the one primeval source who
has been giving them light all the while, and in this new character he
assumes his sovereignty as god over all, the one beside whom
there is none other. This is the deity in the Ritual who says,
“I am the self-originating force. Behold me, how I am raised
upon my throne” (ch. 85). He is no longer merely solar, or one
of the seven elemental powers. He is the god in spirit—the spirit
that is divine, and a type of that which lives for ever. This accounts
for the change of name or title which follows the change in status.
Ra was known by other titles in the mythos, but as Huhi the
eternal he was previously unknown. In this character the god
reveals his secret self as the supreme one, whose name is then
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expressed by the titles of Huhi the eternal and Ra the holy spirit.
The Hebrew deity Ihuh was not simply the one god in a single
form of personality; he is the Egyptian one god in his various
attributes. He is the one god both as the father and the son, who in
the words of Isaiah (ix. 6) is the everlasting father and the prince
of peace, who as Egyptian was Atum-Huhi the eternal father,
and Iusa the ever-coming son; Atum-Ra as closer on the horizon
west, and Atum-Horus as opener on the horizon east. He is the
Egyptian god of Sinai as the lord of Shenni; the god who was “lifted
up” in his ark-shrine of the sanctuary on the mount.
He is
the god of the Urim and Thummim, or lights and perfections; the
Urai or Urur, of the winged disk and other figures of the Egyptian
symbolism; the one god who was solar in the mythos and the
holy spirit in the eschatology. In the book of Exodus the one
god Ihuh supersedes all other gods, El-Shadai and the Elohim;
and, like the Egyptian Ra, he assumes the sovereignty as Ihuh
the eternal. It was in this new character Ra issued his commands
for an ark, shrine, or sanctuary to be made, in which he was to
be lifted up by Shu, the supporter of Ra.
Ages before the Hebrew Pentateuch was written and ascribed
to Moses, the one god had been worshipped at On or Annu as
Egyptian under the title of Atum-Ra, and if he was made known
to Anhur by revelation, whatsoever that may imply, the revelation was
Egyptian. This is the god who was one by nature and dual in
manifestation; one in the solar mythos as the closer and opener
of the nether-world; one in the eschatology as Huhi the everlasting father, and Iu the ever-coming son as prince of peace;
the one god, called the holy spirit, who was founded typically on
the human ghost.
This is the living (Ankhu), self-originating, and eternal god. This is he who was to be lifted up as
god alone in his ark or tabernacle on the mount of glory—that is,
as Ra-Harmakhu on the double horizon or in the dual equinox;
the deity who gave the law upon Mount Shenni through the intermediation of Anhur or Ma-Shu, the son of Ra.
In the so-called “destruction of mankind” the solar god resolves to
be lifted up in an ark or sanctuary by himself alone. This sanctuary
is carried on the back of Nut, the celestial cow. “There was Nut.
The majesty of Ra was on her back. His majesty arrived in the
sanctuary. And his majesty saw the inner part of the sanctuary.”
This creation of the sanctuary for the one god Ra upon the mount
is followed in the Hebrew book. Ihuh says to Moses, “Let them
(the children of Israel) make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell
among them. According to all that I show thee, the pattern of the
dwelling and the pattern of all the furniture thereof, even so ye shall
make it.” “And they shall make an ark of acacia-wood.” The two
together, the sanctuary and the ark, constituted an ark-shrine of the
true Egyptian pattern. As Egyptian, the ark of Ra-Harmakhu
represented the double equinox in the two horizons. This was the
“double abode of Ra” in the dual domain of light and shade, the
model of the Jewish arks or tabernacles that were to be erected equally
in sun and shade. The part open to the rays of light was exactly to
balance the shade or veil of the covering, and not to have more sun
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 669
than shade (Mishna, Treatise Succah, ch. 1). This was in accordance
with the plan of the Great Pyramid in relation to the luminous hemisphere and the hemisphere of shade at the two equinoxes. The
sanctuary of Ra was a figure of the heavens. The Hebrew ark was a
portable copy, a tabernacle fitted for an itinerating deity. It was
the Kamite custom to represent the heaven in miniature as an ark of
so many cubits. There is an ark of seven cubits, one of eight cubits,
another of four cubits, in which the god was “lifted up” or exalted.
Inside the ark there was a shrine for the deity, with a figure of the
god within the sanctuary. As water was the primary element of life,
the nature-powers were held to have come into being by water. Hence
their images were placed within the shrine that was carried on board
the papyrus bark and borne upon the shoulders of the priests. These
tabernacles, consisting of a boat and shrine, were the sacred ark-shrines
of Egypt. Thus the beginnings were for ever kept in view. The arkshrine on the water represented by the boat became a type of heaven as
dwelling-place of the Eternal. Thus an ark of Nnu was constellated in
the stars and pictured on the waters of the inundation. The ark of
Atum-Ra was depicted with the solar orb on board, which was always
red. In the religious mysteries, as already shown, an ark of four cubits
imaged the heaven of four quarters or, as the Egyptians phrased it, of
four sides. As we have seen, there was an ark of seven cubits for the
heptanomis, and one of eight cubits for the octonary. This ark-shrine
of eight cubits is to be built for the god to float in after there has been
a great subsidence of land in the celestial waters. So likewise in the
“destruction of mankind,” when Ra becomes the supreme one god,
he orders an ark or tabernacle to be made for his voyage over the
heavens. The inscription was engraved in the chamber of the cow
that was herself a form of the ark as the goddess Nut.
William Simpson in 1877 called attention to the Japanese arkshrines or mikoshi, “which have many points of likeness to the Jewish
ark of the covenant, and which are carried on men’s shoulders by
means of staves. Mikoshi signifies the high or honourable seat.
Temo-sama may be translated ‘heaven’s lord’” (Trans. Soc. of Bib.
Arch., vol. v, p. ii. 550). Now, the first type of heaven’s lord that is
known to astronomical mythology was the ruler of the pole-star, whose
high or honourable seat was at the pole, like that of Anup on his
mountain. In some of these arks, we are told, there is the small
figure of a deity, which is no doubt the “heaven’s lord” intended by
the name. There were seven of these lords of heaven altogether, who,
as here suggested, had been rulers of the seven pole-stars in succession.
Now, Simpson tells us that there are seven of these arks preserved in
the temple of Hachiman at Kamakura, Japan. “They are said by
some to be state-norimans, but as these shrines are connected with
the deified Mikado, they are most probably temo-samas or mikoshis
as well as norimans.” This is confirmed by a statement of Kaempfer’s.
He says, “The mikoshi themselves being eight,” the eight seats or arkshrines answer to the Kami when the eighth one had been added to
the seven as over-lord, but seven was the primary number of the Kami
as of the Egyptian Akhemu or never-setting ones. We infer that
seven ark-shrines or seats were typical of the seven rulers, in addition
to all the other forms of the septenary, mounds, mountains, islands,
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ANCIENT EGYPT
menhirs, towers, temples, or cities that were raised on high to
symbolize the seven stations marked by pole-stars in the circuit of
precession. Now, Israel is charged by Amos with having borne an
ark-shrine that was obviously the tabernacle of a star-god or gods
who were once the Elohim after which she went a-whoring (Amos. v.
26). The passage in the revised version runs thus, “Yea, ye have
borne siccuth your king and chiun your images, the star of
your god, which ye made to yourselves.”
The most probable
rendering depends on siccuth being a tabernacle or ark of the god,
corresponding to the Egyptian sekhet, for an ark, shrine, or cabin,
and on chiun, from chun, denoting the pillar or pedestal of the star.
Kûn signifies to found, set up, erect, heap up, and establish; it
denotes the highest point, at the centre, and is applied to the founding
of the world. The name was assigned to Saturn as god in the
highest. But Sut was the earlier founder of a world as god of the
pole, in conjunction with his mother, who first represented the mount.
The siccuth as tabernacle, ark, or female abode is equivalent to the
ben-ben or beth of the child, the god or king who as Sut was figured
at times within the cone. The chun as pedestal would be the pillar
of the star, and the images would signify the ark of the pole and its
star—in short, the Great Mother and her child, who were the primeval
female and male as Apt (or the Egypto-Semitic naked goddess Kûn)
and Sut, later Sut-Anup. The so-called tabernacle was a “hut,”
which agrees with the conical pillar or ben-ben as a figure of the
pole. The god of the pillar originated as god of the pole; Sut was
primarily and pre-eminently god of the pillar, and El-Shaddai we hold
to have been a form of Sut-Anup on his mountain of the pole.
In the solar mythos the mount was figured on or as the horizon at
the point of equinox, the point of turning and returning from
Amenta in the circuit of the year, or from the lower Egypt of the
mythos. Hence it was named Mount Shenni=the Hebrew Sinai.
This was the place of crossing or passing over the line in the exodus
or coming forth from the land of bondage when commemorated as
an historical passover. The first day of the first month was the day
of the equinox. The Hebrew dual year, sacred and civil, was based
upon the double equinox. Hence the ark-shrine of Ihuh (Jehovah)
is identifiable with that of Atum-Huhi, whose title of Ra-Harmachis
shows that he was the deity of the double horizon, the double abode,
or double sanctuary, first as Horus, next as Ra. This may be gathered
from the statement, “And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, On the
first day of the first month thou shalt rear up the tabernacle of the
tent of meeting. And thou shalt put therein the ark of the testimony”
(Ex. xl. 1)—that is, on the mount which was the equinoctial meetingpoint upon the summit, the point at which the rescued spirits went on
board the bark of Ra, as represented in the Ritual. “The tabernacle
of the tent of meeting” is the full title of the portable dwelling-place
that was built for Ihuh on Sinai, according to the imagery shown to
Moses in the mount. “Moreover, thou shalt make the tabernacle with
ten curtains. The length of each curtain shall be eight-and-twenty
cubits, and the breadth of each curtain four cubits.” These numbers
correspond to the ark of heaven in ten divisions, with the four corners
and the twenty-eight measures of a lunar zodiac. Ten cubits also
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 671
was to be the length of each board of acacia-wood. The seven-fold
candlestick we look on as a figure of the celestial heptanomis and its
mystery of the seven stars.
It was thus the symbolism was
compounded and continued in the later rendering of the imagery.
The mount of the horizon in the equinox was the place of the two
lions called the Sheniu, which also tend to identify the mount with
Sinai. These two lions, the two kherufu or kherubs that support the
sun upon the horizon, are repeated in the two cherubim that were
portrayed upon the ark of testimony. One symbol of Mount Hetep
is a table piled with food. This is reproduced in the table of shewbread that was to be always set as the oblation in the presence of the
Lord. Ihuh was to commune with Moses from between the two
cherubim. The position is that of Atum-Ra-Har-Makhu in the
equinox when he rises as the sun-god from betwixt the two kherufu
or lions on the mount (Rit., Vig. to ch. 18). Atum-Ra-Har-Makhu
was the lion-god of the double force, or the power and glory of the
sun upon the mount of the horizon. He rose up betwixt two lions
which imaged the double solar force, and was also represented by the
fore-part and the back-part of the lion.
The lion in sign-language was an Egyptian type of the terrible (HorApollo, 1, 20). This was applied to the sun or solar god as an image of
his double force, and represented by Anhur and Tefnut. The hinder
part of the lion that is carried on the head of Anhur is a sign of force.
But the fore-part, the face and front of the lion, which reads peh-peh,
denotes the glory of the double force. The fore-part of the lion or
lion-god being the symbol of his glory, this was not to be seen by
Moses, who is told to stand in the cleft of the rock whilst the glory of
the Lord, or fore-part of the lion, passes by, and he is only to see the
deity’s hinder part. As Egyptian, the cleft in the rock was the place
of entrance to and egress from Amenta. The solar god who rose
again as lord of terror was the lion of the double force, the power and
the glory of the god being figured and differentiated by the hind-part
and the fore-part of the lion. In strict accordance with Egyptian
symbolism, the dual nature of Ihuh was made known to Moses—that
is, if the promise was kept and the Lord revealed his hinder part (Ex.
xxxiii. 18, 23). Moreover, it was made known by means of the lion or
the man-lion as zoötype. Moses asks to see the glory, and the Lord
replies, “Thou canst not see my face” and live, so terrible was the
glory imaged by the lion’s face. The glory being in front, the power
was behind, and this alone could be seen by the mortal who desired to
live. The unbearable glory obviously depended on the Lord as solar
lion because he had first shown his face to Moses “as a man.” “And
the Lord spake unto Moses face to face as a man speaketh unto his
friend” (Ex. xxxiii. 11). On one occasion, when Anhur comes into the
presence of the solar god, it is said, “Turn thou back, O Rehu; turn
thou back from before his mightiness = the glory, or, as otherwise said,
“from him who keepeth watch and is himself unseen,” or is not to be
seen, which is equivalent to the Hebrew “Man shall not see me and
live.” Now, according to the astronomical mythology—with the twin
lions stationed east and west—the lion of the hinder part was to
the west, the lion with the face of glory to the east, the place of
sunrise. The entrance to the nether earth was in the west. This
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was the side of the Amenta through which the first of the two leaders
was Moses; he was to see the back part only, whether of the double
horizon, or the god in person, or the lion of Atum-Ra. Thus, the
statement that Moses was not to see the glory or fore-part is equivalent to his not being allowed to enter the promised land upon the
other side of the water, which was visible from the mountain of
Amenta that reached up to the sky.
As shown by the Vignettes, there is an Egyptian origin likewise
for “the burning bush” in which the one god was manifested to
Moses in Mount Horeb. The Lord as Iahu-Elohim was previously
revealed to Moses in his solar character. As it is said, “Moses was
keeping the flock of Jethro,” and he “came to the mountain of god
unto Horeb.” “And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a
flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and behold,
the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And
Moses said, I will turn aside now, and see this great sight, why the
bush is not burned” (Ex. iii. 1, 3). Now, this “burning bush” is
to be seen full blaze in pictures to the Ritual. There is a vignette to
chapter 64 in which the burning bush is saluted (figure, Papyrus du
Louvre, 111, 93; Renouf, Book of the Dead, pl. 17). In the texts the
golden unbu is a symbol of the solar god. It is a figure of the radiating disk which is depicted raying all aflame at the summit of a
sycamore-fig tree which thus appears to burn with fire, and the tree is
not consumed. It images the lord of the resurrection going forth
from the state of the disk to give light (Rit., 64). The manes, without shoes on his feet, saluting the tree with the flaming disk in
or upon it, from which there issue tongues of flame, addresses the god
concealed in the solar fire, who is going forth from the state of the
disk, saying, “Shine on me, O unknown soul!” “I draw near to
the god whose words were heard by me in the lower earth” (64).
This was the burning bush in which the sun-god manifested as Tum,
whose other name is Iu or Unbu, the burning bush being the
solar unbu. There are two corollaries following this identification:
the one is that the god of the burning bush is the same as the
god of the flaming thornbush named the “unbu,” and the god
being the same, the person addressed by the god is the same in both
versions, and the lion-god who is Shu-Anhur in the Ritual is the
prototype of Moses in the book of Exodus. Further, in the manifestation of the burning bush duality of person is implied. First it is “an
angel of the Lord” that appears “in a flame of fire out of the midst
of a bush.” Then the Lord or Elohim speaks in person and calls on
Moses by name (Ex. iii. 4). These two correspond to the divine
duality of Ra and Unbu in the original representation, when Unbu
(Horus or Iu) as the ever-coming son of god the eternal father (Huhi),
is the manifestor for Ra in the flowing thorn.
The burning
bush, then, is identical with the “golden unbu” of the Egyptian
Book of the Dead, and the “golden unbu” of the Pyramid Texts is
literally the “golden bough” of later legends—as in the English work
of that name.
Here we may say in passing, that The Golden Bough contains a
learned, large, and serviceable collection of data, but the theories of
interpretation derived from the writings of Mannhardt are futile.
Besides which, mythology is not to be fathomed in or by a folk-
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 673
tale, and The Golden Bough is but a twig of the great tree of mythology and sign-language—a twig without its root. The reception of
the work in England served to show how prevalent and profound is
the current ignorance of the subject-matter. It was hailed as if it had
plumbed the depths instead of merely extending the superficies. The
writer never once touches bottom; never traces the comparison home
either in the Assyrian or the Egyptian version. In the former, for
example, Gilgames goes to the other world in quest of the tree of life
and the fountain of youth. His desire is to learn how to become
immortal. In that other world across the water, not in the netherearth of Arali, there grows the tree of renewal. Like the Kamite
Unbu, it is described as similar to the bush of hawthorn in flower, and
its thorns are said to “prick like the viper.” When Gilgames touches
the shore of that upper paradise, he is told of this tree, shrub or plant,
and it is said that if he can lay hold of it without his hand being torn,
gather a branch and bear it away, it will secure for him eternal youth.
The tree is identical with that which grew in the sacred grove at Nemi,
from which no branch was to be broken. And beyond the Babylonian
legend lies the Egyptian myth in which the tree is rooted. The
Egyptian golden bough is a bush of flowering thorn. It is a symbol
of the young solar god who says, “I am Unbu, who proceedeth from
Nu (heaven), and my mother is Nut” (Rit., ch. 42; Pyramid Texts,
Teta 39). “I am Unbu of An-ar-ef, the flower in the abode of occultation” (Rit., ch. 71). This identifies the golden bough with Horus in
the dark and the bush that flowered at Christmas like our Glastonbury
Thorn. The golden bough or burning bush is a solar symbol of
Atum-Huhi, who says to Anhur, “O lion-god, I am Unbu,” and who
thus identifies himself with Ihuh in the burning bush. “I am
Unbu,” says the Egyptian deity in the flowering thorn, where the
Hebrew god announces that he is Ihuh from the midst of the burning
bush.
The golden calf in Israel had also been the gilded heifer in Egypt.
Hes, the sacred heifer, was adored under the name of Isis in
the time of the old empire. This was also a type of the golden
Hathor, the habitation of Horus, her calf. The setting up of the
golden calf for worship is likewise evident in “The destruction of
mankind.” It is “said by the majesty of Ra (to the calf-headed
Hathor), Come in peace, thou goddess, and there arose the young
priestess of Amu.” “Said by the majesty of Ra to the goddess: I
order that libations be made to her at every festival of the new year
under the direction of my priestesses. Hence it comes that libations are
made under the direction of the priestesses at the festival of Hathor,
through all men, since the days of old” (Pl. B., lines 24-6). This was
the worship of the golden calf, thus instituted as Egyptian. There
was a special form of the cow-headed goddess called the golden
Hathor, and a particular type of her child or calf known as the golden
Horus. Both were imaged in one by the virgin heifer, or, as in the
Exodus, by the golden calf, the image of the goddess of Amu. A dual
type of deity originated with the child that was potentially of either
sex, or both. Hence the boy like Bacchus with the female mammæ,
and the lad in Revelation with the feminine paps and girdle, or Horus
with the female breasts. Also the lock of childhood, or the long hair
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of the Egypto-gnostic Christ, represented this dual type of deity, as
well as “the long garment in which was the whole world,” because it
had been the clothing of both sexes for the child. Hathor in Egypt
was the goddess of the golden calf, or heifer with the golden neck.
One of her titles was Nub the golden (Wilk., vol. iii., p. 115), and the
goddess Iusāas, consort of Atum-Ra and mother of Iusa in the cult
of On, was a form of the golden Hathor, as is shown by the ears of the
heifer in her headdress. Hathor was the Egyptian Venus, also the
goddess of music and dancing, and of female ornaments, including
precious stones, particularly the turquoise. The calf or heifer of gold
was a befitting figure for the cult whose gods were Iu the calf, Iusāas
the cow, and Atum-Iu the bull—the gods which they, the Jews or Ius,
brought out of Egypt in the Hebrew exodus. So soon as the metal
was fused, the image fashioned, and the calf set up, the festival of
Hathor-Iusāas followed. “And Aaron made proclamation, and said,
To-morrow shall be a feast to Ihuh. And they rose up early on the
morrow and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings;
and the people sat down to eat and drink, and (then) rose up to play”
(Ex. xxxii. 5-6). The festival was phallic, for the people remembered
Iusāas, the consort of Ihuh and the divine mother of the non-ethnical
Jews, who were born Egyptian. In connection with peace offerings,
one might mention that Iusāas was also called Neb-hetep, the lady of
peace, and her son, Iu-em-hetep, was the prince who comes with
peace. But the libation to the cow-headed or calf-headed goddess
was turned into waters of bitterness when Moses, according to the
story, “took the calf and burnt it with fire, ground it into powder and
strewed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of
it” (xxxii. 20).
There is but one calf mentioned in the book of Exodus, but in the
first book of Kings we see the type is dual. “The king took counsel,
and made two calves of gold; and he said . . . Behold thy gods, O
Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt” (1 Kings
xii. 28). These in Egypt were the heifer that imaged the mother as
the goddess Iusāas, and the calf of Iu, her sa or su—that is, her son—
Iusāas being a form of the golden Hathor, who was the goddess of
Mount Sinai. Also it was pardonable, if not pleasing in the sight of
Ihuh, that Jehu did not forsake the golden calves of Jeroboam (2 Kings
X. 29, 31). The golden calf was the great symbol of sin in the eyes of
the monolators, because it was a figure of both sexes and pre-eminently
sacred to the divine mother, Neith, Hathor, or Iusāas. Although the
one god as the god in Spirit was evolved in the Egyptian cult of Ptah
and Atum-Ra as Huhi the eternal, he was compounded with the
child and mother of an earlier religion. His consort Iusāas was a
form of Hathor, the mother of fair love, who was the Egyptian Venus,
and the child was Iu (em-hetep), the wise youth who became the
Hebrew prince of peace. These were the gods which brought the
Hebrews up or were brought up by them out of Egypt. The later
monotheists sought to exclude the child and mother from the nature
of the deity, which was a holy family in itself, consisting of the father,
mother, and child. The mother was cast out, for the god to be imaged
by a figure of the father alone. But the goddess was continued in her
types of the birthplace. Hers were the ark, the tabernacle, the
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 675
sanctuary, the temple, the meskhen, the holy of holies, as the abode
of the divine child or reborn god. Hence the Hebrew tabernacle or
ark-shrine is the mishken, which as Egyptian is the meskhen, the
chamber of birth, that was imaged in the constellation of the “thigh”
or haunch of Nut in the astronomical mythology. This change had
been made in the theology of Annu, as witnessed by the legend of the
cow in the tomb of Seti I., in which the god is “lifted up” in his
sanctuary as male alone. Nevertheless, there was a continual
recrudescence of the old Egyptian cult, and a return to the worship
of the mother, as is shown in Israel by the setting up of the golden
calf, and the denunciation of it by the later writers.
This worship of Hathor in the mount had already extended from
Sinai to Jerusalem as an Egyptian cult. Eusebius relates that when
Constantine was about to build the Basilica, he discovered a “mound
of Venus” already raised above the Saviour’s tomb (Life of Constantine). This was a mount of the mother, who was Hathor-Iusāas
in Egypt; and no one was buried in or born from the typical mount
of Venus except child-Horus, or his other self, Iu-em-hetep, whose
mother was a form of the Egyptian Venus. The primitive mound
had been perpetuated, as it was in the Tel-el-Jehudieh (near On). The
mount which typified the means of ascent from the valley of Amenta
to the summit where the glorified elect were taken on board the bark
of Ra is variously represented in the Hebrew version of the exodus.
As in the astronomical mythos, it is the one mountain with several
names, and, being celestial, it may be localized in numerous sacred
sties on earth as the place of worship. The mount upon which Moses
stood in conversation with Ihuh is identified with the celestial height,
when it is said to the children of Israel, “Ye yourselves have seen that
I have talked with you from heaven.” This, again, is celestial as the
mount on which the pattern of the divine dwelling, or ark and
tabernacle of the Lord, was shown to Moses. In the Ritual it is
the mountain of Amenta that touches the sky. It is said almost in
the opening of the book of Exodus, when the call is made to Moses
by Ihuh, “When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt,
ye shall serve God upon this mountain” (Ex. iii. 12), which is here
called Mount Horeb, the mountain of God. It is also said of the
chosen people, in this ancient fragment of the mythos, “Thou shalt
bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of their inheritance,
the place, O Lord, which thou hast made for them to dwell in, the
sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established,” where “the
Lord shall reign for ever and ever.” This was in the mount of
Jerusalem on high, the celestial mount of the gathering and congregating together in the Aarru-Salem = Aarru-Hetep in Jerusalem below
by those who built the city as outcasts or colonists from Egypt. The
mountains are several. Elsewhere it is Mount Zion or Sinai. But
the mountain of God, the holy mountain, is one, because it was
astronomical; therefore in the eschatology it is the mount for which
they were bound as spirits, and not as leprous and abominated mortals
fleeing from the land of the Pharaohs. In making the passage from
Amenta, the supreme object of attainment is the mount of peace and
plenty, called Mount Hetep in Egyptian. Hetep is a word of various
meanings besides peace and plenty. It is the mount of the oblations,
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ANCIENT EGYPT
one sign of which is a table piled with provender. The mount itself
presents the oblations to the gods and the glorified upon the summit,
on a scale that is worthy of the eternal feast. And this, we would
suggest, is the prototype of the Oblation described by Ezekiel
(xlviii.), which is colossal in its magnitude. It is commanded that
a huge oblation shall be offered to the Lord, with the sanctuary in the
midst thereof. It is to be “an oblation from the oblation of the
land,” just as Hetep was the oblation to the heaven from the offerings
made by the worshippers on earth as contributions to the table of the
Lord. The mound-builders raised their mount or mound of oblation
in Britain the size of Silbury Hill. Here it is to be a city the size of
paradise, or the New Jerusalem, the eternal city built upon the square,
and therefore a heaven of the four quarters, raised upon twelve pillars
erected round the mount. The difficulty of identifying Sinai as a
geographical mount, according to the book of Exodus, may be
explained when we know that the beginnings were not geographical,
and that the mount on which Shu-Anhur shared the throne of Ra his
father was the mountain in Amenta, not on earth. It was the stellar
mount of glory in the eschatology which had been the mount of
sunrise in the mythology.
After the passage of the Red Sea, in the exodus, the children of
Israel arrive at “the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and
Sinai” (Ex. xvi. 1). This wilderness can be identified in the Ritual
with Anrutef, the region of sterility. After passing the red pool,
lake, or sea, we come to the desert of Anrutef, which is said to
be near Sheni. Here there is some evidence to show that the
Hebrew Sinai is derived from the Egyptian Sheni. Ra, the solar
god, is designated lord of Sheni in the Ritual. The speaker in
chapter 36 says, “I am Khnum, the lord of Sheni,” or Shennu,
equivalent to Sinai in Hebrew. When Osiris becomes the supreme
lord of the mountain in Amenta he is also described as the “commander in the region of Sheni.” He is a form of that lord over all
who gave the Commandments on Mount Sinai. Horus also issues
from the region of Sheni with the other divine chiefs who repulse the
enemies of Osiris in these battles against his enemies. He also is the
lord who came from Sinai. The word Shennu or Sheni in Egyptian
also denotes an orbit, the circuit or circle, to turn and return. Hence
the solar god was designated lord of Sheni. Mount Sheni, as the
place of turning and returning, is the mount of the equinox. This
was the mount of the two lions, and these also are the Sheni by name.
Ra may be Khnum or Amen or Atum, according to the cult. The
Ra of Annu was Atum, otherwise Huhi, whom we also identify
as the Hebrew god Ihuh. In the vignettes to the Ritual, Atum-Ra,
the one god living in truth, is portrayed upon the summit of the mount
of glory, with the seven spirits praising him upon the mount
(Naville, Todtenbuch, Kap. 16, A.), the mount of the circle of turning
and returning and of the lions, therefore Mount Sheni = Sinai. The
mount of glory in the Ritual is represented in the book of Exodus
as a mount of fire or the mount on fire—that is, with the solar glory.
The circuit of fire about the mount is the “sheniu of fire.” This
occurs as the title of a chapter in the Ritual. Thus the sun-god Ra
or Atum-Huhi = Ihuh was the lord of Sheni. His throne was on the
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 677
mount of glory where he sat surrounded by the Sheniu who form the
divine circle of the celestial court. “The Sheniu of this chapter,”
says Renouf, “are living personages who attend upon the Osiris and
greet him (on the mount of glory) with their acclamations. The
word is often translated ‘princes,’ ‘officers,’ but it signifies those
who are in the circle of a king or god, hence ‘ministrants,’ ‘courtiers,’
as in the rubric to ch. cxxv.” (Renouf, Book of the Dead, xxx. note
1). These Sheniu constitute the upper circle round the throne of
God upon Mount Sheni in Egyptian, or Sinai in Hebrew. Here it
may be noted that the Japanese call their divine Kami, the 7 + 1
primeval powers, the Shin, whence came the Shintu gods, which
as stellar correspond to the Egyptian Sheniu, who are a group of
gods in the upper celestial circle, and of whom it is said “the Sheniu
marshal the Osiris” on his way to the “mount of glory” (Rit.,
ch. 130).
The descriptions of Mount Sinai in the book of Exodus show that
it was the mount of glory in the solar mythos—that is, the mount of
sunrise in the daily course, and the mount of the equinox as the
horizon of the annual sun. Various meanings of the word Sheni
coincide in showing that the typical Mount Sinai, Sin, or Ba-Shen
was the Mount Sheni in the Egyptian astronomical mythology. We
have to remember that as far back as the time of the first dynasty
Egypt included the mount and surrounding region of Sinai as a part
of the double kingdom. Thus the Sarabit el Khadem was considered
very holy ground by the Egyptians seven thousand years ago. It
was the seat of Hathor there, whose sanctuary of the mother was a
primitive cavern in the rock. The turquoise mines of the Sinaitic
peninsula were also worked by the Egyptians for the gems of
the goddess to whom they were consecrated. In fact, Mount Sinai
was Egyptian at any time from seven thousand to thirteen thousand
years ago, both as a geographical locality and as a sacred site. The
deities who were worshipped on it were likewise Egyptian. It was
the seat of Hathor, of Atum-Ra, and Horus the calf. There is
a vignette to the Ritual in which this dynasty of divinities from On
or Heliopolis may be seen grouped together on the mount. The
scene portrayed is on Mount Sheni, which became the Hebrew Sinai.
In this, as in the Osirian dynasty of deities, Atum the father was the
bull, Iusāas the mother was the cow or heifer; and the calf as a type
of renewal for either sex was an image of all three, as was the
child-Horus in the anthropomorphic representation. The calf is
again represented in another vignette in presence of the god with the
worshipper (Naville, Todt., Kap. 108 and 109) in the attitude of
adoration behind the calf. This is literally the worship of the golden
calf, which was a dual image of both Hathor the Egyptian Venus and
of Horus as her calf (ch. 108). So ancient is it, when measured by
the mythos, that Horus is the crocodile-headed Sebek as the son
of Hathor, who was represented at Annu by the heifer-headed Iusāas.
These three are designated the powers of the east. Horus of the
solar mount is represented by the calf in presence of the great god
Atum-Ra and the star of dawn, or of Hathor as the morning-star.
Professor Petrie’s explorations show us that a transformation of
this old Egyptian religion into a Semitic or Syrian cult took place at
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ANCIENT EGYPT
Sinai amongst the miners, many of whom were no doubt slaves
who were sent to work the mines, according to the Egyptian practice
of devoting captives to the service of the gods. But the goddess
Hathor and her child Horus, who were the objects of worship at
Sarabit el Khadem in the Sinaitic peninsula, did not originate as
Syrian or Semitic deities. They were Egyptian from the first, and
were continued wheresoever the Egyptian miners went, whether
as the diggers for the turquoise gems of Sinai, the tin of Cornwall, or
the gold of the Zimbabwe in Mashonaland.
The summit of Amenta at the head of the valley was attained upon
the horizon in the east. It was the mount of glory in the solar
mythos, which is Sinai, the mount of the glory of god and the seat of
judgment in the book of Exodus. (“Now these are the judgments
which thou shalt set before them,” Ex. 21. 1.) This is the height
on which the kneeling Anhur, in the character of Shu-si-Ra, uplifts
the solar orb upon the horizon, called the mount, from the summit of
which the hosts of darkness were hurled down the steps and for the
time being annihilated. Also from this Pisgah-height the promised
land was visible as the paradise across the firmamental waters, which
are represented by the river Jordan in the Hebrew exodus. A peak
of Mount Sinai in Arabia Petrea is known by the name of Djebel
Mousa, the mount of Moses, which is traditionally identified as the
scene of the events and occurrences on the mount described in the
book of Exodus. Taking Mousa or Mouishé to be the Hebrew
equivalent for Ma-Shu, the lion-god Shu, Mount Sinai is a localized
form of the typical mount on which the lion-god stood to uplift
the heaven or sustain the solar disk with his two hands. This in the
annual course was at the equinox, and therefore on the mount at the
point of turning and returning, or on Mount Sheni = Sinai.
From the peak of Pisgah Moses is shown the land here called
Canaan as the land flowing with milk and honey, oil, corn, and wine,
which was one and the same in all the legends of this paradise of
peace and plenty at the summit of the mount. Those who went up
from the valley to the top of the mountain neither died there nor
were buried there. They were the glorified spirits of the dead, or
the leaders of the starry host, like Shu upon the mount of AmKhemen. Upon the solar mount of glory or Mount Sheni, the
mount of the Sheniu, was the Egyptian maat in which the law was
given on the mount. This is the hall of justice. The maat was a
double law court, first erected for Anup at the pole; but in the solar
myth the place of equipoise was changed, and the maat was represented where the annual or periodical assize was held. This was at
the point of equinox, which was at one time imaged in the sign of the
Scales. Maat or mati in Egyptian is the law. The maat was the
hall of justice or of law. The tablets of mati in the maat were the books
of the law. Ages before Osiris was enthroned as the great judge in
the maat, Atum-Iu the son of Ptah was the divine law-giver in the
great hall of justice which was figured on the mount, with Anhur as
the intermediary. A divine law-giver was worshipped in Egypt as
Atum-Iu, the original giver of the law which was given first by him
to Egypt, not to Israel. But when Atum-Huhi had become the
Hebrew Ihuh, the law was repeated at second-hand in Israel. The
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 679
tables of the law are identical by name with the tablets of mati, and
the comparative process will show that the matter is the same so far as
the Hebrew records go; and if the law were divinely revealed and
had any superhuman authority, it would be as the law of mati, which
was first inscribed in the papyrus of Ma-Shu or Anhur, and not as the
law of the Hebrew Moses, written in the later letters of the Pentateuch. Several meanings are connoted by the word maat or mati in
Egyptian, such as law and justice, truth and right. The equilibrium
of the universe was expressed by maat, which represented the natural
immutable and eternal law. The balance is a symbol of maat and
its oneness in duality. It was erected as a figure of the equinox, or the
two halves of night and day at equal poise. Makha is a name for
the scales and to weigh. The scales were erected at the place of
poise and weighing in the equinox. Har-Makhu was the deity of the
double equinox, who represented the duality of mati in the oneness of
the equinox. The Sphinx was a figure of this duality in oneness at
the equinox. The feather of Shu (or Ma) was another type of the
same duality, in this case the duality of light and shade which meet
and mingle in one at twilight. The Hebrew “two tables of the
testimony, the tables of stone, written by the finger of God” (Ex. xxxi.
18), are the equivalent of the laws, or truths and commandments that
were “consigned, performed, engraved in script, and placed beneath
the feet of Ra-Har-Makhu in the great temple at On to last for ever.
The tables of the law and commandments represent the tablets in
the hall of maati. The tablets in the Ritual (ch. 28) are expressly
assigned to the god Atum-Ra. “This whole heart of mine is laid
upon the tablets of Tum, who guideth me to the caverns of
Sut” or through the dark passages of Amenta. The tablets of Tum
are records of the law or maat. They are kept by Taht the divine
scribe in the hall of judgment. We learn from the Ritual (ch. 28)
that the Egyptian tables of the law are the tablets or kanu of AtumIu; the same word denotes carving in ivory and engraving on stone,
and Atum-Huhi is the Kamite original of the Semitic Ihuh. The
tables of Moses were the tables of the law, and the law in Egyptian
is ma (mati in the plural). The tables or tablets of the law were produced in the judgment hall, and we know from the pleadings of the
deceased in what is called the negative confession that these tables of
the law contained the commandments or prohibitions concerning the
things which the manes says he has not done because of the “thou
shalt not” in which the law originated. The speaker, addressing
Taht-mati, the recorder in the great hall, says: “O thou bearer of
peace offerings, who openest thy mouth for the presentation of the
tables (or tablets), for the acceptation of the offerings and for the
establishment of mati (law or justice) upon her throne; let the tables
be brought forward and let the truth be firmly established” (Rit.,
ch. 41). These tablets, we repeat, were the tables of the law (ma,
maat, or mati); they are produced at the trial before the judges when
the heart (character) of the deceased is weighed in the balance of
Mati and the goddess (of law or justice) is established on her throne.
Otherwise stated, when the law was given in the judgment hall upon
Mount Sheni or the mountain of Amenta.
The religion of
Egypt was based on maat, that is, on law, or more abstractly on
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ANCIENT EGYPT
truth and justice. And the law was impersonated in the goddess
Mati, the Kamite original of the Greek Themis. It is said in the
Ritual, “The gods and their symbols come into existence by virtue of
law” (ch. 50). This in one sense was by means of Ma or Ma-Shu,
the intermediary betwixt the great god and the people; who is represented in Israel by Moses. It is said that the Ten Commandments
were given by Ihuh, the Egyptian Huhi, to Moses on Mount Sinai.
The Jewish Commandments, however, are not limited to ten in
number. The ten are followed by a series of judgments or laws
(Ex. xxi., xxii., and xxiii.). And here it may be observed that the
laws and judgments are identical in Hebrew, as in the duality of
maati for law and justice in Egyptian.
Also in the book of
Deuteronomy (xxvii.) twelve statutes are enacted under the form of
commandments, enforced with twelve curses. And in the Papyrus of
Ani there is a company of twelve gods sitting on twelve thrones as
judges in the maat or judgment hall upon the mount—a picture
that suggests “the House of the Lord” in the celestial Jerusalem, of
which it is said, “there are set thrones for judgments, the thrones of
the House of David” (Ps. cxxii. 5). These, as described in Revelation, were likewise twelve in number. The maat is identified with
the mount of God by Zechariah when he says, “Jerusalem shall be
called the city of truth (maat) and the mountain of the Lord of
Hosts the holy mountain” (viii. 3, 4).
The law was given to
Israel on Mount Sinai, where the sanctuary or divine dwelling
answers to the maat. Also when Ihuh comes “to judge the world
with righteousness, and the peoples with his truth” (Ps. xcvi. 13), that
is according to maati in the maat. “Thou shalt have no other god
but Ihuh,” in the book assigned to Moses, was preceded ages earlier
in the books of Ma-Shu and Taht at On by “Thou shalt have no
other god but Huhi the eternal one,” besides whom there was none
other in the cult of Atum-Ra. Thus the god Ihuh is one with AtumHuhi the eternal. Mount Sinai is one with Mount Sheni, whether as
the mount of the lions or of turning in the solar orbit; and Moses
is one with Anhur. The tabernacle or sanctuary of Ihuh is one with
that of Atum-Huhi. The tables of the law that were given to Moses
are identical with the tablets of the law in the hall of mati. This
taps once more the sealed-up source of “God’s Word,” which was
derived from the Egyptian wisdom written in the books of Taht and
Shu that were preserved in the great library of On (Annu), where
Atum-Huhi was god the father, and Iu was the ever-coming son, the
prince of peace in person, the Egyptian Jesus, Iusa, or Iu-em-hetep.
Most of the Hebrew commandments are acknowledged and fulfilled
by the speaker, who protests in the judgment hall that he has neither
said nor done any evil thing against the gods, but the following
quotations will show that the Hebrew commandments were compiled
directly from the Egyptian. The pleadings are in reply to the commandments which the deceased declares he has kept. The following
parallel will briefly indicate how directly the Mosaic commandments
were borrowed from the wisdom of Egypt:—
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 681
Egyptian.
Hebrew.
“Thou shalt not take the name
“I have not blasphemed a
god.”
of the Lord thy God in vain.”
“I
have
not
committed
“Thou
shalt
not
commit
adultery.”
adultery.”
“I have not committed theft.”
“Thou shalt not steal.”
“I have not borne false witness
“Thou shalt not bear false
(or told lies) in the tribunal of witness against thy neighbour.”
truth.”
“I am not a murderer.”
“Thou shalt do no murder.”
Rit. of the Resurrection, ch. 125.
Exodus, ch. XX.
Shu-Anhur, the prototype of Moses as giver of the law, has been
somewhat overlooked as a god of the writings in which the revelation
of Ra was made known by him to men. When he is mentioned
in the Ritual as the author of writings called “his rules (or laws) and
his papyrus,” Renouf considers this to be an error of the scribes, and
moots the opinion that the god Taht is meant (Book of the Dead,
ch. 110). Nevertheless, Renouf is wrong. Shu is said to work in
the abode of the books of Seb, that is, of earth (Rit., ch. 17).
This we can identify with the great library at On or Annu. (See
Records, x. 138.) “The papyrus or writing, mahit, of Shu” are
mentioned in the Ritual when the speaker says, “I am in unison with
his successive changes, and his laws (or rules) and his writings”
(Rit., ch. 110). The book of the laws is the book of ma or mati,
which was presented by the duality of Shu-Anhur and represented in
that of Moses and Joshua. Shu is called “truth” (Magic Papyrus,
p. 1, line 9). And as is shown by “the hymn to the god Shu,”
among the records that were kept in the great temple library or, as it
is called, “the royal palace at On,” there were writings ascribed to
Shu-Anhur, the lord of truth or mati. It is said of him, “He made
hereditary titles” for Ra, “which are in the writings of the lord of
Sesennu”—that is, in the collection of Taht, here called “the scribe
of the king Ra-Har-Makhu”; and these titles were “consigned,
performed, engraved in script under the feet of Ra-Har-Makhu,” or
beneath the feet of the statue of the god. Moses likewise is the
writer of “hereditary titles” for Ihuh. He also fulfils the same rôle as
transmitter of titles in the book of Exodus. When he asks for the
name of the new divinity “God said to Moses, I am that I am.”
And he added, “Thus thou shalt say unto the children of Israel: I am
(Eyeh) hath sent me unto you. This is my name for ever, and this is
my memorial for all generations” (Ex. iii. 13-16). The writings of
Shu-Anhur were preserved at On among the 36,000 books that were
traditionally ascribed to Taht. He wrote them as the mouthpiece of
Ra, or Atum-Huhi the father of Iu, who was carried into Judea as
Ihuh the god of the Ius, Aaiu, or Jews, who brought on the sacred
writings that had been “consigned, performed, engraved in script,”
and memorized for ever in “the royal palace of On,” or Heliopolis
Magna. Now the priest named Osarsiph by Manetho, who was afterwards called Moses, is reputed to have been born at On (Annu), and
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ANCIENT EGYPT
to have been a priest of the great temple there, the temple of AtumRa-Har-Makhu, where the writings were kept, including those in
which Ma-Shu had made hereditary titles for Ra-Har-Makhu to be
transmitted from generation to generation for time and eternity. The
most perfect rendering of the name “I am” would be “the selfexistent,” and in the hymn to the god Shu Atum-Ra is designated
“the self-existent” (p. 1, l. 9).
Also his other title of Kheper
signified “he who is” in the Egyptian tongue. Amongst the subjectmatter of the exodus is the revelation of the one god that was made
to Moses on the mount, which revelation had previously been made
to Anhur. It is to Anhur that the one god Ra who is to supersede
all other gods and elemental powers is revealed as Huhi the eternal.
Anhur is represented as being the medium of communication betwixt
the god and mortals. “His substance is blended with the substance
of Ra” as intermediate power. He makes divine law known to men
(Magic Papyrus). As it is said, the people present their offerings to
the god with Anhur’s own hands. Moses is represented as being the
same to Ihuh that Anhur was to Atum-Ra—his medium for communication with the people, the medium that was the human mouthpiece for the god. So the ancestral spirit that inspires the Zulu
Inyanga says to the medium, “You will not speak with the people;
they will be told by us everything they come to inquire about”
(Callaway).
We learn from the very ancient magical texts that amongst the
36,000 books ascribed to Taht by tradition there was a particular
collection known as “The Four Books.” These had the titles of
(1) The Old Book, (2) The Book to Destroy Men, (3) The Great Book,
(4) The Book to be as God. There was also a group of four books
that were astronomical and astrological. Whether these were the
same or not, the “Four Books” were in the temple of the sun at Annu
or On, where Osarsiph is said to have been a priest. The number
does not coincide with that of the Pentateuch. But then the books
originally assigned to Moses were only four in number, not five. The
wisdom of Egypt, in which Osarsiph was so profoundly learned, would
naturally be written upon rolls of papyrus in the library at On, from
which it was carried forth in one of the exodes from Egypt. The
original nucleus of the Hebrew collection consisted of “the precepts
of the Pentateuch” (by which the law was given), “together with their
traditional implications” (Montefiore, C. G., Hib. Lect., p. 469).
This, in a limited or possibly primitive sense, was the Jewish torah.
In Egyptian the Teruu is a roll of papyrus and the torah has the form
of the papyrus-roll.
Also torah, hrvt, denotes the whole law,
and in Egyptian teruu signifies all, entire, the whole.
There is a tradition of the assumption of Moses in the so-called
apocryphal “Assumptio Moysis” (Apocryphal Literature, vol. ii., p. 177).
Such a mode of translation bodily does not apply to any human being,
under whatsoever name. But it was the way in which Anhur made his
exit from the mount or from the mouth of Ra. Anhur is an entirely
mythical character, and if he be the prototype of Moses, it would seem
to follow that this is the origin of the legend concerning his disappearance on the mount. The present writer does not attempt to fathom
the meaning of the mythos in the form of märchen to which the
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 683
tradition belongs, but the disappearance of Moses from the mount
may be taken as identical with that of the god who represented wind
and in the solar mythos was the breathing force of the rising sun
personified. With the cessation of the breeze, or, if very fierce, the
tornado, Shu-Anhur might be said to pass away, as a current saying
has it, “like the devil in a high wind.” It is recorded (Deut. xxxiv. 5)
that Moses died hvhy yp li, literally “upon the mouth of the Lord”
(Ihuh). And Shu-Anhur was the breath of the Lord. He was
the spirit of Ra as the breathing solar force emaned from the very
mouth of the god, or, as might be, he was represented by the panting
lion on the mount of dawn. At sunrise on the mount the allembracing, all-absorbing fires of Ra did veritably swallow up the force
of Anhur, who passed away as breath from the mouth of the solar god.
The personality of Shu-Anhur is united with that of Ra, the supreme
lord. His very substance is blended with the substance of Ra
(Magic Papyrus, i. 6), and is absorbed into it as nutriment when he
passes away upon the mount or makes his change in character. Also
there is a legend of Anhur’s final disappearance from the mount, an
occurrence that took place during a nine days’ tempest, and of which
Maspero says, “We may here note the most ancient known reference
to the tempest whose tumult hid from men the disappearance or
apotheosis of kings, who ascended alive into heaven” (Maspero,
Dawn of Civilisation, Eng. tr., p. 178). Thus Shu-Anhur as an
elemental power had represented breathing force with lion-like
capacity, the equinoctial wind, the breeze of dawn, but in the solar
myth the increase of the twilight current was attributed to the sun;
it was considered to be breath of Ra, the lord of all, which died upon
the mount of sunrise. This becomes the vanishing of Moses on
Mount Pisgah, Alphi-Jehovah, in the Hebrew märchen. In rendering the
fact, which was scientific in relation to Ra and Shu at sunrise, without
due knowledge, the Hebrew writer has apparently made Jehovah
swallow Moses bodily as a human being, although the statement is
somewhat reticently made, in causing him to die like breath upon the
mouth of the lord. This was the “burial of Moses,” and there need
be no wonder that “no man knoweth of his sepulchre to this day.”
When Moses passed away or was dislimned upon that mountain of
the Abarim, his rôle as army leader of the Israelites was taken over
by the young man Joshua, who answers perfectly to Shu when the
part of Shu is carefully discriminated from that of Anhur. Anhur
was the uplifter of the stellar heaven in various forms—his “upliftings”
are mentioned in the texts—whereas Shu was the supporter of the
sun-god in the solar mythos. In the first character he pushes up the
heaven with his rod, as prototype of Moses with his rod. In the
second he uplifts the solar disk upon the horizon as the servant and
supporter of the great god Ra. Shu had been all that Joshua is
going to be when he tells the children of Israel to “put away the
gods which your fathers served beyond the river and in Egypt.
But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”—the Lord
being Ihuh, one with the Egyptian Huhi, the new god Atum-Ra.
When Shu becomes the leader in his name of Shu-si-Ra there is a
river to be crossed. “I am Shu,” he says, “the image of Ra,”
“sitting in the inside of his father’s sacred eye,” or the solar disk.
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ANCIENT EGYPT
“I am the chosen of millions coming out of the lower heaven.
When my name is spelt on the bank of the river, then it is dried up.”
This in the Hebrew account is Joshua coming to the river Jordan.
After the death of Moses “Ihuh spake unto Joshua the son of Nun,
Moses’s minister,” saying, “Arise; go over this Jordan, thou and all this
people, unto the land which I do give them, even to the children of
Israel” (Joshua. i. 2). The white bull was the bull of Shu, who was
called the bull, the master of strength. And according to one of the
Jewish märchen, at the conquest of Canaan Joshua rode upon a bull.
When they came to the river “all Israel passed over on dry ground.”
It is the same with Joshua at the river as with Shu, at whose name “spelt
on the bank” the waters dried up for the passage. Shu is the opener
of the gates for egress from Amenta on behalf of Ra and the glorified
elect who made their exodus from the lower Egypt of Amenta
pursued by the Apap-dragon and all the host of darkness. The
Osiris thus addresses Shu: “O thou who leapest forth, conductor of
the manes and glorified ones from the earth, let the fair path to the
tuat (point of egress) be granted to me which is made on behalf of
those who are in pain” (Rit., ch. lxiv.)—that is, on behalf of the
sufferers in the Egypt of the lower world. The earth here mentioned
is Amenta, from which the manes and the glorified were conducted
first by Anhur to the presence of the solar god upon the mount of
glory, and afterwards by Shu on board the solar bark.
Shu became the harbinger of Ra and leader in the coming forth
from lower Egypt considered as an astronomical locality that was
afterwards represented to be geographical in the Hebrew
exodus. Thus, in the round of night and day Shu-Anhur enters
the Amenta at evening to conduct the children of Ra up from
the lower Egypt of the mythos. His alter ego, Shu, takes up
the leadership upon the horizon east at dawn, to end the journey
in the promised land or upper paradise of plenty and perpetual
peace.
The land of promise on the other side of Jordan is that paradise
across the water which was on the summit of Mount Hetep at
the pole, hence the circumpolar paradise of the heptanomis, or
heaven in seven astronomes. Thus in the book of Joshua the
promised land is mapped out and measured in accordance with
the astronomical mythology of the heptanomis. When the racial
names are added in place of the divine, the seven divisions are
called the seven lands of “the Canaanite, the Hittite, and the Hivite,
and the Perizzite, and the Girgashite, and the Amorite, and the
Jebusite” (Joshua iii. 10). The final heaven attributed to AtumRa, as an astronomical formation, was in twelve divisions. This
formation had been repeated in the making of Amenta. The previous
heaven, considered to be antediluvian, was in ten divisions. These
were represented by the ten circles of Ra in the Ritual (ch. 18)
and by the ten divine domains of the blessed in the paradise
upon the summit of Mount Hetep (Rit. ch. 110). This celestial
formation was also represented by the ten tribes that were lost
upon the other side of the waters, and by the ten sons of Jacob
who preceded the twelve sons of Israel. But the later formation
was repeated when Moses set a boundary to the mount and erected
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 685
twelve pillars, “according to the twelve tribes of Israel” (Ex. xxiv. 4).
The same figure of formation is again repeated when Joshua is
commanded to set up twelve stones in the midst of the waters,
and also in the Gilgal-circle which became the lodging place (Joshua
iv. 20) of the Israelites, who were continually on tramp in making the
journey of the manes through the subterranean world, which was
in twelve sections of space, with the twelve gates through which
Ra passes with the blessed on his right hand and the damned
upon his left, in accordance with the Egyptian rule of perspective
(Book of Hades). In one form of the mythos, then, the Israelites
divide the promised land into twelve lots among the twelve tribes.
This is in accordance with the ground-plan of Amenta, in which
twelve sections of space are shown to be successively enclosed as
the possessions of the glorified elect, the chosen people who originate
as the children of the sons of Ra, headed by the twelve who reap
the harvest-field with Horus in the lower Egypt of Amenta. The
gods of this nether earth in twelve divisions are twelve in number.
The fields of divine harvest are twelve, the harvesters are twelve.
The bearers of the measuring cord are twelve. The lots are also
twelve. All being in accordance with the heaven that was mapped
out in twelve domains. Thus the land of promise in the solar
mythos was the terrestrial paradise of legendary lore. This was
the land mapped out in twelve divisions where the type of plenty
is the harvest-field of Amenta, and the cultivators are the twelve
with Horus as the children of Ra. They formed the twelve colonies
altogether under the suzerainty of local gods, and were the prototypes
of the twelve tribes called the children of Israel. In the second
stage the promised land is that more ancient circumpolar paradise
upon Mount Hetep first mapped out in seven divisions, where
the water-plants (aarru) supplied a primeval natural type of plenty.
Both forms of the double paradise have been reproduced as Hebrew,
one in the book of Exodus, the other in the book of Joshua. The
land that was to be inherited by the children of Israel is also described
as a form of the celestial heptanomis which preceded the heaven
in twelve divisions. Mount Pisgah represents the mountain of Amenta,
the summit of which reached up to the sky (Rit., ch. cxlix.). This
was the top of attainment for Moses, whose journey here comes
to an end midway. But from this point the second upper land
of promise might be seen. This is the circumpolar paradise or
the celestial city in seven divisions, and in attaining this upon the
stellar mount of glory Joshua brings the mythical exodus to its own
proper ending.
Hence the men who were prospecting on behalf of Joshua “went
and passed through the land, and described it by cities into seven
portions in a book” (Joshua xviii. 9).
The promise made to Moses (Ex. iii. 17) was that the Lord would
lead the children of Israel “up out of the affliction of Egypt unto
the land of the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Amorite, and the
Perizzite, and the Hivite and the Jebusite; unto a land flowing with
milk and honey.” The Girgashite is omitted from this list of names.
But when Joshua had crossed the Jordan “he came unto Jericho,”
and the men of Jericho who fought against Israel are said to be the
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ANCIENT EGYPT
Amorite, the Perizzite, the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Girgashite, the
Hivite, and the Jebusite. Thus Jericho in itself becomes a form of the
heptanomis in which the tribes and totems are but seven in number,
corresponding to “the seven portions in a book.” This may account
for seven priests encompassing the city seven times upon the seventh
day, blowing seven times on seven trumpets of rams-horns in order
that the city walls might fall down flat. Here let it be remembered
that in the astronomical mythology the localities are primarily
celestial (Joshua xxiv. 11). The descriptions point to the heaven thus
taken by storm as being a form of the celestial heptanomis or upper
Egypt of the seven astronomes—the upper paradise that was
indefinitely more ancient than the twelve divisions of the solar heaven
established by Ra in his first sovereignty, who is Atum-Huhi, the
Hebrew Ihuh. In short, the siege of Jericho as a subject of the
astronomical mythology is identical with the siege of seven-circled
Troy.
In various survivals of the self-same mythos there is a Delilah who
betrays the city when it is besieged, and who becomes the consort or
the ally of the captor. This in the Greek version is Helen of Troy.
We learn from Plutarch that in the wars of Sut and Horus, Ta-Urt
(Greek Thauris), the concubine of Sut, deserted and came over to the
side of Horus, and was pursued by a serpent (of Isis and Osiris, 19).
Ta-Urt was the Great Mother in the constellation of the Great Bear,
the old harlot of the heptanomis who deserted Sut and joined herself
to the solar Sebek-Horus as “the great mother of him who was
married to his mother.” Rahab the harlot, who dwelt on the top of
the wall in Jericho, the city of the seven tribes, is another survival of
the pre-monogamous Great Mother, the whore of later language.
Rahab in the Psalms and the book of Job is the crocodile, a symbol,
a nickname for Egypt. In Assyrian, rahâbu is a monster of the
waters = the crocodile. The crocodile was a type of the old Great
Mother Apt or Ta-Urt, not only in lower Egypt (Kheb), but in the
upper Egypt where the waters were celestial; and Apt the goddess
passes into Hathor as the amorous queen (Ps. lxxxvii. 4, lxxxix. 10;
Job xxvi. 12). The scarlet signal placed in the window by Rahab is
of the true typhonian colour, the proper hue of the red dragon or
hippopotamus—that is, of the old harlot sitting on the waters of
heaven (Rev. xvii. 15).
In conclusion, the children of Israel, under Moses, travel through
Amenta.
They take possession of a land divided into twelve
domains, which the Egyptian manes had already cultivated in the
nether earth as a map of heaven in twelve divisions. Under Joshua
they cross the water to take possession of the ancient heptanomis
which had been configurated by the Egyptians as the upper circumpolar paradise. They are led to this land flowing with milk and
honey by the hornet = the Kamite wasp or bee. This was the heaven
mapped out of old by the Egyptians as the pastures of the seven
cows who provided milky abundance in the Sekhet-Hetep, or the
evergreen meadows of divine Aarru. And it is the Great Mother,
whether in her stellar or lunar character as Apt or Hathor in the
mount, who plays the part of traitress and surrenders the city to the
solar god.
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 687
The paradise looked up to by the most primitive races was a heaven
of perpetual plenty. That type was preserved by the Egyptians in
the fields of celestial food upon Mount Hetep, but, as before said,
there was no unearned increment to be derived from these elysian
fields. “I am master there,” says the beatified spirit who has attained
his allotment and built his homestead. “I am in glory there; I eat
there; I plant and I reap there; I plough there; I take my fill of
love.” “I net the ducks and I eat the dainties.” “I am united
there to the god Hetep,” the good Osiris, as the deity of plenty and of
peace (ch. 110, Renouf). The Aarru was their oasis in the desert, well
watered, with the sand turned into soil for seed by ceaseless human
labour, and transferred into the nether earth or into the upper
paradise. But in transmogrifying Kamite mythology into the Semite
history, a remarkable omission has been made by the inspired writers
of God’s Word. In the Egyptian original the elect people are chosen
as the cultivators of the Aarru fields, which are measured out and the
allotments made for the express purpose of cultivation. “Holiness
to you, cultivators,” says the god Ra. The Egyptians in their lower
paradise of plenty reaped the produce of their labours, but they had
to earn it individually first. In the Jewish version of the Aarru it is
a land flowing with milk and honey, corn, oil, and wine. But there is
no demand for work, no thought of cultivation, or of earning an
eternal living. On attaining this land of promise they were to enter
into an inheritance prepared by the labours of others, with no need to
become the cultivators on their own account; and this position of the
chosen people as non-cultivators of the soil has been religiously
preserved by the non-agricultural Jews for this world and by the
Christians for the world to come. Also the Jews have been and are
to-day the victims of their misappropriated mythos. The mount was
a stone of stumbling in their path, the rock on which they split.
Their racial and religious origins are still at war in every meeting of
the Zionists. The Zion of the visionaries is based on a celestial
foundation. It is Jerusalem the golden; Jerusalem above, not to
be confounded with a sacred site in Palestine. In the remotest parts
of Africa the Jews would be much nearer “home” than in the Zion
localized in Palestine which represented the eternal city on high,
according to the Egyptian eschatology. The ideal of the racial Jews
is a paradise on earth, whereas the religious ideal was the city in the
heavens figured ages earlier on the summit of the mount, which was
Hetep, the mount of peace, in Egyptian, and in Hebrew it was Mount
Salem, or the later Jerusalem.
THE SEED OF YSIRAAL.
Only one mention of the people of Israel occurs by name on all the monuments
of Egypt. This was discovered a few years since by Professor Petrie on a stele
erected by the King Merenptah II. Not that there is any possibility of identifying
these with the Israelites of the biblical exodus. The “people of Ysiraal” on the
monument belong to those who were amongst the confederated Nine Bows, the
marauders, North Africans, the Kheta, the Canaanites, the Northern Syrians, and
others with whom they are classed. “Every one that was a marauder hath been
subdued by the King Merenptah, who gives life like the sun-god every day.” This
inscription gives an account of the Libyan campaign, and concludes with the
following description of the triumph of King Merenptah: “Chiefs bend down,
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ANCIENT EGYPT
saying, Peace to thee; not one of the Nine Bows raises his head. Vanquished are
the Tahennu (North Africans); the Khita (Hittites) are quieted; ravaged is
Pa-kanana (Kanun) with all violence; taken is Askadni (Askelon?); seized is
Kazmel; Yenu (Yanoh) of the Syrians is made as though it had not existed; the
people of Ysiraal is spoiled—it hath no seed (left); Syria has become as widows of
Egypt; all lands together are in peace (Petrie, Contemp. Review, May, 1896). The
people of Ysiraal (Israel) are here included, together with the Syrians, and amongst
the confederated “Nine Bows” who made continual incursions into Egypt as
invaders and marauders, and who are spoken of as having been exterminated.
Hence it is said, “The people of Ysiraal is spoiled; it hath no seed.” But there is
nothing whatever in the inscription of King Merenptah corresponding to or
corroborative of the biblical story of the Israelites in the land of Egypt or their
exodus into the land of Canaan. The campaign against the Libyan confederacy had
been undertaken by Merenptah, who, according to the inscription, was born as the
destined means of revenging the invasion of Egypt by the Nine Bow barbarians.
In proclaiming the triumph of the monarch the inscription says, “Every one that
was a marauder hath been subdued by the King Merenptah.” The people of
Ysiraal in this inscription are identified by the Pharaoh with the nomads of the
Edomite Shasu or shepherds, and are classed by him with the confederate
marauders who invaded Egypt with the Libu, and were defeated with huge
slaughter at the battle of Procepis (Pa-ar-shep), which is also recorded on the
monuments. They were a tribe or totemic community of cattle-keepers, one of
“the tribes of the Shasu from the land of Aduma” who went down into Egypt in
search of grazing ground to find sustenance for their herds in the eastern region of
the Delta. At this very time, when the people of Ysiraal and their seed were being
“wiped out” or annihilated as the Israelites in Syria, there was an exodus of the
Edomite Shasu which has been pressed into the service of false theory on behalf of
biblical “history.” These tribes had considered the eastern region of the Delta,
as far as Zoan, to be their own possession, until they were driven out by Seti I.
Now they bestirred themselves anew, under Meneptah II (Merenptah), but “in a
manner alike peaceful and loyal.” “As faithful subjects of Egypt, they asked for
a passage through the border fortress of Khetam in the land of Thuku (Heb.
Succoth), in order that they might find sustenance for themselves and their herds
in the rich pasture-lands of the lake districts about the city of Pa-Tum (Pithom)”
(Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs, Eng. tr., one vol., p. 317). An Egyptian
official makes the following report on the subject. He says: “Another matter for
the satisfaction of my master’s heart: we have carried into effect the passage of the
tribes of the Shasu from the land of Aduma (Edom) from the fortress (Khetam) of
Merenptah-Hetephima, which is situated in Thuku (Succoth), to the lakes of the
city Pa-Tum, of Merenptah-Hetephima, which are situated in the land of Thuku, in
order to feed themselves and to feed their herds on the possessions of Pharaoh, who
is there a beneficent sun for all peoples. In the year 8 . . . Sut, I caused them to be
conducted (according to the list of the days on which the fortress was opened for their
passage).” (Brugsch, citing Pap. Anastasi; 6). Merenptah also had his royal seat in the
city of Ramses. Here we meet with the field of Zoan and the store-cities of Pithom
and Ramses which have been imported into the second book of Moses, and futile
efforts have been made to show that this record corroborated the biblical version
of the exodus. But in this exodus we find the Shasu or shepherds are peaceful and
loyal people, faithful subjects of the Pharaoh, who are politely conducted from the
land of Edom through the fortress (Khetam) to the lake-country of Succoth (or
Thuku), the first encampment assigned to the Israelites, where they would find
abundance of food and fodder for themselves and their flocks and herds instead of
wandering in the wilderness for forty years, according to the other story. At the
same time, or thereabouts, the people of Ysiraal in Syria were cut up root and
branch by Merenptah. The passage through the land of Thuku, Hebrew Succoth,
here described is apparently the route adopted by those who converted the
“coming forth” from Amenta into the biblical exodus from Egypt, and it tends to
affiliate the cattle-keepers in the land of Goshen to the nomadic tribes of the
Edomite Shasu (Gen. xlvi. 32). But we shall not overtake the children of Israel
as an ethnological entity on this line of route, nor as the people who perish by
the million in the wilderness of sand that formed the land of graves in the desert
domain of Sekari. For that we shall have to “turn back” and encamp before
Pi-ha-hiroth, and pass through the mouth of the cleft into the wilderness of
Amenta. But it is useless trying any further to confuse the Jewish exodus with the
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE DESERT OF AMENTA 689
mythical “coming forth” from the lower Egypt of Amenta, with intent to reestablish a falsely-bottomed history.
The eruption of the Libyans and their
confederated invaders in the time of Merenptah is a matter of historic fact. That
they were vanquished and driven back by Merenptah is equally historical. They
at least made no triumphant exodus from Egypt as 600,000 fighting men, for they
never got there, but were fatally defeated on the borders of the land. The only
people, then, known by the name of Israel to the Egyptian monuments are the
people of Ysiraal who had their very seed destroyed, as claimed by the Pharaoh
beloved of Ptah. These can be identified as a North Syrian contingent of fighting
men who had joined the Libyans, or the old confederation of the Nine Bows,
in their attacks on Egypt, and were hunted back in wreck and ruin, if not entirely
destroyed, by Merenptah, the so-called “Pharaoh of the exodus.” Thus, if these
were the same people as those of the Hebrew exodus, the deliverance of the
Israelites from Egypt would be turned into the deliverance of Egypt itself from the
Libyan confederacy of raiding barbarians amongst whom the Israelites were
a hardly distinguishable unit.
What then was “the seed of Israel” as an
ethnological entity in the eyes of Merenptah, or the writer of his inscription?
They fought as mercenaries and marauders for the Libyan king, who had made
war on Egypt collectively, and were driven backward all together in one common,
overwhelming rout. They came and went, and left no record of their past. Israel
in Syria was not Israel in Egypt. Israel in Egypt is not an ethnical entity, but the
children of Ra in the lower Egypt of Amenta, who are entirely mythical.
THE TITLE OF PHARAOH.
By the bye, so far as hitherto known, the name of “Pharaoh” is only found in
Hebrew. Some Egyptologists derive it from Par-ao, the great house. The present writer is of opinion that this title of the Ra was more probably derived from
Paru the lion than from Para the house. The Pharaoh personated the lion, or
the lion-god, and sometimes wore the lion’s tail as the emblem of royalty. Then
he was Paru as the lion and the hak as ruler. Thus the king as lion-ruler would
be the Paruhak=Pharaoh. Moreover, and this seems conclusive, the lion-god is
addressed as the god Paru (Rit., ch. 162), and the full spelling of the name
(Paruhak) is extant in the Ritual. In an address to Sekhet (ch. 164) the goddess is
called the divine mother of Parhakasa, who is the royal wife of Paruhak-Khepera,
the king as lion-ruler or Pharaoh. Probably the Paruhak originated with KheperPtah and his consort Sekhet, who were the parents of the lion-god Atum-Ra, and
therefore of Ihuh in Israel. The chapter in which the lion-ruler appears as the
Paruhak is one of the most ancient in the Ritual. It is said to have been written
partly if not entirely in the language of the blacks (the Nahsi) and the Antiu of
Nubia (ch. 164), which takes us beyond Egypt as now known to the country of SutNahsi, whence the Egyptians came in their course of descent from the equatorial
regions where they had dwelt in a land of equal day and night, the prototype of
their double earth and of time in Amenta. We find from chapter 162 that this lion
of the double force, the Paruhak, is invoked as the protector of his people. His
whip is used against their enemies. He is saluted as the lion of the double power
who answers prayer and comes to those that call upon him and invoke him as the
“protector of the wretched against the oppressor” (Rit., 162). These were the
manes in Amenta. A corroboration of this origin of the Pharaonic name may be
found in Ezekiel (xxxii. 2): “Son of man, take up a lamentation for the Pharaoh king
of Egypt, and say unto him, Thou was likened unto a young lion of the nations.”
Which he was as the lion-ruler Paruhak.
EGYPTIAN WISDOM IN THE REVELATION OF JOHN
THE DIVINE
BOOK XI
THE process of making Scripture history from the Egypto-gnostic
remains, without the gnosis or science of the ancient wisdom, may be
seen approaching its climax in the Book of Revelation attributed to
John the divine.
It has been commonly assumed that this book constituted an
historic link between the Old Testament and the New; but the
Sarkolatræ, or worshippers of the word made flesh in one historic
form of personality, the carnalizers of the Egypto-gnostic Christ, have
never yet discovered what the revelation was intended to reveal. It
has been taken as a supplement to the Gospels as if the history of
Jesus had been continued into the wedded life after the marriage of
the bride with the lamb, and that they dwelt together ever after in
that new Jerusalem which came “down out of heaven” “as a bride
adorned for her husband,” when the tabernacle of God which was to
dwell with man took the place of the old Jerusalem that was destroyed
by the Romans. The present contention is that the book is and
always has been inexplicable because it was based upon the symbolism
of the Egyptian astronomical mythology without the gnosis, or
“meaning which hath wisdom,” that is absolutely necessary for
an explanation of its subject-matter; and because the débris of the
ancient wisdom has been turned to account as data for pre-Christian
prophecy that was supposed to have had its fulfilment in Christian
history.
For example, the lamb alone has power to open the book of seven
seals. His power comprised the powers of the “seven spirits of God,”
the primordial seven. And, as represented astronomically, when the
vernal equinox passed from the sign of Taurus into the sign of Aries
the son of God was imaged as a lamb, instead of the earlier calf or
still earlier lion; thenceforth his was the power and the glory and the
majesty, and his the book of life then newly-opened, in the cycle of
precession for another 2,155 years. But in the Book of Revelation
the drama of the mysteries has been mistaken for human history, and
a mythical catastrophe for the actual ending of the world. The book
as it stands has no intrinsic value and very little meaning until the
fragments of ancient lore have been collated, correlated, and compared
with the original mythos and eschatology of Egypt.
To some extent we are now able to identify the wisdom of Egypt
THE BOOK OF REVELATION
691
in the Book of Revelation and to “make sense” of the apocalyptic
visions, so long and so erroneously assumed to have been unveiled to
a Christian named John in the isle of Patmos, for the first time since
the ancient astronomy was made nonsense of in the futile and
fatuous attempt to turn the hidden wisdom into prophecy intended to
prove the truth of a spurious history.
The apocalypse of John might be described as “scenes and
characters from the mysteries of Taht-Aan,” who was literally Aan =
John, the divine penman. This was the sacred scribe to whom the
36,000 books or papyrus-rolls were attributed by tradition. In short,
Taht-Aan was the pre-Christian John the divine. His typical bird, the
ibis, is still known in Egypt by the name of John. His other zoötype,
the kaf-ape, is Aan by name. The name of Aani signifies the saluter.
This is the character personalized in John. Speaking of the angel, he
says: “And when I saw him I fell at his feet as one dead.” “And
when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship before the feet of the
angel.” To salute was a primitive mode of worshipping; hence the
ape, Aan, was an ideographic figure of the saluter. The object of
the present section, then, is to show that the matter of “revelation”
was derived from the Egyptian astronomical mythology and eschatology, and that the Jesus of this book is one with Iu, the su or son
of Atum-Ra, who was portrayed as the divine man and bringer of
peace to earth a many thousand years ago. The prototype of
Patmos is to be seen in the Ritual (ch. 175). John is in the isle of
Patmos, “for the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus.” He
writes of the god who died and is alive again, saying, “Behold he
cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him” “and they which
pierced him” are to mourn (i. 7). To see how ancient this is,
let us turn to the 175th chapter of the Ritual of the Resurrection. It
is “the chapter of not dying a second death.” The divine sufferer is
thus addressed: “Decree this, O Tum, that if I behold thy face I shall
not be pained by thy sufferings.” This Tum decrees. The great gods
have given him the supremacy, and he will reign “on his throne in the
isle of flame for eternities of eternities” (Naville, Rit., ch. 175).
The mission of Taht-Aan, the saluter of Horus, could not be better
stated than in the words of John the divine concerning the Christ of the
gnosis called the Word. “That which was from the beginning, that
which we have heard, that which we beheld, and our hands handled,
concerning the Word of life (and the life was manifested, and we have
seen, and bear witness, and declare unto you the life eternal which was
with the Father, and was manifested unto us); yea, and our fellowship
is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ: and these things we
write that our joy may be fulfilled” (1st Ep. John i. 1-4). Taht-Aan
had indeed beheld and heard and handled “the Word of eternal life”
manifested in Horus or Jesus, the ever-coming son, for, as bearer of
the symbolic Utat, he carried Horus in his hands and held him aloft
as the true light of the world, and the symbolic likeness of a soul in
human nature that was begotten by Ra, the holy spirit and the father
in heaven. Such was the revelation of Tehuti-Aan or Taht-Hermes.
The position of Aan, the divine scribe, in relation to Horus, the onlybegotten son of God, is repeated on behalf of John in the Gospel. It
is in the character of Taht-Aan that “there came a man, sent from
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God, whose name was John.” The same came for witness of the light.
He was not the light, but came that he might bear witness of the
light (ch. i), as did Taht-Aan, who carries the Eye of Horus in his
hands and testifies that Horus is the true light of the world, as son of
Ra the solar god, and of the holy spirit in the eschatology. John likewise gives his personal testimony, not without hard swearing, regarding
“that which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that
which we have seen with our eyes, and our hands handled, concerning
the Word.” But the testimony of Taht-Aan concerning the Word or
logos as Horus was far anterior and just as personal. Moreover, he
handled it by carrying in his hands the eye of light, the talismanic
maatkheru, and the papyrus-roll or book of life.
The Ritual is the book which contains the divine words that bring
about the resurrection to the glory of eternal life. It is a book of the
mysteries in which the revelation was dramatically enacted. As before
said, the chief revelation made by Aan, as we have it in the now
recovered Book of the Dead, is made by the father in heaven on behalf
of Horus, the divine son on earth and in Amenta. Horus as the Word
gives voice to the decrees which Ra hath spoken in heaven. In his
form of the divine son Horus executes those decrees, and Taht-Aan,
the giver of the written words (Rit., ch. 151A), is the recorder of the
decrees for human use. It is announced in the opening chapter of the
Ritual that Ra, the holy spirit, “issued the mandate which Taht-Aan
hath executed” (ch. 1, Renouf). This was the revelation made by the
father in heaven as testifier to Horus the son who is the “word made
truth” in the books of Aan. It is the same opening in the Book of
Revelation. The mandate is divinely given to John that he shall
write “the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show
unto his servants,” and John, like Aan, bears “witness of the word of
God,” which was primarily personalized in Iu as the son of Ptah at
Memphis.
The revelation of Taht-Aan in the Ritual begins with the resurrection or coming forth in Amenta from the life on earth. The opening
chapters contain the words which bring about the resurrection and the
glory, the recorder of which is Taht-Aan. It is Aan, as writer,
who effects the triumph of Osiris over his adversaries on the day of
weighing words, or on the judgment day. “Ra issued the command
to Aan that he should effect the triumph of Osiris against his adversaries, and the command is what Aan hath executed” in writing the
Ritual (ch. 1). The Revelation of John is termed “the Revelation of
Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show unto his servants; and he
sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John, who bore
witness of the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, of all
things that he saw” (Rev. i. 1, 2). Jesus is accompanied by the seven
great spirits whose place is before the throne of God. As Egyptian
these were the seven servants or seshu of Horus. Thus “the Revelation of Jesus Christ” was given to John by God the Father “to show
unto his servants,” the first of whom are the seven spirits which are
before his throne. This is the same as the revelation of Horus that
was given him by Ra to be written down by Taht-Aan, the scribe of
the gods. Therefore we hold that John the divine, as seer in the isle
of Patmos, is a form of Aan (or Taht) upon the Mount of Glory in the
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Isle of Flame. Not only are the seven seshus of Horus given to Jesus
as his servants in Revelation; they are also grouped around him in
their various characters by name, as (1) the seven spirits of God;
(2) the seven as spirits of fire; (3) the seven as stars; (4) the seven as
eyes; (5) the seven as golden lampstands; (6) the seven ruling
powers, as heads of the dragon; (7) the seven as angels of the
seven churches.
Thus the book ascribed to John the divine purports to contain “the
Revelation of Jesus Christ” = Horus, that was given him by God the
Father to show unto his “bond-servants,” and these bond-servants
answer to the seshu or servants of Horus in the original scripture.
The subject-matter of this revelation is sent by Jesus to “his servant
John, who bore witness of the Word of God and of the testimony of
Jesus Christ” to be set forth as a prophecy of things about to happen
that were seen by him in vision; but which had been unfolded by
the mystery-teachers of the heavens in an indefinitely earlier time,
and in accordance with the gnosis by means of which alone it could
be understood.
For the Hebrew versions of the astronomical mythology in
Revelation and in the Book of Enoch could not have been
comprehended while the world lasts without the restitution of the
Egyptian original as gloss and guide. Enoch, like John, was in the
spirit. His internal sight was opened, and he beheld a vision which
was in the heavens. But his vision was admittedly astronomical. In
it he “beheld the secrets of the heavens and of paradise according to its
divisions” (ch. 41).
The record of his visions is called “the
book of the revolutions of the luminaries of heaven”; and is said to
contain “the entire account of the world for ever, until a new work
shall be effected, which will be eternal” (ch. 71). Enoch says, “I
beheld the ancient of days, whose head was like white wool, and with
him another whose countenance resembled that of man,” and who is
called the “Son of Man” in contradistinction to the “son of the
woman” (ch. 46). “I beheld the ancient of days, while he sat upon
the throne of his glory, and the book of the living was opened in his
presence, and while all the powers which were above the heavens
stood armed and before him” (ch. 47, 3). Enoch was “elevated aloft
to heaven.” He saw the new Jerusalem. It was a spacious habitation
built with stones of crystal, with walls and pavement all of crystal.
He saw that the new heaven contained an exalted throne, the
appearance of which was like that of frost. To look upon it was
impossible. One great in glory sat upon it, whose robe was brighter
than the sun, and whiter than the snow. No mortal could behold
him. “Then the Lord with his mouth called me, saying, Approach
hither, Enoch, at my holy word” (ch. 14). He sees the giants who
had been the watchers in heaven as rulers of the seven colossal
constellations of the heptanomis in “their beginning and primary
foundation” (ch. 15). Seven watchers are called up for judgment,
and when tried are found to have been unfaithful to their trust
because they came not in their proper season. They are judged,
found guilty, and cast down into the flaming abyss like the seven
mountains overthrown in Revelation.
There is also another great judgment day commemorated in the
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Book of Enoch. This is the judgment of the seventy. Enoch says,
“I saw the throne erected in a delectable land. Upon this sat the
Lord of the sheep, who received all the sealed books, which were
opened before Him. Then the Lord called the first seven white ones,
saying, Take those seventy shepherds; and behold, I saw them all
bound, and all standing before Him. First came on the trial of the
stars. Then the seventy shepherds were judged, and, being found
guilty, were thrust into the flaming abyss into which the primary
seven had been previously plunged” (Enoch, ch. 89). The seventy
were rulers, angels, princes, watchers, timekeepers, here called
shepherds in a heaven of ten divisions, which preceded the twelve
and the seventy-two. This is the heaven of the Ritual, attained by
spirits perfected upon the mount of glory; the paradise of peace
upon the summit of Mount Hetep at the “Atlantean pole” consisting
of ten divine domains which answer in the eschatology to the ten
islands or celestial nomes in the Astronomy. Thus, it is apparent
that a great judgment of Maat upon the mount, as represented in the
Ritual, was uttered in or at the end of the heaven in ten divisions.
And this had previously taken place when the seven rulers were
overthrown, and the heaven in seven divisions passed away.
The day, or a day of judgment, was periodic, like the deluge. It
was the ending of a time, an age or æon, sometimes called “the
ending of the world” by those who were ignorant of the signlanguage. It was but an ending of the world, according to the
astronomical mythology, when the time had come for “the dead to
be judged” and for “them that destroy the earth” to be exterminated
like the Sebau in the Ritual. This ending was also announced by
“a great earthquake, when a tenth part of the city fell” (ch. 11, 13).
There was a judgment annually in the solar mythos. This is still
celebrated yearly by the Jews: the same assizes that were held each
year or periodically in the Egyptian great hall of dual justice. But
the drama appears so tremendous in the Book of Revelation because
the period ending is on the scale of a great year. It is not the
ending of the world, but of a great year of the world. It is the day
of doom, the “time for the dead to be judged,” upon the hugest
scale (11, 18). The last great day of judgment is known to all the
genuine books of wisdom commonly called apocryphal, but the
nature and mode of judgment were only made known to the initiated
in the mysteries. The great judgment of all, like the great “deluge
of all,” was held at the end of the great year of all, in the cycle of
precession. At the termination of this vast period it was the
Judgment Day. Then followed the conflagration by fire or the
catastrophe by water, or the subsidence of the mountains, islands,
nomes, provinces and other types of the Heptanomis; or the overwhelming deluge of the pole. The Revelation of John and of Enoch
both preserved a fragmentary version of the drama ascribed to
Taht-Aan as the mysteries of Amenta, such as: the mystery of the
Great Mother who sat on the celestial waters; the mystery of the
dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, upon which the woman
rode; the mystery of the seven stars; the mystery of the first-born
from the dead who rose again as the faithful and true witness on
behalf of God the Father.
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In the first place, the subject of Revelation was not derived from the
canonical gospels. The fundamental matter existed ages on ages
earlier. The cult of the lamb and the bride is at least as old in the
astronomical mythology as the time when the vernal equinox entered
the sign of Aries, and the lamb of Sebek succeeded the calf of Horus
on the mount as the type of sacrifice in the cult of the Sebek-heteps in
Egypt (Nat. Genesis).
The doctrinal teaching of the mysteries
is also partially apparent in Revelation and in the other writings
ascribed to “John.” A fragment of the genuine pre-Christian gnosis
previously cited is retained almost intact in the First Epistle of John,
who says of Jesus the Christ, “This is He that came by water and blood,
not in the water only, but with the water and with the blood. And
it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is the Truth,
for there are Three who bear witness, the Spirit, and the Water and
the Blood; and the three agree in one” (1 John 5, 6, 7, 8). After
the poor pitiful apologetics of the Patristic obfuscators in this, as
in a myriad instances, it is a comfort to touch the truth upon Egyptian
ground. Horus came by water, as the child of the mother and
bringer of food, when he was represented by the papyrus-shoot, or
by Ichthus, the fish of the inundation. He also came by blood as the
incarnate mortal child of Isis. Lastly, in his second advent, Horus
or Iusa came in the spirit as the only-begotten son of Atum-Ra,
the holy spirit, who was the father of spirits in the Egyptian
eschatology.
In Revelation it is said, “Be thou faithful unto death and I will
give thee a crown of life” (Rev. ii. 10). The crown of Horus was the
crown of life that was the gift of his father Tum. Horus was lord
of the diadem. Through him the deceased is made master of the
double crown. The Son of Man has on his head a golden crown
(Rev. xiv. 14). The double crown worn by Horus of the kingly
countenance is magnified into many crowns upon the head of the
Logos or “word of God” in Revelation (xix. 12). It was Atum who
conferred the crown of triumph on the faithful followers of that
example which was set before them by his son. “Thy father Tum
hath prepared for thee this beautiful crown of triumph, the living
diadem which the gods love, that thou mayst live for ever” (ch. 19,
Renouf). The deceased, in presence of the great cycle of the gods, is
the “great one who seeketh the crown” (ch. 133). “He followeth
Shu and calleth for the crown” (ch. 131). “He arriveth at the
Aged one, at the confines of the mount of glory, and the crown
awaiteth him. The Osiris raiseth it up” (ch. 131). This crown of
life was always in view, not only to the mind’s eye; it was also
figured as an object-picture to the climbers up the mount of glory.
Probably our Corona Borealis is an extant representative of the ancient
constellation that was imaged as the crown, which, when figured in
the stars that never set, was a likeness of the eternal diadem that was
conferred on those who had attained the mount of glory. It was an
Egyptian practice to place a floral crown upon the mummy in the
sheta or coffin. The mummy of Aahmes I, the first king of the
eighteenth dynasty, was found to have been garlanded with roses for
its burial. The “chapter of the crown of triumph” (Rit., ch. 19)
shows the continuity of the custom in the nether-world, where the
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garland of earth becomes the crown of triumph for eternal wear.
In the Ritual the judgment is designated that of the clothed and
the naked. The righteous are clothed in the white robe of the
worthy by the hands of Taht, and the wicked are synonymous with the
naked in antithesis to those who are the clothed. There is a
comment on this in Revelation, “Blessed is he who watcheth and
keepeth his garments lest he walk naked and they see his shame”
(Rev. xvi. 15). The ransomed spirits in the Ritual who are redeemed
from the mummy condition and all the ills of the corruptible flesh
put on the pure white robe of righteousness, called the vesture of
truth, which is given to them by Taht for their entrance into and
coming forth from the boat of the sun. And being assimilated to
Horus, who fought his battle against Sut with a branch of palm,
the symbol of victorious renewal of life, the righteous also have
the branch of palm given to them as typical of their conquest over
death and Hades. The crown of triumph and eternal life, which
is called the crown of Makheru as an emblem of the word made truth,
is placed by Atum on the brows of those who are justified because they
were faithful unto death and thus have won the crown of life, to live for
ever with their God in heaven since they lived for God, for truth, for
right, for justice, and humanity, on earth (Rit., ch. 19, 1-3). In one
chapter of the Ritual it is said of the deceased, “The mouth of N has
been thirsty; but he will never hunger nor thirst any more; for
Osiris-Châs delivers him and does away with hunger.” In Revelation
it is said “they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, for the
lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall be their shepherd, and
shall guide them unto fountains of the waters of life” (Rev. vii. 17).
These take the place of the water-spring and the vases in the Ritual
(ch. 178). A second death is spoken of several times, called the
“Extinction of the Adversaries of the Inviolate God,” “on the night
when judgment was passed on those who are no more” (ch. 18).
Those who suffer the second death are also spoken of as those who
are buried for ever. That is, they have no part in the resurrection
from Amenta. The deceased says in ch. 42 “I am he who dieth
not a second time.” In the rubric to ch. 135 it is said of the
defunct “he dieth not a second time in the nether-world.” In Revelation (ch. xx.) it is proclaimed that the part of the condemned guilty
shall be in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone; which is the
second death. This, in the Ritual, is the lake or tank of flame in
which the evil Sebau and the enemies of the good being are
annihilated or extinguished for ever.
On the judgment day, in the Ritual, those that overcame are those
who passed in triumph through the searching examination of the
judgment-hall. As we read in Revelation, “he that hath an ear, let
him hear what the spirit saith. To him that overcometh, to him will
I give of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and
upon the stone a new name written, which no one knoweth but he
that receiveth it” (ii. 17). This was given to the initiate both in
the totemic ceremonies and religious mysteries. In the mysteries of
Amenta a white stone, or “a pillar of crystal” is given to the
initiate. As he comes forth in triumph from the examination he is
asked what the judges have awarded him, and he replies “a flame of
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fire and a pillar of crystal” (ch. 125). It is said of the Lord and his
servants “his name shall be upon their foreheads.” In the Ritual
“the name of Ra is upon the Osiris (ch. 130), and his token of
honour is on his mouth.” This is said in the book of life, which is
here called “the book by which the soul is made to live for ever.” It
is also said that the Osiris has been initiated in the mysteries, but he
“hath not repeated what he hath heard in the house of the God who
hideth his face” (Rit., ch. 133). He keeps the secret sacredly. But
the original book of life was no mere volume in which a name might
be written. The words of power in the Ritual were derived from the
Holy Spirit itself by Horus, and inscribed by Taht for human use.
These divine words were to be made truth in the life lived on earth,
so that the spirit, when it entered the hall of judgment, was, as it
were, its own book of life, written for the all-seeing eye. It did not
live because Osiris died, but because the divine words or immortal
seed had quickened and taken root, and been fulfilled = made truth in
the individual human life (Rit., ch. 94) as the gnosis of Salvation.
In Revelation we read of the voice which was heard from heaven, “I
heard it again speaking with me, and saying, ‘Go! take the book
which is open in the hand of the angel that standeth upon the sea
and upon the earth.’ And I went unto the angel, saying unto him
that he should give me the little book. And he saith unto me, ‘Take
it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but in thy mouth
it shall be sweet as honey.’ And I took the little book out of the
angel’s hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey;
and when I had eaten it, my belly was made bitter” (Rev. x. 8-11).
A mode of obtaining knowledge by swallowing the book was also
employed by Ptah-Nefer-Ka in the Egyptian “Tale of Setnau.”
“He placed a new piece of papyrus before him. He copied each
word which was on the roll. He had it dissolved in water. When he
saw it dissolved he drank it. He (then) knew all that it contained”
(Records, vol. iv. p. 138). In the original rendering the book of life
was figuratively the food of soul. In the Hebrew version the book of
life is turned into an edible and eaten actually as a result of literalising the ancient gnosis. It was not a man named Jesus who was
crucified in Egypt as the Lord (Rev. xi. 8). These are the mysteries
of Amenta, and the Egypt signified is the Egypt of that netherworld. It is the place of burial in the sandy realm of Sekari that
will account for the streets that were choked with dead bodies. The
lord who was crucified in that Egypt was Ptah-Sekari, in the cult of
Memphis, Osiris in the religion of Abydos and Iu at Annu. The
“crucified” belongs to a later terminology. The cross as Christian
was preceded by the Tat; the cross of Ptah or of Osiris-Tat—the
god who was immanent in the wood or tree of the cross, and who
gave up his life periodically in or on the cross as the sustainer of the
universe. In the mysteries of Amenta, the Tat-cross was annually
overthrown and re-erected as the symbol of salvation; and it was
there the Lord was crucified in Egypt. A brief synopsis will suffice
to show that the Book of Revelation contains a version of the
astronomical mythology which was derived from the Egyptian
wisdom. The vanishing heaven is the celestial heptanomis that was
formed in seven astronomes, on seven hills, or seven islands, which
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sank and passed away like the lost Atlantis in the last great deluge
of all. The most ancient genetrix is reproduced as the great harlot.
She is the beast that sat upon the waters as a pregnant hippopotamus.
Her seven “sons of the thigh” are here as the seven kings who were
made drunken with the cup of her fornication or promiscuous sexual
intercourse. These, as powers, are the seven heads of the scarletcoloured beast or solar dragon upon which the woman rode. By a
change of type, the scarlet-coloured beast becomes the “Scarlet Lady”
of later theology; the woman in red being substituted for the red
water-cow. The Great Mother is now denounced as the great whore
living in adultery with her own children who originated in the
seven elemental powers, to pass through several phases of phenomena
as the seven with Anup, with Ptah, with Horus, or with Jesus and
with Ra. In Revelation the mother of mystery is called “Babylon
the Great, the mother of harlots and of abominations of the earth,”
who has the name of mystery written on her forehead (xvii. 5).
But there was an earlier Babylon in Egypt, known to the secret
wisdom, which is traditionally identified with the locality of Coptos,
nominally the seat of Kep, the Kamite mother of the mysteries.
The mother of mystery did not originate with the scarlet woman of
Babylon (nor as the red rag of the Protestants), although the title of the
Great Harlot was applied to her also, who was the mother of harlots
and to whom the maiden-tributes were religiously furnished in that
city. Hers is a figure of unknown antiquity in the astronomical
mythology, which was constellated as the red hippopotamus that
preceded the Great Bear. The red hippopotamus (Apt) had already
become the scarlet lady in the Ritual. Hence the Great Mother, as
Sekhet-Bast, who is higher than all the gods, and is the only one
who stands above her father, is called the lady of the scarlet-coloured
garment (Rit., ch. 164, Naville). The Kamite Constellation of the
“birthplace” may also serve to show cause why the “great harlot”
should have been abused so badly in the Book of Revelation.
The creatory of the Great Mother was depicted in the sign of the
meshken to indicate the place of bringing forth by the cow of heaven
whose “thigh” is the emblem of great magical power in the hieroglyphics. The mother of mystery also carries “in her hand a golden
cup full of abominations, even the unclean things of her fornication”
(xvii. 4), such as the mystery of fecundation by water, which was the
primitive mystery of Kep. This was symbolised in Egypt by the
water-vase, and constellated in the sign of Krater, the urn of the
inundation. It has been shown that the gods of the Egyptian
mythology originated in seven elemental forces that were born of
earth, the mother of life, and who were then continued in a variety
of characters as the primordial seven powers. These are reproduced
as the progeny of the mother-earth, where they are called “the
kings of the earth” over whom “the first-born of the dead” is to
become the ruler (ch. 1. 5) as Jesus in the Book of Revelation, the
same as Horus (or Iu) in the Ritual, the god “who giveth light by
means of his own body” (ch. 83). The astronomical mythology was
taught in mysteries by the mystery teachers of the heavens. One of
the chief of these was “the mystery of the seven stars”; the seven
that are described in the Ritual as “the seven glorious ones,” “the
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seven spirits of fire,” “the seven great spirits,” who are also termed
“the lords of eternity.” As never-setting stars the seven were
beyond the bounds of time; hence they became the witnesses for
eternal continuity. Thus seven stars that never set were made a
group of witnesses for the eternal in the eschatology. These in the
Book of Revelation are the seven spirits of God, the seven spirits of
fire, the seven eyes, the seven golden lamps, or lampstands; as
variously typified “before the throne” on the celestial summit.
Certain deities in the Ritual are called the Khabsu gods of light,
or of the lamp. When the risen Osiris passes over heaven unto the
west, it is said the Khabsu gods of the lamp rise up to greet him
with their acclamations. “Acclamation cometh from the mount of
glory, and greeting from the lines of measurement” (Rit., ch. 130 and
133). This is when the light arises in Kher-Aba and the child, “he
of the strong cord,” is re-born upon the mount of resurrection (ch. 136A).
The number is not directly given in the “Book of the Dead.” But
the gods of the lamp are obviously reproduced in “Revelation” as
the spirits of the golden lampstands, whether as the group of seven
or as the “two witnesses,” which are “the two olive trees and the
two lampstands standing before the lord of the earth” (Rev. xi. 4).
The word Khabsu is the name for a lamp, but, in the present instance,
the determinative shows that a heavenly body is meant. Also, if a
plausible correction, made by Renouf, be allowed, there were Khabsu
trees upon the mount of glory as well as deities of the lamp.
Khabsu is the well-known name of a sacred tree (Renouf, Rit., ch. 133,
Note 4). This may be compared with the two olive trees in Revelation, which were also two lampstands, as the two witnesses whom
we shall identify with Anup the stellar god upon his mountain, and
Taht-Aan as the lunar lamp of Ra. Moreover, the word Khabsu
signifies the soul or spirit as well as the star. Hence it is probable
that the seven stars called spirits, the spirits of God, and spirits of fire,
were represented by the seven Khabsu stars, or lamps, which were held
in the hand of the young solar god as head of the seven, whether as
Jesus or as Horus. No matter how these things were shown, or are
said to have been shown, to John in Patmos, what we are concerned
to know is their fundamental significance and to identify them with
the lesser or greater mysteries, which are the mysteries of Taht-Aan
in the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
The writer John, who follows afar off in the wake of Taht-Aan,
makes an attempt at showing some of the mysteries in his Book of
Revelation. Amongst the more prominent are (1) the mystery of the
seven stars; (2) the mystery of the woman, and the beast with seven
heads; (3) the mystery of the two “witnesses” and the four “living
creatures”; (4) the mystery of the war in heaven; (5) the mystery of
God (X. 7); (6) the mystery of renewal in the ancient heavens when
every isle and mountain vanished and the heptanomis passed
away. In the mysteries of Amenta there is a resurrection of the
body-soul, or manes, and a transformation into spirit. This was on
the day upon which the god in spirit, Ra, calls from heaven to the
mummy-Osiris in Amenta. This summons to the transformation of
the mummy into spirit, “Come thou hither!” or “Come thou to
me!” (in “Pistis Sophia” it is “Come thou to us!”), that was
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uttered in the mystery of Tattu, is repeated and applied to John in
Revelation as the mode of resurrection into the spirit. John says:
“I saw and beheld a door opened in heaven, and the first voice which
I heard, a voice as of a trumpet, speaking with me, one saying,
‘Come up hither, and I will show thee the things that must come to
pass hereafter.’ ” Obviously this was the transformation into spirit
that was represented in the mysteries. Hence the saying of John,
“Straightway I was in the spirit” (Rev. iv. 1, 2), as was the Osiris at
the call of Ra (Rit., ch. 17). This cry of “Come” is repeated by
each of the four “living creatures,” who are the same in the mount
that the divine powers, Amsta, Hapi, Tuamutef, and Kabhsenuf,
were in the resurrection from Amenta (Rit., ch. 1).
John says “there came one of seven angels that had the seven
bowls and spake with me saying: ‘Come hither, I will show thee the
judgment of the great harlot that sitteth upon many waters; with
whom the kings of the earth committed fornication’” (ch. 17). The
kings of the earth were the seven spirits of earth who were at once
the children and the consorts of the mother in accordance with the
primitive polyandry. “I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and
of the beast that carried her, which hath the seven heads and the ten
horns. The beast that thou sawest was and is not; and is about to
come up out of the abyss, and to go into perdition.” That is following the final judgment. It is explained that “the woman whom thou
sawest is the great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.”
This was the kingdom of the seven (Rit., ch. 17), who ruled with the
Great Mother in the celestial heptanomis. Some light may be shed
on the mystery of the four-and-twenty elders, seated on their fourand-twenty thrones, by the Egypto-gnostic gospel, “Pistis Sophia.”
In this cryptic work the “mysteries” are said to be four-and-twenty in
number. The mystery of God the Father is the first, the mystery of
God the Son is last. These two are the first and the last in Revelation,
the closer and opener of Amenta in the Ritual. And all the twentyfour are included in the one great, unique, ineffable mystery of the
Father, manifested by the Son, as the dove, or the calf, or the lamb,
upon the mount of sunrise in the mythos, and on the stellar mount of
glory in the eschatology.
In Revelation the heaven in seven divisions comes to an end when
the seven thunders have uttered their voices and the seventh angel
has sounded the trumpet of doom. Then was “finished the mystery
of God, according to the good tidings which he declared to his
servants the prophets” (x. 7), which shows the interpretation
of the Kamite astronomical mythology by means of biblical prophecy
concerning the coming Messiah. The heaven that “was removed as
a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were
moved out of their places” (vi. 14, 15), is also imaged as a book
which had been closed and sealed with seven seals. This was the
book of doomsday; the record possibly kept for six-and-twentythousand years. The book is seen in the right hand of him that sits
upon the throne, “a book written within, and on the back close-sealed
with seven seals” (v. 1, 2). We may not have all the necessary
details for perfecting the parallel and proving the prototype to have
been Egyptian, but we observe that in the end of the world or the
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“subsidence of a country,” described in the “magic papyrus”
(Records, vol. x., 151-2) as an overwhelming deluge, there is mention
made of “the seven great dungeons that were sealed at the time with
an eternal seal.” It is also evident that these seven dungeons were
sealed singly one after the other, as it is said of the evil beings who
are at the time submerged: “What is immersed, do not let it pass
out! Seal the mouths, choke up the mouths, as the shrine is sealed
up for centuries.” There is an echo of this in Revelation (ch. x.).
“And when the seven thunders uttered (their voices) I was about to
write: And I heard a voice from heaven saying, ‘Seal up the things
which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not.’ ” The record
is to be sealed not only for centuries, but with the seal of eternal
silence, or, as it is imaged, with the sevenfold seal.
Seven times over in the great year the typical catastrophe occurred.
The station of the pole was changed. The island was submerged,
the mountain was dislimned. Then was the day of judgment when
one of the seven dungeons of eternal doom was sealed, and this was
repeated until there were seven altogether. It is in this papyrus that
the ark or shrine of seven cubits is superseded by the ark of eight
cubits, and the heptanomis of Sut is to make way for the octonary of
Taht.
In Revelation the heptanomis of seven astronomes is
symboled by the book of judgment sealed with seven seals. Seven
seals are broken for the opening of the book. Seven angels sound
upon seven trumpets. Seven thunders utter their voices. Seven
plagues are loosed by the seven angels from the seven bowls of the
wrath of God. Seven kings are overthrown, and seven mountains
pass away, at this the final judgment of the great harlot and her
seven children of the thigh; her meskhen, or other “unclean things
of her fornication” that were set in heaven as primitive uranographic
signs, by those whose learning came to be unintelligibly interpreted
and unintelligently abused by the ignorant fanatics of a later religious
cult.
At the end of each three thousand seven hundred years in the
cycle of precession the pole-star changed, or, as represented, a star
fell from heaven. Thus, when the second angel sounded, a mountain
(one of the seven) sank down flaming to be quenched in the celestial
sea. This was one of the seven mountains upon which the ancient
harlot sat. At the same time a great star fell from heaven, which
was one of the seven pole-stars. When the fifth angel sounded
another pole-star fell. The fall of the total seven has not been
followed out one by one in stars. But the fall or wreck of the
heptanomis piecemeal has been otherwise described; Enoch saw it as
seven blazing mountains overthrown. Seven types of the overtoppling mount or station of the pole may be assigned approximately:
(1) to the mount of the hippopotamus (or northern crown); (2) to the
mount of the dragon; (3) the mount of the ape; (4) the mount of
the jackal (or dog); (5) the mount of the bird (cygnus); (6) the
mount of the tortoise (or lyra); and (7) the mountain of mankind.
To revert for a moment to the beginning of the Book, the drama
opens in Revelation the same as in “the Book of the Dead,” with
“the resurrection and the glory” of the coming Son. “Behold He
cometh with the clouds, and every eye shall see Him.” It is the risen
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Lord of Resurrection who says: “I was dead, and behold I am alive
for evermore, and I have the keys of death and of hades” (ch. i. 18).
This is Horus of the resurrection risen from Amenta in his triumph
over death and hell or Sut and Akar. He proclaims himself to
be the all-one, Har-Sam-taui-Neb-Uâ. Jesus, like Horus, is the
“faithful witness” for the Father, the first-born of the dead and the
ruler of the kings of the earth who were the seven elemental powers
that were born of the ancient mother, and afterwards elevated in
another character to the sphere, as spirits in glory, and lastly, as the
seven lords of eternity. Risen Horus comes as the anointed onlybegotten son of God; His revelation is to make known the Father
which is in heaven as the God in Spirit. We learn from Irenæus
that the Egypto-gnostic Christ (or Horus) came to teach the seven
powers who preceded him and who had no knowledge of the Father,
and to create in them the desire to investigate the divine nature and
to make that nature known. This was the revelation through the
Christ who is the “faithful witness, the first-born of the dead, and
the ruler of the kings of the earth,” who taught it as a mystery of
revelation.
The secret of the mysteries was with Aan.
The
mysteries of Amenta in the Ritual are chiefly eschatological. But
some of them are plainly astronomical. In one of the texts it is said
of Taht-Aan, “And now behold “Taht in the secret of his mysteries.
He is the maker of endless reckonings” (ch. 130).
As Egyptian, the day of judgment was the day of reckoning, and
the books were kept by Taht-Aan, who was called the reckoner of
all things in earth and heaven. An item in precession is likewise
recognisable in Revelation in the statement concerning the seven
rulers of the heptanomis. “They are seven kings: the five are
fallen, one is, the other is not yet come” (xvii. 10). There is a date
in the statement as it stands. The time indicated is that of the
sixth pole-star, which as here reckoned out was the pole-star Vega
in the constellation of the lyre or tortoise some fourteen thousand
years ago.
The “mount of glory” has been well preserved in the “Revelation
of John.” It is described as a throne set in heaven with “one sitting
on the throne, and round about the throne were four-and-twenty
thrones, and upon the thrones were four-and-twenty elders sitting
arrayed in white garments; on their heads were crowns of gold”
(ch. iv. 4). And in the midst of the elders was the lamb “standing
on the mount Zion,” which shows the identity of the throne and
mount and astronomically with the zodiacal sign of Aries. The
mount in Revelation has been turned into the throne of the Father
and the Son, but it is the same throne as that of Osiris, from beneath
which the water of life wells up, with the four genii standing before
the shrine. These become “the four living creatures full of eyes,”
around the throne, in the four corners of the mount. The probability
is that the four-and-twenty elders had been objectified in the
astronomy by four-and-twenty stars, which represented twenty-four
divine judges who appear in the Babylonian calendar. These were
twenty-four zodiacal stars, twelve to the north and twelve to the
south (Diodorus, ii, 30; Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, p. 72).
As
characters in the Egyptian wisdom, the earliest pre-solar powers were
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called the old ones or the elders. As Egyptian, they are traceable to
the two different groups of the twelve described in “Pistis Sophia”
as the subject of four-and-twenty mysteries. These were the twelve
who had their thrones as rulers (or æons) in the zodiac and the twelve
as spirits with Horus-Khuti, lord of spirits, in the harvest-field or
heaven of eternity.
The Mount is indeed the place of congregation, not only for the spirits
of the just made perfect, but also as the final gathering-place for all the
principal personages in the Pantheon of the Kamite mythography.
The old great mother and her seven sons are there; the seven great
spirits or the glorious ones, the Khus with Horus-Khuti; the four who
kept the quarters as Egyptian gods or powers ages before they were
christened “angels”; the twelve as rulers in the zodiac; the dragon,
the woman with child, and others, which are identifiably Egyptian,
are all included in the astronomical imagery of the Celestial Mount.
The seven Halls, Arits or watch-towers assigned to the seven spirits in
the Great House of Osiris, are utilised as the seven churches which
are assigned to the seven angels in the Book of Revelation. The seat
of justice in the solar mythos was shifted to the point of equinox,
and the balance was erected on the later mount of glory in the zodiac.
This is the mountain of Amenta in the eschatology. It is described
in the Ritual (ch. 149) as the exceeding high mountain of the netherworld, the top of which touches the sky. Whether stellar of solar,
this was the mount as judgment-seat. “And I saw a great white
throne, and him that sat upon it. And I saw the dead standing before
the throne, and the books were opened; and the dead were judged
out of the things which were written in the books, every man
according to their works” (Rev. xx. 11-14). In the Ritual, it is said,
the gods “fashion anew the heart of a person (in spirit) according to
what he hath done,” i.e., according to his works, in the body (ch. 27
and 75). There is also a call to judgment in the Ritual (ch. 136B).
“Come! come! for the Father is uttering the judgment of Maat,” says
the speaker, who is Horus in the Osirian myth and Iu in the cult of
Atum-Ra.
There is a description of the books being brought into the judgmenthall upon the Mount. “Oh, thou who callest out at thine evening
hours, grant that I may come and bring to him (the Father) the two
jaws of Rusta, and that I may bring to him the books which are in the
celestial Annu, and add up for him his hosts.” Bringing away the
jaws of Rusta is equivalent to carrying off “the broken bonds of
Death and of Hades” by him who was dead and is alive for evermore
(Rev. i. 18). He who has conquered death and hell and carried away
the gates of the prison-house has also vanquished the evil dragon. He
exclaims, “I have repulsed Apap and healed the wounds he made.”
There was a great Egyptian library at On or Annu, the Greek
Heliopolis. Hence in heaven itself, or the Celestial City, the books of
Taht were kept in Annu. Thus, speaking of the judgment, the Osiris
says: “Grant that I may bring to him, the Judge, the books which are
in Annu, and add up for him his heavenly hosts.” The deceased says:
“I am come to thee, O my Lord, that I may look upon thy glory. I
know thee, and I know the names of the forty-two gods who make their
appearance with thee in the hall of righteousness.” But in the papyri
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of Ani and of Unnefer, the judges or assessors in the Maat appear as
Twelve in number sitting on twelve thrones instead of the forty-two, or
the twenty-four, which offers a prototype for twelve judges on the
twelve thrones in Revelation and in the canonical gospels. In one
of the pictures to the Ritual Horus stands upon the Mount in
presence of his father as the calf, which was a type of sacrifice in
the Osirian religion earlier than the lamb (Naville, Todt, Kap. 108). “I
come,” says the speaker, “so that I may see the process of Maat, and
the lion-forms.” These are the Kherefu = Cherubs (ch. 136B) stationed
at the seat of judgment on the Mount. “Let the fathers and their
apes (the spirits of fire) make way for me, that I may enter the Mount
of Glory and pass through where the great ones are.” “Here is the
cycle of the gods.” “I poise for him,” the Judge, “the balance, which
is Maat.” “Come! come! for the Father is uttering the judgment
of Maat.” This was the final judgment on the Mount, where the
spirits of the just were passed as perfected. The invitation to “Come,
come,” and hear the judgments delivered on the day of doom, is
equivalent to the words in Revelation, “Come up hither, and I will
show thee the things which must come to pass hereafter. Straightway
I was in the Spirit: and behold, there was a throne set in heaven, and
one sitting upon the throne.” “And I saw in the right hand of him
that sat on the throne a book written within and on the back, closesealed with seven seals” (Rev. iv. 1, and v. 1). It is said in the Ritual
(ch. 133), “Rā maketh his appearance at the Mount of Glory with the
cycle of his gods about him. The strong one issueth from his hidden
dwelling.” “Be thou lift up, O Rā, who art in thy shrine, on the day
when thou discernest the land of Maat”; that is, where the hall of
judgment stands upon the Mount of Glory. The ancient of days in
the Semitic version is Ra, the solar god, who typifies the eternal in the
Ritual. He is called “the aged one at the confines of the Mount of
Glory” (ch. 131). He is the aged one upon his throne, as in the
books of Enoch, Daniel, and John the Divine. The ancient of days
together with the Son of Man preparing for the judgment is described
by Enoch. “At that time I beheld the ancient of days, while he sat
upon the throne of his glory, while the book of the living was opened
in his presence, and while all the powers which were above the heavens
stood around and before him” (ch. 47, 3). Another was present whose
countenance “resembled that of man,” and who accompanied the
ancient of days. This is the Son of Man to whom Righteousness
(or Maati) belongs.
It is said of this great judgment in the
Ritual, “The glorious ones are rightly judged, and the evil dead
are parted off” (ch. 18). In the mysteries of the Ritual, “He that
sitteth upon the throne,” as the great judge in Amenta is Osiris,
with Horus as the beloved only-begotten Son. But in the earlier
cult at Annu, Atum-Ra was the judge, as God the Father, with
Iu-em-hetep as God the Son, that is, as Iu the Su = Jesus the evercoming Son. At the opening of the book for the Judgment Day in
Revelation we read, “I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a great
voice, ‘Who is worthy to open the book, and to close the seals
thereof?’ ” “And one of the elders said unto me, ‘Behold, the lion
that is of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, hath overcome to open
the book and the seven seals thereof’” (Rev. v. 2, 5). This was the
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book containing “the things which the seven thunders uttered” (Rev.
x. 4). The book therefore of Seven Great Mysteries. Now, among
the other writings ascribed to Taht there was a book of the seven
mysteries of Amenta, or of the seven festivals with which the seven
mysteries were celebrated. (1) The day of the Monthly festival of the
sixth-seventh; (2) The festival of the fifteenth; (3) The festival of
Uaka; (4) The festival of Taht; (5) The festival of the birth of
Osiris; (6) The festival of Amsu; and (7) The festival of “Come
thou hither.” Thus there were seven great mysteries corresponding
to the seven festivals for which the record was written. It is a book
by which is revealed all that has happened from the beginning, consequently it was a book of Revelation that was written by Aan, the
divine scribe. By means of this book the Manes for whom it was
written can enter what John calls “the spirit” by becoming a Spirit,
so that the gods are able to come near him and touch him, “for he
has become as one of them.” It is this book of Revelation concerning
the seven mysteries and their celebration of which Aan is speaking
when he declares it is to be copied in its entireness and is not to be
added to by commentaries. This we cannot but associate with the
book of the Seven Great Mysteries that is sealed with seven seals in
Revelation. The book that was sealed with seven seals is a record of
all time, or of the seven ages in the cycle of precession, that was kept
by Taht the measurer, reckoner and divine recorder; the god who
“rescued the Atu from his backward course,” and who “repeated the
ancient ordinances and words for the guidance of posterity” as teller
of time by means of the moon (Rit., ch. 128).
Seven stars in a group were witnesses to the power that was
permanent at the pole, the power of stability, of equilibrium, and of
the scales of justice which they served as “the seven arms of the
balance” on the day of judgment. But there are “two witnesses”
particularly specialised in Revelation. These are said to be “the two
olive-trees and the two lampstands standing before the Lord of the
earth” (xi. 4). These two witnesses are to be met with in the
Egyptian judgment scenes. In the second tale of Khamuas, a scene
of the Osirian judgment is portrayed. The seven halls or mansions
of Osiris and the lords of eternity are here described as the seven
“arits” or watch-towers, the same as in the Ritual (ch. 144). The
seven are represented as a series, the seventh being the last. It is
said that, “They entered the seventh Hall, and behold! Setme saw
the figure of Osiris the great god seated upon his throne of fine gold,
and crowned with his atef-crown”; “Anup the great god being on his
left, and the great god Taht on his right, with the gods of the council
standing in their places: standing and making proclamation.” The
Balance was set in the midst before them, and they were weighing
the evil deeds against the good deeds, the great god Taht (Aan)
recording, with Anup giving the word to his colleague (Griffith,
Second Tale of Khamuas, pp. 46, 48). These are the prototypal “two
witnesses” stellar and lunar for the Father and son in the solar mythos.
Taht-Aan was the witness for Horus, the only-begotten son of the
father. In the mythos, which preceded the eschatology, Taht-Aan
was the light of the world as the god whose luminary was the moon.
Read doctrinally, he was not the true light, but he came that he
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might bear witness to the true light. The lunar god was one of the
powers in nature that was born of the motherhood; whereas Horus,
of the resurrection, was begotten by the father, and Taht bore witness
that Horus, not Aan, was the true light of the world, and the one
direct representative of the father-god, who was Ra the holy spirit in
the eschatology. Horus (or Iu) is the Word that was with God the
Father in the beginning. He is the only Son who issued from the
Father; the Son who converses with the Father; the Son who was
instructed of the Father to reflect and reveal the nature of the God
in Spirit as the One Eternal Power. Anup may be traced in Amenta
as the witness for Horus the child, who was the Word; Aan is the
witness for Horus the adult who is the word made truth. Hence, he
is the giver of the talismanic makheru; also the divine scribe who
avouches the truth of the Word in the writings. These, as Egyptian,
are the “two witnesses” who were present in the hall of judgment.
In the astronomical mythology the earth was the coffin of Osiris;
the coffin of Amenta which Sut, the power of darkness, closed upon
his brother when he betrayed him to his death. Then the four
“living creatures” or “four glorified ones” who rose again with Horus
from the dead were stationed at the four corners of the coffin of the
earth, in which Osiris as the elemental god was buried. In the
Egyptian drawings, the earth is represented by the lotus or papyrusplant on which the four attendant spirits stand. This is equivalent to
the four corners on which a new heaven had been based in the creation
of Atum-Ra. These were four of the primordial powers which had
been the brothers of Horus in the earlier mythos who are now called
his children, when Horus is said to have “come to light in his own
children.” This is in the resurrection as it was rendered in the
Osirian eschatology (Rit., ch. 112). Thus, when Horus rose again
upon the mount of resurrection in Amenta he was accompanied by
the spirits of the four corners with whom his fold was founded (Rit.,
ch. 97). The scene of the mystery on the mount is reproduced in
the Gospels.
According to Matthew, when Jesus “opened his
mouth” to deliver the Sermon on the Mount, only four of the disciples
accompanied him. These were Simon-Peter, Andrew, and the two
brothers John and James (chs. iv., v. and x.). The Kamite four are
also reproduced in Revelation as the four living creatures. “The first
creature like a lion, the second creature like a calf, and the third had the
face of a man, and the fourth creature like a flying eagle” (ch. iv., vii.).
As Egyptian, they are also four great spirits at the four corners of the
mount; and in Revelation they are the “four angels standing at the four
corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth” (vii. 1).
Also, their names under each form of the four are the same. In their
primary form they are the “four living creatures” with the eyes, which,
as Egyptian, are ape-headed, jackal-headed, bird-headed and humanheaded. In a secondary phase they were given the human figure;
and both forms of the four are repeated in the Revelation of John.
According to Revelation, the four living creatures are full of eyes, round
about and within, and they have no rest day and night, as they were
moving round for ever with the sphere. Being astronomical figures,
the eyes of these were stars. And in the Ritual, the four are eyes or
stars to the four quarters. The vignettes to ch. 148 show them as the
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four eyes, or guiding-stars, one to each quarter: north, south, east and
west.
When the heptanomis, or heaven in seven divisions, passed away,
as rendered in the mysteries of the astronomical mythology, the
seven ruling powers were fabled to have fallen, as described by Enoch
in his book of the heavens. But in another representation the powers
of the seven were unified in one great sovereign power. This was
assigned to Horus, the primordial solar god who was born of the Old
Mother as one of the seven that were unified in him, and re-born as
Horus of the resurrection. Horus, in his earliest image, was the
crocodile-headed Sebek, as the fish of the inundation, and the
crocodile was the Kamite prototype of the solar dragon. The seven
powers were variously portrayed as seven stars, seven eyes, seven
spirits, seven islands or mountains on which the “woman” sat; seven
uræus-deities, seven fins of a fish. According to the ancient wisdom,
or the gnosis, says the writer, the seven heads of the beast on which
the woman sitteth are seven mountains, and they are also seven kings,
elsewhere called the kings of the earth, the kings who committed
fornication with the woman, and were made drunken with her wine.
“I will tell thee the mystery of the woman and of the beast that
carried her, which hath the seven heads and the ten horns. The
beast that thou sawest was, and is not, and is about to come up out
of the abyss, and go into perdition. And they that dwell on the
earth shall wonder, when they behold the beast, how that he was, and
is not, and shall come!” The seven heads of the beast “are seven
kings,” that were rulers in the celestial heptanomis. “Five of these
are fallen, the one is, the other is not yet come. And when he cometh
he must continue a little while.”
There would have been no dragon with seven heads but for Sebek
the crocodile-headed deity, whom we look upon as the oldest type of
the solar Horus in the Egyptian mythology. The seven powers born
of the Old Mother as the spirits of earth or gods of the elements,
here called the kings of earth, were compounded into one great power
as the sun-god Horus who preceded Ra. This was the crocodileheaded Sebek in relation to the ancient Mother, and thus the crocodile
became the solar dragon, upon which the woman rode; the seven
powers being at the same time seven kings and also seven mountains
“on which the woman sitteth,” each type being a representative of the
celestial pole. The goddess Apt, who is the female dragon, inasmuch
as the crocodile was one of her zoötypes, is called “the Great Mother
of him who is married to his mother,” that is, to Sebek-Horus, the
crocodile or dragon as male. He, as child of the Great Mother, was
made her consort in the mythos of the mother and child. He became
the husband of the mother as the divinised adult, and seven powers
are equal to the seven heads of the male dragon or crocodile.
By the bye, there is an Egyptian talisman or fetish in the Berlin
Museum composed of a sevenfold figure of the crocodile. The
crocodile was an image of the god Sebek, being the prototypal
dragon; and seven crocodiles are equivalent to the beast with seven
heads, on which the woman rode, in the Book of Revelation, as the
great harlot of primitive promiscuous intercourse (Erman’s Egypt,
p. 149). During the changes that occurred in heaven, the seven-
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headed beast on which the woman rode is represented as losing one
of its seven heads. Thus, the change of type from an image of the
beast to that of the human figure which occurred when the crocodilehead of Sebek was replaced or added to by the head of the human
Horus is plainly indicated. It was given to the second beast, or to
the first beast in a second character, that an image should be made to
the beast who had the stroke of the sword, and lived. “And it was
given unto him to give breath to it, even to the image of the beast,
that the image of the beast should both speak and cause that as many
as should not worship the beast should be killed.” Naturally, the
image that could speak was of the human type, as is Horus An-ar-ef
when portrayed as the seventh of the group who were represented in
the image of the beast before the human figure was adopted for “the
first beast whose death-stroke was healed.” Thus the beast that came
up out of the waters, called the sea, as a crocodile, or dragon, having
ten horns and seven heads, and upon his horns ten diadems, was
smitten unto death, as it seemed, in one of its heads: “And I saw
one of its heads, as though it had been smitten unto death; and his
death-stroke was healed; and there was given to him a mouth speaking
great things” (xiii. 5). The beast that came up out of the sea is
the solar dragon under two different types, but in both characters it
is the dragon or crocodile. In the first, it has seven heads and ten
horns, and is like unto a leopard, and his feet are as the feet of a bear,
and his mouth as the mouth of a lion. In the second shape he had
two horns like unto a lamb, but he spake as a dragon (xiii. 11).
This was Sebek, who, under one type, was the crocodile, and under
the other, a lamb. The dragons are somewhat mixed in Revelation.
There are five altogether: (1) the Apap-dragon (ch. xii. 9); (2) the
dragon that gave power and dominion to the beast (ch. xiii. 2); (3)
the dragon on which the woman rode; (4) the lamb that spake as a
dragon; (5) the dragon constellated in Draconis as a uranographic
sign in heaven. There was at first no human type in the septenary
of powers. They were figured as seven serpents, seven hawks, seven
apes, seven crocodiles, or other forms of the typical seven, but with
no human head amongst them; when there was as yet no Horus as
the human child, or Atum as the divine man, all seven had been
imaged by zoötypes. But in the later mythos the human type was
introduced, as that of Horus, the child of the Virgin Mother. The
seven-headed beast then lost one of its pre-human heads. SebekHorus, the crocodile or dragon-headed, was changed into the human
Horus. As crocodile, he was the child of Apt. As Har-si Hesi, he
became the child of Isis in a human guise. Thenceforth the human
type was one amongst the seven, and the beast, qua beast, lost one of
its original heads, which, as Egyptian, was seen to be replaced by the
human type when the wound was healed.
The acclaiming of Horus or Jesus above the seven previous powers
is a subject of the first chapter in Revelation. He is exalted as “the
first-born of the dead.” This is “the faithful One,” who is the True
Witness for the Father in Heaven as Horus or Iu in his resurrection.
The other seven did but represent a soul in matter. The soul that
rose up from the dead was an immortal spirit, and as an eighth one it
was added to the seven. This was as the sun that rose again from the
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underworld in the mythology, and as the Divine Enduring Spirit in
the eschatology. In one cult, it was the crocodile-headed SebekHorus who is the seven-headed dragon in Revelation. As it is stated
clearly enough, “the beast that was and is not, is himself also an
eighth, and is one of the seven” (Rev. xvii. 11). This, as Egyptian,
became “the ruler of the kings of the earth,” as did Horus in his
resurrection from the dead at his second coming, which was from the
Father in Heaven. Time was when the eighth one was the highest
power. Sut-Anup was the highest as an eighth one to the seven
great spirits in the stellar mythos. Taht—following Sut—was an
eighth one to the seven in the lunar mythos. Lastly, Horus was the
highest in the solar mythos as the lord of resurrections, and as eighth
one to the seven, he whose symbol was the eight-rayed star of the
Egypto-gnostic Pleroma, which was first made historical when it was
called the star of Bethlehem. As the Egypto-gnostics said, “Seven
powers glorify the Word.” These powers were the contributions of
the seven spirits which out of gratitude to the Propator had contributed
whatsoever each one had attained in himself of the greatest beauty
and preciousness; they skilfully blended the whole in producing a
most perfect being, and the very star of the Pleroma (namely, the
gnostic Jesus, the Christ, the Saviour, Logos—everything), because
he was formed from the contributions of all the powers that preceded
him who was the Horus or Jesus of the Resurrection, the outcome
and first fruit of all (Iren., Bk. 1, ch. 2, 6).
The faithful and true witness, as Egyptian, is Horus-Maat-Kheru,
the word made truth; he who made the word truth by his resurrection,
in the likeness of the Living God. The first Horus, or Horus in his
first advent, was the Word; and the promise made by him as founder
was fulfilled by Horus at his second coming as the “faithful witness,”
the first-born from the dead. In Revelation, this “faithful and true
witness” is called “the beginning of the creation of God” (ch. iii. 14).
That is as a creation of the god in spirit, who, as Atum-Ra at Annu,
was the Holy Spirit. Har-Ur, the elder Horus, was the child of the
virgin goddess; Horus in spirit was “the beginning of the creation
of God,” the lord of resurrections who had wrested “the keys of
death and hades” from the grasp of their grim keepers for the
deliverance of the Manes from Amenta (Rit., ch. 64). The scales or
balance was erected in the Maat or Hall of Twofold Justice for the
weighing of hearts and also of words, and in Revelation one of the
four living creatures is portrayed with the scales in his hand. “I saw,
and behold, a black horse, and he that sat thereon had a balance in
his hand” (vi. 5). The balance, as Egyptian, was the scales of
justice. In Revelation, the scales are turned to commercial account
for the weighing out of grain by the pennyworth. “And I saw the
heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and he that sat thereon
called Faithful and True; and in righteousness he doth judge and make
war. And his eyes are a flame of fire, and upon his head are many
diadems; and he hath a name written, which no one knoweth but he
himself. And he is arrayed in a garment sprinkled with blood; and
his name is called the Word of God. And the armies which are in
heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white
and pure. And out of his mouth proceedeth a sharp sword, that
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ANCIENT EGYPT
with it he should smite the nations; and he shall rule them with a
rod of iron; and he treadeth a winepress of the fierceness of the
wrath of Almighty God. And he hath on his garment and on his
thigh a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords” (ch. xix.
11, 16). The sign-language of Egypt will tell us why the name of
the King of Kings and Lord of Lords was written on his Thigh.
The thigh or khepsh was a type of power. In one shape it is
called the Ur-heka, or great magical power, which was feminine at
first. It is a thigh-shaped instrument made use of to open the mouth
of the dead in the resurrection (Rit., ch. 23). At the time of his
re-arising the Osiris exclaims: “Let me seize the khepsh which is
under the place of Osiris, with which I may open the mouth of the
gods” (ch. 69). In another rôle Horus is the divine husbandman, the
sower and the reaper, as the power of germination; of harvest and
of vintage. In this character he is known as the god Amsu, who is
portrayed in the human form like him who is described in Revelation
as the Son of man. “I saw, and behold, a white cloud, and on the
cloud one sitting like unto the Son of man, and wearing on his head a
golden crown, and in his hands a sharp sickle, and another angel came
out from the temple crying with a great voice to him that sat on the
cloud, ‘Send forth thy sickle and reap, for the hour to reap is come, for
the harvest of the earth is over ripe.’ And he that sat on the cloud
cast his sickle on the earth, and the earth was reapt. And another
angel came out from the temple which is in heaven, he also having a
sharp sickle,” and it was said to him, “Send forth thy sharp sickle
and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for her grapes are
fully ripe” (xiv. 19). Horus usually carries the fan or flail as
husbandman, but he is also the reaper and the vintager; hence the
fig-leaf was his emblem. Horus the reaper in Amenta has twelve
followers in two groups of seven and five. These are the reapers in
the Aarru-fields, where the corn grows seven cubits high and the
harvest is reapt for eternity. The twelve are called the “blessed,”
who reap with Horus for his father Ra, and therefore are the blessed
of his father. The harvest-field is in the earth of eternity, where
Horus appears in human form with the fan in his hand as the master
of joy and lord of the twelve, who are likewise portrayed in human
form as the Manes. In the gospels Jesus is depicted in this character
of the reaper. As such he comes like Horus with the fan in his hand
that shows him to be the thresher and winnower of the corn. As
lord of the harvest-field he calls to him the twelve and constitutes
them reapers of the harvest on earth which was reapt in Amenta, the
other earth, by Horus and the twelve. It is made doubly certain by
the context that the twelve in the gospels were astronomical
characters. Their names were written in heaven like those of the
twelve gods, the twelve kings, or the twelve apostles that are coeval
with the founding of the zodiac. The twelve in the gospels were
followed by the seventy and the seventy-two (cf. the two versions),
which represent the two different divisions of the planisphere into its
ancient seventy, and later seventy-two parts that were assigned to
those whose names were written in heaven and had been read there
for ages on ages of time by the astronomers and the men who knew.
So ancient was the matter as mythical representation in the Egyptian
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711
wisdom that the reaper of the harvest in Amenta, who has twelve
followers there, had been set aloft in the planisphere as Horus the
reaper in the fields of food, who is extant to-day as the husbandman
and reaper on the stellar map; but as Boötes, and not as the
“historic” reaper of the harvest.
Horus appears in the various characters of Har-Tema, the revealer
of justice; Har-Makheru, the word made truth; Har, the red god who
orders the block of execution. These are phases of Har-Makhu, the
god of both horizons, all of which are reproduced in Revelation.
Michael, the warrior angel who overthrows “the dragon and his angels,”
is the Hebrew form of Har-Makhu, who is Atum-Huhi in the person
of his own son. This is Har-Tema, he who makes justice visible, in
the cult of Osiris. He is the avenger of the wrongs inflicted on his
father by the Apap-dragon and his dark host of the Sebau or fiends
by the evil Sut, and also by the criminals who on account of their
own deeds are self-condemned to die the second death upon “the
highway of the damned” (Rit., ch. 18).
The mythology of Egypt has preserved the prototypal uncorrupted
version of what has been termed the “awful tradition of a war in
heaven.” This was made out magnificently at last in Milton’s epic
poem, but the original war in heaven was simply elemental and had
no more awfulness or terror in it than a thunderstorm. We can
trace this warfare of the elements from the beginning in chaos; the
terrors were evoked from the mind of man. A battle was fought each
four-and-twenty hours betwixt Har-Makhu, the sun-god of both
horizons, and the dragon of darkness, who is hurled down from the
horizon of the east into the pit with all his angels or fiends called the
Sebau or Sami. This great battle, fought in the Ritual during the
last hours of the night, becomes a typical last great battle in a
contention that is fought out on the scale of the great year in the
Book of Revelation called “the war of the great day of God the
Almighty,” when “the kings of the whole world,” or the seven kings
who ruled in the celestial heptanomis, are to be “gathered together
into the place which is called in Hebrew Har-Magedon” (xvi. 14,
16). Now it is feasible to infer that the name of this battle-ground
was derived from that of Har-Makhu as the place where the Makha,
or scales of justice, was erected for the judgment on the night of the
great battle when the Sebau were defeated and the day when the
adversaries of the good being were finally annihilated. This was at
the point of equinox (Rit., ch. 18). The battle of Har-Magedon is
preceded by the pouring out of the seventh bowl and the sound of
the great voice from the throne that said: “It is done!” “And
every island fled away, and the mountains were no longer found,” for
this was the end of the heptanomis and the substitution of the
heaven in twelve divisions, which was the heaven of Atum-Ra or
Atum-Iu, who says: “I am he who closeth and he who openeth, and
I am but one. I am Ra at his first appearance. I am the great god
self-produced,” and who became the Hebrew deity Ihuh (Rit., ch. 17,
Renouf). The war in heaven, or in external nature, was first. Next
it was made astronomical. Lastly, it was eschatological or theological,
as in Milton’s version of the Paradise Lost. In the Ritual the evil
Apap is bound in chains each morning. “Chains are flung upon thee
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ANCIENT EGYPT
by the scorpion goddess, and slaughter is dealt out to thee by Maati.
Apap is fallen and is in bonds” (ch. 39). The same drama was
represented yearly in relation to the annual sun and the autumn
gathering of All Souls. In Revelation the drama represents a larger
period of time. A thousand years intervene betwixt the first and
second resurrection. “I saw thrones, and they that sat upon them,
and judgment was given unto them.” Those who rise again are
said to “reign with Christ a thousand years,” or with Horus in the
house of a thousand years, and the rest of the dead lived not until
the thousand years should be finished. This is the first resurrection.
Then follows the last judgment, the second death, and the new
Jerusalem built for the children of Israel, whose thrones are twelve in
number as foundations of the final heaven.
We read in Revelation that the great dragon is that “old serpent”
who is called the devil and Satan (ch. xii. 9). And again, it is said:
“I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key of the
abyss and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon,
the old serpent which is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a
thousand years, and cast him into the abyss, and shut it and sealed
it over him” (xx. 2, 3). These are the two types of the Egyptian
devil. The Apap-reptile was that old serpent, the devil in preanthropomorphic guise. Sut was the anthropomorphic Satan or evil
adversary in the later theology. Also the dragon and Sut are
treated as if identical in the Ritual (ch. 108). In the chapter of
chaining the evil one, this is the Apap in one aspect and Sut in the
other. It is said: “Then Sut is made to flee with a chain of steel
upon him. Then Sut is put into his prison.” The evil one is said to
be “pierced with hooks, as was decreed against him of old.” Horus
makes war upon the powers of evil on account of what they have
done against his father Osiris in Amenta. But especially on Sut the
power of drought and darkness now represented as the adversary
Satan in an anthropomorphic shape, which brings us to the latest
stage of the war in heaven, earth, and Amenta. “Horus says to
these gods, ‘Strike the enemies of my father, punish them in your pits
(in the bottom of hell) for the evil they have done to the great one,
my father. Your particular duties in Amenta are to keep the pits of
fire in accordance with Ra’s command, which I make known to you.’ ”
To the condemned, he says: “You are bound for ever, you are tied
by strong cords. I have ordered your detention. My father prevails
against you, your curses are judged against you before Ra. Your
contempt for justice comes back to you.
Bad for you is the
judgment of my father. O Ra! praise be to Ra! thy enemies are in
the place of destruction!” (Book of Hades, Second Division, Legends.)
The battle of Har-Magedon was not a mortal conflict to be fought
at some far-off indefinite future time. It had been fought already in
the Ritual, and was periodically repeated in the mysteries as the final
struggle betwixt light and darkness, or the solar god and apap-reptile.
The great battle depicted in the Ritual is fought by Har-Makhu
(Gr. Har-Machis) and the evil dragon. Har-Makhu was the solar
god of the double horizon or equinox, and the nightly battle was
ended on the horizon east. In the Ritual the dragon of darkness is
shown at night and morn in relation to the double horizon on two
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713
sides of the mount. At the close of day, when the sun-god sinks into
the water of the west as Ra or Horus, he is confronted by his natural
enemy, the evil serpent Apap, the destroyer or devourer that rises up
gigantic from the bottomless abyss. Daylight is described as coming
to a stand (Hâu) like a tidal wave at the poise. With sunset the
Apap “turneth down his eyes to Ra; for there cometh a standing still
in the bark and a deep slumber within the ship. And now he (the
dragon) swalloweth seven cubits (in some texts three) of the great
water” (Rit., ch. 108). This is the monster that drank up all the
water in the world, whether as dragon, toad, snake or other reptile,
here caught, as Kamite, in the act, and the water that it drinks is daylight; the great water flowing round the mount of earth by day. The
war of light and darkness goes on through the night down in Amenta,
the lurking-place of the dragon who seeks to destroy the tree of life
at its roots, but is for ever foiled by the god who represents the
nocturnal sun in the shape of a great cat, as seer in the dark, and
protector of the persea or ash, which is the Kamite Tree of Life by
name. All night the war goes on betwixt the solar god and his
old adversary. At dawn the host of darkness is repulsed and beaten
for another day. The last great overwhelming wrecking, ruining
charge is described in the Ritual (ch. 38). It is the prototype of
the war in heaven described in Revelation, when Michael and his
angels went “forth to war with the dragon; and the dragon warred,
and his angels; and they prevailed not. And the great dragon was
cast down, the old serpent, he that is called the devil and Satan, the
deceiver of the whole world. He was cast down to the earth” (Rev.
xii. 7, 9), which in the Ritual is the Nether Earth of Amenta. “The
stormy voice of bellowings” is heard from the dying monster, and Ra
the conqueror staggers forth upon the horizon, fainting with his many
bleeding wounds. But Apap has fallen, and the song of triumph is
raised, “Apap is fallen! fallen! fallen!” Apap, the enemy of Ra,
goeth down to be cut up piecemeal and drowned in the lake of
heaven. The “gods who are on the roads” overthrow him. There
are ten groups of the Tata-gods of a heaven in ten divisions (Rit.,
ch. 18). The gods of the four quarters bind him. The avenging
goddesses fall on him furiously. Chains are flung upon him by
Isis-Serkh. Death is dealt out to him by Maftit, the lynx-goddess.
Ra is satisfied; he makes his progress peacefully. The monster has
relinquished his hold on the Tree of Life and also disgorged the waters
of light, and the solar bark is once more sailing joyfully across the
heaven of day. The Apap-dragon with the chains upon him is to be
seen in pictures to the Ritual, also on the sarcophagus of Seti
(Bonomi, pls. 10 and 11). In pl. 11 the scorpion-goddess Serkh
is putting the chain upon the Apap-reptile in presence of the executioners, who include the four children of Horus. The angel who
comes down out of heaven, having the key of the abyss and a great
chain in his hand, who lays hold of the dragon and binds him for a
thousand years (Rev. xx. 1, 2, 3) is “Akar” in the Ritual, the chief
of the gate of the abyss, who has overthrown and bound the dragon
of the deep, so that Ra can navigate in peace. Such was the
Egyptian battle of Har-Magedon as fought by Har-Makhu against
his old enemy, the Apap-dragon.
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We find the breaking loose from the pit, the recapturing and
chaining down of the dragon or serpent of evil in the abyss, is
described in the magic papyrus as well as in the Ritual. It is
Amen-Ra, who is addressed as the Egyptian Apollo, piercing the
python of the abyss when he rises in revolt. “Thou disposest of the
Abut-Unti. Nubi shoots his arrows against him. Akar springs forward and watches over him, and restores him to his prison, devouring
the two huge eyes by which he prevailed. A fierce devouring flame
consumes him, commencing from his head and wasting all his
members with its fire.” From this text we learn that one Egyptian
name of the huge typhonian reptile in the abyss is Abut-Unti, from
which we may suppose the name of the Abaddon in Hebrew was
derived; Abut or Abtu being a form of the Apap which typifies nonexistence or Unti (Rit., 93). The beast that was taken and cast
alive into the lake of fire that burneth with brimstone is to be found,
lake and all, in the seventeenth chapter of the Ritual (lines 67-68) in
Baba, the eternal devourer, whose dwelling is in the lake of fire, the
red lake, the pool of the damned, in the fiery pit of the “recess” in
Amenta. The banquet of Baba, lord of gore, who extracts the heart
and other viscera from the corpses doomed to be consumed at his
feast, and who eats the livers of princes, becomes the “great supper of
God” in Revelation, at which is eaten the flesh of kings and captains,
and all kinds of men, great or small (xix. 17, 18).
It is the same war in the Book of Revelation betwixt the serpent
and the seed of the woman that it was in the Book of Genesis, without
having any significance in the fulfilment of supposititious prophecy as
human history. After the great dragon the old serpent was cast
down to the earth; he continued the battle. “The dragon waxed
wroth with the woman (the great mother in a later character) and
went away to make war with the rest of her seed” (Rev. xii. 17).
The application to the seed has been extended, but the woman and
her child remain the same as when she was Isis and he was Horus,
and both were pursued by the dragon, or crocodile, in the marshes of
lower Egypt, and the mother made her escape with her infant upon
the two wings of the Vulture or the Hawk. This war made by the
evil dragon on the Great Mother is reproduced directly from the
Egyptian Mythos. When mortal Horus was brought forth among
the reeds or bushes of the marshes he and his mother were pursued
by the Apap-dragon. Isis tells Osiris that a very great crocodile
was following after his son, and that she hid herself among the
bushes for the purpose of concealing the young child born to be a
king or to become the Royal Horus, whatsoever the opposition. In
this text he is said to be born for repulsing Tebha, a form of the
devourer who seeks to destroy the divine heir, for answering on behalf
of his father Osiris. (Budge, “The Book of Overthrowing Apap,”
Proc. Soc. Bib. Archy., 1886, p. 17).
In Revelation a great sign is described in heaven; “a woman arrayed
with the sun and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown
of twelve stars; and she was with child; and she cried out, travailing in
birth, and in pain to be delivered. . . . And the dragon stood before
the woman which was about to be delivered, that when she was
delivered he might devour her child; and she was delivered of a son,
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715
a man-child who is to rule all nations with a rod of iron; and her
child was caught unto God and unto his throne, and the woman fled
into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God.” (ch. xii.).
This marks the course of development and the change from the
Great Mother in the stellar to the bringer forth of the child in the
lunar mythos. As Egyptian, the first Great Mother Apt was imaged
in the likeness of the water-cow, the cow of earth. In her later lunar
character as Hathor, she was imaged in the likeness of the milch-cow.
And in the vignette to the last chapter of the Ritual this Great
Mother is portrayed in these two of her forms, as Apt the water-cow
and Hathor the milch-cow, in which two forms she receives the Manes
in the mountain of Amenta as the mother in earth and in heaven,
the mother in the Great Bear and the mother in the Moon. Hathor
has now the upper and Apt the lowermost place of two, as it was
when the stellar was succeeded and to some extent superseded by the
soli-lunar Mythos. But Apt was never cast out of heaven in the
genuine version as the drama is represented in the Book of Revelation,
although the matriarchate was superseded by the fatherhood of AtumRa. Thus it is demonstrated little by little, item by item, that the
main subject-matter of the Book of Revelation is the drama of the
last judgment, of which we get great glimpses in the mysteries of
Amenta. The judgment seat is set upon the highest hill in heaven
called “the mount of the resurrection and the glory” (Rit., ch. 1).
The one eternal judge is seated on the throne. He also appears in
the two characters of God the Father and God the Son; the lion and
the lamb; the first and the last; he that was dead and is alive again
for evermore. The lords of eternity are round about him on their
thrones; the shennin or officials of the celestial court are present as
the seven spirits of fire; the two witnesses, who are Taht-Aan and
Anup in the Egyptian judgment scenes; the keepers of the four
corners of the mount; the old, old ones, or four-and-twenty elders,
with various other Kamite prototypes, are all there. The old Great
Mother and her seven earth-born spirits are judged, rejected and cast
out of heaven. Apt, so to say, is now succeeded by Hathor as the
Great Mother in the later mythos, and Sebek the dragon by
Horus as the lamb of the goddess. In this new heaven it is Horus,
or Jesus, of the resurrection who was raised to the supremacy as lord
over all. And in such ways did the Egyptian wisdom supply the
original data for the Christian Revelation. The heaven in seven
divisions is not the only celestial formation that declines and passes
away as a mystery in Revelation. When the seventh bowl was
poured out and the heptanomis came to an end with a mighty
earthquake the celestial city “was divided into three parts,” or, as we
read it, into the triangular heaven of Sut, Horus, and Shu as gods of
the south, north, and equinox. Also the ten horns or powers of the
solar dragon indicate a heaven in ten domains, ten islands, or ten
circles of Ra, in the Ritual, which preceded the ultimate heaven in
twelve divisions. This is intimated when “the tenth part of the city fell”
as one of the ten divisions passing away in the course of precession.
The ancient heaven passed away “as a scroll,” or as the book of the
eternal sealed for the great judgment with the seven seals. There is
a new heaven built on twelve foundations in place of the earlier seven
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or ten. “He that sitteth on the throne said, ‘Behold I make all
things new!’ ” (ch. xxi. 5). This, in the Ritual, is the son of God who
is reborn upon the mount of glory as the lamb, or the child that was
the connecting link with the eternal parent in the sphere of time.
The new heaven in the Book of Revelation is based upon the twelve
zodiacal signs for its twelve foundations. This was as old as the
heaven of Atum-Ra, in which the twelve kings rowed the solar bark
around the ecliptic thirteen thousand years ago. Following the
making of Amenta by Ptah, the creation of a new heaven and earth
was ascribed to Atum-Ra, the highest deity developed in the Egyptian
theology previous to Osiris Neb-er-ter. Hence the creation, or a
creation was proclaimed to be the work of Atum by the priests of
Heliopolis. In the eschatology it is said of the house on high, “Tum
buildeth thy dwelling, the Lion-faced God (Tum or Atum) layeth
the foundation of thy house, as he goeth his round” in fulfilling the
solar circle, which was completed with the twelve thrones, twelve
stars, twelve gates, or twelve foundations of the final zodiac. This
foundation, as the imagery shows, was extant at the time when the
solar lion-god first rose up in the strength of the double lions, and
the mount of the vernal equinox was in the sign of Leo. In
Revelation the equinox has travelled to the sign of Aries, which
will account for the lamb upon the mount in place of Horus
the calf. In this new rendering the earth was thought of as the lotus
of the nun from which the sun of dawn arose. This is shown by the
four keepers of the cardinal points or corners of the earth that stand
on the papyrus-plant in the presence of the Lord of all things, who
was Atum in the earlier and Osiris in the later cult. These, in
Revelation, are “the four living creatures full of eyes” that were “in
the midst of and around about the throne.” The throne was now
upon the mount of glory in the equinox, with the four corner keepers
“round about the throne”; the solar heaven being founded on the
four quarters previously established by Kheper-Ptah. The opening
day of this new creation in the cult of Atum-Ra, at Annu, was called
the day of “come thou to me,” or “come thou hither.” It is described
in the Ritual (ch. 17) as the day on which their places were fixed by
Anup for the seven glorious ones who follow the coffined one in the
Osirian mystery of the resurrection, as previously set forth. These
are the seven great spirits who are represented by the seven neversetting stars in the right hand of him who moves in the midst of the
seven golden lampstands or khabsu lamps as the Supreme One, the
only God-begotten Son, in whom the seven powers in the mythology
were unified to image an eighth one in the eschatology. As the elder
Horus and child of the Mother he had been one of the seven, and in
Horus of the resurrection he is now the Son of the Father, divinised
in spirit as eighth one to the seven. This is the twofold figure seen
upon the mount in Patmos as “the Son of man.”
In one phase, Horus or Iu-em-hetep was the type of an eternal
child, the raison d’être of which was in the human child being an
image of both sexes, or, as the Ritual expresses it, both souls of the
god and goddess in one figure. As it is said in the Ritual (ch. 115),
Horus assumed the form of a female with the sidelock of childhood.
Horus was also portrayed as a male child with feminine mammæ. It
is said in the pyramid texts, “Hail, Unas, the nipples of the bosom
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717
of Horus have been given to thee, and thou hast taken in thy mouth
the breast of thy sister Isis.” This was the mystical divine malefemale of the gnosis; the youth with female paps like Bacchus, or
Serapis; Horus with the cteis; Venus with the beard; the Christ as
Charis or Jesus as Saint Sophia (Didron, fig. 50). The Son of man
portrayed in Revelation is the Egypto-gnostic Jesus. The garment
worn by him is that “long garment in which rests the whole world”;
the garment that was worn by Iu-em-hetep, in the temple at Annu,
as the son of Atum-Ra. This long garment was the sign of both
sexes, like the sidelock of the child in Egypt; and it is worn by a
figure that is both male and female as shown by the feminine paps
and golden girdle, and was worn originally on account of the female
nature of the type.
This is the very effigy of child-Horus or Iu-em-hetep, the son of
Ptah, who was the dual representative of the biune parent. But in
no case could such a dual figure have become “historical” or been
“made flesh” except in some hermaphrodital shape of monstrous
personality, whether in Egypt, Nazareth, or Rome.
It is now proposed to show that God the Father in Revelation
was Atum-Huhi, the Eternal Being in the religion of On, who had
become the Jewish god Ihuh, and that the Jesus of this book was Iusa,
the coming Son of god and demonstrator of eternal life upon the
mount of resurrection in the Ritual and in the Book of Revelation.
Atum-Huhi (Atum-Iu or Atum-Ra) was the only deity in all Egypt
who was expressly worshipped by the title of the “Ankhu,” or the
ever-living one eternal god. This is he who is reproduced by name
in Revelation, saying, “I am the first and the last, and the living one”
(Rev. i. 17). In the coming forth to day from out the dark of death
which is the resurrection in the Ritual, Atum-Iu, the closer and the
opener of Amenta, carries in his hands the keys that close and open
the underworld. These are the Ankh-key of life, and the Unsceptre, with which Amenta is closed and opened.
These are
repeated in the Book of Revelation as the keys of death and hell.
The god in spirit was the highest type of deity attained as the “holy
spirit” in the cult of Atum-Ra. Now, there is a typical character in
Revelation called “the spirit,” but which is not otherwise identified.
“Hear what the spirit saith: ‘To him that overcometh, to him will I
give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God’ ” (Rev.
ii. 7). It is this god in spirit who proclaims the blessedness of the
dead “which die in the Lord” to “rest from their labours” (xiv. 13) and
calls on those who are athirst to come and take of the waters of life
freely (xxii. 17). He is also the spirit with the bride, but distinguished
from the lamb. “The spirit and the bride say ‘Come’” (xxii. 17). As
Egyptian, then, “the spirit” in the eschatology was Atum-Ra the holy
spirit, in the cult of Annu; Iusāas, a form of Hathor, was the bride,
and Iu-em-hetep, he who comes with peace, was their son, whom
we identify as the Egyptian Jesus in the Book of Revelation, in Pistis
Sophia, in the Apocrypha, and in the Book of Taht-Aan.
The “entire god” was a mystical title of Amen-Ra as the child
and husband of the mother. According to the gnosis, there was a
triune being, distinct from the male trinity, consisting of the mother,
child, and adult male, in one person. The figure-head of this triad
might be either the mother, the father, or the child, according to the
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ANCIENT EGYPT
cult; and whereas the knowers worshipped the “entire god” who
was three in one, one sect would exalt the mother; on the other hand,
the Jews became monotheists by eliminating both the mother and the
son from the godhead, and setting up the father by himself alone as
the “entire god,” the Kamite Neb-er-ter. Irenæus cachinnates in a
ghastly fashion at the gnostics who assigned but one consort to both
the father and son. But, it is the same with the spirit (father) and
the lamb (son) in connection with the bride in Revelation, as it was
in Egypt and as it still remains in Rome. Fortunately, the mystical
bride had two characters not to be easily taken away by the Bishop
of Lyons. She was the virgin in one, the gestator in the other. As
virgin she was the bride of Horus, the lamb of god. As gestator she
was the consort of the lion-faced man or man-faced lion who was
Atum as god the father. According to the Kabalists these two were
the macrocosm and microcosm.
The two figures are said to
comprehend three persons—namely, the father, the son, and the
mother, who was the bride of both. The lesser man or microcosm
was a figure of double sex, the feminine half being conjoined to his
back as the hinder female part. This is equivalent to the Horus of
both sexes, and to Jesus as Saint Sophia. This was he whom the
gnostics called Pan and Totum, the all-one, who became the manifestor
as the ever-coming son. This all-oneness of the son is described
in the Ritual and proclaimed by Atum the father, when it is said
that “Horus is the father! Horus is the mother! Horus is the
brother! Horus is the kinsman! Horus is seated upon the throne,
and all that lives is subject to him. All the gods are in his service.
So saith Atum, the sole force of the gods, whose word is not to be
altered” (Rit., ch. 78). Horus was now the all-one as manifestor in
physical and spiritual phenomena for all the powers which had been
summed up in Atum as the one god in spirit and in truth. This
same triad of the mother, father, and son was known to the Sethians.
With them the father of all is styled the first man = Atum or Adam.
“His Ennua, going forth from him, produced a son, and this is the
son of man—the second man,” or second Adam. “The father and
son both had intercourse with the woman, whom they call the mother
of the living,” and the triad constituted the “entire god,” in
accordance with the Egyptian doctrine (Irenæus, Against Heresies,
Bk. I, ch. 30). Atum, who was god the father in spirit, had assumed the
sovereignty of Ra, the creator as god almighty, the one true god, the
only one, because he was the god in spirit, not merely in physical
phenomena, but in that new heaven which was opened on the day of
“Come thou to me.” This is the position acknowledged by the
worshippers in the new temple of god (Rev. xi. 17). “We give thee
thanks, O Lord God, the Almighty, which art and which wast,
because thou hast taken thy great power and didst reign.” That is he
who had assumed the sovereignty as sole ruler in the luni-solar
heaven that followed the passing away of the heptanomis and the
heaven in ten divisions.
Atum Ra is not only to be identified as the closer and opener of
Amenta; the first and the last, and the “living one”; the spirit with
the bride; the god who sat upon the throne was also of a red
complexion. He was like unto “a sardius” to look upon, which is
THE BOOK OF REVELATION
719
the especial colour of Atum in the vignettes to the Ritual. In
Revelation, when the “throne is set in heaven, and one sitting upon
the throne,” there was a rainbow round about the throne like emerald
to look upon (iv. 3). Also in the original mythos the throne “like
emerald to look upon” was a figure of the Egyptian dawn that was
imaged as a great emerald sycamore tree, a lake of emerald, green
fields, and other evergreen things upon the mount of glory. Ra, in
the Ritual, is said to be “encircled with emerald light,” which was the
emerald dawn surrounding him on the solar mount. As it is said,
“thy body is of gold, thy head of azure, and emerald light
encircleth thee” (ch. 15). The gods who are in the green light of
dawn are also called “the emerald ones” (Rit., ch. 110).
When Horus at his second coming rises from the dead it is as the
son of God to whom was given the throne of the eternal with power
to share the sonship with his followers. He is received with “a cry of
adoration to him in Suten-Khen.” There is exultation in the place of
Horus in his darkness, previously described as a world “without
water and without air; all abyss, utter darkness, sheer bewilderment”
(ch. 175), as the condition of the soul in matter that was imaged by the
mortal Horus without sight. “He of the strong cord is born (ch. 136),
his cable is completed,” and the ark of earth made fast to heaven once
more for another period in precession, or the shennu-circle of
eternity. “Glory is given to the inviolate one,” “by generations yet
unborn.” “Ra exalteth him.” The gods of the lamps “rise up to
greet him with their exclamations of great joy”; he who comes was
the re-establisher of time “for millions of years” (ch. 130). He comes
in raiment like the dawn as the true light of the world newly kindled
for the night of death. “He putteth an end to the opposition of
Sut,” the power of darkness (ch. 137 B, 2, 3). This, then, is Horus
the son of God in the Osirian cult or Jesus in the religion of AtumRa, with God the father in the great judgment scenes upon the
mount. He comes “to witness the process of Maat (or the judgment)
and the lion-forms which belong to it.” He comes to erect the scales
of justice for his father, who is “uttering the judgment of Maat.” He
now appears as Horus triumphant who has torn out the jaws of
Rusta, conquered the evil Apap, and brought the books which are
kept in Annu to his father in the hall of judgment called the Maat.
Here, says the speaker, “here is the cycle of the gods, and the kite of
Osiris,” which represents his son Horus. “Grant ye that his father
may judge in his behalf; and so I poise for him the balance, which
is Maat (that of law and justice) and I raise it that he may live. Come
! come! for the father is uttering the judgment of Maat.
O
thou who callest out at thine evening hours, grant that I may come
and bring to him the two jaws of Rusta, and that I may bring to him
the books which are in Annu, and add up for him his heavenly hosts”
(ch. 136 B, Renouf). These are the books of Taht-Aan that were
examined on the great day of reckoning called the judgment day
(Rev. iv.). In the parallel scene, the father sits, Osiris-like, upon his
throne, with the four-and-twenty elders, the seven great spirits, and
the four living creatures round about.
A striking picture of the god in his characters of the closer and
the opener is presented by John in the Book of Revelation. The
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ANCIENT EGYPT
father-god, he who closes, is seated on the throne. In his right hand
he holds the book that is closed with seven seals; the book which
“no one in the heaven or earth, or under the earth” is able to open.
In his other character, that of the son, represented by the lamb, “he
taketh it out of the right hand of him that sat on the throne.” This
is the opener of the book and the breaker of the seven seals thereof.
“And when he had taken the book, the four living creatures and the
four-and-twenty elders fell down before the lamb,” who alone has
power to break the seals and open the book. His taking of the
seven-sealed book from the right hand of him that sat upon the
throne is followed by the “adding up for him his hosts.” In this
reckoning it is declared that the number of angels round the throne
“was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands”
(V. 11). These in the astronomical mythology would signify the
souls that had attained eternal setting as the hosts of heaven,
represented by the Akhemu-Seku or stars which never set. The
spirits in glory, called the Khus, are numbered in the Ritual as in
Revelation. In the Papyrus of Nebseni, the number of the Khus or
spirits is reckoned as “four millions, six hundred thousand, and two
hundred” (Rit., ch. 64, Papyrus of Nebseni). It is not said on what
grounds the computation was made. In Revelation the number of the
saved and sealed is computed at one hundred and forty-four thousand.
The mysteries of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, though the latest in
evolution, have been given the foremost place in the Ritual and have
somewhat obscured the pre-Osirian mythology. But Atum was the
great judge upon the mount of Amenta at a far earlier period than
Osiris. And one of the judgments in the Ritual is described as that
of Atum-Ra. This takes place “when the eye is full on the last day
of the month Mechir”; on the night wherein the eye is full and fixed
for the judgment (Rit., ch. 71). “Ra makes his appearance on the
mount of glory with his cycle of gods about him.” “Atum rises
pouring out his dew.” “His majesty gives orders to the cycle of his
followers.” “They fall down before Atum-Harmachis,” or AtumHorus. “His majesty orders them to praise the eye.” “His glorious
eye rests in its place on his majesty in this hour of the night.” At
the fourth hour of the night, on the last day of Mechir, “the majesty
of the eye is in the presence of the cycle of the gods, and his majesty
rises, as in the beginning, with the eye upon his head as Atum-Ra.”
The Khabsu-gods lift up their lamps by night. When Ra passes over
heaven unto the west upon his daily round, these gods of the lamp
rise up with exclamations of delight to show the way. They are stars
upon the summit of the mount which are said “to receive the cable of
Ra from his rowers.” Twelve rowers rowed the bark by day around
the zodiac. At night the seven starry powers at the pole took the rope
in hand to haul the vessel through the underworld. Thus a mystery of
the seven stars, as servants of the solar god, was interpreted in
the astronomical mythos before the law of gravitation could be
known (Rit., ch. 130). As it is said, “Oh Ra, who smileth cheerfully, as
thou comest forth in the east, the ancients, and those who are gone
before acclaim thee” (ch. 64). These “ancients,” who came from the
“primeval womb” as earlier powers than Ra (ch. 133), appear in
Revelation as “the elders.” They are also called “the fathers.” The
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721
Osiris in the character of Horus risen on the mount, says “Let the
fathers and their apes make way for me, that I may enter the mount
of glory, where the great ones are” (ch. 136 B). Naturally enough,
“the apes” do not appear as apes in Revelation. But we may discern
them in “the seven spirits of fire,” or the seven lamps of fire,
burning before the throne, which are the seven spirits of God (iv. 5).
As Egyptian, the apes are spirits of fire. In sign-language the hotnatured or fiery-tempered Kaf-Ape was made the image of a spirit of
fire. Thus seven apes are equivalent to seven spirits of fire. They
could “make way” for the Osiris in the mount, as they were keepers
of the way and openers of the gates of dawn for Ra in his rising.
The numbers vary. But there is a picture to the Ritual in which the
seven spirits of fire around the throne of Ra are seven apes around the
mount of glory (Naville, Todt. Kap., 16 A). In Revelation, the son of
God promises to give the morning star to him that overcometh. “As
I also have received of my father; I will give him the morning star”
(Rev. ii. 28).
The morning star was equally identified with
Horus. “I know the powers of the east: Horus of the mount of
glory, the calf in presence of the god, and the star of dawn” (Rit.,
ch. 109). The powers represented in the vignette are Atum-Ra, the
father, with Horus (or Jesus) the son, as a calf, the later lamb. This
is Horus of the morning star. In the vignette to the previous chapter
(108) the powers are Atum, the father, Horus (as Sebek), the son,
and Hathor as the bride (Naville, Todt. Kap., 108, 109). Here is an
application of the imagery to the deceased which is as old as the
Pyramids. The morning star was given by Horus to his followers
who were reborn in Sothis. The rebirth of Pepi was in or as the
morning star. And “his guide the morning star leadeth him to
paradise, where he seateth himself upon his throne” (Budge, Book of
the Dead, Introd., pp. 141, 143). When Pepi goeth forth into heaven
he is led by Septet, the female Sothis, and his guide is the morning
star. She is the bride whom he calls his sister. He seats himself
upon his throne of ba-metal. This throne has lions’ heads, and feet
in the form of hoofs called the hoofs of the bull, Sema-Ur. Thus the
lion and the bull, or bullock, meet in the throne of Pepi, which is the
throne of god upon the mount of glory (Pyramid Texts, 304), and the
types are equivalent to Atum the man-faced lion and Iu the son, as
calf, later lamb, together with the bride in Sothis.
As Egyptian, then, Atum-Huhi was the God in Spirit, who was
adored at On, as God the Holy Spirit, with Hathor-Iusāas, the
bride, and Horus as the calf. And in one of the vignettes to the
Ritual (Naville, Todt. Kap., 109) these three are grouped together
on the mount, the same as in the Book of Revelation (Naville,
Todt. Kap., 108).
About the year 2410 B.C. the vernal equinox was moving out of
Taurus into the sign of Aries, and the type of Horus changed from
the calf upon the horizon to the lamb upon the mount. Horus is
called “the Lamb, Son of a Sheep.” As a fact in the astronomical
mythology the lamb was then exalted to the highest place, and
Hathor-Sothis became “the bride, as the wife of the lamb.” In the
Book of Esdras we come very near to the fulfillment of a Sothiac
cycle. “These tokens shall come to pass, and the bride shall appear,
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ANCIENT EGYPT
and she coming forth shall be seen that now is withdrawn from the
earth,” and “my Son Jesus shall be revealed with those that be with
him, and they that remain shall rejoice within four hundred years.
And the world shall be turned into the old silence seven days, like as in
the former Judgment: so that no man shall remain. And after seven
days the world, that yet awaketh not, shall be raised up, and that shall
die that is corrupt. And the earth shall restore those that are asleep in
her, and so shall the dust those that dwell in silence; and the secret
places shall deliver those souls that were committed unto them. And the
Most High shall appear upon the seat of Judgment.” In this reckoning
“my son Jesus” is no more historical or ethnical than the bride.
The bride, who was now withdrawn from the world in fulfilling her
period, identifies Sothis and her cycle, which is to be completed in four
hundred years, when the Coming One will be reborn as the Bennu or
Phœnix, the Messu or Messiah, whose rebirth was reckoned and
redated by that cycle.
The bride or Shtar, the betrothed, as
Egyptian, was Hathor-Sothis, who was “withdrawn” from the world
in completing the Sothiac cycle; and Iusāas-Neb-hetep, the mother
of Iusa, was a form of Hathor in the cult of Atum-Ra. Thus,
Atum was the God in Spirit, Hathor-Iusāas is the bride, and Iusa is
the son who was imaged by the calf or lamb according to the time
and position on the ecliptic. As Egyptian, the mystical bride and
child were astronomical. The prophecy of their return to earth and
reappearance within four hundred years, in the secret wisdom of
Esdras, is astronomical. Consequently, the fulfilment with the
marriage of the bride and the lamb or Virgin Mother and Child in
Revelation was likewise astronomical, and Jesus was that character in
the astronomical mythology which was and is, and is to come for
ever as the Son who is the manifestor for the Father under whatsoever type or name, whether as the lamb, calf, the crocodile, the
beetle, the dove, the hawk, the fish, the green corn, the grapes, the
shoot of the papyrus-plant, or as Horus in the human image of the
eternal Child.
To all appearance “John” has reproduced the astronomy in
“Revelation” so as to agree with the entrance of the vernal equinox
into the sign of the Ram which occurred about the year 2410 B.C.,
when the starry dragon as Draconis ceased to be the station of the
pole star and so was fabled to have fallen from heaven; and the lamb
became the typical victim that suffered death and rose again in the
sign of the ram at Easter, as Horus in one cult, Sebek in the other,
and as Jesus the “Lamb of God” in the Book of John.
The drama comes to an end with the marriage of the bride and the
lamb. This is the same in the astronomical reckoning as shifting the
birthplace of the child in the circle of precession from the sign of the
bull to the sign of the ram, as it actually took place four thousand
three hundred years ago. The natural result of this change was that
the lamb from that time became the type of Horus instead of the
calf. And the great change was marked in Egypt by the crocodileheaded Sebek being portrayed by the Sebek-heteps with the head of
the lamb now added to the form of the dragon (Book of Beginnings,
also Nat. Genesis).
The biblical writings abound in phrases too indefinite for anything
THE BOOK OF REVELATION
723
but the faith that can supply its own fulcrum. One of these is the
“foundation of the world.”
Can any Christian explain this
“foundation of the world”? For them, this had to be historically
laid or relaid some nineteen centuries ago. But, according to the
Book of Revelation, the sacrificial lamb was slain from the “foundation
of the world.” In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is made to say,
“Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for
you from the foundation of the world” (Matt. xxv. 34).
Here
the kingdom of the elect was already prepared and in no wise
dependent upon any slaying of the historic lamb. On the other
hand, the lamb (or calf, or other animal) had been slain for ages
annually, as the type of the foundation laid in blood-sacrifice; and
Sebek or Jesus in Egypt had been the lamb that was slain as the
foundation of the world. He is addressed as the lamb, son of a
sheep, and as such was the Lamb of God who did not take away the
sins of the world, and did not profess to have the power. It is in
totemism that we find a first foundation laid in sacrifice which is
afterwards religiously described as the foundation of the world. The
lamb was one of the sacrificial types; Osiris, in the human form of
his son Horus, is another; and from the Osirian mysteries we may
learn the meaning of this “foundation of the world” which, like so
many other mysteries, has been imported into the Christian scheme, to
be continued as one of the mysteries of ignorance and wondering
faith, and to be accepted on the condition that it was never to be
explained. In the Book of Revelation Jesus is “the lamb that hath been
slain from the foundation of the world” (xiii. 8). But in the Epistle to
the Hebrews (IX. 26) this foundation is shifted. Here the lamb has
not “suffered since the foundation of the world,” but “now once at the
end of the ages hath he been manifested to put away sin by the
sacrifice of himself.” In that way the astronomical was turned into
the supposed historical Lamb of God. In the new heaven that is
finally established the mother and child are re-enthroned in glory as
the lamb and the bride who is the wife of the lamb, together with
“the Lord God, the Almighty” (Rev. xxi., xxii.; cf. ch. i. 8). And
these were the three persons who previously composed the “entire
god” in Amen, the hidden Ra, who was a form of Atum-Ra, or Huhi
the Eternal.
The prevalence and persistence of the lamb in the gnostic-Christian
iconography point to a starting-point when the vernal equinox
occurred in the sign of Aries. In the early ages of what is termed
Christianity the lamb, not the man, upon the cross was the sacrificial
type of the divine victim, as it had been of Sebek-Horus in Egypt at
the time of the Sebek-hetep dynasty. “And I saw in the midst of
the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the
elders, a lamb standing as though it had been slain, having seven
horns and seven eyes which are the seven spirits of God, sent forth
into all the earth.” The lamb is but a type that is here employed at
its current value in symbolism, like the calf, as a sign of sacrifice,
which like other types in Revelation has to be read by means of the
mythology. As Egyptian, the lamb, “son of a sheep,” had been a
type of Horus who was called the child. This was Har-Ur, the first
or elder Horus, who was “born but not begotten” of the virgin
724
ANCIENT EGYPT
mother. The seven powers, or spirits, that were unified in Horus who
became the all-one as “an eighth to the seven,” are now represented by
the seven horns and seven eyes of the lamb, which are correctly
described as the seven powers or “seven spirits of God.”
The new Jerusalem was built upon the square. “The city lieth
four-square, and the length thereof is as great as the breadth; the
length and the breadth and the height thereof are equal.” This was
the heaven of Atum based upon the four quarters of the solstices and
the equinoxes which followed the making of Amenta (Rev. xxi. 16).
At first the form impressed upon the universe, in the Kamite
mythology, had been feminine. It was the womb, the meskhen, or
creatory of the Great Mother, as bringer-forth of life and the elements of
life. Finally, this was superseded by the image of the man; the divine
man described by Plato, who bicussated and was stamped upon the
universe in the likeness of a cross. Now the new heaven in the Book
of Revelation was formed according to “the measure of a man” (Rev.
xxi. 17). This was the heaven founded on the four cardinal points,
which were represented by the cross of the four quarters. The cross
of the four quarters, or the earlier Tat-pillar was a figure of the power
that sustained the universe as the Osiris-Tat or as the later man
upon the cross. Thus the divine man, as the cruciform support
of all in Ptah-Sekeri or Osiris, was the prototype of the Crucified.
This god of the four quarters is portrayed as Atum-Ra in the Ritual
(ch. 82). It is he who says (by proxy) “My head is that of Ra and
I am summed up as Atum, four times the arm’s length of Ra, four
times the width of the world.” Thus Atum, the divine man, was a
quadrangular figure of the four quarters in the heaven founded
according to “the measure of a man” which is reproduced in
Revelation. We learn from the Ritual that man became the measure
of the universe in consequence of the god being divinised in the
human form, who in his coming to earth as the heir of Seb says, “I
come before you and make my appearance as the god in the form of
a man” (ch. 79); he who is identified in the same chapter as AtumRa. As Atum was the first god who assumed the form of man, that may
account for the new heaven being designed according to “the measure
of a man,” as described in Revelation (xxi. 17, and Rit., ch. 82).
This was what took place at Annu when Iu, the son of Atum-Ra,
designed the “temple,” as the new heaven was called. Moreover, as
Atum-Ra was the divine man, this tends to prove that “the son
of man” who is Jesus in Revelation was one with Iu, the Su or son
of Atum-Ra. And here it is possible that we come upon the origin
of the Swastika cross as a typical figure of the heaven that was
founded on the four corners according to the measure of a man.
From the most primitive forms of the Swastika known we learn that
in its origin it was derived from the human figure. The Swastika
found in Egypt proves it to have been derived from the form of a
man. The four limbs, which eventually became four feet or four legs,
were at first the two arms and two legs of the human figure (Pro. Bib.
Arch., Nov. 1900). This, then, is the divine man whose image was
extended crosswise on the universe as a type of creation, and who, as
Atum in the character of Iu the son, was the Egyptian Jesus. A
portrait of the Good Shepherd has been discovered in an underground
THE BOOK OF REVELATION
725
Roman cemetery with the Swastika figured twice upon his tunic. He
carries the pan-pipes in his right hand and comes in the attitude of
dancing (Lanciani, Rodolfo, New Tales of Old Rome, p. 117). This
in the mythos was the youthful solar god, and Horus of the resurrection in the eschatology. “The tabernacle of God” is now “with men,
and he shall dwell with them.” As it had been ever since the child, as
Horus, was incarnated in the blood of Isis, to assume the human
figure when “the Word was made flesh” in the beginning.
The mystery of Messiahship, which had been rendered in the
Kamite wisdom thousands of years before, was now repeated as
Hebrew prophecy in the Book of Revelation. In the sign of the
bull, the bride had been represented by the sacred heifer, and Horus
the child was imaged as the calf upon the horizon. “The calf in
presence of the god” is as we have seen with Horus of the solar mount,
in a vignette to ch. 109 (Naville, Todt. Kap.). The victim as the
sacrificial calf is also spoken of in the Ritual (ch. 84) when the
speaker says, “I am the calf painted red on the tablets.” Again he
speaks of being the calf or the bull of the sacrificial herd with
the mortuary gifts upon him (ch. 105). One sign later in precession,
there was a change of type. The vernal equinox now entered Aries
and the lamb upon the mount was substituted for the calf as the
sacrificial victim, just as the fish was substituted 2,155 years later for
the lamb.
The new heaven of Revelation is the “heaven of eternity” in the
Ritual, at the summit of Mount Hetep; the mould of the mythos
being continued in the eschatology. For this reason there was
no night there, and no more sea, and “death shall be no more.”
“Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more;
the first things are passed away.” And this is the vision of a spiritlife in the heaven of eternity that is no longer simply astronomical.
The astronomical enclosure of the non-setting stars; the tree of
life, the water of life, the sacrificial lamb, remain as types of salvation
and eternal sustenance in what the “Revelation” terms “the paradise
of God” (ii. 7), which is identical by name with the garden of the
beginning in the Book of Genesis.
In some of the Papyri, the dwelling-place upon the summit of eternal
attainment, described in the Book of the Dead (ch. 110), is called the
City of the Two Eyes, or Merti the Double Eye, the two eyes that we
hold to have been the stars of the two poles seen in Equatoria.
Merti was also a place-name in Egypt. Thus, the stellar paradise
upon the mount that was established in the region of the pole before
the time of moon or sun remained the type of a future heaven
described in Revelation which had “no need of the sun, neither of the
moon to shine upon it: for the glory of God did lighten it,” and the
light of it, or the luminary, “was like a stone most precious”—otherwise it was the star Polaris. The light of the pole-star in the primal
paradise is likewise referred to in the Talmudic Legends of the future
heaven. It is said, “There is a light which is never eclipsed or
obscured, derived from that upper light by which the first men could
view the world from one end to the other” (Avodath Hakodesh,
f. xlvi. c. 1, 2; Stehelin, Vol. ii., pp. 20-24). Only one pole-star is
reproduced in Revelation, but in the elder legend, as we see, the first
726
ANCIENT EGYPT
men could view the world from one end to the other, which included
both poles (or pole-stars) that were seen at first upon the level of the
equatorial plain and are repeated in the latest eschatology. Finally,
the injunctions at the end of the book should be compared with the
Rubrical Instructions of the Ritual. The writer of Revelation says,
“Blessed is he that keepeth the words of the prophecy in this book.
I testify unto every man that heareth the words of prophecy of this
book. If any man shall add unto them, God shall add unto him the
plagues which are written in this book; and if any man shall take
away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take
away his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy city, which are
written in this book” (xxii. 7, 18, 19). In the Ritual, at the end of
the book by which the soul of the Osiris is perfected in the bosom of
Ra, it is said, “Let not this be seen by anyone except the minister of
the funeral and the king. By this book (or according to it) the soul
of the deceased shall make its exodus with the living and prevail
amongst, or as, the gods. By this book he shall know the secrets of
that which happened in the beginning. No one else has ever known
this mystical book or any part of it. It has not been spoken by men.
No eye hath deciphered it, no ear hath heard it. It must only be
seen by thee and the man who unfolded its secrets to thee. Do not
add to its chapters or make commentaries on it from imagination or
from memory. Carry it out (or execute it) in the judgment hall.
This is a true Mystery, unknown anywhere to those who are
uninitiated” (Rubrical Directions to Rit., ch. 149, Birch; 148, Pierret).
THE JESUS-LEGEND TRACED IN EGYPT FOR TEN
THOUSAND YEARS.
BOOK XII
THE Messianic mystery which has caused unparalleled mental
trouble to the world did not originate with, nor was the solution to
be found in, the biblical collection of the Hebrew writings. The
Egyptian “mesu,” to anoint, and as a name for the Anointed, is
earlier than the Jewish Messiah. Nor would there have been any
typical Christ the anointed but for the making of the Karest-mummy.
We have to look a long way beyond these books to learn how
salvation came into the world by water, or a saviour could be represented by the fish. It was thus salvation came to Egypt periodically
in the new life of the Nile, and thence the saviour, who was imaged
in the likeness of a fish. According to the mythical rendering HorusIu-em-hetep was a saviour because he came with plenty of food and
water in the inundation, as the shoot of, or as the child on the papyrus.
In the eschatology he represented the saviour who showed the way by
which the Manes might attain eternal life, when immortality was held
to be conditional and dependent upon right conduct and true character.
A doctrine of messiahship was founded on the ever-coming Messu, or
child of the inundation in the pre-anthropomorphic phase of symbolism, in which the type might be the fish, the papyrus-shoot, the
beetle, hawk or calf, each one of which bears witness that when the
infant-likeness was adopted as a figure of the ever-coming saviour or
messiah the human type was just as non-historical as any of its predecessors. The advent of the Messu (the Hebrew Messiah) was
periodic in accordance with the natural phenomena: not once for all.
Once for all could have no meaning in relation to that which was
ever-coming from age to age, from generation to generation, or for
ever and ever. Eternity itself to the Egyptians of the Ritual was
æonian, and synonymous with millions of repetitions, therefore evercoming in the likeness of perennial renewal, whether in the waterspring of earth or the day-spring on high, the papyrus-shoot, the green
branch, or as Horus the child in whom a saviour was at length
embodied as a figure of eternal source. At the foundation of all
sacrifice we find the great Earth-mother, following the human mother,
giving herself for food and drink. Next the type of sacrifice was that
of the ever-coming child. Ten thousand years ago a divine ideal of
matchless excellence had been portrayed in elder Horus as a voluntary
728
ANCIENT EGYPT
sacrifice of self, not for the sins of the world, but for human sustenance. This voluntary victim took the parent’s place, and suffered in
the mother’s stead. Thenceforth the papyrus-plant was represented
by the shoot; the tree by the branch; the sheep by the lamb; the
saviour by the infant as an image of perpetual renewal in life by
means of his own death and transformation in furnishing the elements
of life. Next Horus, as the foremost of the seven elemental powers,
passed into the solar mythos, where the typical virgin and child were
reproduced and constellated as repeaters of periodic time and season
in the Zodiac.
The Jesus-legend is Egyptian, but it was at first without the dogma
of historic personality. We have now to follow it in the circuit of
precession, where it might be traced back to a beginning with the
sign of Virgo. But for the present purpose, the birthplace of the
virgin’s child was in the sign of Leo when the vernal equinox was
resting in the lion constellation.
The Messu, or the Messianic prince of peace, was born into the
world at Memphis in the cult of Ptah as the Egyptian Jesus, with the
title of Iu-em-hetep, he who comes with peace or plenty and good
fortune as the type of an eternal youth. Here we may note in passing
that this divine Child, Iu-em-hetep, as the image of immortal youth, the
little Hero of all later legend, the Kamite Herakles, had been one of
the eight great gods of Egypt who were in existence twenty thousand
years ago (Herodotus, 2, 43). This wondrous child, who is the figure
of ever-coming and of perennial renewal in the elements of life, was
also known by name as Kheper, Horus, Aten, Tum or Nefer-Atum
according to the cult. He was continued at On or Annu. The title
likewise was repeated in the new religion, when Iu-em-hetep became
the representative of Atum-Ra. His mother’s name at On was
Iusāas, she who was great (as) with Iusa or Iusu, the ever-coming
child, the Messiah of the inundation.
Such doctrine, however, did not originate as uterine or come the
human way, although it might be expressed in human terminology.
We have now to track the ever-coming child Iusa, Iusu or Jesus in
the sphere of time as the son of Iusāas and of Atum, who was Ra in
his first sovereignty; not merely in the round of the lesser year, but
in the movement of precession as determined by the changing equinox
or by the shifting position of the pole. As we have shown, the Zodiacal
signs were set in heaven according to the seasons of the Egyptian year
and in the annual circuit of the sun. The birthplace of the Inundation and the Grapes was figured in or near the sign of Virgo or the
Virgin, the mother of the child who brought the new life to the land
in water as Ichthus the fish and in food as Horus on his papyrus.
But Horus the traveller of eternity has to be tracked and followed in the
movement of Precession. And thus the new beginning for the present
quest is in the sign of Leo.
The priests of On attributed a new creation of the world, or the
heavens, to Atum-Ra. This was the cultivated enclosure or garden
of a new beginning. And this garden of a new beginning or creation
was visibly featured in the southern heaven. There ran the river
Nile as the one water from its hidden source, as it flowed in the starry
stream Eridanus, and meandered through the Aarru-garden that was
THE JESUS-LEGEND
729
made for Atum, in the likeness of which the future paradise was
represented in Amenta (Rit., ch. 150, Vignette). According to the
Osirian rendering, the later Aarru-field is the garden of the grape
(Rit., Vignettes). The typical tree of life in an Egypto-Greek planisphere is the grape-vine. This is the tree still represented by the
female vine-dresser and the male grape-gatherer in the Decans of
Virgo (Higgins, W. H., Arabic Names of the Stars). Orion rose
up when the grapes were ripe to represent the Deliverer, who was
coming “full of wine.” The goblet or “mixing-bowl” in which the
drink was brewed to hugely celebrate the Uaka-festival of the
Inundation is constellated in the sign of “Krater.” The ancient
enemy of man, the evil dragon of Drought, is imaged in the form of
“Hydra,” waiting to devour the Virgin’s child the moment it is
born.
At one time the birthplace in the stellar mythos was where
Sothis rose as opener of the year and herald of the Inundation. This
was the star of Hathor and her Messu or Messianic babe who came to
make war on the dragon and to bruise the serpent’s head. And
Iusāas was a form of Hathor. The fulfilment of the primitive
promises of the coming child as bringer of all good things was annual
in the astronomical mythology. The babe, the birth, the birthplace
and the bringer to birth, were all continued in the solar cult, from this,
the starting-point, with Sothis now as the announcer of the Inundation,
and the life of vegetation figured as the young deliverer Horus on his
papyrus, or the later Atum-Horus issuing from the lotus on the day
of “come thou to me,” the first day of the Egyptian year or new
creation.
Time in the old year of the Great Bear and the Inundation had not
been subject to the changes in Precession. In this year there was but
one birthplace for the typical child who originated in Horus of the
Inundation as the figure of food and bringer of the water, and therefore of salvation. Also there was but one date for the birthday of the
child, namely, the first of the month Tekki (or Thoth) which we equate
with July 25, when the five dies non are also counted in the reckoning
of the year. If Ra had not discovered the co-partnery of the Great
Mother and Sebek-Horus the Fish of the Inundation, and substituted
the time of the sun, the birthplace of the babe might have remained
for ever fixed in heaven. Time in the ordinary year was always kept
and reckoned by the recurring seasons; firstly by the Inundation. In
the great year this time was rectified by the retrocession of the
equinoxes and the changing position of the pole. Thus time was kept
by double entry. And when the birthplace of the Messianic child was
made zodiacal it travelled round the backward circuit of precession
to fulfil a course of six-and-twenty thousand years. The great year
might have gone its way unrecognized but for this change of polestars
or the backward lapsing of the equinoxes being observed and
registered by the astronomers. It was solar time, which had to be
continually revised and readjusted by means of the stars. The
Inundation was a fixture in relation to the earth, and a primary factor
in the year of the Great Bear, the end and re-beginning of which were
memorized by means of the “Sut-Heb” or “festival of the tail”—that
is, the tail of the Great Bear as pointer at its southernmost longitude,
730
ANCIENT EGYPT
which was dependent on the revolution of the sphere. The Great
Bear, hippopotamus or crocodile, was then the Stellar bringer-forth to
Horus of the Inundation. But with Horus, born of Virgo in the
Zodiac, the birthplace of the babe was figured in the vernal equinox,
and thus became subject to the changes in precession. It parted
company with the lesser year of the Inundation to travel from sign to
sign around the circuit of the world’s great year.
Fourteen thousand years ago the vernal equinox coincided with the
sign of Virgo and the autumn equinox with the sign of Pisces. And
here the learned writer Eratosthenes has a word to say upon this
point. He is a most unimpeachable witness for the Egyptians; a
better could not be subpœnaed. He was born in the year 276 B.C.
He was keeper of the great Alexandrian library and the most learned
Greek in Egypt at the time. Amongst other subjects he wrote on
was astronomy, and he testifies to the fact that the festival of Isis,
which was celebrated in his time at the autumn equinox, had been celebrated when the Easter equinox was in Virgo. This perfectly agrees
with the position of Isis, the Virgin Mother in the Zodiac. During
those six months in the great year = six signs, the child as periodic
fulfiller of time and season in the Zodiac, together with the birth and
birthplace, was receding through the six signs in precession, from
Virgo to Pisces. Thirteen thousand years later the autumn equinox
coincided once more with the sign of Virgo. Now there is no meetingpoint of the mythology with the astronomy more obvious than in these
two signs of the Zodiac. But it is impossible that this imagery should
have been constellated in the planisphere the last time the equinoxes
entered them, which was about the year 255 B.C., where they still
linger at the present moment. And the time before that, in round
numbers, was 26,000 years previously.
It is a fixed fundamental fact that the death and rebirth of the year
were commemorated at this time from the 20th to the 25th of July,
when the birth of Horus was announced by the star Sothis or the
Bennu = Phœnix. It is equally a fact that when the solar Horus had
entered the Zodiac the birthplace was shifted from sign to sign,
according to the movement in precession, from Virgo to Leo, from Cancer
to the Gemini, from Taurus to Aries, from Aries to Pisces. The pathway of eternity was now depicted in the circle of precession. In this
the sonship of Horus was continued after the fatherhood of God had
been established, and Horus became the manifestor for the eternal in
the sphere of solar time. Hence the sayings of Horus in the Ritual.
“I am Horus, the prince of eternity.” “Witness of Eternity is my
name” (ch. 42). He calls himself “the persistent traveller on the
highways of heaven,” which he surveys as “the everlasting one.” “I
am Horus,” he says, “who steppeth onwards through eternity”—
without stopping or ever standing still. This was Horus, otherwise
the Egyptian Jesus, as the ever-coming son (Iu-sa) in all the years of
time that culminated in the all-inclusive cycle of precession. Horus
as the shoot, or the later wheat-ear (spica), had been brought forth
when the birthplace was in Virgo. If we look on this as a sign in
precession, the next birthplace in the backward course is in the sign
of Leo, in which Horus was the lion of the solar power that was
doubled in the vernal equinox. When the Osiris comes to witness
THE JESUS-LEGEND
731
the judgment on the mount of glory (Rit., ch. 136 B), he sees
“the lion forms” called the Kherufu, which are three in number.
Two of these are figures of the Double Force, as shown in the vignette
to ch. 18, and the one in the centre is the lion of the double lions =
the double force, as the lion or as the solar disk. Now Atum is this
solar lion on the mount which is in the equinox, and which can be
thus identified with the lion-sign or sign of the lions in the Zodiac.
Atum is the god with the lion’s face, who is also called the man-faced
lion. He is said to lay the foundations of the eternal house (Rit.,
ch. 17). That is, in building the new heaven which was based upon
the equinoxes in the circuit of precession, at a certain starting-point,
including all the previous foundations laid by Ptah and Taht, Shu
and Sut, and by the first great Mother in the Heptanomis.
It is a tradition common to the Quichés, the Aztecs, the Bushmen,
the Australian aborigines and other ancient races that their ancestors
existed before the creation of the sun. The Bushmen say that the sun
did not shine on their country in the beginning. It was only
when the children of the first Bushmen had been sent up to the summit
of the Mount that the sun was launched to give light to the South
African world (Bleek, Bushmen Folk-Lore, p. 9). So in Egypt it
might be said there was no sun before the creation of Ra, when Atum
issued from the lotus on the day of “Come thou to me.” It is stated
in the texts that light began with this new creation, when the sun-god
rose up from the lotus; that is, the solar light which followed the
lunar and the starlight which preceded day in accordance with the
mythical representation. Atum-Horus sinks at evening in the waters
as the closer of day, with the lotus on his head. At dawn he rises
from the lotus, the opening flower of dawn. But, instead of commencing with the sign of Virgo, the present writer traces this new
beginning in the solar mythos to the time when the vernal equinox
was in the sign of Leo, now some 13,000 to 15,000 years ago,
according to the reckoning in the greater year. By this, however, it
is not meant that equal day and night were then coincident with the
birth of the Inundation or the heliacal rising of the dog-star on the
25th of July. The position of the equinox has to be made out
according to the precessional year, not by the lesser year. This
difference constitutes the difficulty of the reckoning. The time of
equinox was determined in the lesser year by the recurrence of equal
day and night, but the position of the equinoxes in the annus magnus
was determined by the risings of the herald stars. Amongst other
figures of the god Atum, he is portrayed standing on a lion, in others
he is accompanied by his mother the lioness, Sekhet or Bast. The
annual resurrection of the solar god was always in the Easter equinox,
and when the funeral couch is figured in the lion-form, and the rising
of the dead is from the lion-bier, the fact is registered in the eschatological phase of the astronomical mythology. It is said in the Ritual
(ch. 64), “He who lulleth me to rest is the god in lion-form.” Another
note of this zodiacal beginning with the birthplace in the sign of the
lion is recognizable in the arrangement of the twelve signs as double
houses for the seven planets. In ancient astrology five of the planets
had each one a house on either side of the Zodiac excepting the sun
and moon; these had but one house between the two—that is, in the
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ANCIENT EGYPT
lion-sign; or rather, the lion-sign was the only double house of the
Zodiac, and this was of necessity founded at the place of the equinox.
The double house of the astrologers is identical with the great hall of
Mati, the place where the balance was always set up in whichever sign
the equinox occurred for the time being. The place of the equinox
was the hall of Mati, or rather the double equinoxes formed the double
house of Mati.
The Egyptian founders of astronomical science did not begin with
mathematical calculations. They had to verify everything by observation through all the range of periodic time, and this was the only
method that was fundamental or practical at first. It was by direct
observation, not by calculation, that the wise men of Egypt and
Meroē attained their knowledge of precession. By ages on ages of
watching and registering they perceived that the backward movement
of the equinox, as immense in time as it is slow in motion, had to be
reckoned with as a factor of vast magnitude; and that this long hand
on the face of the eternal horologe was a determinative of the hugest
cycle of all, so far as they could measure periodic time. By imperceptible degrees the movement itself had become apparent, and the
point of equal day and night was observed to be passing out of one
group of stars upon the ecliptic into another; which sometimes
coincided with a change of pole-stars.
We have now to trace the vernal equinox in precession, from the sign
of the lion through the signs of the crab, the twins, the bull, the ram,
until it entered the sign of the fishes, about 255 B.C. For 2,155 years
Atum-Horus manifested, as Iu-sa, the coming son in the vernal equinox,
or as the lion of the double force, when this was in the constellation
Leo. The next sign in precession is the crab, the Kamite original
of which was the beetle, and the beetle was an emblem of Ptah and
Atum as a type of the God who came into being as his own son, that
is Iu-sa, the child of Iusāas. When the equinox had receded from the
lion-sign to the house of the beetle—our crab—the young Jesus of the
Zodiac was there brought forth as Kheper the beetle, the “good
scarabæus,” which type and title he retained until the Christian era.
In this sign of the beetle we find the crib or manger of the infant
figured in an early form. The star called “El Nethra” by the Arabs,
and “Prœsepe” by the Greeks, which is in the eighth lunar mansion,
is the crib or manger by name. In Cancer, then, the Horus of the
Zodiac was reborn in his solar character as the beetle of the Nile, the
reproducer of himself by transformation. Thus Horus had been born
in his solar character as a young lion in the sign of Leo, in the month
of the lions; and reborn 2,155 years later as a beetle in the sign of
and in the month of the beetles (for the lunar beetle, see Hor-Apollo,
1, 10). Also the ass, another zoötype of Iu, is figured in this sign of
the beetle or crab. Here, then, we find the crib, or manger, of Iu,
the ass, in the sign which was the birthplace in the vernal equinox
from 12,000 to 10,000 years ago, and therefore the original birthplace
of the divine infant that was born in a manger or a stable, and was
attended by the ass of Atum and the bullock of Iu.
When the equinox entered the sign of the Twins, it no longer
coincided by a month in the great year with the birthplace in the
crab; and there was now a difference of two months betwixt the day
THE JESUS-LEGEND
733
of the equinox in the twins and the opening day of the sacred year,
on the 25th of July, at the time when the equinox was in the sign of
the lion. And two months in the great year are equivalent to 4,310
lesser years. Next Iusa, the coming son, the second Atum, was born
of Hathor Iusāas, the cow headed goddess, in the sign of the bull,
where the equinox rested from the year 6,465 to the year 4,310 B.C.
In this sign the divine child was brought forth in the stable as a calf
or a bullock. The lunar cow was in the stable of the solar bull, where
the young babe was born and laid in a manger now as Horus or Iu,
the calf. Mother and child might be and were portrayed in human
form, but it is the cow that gives the name of “Meri,” and but for the
cow-headed Hathor-Meri there would have been no human Mary as a
virgin-mother in the Jesus-legend. Hathor-Meri was the mother of
Horus, the Su in the “house of a thousand years,” born in the stable
or the manger of the bull. He had been brought forth as a young
lion in the house of the lions, as a scarabæus in the sign of the
beetles, and now was manifested as the calf in the sign of the
bull. And it was as the lunar cow in the “house of a thousand
years” that the mother brought forth her child as a calf in the stable
which was rebuilt for the oxen, that is, for the bull, the cow and calf,
when the birthplace passed into the zodiacal house, stable, or byre
of Taurus. In re-erecting the house of heaven on earth when it was
going to ruin, or, at the end of the period, King Har-si-Atef says
he has built the stable for oxen in the temple. (Stele of King
Har-si-Atef, left side.—Records, v. 6, p. 90.) In this stable of the
temple the mystery of the birthplace was sacredly performed, and the
child born in a manger (the Apt) was exhibited to the worshippers every
year. The ox and the ass that were present at the birth of the Divine
child in the stable at Bethlehem were extant in this sign. The ass had
been present without the ox when the birthplace was in the sign of the
lion; and again when the birthplace was in the sign of the crab. The
manger in which the little Jesus lay is figured in the sign of cancer, and
the birth of the babe in that sign with the manger for his cradle had
occurred 8,875 years B.C. Also the ass on which the child Iusa
rode is standing by the manger in the stable. The ass in the
birthplace is a representative of the sun-god Atum-Iu, and when the
ass and ox are found together in the stable the birthplace is in the
sign of the bull.
Horus or Iusa in the “house of a thousand years” was the bringer
of the millennium, which was renewed in the following cycle. Sut or
Satan was loosed for a little while, seven days at most, during the
Saturnalia; then he was bound in chains for another cycle of time,
whilst Horus took possession of the house once more on a lease of a
thousand years to establish his reign of peace, plenty and good luck
in the domain of time and law, justice and right by the inauguration
of another millennium. The Divine mother and child had been
humanized in the Egyptian religion when the stone monuments begin
for us, at least ten thousand years ago, but the zoötypes were still
continued as data in sign-language. This was the knowledge that was
in possession of the Wise Men, the Magi, the Zoroastrians, Jews,
Gnostics, Essenes and others who kept the reckoning, read the signs,
and knew the time at which the advent was to occur, once every
fourteen lifetimes (14 × 71-2 years), in the “house of a thousand
734
ANCIENT EGYPT
years,” or once every 2,155 years, when the prince of peace was to be
reborn as the lamb in the sign of the ram, or as Ichthus the fish in the
sign of Pisces. He had been born as a calf in the sign of the bull; as
the beetle in cancer; as the lion in Leo; as the red shoot of the vine
in Virgo; as lord of the balance in the Scales. And when the Easter
equinox had moved round slowly into the sign of the ram, the coming
fulfiller of the cycle was Jesus or Horus, that “Lamb of God,” who
is supposed to have become historical 2,410 years later to take away
the sins of the Christian world.
Before passing on to follow the vernal equinox into the sign of the
fishes (we may add the corn, of which this also was the sign on
account of the harvest in Egypt), we must glance back for a moment
to the birthplace and the beginning with the Inundation, which was
the source of so much astronomical mythology that necessitated
continued readjustment of the reckoning in precession. The fish, a
figure of plenty brought by the Inundation, was continued as a symbol
of Atum-Horus. The type might be changed from the crocodile
of Sebek to the silurus or electric eel of Atum, but the fish remained
as an emblem of Ichthus, or of Ichthon, that saviour of the world who
came to it first in Africa by water as the fish. We have already seen
that the mystical emblem called the “Vesica Pisces,” as a frame and
aureole for the virgin and her child, is a living witness to the birth of
Jesus from the fish’s mouth, as it was in the beginning for Iusa or
Horus of the Inundation. This will also explain why Ichthus, the fish,
is a title of Jesus in Rome; why the Christian religion was founded
on the fish; why the primitive Christians were called Pisciculi, and
why the fish is still eaten as the sacrificial food on Friday and at
Easter. There is evidence to show the impossibility of this sign
having been founded in the year 255 B.C. as the sign of the vernal
equinox, either in relation to Horus the fish or Horus the bread of
life, or Iu the Su (son) of Atum-Ra. For instance, the wheat-harvest
in Egypt coincides with the Easter equinox, and always has done so
since wheat was grown and time correctly kept. In the Alexandrian
year the month Parmuti, the month of the mother of corn, begins on
the 27th of March, or about the time of the equinox when this had
entered the sign of Pisces. According to the table of the months at
Edfu and the Ramesseum, Parmuti was the very ancient goddess of
vegetation, Rannut. Rannut was the goddess of harvest and also of
the eighth month in the year, which opened with the month Tekki
or Thoth. From Thoth, the first month, to Rannut-Parmuti, the
eighth month, is eight months of the Egyptian year, equivalent to
two tetramenes in the year of three seasons.
When Horus had fulfilled the period of 2,155 years with the Easter
equinox in the sign of Aries, the birthplace passed into the sign of
Pisces, where the ever-coming one, the Renewer as the eternal child
who had been brought forth as a lion in Leo, a beetle in cancer, as one
of the twins in the sign of the Gemini, as a calf in the sign of the bull,
and as a lamb in the sign of the ram, was destined to manifest as the
fish, born of a fish-mother, in the zodiacal sign of the fishes. The rebirth of Atum-Horus or Jesus as the fish of Iusāas and the bread of
Nephthys was astronomically dated to occur and appointed to take
place in Bethlehem of the Zodiac about the year 255 B.C., at the time
THE JESUS-LEGEND
735
when the Easter equinox entered the sign of Pisces, the house of corn
and bread; the corn that was brought forth by the gestator Rannut in
the eighth month of the Egyptian year, and was reaped in the month
named from Parmuti the Corn-Mother; and the bread that was
kneaded by Nephthys in the house of bread.
Horus, or Jesus, the fulfiller of time and law, the saviour who
came by water, by blood and in the spirit, Horus the fish and the
bread of life, was due according to precession in the sign of the fishes
about the year 255 B.C. A new point of departure for the religion of
Ichthus in Rome is indicated astronomically when Jesus or Horus was
portrayed with the sign of the fish upon his head, and the crocodile
beneath his feet (fig. p. 343).
This would be about the year
255 B.C. (so-called). But the perverters of the Jesus-legend, in concocting the Christian “history,” had falsified the time in heaven that
the Egyptians kept so sacredly on earth during the ages on ages
through which they zealously sought to discern the true way to the
infinite through every avenue of the finite, and to track the Eternal by
following the footprints of the typical fulfiller through all the cycles
and epicycles of renewing time.
The type of sacrifice once eaten in the totemic or mortuary meal, as
the fish, is still partaken of on Good Friday as the image of Ichthus;
the same in Rome at present as in Heliopolis or Annu in the past.
The type was changed from sign to sign, from age to age in the
course of precession. The commemorative customs light us back as
far at least as the sign of the Gemini, when twin turtle-doves, two
goats, or twin children were sacrificed. Indeed, there is some evidence
extant to show that the ass, a figure of Atum-Iu, which may be found
constellated in the decans of cancer, was at one time the type of
sacrifice, and which, to judge from its position, was of course anterior
to the “twins.” (Petrie, Egyptian Tales, p. 90.) The ass has been
obscured by the lion and other sacred animals, but it was at one time
great in glory, particularly in the cult of Atum-Iu, the ass-headed or
ass-eared divinity. The ass has been badly abused and evilly treated
as a type of Sut-Typhon, whereas it was expressly a figure of the
solar-god, the swift goer who was Iu the Sa of Atum; and Iu-Sa is
the coming son or the Egyptian Jesus on the ass. Mythically
rendered, he made his advent as a lion, or it might be said that he
came riding on an ass. Horus, the sacrificial victim, as the calf, was
an especial type in the Osirian cult. The lamb is heard of as
expressly Jewish; the lamb that was roasted on the cruciform spit to
image the Crucified upon the cross at Easter, when the lamb was yet
the typical victim. When the equinox passed into the ram-sign
Horus or Iusa became the lamb “son of a sheep,” who as son of the
father was the son of God, an especial type with the Sebek-heteps.
When the vernal equinox entered once more into the sign of the
“fishes” the time had come for the type to change back again to the
fish which had been eaten as a typical sacrifice thousands of years
before when the crocodile was eaten once a year as the zoötype of
Sebek-Horus, “the almighty fish in Kamurit” (Rit., ch. 88), the
bringer of plenty in the inundation of the Nile.
The advent of a Jewish Jesus, as the fish Ichthus, was dependent on
the Messu or Messiah-son being incarnated when the vernal equinox
736
ANCIENT EGYPT
was entering Pisces in the circuit of precession, where the female
bringer-forth was figured as the mother-fish, instead of the sheep, the
cow or the lioness.
The astronomers knew and foretold that the Divine babe was to be
born in the sign of the fishes, the sign of the Messiah Dag, of An, of
Oan or Jonah. It is probable that the name of Rome was derived
from an Egyptian name for the fish, and that Roma was the fishgoddess. Rem, Rum, or Rome signifies the fish in Egyptian. Be this as
it may, the fish-man (or woman?) rules in Rome. The ring with which
the Pope is invested, his seal-ring, has on it the sign of the fish, and
Ichthon the Saviour was brought on in Rome as Ichthus the fish, or
otherwise personified as the “historical Jesus.” This is illustrated in
the Catacombs, where the fish emaning Jonah from its mouth has been
supposed by Christians to represent the resurrection of an historical
Jew. The name of the Piscina given to the baptismal font likewise
shows the cult of the fish. Those who were baptized in the Piscina as
primitive Christians were known by name as the Pisciculi. “Ichthus”
also was the secret password and sign of salutation betwixt the
Christian Pisciculi.
Bryant copied from an ancient Maltese coin the figure of Horus,
who carries the crook and fan in his hands and wears a fish-mitre on
his head. This was Horus of the Inundation, who was emaned from
the water as a fish and by the fish, but who is here portrayed in a
human form with the fish’s mouth for a mitre on his head. (Bryant,
v. 5, p. 384.) The wearer of the os tincæ on his head is not only the
fish-man in survival, the petticoated Pope is likewise a figure of the
ancient fish-woman; she who sat upon the waters and on the seven
hills of the celestial Heptanomis as a water-cow, who brought forth
from the mystical mouth of the fish. The Pope is dressed in the
likeness of both sexes. The “os tincæ” of the papal mitre, equally with
the star Fomalhaut in Piscis Australis of the planisphere, and the
mouthpiece of the divine Word, is still the same antique as when the
ancient Wisdom was first figured as the female fish, the crocodile, and
the male fish was a likeness of the Saviour who came by water in the
Inundation before Horus could come by boat, or float on the papyrusplant in human form; so long has the fish been a zoötype of emaning
source in the Egyptian eschatology. The Pope impersonates the
mouthpiece, the fish’s mouthpiece of the Word, and, as the imagery
shows, the Word, or Logos, is the same that was uttered of old as a fish
by the ancient mother-fish with the os tincæ or mouth of utterance
from which a child is born; so that the mother-church in Rome, as
represented by the Pope, is still the living likeness of the fish-mother,
who brought forth Horus of the Inundation as her fish in the Zodiac,
at least some 12,000 or 13,000 years ago, and had never ceased to do so
annually up to the time of rebirth in the sign of the fishes,
when Papal Rome took up the parable but suppressed or omitted the
explanation concerning the Christ now apotheosized as Ichthus the
fish. Thus, as previously demonstrated, the proper date for the
commencement of Christianity or equinoctial Christianity is somewhere about 255 B.C.
One of the most perfect illustrations of fulfilment attained by the
mythos may be studied in a scene that was copied from the Roman
THE JESUS-LEGEND
737
Catacombs by De Rossi (Rom. Sott., 2, pl. 16).
In this the
seven great spirits appear in human guise, who are elsewhere
represented by the seven fishers or the seven lambs with Horus,
ignorantly supposed to be an historic personage. These seven are
with the fish in the sign of the two fishes, who are figured as the two
fishes laid out on two dishes. Moreover, lest there might be any
mistake in reading the picture it is placed between two other illustrations.
In one of these the lamb is portrayed as the victim of sacrifice; in the
other a fish is lying with the bread upon the altar. So that the central
picture shows the result of the transference from the sign of the ram to
the sign of the fishes. In another scene the seven who were followers
of Horus are portrayed together with seven baskets of bread (Bosio,
pp. 216, 217). In relation to the group of seven spirits in the Roman
Catacombs it must be noted that the company of twelve, as followers
of Horus, or disciples of Iusa, was not a primary formation. It was
preceded by the group of seven, the seven who were with Horus,
the leader of that “glorious company,” from the beginning; the same
in the eschatology as in the astronomical mythology. They are the
seven with Horus in the bark of souls or Sahus that was constellated in Orion. In the creation attributed to Atum-Ra, which
opened on the day of “come thou hither,” otherwise upon the
resurrection day, the seven great spirits are assigned their place in this
new heaven; they are called the seven glorious ones “who are in the
train of Horus”; and who follow after the coffined one, that is OsirisSekari, whose bier or coffin was configurated in the greater bear.
They who followed their lord as his attendants in the resurrection
were also grouped as seven khuti in the lesser bear.
In his various advents Horus was attended by the seven great
spirits termed his seshu, or his servants. So Jesus, according to
Hebrew prophecy, was to be attended by the seven spirits called (1)
the spirit of the Lord; (2) the spirit of wisdom; (3) the spirit of
understanding; (4) the spirit of counsel; (5) the spirit of might; (6)
the spirit of knowledge; (7) the spirit of the fear of the Lord (Is. xi.
1, 2). These, as Egyptian, were they who had originated as the
seven elemental powers and who afterwards became the Khuti as the
seven great spirits. But in their Hebrew guise they are evaporized
and attenuated past all recognition except as a septenary of spirits.
The seven with Jesus as a group of attendant powers or followers
may be seen in the seven doves that hover round the child in utero;
the seven solar rays about his head; the seven lambs or rams with
Jesus on the mount; the seven as stars with Jesus in the midst; the
seven as fishers in the boat; and lastly, the seven as communicants
who solemnize the Eucharist with the loaves and fishes in the mortuary
meal of the Roman Catacombs. There are various pictures in the
Catacombs which can only be explained by the pre-Christian gnosis.
This alone can tell us why the divine infant should be imaged as a
little mummy with the solar halo round his head, or why the so-called
“Star of Bethlehem” should be figured with eight rays. Such things
are Egypto-gnostic remains belonging to the Church in Rome that
was not founded on the Canonical Gospels, but was pre-extant as
gnostic; the Church of Marcion and of Marcelina. Several of these
pictures contain the group of the seven great spirits who were with
738
ANCIENT EGYPT
Horus of the Resurrection at his advent in the sign of Pisces, as they
had been with him in the previous signs when he was the lamb, the
calf, the beetle or the lion. Two pictures are copied by Lundy, one
from De Rossi’s Roman Sotteranea Christiana (vol. 1) and one from
Bosio (Rom. Sott.). In the one scene seven persons are seated at a
semicircular table with two fishes and eight baskets of bread before
them. In the other scene, seven persons are kneeling with two fishes,
seven cakes and seven baskets of bread in front of them (Lundy,
Monumental Christianity, figs. 169 and 171).
Now, there is nothing whatsoever in the canonical Gospels to account
for or suggest the eight baskets-full of cakes which are somewhat
common in the Catacombs. These we claim to be a direct survival
from the Egyptian; the eight loaves or cakes which are a sacred
regulation number in the Ritual. According to the Rubrical directions
appended to chapter 144 it is commanded that eight Persen loaves,
eight Shenen loaves, eight Khenfer loaves, and eight Hebennu loaves
are to be offered at each gate of the seven arits or mansions of the
celestial Heptanomis. These offerings were made for the feast of
illumining the earth, or elsewhere (ch. 18), the coffin of Osiris, and
therefore for the festival of the Resurrection and solemnizing of the
Eucharist. The seven persons present with the Lord are identifiable
with the typical seven followers of Horus as the seven khuti or
glorious ones. The speaker, who personates the lord of the seven, says
“I am the divine leader of the seven. I am a khu, the lord of the
khus.” The Osiris Nu thus celebrates the monthly festival by offering
eight loaves or cakes at each of the seven halls. The khus were seven
in number or eight with Horus their lord, in whom Osiris rose again
from the condition of the dead. The chapter is to be repeated over a
picture of the seven sovereign chiefs, which we now claim to be the
original of the seven personages that keep the sacramental ceremony in
the Catacombs when the eight cakes are figured on the table of the
seven personages who have been termed the “Septem Pii Sacerdotes”
(Northcote and Brownlow, Rom. Sott., vol. 2, pl. 17, p. 68). But
to return, our starting-point for tracking the movement in precession
was with the vernal equinox in the sign of Leo, on the birthday of
the year that was determined at the time by the heliacal rising of the
star which announced the birthplace of Horus, now figured in the solar
zodiac, nigh where the evil dragon Hydra lay in wait to devour the
babe as soon as it was born. This was about 11,000 years B.C., or
13,000 years ago. During these eleven thousand years, by the changes
in precession and the continual rectification of the calendar from old
style to new, July 25th at starting had receded to December 25th
in the end. That is, the birthday of the coming child Iusa or Horus
in the Lion sign, celebrated on the 25th of July, came to be commemorated on the 25th of December at the end of this period, by
those who kept the reckoning, and this, as will be shown, is precisely
what did occur in the evolution of the Jesus-legend.
Two birthdays had been assigned to Horus of the double horizon,
one to child-Horus in the autumn, the other to Horus the adult in the
vernal equinox. These were the two times or teriu of the year. But
when the solstices were added to the equinoxes in the new creation of
THE JESUS-LEGEND
739
the four quarters established by Ptah for his son Atum-Ra, there was
a further change. The place of birth for the elder, the mortal Horus
who was born child of the Virgin Mother, now occurred in the winter
solstice and the place of rebirth for Horus the eternal Son was
celebrated in the vernal equinox, with three months between the two
positions instead of six. If the birth occurred at Christmas with the
winter solstice in the sign of the Archer, the Resurrection at Easter
would occur in the sign of the fishes as at present. The equinoxes, of
course, remained upon the double horizon, whereas the winter solstice
took place in the depths of Amenta, and this became the place of
rebirth for the child-Horus as Iu-sa, the coming son in the
astronomical mythology. Horus in the autumnal equinox was now
succeeded by Horus who suffered in the winter solstice. The Jews
still celebrate their mysteries annually as mysteries. And it is
instructive to note that with them the two times remain equinoctial,
and have never been changed to the winter solstice and Easter
equinox. The Jews have subterranean reasons for not accepting the
Messiah born at Christmas. Theirs are the mysteries of the double
horizon; or of Ra-Harmachis. The double birth of Horus at the two
times, or the birth of the babe in the winter solstice and the rebirth as
the adult in the Easter equinox is acknowledged in the Egyptian
Book of the Divine Birth. The celebration of the Nativity at the solstice
is referred to in the calendar of Edfu, and it is said that “everything
is performed which is ordained” in the “Book of the Divine Birth.”
Also, it was commanded in the calendar of Esné that the precepts of the
Book on the Second Divine Birth of the child Kahi “were to be
performed on the first of the month Epiphi” (cited by Lockyer,
Dawn of Astronomy, pp. 284-6). The child Kahi is a pseudonym for
the child-Horus. He is the revealer, the logos or word, and the
“Revelation of Kahi” is associated with New Year’s day, when this
occurred on the 26th of the month Payni. Now the first and
second “divine births” (or the birth and rebirth) of Horus were
celebrated at the festivals of the winter solstice and the Easter equinox,
and these are the two times of the two Horuses identified by Plutarch, the
first as manifestor for Isis, the Virgin Mother, the second as Horus,
the Son of God the Father, when he tells us that “Harpocrates (Har
the Khart, or child) is born about the winter solstice, immature and
infant-like in the plants that flower and spring up early, for which
reason they offer to him the first-fruits of growing lentils; and they
celebrate her (Isis) being brought to bed after the vernal equinox”
(of Is. and Os., ch. 65). Here are the three months between the two
birthdays which were celebrated at the two festivals now known as
Christmas and Easter. Two different birthdays were likewise assigned
to the Greek Apollo. One of these was commemorated by the Delians
at the time of the winter solstice; the other by the Delphians in the
vernal equinox.
According to the decree of Canopus (B.C. 238) the date of Osiris’s
entry into the moon at the annual resurrection had then receded to
the 29th of Choiak, equivalent to December 26th, in the Alexandrian
year, which was established in the reign of Augustus, B.C. 25. “The
entry of Osiris into the sacred bark takes place here annually at the
740
ANCIENT EGYPT
defined time on the 29th day of the month Choiak.” In this way the
Christmas festival, by which the “Birth of Christ” is now celebrated,
can be identified with the yearly celebration of the rebirth of Osiris (or
Horus) in the moon. Moreover, we can thus trace it, following the
course of precession, from the 17th of Athor (October 5th in the sacred
year; November 14th in the Alexandrian year), mentioned by Plutarch,
to the 29th of Choiak, our December 26th. The next day, December 27th,
was the first of Tybi, and this was the day on which the child-Horus
was crowned, and the festival of his coronation celebrated. If we reckon
the 25th of December (28th Choiak) to be the day of birth, the day
of resurrection and of the crowning in Amenta is on the third day.
In the month-list of the Ramesseum, Tybi is the month dedicated to
Amsu, the Horus who arose from the dead in Amenta, and who was
crowned as conqueror on the third day—that is, on December 27th =
Tybi 1st. There are several symbols of this resurrection on the third
day. First, Osiris rises on that day in the new moon. Next, Amsu
figures as the Sahu-mummy risen to his feet, with right arm free, as
ruler in Amenta, the earth of eternity. Thirdly, Horus the child is
crowned in the seat of Osiris for another year. Fourthly, the Tat was
erected as a figure of the god re-arisen, and a type of eternal stability
in the depths of the winter solstice. Thus the resurrection on the
third day was in Amenta and not upon this earth.
The Egyptians celebrated their festival of the resurrection every
year, called the feast of Ptah-Sekari-Osiris, in the month Choiak
(November 27th, December 26th, Alexandrian year). The rite is
otherwise known as “the erection of the Tat-pillar.”
Erman
recovered a description of the festival from a Theban tomb. Of this
he says: “The special festival was of all the greater importance
because it was solemnized on the morning of the royal jubilee. The
festivities began with a sacrifice offered by the king to Osiris, the
‘LORD of Eternity,’ a mummied figure, wearing the Tat-pillar on
his head.” It lasted for ten days, from the 20th to the 30th of the
month Choiak, the 26th being the great day of feasting. The royal
endowment of the temple at Medinet Habu for the sixth day of the
festival included 3,694 loaves of bread, 600 cakes, 905 jugs of beer
and 33 jars of wine. This was the great day of eating and drinking,
corresponding to our Christmas gorging and guzzling, but on the
22nd December, instead of the 25th, of a somewhat later period.
The festival was devoted to the god Osiris-Ptah-Sekari, who had been
dead and was alive again; cut in pieces and reconstituted with his
vertebræ sound and not a bone of his body found to be broken or
missing. The festival of the sixth day is clearly the Ha-k-er-a feast
that was celebrated on the sixth night of the Ten Mysteries. Moreover, the ten days of the festival that was sacred to the god OsirisSekari are also in agreement with the ten nights of the mysteries
(Rit., ch. 18). In the scene copied from the Theban tomb the “Noble
Pillar” of the Tat-cross is to be seen lying pronely on the ground
where it had been overthrown by Sut and the Sebau. The object of
the festival was to celebrate the re-erection of the Tat and turn the
Cross of death once more into the Cross of life as the symbol of
resurrection. The king, as representative of Horus who reconstitutes
THE JESUS-LEGEND
741
his father, with the aid of the royal relatives and a priest, pulls the
pillar upright. Four priests bring in the usual table of offerings and
place them in front of the Tat. So far, says Erman, we can understand the festival. But the further ceremonies refer to mythological
events unknown to us. Four priests with their fists raised rush upon
four others, who appear to give way; two more strike each other, and
one standing by says of them, “I seize Horus shining in truth.”
Then follows a great flogging scene, in which fifteen persons beat
each other mercilessly with their sticks and fists; they are divided
into several groups, two of which, according to the inscription,
represent the people of the town Pa and of the town Tepu. This
is evidently the representation of a great mythological fight, in which
were engaged the inhabitants of Pa and Tepu, i.e., of the ancient city
of Buto, in the north of the delta. “The ceremonies which close
the sacred rite are also quite problematic; four herds of oxen and asses
are seen driven by their herdsmen, and we are told in the accompanying text four times they circle round the walls on that day when the
noble Tat-pillar is re-erected.”
Raising the Tat-pillar was typical of Horus in his second
advent raising the dead Osiris from his sepulchre and calling the
mummy to come forth alive. The gods in Tattu on the night of the
resurrection, symbolized by this re-erection of the Tat, are Osiris, Isis,
Nephthys, and Horus the avenger of his father. Thus in re-erecting
the Tat, Amenhetep III, with his queen Ti and one of the royal
princesses were personating Horus the avenger and the two divine
sisters in the resurrection of Osiris. (Rit., ch. 18.)
The Christians celebrate the birth of the divine babe at Christmas
and the death and resurrection at Easter; whereas the birth and
death were commemorated at the same season in the Egyptian
mysteries of Ptah, and later of Osiris—as it was in the beginning,
when the death was that of the old year and the rebirth that of the
new year; otherwise, the death of Osiris and the birth of Horus, or
the death of Atum and the rebirth of Iusa. The new year came to
be reckoned from the shortest day when the sun had reached its
lowest point and the shadow of darkness or the dragon its utmost
length. The sufferings of the Sun-god were naturally accredited to
him at that time, and the death and resurrection in Amenta were both
timed to the solstice. The sun was lord of light as ruler of the
lesser year. The Apap-monster was the reptile power of darkness,
and of desert drought. This dreaded adversary of the sun was now
the uppermost, Osiris in Amenta was the victim in the winter solstice.
The suffering and death of Osiris were the cause of the long period of
mourning, of fasting and supplication that was memorized in the
mysteries. In the winter solstice the birth took place below, in
Amenta, the earth of Sut, and habitat of the Apap-reptile. In the
equinox at Easter, Horus the fulfiller was transformed from the
human child to the divine hawk-headed Horus, who rose from
the underworld as the spirit of life and light and food, and who
was then re-fleshed or re-incorporated anew on earth, conceived
of the Virgin, incarnated in her blood once more, to be brought
forth in human shape again at Christmas; and by the gestator
742
ANCIENT EGYPT
in the divine form, as Horus of the resurrection now reborn at
Easter.
The last night of the old year (July 24th), “the night of the child in
the cradle,” had been named from the new birth as the Mesiu; also the
evening meal of the next day, the first of the new year, was called
the “Mesiu.” These were the exact equivalent of our Christmas Eve
and Christmas Day on December 24th and 25th, after a lapse of 11,000
years in time according to the movement in precession. The sacred
old Egyptian year, which opened on the first of Tekki (or Thoth) as
the year of the great Bear and the inundation, began upon the 25th
of July in the year of 365 days. Therefore July 24th was the last
night of the old year and the 25th (or the 20th in the year of 360 days)
was New Year’s Day, the birthday of Horus the child, or fish of the
inundation. Time was sacredly kept by means of the festivals, and
these were redated age after age from old style to new. The decree
of Canopus is both explicit and emphatic on the necessity of correctly
readjusting the calendar to the lapse of time, whether in the Sothiac
cycle or the movement in precession so that “the case shall not occur
that the Egyptian festivals by which time was kept—now celebrated
in winter—should be celebrated some time or other in summer, as has
occasionally occurred” in times past, in consequence of the calendar
being incorrectly kept (Records, vol. 8, p. 87).
For example, a new year was introduced by the Egyptian priests
B.C. 25, in the name of the Roman Emperor Augustus, which is known
as the Alexandrian year. When this new year was established a readjustment was made to allow for the lapse in precession and to correct
the calendar. At this time the so-called “sacred year” was for the last
time readjusted. This was that year of 360 days which was based on
the twelve moons or months of thirty days each and on the reckoning
permanently figured in the 360 degrees of the ecliptic that was to be
kept in endless sanctity howsoever supplemented by other reckonings
in the total combination to be united in the great precessional year
of 360×71−2=26,000 years. In this corrected calendar the first of
Choiak, which fell on October 18th in the sacred year is shifted to
November 27th in the Alexandrian year, and there is a rectification of
time to the extent of forty days. These forty days in the lesser year
represent nearly 3,000 years in the cycle of precession. In other words
stellar time was corrected by the time of the sun and determined on
the grand scale by the position of the vernal equinox. This had now
receded to the sign of Pisces, when Horus or Jesus, who had been the
“Lamb of God” in the previous sign, and the calf in the sign of the
bull, was figured as the fish by the Egypto-gnostic artists (fig. on p.
343).
Thus the cult was continued without a break in Rome.
Augustus personally posed himself in the character of the expected
one, the Prince of Peace, the Messiah of the astronomical mythology
and thence in the eschatology.
At the time when the change of equinox from Aries to Pisces
occurred in the great year, or in connection with this event, the birthplace was rebuilt as the crib or cradle, meskhen, or holy of holies in
the temple for the new-born babe. Now the temple of Hathor at
Denderah was last rebuilt in the time of the Ptolemies, a century or
THE JESUS-LEGEND
743
so B.C. The inscriptions show that this rebuilding of the temple was
attributed to Augustus. He never was at Denderah in person, but
the ruler in Rome was assigned the place of the king or Pharaoh in
Egypt as rebuilder of the temple for Hathor and her babe, and the
king on earth was the royal representative, first as the Repa, then as
the Ra, of the king, who was divine or astronomical. Augustus was
invested with this divinity, and thus the Egyptian doctrine was
continued in the person of the Emperor in Rome.
Augustus
proclaimed himself to be not merely a human likeness, but the very
God himself on earth. “The reverence due to the gods,” says
Tacitus (Annals, i. 10), “was no longer peculiar; Augustus claimed
equal worship. A mortal man was directly adored, and priests and
pontiffs were appointed to pay him impious homage.” Thus the
apotheosis of a mortal had begun and a kind of papacy was already
established as a bridge betwixt Alexandria and Rome. The vernal
equinox was now in Pisces, and Horus, as type, was the fish instead
of the lamb or ram. “Ichthus the fish” had been a title self-conferred
by Alexander in his apotheosis 300 years earlier. So Augustus,
in relation to the same fulfilment in astronomical time was Ichthus the
fish in Rome before the title was conferred upon a supposed historical
Jesus of Nazareth. Thus the festival now dated Choiak 29th in the
Alexandrian year had been celebrated 3,000 years earlier in the sacred
year, and we behold it being readjusted according to the reckoning in
precession as it had been aforetime.
It has often been a matter of wonderment why the birthday of the
Son of God on earth should be celebrated as a festival of unlimited
gorging and guzzling. The explanation is that the feast of Christmas Day is a survival of the ancient Uaka festival, with which
the rebirth of the Nilotic year was celebrated with uproarious
revellings and rejoicings, as the festival of returning food and drink.
It was at once the natal-day of the Nile, and of the Messu or
Messianic child under his various names. It is called the birthday
of Osiris in the Ritual (ch. 130). Osiris, or the young god Horus,
came to earth as lord of wine, and is said to be “full of wine” at the
fair Uaka festival. The rubric to chapter 130 states that “bread,
beer, wine, and all good things” are to be offered to the manes upon
the birthday of Osiris, which, in the course of time, became equivalent
to our New Year’s festival, or Christmas Day. The grapes were ripe
in Egypt at the time the imagery was given its starry setting. This
offers a datum as determinative of time and season. The times
might change in heaven’s “enormous year”; other doctrines be
developed under other names; the grapes be turned to raisins. But
the old Festival of Intoxication still lived on when celebrated in the
name of Christ. The babe that is born on Christmas Day in the
morning is Horus of the inundation still.
The mythical ideal of a saviour-child was Egyptian. But this
ideal did not originate in the human child. The child was preceded
by other types of eternal, ever-coming youth. Each year salvation
came to Egypt with the waters just in time to save the land from
drought and famine, and the power that saved it was represented by
the shoot of the papyrus, or the fish as the bringer of food and drink
744
ANCIENT EGYPT
on which the salvation of the people depended; and the bringer
of these was Horus the saviour, as the Messu of the inundation.
Horus the jocund who rose up as Orion “full of wine,” with
Krater for his constellated “cup” that held 7,000 gallons of
intoxicating drink; Horus who brought the grapes to make the
wine; who drowned the fiery dragon Hydra, was he who came
to Egypt as a veritable saviour once a year.
The same
mythical character passed into Greece and is also repeated in
the Canonical Gospels as the wine-bibber who comes eating and
drinking.
In this way the birth of the child at Christmas and the rebirth at
Easter came to represent the keeping of time in the great year, which
can be calculated by a twofold process of reckoning, from the original
starting-point. On the one hand, the lapse of time in the course
of precession is five months = the equinox passing through the five
signs, that is, from July 25th (the first of Taht) to December 25th.
On the other hand, the time taken for the equinox to travel through
the five signs is the exact equivalent in the great year to the five
months’ lapse in the solar year of 365 days. The reckoning has
to be made one way by the lesser year, from July 25th to December
25th in accordance with the natural fact. The other way it has to be
computed on the scale of the great year in the cycle of precession.
The total result of this twofold and verifiable computation is that on
the one side we are ultimately landed with a birthday of Iusa in the
solstice at Christmas, and on the other hand we are landed with the
birthday or day of rebirth for Iusa at Easter, when the equinox was
entering the sign of the fishes, about 255 years before the time that
has been falsely dated “B.C.”
One knows well enough that Christian credulity is quite capable of
still assuming that this Jesus who manifested during 10,000 years in the
astronomical mythology, and who was accreting the typical character
of the unique person all that time, is but the fore-shadow cast backwards by the historical figure in whom they believe as the one reality
of all realities. Nevertheless, the fact remains that, such being the
character pre-extant, there was nothing left to have any historical
human origin at the wrong end of 10,000 years.
This is a strictly scientific and not-to-be-controverted demonstration
of the indubitable truth that the birthday of the Messiah now celebrated on the 25th of December had been celebrated for at least
10,000 years on the corresponding day as the birth of the Egyptian
Messu at the feast of the Messiu on the first day of the Egyptian year,
which was the 25th of July, from the time when the Easter equinox
was in the sign of the lion. There is evidence also that the lapse of
time was religiously rectified in the readjusted calendar according to
the course of precession from July 25th down to December 25th,
when the winter solstice coincided with the sign of Sagittarius and the
vernal equinox first entered the sign of Pisces, in the year that was
erroneously dated. Through all the ten or eleven millenniums intervening the Messu had periodically manifested in the annual inundation and as the fulfiller of time in the house of a thousand years,
whilst the Easter equinox kept travelling and the birthplace shifting,
THE JESUS-LEGEND
745
from Virgo to the lion, from the lion to the crab, from the twins to the
bull, from the ram to the fishes. All that went to the making of the
latest legendary saviour, barring the false belief, was pre-extant on
entirely other grounds in the Egyptian mythology and eschatology; and
when the Easter equinox entered the sign of the fishes, about 255 B.C.,
the Jesus who is the one verifiable founder of so-called Christianity was
at least 10,000 years of age and had been travelling hither as the Ever
Coming One through all this period of time. During that vast length
of years the young Fulfiller was periodically mothered as mortal by the
Virgin with Seb for his reputed earthly father and with Anup the baptizer as his precursor and announcer in the wilderness. All that time
he had fought the battle with Satan in the desert during forty days and
nights each year in every one of those 10,000 years as a matter of fact
in the natural phenomena of time and season in Egypt. During
those 10,000 years that ideal of the divine incarnated in Iusa the
Coming Son had gone on growing in the mind of Egypt preparatory
to its being rendered historically as the divine man of a later cult by
those deluded idiotai who dreamt the astronomical forecast had been
fulfilled in Hebrew prophecy and in veritable human fact, through
their ignorance of sign-language and the wisdom of the past.
The two birthdays at Christmas and Easter which were assigned
to Iusa in his two characters of child-Horus and Horus the adult,
Horus the Earth-born and Horus the Heaven-born in the Osirian
mythos, were brought on as the two birthdays of Jesus. But there
was a diversity of opinion amongst the Christian Fathers as to
whether Jesus the Christ was born in the winter solstice or in the
vernal equinox. It was held by some that the 25th of March was
the natal day. Others maintained that this was the day of the
incarnation. According to Clement Alexander, the birth of Jesus
took place upon the 25th of March. But in Rome the festival of
Lady-day was celebrated on the 25th of March in commemoration of
the miraculous conception in the womb of a virgin, which virgin
gives birth to the child at Christmas, nine months afterwards.
According to the Gospel of James (ch. 18) it was in the equinox,
and consequently not at Christmas, that the virgin birth took place.
At the moment of Mary’s delivery on what is designated “the day of
the Lord” the birth of the Babe in the cave is described. It occurs
at Bethlehem. Joseph went out and sought a midwife in the
country of Bethlehem. “And I, Joseph, walked, and I walked not:
and I looked up into the sky, and saw the air violently agitated; and I
looked up at the pole of heaven, and saw it stationary, and the fowls of
heaven were still; and I looked at the earth and saw a vessel lying, and
workmen reclining by it, with their hands in the vessel, and those who
handled did not handle it, and those who took hold did not lift, and
those who presented it to their mouth did not present, but the faces of all
were looking up; and I saw the sheep scattered, and the sheep stood, and
the shepherd lifted up his hand to strike them, and his hand remained
up; and I looked at the stream of the river, and I saw that the mouths
of the kids were down, and not drinking; and everything which was
being impelled forward was intercepted in its course.” There can be
no doubt of this description being equinoctial. It is a picture of the
746
ANCIENT EGYPT
perfect counterpoise between night and day which only occurs at the
level of the equinox when the Lord of the balance is reborn in the
house of a thousand years, or at some other fresh stage in the circuit
of precession: and the Messiah Dag was now in the house of the
fish and of bread, with the prophecy fulfilled according to the
astronomical reckoning.
This duality of the divine birth at Christmas and Easter has been
the cause of inextricable confusion to the Christians, who never could
adjust the falsehood to the fact; and now at last we recover the
fact itself that will be fatal to the falsehood.
It will be elaborately demonstrated that the concocters of Christianity and its spurious records had a second-hand acquaintanceship
with the Egyptian Ritual, and that they wrought into their counterfeit
Gospels all that could be made to look more or less historical-like
as a sacerdotal mode of obtaining mastery over the minds of the
utterly ignorant, who were held to be the “better believers.” But
they never could determine whether the divine child was born at
Christmas or at Easter, which was naturally impossible to the one-man
scheme of supposed historic fulfilment. Again, in the Christian
version the crucifixion = the death of Osiris, has been postponed until
Easter. This makes the period of mourning wrong. In Egypt there
was a time of fasting for forty days during the Egyptian Lent. The
mourning and the fasting naturally followed the suffering and the
death of Osiris, which supplied the raison d’être. But when the death
was shifted to Easter, to be celebrated in accordance with the Jewish
Passover, to which it was hitched on, the long time of fasting remained
as in Egypt, and for the first time in this world the death was
preceded by the mourning with which the murder is supposed to
have been commiserated and solemnized. The fourth Sunday in Lent
is commonly observed in Europe by the name of “Dead Sunday.”
But the death then celebrated or “carried out” has no relation to a
personal crucifixion that is assumed to have occurred once upon a
time at Easter. Such customs followed Christmas or the death in
winter with a prehistoric significance varying in accordance with the
old style and new in the keeping of the festivals; whereas
there is no death at Christmas in the Christian scheme to be
celebrated before Easter or to account for the mourning-festival
during Lent. The death and rebirth at Christmas, or New Year,
and the resurrection at Easter can only be explained by the Osirian
mysteries, and these are still celebrated throughout Europe, precisely
the same as in Asia and in Africa. The Ritual also has a word to say
concerning the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday, and the Christian
Sabbath sacred to the sun.
The ancient Egyptians celebrated
festivals on the first, the sixth, the seventh, and the fifteenth of the
month. The feast of the first and the fifteenth was a festival of Ra
and the day was dedicated to Horus, who represented the earlier sun,
and whose Sabbath was the seventh day, or Saturday in the earlier
cult. It is said in the Ritual, “I am with Horus on the day when the
Festivals of Osiris are celebrated, and when offerings are made on
the sixth day of the month, and on the Feast of the Tenait in
Heliopolis” (Rit., ch. 1). This Tenait was a feast associated with
the seventh day of the month. Here then is a feast of the sixth and
THE JESUS-LEGEND
747
seventh, or night and day, corresponding to the Jewish Sabbath.
Osiris entered the moon on the sixth day of the month. The
seventh was the feast-day, when “couplings and conceptions did
abound.” This was celebrated in Annu, the city of the sun, and
thus far the day was a sun-day. The word tenait denotes a measure
of time, a division, a week or a fortnight. A feast-day on the
seventh, dedicated to the solar god, would be the sun’s day, or
Sunday once a month. Now, two great festivals were dedicated to
Ra, the solar god, upon the seventh and fifteenth of the month. Here,
then, is a fifteen-day fortnight, or solar half-month (fifteen days), which
was correlated with the half-month, or tenait, of fourteen days in the
lunar reckoning. The sixth of the month was a moon-day, on the
night of which the love-feast of Agapæ began with the entrance of
Osiris, earlier Horus, into the moon, or the conjunction, say, of
Horus or Hu with Hathor. This was on Friday night. The next day
was a phallic festival in celebration of the celestial conjunction; it
was the day assigned to Sebek = Saturn in conjunction with his
mother. The festival was luni-solar; hence it was celebrated on the
sixth and seventh of the month, like the Sabbath of the Jews, which is
repeated later on the sixth and seventh days of the week. Now, if we
start with Sunday as the first of the month, the tenait festival fell on
Saturday as a Sabbath of the seventh day. The second festival of
Ra, that of Sunday, was on the fifteenth of the month, which would
be eight days after the Tenait-feast upon the seventh of the month.
The tenait on the Saturday and a feast of the 15th on a Sunday show
the existence of a Sabbath celebrated on Saturday, the 7th, and
another, eight days later, on Sunday, the 15th of the month. These,
however, were monthly at first, as the festivals of Osiris or Ra, and
not weekly, as they afterwards became with the Jews and the
Christians. The festival of Saturday as the seventh day of the
month is Jewish. The Sabbath of Sunday, the day of Ra, is a
survival of the festival celebrated on the 15th of the month in
ancient Egypt as the sun’s day, or Sunday, once a month.
It was the custom at one time in Rome for the mummy, or corpse of
the dead Christ, to be exhibited in the churches on Holy Thursday,
the day before the Crucifixion, and if the symbolical corpse is not now
exposed to the public gaze, the Holy Sepulchre is still exhibited.
This has the appearance of commemorating two different deaths, the
only explanation of which is to be found in the Egyptian mythos.
Osiris was the Corpus Christi at Christmas or in the solstice. He died to
be reborn again as Horus in various phenomena on the third day
in the moon; also from the water in his baptism; after forty days in
the buried grain; and at the end of three months, in the Easter
equinox. In the Kamite original the night of the Last Supper, and of
the death of Osiris, and the laying out of his body on the table of
offerings are identical. It is the “night of provisioning the altar” and
the provender was the mummy of the god provided for the mortuary
meal. That was the dead Christ, or Corpus Christi (Rit., ch. 18).
Holy Thursday is especially consecrated by the Roman Catholic
Church as a commemoration of the Last Supper and the institution of
the eucharistic meal, at which the corpus of the Christ already dead
was laid out to be eaten sacramentally. It is similar in the Gospels.
748
ANCIENT EGYPT
The Last Supper is there celebrated, and the body and blood of the
Christ are there partaken of before the Crucifixion has occurred. This, in
the Egyptian original, would be the corpse of Osiris, the karest-mummy
of him who died in the winter solstice three months before the
resurrection in the equinox occurred at Easter . Seven days of
mourning for the burial of Osiris were also celebrated at the end of the
month Choiak. This was known as the “fêtes des ténèbres,” which,
according to Brugsch, commemorated the “sept jours qu’il a passé dans
le ventre de sa mère, Nût”—equivalent to Jonah being in the belly of
the fish, only the days of darkness in this phase are seven instead of
three. These seven days of mourning are the prototype of Passion
week in the rubrical usage of the Roman Church, during which the
pictures of the cross (and Crucifixion) are all covered up and veiled
in darkness. Here the funeral ceremony followed the burial of Osiris,
whereas in the Christian version the fêtes des ténèbres precede the
death and burial of the supposed historic victim.
According to the synoptics, it was on the 15th of the month Nisan
that the Crucifixion occurred. But according to John, it was on the
14th. These two different reckonings are solar and lunar. When
time was reckoned by the lunar month of twenty-eight days, the 14th
was the day of mid-month, or full moon, the day of the equinox and of
the Easter Pasch. In the luni-solar reckoning of thirty days to the
month, the 15th was the day of full moon in the equinox. The two
dates for the Crucifixion are identical with these two possible dates for
the equinox. There was a fortnight, or half-moon of fourteen days,
and a half-month of fifteen days. The French fortnight is quinze
jours, or fifteen days, and this is the fifteen-day fortnight of the
Christian festivals, the Passion and the Resurrection. The 14th Nisan
was true to the lunar calculation of time, but the 15th was also
needed for the solar reckoning, and, as usual, the Christian founders
have brought on both in aiming at the one supposed event. It has
lately become known, from a lexicographical tablet belonging to
the library of Assurbanipal, that the Assyrians also kept a Sabbath
(Shapatu) of the 15th day of the month, or full moon in the luni-solar
reckoning.
Thus the crucifixion assigned by the synoptics to the 15th Nisan
was according to the solar month, and the 14th assigned by John was
lunar, both being astronomical, and both impossible as dates in
human history. The festival of the seventh day is Jewish, and a festival
of the eighth day was continued by the Christians. Barnabas
(Ep. 15) says, “We observe the eighth day with gladness, in which
Jesus rose from the dead.” This identifies the eighth day as a
Sunday, and only in the Egyptian way of celebrating the 15th
following the Tenait on the seventh can the eighth day be a Sabbath.
The seventh day was Saturday, the day of Sebek. The eighth day
was Sunday, once a month, the day of Ra, and thus the eighth
day became the Lord’s day in the pre-Christian religion; and the
origin of both festivals or Sabbaths of the seventh day and of the
15th, eight days afterwards, can be traced to the sun-god as
Horus and the sun-god as Ra (Rit., ch. 113, 7). “The ancients
speak of the Passion and Resurrection Pasch as a fifteen days’
solemnity. Fifteen days (the length of time) was enforced by law of
THE JESUS-LEGEND
749
the empire and commanded to the universal Church” (Bingham, 9,
p. 95; Gieseler, Catholic Church, sect. 53, p. 178). Fifteen days
include the week of seven days and the period of eight days. Both
days—Saturday the day of Horus and Sunday the day of Ra, as the
seventh-day feast and the eighth-day Sabbath—were being celebrated
as their two feast-days by the Christians in the middle of the fifth
century, and these were known as the feasts of Saturday and of the
Lord’s day, or Sunday (Socrates, Hist. Eccles., lib. v. cap. 22, p. 234).
When Dionysius the Areopagite arranged the dates for the Christian
celebration of the festivals he had only the pre-Christian data to
go upon. Both the dates and data were Egyptian, and these had
been continued with the calendar and the festivals more or less
correctly. But the early Christians never really knew which was the
true Sabbath, the seventh day or the eighth, so they celebrated both.
As now demonstrated, according to the record of the mysteryteachers in the astronomical mythology of Egypt the legend of
a child that was born of a mother who was a virgin at the time
is at least as old as the constellation in the zodiac when the birthplace (in precession) coincided with the sign of Virgo some 15,000
years ago. The virgin, in this category, was the goddess Neith. The
child was Horus-Sebek, the great fish of the inundation that typified
the deliverer from drought and hunger, and was, in other words,
the saviour of the world. Thus, by aid of equinoctial precession, the
origin and development of the Christian legend and its festivals can
be scientifically traced in the pre-Christian past from the time when
the virgin birth of the divine child and the house of birth were in the
sign of Virgo, or in Leo for the present purpose, reckoned by the
movement in precession.
We shall find the virgin motherhood of Jesus, the divine sonship
of Jesus, the miracles of Jesus, the self-sacrifice of Jesus, the
humanity of Jesus, the compassion of Jesus, the Sayings of Jesus,
the resurrection of Jesus had all been ascribed in earlier ages to
Iusa, or Iusu, the son of Iusāas and of Atum-Ra. Thus Egypt was
indeed the cradle of Christianity, but not of the current delusion
called “historic Christianity.” The saying attributed to the Hebrew
deity “out of Egypt did I call my son” was true, but in a sense
undreamt of by the Christian world. Such was the foundation of the
Jesus-legend in the astronomical mythology with Horus of the
inundation on his papyrus, or Iusa = Atum-Horus in the zodiac. As
we shall see, nothing was added to the Egypto-gnostic “wisdom” by
the carnalizers of the Christ in Jerusalem or Rome except the
literalization of the mythos and perversion of the eschatology in
a fictitious human history.
A religion of the cross was first of all established in the mysteries
of Memphis as the cult of Ptah and his son Iu-em-hetep, otherwise
Atum-Horus, who passed at Annu into Atum-Ra, the father in
spirit, with Iusa, son of Iusāas, as the ever-coming Messianic
son.
We have evidence from the pyramid of Medum that from 6,000 to
7,000 years ago the dead in Egypt were buried in a faith which was
founded on the mystery of the cross, and rationally founded too,
because that cross was a figure of the fourfold foundation on which
750
ANCIENT EGYPT
heaven itself was built. The Tat-cross is a type of the eternal in Tattu.
But whether as a fourfold, a fivefold, or a twelvefold support it was
a figure of an all-sustaining, all-renewing, all-revivifying power that
was re-erected and religiously besought for hope, encouragement,
and succour, when the day was at the darkest and things were at
the worst in physical nature. The sun apparently was going out.
The life of Egypt in the Nile was running low and lower toward the
desert drought. The spirit of vegetation died within itself. The
rebel powers of evil gathered from all quarters for the annual conflict,
led by Apap and the Sebau in one domain, and by Sut and his
seventy-two conspirators in another. At this point began the ten
mysteries grouped together in the Ritual (ch. 18). The Tat for
the time being was overthrown. The deity suffered, as was represented, unto death. The heart of life that bled in every wound was
no longer felt to pulsate. The god in matter was inert and breathless.
Make ye the word of Osiris truth against his enemies! Raise up the
Tat, which portrayed the resurrection of the god; let the mummytype of the eternal be once more erected as the mainstay and divine
support of all. It was thus that the power of salvation through
Osiris-Tat was represented in the mysteries. Fundamentally the
cross was astronomical. It is a figure of time, as much so in its way
as is the clock. It is a measure of time made visible upon the scale
and in the circle of the year instead of the hour. A cross with equal
arms + denotes the time of equal day and night. Hence it is a figure of
the equinox. Another cross ✝ is a figure of time in the winter
on which the
Ö
four quarters are more obviously portrayed in the four arms of the
solstice. It is a modified form of the Tat of Ptah
pedestal. This was re-erected annually in the depths of the solstice
where the darkness lasts some sixteen hours and the daylight only
eight—the measure of time that is imaged by this Tat-figure of the
cross. These two are now known as the Greek and Roman crosses,
and under those two names the fact has been lost sight of that the
first is a type of time in the equinox, the other a symbol of the
winter solstice. The two crosses are scientific figures in the astronomical mythology. They were symbols of mystical significance in
the Egyptian eschatology: and they formed the ground plan of the
Ka-chambers of King Rahetep and his wife Nefermat in the pyramid
of Medum (Petrie, Medum).
The tree was first of all a sign of sustenance when the sustainer was
the Great Earth Mother; Apt in the Dom Palm, Uati in the papyrus
plant, Hathor in the sycamore, or Isis in the persea-tree. On this the
type of Ptah was based as the Tat-image of a power that sustained
the universe. Osiris-Tat then typified the power that sustained
the human soul in death. This was buried with the mummy as a fetish
in the coffin, where the dead were seen to lie at rest in the eternal
arms. And thus a cultus of the cross was founded many thousand
years ago. The Christian doctrine of the crucifixion, with the human
victim raised aloft as the sin-offering for all the world, is but a ghastly
simulacrum of the primitive meaning: a shadowy phantom of the
original substance. The doctrine had its beginning with an idea of upbearing, but not in the moral domain. When the sky was suspended by
THE JESUS-LEGEND
751
Ptah in Amenta the act was symbolized by raising up the Tat-type of
stability and support. This not only sustained the sky of the netherworld, it also imaged the divine backbone of the universe. The Tat,
was a figure of the pole and the four corners, which united in one
the “five supports” or fivefold tree of the Egypto-gnostic mystery
(Pistis Sophia, B. 1, 1-3). Otherwise stated, it was a symbol of the
power that sustained the heavens with the supporting pole and the
arms of the four quarters. This power was personified in Ptah as well
as figured in the Tat. Hence the god is seen within the type as PtahSekari or the later Asar-Tat. Then the type of the eternal is the
eternal’s own self: the power that sustains the universe in very person
who is Ptah in one cult, Osiris in the other. The superincumbent
weight and pressure on the sustaining power is probably indicated by
the squelched face and compressed features of the Osiris-Tat (Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, vol. 3, pl. 25). The sustaining power within the
Tat would make the god and the cross to be one as they are in the
Osiris Tat. The deceased arises from the tomb as the Tat. He says
“I am Tat, the son of Tat” (Rit., ch. 1), or of the eternal who
establishes the soul for eternity in the mystery of Tattu (Rit., ch.
17). Hence the figure of a god extended crosswise as the sustainer of the universe could be equivalent to the cross. The Hindu
figure of Witoba, for example, is portrayed in space as the Crucified
without the cross (Moor’s Hindu Pantheon). On the other hand, the
Swastika is a form of the cross without the crucified. In the Christian
Iconography, as Didron shows, Christ and the cross are identical, as
were Horus and the Tat. The cross takes the place of the Tat as
symbol of supporting power, and the god as the sustaining force
within the Tat may account for the legend of the gospel Jesus being
the bearer of the cross on which he was to suffer death. A resurrection of Osiris from death in the month Choiak is mentioned in
several texts (as in the Pap. Biling. Rhind., ii. 4, line 8, ed. Birch, plate
8) without giving the day of the month, but of course rebirth and
resurrection in Amenta were identical, and the resurrection is also
signified there by the raising of the Tat-pillar or cross. When the
Tat was annually overthrown it was raised again by the uplifting
power of the god represented by the Son as the sign of resurrection.
Thus the genesis of the legend of the cross, like to that of the Christ,
can be traced in Egypt to the cult of Ptah at Memphis, where the
religion of the cross originated; and to Annu or On, where it was
continued in the cult of Atum-Ra with Iu-em-hetep as the Egyptian
Jesus. This, as we show, was Iusa the Jew-God brought out of Egypt
by the Ius or Aius, or when the name is spelt with the letter J, by the
Jews. For 13,000 years has Iu the Egyptian Jew been coming astronomically as Iu the Su or Iu-sa, the son of Atum, or rather as Atum manifesting in the person of the son. For 13,000 years he has been the
bringer of good-will and peace and plenty to the world in accordance
with the meanings of his title, Iu-em-hetep. And as this Jesus is the
ever-coming-one who is always figured one foot before the other and
best foot foremost in the act of coming, never-hasting never-halting,
and as Iu is the Jew we see in this wanderer of eternity with no rest
for the sole of his foot through all the cycles of time, the original personification of him who lives in later legend as the “Wandering Jew.”
752
ANCIENT EGYPT
How often has it been confidently declared that the idea of a divine
fatherhood was introduced into the world some time after A.D. by
an historical Jesus; whereas it is a matter of scientific demonstration
that the doctrine was established in the cult of Ptah, and perfected in
the religion of Atum-Ra; in both of which Iusa or Jesus was the
ever-coming son as demonstrator for the eternal in the sphere of time.
The doctrine of a future life, or in modern phrase, the immortality
of the soul, was also taught at Memphis many thousand years ago
under at least four different figures of the re-arising human spirit.
One of these was the Apis called “the second life of Ptah”; one
the Scarabæus termed “the old one who becomes young”; a third
was the Hawk of soul emerging from the mortal mummy; and a
fourth Iu-em-hetep, as the type of an eternal child.
Until the time of Ptah, the Totemic types prevailed in the
Egyptian astronomical mythology. There was only the Great Mother,
in several characters, with her children, the same as in Totemism.
But when the fatherhood was founded in Ptah his predecessors were
designated his children. We learn from a hieroglyphic inscription on
the temple of Iu-em-hetep at Philæ that he was called “the great one,
son of Ptah, the creative god, made by Tanen (a title of Ptah), begotten
by him, the god of divine forms, who giveth life to all men.” On
one line of development he became the father-god as Atum-Ra
at Heliopolis; on the other he was God the son as Atum-Horus or
Iu-em-hetep, he who comes with peace or rest.
Christian ignorance notwithstanding the Gnostic Jesus is the
Egyptian Horus who was continued by the various sects of gnostics
under both the names of Horus and of Jesus. In the gnostic iconography of the Roman Catacombs child-Horus reappears as the
mummy-babe who wears the solar disc. The royal Horus is represented
in the cloak of royalty, and the phallic emblem found there witnesses
to Jesus being Horus of the resurrection. The resurrection of
Osiris, the mummy-god, is reproduced in the Roman Catacombs as
the raising of Lazarus. Amongst the numerous types of Horus
repeated in Rome as symbols of the alleged “historic” Jesus are
“Horus on his papyrus” as the Messianic shoot or natzer; Horus
the branch of endless ages as the vine; Horus as Ichthus, the fish;
Horus as the bennu or phœnix; Horus as the dove; Horus as the
eight-rayed star of the Pleroma; Horus the Scarabæus; Horus as
the child-mummy with the head of Ra; Horus as the black child, or
Bambino; Horus, of the triangle (reversed)
A
P
w
(Lapidarian
Gallery of the Vatican, Lundy, p. 92). Horus in his resurrection
betwixt the two trees; Horus attended by the two divine sisters, or
two women; Horus as the lion of the double force; Horus as
Serapis; these and others were reproduced as Egypto-gnostic by gnostic
artists in illustration of Egypto-gnostic tenets, doctrines, and dogmas.
The Catacombs of Rome are crowded with the Egypto-gnostic types
which had served to Roman, Persian, Greek, and Jew as evidence for
the non-historic origins of Christianity. To Marcion of Pontus, for
THE JESUS-LEGEND
753
example, the epicene Serapis would represent the soul of both sexes
which was the non-historical Egypto-gnostic Christ. Horus of the
inundation brings the fish and grapes for the Uaka festival (“Called
Christ as a Fisherman,” Lundy, fig. 54). Horus still issues from the
mummy as the young sun-god with the head of Ra, the same as in
the Ritual. The soul of Ra still issues from the sepulchre as the
phœnix = bennu; and Osiris comes forth at the call of Horus from
the tomb. Amsu still rises from betwixt the trees of Nut and Hathor
as the good shepherd with the lamb upon his shoulder, wearing the
cloak of royalty, and carrying the panpipes in his hand as a figure
of the All-one, that is, as Horus of the resurrection. Double Horus,
as the child of the virgin and the son of God the Father, is portrayed
in both his characters as the heir of Seb, god of earth, and the heir of
Ra, the father in heaven. As the heir of Seb he is seated on a throne
that is supported on the head of an aged man, who represents the god
of earth (“Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus,” Lundy, fig. 41). As the heir
of Ra he is enthroned in heaven, or on a figure of heaven (Nut), as
Horus divinized (Lundy, fig. 42; Didron, figs. 18 and 66). The ox
and the ass which appear in the Roman Catacombs with the worshippers
of the new-born infant are witnesses for Iusa, and not for an historical
Jesus. Iusa in Egypt had been represented by both the ass and the
ox, or the short-horned bullock, in the cult of Atum-Ra at On. In a
sculptured sarcophagus of the fourth century, the three Magi are offering
gifts to the divine infant, or mummy-child. These, according to their
caps, are Zoroastrians. They are worshippers, however, of the risen
Christ. Only the risen one in this case is Mithra, son of the sun, and
not the Jewish Jesus. The story of Jesus riding on two asses, or on
an ass and the foal of an ass, in the triumphal procession to Jerusalem
also shows that he was one with Iusa, the Egyptian Jesus. It has
been suggested that the Gospel narrative was derived from the Greek
tradition of Dionysius riding on two asses. But it is of incomparably
greater likelihood that it was derived from the Hebrew prophecy
being converted into an historical event. Either way, there was one
origin for both in the Egyptian mythical representation. As already
shown, Iu, the ass in ancient Egypt, was a type of Atum-Ra, and his
son Iusa in the Kamite mythos. It was a zoötype of the swift-goer
where there was no horse, and bearer of the solar god who was Atum
in the two characters of the father and the son, the old one and the young
one, or, in sign-language, the ass and the foal of the ass, upon which
the Messu, or Messiah rode, in coming up to day from Amenta. Iusa
is portrayed with asses’ ears. Iu is both the ass and the god under one
name, and if not portrayed as riding on an ass, or, according to the
Märchen, on two asses, he is represented by the ass with the solar
disc upon his head, at the sides of which are the two ears of an ass.
According to Lefébure “he seems to raise himself by means of a
rope” (“Book of Hades,” Records of the Past, v. 10, 130). Thus, and
in no other way, the youthful sun-god rode upon the ass as Iusa or as
“Horus with the royal countenance,” considered as the son of Ra
(ib., p. 131). The twin-lions form another tell-tale type. Ciampini
says two lions used to be stationed at the doors of ancient churches
and basilicas in Italy, not as mere ornaments, but for some mystical
signification (Vet. Mon. I. C., 3, p. 35). As Egyptian, the type is as old
754
ANCIENT EGYPT
as the Kherefu, which were stationed in the sign of Leo at our point of
beginning in the Jesus-legend where Iusa was born as Atum-Horus,
the lion-faced, supported by the two lions on the ecliptic, which
imaged the double force of the young sun-god coming in the strength
and glory of the father, Atum-Ra, whether supported by the two lions
or riding on the ass. Thus the two lions supposed to be guarding the
doors of the church in Rome were at that time guarding the doubledoors of the horizon, through which the solar god came forth at Easter
in the equinox.
Naturally it was for mythical not for historical reasons that the
child-Christ remained a starrily-bejewelled blackamoor as the typical
healer in Rome. Jesus, the divine healer, does not retain the black
complexion of Iu-em-hetep in the canonical Gospels, but he does in
the Church of Rome when represented by the little black bambino. A
jewelled image of the child-Christ as a blackamoor is sacredly
preserved at the headquarters of the Franciscan order, and true to its
typical character as a symbolical likeness of Iusa the healer, the
little black figure is still taken out in state, with its regalia on, to visit
the sick, and demonstrate the supposed healing power of this
Egyptian Æsculapius thus Christianized. The virgin mother, who
was also black, survived in Italy as in Egypt. At Oropa, near Bietta,
the Madonna and her child-Christ are not white but black, as they so
often were in Italy of old, and as the child is yet conditioned in the
little black Jesus of the eternal city. According to local tradition the
image of the black bambino was carved at Jerusalem out of the root
of a tree from the mount of Olives. This supplies another illustration
of Egyptian origin. In the solar mythos the divine babe rises from
the emerald tree of dawn. In the Ritual he issues from the Asru-tree
(ch. 42). But under one Egyptian type the tree of dawn is the
bakhu or olive-tree, the “son of oil,” from which the solar light was
born. Hence mount Bakhu, the solar birthplace, is the mount of
Olives, and the infant born from the tree of dawn was represented by
the image carved out of the tree upon mount Olivet. In this, as in
unnumbered other instances, the mythos lives obscurely in the legend
which is still capable of reconversion. The cult of the child who was
black is further illustrated at the festivals of the Bambino in Rome,
when sermons are preached from the pulpit by “the mouths of babes
and sucklings.” There is a little black doll in the hieroglyphics
which is a determinative of the word “men” to be concealed. This
appears alongside of Atum as variant to the Ankh-symbol of life,
and is very suggestive of the little black bambino as a figure of childHorus in his darkness, or Iu-em-hetep in Amenta. From this standpoint it is possible to see how it came to pass that the Jew-God could
have a son born to him with a black complexion, and thus account
for the black Jesus that is worshipped in the cult of papal Rome.
Surely the profoundest sigh of an ever-warring world went up to
heaven in the cult of Iu-em-hetep, who was worshipped as the giver
of rest, the Kamite prince of peace. The bringer of peace was the
giver of rest to the weary; the word hetep having both meanings.
From the time of the fifth dynasty the Egyptian dead were buried
“em-hetep” or “In pace” in the great resting-place of Amenta. This
giver of rest was the leader of his followers into the kingdom of rest,
THE JESUS-LEGEND
755
where they reigned with him in the glory of the father. In one
of the sayings of Jesus, or Iu-em-hetep, “Jesus saith” of him who
seeks, “Astonished he (the seeker) shall reach the kingdom, and
having reached the kingdom he shall rest” (“New Sayings of Jesus”).
It is also said in the Gospel according to the Hebrews, “He that
wonders shall reach the kingdom, and having reached the kingdom
he shall rest.” “The promise of Christ (or Jesus) is great and
wonderful and rest in the kingdom to come and life eternal”
(Clement II, Epis. v. 5). And in the Acts of Thomas it is said that
“they who worthily partake of the goods of this world have rest, and
in rest shall they reign.”
Iu-em-hetep is portrayed as the youthful sage and precocious
teacher. He is the “heir of the temple,” depicted as the teacher in
the temple; the boy of twelve years who wears the skull-cap of
wisdom, and sits in the seat of learning. He holds a papyrus on his
knee and is in the act of unrolling it for his discourse. This is
he who personated the divine Word in human form as the wise
and wondrous child of whom the tales of the infancy were told.
Hence he was the mythical teacher, and reputed author of the
“Sayings” and writer of the Books of Wisdom. But it cannot even
be pretended that any historic personage named Jesus, alleged
to have been born into the world in the year one, or four, of the
present era, could have been the author of “the wisdom of Jesus” in
the Apocrypha. But there is the book, and there is the name to
be accounted for.
In the “New Sayings of Jesus,” found at
Oxyrhynchus, it is said in the opening paragraph, “These are the
words (or logoi) which Jesus the living spake to . . . and Thomas,
and he said unto (them) ‘Every one that hearkens to these words
shall never taste of death.’ ” And this is the common formula in
the rubrical directions of the Ritual.
For example, the 64th
chapter is to be recited in order that “the soul of the person may not
die a second time” or may not suffer the second death. It is also
said of ch. 20, “Let the person say this chapter and he will come
forth by day after death, and escape from the fire.” These are
the words of life that deliver the soul from second death in Amenta.
Of chapter 70 it is said, “If this scripture is known upon earth
he will come forth by day (from the dead) and walk among the
living. His name will be uninjured for ever.” Ch. 130 is entitled
“a book by which the soul is made to live for ever.” By means of
ch. 180 the manes takes the form of a living soul. In truth
one half of the Ritual consists of the magical words of power that
save a soul from the dreaded second death; the rest describe the
way of salvation together with the transformations and trials which
have to be undergone in the course of working it out. Iu-em-hetep
was pre-eminently the divine healer, the medicine-man amongst the
Egyptian gods. He was the good physician of souls as well as the
healer of bodily disease. He was the caster-out of evil demons, the
giver of sleep and rest to sufferers in pain. Æsculapius was a Greek
version of Iu-em-hetep, “the great son of Ptah.” The Greeks called
his temple near the city of Memphis “The Æsculapion.” “Under
the Ptolemies a small temple was built in honour of Iu-em-hetep on
the island of Philæ”; and a Greek version of the hieroglyphic
756
ANCIENT EGYPT
inscription was placed over the door by the command of Ptolemy V
(Budge, Gods of Eg., vol. i, p. 23). Iu-em-hetep is not mentioned
by name in the “Book of the Dead,” but it is said to the deceased in
“the Ritual of Embalmment” “thy soul uniteth itself to Iu-em-hetep,
whilst thou art in the funeral valley,” where he takes the name
of Horus as lord of the resurrection.
The cult of Iu-em-hetep was eclipsed or much obscured by the
Osirian religion. In fact Iu-em-hetep was but a title of him who was
the bringer of peace and good luck, and who was Atum-Horus as the
son of Ptah; hence Iu-em-hetep is far better known as Horus the
son of Osiris. Nevertheless, this cult of Iusa the child, the little hero
sayer and healer, had a remarkable recrudescence and a considerable
increase in Saitic and Greek times. We find that a temple was
erected for his worship at Sakkara between the Serapeum and
the village of Abusir. This is near enough in time to help in
establishing a link betwixt the Egyptian Iusa and the Jesus of
the Gospels, who was brought on from Memphis as Iu the Sa or son
of Ptah, to Annu as Iu the ever-coming sa or son of Atum-Ra,
thence to Alexandria as Iu-em-hetep, and to Greece as Imuthes, or
Æsculapius, the god of healing there as he had been in Egypt, and
to Rome as Jesus the Egypto-gnostic Christ.
In the transition from the old Egyptian religion to the new cult of
Christianity there was no factor of profounder importance than the
worship of Serapis. As the Emperor Hadrian relates, in his wellknown letter to Servianus, “those who worship Serapis are likewise
Christians; even those who style themselves the Bishops of Christ are
devoted to Serapis.” The very Patriarch himself (Tiberias, head of
the Jewish religion), when he comes to Egypt, is forced by some to
adore Serapis, by others to worship Christ. “There is but one God for
them all.” Clearly this was but a difference in type and title.
According to inscriptions at the Serapeum of Memphis, the ancient
Egyptian Serapis was born of the Virgin Mother, when she was
represented by the sacred heifer—a far earlier type than the mystical
human Virgin. Serapis was “the second life of Ptah.” Hence, as
Diodorus says (I. 25), Serapis was a name given to all persons after
their death or in their resurrection.
Prehistoric Christianity was founded, as Egyptian, on the
resurrection of the human soul from the deaf and dumb, the
blind and impotent inertia imaged in death, and its coming forth to
day as demonstrated by the reappearance of the eidolon or double of
the dead. The Egypto-gnostic Christ only existed in the spirit as a
spirit or a god. Their Christ was represented by the superhuman
types of the risen mummy; the eight-rayed star of the pleroma;
the divine hawk; the mystical dove; the sacred beetle; the lion,
fish or lamb; not by the man in an individual form of historic
personality. That is why there is no portrait of the man Christ-Jesus.
There is no human portrait for the reason that there was no man.
THE JESUS-LEGEND IN ROME.
Before it could be for the first time understood, the story outlined
so elusively in the canonical Gospels had to be retold in accordance
THE JESUS-LEGEND IN ROME
757
The Annunciation, Conception, Birth, and Adoration of the Child.
with the astronomical mythology, and more especially in terms of the
Osirian eschatology. The legend was so ancient in Egypt that in
the time of Amen-hetep, a Pharaoh of the 18th dynasty, it was humanly
applied to his child and to his consort Mut-em-Ua in the character of
the divine woman, the mother who,
like Neith, was ever-virgin. A passage and a picture from the “Natural
Genesis” (vol ii., p. 398) may be
repeated here. The story of the
Annunciation, the miraculous conception (or incarnation), the birth
and the adoration of the Messianic
infant had already been engraved in
stone and represented in four consecutive scenes upon the innermost
walls of the holy of holies (the
Meskhen) in the temple of Luxor
(which was built by Amen-hetep III.
about 1700 B.C., or some seventeen centuries before the events
depicted are commonly supposed to
have taken place. In these scenes
the maiden queen Mut-em-Ua, the
mother of Amen-hetep, her future
child, impersonates the virgin-mother,
who conceived and brought forth
without the fatherhood. The first
scene on the left hand shows the
god Taht, as divine word or logos,
in the act of hailing the virgin
queen and announcing to her that
she is to give birth to the coming
son. (That is, to bring forth the
royal Repa in the character of Horus
or Aten, the divine heir.) In the
second scene the ram-headed god
Kneph, in conjunction with Hathor,
gives life to her. This is the Holy
Ghost or spirit that causes conception, Neph being the spirit by nature
and by name. Impregnation and
conception are apparent in the
virgin’s fuller form.
Next, the
mother is seated on the midwife’s
stool, and the child is supported in
the hands of one of the nurses. The
fourth scene is that of the Adoration. Here the infant is enthroned,
receiving homage from the gods and gifts from men. Behind the deity,
who represents the holy spirit, on the right three men are
kneeling offering gifts with the right hand, and life with the left. The
child thus announced, incarnated, born and worshipped was the
758
ANCIENT EGYPT
Pharaonic representative of the Aten-sun or child-Christ of the Atencult, the miraculous conception of the ever-virgin mother imaged by
Mut-em-Ua. (The scenes were copied by Sharpe from the temple
at Luxor.) Thus the divine drama was represented humanly by
the royal lady who personated the mother of God, with her child
in this particular religion.
And here a dogma of “historic personality” may be seen in the
germ. Indeed, when the Pharaoh first assumed the vesture of divinity
and a doctrine of historic personality for the Messiah could be and
was established, Ra was the representative of God the Father and
the Repa was a type of God the Son, as heir-apparent for the eternal.
The father was the ever-living and the son the ever-coming one.
These, in the cult of Annu, were Atum-Ra the father, and Iusa,
the Egyptian Jesus, the coming son. The eternal existence of
the father was thus demonstrated by the ever-coming of the son.
These divine characters of the Ra and Repa, so to say, had become
historical in Usertsen First according to a record of the twelfth
dynasty. In this the king says of his God, the double Har-makhu,
“I am a king of his own making, a monarch long-living, not by
the Father. He exalted me as lord of both parts; as an infant not
yet gone forth; as a youth not yet come from my mother’s womb.”
This was in the character of the unbegotten Horus, the Virgin’s
child, who had no father (Records, vol. 12, pp. 53-4), and who as
Har-makhu was earlier than God the Father, Ra. We learn from
a still older document that the Son of God may be said to have
become historical in Egypt early in the fifth dynasty; that
is, as the Son of Ra. The earlier Pharaohs were not the sons
of Ra, they were Horus-kings. The “Son of Ra” then gave historic
personality to the god who was first imaged in the human form of
Atum-Iu.
Thenceforth the Repa, or heir-apparent, was the
representative of that ever-coming son who was the child of Iusāas
in the cult of Annu, and who was, in fact, the Egyptian Jesus or
Iusa, the coming son in historic personality as the royal representative of Ra.
Another version of the ancient legend that was at length converted
into Christian history has recently been discovered in Egypt. This
was written in Demotic, but however late the copy, the internal
evidence shows that it is an Egyptian folk-tale containing matter of
the indefinitely more ancient mythos. That is the all-important
point. The story is told of one Si-Osiris, the son of Khamuas, a
famous high priest of Ptah at Memphis who was head of the
hierarchy of his time, about 1250 B.C. The tale of Khamuas, so far as
it goes, is a perfect parallel to the story of the marvellous child that
is told in the Gospels, canonical or apocryphal, which contain some
portions of the mythos reduced to the status of the Märchen. There
was one origin for all—that is, Egyptian. The mythos is the parent of
the Märchen, and the unity of the Märchen is traceable to the
Egyptian mythology and eschatology—there, and nowhere else.
It is the story that had been dramatized and narrated by the
Egyptians during many thousand years in the cult of Ptah-Sekari
at Memphis; of Aten and of Atum-Iu at Annu, and of Osiris in
Egypt generally. Only minds completely crazed or fatally confused
THE JESUS-LEGEND IN ROME
759
by the current Christomania would suppose that the details of the
story, which is as old at least as the cult of Ptah in Memphis, were
derived from the “historic” version that was canonized at last as
Christian. The Ritual is a permanent reply to all such false
assumptions. At least the “Book of the Dead” is not a forgery of
post-Christian gnostics.
The folk-tale here is told of Si-Osiris, son of Setme-Khamuas, who
was incarnated as the human representative of Horus the divine. It
is said of Horus, son of Pa-neshe, “he being in the shape of Si-Osiris
made an effort of written magic against the man of Ethiopia.”
Moreover, this Horus comes up from Amenta on purpose to contend
against the black art of Hor, son of the negress, and in doing this
assumes the shape of the human Si-Osiris. As the translator
remarks, “the end of the story shows that Si-Osiris is really Horus,
son of Pa-neshe, who had obtained leave from Osiris to revisit the
earth.”
Setme-Khamuas, the son of Pharaoh Mer-ma-ra (King Rameses II.),
took to wife his sister Meh-wesekht, whom he loved devoutly, but
they had no child, and their hearts were grieved because of it. The
childless wife is spoken with one night, by superhuman visitants, in a
dream. They tell her (or words are spoken to the effect) that she
shall conceive and bear a child. Khamuas, her husband, is also
informed in a dream that his consort, who is called his sister, just as
Isis is the sister of Osiris, has conceived and will bear a son. “The
child that will be born, he (shall be named) Si-Osiris (Osiris’ son);
many are the marvels that he shall do in the land of Egypt”
(Griffith, Stories, p. 43). Meh-wesekht is told that she will find a
melon-vine, which shall be to her for medicine, and she is to give
of it to Khamuas. Then “she lay down by her husband and she
conceived seed of him” (Stories, p. 43).
In this account of conception the melon-plant, its gourd or its
flower, takes the place of the papyrus, lotus or lily presented to Isis
the virgin and to Mary. This is referred to after his birth by the
child Si-Horus, who, in speaking of his coming forth, says, “I grew
as that melon-vine, with the intent of returning to the body again that
I might be born into the world” for a purpose variously described in
the different texts. In this he becomes incarnate to combat the
power and influence of evil in the form of black magic (Stories,
pp. 43-65). Si-Osiris is really Horus, the son of Osiris in Amenta.
This he leaves to visit earth and become the son of Meh-wesekht, the
sister and consort of Khamuas. He says, “I prayed before Osiris in
Amenta to let me come forth to the world again. It was commanded
before to let me forth into the world. I awoke; I flew right up, to
find Setme, the son of Pharaoh, upon the Gebel of On and the Gebel
of Memphis, the place of burial in the desert.” Si-Osiris, like Jesus
in the “history,” has the power of suddenly becoming invisible; as
it is said, “Si-Osiris passed away as a shade or spirit out from the
land of Pharaoh and Setme, his father, nor did they see him”
(Stories, p. 65). Like the young Jesus in the Gospel (Luke ii. 40), the
child grew and waxed strong. The exact words are, “The child
grew big; he waxed strong; he was sent to the school. He rivalled
the scribe that had been appointed to teach him.” “The child, son
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of Osiris, began to speak with the scribes of the House of Life (in
the temple of Ptah); all who heard him were lost in wonder at him”
(Stories, p. 44). “Now when the royal Si-Osiris had attained the age
of twelve years it came to pass that there was no good scribe (or
learned man) that rivalled him in Memphis in reading or in writing
that compels”; that is, in uttering the Ur-hekau or mystical words of
great magical power. As the translator remarks, it is curious to
find that linguistically the tale is somewhat closely related to the
new Egyptian of the twelfth century B.C.; that is, to the time of
Khamuas, one of the chief characters, as the date of the original
document.
But not only in Egypt was the divine hero, the Prince of Eternity,
represented by the royal child born heir-apparent to the throne. It
was the same in Rome. For instance, the birthday of Augustus
Cæsar was hailed in Rome as that of the Messianic Prince of Peace.
In a well-preserved Greek inscription of eighty-four lines, in which an
ancient account is given of the introduction of the Julian calendar on
the birthday of the Emperor Cæsar Augustus, September 23rd, it is
written:—
“On this day [i.e., the birthday of Augustus] the world has been given a different
aspect. It would have been doomed to destruction if a great good fortune common to
all men had not appeared in him who was born on this day. He judges aright who
sees in this birthday the beginning of life and of all living powers for himself.
Now at last the times are passed when man must regret that he has been born.
From no other day does the individual and all humanity receive so much good
as from this day, which has brought happiness to all. It is impossible to find
words of thanksgiving sufficient for the great blessings which this day has brought.
That Providence which presides over the destinies of all living creatures has fitted this
man for the salvation of humanity with such gifts that he has been sent to us and to
coming generations as a saviour. He will put an end to all strife and will restore
all things gloriously. In his appearance, all the hopes of the ancestors have been
fulfilled. He has not only surpassed all former benefactors of mankind, but it is
impossible that a greater than he should ever come. The birthday of this god
[i.e., Augustus] has brought out the good news of great joy based upon him. From
his birth a new era must begin.”
The Egyptian Repa or the Roman Cæsar was enacting on this
earth, approximately, the character assigned to the son of God in the
Egypto-gnostic mysteries. The world would have been doomed to
destruction but for the rebirth in time of the Messu or Messiah, the
Repa or divine heir, who represented the eternal as the child, the
ever-coming prince of peace, who is also imaged as the living link
which connects and unites the past and future in the present, by
means of him who became the representative of the deity on earth,
whether in Egypt or in Rome, in India or Japan (Rit., ch. 42, 4, 5).
But the man whose coming changed the world, and saved it by
renewal, was mythical, and his advent was æonian from age to age,
under whatsoever name. Thus, in Rome the Emperor Augustus
personalized the coming prince of peace in an historical character.
The repetition of this as Christian legend in the Gospels is no
mere replica of “heathen” sentiments, images, types, and phrases.
It is a reproduction of the Egyptian astronomical mythology and
eschatology in the disguise of a pretended history.
In Egypt the Pharaoh and his son for ages had represented Ra and
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761
the Repa, the divine heir-apparent or the prince. As Egyptian the
fatherhood and sonship of the one god were founded on the Pharaoh
and the heir-apparent, the Ra and Repa, who constituted the King
that never died. The son of God was born as manifestor for the
eternal, and the ruler as Pharaoh, emperor or king, was the earthly
representative of the God with whose divinity the new historical ruler
was invested as the Anointed, the Repa, the Prince, the Cæsar, the
Mikado, the Cyrus, or the Christ. This birth of the eternal in time was
astronomical. But it was humanized for the birthday of Amen-hetep
in Egypt, for Alexander in Greece, and for Cæsar-Augustus in Rome
before the era that was designated Christian. The virgin-mother in
mythology, and there never was any other, is she who made her
proclamation in the Temple of Neith at Sais that she proceeded from
herself and bore the child without her peplum being lifted by the
male. The myth reflects the matriarchate from a time when the
fatherhood was not yet individualized. The mother with child, the
great or enceinte mother, is at the head of the Kamite Pantheon as
the mother of life and a figure of fecundity. This type of the
mother and child retains its position in the Christian iconography
when the child Jesus, like Kheper, is exhibited in the Virgin’s womb
surrounded by the seven spirits as doves (Didron). The mother with
her child in utero or in her arms was indefinitely earlier than the
typical father and son whose worshippers were opposed to the more
primitive representation of nature. Horus, at first, is the child of Isis
only, with Seb as putative or foster-father, who was not the begetter.
Thus the mother might remain a virgin. Horus, the child, was an
image of the god, made flesh in human guise. He is the mortal
Horus, very imperfect, sometimes sightless, at others a cripple, but
divine; the divine victim in a human shape, which was now the
manifesting mask of the deity or superhuman power, instead of the
totemic zoötype. And naturally the divine child thus humanly
featured involved the mother of the god in a human effigy. The
child assigned to the earth-father Seb = Joseph is Horus up to
twelve years of age, and then he passes from the mortal sphere.
A virgin mother in the ancient wisdom is she who was fecundated
by her own child as bull of the mother in the moon, in the earth, or
in other phenomena that were at first entirely non-human. But the
doctrine survived when the divinized mother and her child were
rendered anthropomorphically.
Thus the gnostic Jesus in the
Pistis Sophia says, “I found Mary, who is called my mother, after
the material body; I implanted in her the first power which I had
received from the hands of Barbêlô, and I planted in her the
power which I had received from the hands of the great, the good
Sabaoth” (Mead, B. I, 13). That is in the character of the mythical
child who fecundates his own mother. And here the overshadowing
of Mary by “the power of the Most High” (Luke i. 35) is suggestive
of another overshadowing of the Virgin who conceives. This is
described in the magic papyrus (Records of the Past, vol. 10, p. 141) as
a “concealment” of the mother in the process of generation.
“On Horror’s head horrors accumulate” in manufacturing history
from the mythos. Horus, the fatherless, was the fecundator of his
own virgin mother, but neither as the human Horus nor the divine
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Horus was it presented that he was other than the typical figure in
a mystery, or that the doctrine came the human way. Jesus in the
same character, called the Mamzer rzmm by the Jews, is the same
fatherless fecundator of the virgin mother when the two are Jew and
Jewess. To the truly religious sense this is a most profane parody
of the sacred Osirian drama. Thus the fragments of a great complex
in dogma and doctrine were collected together in relation to the
conception of the Messianic child. First, the virgin mother was
the insufflator of a soul. Secondly, there is a begettal in which the
offspring fecundates the mother—this of course is in the mythical
representation. Thirdly, according to Matthew, the divine child was
either conceived or begotten of the Holy Ghost.
It is the type that tells so many secrets of the non-historical
beginnings: and nothing has been bottomed, nothing could be fundamentally explained with the Egypto-gnostic wisdom still unknown.
The dove that laid the egg is pre-eminent as a type in the conception
and the birth of Jesus. At first the insufflating spirit of life, whether
called holy or not, was female. This was demonstrated by the
Mother-nature. In the Gospels the Holy Spirit as female suffices for
the miraculous conception of the child-Jesus who is generated without
a father. But Pistis Sophia witnesses that the gnostic Jesus proceeded
from the father in the likeness of a dove. And that the mystery of
all mysteries, the first and final mystery, was this of the dove,
considered to be the bird of God the Father. By this means the Holy
Spirit is portrayed as male, whereas according to the secret wisdom
the dove had been a female type of spirit from the first. The gnosis
was so ancient as Egyptian that the dove had been succeeded by the
hawk as the bird of Ra, the Holy Spirit as male. The hawk was
now the symbol of the father and the son, that is, of Ra and Horus.
Whereas the dove as mother-bird was primary. The female nature of
the mystic dove is also shown by its co-type the pigeon, still employed
in modern slang as a survival of sign-language. Thus the earliest
human soul was insufflated by the mother, and the mother divinized
was represented by the Dove, the bird of soul when soul was first
attributed to female source. Lastly, the same bird was given to the
Holy Spirit as God the Father, and as a type of the Trinity
consisting of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, with the mother veiled
and hidden by the dove. It may be noted in passing that the dove
was not necessarily a type of sensual desire although it became
associated with Venus in Greece. There was nothing licentious in
Hathor or Iusāas. The earliest Venus was a personification of the
enceinte mother, not a goddess Lubricity provocative of lust, but in all
simplicity and seriousness a type of tenderest maternity. The dove
had been the bird of Hathor as the insufflator of a soul of breath.
In this character it is portrayed with brooding wings extended on
the bosom of the mummy as quickener of the spirit for a future life.
On the tomb of Rameses IX. the dove appears in place of the hawk
as a co-type of Horus at the prow of the solar boat. Also, in a
statuette of the 19th dynasty there is a human-headed dove which
takes the place of the hawk as a zoötype of the soul. It is seen
hovering over the bosom of a mummy. The divine Horus rises again
in the form of a dove, as well as in the shape of a hawk. “I am the
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763
Dove: I am the Dove,” exclaims the risen spirit as he soars up from
Amenta, where the egg of his future being was hatched by the divine
incubator (Rit., 86, 1). Here the bird of Hathor is also the bird of
Ra, and thus the dove became the bird of the Holy Spirit, female in
the mother, and male in the divine child Horus, and finally in the
Father. In the Councils of Nice and Constantinople, the fathers
condemned Xenora, who derided the imaging of the Holy Spirit by
the dove. And to show how the type will persist, in The Catholic
Layman for July 17th, 1856, there is a Papal picture of the Christian
Godhead that was extant in that same year, as the trinity of the
Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In this, God the Father and God the
Son are represented as a man with two heads, one body and two
arms. One of the heads is like the ordinary pictures of Jesus, or
Serapis, the other is the head of an old man surmounted by a triangle.
Out of the middle of this figure is proceeding the Holy Ghost in the
form of a dove (Catholic Layman, July 17th, 1856).
The dove, then, as an emblem of the Holy Spirit, also shows the
gnostic nature of the beginnings in the Gospels termed Canonical.
“Now the birth of the Christ was on this wise. When his Mother
Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she
was found with child of the Holy Ghost,” or, as rendered in signlanguage, with the dove as emblem of the Holy Spirit. Hence, in
the Iconography, child-Jesus is represented in the Virgin’s arms or
womb, surrounded by the seven doves as symbols of the Holy
Spirit (Didron, fig. 124).
We might say that the dove of Hathor-Iusāas came to Rome on
board the papyrus-boat, in which the mother Isis crossed the swamps
to save her little one from the pursuing dragon (Plutarch, Of Isis and
Osiris, 18). For the papyrus-boat is obviously the bark of Peter in
the Roman Catacombs (Lundy, Mont. Christ, fig. 139). Iusāas, the
mother of Iusa = Iusu, the Egyptian Jesus, was a form of HathorMeri, and was brought on in the cult of Rome as Mary, the mystical
dove and mother of Iusu, now believed to have become historical. A
dovecote was the dwelling where she brought him forth in Rome. As
Cyprien Robert says, “The first basilicas, placed generally upon
eminences, were called domus columbæ, dwellings of the dove, that is,
the Holy Ghost” (Didron, 1, 439, Eng. tr.).
Now Atum was the holy spirit in the eschatology of Annu; the
first who ever did attain that status in theology. His consort was
Iusāas, who, in the character of Hathor, was the female holy spirit, as
the dove. Their child was Iusa, the Egyptian Jesus. This was he
who says, on rising from Amenta as a spirit, “I am the dove, I am the
dove” (The “Menat.” Rit., ch. 86). Thus, the gnostic mystery of the
dove is traceable to Atum as the holy spirit, and to Iusāas-Hathor as
the Mother of the Coming Son (Iusa), he who emanated from them
as the dove. This mode of incarnation is followed by a second
descent of the holy spirit in the baptism of Jesus. “Lo, the heavens
were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a
dove, and coming upon him; and lo, a voice out of the heavens
saying, This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.” Thus,
the child that was conceived of the virgin in the first descent of the
spirit is authenticated as son of the father at the time of the second
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descent of the holy spirit as the dove. And this, as Egyptian, is the
doctrine of the dual Horus, who was born of Isis, the virgin, and
afterwards begotten in spirit as the beloved son of Ra, the holy spirit.
Jesus when mothered by the virgin-dove, whether at On or Bethlehem,
is Iusa the coming child of Hathor-Iusāas; and Jesus when authenticated by the bird from heaven is Iusa as the son of Atum-Ra, the
holy spirit who is fathered by the dove. This fatherhood of Jesus in
his baptism is vouched for by the writers of the Canonical Gospels.
And in “the Gospel according to the Hebrews,” Jesus speaks of His
“Mother, the Holy Ghost.” He says, “the Holy Spirit, my mother,
took me and bore me away to the great mountain, called Thabor.”
Which can be understood as a saying of Iusa, the Egyptian Jesus.
Iusa of Annu went to Rome as Ichthon of Annu. Jesus went to
Rome as Ichthus, the fish. The black Iusa went to Rome as the
Bambino. He went to Rome as the ass-headed Iu, and also is the
dove as bird of resurrection in the Catacombs. He is found there in
the several characters of Horus, Serapis, Mithras, and under various
types. But nowhere is the “historic” personage discoverable, living
or dead, in subterranean Rome.
According to the Osirian eschatology in the Ritual, Horus, the son
of God, was with his father in heaven before he descended to our
earth as the bringer of peace and goodwill (hetep) to men. In coming
forth from heaven, he is said to reveal himself by disrobing himself to
present himself to the earth. He issues forth as Horus, the son of Isis,
the child of the Virgin Mother, saying, “I am Unbu.” That is, “I am
the Branch.” He also describes himself as the mortal Horus who was
born blind and dumb in “the abode of occultation,” En-arar-ef (Rit.,
ch. 71). Jesus is born at Bethlehem, in the house of bread. Horus comes
forth in Annu, the place of bread. The vesture of Horus is girt on
him by Tait, the goddess of food. This answers to the swaddlingclothes in which the child was wrapped when the mother laid him in
a manger. Offerings were made to the child who is received by the
worshippers with “bendings of the head in Annu” (Rit., ch. 82). The
reason why the divine child should be born in a manger is not because
there was lack of room in the inn, but because the child had been
previously born as a lamb or a calf before the type was humanized,
and when the crib, or manger, was the earliest cradle of the little one.
The birth of the babe in a manger was anciently exhibited in Egypt,
and the origin is traceable to-day. The mother can be identified with
the cattle-shed and the manger. For instance, Hathor was the hat
or hut; Nephthys is the house; Isis, the seat; the old first mother
Apt was the crib; and Apt the crib is also the manger which was a
type of the cattle-shed when her offspring was a calf. The Apt was
the birthplace when this was the womb of Apt, the water-cow. The
name was then applied to the manger, the crib, the hold of a vessel,
and to the city of Apt, or Thebes, in Egypt, which is the city of the
manger by name. The child born in a manger or Apt = crib is the
wise way of showing a continuity of type which survived in Egypt
down to Ptolemaic times. The child was incarnated to live and eat
the bread of Seb = Joseph beneath the tree of Hathor—one of whose
names is Meri. In various legends, the child was brought forth
beneath the tree, and in our ancient carols the tree, as a cherry-tree,
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765
bows down for Mary to eat of its fruit at the command of the child,
who is yet in the mother’s womb. The oblations offered in Tattu
and the adorations made in Annu are the same as in the story of the
Magi, who bring their presents and bow down before the babe in
Bethlehem. This rebirth is referred to in the tale of Sanehat: “Thou
shalt see thyself come to the blessed state, they shall give thee the
bandages from the hand of Tait, the night of applying the oil of
embalming” (Egyptian Tales, p. 114, Petrie); where the making of
the Karast-mummy is a type of the birth of the Christ or Anointed.
Horus comes to record the words of God the father with his mouth;
the same mouth that draws to it the spouse of Seb as wet-nurse for
the child. Like Jesus in the Christology of John, he is the Word made
flesh; and the spouse of Seb is the prototype of Mary, the spouse of
Joseph, who is portrayed as the suckler of Jesus in the Christian
version of the legend. At his coming there are cries of adoration in
Suten-Khen, the royal birthplace, and of exultation in An-arar-ef, the
city of the blind. The whole cycle of the gods is filled with satisfaction at seeing Horus inherit his throne to rule over the earth.
There are bendings in Annu where the different generations of the
Rekhet, the Pait, and the Hamemmat bow down before him. The evil
Sut is filled with consternation at what has taken place. This
reception of the child in Annu, the house of bread, as a celestial
locality, is the prototype of the jubilation heard in Bethlehem when,
“Suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly
host praising God” (Luke ii. 13).
These are the acclamations
uttered in Annu, on the divine babe making his appearance there
(Rit., ch. 125), and being declared the heir of Seb, the god of earth,
from whom he issued in the character of Iusa, the child of Iusāas.
At his advent Horus says the gods come to him with their acclamation, and the female deities with jubilation, when they see him.
Horus, in the litany of Ra, is called the son of Ra, proceeding from
Tum. “He has placed your offerings before you; he accords you the
favour of receiving your portion as his father Ra commanded. He
is his darling. He is his descendant upon the earth.” “Show the
way to his spirit. Show him his dwelling in the midst of the earth.”
What we may term the human history of Horus is passed in the
earth of Seb, his foster-father on earth, whose bread he eats, and in
whose house he dwells with Isis, the virgin mother. There is neither
date nor history of Horus betwixt the age of twelve and thirty years.
The child-Horus quits the house of Seb and the virgin to reappear in
the house of his father Osiris in the earth of eternity. This will
explain why the youthful Jesus leaves his mother and his earthly
father Joseph to be about his heavenly father’s business when he is
twelve years of age. Also, this fact in the mythical representation
will account for there being no further mention of Joseph in the
Gospels after the journey to Jerusalem (Luke ii. 43, 50). Seb ceases
to be the foster-father and protector of Horus, who disappears from
the earth of time (or Seb) to reappear in the earth of eternity.
The infant Horus was suckled by Isis in solitude. She is said to
have nursed him in secret. No one knew the hiding-place, but it was
somewhere in the marshes of Amenta, the lower Egypt of the mythos.
As an earthly locality, the place where Isis hid herself to suckle her
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child was identified in the marshes of the Delta. This part of the
programme is fulfilled in the Gospel according to Matthew, and there
only, by the flight into Egypt. So soon as the babe was born, “an
angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise and
take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt.” And the
child was there until the death of Herod, “that it might be fulfilled
which was spoken by the Lord, through the prophet, saying, Out
of Egypt did I call my son” (Matt. ii. 13, 16). The child of the
mother had to be taken down into Egypt in order that the Son of God
might be brought up out of it, and for the mythos to be fulfilled as
biblical history.
At the birth of Horus the life of the young child was sought by
the evil Sut. The mother was warned of the danger by Taht, the
lunar god, called the great one. He says to her, “Come, thou goddess
Isis, hide thyself with thy child”; and he tells her it is well to be
obedient. She is to take the child down into the marshes of lower
Egypt, called Kheb, or Khebt. There, says Taht, “these things will
happen: his limbs will grow; he will wax entirely strong; he will
attain the dignity of prince of the double earth, and sit (or rest) upon
the throne of his father.” Then the child and mother make their way
to the papyrus-swamps. It is said that the plants were so secret that
no enemy could enter there. “Sut could not penetrate this region,
or go about in Kheb.” Nevertheless the child was bitten by the
reptile, as the story is rendered in the sorrows of Isis, the preChristian mater dolorosa (Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, vol. ii.,
ch. 14). “Horus in Kheb” (Egypt) was a title of the divine child.
Kheb was in the north of Egypt, and it was there that Horus passed
his early days, and was reared in secret by his mother Isis. Horus
lands upon the earth of Seb at eventide. He sits upon the seat of
Ra, which is on the western horizon, and receives the offerings upon
the altars. He says, “I drink the sacred liquor each evening, in the
form of the lord of all creatures” (Rit., ch. 79). The descent of Horus,
as a child, to earth was daily or yearly according to the mythos. Every
night the sinking sun was received by the mother in the breedingplace, or Meskhen, of the western mount, where she prepared him
(or he her) for his new birth daily in the East. The point at which
the god descends to earth at evening is well portrayed in the oblong
zodiac of Denderah. In this the child-Horus is seated on the mount
of the western equinox in the sign of the Scales. The sign of the
Scales, Makhu, was once the sign of the autumn equinox, and at that
point child-Horus touches earth for his descent from heaven. In this
sign the child is portrayed sitting on the mount in the disc of the full
moon. As seen by night, the mount of earth, or the horizon, is the
mount of the ecliptic, the meeting-point of earth and heaven. The
full moon is the mother who is Virgo in the previous sign, and in the
sign of the Scales she has brought forth the child.
In the Gospel of pseudo-James (ch. 22) it is John, the child of
Elizabeth, who is sought for by Herod. “And Elizabeth groaned
and said with a loud voice, Mount of God, receive a mother with
her child. And suddenly the mountain was divided, and received
them. And light shone through to them.” It is the same story of
the mother and child when applied to the infant John instead of Jesus.
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The opening of the mount is in the equinox, and it is there the pursued
ones attain safety by entering the earth to escape from Apap, the
devouring dragon. Seb is the Egyptian Joseph, as consort of Isis,
the earth-mother and foster-father of the child; and at this point in
the western equinox where Horus enters the earth or the earth-life,
Seb, as god of earth, takes charge of the child and mother to convey
them on the way to the lower Egypt of Amenta.
Going down into Kheb or lower Egypt, as rendered in the Ritual,
is descending to the secret earth of Amenta, where the mother hid
her infant in the marshes, when they were pursued by Sut, otherwise
the crocodile. Now it is related in the Gospel of pseudo-Matthew
(ch. 18), that when Joseph and Mary were on their way to Egypt with
the child-Jesus they came to a certain cave, and “Behold there
suddenly came out of the cave many dragons, seeing which the youths
cried out with excessive fear. Then Jesus descending from the
mother’s lap stood on his feet before the dragons, and they adored
Jesus.” In this scene, Jesus saves his father and mother from the
dragons, which obey him; and the dragons we may consider to be
crocodiles in accordance with Hebrew use and wont. In the Ritual,
there is a chapter on repulsing the crocodiles in which Horus saves
his father from the four crocodiles (these are eight in the Turin text
of the Ritual). “I am the one,” he says, “who saves the great one
from the four crocodiles. I am the one who delivers his father from
them.” “I am the one who cannot be overthrown by the principles
and powers of evil” (Rit., ch. 32), or, as it is otherwise rendered by
Renouf: “O son who conversest with thy father, do thou protect this
great one from these four crocodiles. I know them by their names
and their way of living, and it is I who protect his own father from
them.” He orders the crocodiles to go back, one by one, to their
quarters, and they obey him with docility. Ra has given him
possession of lower Egypt, in which the living are destroyed, and
the crocodiles or dragons of the waters do not triumph over him
(ch. 32, 9). Coming, as Horus, to make ready the horizon, he
repulses the crocodiles of darkness (ch. 136, 8, 9). The dragons of a
“certain cave” that is found upon the way to Egypt are an Egyptognostic version of the crocodiles of Amenta in the Ritual. Thus, the
animals in attendance on the child-Jesus in the apocryphal Gospels
are witnesses for the child-Horus. Horus, as the youthful sun-god on
the horizon, is accompanied by the two lions, Shu and Tefnut. He
is attended by the two lions. He is lighted in their recesses by the
two lions (ch. 3, 1, 2). The power of two lions is represented by the
head-dress of Horus. He is strengthened by the double force of the
two lions. He arrives each day in the dwelling of the two lions
(ch. 78, 20-22), with the two lions who are his protectors. It is also
said of the Osiris, “He is furnished with two lions” (ch. 144).
The lions are likewise in attendance upon Jesus in the Gospels of
the Infancy. The lions adored him, and kept him company in the
desert. They walked along with the child; bowed their heads before
him, and showed subjection by wagging their tails (Gospel of pseudoMatthew, chs. 19 and 35).
The “apocryphal” Gospels are not a mere collection of “foolish
traditions” or fables forged or invented to supply an account of that
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period in “our Lord’s” history, respecting which the accepted
Gospels are almost silent. They are disjecta membra of the original
matter; the mythos reduced to the state of Märchen; the story of
the miraculous child told as a folk-tale which was at last repeated as
a history in the Gospels with matter like the above omitted because
it was too naturally incredible, and could not be utilized by the most
desperate expedient of miracle.
When, or where, the mythos was no longer interpreted astronomically, from lapse of the necessary knowledge, the folk-tales and
legendary lore began to take the place of the ancient wisdom that
was scientifically verifiable. Celestial localities were made geographical. The descent of the little sun in the lower hemisphere is
described as the journey of the child-Horus into lower Egypt, accompanied by the Virgin Mother and Seb, or Joseph, the earthly father.
It is observable that in an Egyptian planisphere, according to Kircher,
the god Seb is figured, on a large scale, in the Decans of Scorpio,
with the symbolic goose of earth upon his head. This, at one time,
marked the western equinox; the point at which the earth of Seb, or
the mountain, opened to protect the mother and child, when they
sought refuge from the dragon, the scorpion, or serpent that stung
the infant on the way to Egypt in the nether earth, and where “earth
helped the woman” (Rev. xii. 16) in her flight.
The origin of the “Holy Family” can be traced to this initial point
of the journey down to Egypt. The moon at full was the mother
with the child who rode upon the ass attended by the old man Seb.
This was the “woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her
feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars,” who was persecuted
by the crocodile of darkness. At the autumn equinox the Apapreptile reared its loathly form from out the abyss to pursue the
mother and destroy her Babe. But the earth opened and helped the
woman, or Seb protected her as foster-father to the child of light.
According to the astronomical mythos, the Pool of Putrata, or lake
of darkness, lay upon the western side of the mount. This was the
habitat and lair of the dragon, “eternal devourer is its name” (ch. 17,
40, 44). Here the reptile lurks and watches the “bight of Amenta”
for its prey. With wide-open jaws of the crocodile it swallows the
sinking stars (in the mythos), and the souls that fall into darkness
(in the eschatology). Above all, the dragon of darkness lies in wait
for the virgin mother and her forthcoming child, who is the saviour
of vegetation and preserver of the light. The journey into Egypt
can be followed a little further in the Gospels of the Infancy. The
Arabic Gospel says the mother and child remained three years in
Egypt, and the Lord Jesus wrought very many miracles in Egypt,
which are not found written either in the Gospel of the Infancy or
in the perfect Gospel (Cowper, H. B., The Apocryphal Gospels,
p. 191).
The child-Jesus in Egypt is the child-Horus in Egypt,
and the traditions of Horus have been assigned to an “historic”
Jesus. “These,” as Wiedeman puts the cart before the horse, “have
affected a series of Coptic texts which, in making use of the wellknown apocryphal account of Christ’s journey through Egypt as a
child, describe the triumphal march of the Saviour along the valley
of the Nile, and relate how he drove his foes from place to place,
THE JESUS-LEGEND IN ROME
769
destroying them as he went” (Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, p. 77,
Eng. tr.).
According to the Gospel of pseudo-Matthew, the Holy family,
fleeing from the murderer Herod, came into the borders of Hermopolis and “entered into a certain city of Egypt which is called
Sotinen.” Nothing has been made of this statement geographically.
But Sotinen evidently represents the Sutenhen (earlier Suten-Khen)
of the “Book of the Dead” (ch. 17). This is a celestial locality of
great importance to the legend of Horus in Kheb. In “the childhood of Jesus, according to Thomas,” one year is thus accounted
for. “Now when they had come into Egypt they found a lodging
in the house of a certain widow, and they lodged one year in the
same place” (ch. i). It may be remembered that in one of her
characters Isis is the widow of the dead Osiris. In a small papyrus
now at the Louvre there is an incantation against the evil serpent
that stung the infant, in which the goddess Isis is the speaker. She
says, “I am Isis the widow, broken with sorrow” (Deveria, Catalogue
des Manuscrits Eg. Du Louvre). Isis is the original widow who has
an only son, and it is she who seeks the lost Osiris, and brings him to
rebirth as Horus, her child, in the house of the widow. In the
Kamite version of the journey into Egypt the Herrut-reptile takes
the place of Herod, and the child-Horus is bitten by the serpent,
though not stung to death. This event occurred when Isis was about
to go down into Egypt for the safety of her child. M. Revillout (in
1881) described a Demotic papyrus at Leyden, which gives an account
of the attack made on Horus by the serpent. This text corroborates
the statement of Plutarch and Aristides (Apology, par. 12) that the
scene of the serpent’s attack was in Syria. It occurred when Isis
was about to go down into Egypt, for Horus, the divine heir, to take
possession of his father’s kingdom. When Isis and the child were
setting out, Horus began to weep and cry because the serpent
had stung him (Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archy., May,
1892, p. 372). Isis protects her child and heals his wound. This is
the journey of the virgin mother from Syria down into Egypt, as
represented in the mythos. The massacre of the Innocents is a
common legend. In the Jewish traditions there is a massacre of
the little ones at the time of Moses’ birth, in which the Pharaoh plays
the part of the monster Herod. So universal was this murder that no
distinction was made betwixt the children of the Egyptians and the
Jews. On the day that Moses was born the astrologers told Pharaoh
they had seen in the stars that the deliverer of the Jews had been
born that day, but they could not tell whether his parents were
Egyptian or Jewish. Therefore Pharaoh kills not only all the Jewish
boys born that day, but also all the Egyptians (for authorities see
Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology, December 4, 1888).
It is the old, old story of the child that was born to be king in defiance
of all obstacles.
The origin of the innocents that were massacred by the monster
Herod can be traced in accordance with the ancient wisdom. A
primitive soul of life was derived from the elements; the soul of Shu
from wind or air; the soul of Seb from the earth; the soul of Horus,
son of Ra, from the sun, which became the supreme source of the
770
ANCIENT EGYPT
elemental souls that preceded a human soul. When the solar force
was looked upon as the highest soul of life in nature, the souls of
future beings were considered to be emanations from the sun as a
source of life in external nature that was superhuman. This gave
rise to the class of beings known as the Hamemmat, which originated
as germs of soul that issued from the sun. They are described as
circling round the solar orb in glory. The word hamemmat signifies
that which is unembodied or not yet incorporated. We might say the
hamemmat were pre-existing souls when souls were derived from the
elemental forces in the germ, and the highest of these was solar.
They are the germ-souls of future beings which originate as children
of the sun portrayed in a human form. As offspring of the sun,
they are called the children of Horus, who, as the child-Horus, is one
with them; and if they can be destroyed in the germ, or, as the
Ritual has it, in the egg, the devourer of souls may succeed in slaying the divine heir himself, who is destined to bruise the serpent’s
head and win the victory over all the powers of evil as the lord
of light and link of continuity of life. Being at enmity with the
sun, the reptile of darkness seeks to devour the new-born child
of light. For that purpose he lies in wait till the woman clothed
with the sun shall bring forth. He seeks the life of the young childHorus, and other lives are involved in taking this. For Horus is the
head of the solar race, the hamemmat or future beings that issue
from the Eye of the sun. These future souls are called the “issue
of Horus.” They are the Innocents of the legend that are supposed
to suffer, whereas the child of light, the divine offspring of the solar
god, is sure to escape from the coils of the monster who has been
rendered anthropomorphically as the ruling tyrant—the monster
Herod in a mortal guise. Thus, if any little children were murdered
by the Apap-monster, the dragon of darkness, these would be the
offspring and issue of the solar disk in the domain of physical
phenomena—little ones that were neither human nor spiritual beings,
but the seed or germs of souls about to be. The parallel to the
slaughter of the innocents can be traced in what is termed “the
slaughter which is wrought in Suten-Khen”; that is, in the khen or
birthplace where the young child-Horus was reborn as the royal
Horus. Each one of the manes or the “younglings of Shu” had to
pass through this place of rebirth where the Herrut-reptile lay in
wait. Chapter 42 is the one “by which one hindereth the slaughter
which is wrought in Suten-Khen.” Here the manes speaks in the
character of Horus the babe. “I am the babe” is said four times.
As human manes, he is one of those who may be destroyed, but is
safe so far as he has become assimilated to Horus. He tells the reptile, the herrut = Herod, that he is not to be seized or grasped by
him, and that neither men nor gods, neither the glorified nor the
damned can inflict any injury on him who is Horus the divine child,
born and bound to fulfil his course as the ever-coming One, who
“steppeth onward through eternity” (ch. 42). Sotinen, “a certain
city on the borders of Hermopolis,” is the dreaded place in Amenta,
where the slaughter of the innocents was periodically wrought. The
would be destroyer of the child is addressed in one of his reptileforms, “O serpent Abur!” (the name rendered “great thirst” is
THE EGYPTO-GNOSTIC JESUS
771
equivalent to that of the dragon of drought), thou sayest this day
“the block of execution is furnished (Rit. ch. 42), and thou art come
to contaminate the Mighty One.” In another chapter Horus exults
that in making his descent to the earth of Seb for putting a stop to
evil his nest is safe. “Not to be seen is my nest. Not to be broken
is my egg. I have made my nest on the confines of Heaven” (Rit.,
ch. 85). He rejoices on account of his escape from the slaughter
of the innocents which followed his descent into the earth of Seb.
Thus in the Osirian mythos the child-Horus was with the widow in
Suten-Khen, and in the Gospel of the Infancy it is the child-Jesus
with the widow in Sotinen.
THE EGYPTO-GNOSTIC JESUS.
On one line of its descent the Jesus-legend was brought on to
Rome from Egypt by the mystery-teachers whom we term Egyptognostics, and whose Jesus was no Word-made-flesh in one historic
form of personality, either at Nazareth or at Bethlehem, but was
absolutely non-historical. One of the most important of all the
written gnostic remains is the Pistis Sophia. And whether we
look on this as the work of Valentinus or another, it continues the
Jesus-legend from the Egyptian source, and constitutes a further link
betwixt the genuine mythos and the spurious history.
These books of Ieou are the books of Jesus, like the “Wisdom
of Jesus” in the Apocrypha and the lately discovered “Sayings of
Jesus,” that is, when the only real Jesus has been discovered in Iusa
the son of Iusāas, he whose Jewish name is Ieou, Iao or Iah, as
derivatives from Iu, in Egyptian. The two books of Ieou are said to
contain the Mysteries, the first being the lesser, the second the
greater mysteries, as the Pistis Sophia carefully explains. Here we
reach the Egyptian rootage of the Jewish Ieou, whom the Pistis
Sophia calls “Ieou the first man, the legate of the first order”
(p. 333). Now as Atum was the first man, the created man, who
under one of his names was Iu, the Egyptian Jesus, this also
tends to identify the Egypto-gnostic Ieou with Iu-em-hetep, the
author of the Sayings and the books of wisdom which included
the books of Ieou. One of the two books had the general title of
The Book of the Great Logos, according to the Mystery, an equivalent
for the Logoi or Sayings of Jesus, which were Christianized as
the Logia Kuriaka or Sayings of the Lord, and on which the
canonical Gospels were eventually founded.
Pistis Sophia, like the Ritual, is mainly post-resurrectional, with the
briefest allusion to the earth-life. It begins with the after-life
in which Jesus has risen from the dead, like Amsu the good
shepherd. It opens with the resurrection on the Mount of Glory, the
same as the Ritual. The localities, like those in the Egyptian book,
are not of this world. They are in the earth of eternity, not in
the earth of time. Pistis Sophia begins where the Gospel story comes
to an end. Jesus rises in the Mount of Olives, but not on the mount
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ANCIENT EGYPT
that was localized to the east of Jerusalem. The Mount of Olives, as
Egyptian, was the mountain of Amenta. It is termed Mount Bakhu,
the Mount of the Olive-tree, when the green dawn was represented by
this tree instead of by the sycamore. Mount Bakhu, the Mount of
the Olive-tree, was the way of ascent to the risen Saviour as he
issued forth from Amenta to the land of spirits in heaven (Rit.,
ch. 17). So when the Egypto-gnostic Jesus takes his seat upon the
Mount of Olives or the Olive-tree, he is said to have “ascended into
the heavens” (Pistis Sophia, Mead, G. R. S., whose version is the
only one in English: London, 1896). Jesus “descended into hell,”
according to the Christian creed. This forms no part of the Gospellegend, but we find it in the Book of the Dead; also in Pistis Sophia.
Hell or Hades in Greek is the Amenta, as Egyptian.
Horus
descends into Amenta, or rather rises there from the tomb, as the
teacher of the mysteries concerning the father, who is Ra the
father in spirit and in truth. This descent into the under-world is
spoken of by Horus in the Ritual (ch. 38). He goes to visit the
spirits in prison or in their cells and sepulchres. Those “who are in
their cells,” the manes, “accompany him as his guides.”
His
object in making this descent is to utter the words of the father in
heaven to the breathless ones, or the spirits in prison. The passage
shows the speaker as the divine teacher in two characters on earth and
in Amenta. Speaking of Ra, his father in the spirit, Horus says, “I
utter his words to the Men of the present generation,” or to the
living. He also utters them to those who have been deprived of
breath, or the dead in Amenta. So in the Pistis Sophia the gnostic
Jesus passes into Amenta as the teacher of the greater mysteries.
As it is said of his teaching in this spirit-world, “Jesus spake these
words unto his disciples in the midst of Amenta” (p. 394, Mead).
Moreover, a special title is assigned to Jesus in Amenta. He is
called Aber-Amentho. “Jesus, that is to say Aber-Amentho,” is a
formula several times repeated in Pistis Sophia.
According to the Ritual, a glorious “vesture” is put on in the
place where the human soul becomes eternized or is made immortal.
This is represented in the mystery of Tattu, where the body-soul
in matter (Osiris) is blended with the holy spirit Ra; the female
with the male (Tefnut with Shu), or Horus the child of twelve years
with Horus the adult of thirty years. The transaction occurs on the
day that was termed “Come thou to me” (Rit., ch. 17). This call
is reproduced in the Pistis Sophia as “Come unto us” on the day
of Investiture, when Jesus puts on the divine vesture in his character
of Aber-Amentho, or Lord over Amenta, a title which identifies the
Egypto-gnostic Jesus with Horus in Amenta. The call is made
to him by the attendant spirits, “Come unto us, who are thy fellowmembers”; “Come unto us, for we all stand near to clothe thee with
the first mystery (that of the father) in all his glory”; “Come therefore quickly, that thou mayst receive the full glory, the glory of the
first mystery,” the mystery of God the father (P. S., 16-19).
The Pistis Sophia is a book of those Egypto-gnostics with
whom the Father-God is Ieou = Ihuh, and God the son is Iao=Iah
(P. S., B. 2, 192, 193, Mead). It contains an Egypto-gnostic version of
the mysteries, astronomical and eschatological.
THE EGYPTO-GNOSTIC JESUS
773
Relics of the ancient wisdom have been piously preserved in this,
the most important of all the gnostic remains, i.e., for the purpose of
establishing a link betwixt the Egyptian origins and the canonical
Gospels, and for showing how the “History” was concocted. The
Jesus who is teacher of the twelve in Pistis Sophia is the Egyptognostic Jesus who had been from of old the ever-coming son of the
eternal father, whom we trace by nature and by name as far back
as the time of Ptah in Memphis. This is the Jesus, or the Horus, of
the Egyptian mysteries, and not of any Judean biography. In the
religion of Atum-Ra the names of Horus and of Iu or Jesus
were employed to denote the same character, and both names were
continued for the one type by the Egypto-gnostics. The gnostic
Jesus is the son of God who had been with the father from eternity.
Hence it is he alone who knows the father and is able to expound
the mystery of his nature to the Twelve. This is the first, great and
only ineffable mystery, which is before all others and embraces all the
rest. Jesus proceeding from the father as a spirit, divine in origin,
impersonates the soul that became incarnate in the human form.
The great primordial and ineffable mystery, from which the others
radiate, and in which the total twenty-four revolve as the central
source of an eternal evolution and involution, is the mystery of God
the father becoming God the son. God the father is the holy spirit
represented by a bird. This bird in the Egyptian symbolism was the
hawk, or dove. In the gnostic version it is the dove. One chief
difference between the two birds is in the dove being a type of the
mother and child, whereas the hawk was the bird of the father, Ra,
and the son; the holy Spirit, and Horus the son of the father. In
the Pistis Sophia the son proceeds from the father in the likeness
of the dove where Horus proceeded from the hawk-headed Ra in the
likeness of a hawk. Under whichever type the duality of the father
and son was indicated by one bird as symbol of the God in spirit, who
was over all the powers which had been (elemental or astronomical)
rulers in the realms of matter from the beginning.
The gnostic Jesus utters the Sayings or Logia Kuriaka on the
mount, and is also the revealer of the greater mysteries of
Amenta. According to the Pistis Sophia, when Jesus expounded
the greater mysteries to the twelve it is said “Jesus spake these
words to his disciples in Amenta” (Books of the Saviour, P. S., 394,
Mead). He had previously taught the lesser mysteries to the twelve
disciples in the life on earth. It is the same with Jesus as with Horus
in Amenta. When Horus passes from the life on earth he rises from
the tomb wearing the double feather and wielding the whip as his sign
of sovereignty. He is Amsu-Horus, Lord of Amenta. This is the
title of the gnostic Jesus, who is designated “Jesus, that is to say
Aber-Amentho”—which we take to be Jewish-gnostic for Jesus, the
mighty or great one, who in his resurrection is the Lord or Master
over Amenta (Books of the Saviour, Pistis Sophia, 358, Mead).
And Jesus “Aber-Amentho” is an Egypto-gnostic equivalent for
Osiris “Khent Amenta.”
The mysteries of Amenta, as in the Book of Revelation, are more
or less repeated in the mysteries of Pistis Sophia which contains
sufficient data to identify a gnostic version with the Kamite original.
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ANCIENT EGYPT
There are twelve divisions in Amenta corresponding to the twelve
hours of darkness. Twelve gates or doors successively enclose twelve
sections of space, and the doors are guarded by twelve serpents, one
serpent “to each door.” These twelve divisions of the nether regions
are repeated in Pistis Sophia as twelve dungeons of infernal torment.
The surrounding gloom is represented by the Apap-dragon of darkness. As it is said, “the outer darkness is a huge dragon with its
tail in its mouth” (B. 2, 320). There are twelve rulers or guardians
to the twelve dungeons who take the place of the Egyptian twelve
serpents (Book of Hades, Records, vol. 10). They have the faces of
serpents, dragons, basilisks, crocodiles, cats, vultures, bears and other
beasts; for, as it is said of the rulers of “these twelve dungeons which
are inside the dragon of outer darkness,” “each hath a name for every
hour, and each one of them changeth its face every hour” (B. 2, 322).
A dog-faced demon, called the eternal devourer, who lives upon the
damned, is described in the Ritual (ch. 17). The deceased prays to
the great Osiris, “Deliver me from that God who liveth upon the
damned, whose face is that of a hound, but whose skin is that of a
man, at the angle of the pool of fire.” This “dog-faced one” and
his rivers of fire reappear in the Pistis Sophia. Certain sins are
to be renounced in order that the manes may escape from “the
judgment of that dog-faced one” and from the “judgments of
Amenta,” “from the fires of Amenta,” and “from the torments which
are in Amenta” (B. 2, 255-256). Knowing the magical names in
Amenta has the same power, according to the Pistis Sophia, as
with the Book of the Dead. For instance, the dragon of outer
darkness has twelve names written on the doors of its dungeons, and,
as it is said, whosoever shall understand the mystery of one of
the names, if he is abandoned in the outer darkness and he pronounceth
the name of the dragon, he shall be saved and receive the treasure
of light (B. 2, 335, Mead). To know the name was to obtain possession of the magical word of power which meant salvation.
In the Egyptian hall of judgment there are forty-two assessors,
and the deceased has to plead in their presence that he has not
broken any of the forty-two commandments (Rit., ch. 125).
A
version of these is retained in the Pistis Sophia in the shape of
forty-four renunciations, two having been added to the Egyptian
forty-two. By renouncing these forty-four sins the deceased is saved
from the dog-faced devourer of souls, from the dragon of outer darkness, from Ialdabaoth = Sut, prince of the powers of darkness, and
from the torments of the twelve dungeons of the outer darkness,
all of which are Egyptian. The lesser mysteries were astronomical;
the greater mysteries are spiritual. The astronomical nature of the
“lesser mysteries” is convincingly shown in the Pistis Sophia;
also the astronomical origin of the Twelve who were taught those
mysteries by the Egypto-gnostic Jesus sitting on the mount. The
mystery of the five supporters, the mystery of the seven amens or
seven voices (in the heptanomis), the mystery of the nine guardians
of the three gates of the treasures of light ( = the Put-circle of the
nine gods who were in three threes), the mystery of the great forefather, the mystery of the triple powers or of the trinity, and lastly
the mystery of the twelve saviours who preserve the treasure of light
THE EGYPTO-GNOSTIC JESUS
775
in heaven and on earth, are all identifiable as primary types in
the astronomical mythology of Egypt.
The teacher of the mysteries is an Egyptian type. He was the
Her-Seshta. Brugsch enumerates seven classes of such teachers:
(1) the mystery-teachers of heaven; (2) the mystery-teachers of all
the lands, which were first of all celestial; (3) the mystery-teachers of
the depth (Amenta); (4) the mystery-teachers of the secret world;
(5) the mystery-teachers of the sacred language; (6) the mysteryteachers of Pharaoh; (7) the mystery-teachers who examine words.
The divine child manifests to men as expounder of the mysteries or
revealer of the hidden wisdom of which he is the word, the sayer, or
the teacher. The teacher of the lesser mysteries was child-Horus or
Iusa, the youth of twelve years. These were the mysteries of matter
and of mythology revealed by the child of the mother at his first
advent. The teacher of the greater mysteries was Horus the adult,
who expounded the nature of the fatherhood, the begettal or duplication of the divine soul, and all the other mysteries of the resurrection in and from Amenta, as the son of God the father in heaven.
But the Egypto-gnostic Jesus is the fulfiller of both the first and the
second advent; the first as the child of twelve years, the second as
the Horus of thirty years; the first in the life on earth, the second
in Amenta; the first as solar in the astronomical mythology, the
second as spiritual in the eschatology; the first as the utterer of
parables, the second as the expounder of the greater mysteries.
In vain do we try to make out the doctrinal mysteries of the
eschatology, whether it is called Egyptian, Hebrew, Coptic, Gnostic,
or Christian, until we have mastered the mythology. Without this
foundation there is no foothold. Neither is there any help in an
exoteric version of the esoteric wisdom. The group of powers was
seven or eight, nine or ten, before it included the twelve. And the
character is the same in the mythos when the group is twelve as
when it was ten or nine, eight or seven or four—that is, it was
astronomical.
Pistis Sophia commences formally after the manner of an
historic document, whilst being, from beginning to end, entirely nonhistorical. It opens with a date that is astronomical, and also with
what the Ritual terms “the manifestation to light” at the time of full
moon—that is, when the eye was full or the circle complete in Annu,
where the divine heir was born. “It came to pass, when Jesus had
risen from the dead in the first advent, that he passed eleven (should
be twelve) years speaking with his disciples and instructing them up
to the regions of the first statutes only and up to the regions of the
first mystery—the mystery within the veil—the veil that was rent in
death, which is before all mysteries, because it is the mystery of the
One Eternal God and the son who issues from the father in the
likeness of a dove, just as Horus issued from the father in the
likeness of the hawk or dove, or the canonical Christ as the dove.
“It came to pass, therefore, that the disciples were sitting together on
the Mount of Olives, speaking of these things, rejoicing with great joy,
and being exceedingly glad, and saying one to another, ‘Blessed are
we before all men who are on earth, for the Saviour hath revealed
this unto us, and we have received all fulness and all perfection’ ”—
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ANCIENT EGYPT
as these were received upon Mount Bakhu, the Mount of the Olivetree, in the ascent of Horus from Amenta. “And while they were
saying these things the one to the other Jesus sat a little apart from
them.” “It came to pass, therefore, on the fifteenth day of the month,
Tybi (or Tobe), the day of the full moon, on that day when the sun
had risen in its going, that there came forth a great stream of light
shining exceedingly. It came forth from the light of lights. And
this stream of light poured over Jesus and surrounded him. He
was seated apart from his disciples and was shining exceedingly.
But the disciples saw not Jesus because of the great light in which he
sat, for their eyes were blinded by the great light” on this, the
Egypto-gnostic mount of the transfiguration (pp. 4, 5, Mead).
(By the bye, the fifteenth of the month Tybi in the esoteric Gospel
sounds somewhat suggestive of “the fifteenth year of the reign of
Tiberius” in the exoteric Gospel according to Luke.) “And Jesus
said to his disciples, I am come from that first mystery which is also
the last mystery” of the four-and-twenty mysteries which he had
now come to expound, because “his disciples did not know that
mystery.”
In the Egyptian tale of Khamuas, Si-Osiris, i.e. Horus the son of
Osiris, comes forth from Amenta to spend twelve years on the earth.
This has an important bearing on the statement in the first part of
Pistis Sophia. The time spent by Horus the elder in the great
hall of Seb, or on earth, in mortal form, was twelve years in the
original mythos, this being the Egyptian limit of child-life. It is
twelve years in the tale of Khamuas. But in the Pistis Sophia the
time is given as eleven years, which has the vagueness of the märchen.
This tends to show the origin of the tradition reported by Irenæus,
that the ministry and teaching of Jesus extended over a vague period
of ten or more years, and that the Lord lived on to be an old man,
the old man being a literalized version of the old child, Har-Ur, the
elder Horus (Iren., B. 2, ch. 22, 5). During those twelve years he
was the child of the mother only, as in the Gospels of the Infancy.
He is her Word or logos, and the teacher of those lesser mysteries
that led up to the one great ineffable mystery which was now held
to be the source of all the rest.
We hear little of the wonderful child as divine teacher in the
canonical Gospels, but some of the excluded matter appears in the
apocryphal Gospels. In the canonical Gospels the child-Jesus is the
teacher at twelve years of age. This corresponds to Horus as wearer
of the lock, and to Iu-em-hetep, the youthful sage, each of whom
had been portrayed as the typical teacher twelve years old. It was
during those years that the child-Horus or child-Jesus taught.
Something of this may be read in the so-called “apocryphal
Gospels,” ignorantly supposed to contain the lying inventions concocted by the gnostic heretics to discredit and destroy a veritable
human history. There is a very naïve confession in the “Arabic
Gospel” that, during the first three years of the infancy, the childJesus” wrought very many miracles in Egypt which are not found
written either in the Gospel of the Infancy or in the Perfect Gospel”
(ch. 25). Such stories had been told for ages of the child-Horus,
who was a miracle-worker in and from the womb; and also of the
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child as Iusa, son of Atum-Ra, and earlier still of Iu-em-hetep, the
son of Ptah. The miracles were a mode of demonstrating the divinity
of the ever-coming little one, Iu-Su. At three years of age he performs the miracle of making a dead fish live (Latin Gospel of Thomas,
B. 3, ch. 1). At five years of age he takes clay and models twelve
sparrows, which he commanded to fly, whereupon they lived and
flew aloft (Latin Gospel of Thomas, B. 2, ch. 2). Horus or Jesus,
Egyptian, Jewish, or Gnostic, the little hero of the mythos, is one and
the same divine son of the Virgin in mortal guise.
Horus, at his coming-froth from Amenta, as the Word or Teacher,
says: “I make my appearance on the seat of Ra, and I sit
upon my seat which is upon the horizon” (Rit., ch. 79).
The
horizon and the mount are identical in Egyptian, and this seat of
Ra, the father in heaven, assumed by Horus in his ascent from
Amenta, is the mount of earth according to the solar mythos—that
is, the mount of sunrise, which is Mount Bakhu in Egyptian, the
Mount of the Olive-tree, the prototypal Mount of Olives. In the
Pistis Sophia Jesus takes his seat upon the Mount of Olives as the
divine teacher, word or logos, who utters the Sayings to his disciples.
This is the advent of Jesus which is dated the fifteenth day of the
Egyptian month Tybi, the day of full moon, by which the resurrection or new birth was always reckoned.
This month in the
Alexandrian year (B.C. 25) began December 27th, which is near
enough as a date for the nativity at Christmas, when measured in the
circle of precession. The “coming-forth to day” is illustrated by
the great flood of light that emanated from the light of lights and
“enveloped him entirely.” “The multitude of the heavenly host
praising God” (Luke ii. 13) is described. “And all the angels with
their archangels, and all the powers of the height, all sang from the
interior of the interiors, so that the whole world heard their voice.”
“But the disciples sat together and were in the greatest possible
distress” (B. 1, p. 6, Mead). In the Ritual when Horus stands or
is seated (on the Mount of the Olive-tree) “in the (human) form of
that god who is raised aloft upon his pedestal” or his papyrus, it is
said “the gods come to him with acclamation, and the female deities
with jubilation.” “They rejoice at his beautiful coming-forth from
the womb of Nut,” or, as it might be rendered, the womb of Meri,
for Meri = Mary is another name for Nut the mother-heaven (Book
of the Dead).
The gnostic Jesus, on emerging from Amenta, takes his seat as
teacher of the twelve disciples on the Mount of Olives. The way up
from Amenta for the sun-god in the solar mythos was on the eastern
side of the four-faced mount of earth which on that side was known
as Bakhu, the Mount of the Olive-tree. The way of ascent, worked
out in the mythos, served for the manes in the eschatology. Thus
Jesus in the ancient character of sun-god, or as the divine child who
taught, or who was the word in mortal guise, attains the landing-stage
upon the Mount of Olives or the olive-tree of dawn, when he issues
in or from Amenta, like Horus in the tamarisk, as Jesus of the
resurrection. The divine child is not merely born in human guise,
but also as the youthful solar god. Hence in the beginning of the
narrative the disciples are sitting round him on the Mount of Olives
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with Jesus shining like the sun in glory (P. S., B. 1, 4). The scene
had been already set in the astronomical mythos. He images the
sun-god on the mount; the twelve are round him in the zodiac.
And, as it is noted, although Jesus is in their midst, he is “a little
apart from his disciples.”
Thus Pistis Sophia shows the physical foundation of the
mysteries.
Astronomical science was taught as matter of the
mysteries, but the science being physical these were classified as
the lesser mysteries, whereas the greater mysteries were eschatological.
The twelve on earth, or in matter, were the companions of elder
Horus, the son of Isis, the suffering saviour. The twelve in Amenta
are the associates of Horus, the triumphant saviour, the beloved
only-begotten son of God the father. The twelve with Horus or
Jesus risen from Amenta are freed from the environment, the darkness, the stains of matter, as pure spirits to be wholly perfected.
They have attained the beatific vision, as the children of light. They
have passed through death and the purgation of matter to become
clear spirit when risen to the status of Horus the immortal. With
Horus or Jesus, in the character of the young sun-god, the twelve
were astronomical powers, rulers, or saviours of the treasure (light)
in the physical domain. With Horus or Jesus, the saviour as son of
God the father, they are the twelve glorious ones or gods of Amenta,
the twelve who as spirits are the children of Ra the holy spirit;
in short, they are the twelve in the eschatology who were the chosen
twelve with Horus on earth as sowers of the seed, and the twelve
with Horus as reapers of the harvest in Amenta.
Our starting-point, then, is that Jesus or Horus in coming to earth
and assuming the vesture of mortality issues forth in Amenta; not
the Greek Hades, nor the Hebrew Sheol, but the Egyptian Amenta,
that other world in which the dead as sleepers wake to life in spirit,
and where the mortal Horus makes his transformation and arises as
the first-fruits of them that slept—a resurrection of Horus that was
celebrated in Egypt when the “first-fruits of the earth” were the
shoots of the papyrus-plant or sprouts of the lentils, as described by
Plutarch. When Jesus, in his second advent, issues from Amenta to
become the teacher of the twelve upon the Mount of Olives, the
disciples are already seated on the mount. Jesus suddenly appears
to them, a little apart from them, in such a dazzle of glory as to be at
first invisible to them. This glory of light was composed of various
lights. “The light was of every kind, and of every type, from the
lower to the higher” (P. S., 1, 5). It was the glory of the youthful solar
god upon the mount of sunrise, with the lesser lights surrounding
him. So in the Ritual it is said of the sun-god, who was Horus
in his beautiful coming-forth, “Ra maketh his appearance at the
mount of glory, with the cycle of gods about him” (Rit., ch. 133,
Renouf). This was upon the Mount Bakhu or the olive-tree of
dawn, and the cycle of gods about the “golden form” of Horus are
the astronomical originals of the disciples with the Egypto-gnostic
Jesus on the mount of sunrise called the mount of glory. The
twelve disciples of the Lord are no more human than was their
teacher. But when the word was made flesh and Jesus assumed the
human guise, his followers likewise conformed to the anthropomorphic
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type of Horus the mortal in the life that was lived, as mythically
represented, for twelve years as the child of Seb on earth. The
twelve with Horus in the harvest-field are reapers, and reapers,
mariners, fishers, or teachers demanded the anthropomorphic type.
The human type, however, does not necessarily imply the human
personage, either in the teacher or as the taught, any more than the
zoötypes imply that the god was a crocodile, a hawk, a lion, or that
the goddess was a water-cow, a serpent, a tree, or a cleft in the rock.
As the gnostics truly declared, in reply to the pretended “History,” the twelve apostles were a type of the twelve æons, who
were set in the zodiac as timekeepers and preservers of the light.
(Irenæus, Bk. 2, ch. 21, 1.) That is, they who knew vouched for the
apostles being the same as the æons who were the twelve powers of
the twelve saviours of the twelve treasures of light with the gnostic
Jesus on the mount, whose twelve stations were figured in the zodiac;
and who were the twelve powers in matter, in physics, or in the
astronomical mythology which preceded the twelve as great spirits
with Jesus or Horus in the eschatology. Even if there had been
twelve men as a group of teachers, fishers, or harvesters, in every city,
town, or village of the earth who called themselves the disciples,
or apostles, of Jesus, Horus, or the Lord, it could not change one jot
or tittle of the fact that the twelve were teachers of astronomy, whose
names were written in heaven as attendants on the youthful solar
god; and who in the second phase became the twelve great spirits in
Amenta as reapers of the harvest for Har-khuti, the Egyptian lord of
spirits. The god at the head of a group or cycle of powers was
a teacher from the first. Sut, Anup, Taht and Ptah were typical
teachers of astronomy in the stellar, lunar and solar mythos, when
the group was seven, eight, or nine in number. Jesus (or Horus) is
the only teacher in the heaven of twelve astronomes. He was the
only-begotten son in spirit who was made flesh in his incarnation
to enter the human sphere as child of the mother, that is of matter as
the matrix of spirit. He became the greatest of all the teachers
in the astronomical mythos, and “the twelve” who had been presolar teachers and preservers of the treasures of light were now his
servants (Seshu), his followers, his apostles. And being the Only
Son of God it was Jesus alone who knew the nature of the Father,
which knowledge he now expounded to the twelve in the higher
mysteries of Amenta. Jesus describes the twelve in the two different
categories, astronomical and spiritual, and says, “When I first came
into the world I brought with me twelve powers. I took them from
the hands of the twelve saviours of the treasure of light”: that is,
from the twelve who are called the æons in the astronomy; the
twelve who had been the powers in physical phenomena. These
were unified in him; he gathers their powers to himself in passing
through the twelve signs of the zodiac as the youthful solar god.
At an earlier stage of the mythos the powers that were gathered up
in the one supreme power were but seven in number, called the seven
souls of Ra; in the final zodiac they are twelve. Jesus also describes
the founding of the twelve as his ministers on earth in matter, or in
the lower range of the mysteries. The first Horus imaged a soul in
matter; the second was the likeness of an immortal spirit. Jesus
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brought the primary soul to the twelve who are his associates in the
life on earth. But that was before he was invested as a Sahu or
spiritual mummy to become the lord of the resurrection as Jesus
Aber-Amentho.
The typical twelve, who latterly became the teachers of, and for,
the Word, were as ancient as the signs of the zodiac, or the twelve
great gods of Egypt, which according to Herodotus were extant some
20,000 years ago. They were the twelve as kings, who rowed the
solar-bark for Ra, with Horus on the look-out at the prow. They
were the twelve in various characters and in several countries into
which the gnosis of the mysteries passed from out the birthplace of
the ancient wisdom; although the twelve have no such universal
radius as the seven, or the four, because of their comparative lateness
in Egypt. They were the twelve princes of Israel (Num. i. 44), the
twelve sons of Israel; the twelve judges on twelve thrones with the
Son of man sitting on the throne of his glory (Matt. xix. 28);
also the twelve that sit at the table with the son in the new kingdom
founded by him for the father (Luke xxii. 14). They are the twelve
knights that gathered round the table of Arthur; the twelve gods
with Odin in their midst, with others that need not be enumerated
now. At his second advent, which is in the spirit, the Egypto-gnostic
Jesus says to the disciples, “I am come now, and not (as) formerly
before they had crucified me.” That is when he was represented as
the afflicted mortal suffering in the flesh. (P. S., 1, 10.) He has now
come in the spirit which was imaged by the dove, and not as
formerly or aforetime when he was incarnated in matter, for the
twelve years on earth, as the lifetime of the child was reckoned.
Becoming a spirit is described as putting on the vesture of everlasting
light. And the coming forth of Jesus as a spirit, or the Christ, is
described as his investiture, the same as with Horus in Amenta. He
says, “The times are fulfilled for me to put on my vesture. Lo,
I have put on my vesture, and all power hath been given to me
by the first mystery”—or God as the one eternal source. He
issues from this source as the light of all the lights; a light that is
infinitely beyond the star-fires, the moon-light, and the splendours of
the sun, in the mythical representation. All the previous powers of
light had contributed to fulfil the glory of this vesture. These
powers belong mainly to the astronomical mythology as the lights
that were revealed and set forth in the lesser mysteries of the
physical domain, which, according to gnostic terminology, were
designated the rulers in matter. Amongst these are “the seven
amens which are the seven voices”; the five supports, the nine
guardians, the three powers, the twelve saviours of light, all of
whom are recognizably astronomical. (P. S., B. 1, 14, 18, 19.) He
wears the glory now, “as of an only-begotten from the father.” In
making this transformation Jesus presents an outer view of God the
father as the first ineffable mystery of all the mysteries. When he
came previously, in his first advent, it was from the mother as the
mortal, or the mould of soul in matter. Now he issues from the
father in spirit as revealer of the mystery of which he alone has ever
had an inner view. He is now invested with the glory of the father.
This investiture of Jesus in spirit might be claimed as pre-eminently
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781
Egyptian if all the rest were not pre-eminently so. As a mystery of
Amenta this investiture took place when the deceased became a
Sahu and put on the divine vesture of a spiritual body, or the soul of
Horus. The Sahu signifies the invested, and it is identical with the
Karest or the Christ.
There is one datum which by itself alone might dispel any doubt
respecting the Egyptian origin of the Pistis Sophia. It is this: the
day of investiture is the day of “Come thou to us,” or “Come unto
us.” (B. 1, 17-19.) This, in the Kamite eschatology, was the day of
“Come thou hither,” on which Ra called to Osiris in Amenta,
“Come thou hither,” or “Come thou to me.” (Rit., ch. 17.) In the
Pistis Sophia this is the call, not only of Ra but of all the powers of
light who raise the cry of “Come unto us” that Jesus may receive the
glory of the Father as his vesture for the resurrection. In the socalled earth-life “Jesus had not told his disciples the whole distribution of all the regions of the great invisible, and of the three
triple powers, and of the four-and-twenty invisibles.” “Nor had he
told them of their saviours, according to the orders of each (of the
twelve) as they are; nor had he told them of the region of the saviour
of the twins; nor the region of the three amens; nor those of the
seven amens, which are also the seven voices. Nor had Jesus told
his disciples of what type are the five supporters, or from what region
they had been brought forth. Nor had he told them how the great
light had emanated, nor from what region it had been brought
forth.” (B. 1, 2, 3, Mead.) In brief, as the data when identified will
show, he had not instructed them in the spiritual nature of
the mysteries, which is the object of the second coming. But
now the teacher in Amenta says to the twelve, “Rejoice and
be glad from this hour. From this day will I speak with you
freely, from the beginning of the truth unto the completion thereof;
and I will speak to you face to face without parable. From this
hour will I hide nothing from you of the things which pertain to
the height.” (B. 1, 3, 1, 8, 9, Mead.) This is said by Jesus AberAmentho, or Jesus in the spirit-world of Amenta, who had “Come forth
to day” at his second advent. When he is expounding the profounder mysteries, Jesus says to the disciples, “As for the rest of the
lower mysteries, we have no need thereof, but ye shall find them in
the Two Books of Ieou, which Enoch wrote when I spoke with him
from the tree of knowledge, and from the tree of life, which were in the
paradise of Adam.” (B. 2, 246, Mead.) In this passage Jesus identifies
himself with Iao the son of Ieou = Ihuh—and also in the character of
the solar god who spoke with Moses from the midst of the burning bush.
It was shown in the mysteries why and how the Twelve Immovables,
or Unspeakables, “rent themselves asunder,” to move, to manifest, to
reveal, to find utterance by means of God the Son as teacher of the
mysteries in Amenta (B. 2, 219-226).
Pistis Sophia marks the
change of the twelve rulers from one category to the other. These
things, said Jesus, speaking of the change which he had come on earth,
or entered the lower domain of matter, to effect, “these things shall
come to pass at the time of the completion of the æon (or cycle), and
of the accession of the Pleroma. The twelve saviours of the treasure,
and the twelve orders of each of them, which are the emanations of the
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ANCIENT EGYPT
seven voices and of the five trees (or supports) shall be with me in my
kingdom,” which was in the heaven of eternity. Jesus speaks of
those “who receive the mystery of light when they shall have quitted
the body of the matter of the rulers” (B. 2, 201), who were the
rulers in matter versus the life in spirit, or in Horus as the lord of
light who was the witness to the light of life eternal.
Jesus is described in Pistis Sophia as passing through the twelve
signs of the zodiac. The ram, bull, twins, crab, lion, balance, scorpion,
bowman, goat, and waterer are all mentioned by name. (B. of the S. in
Pistis Sophia, 366-372, Mead.) He passes through the twelve signs
in his character of solar god. He takes a portion of their light from
the twelve æons who were the Kronian rulers. “And the twelve
powers of the twelve saviours of the treasure of light, which I had
received from the twelve ministers of the midst, I cast into the sphere
of the rulers . . . and I bound them into the bodies of your
mothers.” The rulers of the Decans thought that these twelve were
“the souls of the rulers.” But, when in the fulness of time they were
brought forth into the world, there was no soul of the rulers in them;
they were recognized as beings of a superior nature. Jesus is to reign
as king over these twelve saviours, the twin-saviour, the nine guardians,
the three amens, the five supporters, and the seven amens and all the
other characters, which had been “light-emanations,” and which would
have no meaning if Jesus had not likewise had an astronomical
character. (B. 2, 230, 231.) For these names connote the seven
rulers of the Heptanomis; the five supports of a heaven that was
based upon a figure of the pole and the arms of the four quarters; the
solar trinity; the nine gods of the put-cycle, the Twin-Horus, and the
heaven that was perfected at last as the heaven of the twelve tribes,
twelve sons, twelve brothers, twelve kings, twelve reapers, twelve
rowers, twelve fishermen, twelve voices of the word, twelve teachers,
who began as saviours of the treasure of light in physical phenomena;
and who were assigned a spiritual status with Jesus in that kingdom
of the Father which they had assisted in establishing for ever; and
finally in the heaven of eternity. These, however, are mysteries that
never could be understood whilst a fictitious history of Jesus barred
the way. Horus or Jesus in Amenta is the founder of a kingdom for
his Father in heaven, and for his followers in spirit-world, at the head
of whom are the typical twelve who now become the children of
Horus. This heaven for spirits made perfect is built upon foundations
that were laid in the mythology. The Ritual shows us how the
four foundations of this new heaven were laid by Horus in establishing
the kingdom of God. First, he himself united the “double earth,” or
the two worlds in one, by his death, burial and resurrection. Then he
prays to his Father in heaven that the “four brothers” of “his own
body” or flesh and blood may be given to him as protectors of
his own person “in dutiful service.” (Rit., ch. 112, 11, 12; and
13, 8.) These four who were his brothers previously are the first of
the twelve with Horus “on his papyrus,” or monolith, or on the
mount. The four brothers of Horus who were first chosen to become
his children had been astronomical as the ancient gods or divine
supports of the four quarters, Amsta, Hapi, Tuamutef and Kabhsenuf.
With these four as supports the foundations of the kingdom of
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heaven were laid, and “the fold” of the good shepherd established
in Amenta, the earth of eternity. The explanation here is that
Horus was born one of the twelve like Joseph, but as the young
solar god, and beloved son of the father Ra, he obtained his supremacy
as the head over all the rest of the brethren. Then the twelve became
his founders, reapers, fishers, his disciples, pupil-teachers or his
children. As it is said in the Ritual (ch. 112, 9, 10), these are
“the circle of gods who were with him when Horus came to light in
his own children”; that is, when the twelve powers were assimilated
to the son of God, who was in them as they were in him at the
second coming.
The gnostic Jesus, the mystery-teacher of heaven, issues from the
father in Amenta in the likeness of the dove as the expounder of the
greater mysteries to the twelve disciples. He now says to the disciples,
“I will tell unto you the mystery of the one and only ineffable, and all
its types, all its configurations, all its regulations . . . for this mystery
is the support of them all” (B. 2, 226, Mead). This first ineffable mystery
—looking within, as Pistis Sophia phrases it—is the mystery of God
the Father. The first ineffable mystery—looking without—is the
mystery of God the Son. It is the mystery of the one God in the
two aspects of the Father and Son; hence the mystery of the one
and only ineffable, “looking within,” is also the mystery of the
one and only word or logos “looking without” (B. 2). Jesus
says, “I am come from the first mystery which is also the last”
(B. 1, 1). The power now given by the first mystery, within the veil,
to him who personates the mystery to men, looking without, is
received by the Son from the Father, from whom he emanated in the
likeness of the dove, or the hawk. And not as previously in the likeness of a puny mortal, the human Horus—born of the virgin mother
as her blind and deaf, her dumb and impubescent child.
Pistis Sophia shows the twofold character of the teaching on the
earth and in Amenta. The “wisdom of Jesus” in the Apocrypha
was taught in parables. Jesus in the canonical Gospels speaks to
the multitude in parables, and “without a parable spake he nothing
unto them” (Matt. xiii. 34). But he says, “The hour cometh when I
shall no more speak unto you in parables, but shall tell you plainly
of the Father” (John xvi. 25). This promise is fulfilled by the
Egypto-gnostic Jesus after his return to the regions from whence he
came into the earth-life. He says to the disciples, “I have gone to
the regions whence I came forth. From this day I will speak to you
face to face without parable” (B. 1, 8, 9). Henceforth he speaks to
them plainly of the Father, and, as it is frequently said, “without
parable.” This is after that second advent which the Jesus in the
Gospels is not permitted to fulfil, but which is still expected by the
millenarians.
Various sayings that were uttered aforetime in the earth-life are
now expounded by Jesus in Amenta “without parable.” He says to
the disciples, “When I shall be king over the seven amens, the five
supports (or trees), the three amens, and the nine guardians; king
over the child of the child, that is to say, over the twin-saviours (or
the double Horus); king over the twelve saviours and the whole
number of perfect souls—then all those men who shall have received
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the mystery in (or of) that ineffable, shall be fellow-kings with me.
They shall sit on my right hand and on my left in my kingdom;
therefore I said unto you aforetime, ‘Ye shall sit on my right hand and
on my left in my kingdom, and ye shall reign with me’” (B. 2, 230).
Speaking of the greater mysteries, which are spiritual, Jesus says,
“I have brought the mysteries which break all the bonds of the counterfeit of the spirit (i.e., the bonds of matter) and all the seals which are
attached to the soul, the mysteries of which make the soul free, and
ransom it from the hands of its parents, the rulers, and transform it
into the kingdom of the true Father, the first Father, the first One,
ineffable and everlasting mystery.” “For this cause have I said unto
you aforetime, ‘He who shall not leave father and mother to follow
after me is not worthy of me.’ What I said then was, ye shall leave your
parents the rulers, that ye may all be children of the first, everlasting
mystery” (B. 2, 341). This is the esoteric true interpretation of a
saying that has been used exoterically (Matt. xix. 29; Mark x. 29).
The parents signified were not human, but those rulers in matter who
preceded the one God, the Holy Spirit, whom the Son made known
in the mysteries of Amenta under his title of Jesus Aber-Amentho.
Again, he exclaims, “I said unto you aforetime, ‘Seek that ye may
find.’ ” When he said that it signified “Ye shall seek out the mysteries
of light, which purify the body of matter. I say unto you, the race
of human kind is material. I tore myself asunder, I brought unto
them the mysteries of light to purify them . . . otherwise, no soul in
the whole of human kind would have been saved” (B. 2, 249, Mead).
Salvation here is brought by means of the Son of God the Father
becoming incarnate to redeem the human race from matter by inculcating the virtues of purification which were taught by Horus
or Jesus in the mysteries of Amenta.
The gnostic Jesus also gives an esoteric rendering of the Resurrection when he says that “All men who shall achieve the mystery of
the resurrection of the dead which healeth from demoniac possessions,
and sufferings, and every disease, which also healeth the blind, the
lame, the halt, the dumb, and the deaf, (the mystery) which I gave you
aforetime—whosoever shall receive of these mysteries and achieve (or
master) when if he asks for anything whatsoever . . . it shall at once
be granted unto him” (B. 2, 279). In the resurrection the deceased
transforms into a spirit, and it was in the mysteries of Amenta, and
in the spirit-life, that these miracles were achieved, not in the life on
earth. In the Ritual the deceased goes where he pleases, does as he
please, and assumes whatsoever form he please as he masters
mystery after mystery according to the gnosis. In the canonical
Gospels we find an exoteric rendering of these mysteries of Amenta,
which the lie-enchanted Christian world believe in as historical miracles
performed on earth by an historical Saviour named Jesus. There
were seven preservers of the treasures of light in the celestial
heptanomis, whether as rulers of constellations or as lords of polestars, who first upraised the starry firesticks which were kindled on
the seven hills of heaven. The Pistis Sophia shows the way in which
an additional five were added to the seven in completing the first
twelve saviours of the treasure of light. This is indicated when it is
said (B. 2, 189), “The twelve saviours of the treasure, and the twelve
THE EGYPTO-GNOSTIC JESUS
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orders of each of them, which are the emanations of the seven voices
and of the five supports, shall be with me in the region of the
inheritance of light; they shall be kings with me in my kingdom.”
Which shows that the first twelve were combined as the 7 + 5 that
were pre-zodiacal, and that they are to become kings in the kingdom
of eternal light; which twelve were stationed in the solar zodiac,
or round the mount of glory. There is frequent reference in Pistis
Sophia to the mystery of the five supports. These are also figured
as five trees, one of which is said to be “in the midst” (B. 1, 3 and
18, B. 2, 191, 196). These five tree-supports, with the great one in
their midst, are equivalent to the tree-type of eternal stability imaged
as the Tat of Ptah (or as Ptah himself), which is a figure of support
at the four corners with the pole as the central great pillar of support.
It is also equivalent, as a symbol, to the group of Horus and his four
children in the Osirian mysteries. The Kamite twelve, as reapers in
the harvest-field with Horus in Amenta, were also put together from
two earlier groups of seven and five, the same as in the gnostic
mysteries of the twelve supports or the pole-tree of heaven with
twelve branches in the zodiac. A sketch, however tentative, may be
drawn of the original characters in the astronomical mythology, that
were given the twelve thrones under one name or another in the final
zodiac. (1) Sut, (2) Horus, (3) Shu, (4) Hapi, (5) Ap-Uat, (6) Kabhsenuf, (7) Amsta, (8) Anup, (9) Ptah, (10) Atum, (11) Sau, (12) Hu,
as the Kamite originals of the twelve who rowed the solar bark
for Ra.
We claim, then, to show that the typical Twelve, who are called
apostles or disciples in later language, originated in twelve characters
which had represented twelve stellar powers in the astronomical
mythology, and that these were afterwards given thrones or seats as
rulers in the twelve signs of the zodiac or in heaven. These, in the
Pistis Sophia, are designated twelve preservers or saviours of the
treasure of light. They form the cycle of twelve lesser gods around
the sun-god on the summit of the mount, and are the same in
signification, whether called gods in the Ritual or disciples of the
Egypto-gnostic Jesus in the Pistis Sophia. These are at first the
twelve with Horus the mortal, Horus in matter, Horus in the mythos,
Horus the youthful solar god. But when he makes his transformation
and becomes the Son of God the Father, in the spirit life, they are
his companions in Amenta; the twelve great spirits to whom he
expounds the mysteries of the fatherhood; in short, they become the
typical twelve as characters in the Kamite eschatology.
According to Pistis Sophia the localities of the teachings,
whether in the midst of Amenta, or on the Mount of Olives, were
celestial, and not mundane. As it is said, “Jesus and his disciples
remained in the midst of an aerial region, in the paths of the ways of
the midst which is below the sphere.” This is the starting-point from
which the twelve accompany him, through the regions that are mapped
out by the zodiacal signs (Books of the Saviour in Pistis Sophia,
359-371), when they “go forth three by three to the four quarters
of heaven to preach the gospel of the kingdom” (390). It is also
said that “Jesus stood at the altar, and cried aloud, turning towards
the four angles of the world” (358). Here the “altar” is urano-
786
ANCIENT EGYPT
graphic. It was figured in the constellation Ara as a co-type with the
summit called the Mount of Hetep, or of Heaven, in the astronomical
mythology.
DOUBLE HORUS, OR JESUS AND THE CHRIST.
It was a saying of Philo’s that “the logos is double.” This it is
as the double Horus, or as Jesus and the Christ, who was dual as
manifestor for the Virgin Mother and afterwards for God the Father:
double by nature, human and divine; double in matter and in spirit;
double as child and as adult, double as the soul of both sexes. But
when the word “logos” comes to be used for the divine Reason we are
in the midst of Greek metaphysic and doctrinal mystification. These
two, blended in one person, constituted the double Horus who was
that double logos spoken of by Philo, the figure of which was founded,
as Egyptian, on the two halves of the soul, or pair of gods in the
mystery of Tattu (Rit., ch. 17). Horus in these two characters was
Horus with the tress of infancy, and Horus who becomes bird-headed
at the transformation in his baptism. In his first advent Horus is
the sower in the seed-field of time; in his second he is the lord of the
reapers in the harvest of eternity. In the astronomical mythos Horus
was the king of one year. Naturally that was as ruler of the seasons
in the annual circuit of the sun. As the prince of eternity he was the
typical adult of thirty years, and lord of the Sut-Heb festival, who is
called “the living Horus, the powerful bull, lord of the festivals
of thirty years,” which are termed “the years of Horus as King”
(Rec. of the Past, vol. 10, 34). This was the royal Horus in whom the
child that was destined to be a king attained his manhood and
assumed his perfect sovereignty.
As already shown, the genesis of the double Horus is portrayed in
the Ritual (ch. 115). In this description “two brethren come into
being.” One of these was the wearer of the female lock, as the childHorus. His birth was mystical. He was both male and female in
person, or, as it is said, “he assumed the form of a female with a
lock,” the sign of pre-pubescence in either sex, and hence a type of
both. He is also called “the Afflicted One,” which denotes the
mystery of the Virgin’s child. The second is “the active one of
Heliopolis.” He is “the heir of the temple.” The first is also called
the heir, and the second the heir of the heir. He was the divine
might of “the son whom the father hath begotten.” This was “the
only-begotten of the father.” Thus the “two brethren” were Horus
the child who wears the long tress that is the sign of either sex, and
Horus the adult who images the power and glory of the father as the
god in spirit.
Iusa, the Jesus of On, like Horus in the Osirian cult, was born bimater. His two mothers were Iusāas and Neb-hetep, the two consorts of
Atum-Ra. These two mothers were at first two sisters in the mythos.
One of them was the mother in the western mountain, or later in the
winter solstice; the other gave birth to Horus on the horizon in the
eastern equinox. It follows inevitably that the Gospel-Jesus has two
mothers who were sisters, and two places of birth and rebirth. When
JESUS AND THE CHRIST
787
the mythology was merged in the eschatology, and Ra became the
father in heaven, he is described as having two companions who are
with him in the solar bark. In this text the two sister-mothers with
whom Ra consorts in the “divine ship” are Isis and Nut, who are the
bringers-forth of Iusa or Jesus in his twofold character: child-Horus
at his first advent being the son of Isis (Har-si-Hesi) the earthmother, and in his second advent, or rebirth in spirit, the son of Nut,
the heavenly mother. Such is the origin of the two mothers who
were two sisters, and two consorts in two places of birth and rebirth
represented in the “historic” narrative by Nazareth and Bethlehem
as the birthplace of the shoot or natzer in Virgo, and the house of
bread in Pisces, which two places of birth corresponded to the two
seasons of seedtime and of harvest in the old Egyptian year.
Not only had Horus two mothers, Isis the virgin who conceived
him, and Nephthys who nursed him. He was brought forth singly,
and also as one of five brothers. Jesus has two mothers, Mary the
Virgin who conceived him, and Mary the wife of Cleopas, who brought
him forth as one of her children. He, likewise, was brought forth
singly, and as one of five brethren. Horus was the son of Seb, his
father on earth. Jesus is the son of Joseph, the father on earth.
Horus was with his mother the Virgin until twelve years old, when he
transformed into the beloved son of God as the only-begotten of the
father in heaven. Jesus remained with his mother the Virgin up to
the age of twelve years, when he left her to be about his father’s
business. From twelve to thirty years of age there is no record in
the life of Horus. From twelve to thirty years of age there is no
record in the life of Jesus. Horus at thirty years of age became adult
in his baptism by Anup. Jesus at thirty years of age was made a
man of in his baptism by John the Baptist. Horus in his baptism
made his transformation into the beloved son and only-begotten of
the father, the holy spirit, represented by a bird. Jesus in his
baptism is hailed from heaven as the beloved son and only-begotten
of the father God, the holy spirit that is represented by a dove, which
denotes the mystery of all mysteries concerning the origin of the
Egypto-gnostic Christ.
The elder Horus came to earth in the body of his humility. The
younger came from heaven to wear the vesture of his father’s glory.
The first was the child of a baptism by water. The second is Horus
the anointed or Christified; the oil upon whose face reflected the
glory of the Father. This was the double baptism of the mysteries
which is referred to in the Ritual by the priest who says, “I lustrate
with water in Tattu and with oil in Abydos” (ch. 1). The duality
manifested in Horus is shown when he is said to come into being as
two brethren, the same that Pistis Sophia describes as “the Saviourtwins”; also when the transformer Kheper takes the form of two
children—the elder and the younger (Litany of Ra, 61). Again, in
the seventy-first chapter of the Ritual, Horus divinized is called “the
owner of twin souls, who lives in two twin souls,” now united in the
eternal one. It is the potential duality of sex in the child-Horus
that will account for Queen Hatshepsu being designated Mat-Ka-Ra,
the true likeness of the solar god, called the golden Horus. She
assumed the habiliments of both sexes in token that the divinity was
788
ANCIENT EGYPT
dual, and that this duality was reproduced in the golden Horus whose
various phases of twinship included the two souls of sex. The golden
Horus was a supreme type because of the twofold nature of the
soul. It was this duality of Horus that is referred to by Hatshepsu
when she says “the two Horus-gods have united the two divisions
(south and north) for me.” “I rule over this land like the son of
Isis”; “I am victorious like the son of Nut”; which two likewise
constitute the double Horus (Inscription: Records, vol. 12, 134). It
is said of the Osirian Horus in his twofold genesis from matter and
spirit, “Horus proceedeth from the essence of his father and the
corruption which befell him” (Rit., ch. 78). That is in the incarnation or immergence in matter as the opposite of spirit, according
to the later theology. Matter was at this time considered to be
corrupt, and matter was maternal, but spirit was paternal and held
to be divine. This will also explain the language of the Ritual
applied to Osiris when he is spoken of as suffering decay and
corruption, although inherently inviolate and incorruptible. The
Osiris is embalmed in the divine type of him that never saw corruption.
Yet Horus the child is born of Isis, into the corruption of matter in his incorporation, and all the evil that was
derived from matter or the mother-nature has to be purged away
in becoming pure spirit like Horus at the second advent, when he has
become the glorified, anointed, only-begotten son. These were the
two halves of a soul that was perfected in oneness, when Horus the
child was blended with Horus the adult in the marriage-mystery of
Tattu, but not till then, and not otherwise. “The two Horus-gods”
is a title of the dual Horus in the Pyramid-texts of Teta. The Olive
is there said to be “the tree of the two Horus-gods who are in the
temples.” Horus proclaims himself to be the issue of Seb (or Earth)
whose spouse is Isis, and affirms that his mother is Nut (ch. 42).
That is as the double Horus. Horus the human soul on earth, and
Horus as a spirit in Amenta; Horus born of two mothers who were
two sisters, and who in the different theologies may be Neith and
Sekhet; Iusāas and Nebhetep; Isis and Nut; or two Marys, the two
Meris who were at first the cow of earth and the cow of heaven.
The child of Isis, the virgin heifer, was imaged as the calf, the red
calf of sacrifice, also by the golden calf. After his death he rose
again as the bull in the likeness of his father, Osiris, the bull of
eternity. In the solar mythos he was born as a calf in the autumn
equinox that became a bull in the Easter equinox when this occurred
in Taurus. The type was repeated in the eschatology, when the
manes is baptized to become the anointed in the character of Horus,
who says, “I am the divine bull, son of the ancestress of Osiris”
(Rit., ch. 147).
The story of Jesus in the canonical Gospels follows the totemic
and mythical representation. Like Heitsi-Eibib and the human
Horus he is the child of a virgin mother, the child of Mary only
up to twelve years of age. Then the same change occurs with him
as with the totemic youth at puberty. He waxes in force and
stature, and is immediately “about thirty years of age.” This is
the age of Amsu-Horus when he has made his transformation from
childhood into manhood as the khemt or typical adult of thirty years,
JESUS AND THE CHRIST
789
at which time he rises in Amenta as a sahu in the glorified body.
The transformation of Horus who was a child of the mother alone,
the immaculate virgin Neith, she who came from herself, is reproduced by Luke. When Horus the child transforms he is only twelve
years of age. As a child with Mary Jesus “waxed strong and was
filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him” (Luke ii. 40).
The “grace of God” in Egyptian is termed “khemt” for grace and
favour, and it is as Amsu-Horus that the child waxes strong and is in
favour with, or endowed by, God the Father. The way in which he
“waxed in stature” can be seen in the effigy of Amsu-Horus, the
divinized adult who is the fulfiller at puberty, mythical in the vernal
equinox, human in the harvest-field, and in the resurrection eschatological. But there had been no fecundator of a human mother by
her own child since the days of utter and incestuous promiscuity
until the time when the mythical Horus (or Jesus) was made human
in a personal and historical character as the fertilizer of a Hebrew
virgin.
The titles given to two Egyptian priests who, in succession, present
the deceased person to the gods are the An-mut-ef and Si-meri-ef.
These are two titles of Horus in his two characters, first as the support
of his mother, and secondly as the beloved son of his father. According to Egyptian doctrine, the incarnation of the elder Horus was no
isolated individual event. Nor was a soul made flesh in any single
form of personality. It was the soul of the totem, family, stock or
tribe, and lastly of the individual that was represented in the typical
figure of Horus or Jesus, child of the virgin mother. The soul of
flesh that was born of the mother’s blood and made a type of in
mythology could no more be limited to a single person than the soul
that was previously derived from air, earth, water or other element
of life. It was in keeping with natural law that, when the pubescent
virgin had conceived, the incarnation of a human soul commenced.
The mother, as the insufflator of that soul, was the mode and means
of the incarnation which was effected in her blood, the flow of which
was diverted to that end. The earliest embodiment then of a soul
that was derived from a human source, and not simply from the elements of external nature, was by incarnation in the blood of the
female who was mythically represented as the virgin mother. Thus
the embodiment of the human soul, when descent was traced from
the mother only, was by incarnation, and not by begettal. As it is
said of the elder Horus, Har-si-Hesi, he was born but not begotten.
The second Horus is begotten of the father with a second mother
Nut, who is added as the bringer-forth above. It was comparatively
late before the begettal of a human soul was ascribed to the individual
progenitor. As shown by Egypt in the mirror of the mythos, this
was not earlier than the time of Ptah when the double primitive
essence was first recognized. A pair of souls were then derived, the
one from matter, the other from spirit; one from the motherhood, the
other from the fatherhood, both of which were blended in Ptah, the
epicene parent. Child-Horus literally embodies the first half of a
soul that was human primarily and in a latter stage divine. In its
first phase this soul was derived from the mother’s blood and quickening breath as a body-soul. In its second, the source is spiritual, a
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ANCIENT EGYPT
causative source from the father in heaven. For example, the Ka, or
highest soul of seven, is thought of in the Ritual as food or sustenance for the body and the means of duration. It is also looked upon
as a typical sacrifice to that end. Hence the speaker says, “Am I not
the bull of the sacrificial herd: are not the mortuary gifts upon me,
and the powers above Nu” (ch. 105). Horus in the second phase
says, “I am a soul and my soul is divine. I am he who produceth
food. I am the food which perisheth not—in my name of self-originating force, together with Nu,” the mother heaven. (Rit., ch. 85). This
is he who possessed the “powers above Nu” as bringer of the bread
of life from heaven. “The bread of God which cometh down out of
heaven and giveth life to the world” was this imperishable food of
soul that gave eternal life to men: and which when personified in Horus
imaged a saviour from death in matter. When the Osiris deceased
attains the type of the sacred hawk he speaks of being invested with
the soul of Horus. “Horus has invested (him) with his own soul for
the seizing of his inheritance from Osiris at the Tuat.” “It is I, even
I, who am Horus in glory” (ch. 78). Horus had come again in
glory from the father as revealer of the bliss towards which his
followers were bound (ch. 30 B). When Horus was invested with
the soul that is to be eternal, he becomes hawk-headed, in the likeness
of the father, as Jesus was invested with that other bird of soul, the
gnostic dove, when he was proclaimed to be the beloved son of God
the father in his baptism.
Paul’s doctrine of the resurrection is founded on this mystery of
the double Horus. As taught by the Egyptian wisdom, continuity
was conditional, and the power of resurrection was personally secured
by living the life of human Horus in fellowship with his sufferings as
the bearer of his cross by which the power of his resurrection in the
after-life was attained through becoming Horus the divinized adult.
Paul’s resurrection is obtainable on the same conditions of becoming.
As a struggling mortal he hopes “by any means” to attain “unto
the resurrection from the dead,” and says, “Not that I have already
attained or am already made perfect; but I press on.” In Paul’s
Epistles, Christ takes the place of Horus the anointed by whom the
power of resurrection was made manifest in the mysteries, and the
doctrine is the same as in the Ritual. In his own body and sufferings
Paul was living the life and trying to emulate the character of Horus
the mortal, whilst looking forward to the future fulfilment as it was
portrayed in Horus glorified, whose second coming in Tattu as
representative of Ra the holy spirit and the power of resurrection is
perfectly described by Paul. The manes in the Ritual says, “My
enclosure is in Heaven,” as it was imaged on the mountain summit
in the eternal city. Paul writes, “Our own citizenship is in heaven:
from whence also we wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who
shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation (which was one with
the maimed, deformed and suffering human Horus, changed and
glorified in the resurrection) that it may be conformed to the body of
his glory” as it had been set forth scene by scene in the mysteries of
Amenta by the divine scribe Taht, and preserved sufficiently intact
to make it out as pre-historical and non-historical in the once-more
living Egyptian Book of the Dead (Phil. iii. 20-21).
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791
The reason why the Virgin’s child should make his change and
pass away when twelve years old, and why the divinized adult should
not take up the story until thirty years of age, to leave no record
during eighteen years, is to be explicated by the Egyptian wisdom.
It is because the two as double Horus, or as the dual Jesus Christ, are
no more than types, and have no relation to an individual human
history, Kamite, Hebrew, Persian, Gnostic, or Christian; and in this
unity, as before said, the different versions all agree.
The Pistis Sophia tells us more about the double Horus, the twofold Messiah, or twin Saviour, than all the records outside the Ritual
put together; more particularly in the astronomical phase of the
mythos, only in this work the double Horus is the Egypto-gnostic
Jesus, who does fulfil the second advent in accordance with the map
of mythology. In one representation of his nature Horus is portrayed
as the ruler, both in time and eternity. In time he is the foster-child
of Seb, god of earth, brought forth by the mother-moon or Virgin in
the zodiac as the king of one year. This is Horus in the circle of the
lesser year. At his second advent, as fulfiller on the vastest scale, he
is said to travel the everlasting road as the ever-coming prince of
eternity. It was thus the first Horus, or Jesus, represented the solar
god that made the circuit of the signs in the forward motion through
the zodiac, whereas the second Horus, or Jesus, was the “traveller of
the heavenly road,” the backward way in the hugest all-embracing
circle of precession.
The gnostic Jesus represents the double Horus, human and divine,
more fully and definitely than does the Jesus of the canonical Gospels
and independently of any personal history. The first and second
advents are both fulfilled by the Jesus of Pistis Sophia. As the
youth of twelve years who was Horus the word, he instructs the
disciples “up to the regions of the first statutes only” and is the
teacher by means of parables. In his second advent he says, “I will
speak with you face to face without parable.” He then unveils and
expounds the greater mysteries from centre to circumference; from
the first to the last. In the same gnostic scripture Mary, the mother
of Jesus, describes her son in accordance with the Egyptian gnosis of
the double Horus, which was not derived from the canonical Gospels.
She thus addresses him: “When thou wert a child before the spirit
had descended upon thee, when thou wert in the vineyard with Joseph,
the spirit descended from the height and came unto me in the house (so)
like unto thee I knew him not, but thought that it was thou. And he
said unto me, ‘Where is Jesus, my brother, that I may go to meet him?’
And when he had said this unto me I was in doubt and thought it
was a phantom tempting me. I seized him and bound him to the foot
of the bed which was in my house.” Jesus, the mortal, is in the
vineyard with Joseph. He hears Mary tell her naïf story to Joseph,
and exclaims, “Where is he that I may see him? I am expecting
him in this place.”
Mary continues: “We went together; we
entered into the house, we found the spirit bound to the bed, and we
gazed upon thee and him and found that thou wert like unto him.
And he that was bound to the bed was unloosed. He embraced thee
and kissed thee, and thou also didst kiss him; ye became one and
the same being” (P. S., B. 1, 120, Mead).
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ANCIENT EGYPT
The two Jesuses, one in matter and one in spirit, or Jesus and the
Christ, are identical with Horus, the prince in the city of the blind,
and Horus who reconstitutes his father. The meeting and the
blending of the two into one being is a gnostic version of the mystery
enacted in Tattu, where Horus in spirit meets with Horus the mortal,
or Ra, the holy spirit, embraces Osiris, the god in matter, and the pair
are united in the one double divine soul, which dwelleth in the place
of establishing a soul that is to live for ever (Rit., ch. 17, 16-18).
In the opening chapter of Matthew’s Gospel the birth or generation
of Jesus is called “the birth of Jesus Christ” (ch. i., 18), a twofold
character equivalent to that of the double Horus, who was Horus in
the flesh until twelve years of age, and Horus in the spirit from the
age of thirty years. In other versions it is designated “the birth
of the Christ.”
But in accordance with the genuine doctrine
these are two births entirely distinct from each other, one for Jesus
the Virgin’s child and one for the Christ as en effluence of the Holy
Spirit emanating from the father in the form of a dove. Horus the
Virgin’s child was born but not begotten. At his second advent he
became the divinized adult as the only son begotten of the father.
This was the anointed son, and the anointed is the Christ, or
Christified. The Christ was constituted by a begettal in spirit, when
the spirit of God descended from heaven as the dove, or the hawk of
soul, and the youth of twelve yeas was transformed into the man of
thirty years. There was no Christ until this change of state and type
took place, and could be none without the necessary transformation
by which it was accomplished.
This was represented in the
transformation and transubstantiation of the mummy; in the
baptism, circumcision, regeneration, resurrection, and other modes of
the mystery, in which the body-soul was converted into a likeness
of the eternal spirit; child-Horus into Horus the adult, or Jesus
into the Christ. But, to compare as we proceed, the Word in the
Kamite original was the first, or elder Horus, the child-Horus born of
the Virgin Mother, he who issued out of silence as the inarticulate
Logos (Rit., ch. 24). He is called the Kheru in Egyptian, which not
only signifies the Word, but also denotes a victim doomed to be
sacrificed, whether as the sufferer in the Tat, on the cross, or as the
victim bound for slaughter. The second Horus, Horus in spirit, was
the demonstrator of eternal life in his resurrection from the sepulchre
who is thus the word-made-truth that was personalized in Har-MaKheru. This second Horus, who is the fulfiller that follows the
founder, is referred to in the Gospel, parenthetically, in a way that
blends or confuses the two in one as the word. “And the Word
became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as
of the only-begotten from the father) full of grace and truth.” This
is the merest passing allusion to the second Horus who was the
anointed, only-begotten Son of God the Father; that is, to Horus,
glorified, who followed human Horus in the flesh, but could not be
so easily made to look historical.
The difference betwixt “the Son of Man” and “the Son of the
woman” may also be explicated by the doctrine of the double Horus.
The “Son of Man” is a title of Jesus in the Gospels, which has been
supposed to denote the Son of God in the body of his humanity. But
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793
there was a “Son of Man” with an esoteric and mystical significance,
who was known to the gnostic teachers as Anthropos the son of
Anthropos; also as Monogenes. Horus the Saviour in his first
advent was the child of Isis; that is, the son of woman when the woman
is divine. In his second advent he is Iu, the Su or Son of God the
Father, who became the Son of Man by title thus: Atum-Ra, son of
Ptah, was the earliest god in the likeness of the perfect man. He was
the first man in the same sense that the Jew-god Ieou in the Pistis
Sophia is called the “First Man” (333) as the divine begetter in the
human likeness. Ieou is the first man, and Iao is his son. Thus
Iao, or Jesus, is “the Son of Man.” He comes to earth as the one
God in the form of man. This, in the Ritual, is the Egyptian Jesus,
Iu-em-hetep, the Son as Revealer of the Father Atum-Ra. The
Father gives authority to the Son “to execute judgment, because he
is the Son of Man” (John v. 27). That is at the second coming,
when he is to appear in the power and the glory of the Father, as did
the second Horus with the oil upon his face which expressed the glory
of his divinity. This is “the Son of Man” who was in heaven whilst
on the earth (John iii. 13), and who was to “come in his glory,
and all the angels with him” (Matt. xxv. 31); and who did so come
to judgment periodically as Horus in the mysteries of Amenta
(Rit., ch. 125). But the title is applied to Jesus indiscriminately
in the Gospels, where the two Horuses are continually confused
together by the concoctors of the human history, which was limited in
locality as much as possible to this earth, to make it the more convincing in its appeal.
In the Ritual Horus says: “I am the heir, the primary power of
motion and of rest.” He was the heir in several characters. In the
first he is the heir of Seb, the earth-father. In the second he is the
heir of Osiris. When Osiris and Ra are blended in one Horus becomes
the heir of Ra, the father in heaven, as the inheritor and the giver of
eternal life to his followers. “The two earths have been decreed to
Horus absolutely and without condition” (ch. 19). Because it was he
who joined the two Horuses together, and as Paul phrases it, “made
both one, and brake down the middle-wall of partition, that he might
create in himself of the twain one new man” (Eph. ii. 14, 15). As
son of Seb he is the Virgin’s child on earth, or in matter. As son of
Osiris he is Amsu the Divine Manes in Amenta, and as Har-Sam-Taui
he is the uniter of the two earths in one, the conqueror who makes
the word of Osiris truth against his enemies, and thus becomes the
founder of the future kingdom of heaven for his father in the spirit as
the double Horus, he who wins and wears the double diadem.
The dual Horus—Horus as mortal and Horus in spirit, Horus
as child of the Virgin and Horus begotten of the Father, Horus
twelve years of age and Horus the adult of thirty years—is reproduced
in the Gospels, however briefly, although the object of the writers
was not to distinguish between the two natures, human and divine,
whilst both were limited to the one life on this earth. Still, there is a
dual Jesus, or Jesus and the Christ, corresponding to the double
Horus. Child-Horus is portrayed as the child-Jesus up to twelve
years of age. In his baptism by water it is prognosticated by John
that Jesus is to come as the Baptizer with the Holy Spirit and with
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fire. This is he “whose fan is in his hand,” and this is the transformation that was made by Horus the mortal when he became Horus
rising in spirit with the fan, or khu, in his hand. Jesus in the same
circumstances is the same character. The Spirit of God the Father
descends upon him in the likeness of a dove, which indicates that he is
now the Christ in Spirit. The Virgin’s child has changed into the Son
of God the Father, and the change is authenticated by the “Voice out
of the heavens, saying, this is my beloved Son” (Matt. iii. 16, 17).
The transaction is one of many that could only take place in the
Earth of Amenta, but which are represented perforce in the earth of
time, because the matter of the pre-existent mythos was rendered as
a human history in the exoteric Gospels.
It has to be repeated again and again that the primitive mysteries
of totemism were continued and developed as spiritual in the
Egyptian eschatology. Child-Horus at twelve years of age represents the typical youth that passed into the ranks of the adults at
puberty, who was circumcised and regenerated in the rite of Baptism,
blood, water or oil being used for the purpose of lustration. This is
repeated in the transformation of child-Horus into Horus the adult,
the child of twelve years into the sherau of thirty years; otherwise
the child of the mother into the son of the father. Thus, the childHorus becomes the beloved son of the father in his baptism, as did
Jesus. In the Ritual (chapter of the baptisms) the speaker at the
fourth portal says: “I have been baptized in the water with which the
Good Being was washed at the time when he had his contention with
Sut (Satan), and when the victory was given to him.” In the baptism
at the fifth portal, he says he has washed himself, or has been baptized in
the water that Horus was washed in when he became the beloved son of
his father, Osiris. “Su-meri-f ” is the son whom the father loves,
hence the beloved son, the anointed, or the Christ when Christified.
In one of these baptisms (eighth portal) the baptizer is mentioned by
name as Anup. He was the typical baptizer, the embalmer and
anointer of the dead from of old, before the time of the solar
Horus, or Osiris. “I have been washed in the water wherein the God
Anup baptized when he performed the office of embalmer and binderup of the Mummy.” Or, as it is otherwise said, when he became the
chief minister to Osiris in the later cult. Here we find (1) that
Anup was the baptizer in preparing Osiris (or the mortal Horus) to
become the Horus in spirit, the anointed and beloved son of the father
in the rite of embalmment, or baptism; that Osiris, or Horus, was
baptized preparatory to or at the time of his contest with Sut (Satan);
and that the baptism of Horus took place when he became chief
minister, the beloved son Su-meri-f of his father, he who had previously
been the pillar of support (An-mut-f) to his mother. (Naville, Texts;
Budge, Book of the Dead, ch. 145.) There is a baptism in the Ritual
which takes place at the time when Horus makes his transformation into
the menat, the bird of soul as a swallow, dove or pigeon. That is when
mortal Horus has become a spirit (ch. 85, 1), with the head of a bird,
whether as the Divine hawk or the dove, and the same transformation
takes place in the baptism of Jesus, when the dove from heaven
descended and abode upon him as the sign to show that he was now
the Son of the Father in Spirit.
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There was a double baptism in the ancient mysteries: the baptism
by water and the baptism by spirit. This may be traced to the two
lakes of heaven at the head of the celestial river in the region of
the northern pole, which were also repeated as the two lakes of
purification in Amenta. The manes says, “I purify me in the
southern tank, and I rest me at the northern lake” (ch. 125). They
will account for the two forms of baptism mentioned in the Gospels.
John baptizes with water, Jesus with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
This twofold baptism had been presented by the two celestial
lakes or pools that were configurated in the northern heaven which
are to be read of in the Ritual (ch. 97) as the baptistery of Anup.
One of these was the lake of purification by water; the other by
spirit. This latter was the lake of Sa by name, in which the gods
themselves were wont to be vitalized in their baptism. Sa signifies
spirit; the Sa was a divine or magical fluid which made immortal;
and the baptism in this sacred lake of Sa was literally a baptism of
the holy spirit. The scene of the baptism by John can be paralleled
in the Ritual (ch. 97). Horus claims to be the master of all things,
including the water of the Inundation. When he comes to be
baptized, it is “said at the boat,” called “the staff of Anup,” “Look
upon me, oh ye great and mighty Gods, who are foremost among the
spirits of Annu; let me be exalted in your presence.” The plea for
baptism is very express. “Lo, I come, that I may purify this soul of
mine in the most high degree: let not that impediment which cometh
from your mouth be issued against me, let me be purified in the lake of
propitiation and of equipoise : let me plunge into the divine pool
beneath the two divine sycamores of heaven and earth.” After the
baptism, he says, “Now let my Fold be fitted for me as one victorious
against all adversaries who would not that right should be done to me.
I am the only one just and true upon the earth” (Rit., ch. 97, Renouf).
In the Gospel, when Jesus cometh “unto John” = Anup the baptizer,
“John would have hindered him.” “But Jesus answering said unto
him, suffer me now for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness”
(Matt. iii. 14, 15)—a probable rendering of the Egyptian word
Maat! In the Egyptian baptism three elements are involved: the
elements of water, fire and spirit. Osiris represented water, Horus
the solar fire, and Ra the holy spirit. These elements agree with the
three persons in the trinity that were Osiris the father, Horus the son,
Ra the holy spirit, in whose names as father, son and holy ghost the
rite of baptism still continues to be practised. The second character
was fulfilled by Horus when he became bird-headed as a spirit in the
resurrection. This fulfilment is obvious if not perfectly accomplished
on behalf of Jesus after his baptism. “And Jesus, full of the holy
spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led in the Spirit” (Luke iv.
1, 2). He also returns “in the power of the Spirit” (iv. 14). The
same change has occurred with him as with Horus in the same
circumstances. It is now that he makes the announcement. “The
Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach
good tidings to the poor: he hath sent me to proclaim release to the
captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them
that are bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. To-day
hath the scripture been fulfilled in your ears.” This was the fulfil-
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ment, according to Jewish prophecy, of that second advent which
took place, and could only take place in spirit-world, and not
in the life on earth, except as a performance in the religious
mysteries.
Another episode in the canonical account of Jesus will serve to
illustrate the transformation from the child of twelve into the adult of
thirty years. When Jesus was twelve years old, says Luke, his
parents went up to Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover. When
they were returning to Nazareth they found the boy had tarried
behind in Jerusalem. After three days they discovered him in the
temple sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and
asking them questions. They were astonished; and his mother said
unto him, “Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy
father and I sought thee sorrowing.” And he said unto them, “How
is it ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be on my father’s
business?”—or must be about the things of my father. This, in the
original, is a legend of the infancy and of the time when the childHorus made his transformation into Horus the adult, to become the
fulfiller for his father, “and,” as he says, “to take the lead.” Osiris in
his maimed and mutilated state was represented by the child of Isis,
the Horus of twelve years, or the moon in the fourteen days of waning
light, or the sun in the winter solstice. Thus Isis in search of the
scattered limbs and members of Osiris was in search of her child
(Rit., ch. 157). As it is said in the “Hymn to Osiris,” “she went
round the world lamenting him. She stopped not till she found him.
. . . She raised the remains of the god of the motionless heart. She
extracted his essence. She bore a child. She suckled her babe in
secrecy. No one knew where it happened” (Records, vol. 4, pp. 101-2).
In the text quoted from the Ritual the child of the papyrus-marshes
has changed and come forth as the ruler, he who fights the great battle
against Sut. Horus was then about his father’s business. He had
now transformed from the child of Isis only, or Horus in the secret
place, into Horus the begotten of the father, the Horus of thirty years.
This is the original of the story told by Luke of the child-Christ when
he was twelve years of age. Mary, like Isis, searches the districts for
her missing child, who is found after three days, which is the length of
time assigned to the transformation of Osiris for renewal in the
moon. Meantime he, too, has “made a great battle,” asserted his
supremacy, and “ordered what was to be done,” although the nature
and mode of the contest have been changed. He has also given
terror and caused his mother to fear. When reproached by his mother,
who had sought him sorrowing, he asks his mother and father if they
did not know that he must be about his father’s business, or attending
to the things of his father.
There is a chapter of Isis seeking for child-Horus at his going forth
from the marshes in which the papyrus grew; that is, when Horus
is the child of twelve years who transforms into the living likeness of
the father as the man of thirty years. A vulture with outspread wings
is the emblem of the seeking mother, who goes about searching the
“mysterious retreats” of Horus in which he hides himself after leaving
the marshes. Her son goes forth to face misfortune, to command the
chiefs of the district. He fights a great battle. He calls to remem-
JESUS AND THE CHRIST
797
brance what he has done, imposes fear on them, establishes his terror,
his mother Isis having made charms for the protection of her child
(Rit., ch. 157; Naville and Renouf). Horus in his two characters of
the child and the adult is called the lad in the country, and the youth
in the city or in the town (Rit., ch. 85). As the lad in the country he
is the child with Isis the virgin mother, and Seb the earth-god, who
was his foster-father during his childhood. As the youth in town he
is in his father’s house, and is “the heir of the temple” in Heliopolis
(ch. 115). When Horus the child passes into Horus the adult he
becomes the heir to the “things of his father.” The Egyptian word
“khetu” for “things” is most idiomatic, and “the things of my father”
in the Greek is uniquely perfect as a rendering of the Egyptian “khetu.”
It is as the youth in town or in Heliopolis = Jerusalem, that
Horus says, “I am a soul, and my soul is divine”; this was derived
from Ra, his father in heaven: “I take the lead. I put an end
to darkness. I put a stop to evil.” And when Horus goes to
Abydos to see his father Osiris, all the great gods, together with
the groups of the gods, come forth to meet and greet him with
their acclamations. He is hailed by them as “the king of hosts”
who cometh to unite and take possession of the two worlds.
His father’s house is seized (in the juridical sense of seizin or feudal
possession) “in virtue of the writs,” which have been issued on behalf
of the divine heir, “the heir of the temple” (ch. 138), the “son whom
the father hath begotten” (ch. 115). Abydos is the mythical rebirthplace of Osiris, and it was there that Horus took possession of his
father’s house. In the Gospel it is Jerusalem. Twice over in one
brief chapter of the Ritual (115th) Horus is called “the heir of the
temple.” He says, “It is with reference to me that the gods say, Lo,
the afflicted one is the heir of Annu.” This was as Horus the wise
and wonderful child. And again it is said of Horus the divine
adult, “active and powerful is the heir of the temple; the active one
of Annu, the son whom the father hath begotten.” In the Ritual the
temple is in Annu; it is otherwise termed the hat-saru, or house of
the prince. Horus enters this as the child of the mother, and he
comes forth as the son of the father, and the wielder of the whip as
the symbol of his sovereignty. Here is the parallel to the child-Jesus
sitting in the temple as a teacher of the teachers, laying down the law
to the masters of the law. As the Word of truth, Horus “assembles
the chiefs of truth” or law. These are the acolytes who sit with
Osiris in the great hall of Maat. The lords of truth (or the law)
collected there to watch over iniquity, as they sit in “Seb’s great
dwelling,” recognize the lad as the lord of justice, and delegate
authority to him as their chief. The original of a scene in the temple
is traceable in the “Hymn to Osiris.” Horus has grown strong in
the dwelling of Seb. “The divine company rejoices when the son of
Osiris comes, even Horus steadfast of heart, with (or as) the word
made truth: the son of Isis, the flesh of Osiris.” Horus in the hall of
Mati was in the house of his father Osiris seated on the judgment-seat
surrounded by the chiefs of truth as the lad who is acknowledged now
to be the universal master, and the lord of law and of very truth itself.
The father’s house in the Gospels becomes the temple at Jerusalem,
the “chiefs of truth” collected there are the doctors or Tannaim, and
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the divine child Horus, the royal Horus, wearer of the double crown,
has been converted into the child of Joseph the carpenter.
According to John, the first thing that Jesus did after his baptism
was to prove his power by turning water into wine. This is immediately followed by his foray in the temple at Jerusalem. He makes a
scourge of cords, where Horus, as “heir of the temple,” wields the
whip or flagellum on the enemies of his father. Jesus lays on lustily
with his flagellum and drives out those who have made the Father’s
house a house of merchandise or den of thieves. He thus proves
himself to be, like Horus, “active and powerful,” “the heir of the
temple” who hath the might divine as the only son, whom “the Father
hath begotten,” in the one instance by vanquishing Sut on the
pinnacle, and in the other by driving out the evil-doers = the SutTyphonians from the temple (John ii. 14-17), both of which events
are stated in two different Gospels to have followed immediately
after the baptism, in which occurred the transformation of Jesus into
the dove-headed Son of God the Father.
In the Ritual the subject of chapter 138 is the “Entry into
Abydos,” and it describes a scene of triumph for Horus analogous to
the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. He is the lord of life in Abydos.
He exclaims, “O gods of Abydos. Let us be joyful. Do not hinder
me from seeing my father. I am the Horus of Khem-Ka, the red
shoot (or branch = natzer) which nothing can injure, whose hand is
strong against his enemies: avenger of his father, striking his enemies,
repelling violence: governor of multitudes, chief of the earth, who
takes possession of his father’s dwelling with his arms.” The object
of this triumphant entry is for the divine heir to take possession of
his father’s dwelling. This he effects by force of arms. “And Jesus
entered into the temple of God, and cast out all that bought and sold
in the temple and overthrew the tables of the money-changers.”
And he saith unto them, “It is written my house shall be called a
house of prayer: but ye have made it a den of robbers” (Matt. xxi.;
Rit., 138).
Amsu-Horus rises in Amenta with the signs of government upon
his shoulder in the shape of the crook and the whip (or khu). As
bearer of the crook he is a form of the Good Shepherd who comes in
that character to look after his father’s flock or herd. As wielder of
the whip he came to drive out and scourge the enemies of his father.
The Christ who is portrayed as the Good Shepherd in one character
is also described as making his advent with the fan in his hand,
which in the hand of Amsu is the flail or whip. This, in another
scene, becomes the whip or scourge with which Jesus drives out the
illegal occupants of the temple. The Passover of the Jews being at
hand, Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and “he found in the temple those
that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money
sitting” together in this compound of menagerie and mart, which
is as if the Stock Exchange and Smithfield Market met together in
St. Paul’s Cathedral. “And he made a scourge of cords, and cast all
out of the temple, both the sheep and the oxen: and he poured out
the changers’ money and overthrew the tables, and to them that sold
the doves he said, take these things hence; make not my father’s
house a house of merchandise” (John ii. 13-17). This portrait of the
JESUS AND THE CHRIST
799
wielder of the whip driving out the sheep and oxen is the reverse to
that of the good shepherd with the crook, and this historic fulfilment
of the mythos is a very puerile parody of Amsu-Har-Tema, the doer
of justice, scourging the foes of his father out of the temple in his
consuming fury of resentment, so soon as ever he had taken in hand
the whip of his divine authority. Horus is not mentioned as riding
into Abydos on an ass, but in the cult of Atum-Ra the solar disk was
hauled up from Amenta by the ass-eared god Iusa, and Iusa was the
original rider on the ass or the foal of the ass.
Immediately following this clearing out of the temple it is said
that Jesus hungered—and seeing a fig-tree by the wayside he came to
it and found nothing thereon. He is described as coming to the figtree hungry, when figs were not in season, and because there was no
fruit upon it he sterilized it for ever, “and immediately the fig-tree
withered away” (Matt. xxi. 19). This is in the character of Horus the
avenger, who comes to the fig-tree in the Aarru-garden and says, “I
am Amsu-Horus, the avenger of his father the Good Being. I carry out
for my father the overthrowal of all his enemies,” including the figtree, as it is rendered in the Gospels. In the Ritual the cedar is
quoted in the place of the sycamore-fig. The speaker, in addressing
the keeper of the twenty-first gate, says, “Thou keepest the secrets
of the Avenging God (Har-Tema) who causes the Shennu-tree to
bear no fruit ” (Rit., ch. 145).
The earth-life ceases for Horus at the age of twelve. Partly
because he typified an impotent or impubescent body-soul in matter,
mere soul of the mother-blood, and the difference between childHorus and Horus divinized was expressed by the difference betwixt
the child of twelve and the perfect man of thirty years. It ceased by
the transformation into that which was typical of another life. ChildHorus passed away from earth to make his change or to be made “a
man of” in the mysteries of Amenta. He rose again as Amsu in
ithyphallic form to show the potency of soul or spirit in the afterlife by means of the nature figure. Thus, according to the genuine
mythos, at the time of the baptism in the Jordan, when Jesus had
attained the age of twelve, the earthly life came to an end, the
mother’s child had for the first time found his father. But that was
not in this world. The second Horus was begotten in Amenta, not
on earth. Also the baptism of regeneration, and other of the
spiritual mysteries, occurred in that earth of eternity and not upon
the earth where mortal beings dwell. In the totemic mysteries
circumcision was a rite of puberty which marked the transformation
of the youth into the man, and this, like other typical customs, was
continued in the religious mysteries.
When Horus makes his
change and rises in Amenta as Horus the adult, it is in a figure that
has suffered the rite of circumcision, as the portraits of the risen Amsu
prove. Thus, circumcision, like baptism, was a rite of regeneration
and resurrection or re-erection from the dead; that is, from the state
of the inert Osiris, the impubescent Horus, or, doctrinally, from the
status of the uncircumcised, the unbaptized, who were “unhouselled,
unanointed, unannealed,” and who might thus remain in mummied
immobility. The first Horus is impubescent; the second is circumcised to show that he has risen in the likeness of the father, “full of
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grace and truth,” “the image of the invisible god, the first-born of all
creation.” Amsu-Horus, the risen Sahu, is identical doctrinally with
the gnostic Christ of Paul, who tells his hearers that they have been
circumcised in him who includes the pleroma of the godhead bodily,
“with a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off the body
of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with
him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in
the working of God, who raised him from the dead” (Col. ii. 10-12).
When Horus rises from the dead he wields the weapons and he bears
the symbols of his sovereignty. He has been baptized and circumcised, or lustrated with water, with oil, with the Holy Spirit, and
crowned with the double feather. The doctrine is the same whether
the risen one be Horus or the Christ; and there was nothing historical in the death, the baptism, the circumcision, the resurrection of
Amsu-Horus, either as the Karast mummy or the Christ.
A difficulty all through with the concocters of the Gospel history
was this dual character of Horus in two lives and two worlds. They
had only the one lifetime to go upon in one world. Jesus had to
become bird-headed in the human lifetime and on earth. Whereas
the human Horus made his change into the “second-born, the golden
hawk,” after he had passed into Amenta. It was as a spirit in the
earth of eternity that he became bird-headed in the likeness of his
father Ra, not on the earth of Seb, where he was imaged in the likeness of mortality, as the human Horus. Still, the risen Jesus acts the
part of Horus in issuing from the sepulchre as a spirit. After his
death and burial, he appears to the disciples in the rôle of the second
Horus who represents the Father after the resurrection in spirit. He
tells them that the Father hath sent him. “And when he had said this,
he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the
Holy Spirit” (John xx. 21, 22). This is in the character of the hawkheaded Horus who, as the son of Ra, is given power from the Father
to breathe the Holy Spirit. It is a mystery of Amenta, with no
meaning elsewhere. In this the Horus who had conquered death and
risen again in triumph as the Beloved Son of God the Father, became
the representative of the Holy Spirit with power to impart it to the
breathless ones, and raise them from the dead; he who, as Horus or
Jesus, in this character was “the resurrection and the life.” But, in
the gospels of the Sarkolatræ it had to be demonstrated that the
risen Christ was not a spirit or anything superhuman, if the history
was to be accepted as simply human and limited to the life on
earth.
Horus, in his first advent, was the word-made-flesh in mortal guise,
according to the Kamite doctrine of the incarnation. In his second
advent, he is the word-made-truth as Horus the fulfiller in the spirit,
according to the Kamite doctrine of the resurrection. In his baptism,
Horus the word-made-flesh transformed into the word-made-truth,
according to the Kamite doctrine of baptismal regeneration, each of
which doctrines was of necessity perverted in the exoteric rendering.
The scene of this rebirth in Amenta was underneath the tree of
dawn—the tamarisk, persea, olive, or sycamore-fig-tree. The desire of
the manes is literally to be with Horus under the fig-tree at the time
of his resurrection from Amenta, a figure that was derived from the
JESUS AND THE CHRIST
801
Horus-sun arising from under the tree of dawn in the mythology.
Horus reborn as the sun of morning, says, “I am the babe. I am
the god within the tamarisk-tree” (ch. 42). The olive was another tree
of dawn. The transformation of Osiris into Horus, or of Amsu into
Horus the bird-headed, was effected underneath this tree. One of the
seven khus, or great spirits who are the companions of Horus in his
resurrection is named Kheri-bakhu-f or “he who is under the olivetree,” which is equated by the fig-tree in the Gospel of John for the
green tree of dawn. On a papyrus at Dublin the Osiris prays that
he may be under the sycamore (fig-tree) of Hathor at the rising of
Horus (Trans. Soci. Bib., vol. viii., p. 218). This, according to
John, was the place where Nathaniel had been with Jesus before the
two had ever met on earth (John i. 48, 49). “Now,” says Andrew,
“we have found the Christ.” He calls upon Nathaniel to “come and
see.” Jesus recognizes him. Nathaniel says, “whence knowest thou
me?” “Jesus answered and said unto him, before Phillip called thee,
when thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee” (John i. 41-49).
The two characters of the double Horus, commonly ascribed to
Jesus, are also portrayed upon the gnostic monuments in the Roman
catacombs. In one character he is the little old and ugly Jesus. In
the other he corresponds to Horus of the beautiful face. The first is
the suffering Messiah, the despised and afflicted one, who was
considered to be of an ignoble origin compared with that of Horus
the younger. He was the child of the Mother only; the soul in
matter; the heir of Seb, and therefore of the earth earthy. Horus
the younger is the man from heaven; the immortal Son of the Divine
Man who is in heaven, Horus in his glory and his majesty. These
often occur together on the same monuments in their irreconcilable
contradiction of each other (Bosio, Rom. Sott.). But the “elder
Horus” did not mean the aged Horus, for he was at the same time
the child-Horus. The title has been misinterpreted by the artists of
the catacombs who have represented “the afflicted one,” the Man of
sorrows, as diminutive, and pensive, old and ugly, whereas, according
to the true type, he was never more than twelve years of age, and
always wore the lock of childhood. “Old Child” was his name.
Horus in his childhood was the sower of the seed in the fields of
his father. This Mystery follows that of the great battle in which
Osiris is avenged and the associates of Sut are slain in the shape of
goats, and the fields are prepared for the seed by being manured with
their blood. The vignette is given by Naville from the tracing taken
by Lepsius of the now lost papyrus Busca. The picture represents
the great hoeing in Tattu. The long text at Denderah (Mariette,
tom. 4, pl. 39) contains directions to be observed on the festival
commemorative of the ancient custom. Two black cows are put
under a yoke of am-wood, the plough is of tamarisk-wood, and the
share of black bronze. The ploughman goes behind, with a cow led
in a halter. A little child with the side-lock attached to its head is
to scatter the seed in the field of Osiris. Barley is sown at one end,
spelt at the other, and flax between the two. The Kher-heb in chief
recites the office for the sowing of the field (Renouf, Book of the Dead,
ch. 18, note 9). The child with the side-lock represents the Horus of
twelve years who leaves his mother at that age and goes forth to be
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“about his father’s business.” That business, as here shown, was the
sowing of seed for Osiris, the divine husbandman. Jesus at twelve
years of age is said to leave the Virgin on his father’s business for the
purpose of sowing the seed of the word; the word that was to be made
truth in the fields of divine harvest. Osiris is the husbandman as
God the father, and child-Horus the seed-sower as the son, in human
form. Sut, the anthropomorphic Satan, is the opponent of Horus in
the harvest-field; he undoes what Horus does. As the prince and
power of drought and darkness, he is busy in the night. He sows the
tares, the thorns and thistles, the weeds or “devil’s-dung” amongst
the good seed of Osiris sown by Horus. Horus has his assistants in
the seed-sowing and the reaping of the harvest. These are grouped
as the two, the four, the seven, and finally the typical twelve who are
the reapers in the Aarru-fields, which are in the earth of eternity.
There is no exact parallel scene in the canonical gospels to this of
the seed-sowing in the Ritual, but the child that sows the seed in his
father’s field, survives in the Gospels of the Infancy. As we read in
the Gospel of Thomas (ch. 12) at the time for sowing the child went
out with his father to sow corn in their field, and when his father
sowed, the child Jesus also sowed one grain of corn. And having
reaped and threshed it, he made “a hundred quarters of it,” and
bestowed the corn upon the poor. “Now Jesus was eight years old
when he wrought this miracle,” during his first advent. At his second
coming, Horus is the reaper in the fields of harvest. This is he
“whose fan (or flail) is in his hand” when he rises from the sepulchre.
The harvest at the end of the world was reaped by the followers of
Horus at the end of the age or cycle of time. It was periodic in the
mythology, like the harvests of the earth, and therefore periodic in
the eschatology. He that sowed the good seed in the Egyptian
mysteries was Horus the son of Isis, or the human Horus, who
reappears as Amsu the husbandman in the fields of divine harvest,
otherwise as Horus-Khuti the master of joy with his twelve followers
who are the reapers of the harvest in Amenta. This is portrayed
both in the nether-world and in the upper paradise of Hetep on the
summit of the mount. The object of the beatified deceased is to
attain the harvest-field in Hetep, that he may take possession of his
allotment there, and be in glory there, and plough and sow and reap
the harvest there for ever, “doing whatsoever things were done on
earth,” but changed and glorified. This was to be attained, not at
the end of the world, but at the end of all the trials, the purifications
and purgatorial pains, the strenuous efforts made in climbing up the
ascent to reach at last the paradise of rest upon the summit; the
place of re-union and reconciliation; the land of the tree of life and
the water of life, of perennial plenty and of everlasting peace. Here
the reapers, called the “angels” in the Gospel, show the harvest-field
is not upon the earth of time. They are the twelve with Horus in
the fields of divine harvest. Horus tells Osiris at the harvest-home
that he has cultivated his corn for him in the Aarru-fields of peace;
and in the person of Har-khuti with the twelve as lord of spirits
gathered in the harvests of eternity.
Two opposite characters are assigned to Jesus in the Gospels, in one
of which he comes with peace, in the other he is the bringer of the
JESUS AND THE CHRIST
803
sword. He is the bringer of peace on earth (Luke ii. 14; John xvi. 27),
who says he has not come to bring peace on earth (Luke xii. 51).
“I came not to send peace but a sword” (Matt. x. 34). Horus
had appeared previously in these two rôles. He is “Horus the
peaceful.” As Iu-em-hetep he comes to bring peace and good fortune
on earth and make wars to cease. Horus also comes with the
sword as the avenger of his father when he pierces Sut to the heart,
and annihilates the rebel powers. Har-tema is a title of the second
Horus. The word Ma for justice also signifies the law. And he who
reveals and makes justice visible is the Horus who not only fufils
the word by making it truth, but who also comes to fulfil the law, or
maat. This is the character assigned to the Jesus of the Gospels,
who says, “Think not I came to destroy the law. I came not to
destroy but to fulfil. Verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth
pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the
law till all things be accomplished” (Matt. v. 17, 18). This law
is the maat of the Ritual. And in the Gospel the speaker assumes
the position of Har-tema, who was the fulfiller of justice or the law.
In the earth-life Jesus is the word or speaker in parables. In
that way the “Inarticulate Discourse” of Horus is assigned to Jesus,
with the usual misrendering of the hidden meaning, as the matter of
parables which no one but the duly initiated could possibly understand. Indeed they were prepensely intended to be non-intelligible
to all others. As it is said to the disciples, “Unto you it is given to
know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, but to the rest in
parables, that seeing they may see not and hearing they may not
understand (Luke viii. 10). Child-Horus opened his mouth in Signlanguage only. Jesus only opens his in parables. At his second
coming he is to speak no more in parables but to tell the disciples
plainly of the father. That is how the twofold character of Horus
was to be fulfilled by Jesus, and as it had been already fulfilled by
the Egypto-gnostic Jesus in “Pistis Sophia.”
Also, however
indirectly, Jesus is identified with the child-Horus as the teacher who
was a babe and suckling and who exclaims, “I am the babe” (repeated
four times) in the Ritual (ch. 42). Jesus says, at the time when
“he rejoiced in the holy spirit” (Luke x. 21), “I thank thee,
O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these
things (the things which had been given him to teach) from the wise
and understanding and didst reveal them unto babes. (Such babes as
Horus with the side-lock.) All things have been delivered unto me of
my father and no one knoweth who the son is save the father.” But
in the course of making out a human history from the mythos and
the eschatology in the Ritual, Jesus has been forced to remain on the
earth not only after he was twelve years of age but after he was thirty
years, when he ought to have been a manes in Amenta. The “Pistis
Sophia” retains the true version of Horus, or Jesus, in Amenta, when
it says, “Jesus spake these words unto his disciples in the midst of
Amenta” (390) and describes him in the character of Aber-Amentho,
the lord of Amenta, in which he rose again triumphant over death.
That which was taught by Horus, or Jesus, the Word in the sayings
and parables, was made truth by Horus-Makheru, the fulfiller indeed.
And this fulfilment at the second coming is imitated by Jesus when
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he says, “These things have I spoken unto you in parables (or in
proverbial sayings). The hour cometh when I shall no more speak
unto you in parables but shall tell you plainly of the father” (John
xvi. 25). The teaching of child-Horus did not contain a revelation of
the father in spirit. This was the mission of Har-Makheru, the
fulfiller of the word in truth, as it was acted in the mysteries to be
repeated in the mortal life, for human use. This second part is
promised in the Gospels but remained a matter of prophecy that never
was fulfilled. Albeit the doctrine survives in the Christian “Word-oftruth” with no foundation in the historical life of Jesus. The
Christian advent of Horus-Makheru, the word-made-truth, the
beloved son who represents the father, from beginning to end of the
Ritual, still awaits the ending of the world or that last day which was
annually solemnized in the Egyptian mysteries.
As Paul the
Christian Gnostic puts it, “the kingdom of God is not in word, but
in power.” That is in fulfilment as the word-made-truth (1 Cor.
iv. 20). The first Horus was the word, the second is the power: the
heir of glory who hath the might-divine of the only-begotten Son of
God the Father (Rit., ch. 115).
This, wherever met with, is
Egyptian first of all as Horus, who was the word or logos in one
phase of character, and in the other of two he was the power. As the
word he represented the virgin mother. As the power he imaged the
glory of the father. Horus was the word in the earth of Seb, and he
is the power in the earth of Sut. In the canonical and apocryphal
Gospels both the word and power have been continued and fused into
one, as there was but one life to be represented, that on earth, in the
“history.” It is said of the child-Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas
(chap. 4), “Every word of his becometh at once a deed.” “Every
word of his is at once a deed” (ch. 17). “Every word he speaketh
forthwith becometh a deed” (4). The sum and substance of the
doctrine of Maati is to make the word of Osiris truth against his
enemies. Elder Horus was that word in person. The word was
also uttered in dark sayings which constituted the ancient wisdom.
Then it became the written word of Taht Aan, the scribe of the gods,
and Horus at his second coming was the divine ensample of the son
who made the word of Osiris truth against all opposition as the
fulfiller of the word and the doer in truth. The word of the Christ,
according to Paul, is identical with the Makheru, or word-made-truth
by Horus the fulfiller. He likewise speaks of “the word of the
truth of the gospels” (Col. i. 6). The power of his Christ is that of
the risen Horus; it is the power of the resurrection to eternal life;
and both are the same, because both represented one meaning, namely
the soul of man that rose again from death, and was personalized in
Horus or in Iusa.
Although the second character of Horus is realized by Jesus in his
baptism; in his becoming the beloved and anointed son of God; in
his contests with Satan as a spirit; in proving himself to be the “heir
of the temple”; in his breathing the Holy Spirit into the breathless,
raising of the dead, and in various other ways, such fulfilment had to
be repudiated on account of the alleged Judean history. Hence he
promises that if he goes away from the disciples he will send them
the Comforter, the Paraclete, or advocate, “even the Spirit of Truth
THE MYSTERIES AND THE MIRACLES
805
which proceedeth from the father.” “A little while, and ye behold
me no more; and again a little while and ye shall see me.” This
was the short time betwixt the first and second coming of the Lord,
which was about three nights in the mysteries. “If I go not away
the comforter will not come unto you.” Whereas in the Egyptian
judgment scenes the comforter has come already. Horus in his
second character is the paraclete or advocate with the father. One
by one he introduces the faithful to Osiris (in the vignettes to the
Ritual), and is the intercessor and the mediator with the father on
behalf of his children. In the papyrus of Ani, for example, Horus
the intercessor or advocate introduces Ani to his father, saying, “I
have come to thee, O Un-nefer, and I have brought unto thee the
Osiris-Ani. His heart is right; it hath come forth guiltless from the
scales. It hath not sinned against any god or goddess. Taht hath
weighed it according to the decree pronounced unto him by the
company of the gods; it is most right and true. Grant that he may
appear in the presence of Osiris; and let him be like unto the
followers of Horus for ever and ever.”
The process of converting parts of the Osirian drama into Gospel
narratives and of making the wisdom of the mystery-teachers
portable for ordinary use, is obvious still in various of the parables of
the double-Horus. For instance, in his first estate child-Horus was
the sower of the seed, and in his second character at the second
coming he is the reaper of the harvest. Thence comes the parable
of the sower. In the pictures to the Ritual Horus is the sower who
goes forth to sow the seed in the field of his father. And when he
sows the wheat the enemy, that is Sut the power of darkness, comes
by night and sows the field with tares and thorns and thistles, it
being his work to undo all the good that Horus does. This is
represented in a parable by means of which “the kingdom of heaven
is likened unto a man that sowed good seed in his field; but while
men slept his enemy came and sowed tares also among the wheat
and went away.” The disciples ask for an explanation and the
answer is “he that soweth the good seed is the son of man; and the
field is the world, and the good seed, these are the sons of the
kingdom; and the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy
that sowed them is the devil; and the harvest is the end of the
world; and the reapers are the angels” (Matt. xiii.). Thus the
matter of the drama was reproduced piecemeal in religious märchen
and exoteric narratives.
THE MYSTERIES AND THE MIRACLES.
The Mysteries were a dramatic mode of representing the gnosis or
science of the Egyptian mythology and eschatology. They are the
mysteries of Amenta. It was in these the dead were raised, the
blind were made to see, the dumb to speak, the deaf to hear, the
lame to walk, the manes to become bird-headed. Hence the scenes
of their occurrence were in spirit-world, where the manes made their
transformation visibly, and the mortal put on immortality. The
greater mysteries were founded on the resurrection from the dead
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ANCIENT EGYPT
with the Ka or the bird-headed Horus as the representative of a
survival in spirit. As we have seen in the “Pistis Sophia,” Jesus tells
the disciples that “the mystery of the resurrection of the dead healeth
from demoniac possessions, from sufferings and all diseases. It also
healeth the blind, the dumb, the maimed, the halt”; and he promises that
whosoever shall achieve the gnosis of this wisdom shall have the
power of performing these mysteries of the resurrection which
only become miracles when exoterically rendered in the canonical
Gospels (P. S., B. 2, 279). Amenta in the mythos was the secret
earth of the nocturnal sun. In the eschatology it is the spiritworld in which the dead become once more the living, and attained
their continuity by being proved and passed as true for all eternity.
If they failed, it was here they died the second death, and never
rose again. Amenta was the world of the blind, the deaf and dumb,
the maimed, the halt, and impotent because it was the world of the
dead.
Thus the miracles of the canonical Gospels repeat the mysteries of
the Ritual, and the scene of these was in the earth of the manes, not
in the earth of mortals. It was there the deliverer wrought his
“miracles” in the eschatological representation, whether as Horus, the
son of Osiris, or as Iusa, the son of Atum-Ra. The Egyptian
religion had no need of miracles. It did not postulate the supernatural. The superhuman and ideally divine were a part of and not
apart from nature. The nether-earth was the other half of this and
the Gospel history has been based upon that other earth of the manes
being mistaken for the earth of mortals. In the Ritual, and in the
gnostic writings, we find the mystery, the events, the characters, the
Christ, the Virgin-Mother, the miracles, replaced upon their own
proper footing and on the only ground of their existence which
is eschatological and was a means of working out the drama in
Amenta by means of the mythology that was previously extant. The
so-called miracles of Jesus were not only impossible on human
grounds; they are historically impossible because they were preextant as mythical representations which were made on grounds that
were entirely non-human in the drama of the mysteries that was as
non-historical as the Christmas pantomime. The miracles ascribed
to Jesus on earth had been previously assigned to Iusa the divine
healer who was non-historical in the pre-Christian religion. Horus,
whose other name is Jesus, is the performer of “miracles” which are
repeated in the Gospels, and which were first performed as mysteries
in the divine nether-world. But if Horus or Iusa be made human on
earth, as a Jew in Judea, we are suddenly hemmed in by the
miraculous, at the centre of a maze with nothing antecedent for a
clue; no path that leads to the heart of the mystery, and no visible
means of exit therefrom. With the introduction of the human
personage on mundane ground, the mythical inevitably becomes the
miraculous; you cannot have the history without it; thus the history
was founded on the miracles which are perversions of the mythology
that was provably pre-extant.
Not only is it represented in the Gospels that Jesus raised the dead
but that he also conferred power on the disciples to do likewise.
They are to preach and proclaim that the kingdom of heaven is at
THE MYSTERIES AND THE MIRACLES
807
hand, to “heal the sick and raise the dead” (Matt. x. 5-8). So the
followers, called the “Children of Horus,” had the power given them
previously by their Lord to raise the dead. In the Pyramid texts of
Teta (line 270) it is said, “Horus hath given his children power that
they may raise thee up”; that is, from the funeral couch. But this
resurrection was in Amenta, the earth of eternity, not in the earth of
time, and those who were raised up for the second life are the manes,
not mortal beings in the human world. It was not pretended that
they were Egyptians in the time of Teta, the first king of the sixth
dynasty. The Christians babble about the mysteries of revealed
religion, which mysteries never were revealed except to those who
had been duly initiated. These were mysteries to the Christians
simply because they had not been revealed to them. They are the
mysteries of ancient knowledge reproduced as miracles of modern
ignorance. Such mysteries of the Christian faith, as the Trinity, the
Incarnation, and the Virgin Birth, the Transfiguration on the Mount,
the Passion, Death, Burial, Resurrection and Ascension, Transubstantiation and Baptismal Regeneration, were all extant in the
mysteries of Amenta with Horus or Iu-em-hetep as the central
figure of the pre-Christian Jesus.
This mode of making miracles from the mysteries can be traced in
the canonical Gospels. For instance, according to John, when Jesus
reappears to the seven fishers on board the boat to cause the
miraculous draught of fishes it is after his resurrection from the dead.
Consequently, the transaction is in a region beyond the tomb, therefore
in spirit-world, not in the life on earth. Whereas in Luke’s version,
his reappearance was in the earth-life and is not a reappearance
after death. Yet the miraculous draught of fishes is the same in both
books; and either the transaction is historical in Luke and has been
relegated to the after-life in another world by John, or else the
mythical version was first and has been converted into an historical
event by Luke. But here, as in other cases, there is no corroboration
of the history to be adduced, whereas the priority of John’s version is
attested by the Ritual where the fisher, the seven fishers, the fishing
and the fish belong not to this earth but to that other world beyond
the tomb and to the mysteries of Amenta.
When Sebek in the Ritual (ch. 113) catches the fish in his
marvellous net this is proclaimed by Ra to be “a mystery.” But
when Simon Peter in the Gospel catches the great draught of fishes
the mystery becomes a miracle.
Mythology knows nothing of miracle, nor the need of it. Miracle
has no place in the Egyptian Ritual. But the Ritual shows us how
the necessity for it arose as a modus operandi when the gnosis had to
be accounted for by ignorance and the mythos was converted into
human history. For example, the sun or the sun-god Atum is
described in the Ritual as going over the surface of the lake of Mati,
in Abydos, the place of rebirth, or of sunrise. That which is done
mythically by the god is performed by the manes on the eschatological plane, and as he is in the human likeness, it follows that he
must walk the water in the sun-god’s track. He says, “the great God
who is there is Ra himself. I walk on his road; I know the surface
of the lake of Mati. The water of Mati is the road by which Atum-Ra
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ANCIENT EGYPT
goes to traverse the field of divine harvest” (Rit., 17). In the first
phase the sun (or solar god) traverses the celestial water at dawn.
In the eschatological continuation the human soul in Amenta does
the same because assimilated to the character of the god. It is but a
mode of representing phenomena in the two worlds of the double
earth, the imagery of upper earth being repeated in spirit-world.
But if we substitute a human being for the solar god or the manes in
Amenta, and make him walk the water in our world on the surface of
the sea or lake of Galilee, instead of the lake of Mati in Amenta, the
water-walking can only be done by miracle. Such is the genesis of
the Biblical miracles in both the Old Testament and the New. This
we are now able to prove twice over by means of the original matter
and mode of the mythos in the Egyptian eschatology that was
humanized or literalized in legends and at last converted into
Christian history.
You cannot rationalize the Bible miracles by reducing them to
what may be thought reasonable dimensions. As Matthew Arnold
said, “this is as if we were startled by the extravagance of supposing
Cinderella’s fairy godmother to have actually changed the pumpkin
into a coach-and-six, but should suggest that she did really change it
into a one-horse-cab.” It is not a matter of degree or proportion, but
of a radical difference in the fundamental nature of things. It is not
the kind of transformation that was applied to the primary facts, nor
is this transformation the result of imagination. It was not a result
of the faculty of imagining that a man should be supposed to walk
the water and not sink. Such an imagining was controverted by all
the past of human experience. When the Egyptians portrayed a
human impossibility—a miracle—they depicted a pair of feet walking
on the water. This was a mode of superhuman force first made
manifest by the elemental powers such as light and darkness, the
wind, or the spirit of the storm. The water-walker was an old type
of deity. The Christian miracles are false modes of explaining that
which was ignorantly misappropriated. The gnostic interpretation
of the Kamite mysteries had no need of miracles, no reversal or
violation of natural law. The process by which miracles, or total
violations of natural law, arose, was through perversion of ancient
knowledge by later ignorance—not in the false or exaggerated
reports of eye-witnesses. Nor could anything be settled by a conflict
of opinions in the domain of ideas. We must have some foothold
and ground of fact to go upon even to fight the battle. As it is
in physical science, we have to ascertain the knowable. It avails
nothing to take refuge in the unknown or to enshroud ourselves in
mystery. The legends of mythology were not ideal, nor based upon
abstract ideas. They were not first evolved from the inner consciousness, but from facts in outward nature that are for ever verifiable.
The mysteries that “historic Christianity” took over without understanding, and preserved as food for faith, or as problems for
metaphysical speculation, are fathomable and even simple when
truly interpreted, but they have and can have no solution on the
supposed historic ground. And with its bogus miracles surreptitiously derived from the ancient mysteries by falsification of the
myths, it has destroyed or tended to destroy all standing-ground
THE MYSTERIES AND THE MIRACLES
809
of common sense in natural reality. With its “historical” virgin
mother of a God who was her “historical” child, it has made a
double mockery of nature, human and divine.
With its risen
corpse for an anointed Christ the only Son of God, it has deified
an image of death itself and made a mortuary of the human mind.
When it is conclusively proved that the Christian miracles are
nothing more than a pagan mode of symbolical representation
literalized, there is no longer any question of contravening, or
breaking, or even challenging any well-known laws of nature. The
discussion as to the probability or possibility of miracle on the old
grounds of belief and doubt is closed for ever. A glance at the
Egyptian pictures will show that the Horus or Christ is the young
sun-god who walks the waters in Amenta not on the upper earth,
and that the evil spirits who enter the swine and are driven down into
the lake are the souls of those who were condemned in the great
judgment as typhonian, the black pig being a type of Sut the evil
being. A study of these miracles as they were originally rendered
will lead to an understanding of their true significance, and here
as everywhere else the truth of the matter once attained must
ultimately put an end to the false belief:
Falsehood hath nothing in the world to do,
But lie to live and die to prove the true!
With what facility the miracle could be manufactured for the
exoteric Gospels, canonical or apocryphal, may be seen from the
legends in The Arabic Gospel of the Infancy (ch. 37). In one character the youthful sun-god, Horus or Jesus, was represented as a sort
of divine dyer. He is called the great one who produces colours.
In a passage of the Ritual (ch. 153), as rendered by Birch, it is said
that “the great one journeys to the production of colours.” These
are the colours which are produced when the sun, or the child-Horus,
or Jesus, rises from the lotus to dye the blue heaven with the hues of
dawn. This is shown by a reference in the same passage to the
sycamore tree of dawn. Now, in one of the numerous folk-tales that
were derived from the mythos, this is made a miracle of in a legend
of the Infancy. It was as the child-Horus that the sun arose to
create the colours; and, as a child, it is said the Lord Jesus entered
the shop of a dyer where lay many cloths which were waiting to be
dyed each of a different colour. Taking them all up together he
threw the whole lot into a vessel of Indian blue. The dyer cried out
and said the boy had ruined them all. But Jesus said he would cause
each one to come forth of the colour that was desired, and he took
them out of the vessel one by one, each one being dyed of the very
colour that the dyer wanted.
The story of child-Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas who, when five
years old, took clay and formed the images of twelve sparrows, which
turned the word into a deed when Jesus bade them fly, is a miracle
manufactured from a mystery of Amenta. When the manes were
transformed from mummy to spirit they became bird-headed in the
likeness of Horus whose head was that of a sparrow-hawk. This in
the folk-tale becomes a sparrow, and twelve sparrows created by Jesus
in the miracle are the representatives of the twelve great spirits of
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ANCIENT EGYPT
Horus which have the head of the sparrow-hawk in the mystery of
Amenta.
When evil spirits enter swine and are driven down the mountainside to be drowned in the lake of darkness the representation is
mythical, not miraculous. The mount is rooted in Amenta. The
scene is in the earth of eternity. The mount was called the mount
of birth in heaven. This was ascended by the manes who had passed
through the judgment-hall and come forth as the good spirits,
whereas the condemned were driven back and literally sent to the
devil by entering the pig of Sut, which had become a type of all
impurity. The miracle begins when the avenging Har-Tema is made
historical, the pig actual, and the transaction takes place on this our
upper earth. We must go to the Egyptian drawings in the drama of
the mysteries for the verifiable fact; and once we are in presence
of the real truth we learn that the argument of Professor Huxley
against the miracle is just as unprofitable as the Christian belief in the
miracle. Here, as everywhere, the miracle results from a misinterpretation of the mythos out of which the gospels were ultimately
evolved, piecemeal, and put together in a spurious history, with a
spurious version of Horus the mortal, and a spurious spectre of Horus
in the spirit.
In performing his miracles with a word, in being the word incarnated or made truth in person, in wielding a magical power over the
elements, in casting out devils, in causing the spirits of evil to enter
the swine, in healing the woman with the issue of blood, in giving
sight to the blind, in transforming and transfiguring himself, in
suddenly concealing himself, in walking upon the sea, in his personal
conflict and battles with Satan, in raising the dead to life out of the
earth, in resuscitating himself on the third day; in all these and other
things Jesus is accredited with doing exactly what was attributed to
Horus in the Ritual and in the Egyptian mysteries. But these
miraculous things were never done by mortal or immortal on the
surface of our earth. They are other-world occurrences in the true
rendering, and they can only be re-related to reality as a mythical
mode of representing the scenes in the drama of Amenta. The
superhuman attributes are possessed, the transformation and transfiguration effected, the waters walked, the evil spirits cast out to enter
the typhonian swine; sight is restored to the blind, the dumb are
given a mouth, the dead are raised up out of the earth by Horus in
this divine nether-world termed the earth of eternity and not on the
earth of Seb in the world of time.
The historical character of the four Gospel narratives must stand
or fall by the historical facts of the miracles. From the birth derived
from a virgin to the corporeal resurrection of the Christ, the sole
standing-ground is upon miracle. No amount of Jesuitical dialectic
or logical argument based upon false premises, can ever make right, as
a trustworthy matter of faith, that which is verifiably wrong as matterof-fact. Yet the faith was founded on the uttermost falsification of
natural fact as the ground of the history. On the one hand we find a
belief that these miraculous transactions, these teachings of the Christ
and the Christ himself were historical. On the other, we have the
proof that they were unhistorical, a proof upon evidence that has
THE MYSTERIES AND THE MIRACLES
811
never been tampered with, and that is directly derived from witnesses
that do not, cannot lie. The miracles of the virgin birth and physical
resurrection of Jesus; the miracles of giving sight to the blind and of
raising the dead, the descent into Hades, and the resurrection in
three days or on the third day, are all Egyptian, all in the Ritual.
They were previously performed by the Christ who was not historical,
the Christ of the Egypto-gnostics who is Horus or Jesus, identical
with the Osirian Christ who was Horus the lord by name, and who,
as the records show, was also extant as a divine type or spiritual
impersonation as Iusa or Iu-em-hetep many thousand years ago.
A crucial example of the mode in which the gospel history was
manufactured from the matter of the mythos and the eschatology is furnished by the miracle of miracles of the loaves and fishes. In one
account the multitude of men, women and children are fed on five loaves
and two fishes, and the remains of the meal were sufficient to fill twelve
baskets (Matt. xvi. 17-21). In the other miracle, or second version
of the same, the multitude are fed on seven loaves and a few small
fishes, and there were seven baskets full of broken pieces. But for
the Ritual we might never have known the correct number of loaves
that did suffice to feed the vast multitude. They are seven in one
place and five in another, and both the seven and five are found in
one and the same book. This difference, however, serves for Matthew
to make out a second miracle (xv. 36). The speaker in the Ritual
says, “There are seven loaves on earth with Seb; there are seven
loaves with Osiris (in Amenta); there are seven loaves at Annu with
Ra in heaven” (ch. 53). “Henceforth let me live upon corn in
your presence, ye gods, and let there come one who bringeth to me
that I may feed from those seven loaves which he hath brought for
Horus” (Renouf, Rit., ch. 52). “It is the god of the sektet boat
and of the maatit boat who hath brought them (the loaves) to me at
Annu” (ch. 53). These seven loaves constitute the celestial diet
on which the multitude of souls are fed in Annu, called “the place
of multiplying bread.” But those who are fed upon the seven loaves
in the celestial locality of Annu are not human beings on earth; they
are manes in Amenta where Horus is the bread of life as giver of food
to the quickened spirits of the dead; and as the transaction occurred
in the next life there was no need of a miracle in this life by
asserting that about five thousand hungry men, besides women
and children, were fed upon five or seven loaves of bread and two
fishes.
The synoptics do not mention the incident, but according to John
(vi. 9) who retains much more of the Egyptian wisdom in his Gospel,
there was a lad present in the scene who had with him “five barley
loaves and two fishes.” “Jesus therefore took the loaves from him
and distributed them to the people.” We have identified the feeding
of the multitude of manes on the seven loaves that were brought to
Horus as distributor of the bread of life, and the lad who brings the
bread to Jesus in the Gospel with the one who brings the seven loaves
to Horus, or, it may be, the five loaves to Taht, in the Ritual, and
who is described as “someone” who comes with the bread of Horus
and Taht which is ritualistically represented by the seven loaves.
A primitive concept of the infinite had been expressed in terms of
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ANCIENT EGYPT
boundless food and drink. Providence was the provider; and the
power that provided the fruits of the earth or water was Providence.
When bread was made the providing power or godhead itself was
figured by the Egyptians as an illimitable loaf, the food of spirits or
celestial diet for the life to come. The one great loaf was equivalent to
the one supreme source of soul. Seven loaves were numerically
equivalent to the seven souls of Ra. The human soul was fed from
the bread of life as typical of divine source. With bread of that kind
one loaf might have sufficed without the pretence of a miracle, as it
was cut and come again without diminution. It was the kind of
bread which keeps on rising and expanding for ever as in the German
tale of Jesus and the miserly woman with her dough.
Annu is the place of bread in which the multitudes of manes are
fed as men, women and children also, if the younglings of Shu are
included. It is called the place of multiplying bread. There are
seven loaves of bread with Ra in Annu (Rit., ch. 53 B) on which the
manes are fed by Horus. They feed upon the seven loaves of
celestial bread which were brought for Horus to feed the manes with by
a divine messenger. Seven loaves were brought for Horus and there
were also loaves for Taht (ch. 52), the two which correspond to the seven
loaves and the five in the “historical” miracles. The manes prays
that he may feed on the seven loaves that are brought for Horus, and
the loaves that were brought for Taht, which shows at least that there
was more than one set of loaves, when the multitude were fed on the
divine diet in the place of multiplying bread. In the Gospel the multitude recline upon the grass. In the Ritual they rest upon the grassy
sward beneath the sycamore of Hathor (ch. 52, 4). But when the
multitudes were fed in Annu they were the souls of the departed, and
the symbolical seven loaves on which they fed was Ka-bread that was
neither made nor eaten on earth, nor did it need a miracle to make
the good go far enough. Annu was a mythical locality which did not
supply the conditions for a miracle. A miracle had to be performed
only when the eschatological representation was shifted from the
mount of Annu in Amenta to a mountain in Judea. One hieroglyphic sign of the mount hetep is a pile of food. The mount was the
place of feasting for the followers of Horus, the beatified spirits of the
departed. “Every feast on earth and on the mountain” signifies the
feasts of the living and the dead; the living upon earth, the dead or
the departed on the mountain. In the feasting on the mount “Jesus
went up into the mountain and sat there. And there came unto him
great multitudes, having with them the lame, blind, dumb, maimed,
and many others, and they cast them down at his feet; and he
healed them; insomuch that the multitude wondered when they saw
the dumb speaking, the maimed whole, the lame walking, and
the blind seeing; and they glorified the God of Israel. And Jesus
called his disciples and said, I have compassion on the multitude,
because they continue with me three days and have nothing to eat.”
(Matt. xv. 29-32.) The miracles of healing, including the casting
out of evil spirits and the raising of the dead, as portrayed in the
Ritual and corroborated by the “Pistis Sophia,” occurred in the
resurrection on the mount; and this shows that those who had been
with Jesus having nothing to eat for three days had been awaiting their
THE MYSTERIES AND THE MIRACLES
813
resurrection on the third day, and that they were the manes and not
mortals.
The only reason why the blind and deaf and dumb, the palsied and
the lame, including the dead, assembled in their multitudes upon the
mount is because this was the mount of resurrection and regeneration,
thence of healing, for the manes who had waited in Amenta for the
coming of the Lord. The resurrection of Osiris was solemnized at
the great Haker festival. This is one of the ten mysteries described
in the “Book of the Dead” (ch. 18) said to have been celebrated “before
the great circle of gods in Abydos (the place of Osiris’s rebirth and
resurrections) on the night of “Haker” (or Ha-k-er-a) when the glorious
ones are rightly judged: when the evil dead are parted off, and joy
goeth its round in Thinis” (ch. 18, Renouf). The name for this
festival is rendered “Come thou hither or Come thou to me”: as the call
of Ra upon the mount addressed to Osiris in the valley on the day of
resurrection, when the soul of Horus the mortal was blended with
Horus the immortal in the mystery of Tattu (ch. 17). The Haker
celebration included both fasting and feasting. The word haker signifies fasting, to be famished, as well as denoting the festival of “Come
thou to me” or the rite of resurrection. Now, as the comparative
process shows an “historical” version of the Haker festival is given in
the Gospels where we find an exoteric account of the funeral fast and
resurrection feast, in the miracles of healing performed upon the mount
and feeding the famished multitude upon the seven loaves of bread. It
should be premised that the raising of Osiris, the god in matter was
individual, but, at the same time, the resurrection of the dead in
Osiris who were the “All Souls” for the year or cycle was general.
The supreme miracle of “raising the dead” suffices of itself to
show that it belonged to the mysteries of Amenta, as asserted in the
“Pistis Sophia,” where the dead were raised; evil spirits were cast
out, the blind were made to see, the deaf to hear, the lame to walk,
the bed-ridden to get up and go, not by miracle but as a dramatic
mode of illustrating the mysteries of the resurrection in the Peri em
hru or coming forth to day. It is noticeable that the miracles of
healing on the mount described in Matthew (xv. 29-31), are
immediately followed by the miracle of multiplying the loaves and
fishes. There is no change of scene, the multitude upon the mount
remain the same. “And Jesus called unto Him His disciples, and said
‘I have compassion on the multitude, because they continue with Me
now three days and have nothing to eat; and I would not send them
away fasting.” Thus three days are allotted to the work of healing in
the mount, during which time the multitude were fasting in the
company of Jesus and his disciples. In the Ritual these are not only
the fasting, they are also deprived of breath. They are without a
mouth. They are the blind, the dumb, the motionless, in short, they
are the deceased awaiting in their coffins and their cells for him who
is the resurrection and the life, as the divine healer and deliverer of
the manes from Amenta; he is the “divine one who dwelleth in
heaven, and who sitteth on the eastern side of heaven” (Rit., ch. 25)
that is on Mount Bakhu, the mount of the olive-tree, the only mount
on which the dead were ever raised (P. S., B. 2, 279). This healing
then was a mystery of the resurrection, the same in the canonical as
814
ANCIENT EGYPT
in the Egypto-gnostic Gospel; the same in both as in the Book of
the Dead, or Ritual of the resurrection. Three days was the length of
time allowed for the burial in Amenta. This would constitute a three
days’ fasting of the dead. We must discriminate. In the lunar
reckoning the resurrection of Osiris in the moon was on the third
day, which corresponded to the actual appearance of the light in
nature. This death, described by Plutarch, occurred on the seventeenth of the month. In the solar reckoning three whole days and
nights were allowed for the burial of the sun or sun-god in the earth.
Both are employed in the Gospels but not scientifically. Neither
could the complex of soli-lunar reckoning be explicated on the single
line of a personal human history. Both solar and lunar reckonings
remain, but hugely gaping apart with a gulf for ever fixed between
the two. The Son of Man was to remain three nights as well as days
in the “heart of the earth.” That is in keeping with the solar
reckoning, whereas the resurrection is on the third day, the same as
that of Osiris in the moon. We repeat, there was a two-fold computation of time, lunar and solar, both of which are given in the
gospels, but without the gnosis that explained the astronomical
mythology. Three days is the full period, and this is the length of
time over which the miracles of healing were extended and during
which the multitude with Jesus had “nothing to eat,” because they
were with him in the Valley of Amenta; the same that were healed
by him on the Mount of Resurrection. It was in the resurrection that
the dead were raised to life and became spirits. These were the good
spirits which were parted from the evil spirits that were then “cast
out.” Sight was given to the blind, a mouth to the dumb, hearing
was restored to the deaf. The lame were enabled to rise and walk.
Then the three days’ fast was ended by the feeding of the multitude
on what the Ritual terms celestial diet, i.e., the “seven loaves” of
heaven that were supplied as sustenance for the risen dead in Annu, the
place of multiplying bread. In the Egyptian mysteries, all who enter the
nether world as manes to rise again as spirits are blind and deaf and
dumb and maimed and impotent because they are the dead. Their condition is typified by that of mortal Horus who is portrayed as blind
and maimed, deaf and dumb in An-arar-ef the abode of occultation, the
house of obscurity, the “city of dreadful night” where all the denizens
were deaf and dumb and maimed and blind awaiting the cure that
only came with the divine healer who is Horus of the resurrection
in the Ritual, or Khunsu, the caster out of demons, or Iu-em-hetep
the healer, or Jesus in the Gospels, gnostic or agnostic. Thus the
restoring of sight to the blind man, or the two blind men, was one of
the mysteries of Amenta that is reproduced amongst the miracles in
the canonical gospels.
The speaker in the Ritual often makes the merest allusion to some
act of the drama that was visibly performed and fully unfolded in the
mysteries. For example, Horus the avenger is described as blending
his being with that of the Sightless One, who had been Horus in the
flesh (Rit., 17). In a previous allusion (same chapter) the coming of
the soul of Ra to embrace and blend with the body-soul of Osiris, to
give light and life to the Mummy-God is also described as the act
of Horus-Tema who is blended with the Sightless God. In either
THE MYSTERIES AND THE MIRACLES
815
representation there is a restoration of sight to the blind; and this
when written out and narrated as “History” becomes the miracle of
Jesus curing the man and giving sight to him who was blind; or to
the two men as Osiris and the Osiris, N., or to any number of those
who were sightless in the city of the blind. When Horus the
deliverer descends into Amenta he is hailed as the prince in the
city or the region of the blind. That is, of the dead who are sleeping
in their prison cells, and who therefore are the prototypal spirits in
prison. He comes to shine into their sepulchres and to restore their
sight to the blind. “Hail to Thee, Lord of Light, who art prince of the
house which is encircled by darkness and obscurity,” in the city of
the blind (Rit., ch. 21). This picture is repeated in the Gospel
of Matthew (iv. 16). “The people which sat in darkness saw a great
light: and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death,
to them did the light spring up.” This, as written in the “Book
of the Dead” was in Amenta.
The typical blind man of Amenta, then, is Horus in the gloom of
his sightless condition, as the human soul obscured in matter or
groping in the darkness of the grave. This is Horus An-arar-ef
in the city of the blind. And the Horus who comes to restore the
lost sight, is he who had been divinized in the likeness of Ra, the
holy spirit. It is said of this dual Horus in the Ritual (ch. 17),
“The pair of gods are Horus the reconstituter of his father and
Horus the prince in the city of blindness.” The second Horus is the
spirit perfected. He descends from heaven to the darkness of
Amenta as The Light of the World. He is called the one whose head
is clothed with a white radiance. His presence shines into the sepulchres and cells of the manes. He comes to the blind in the city of
the blind, the place in which blind Horus was enveloped in
obscurity. He shows as a great light in the darkness of the land
of the dead, and is described as restoring sight to those who are blind,
that is to the manes who have not yet attained the beatific or
spiritual vision. This is represented as giving sight to the blind.
Amenta was looked upon as the earth of the blind. The manes were
there as blind folk awaiting sight. The human Horus Har-KhentAn-arar-ef in Sekhem was the prince of the blind, being chief
amongst the manes who were sightless or without the means of
seeing in the dark. For this reason the mole or shrewmouse was his
zoötype. The typical blind man in Amenta is the blind Horus who
was deprived of sight by Sut, the Power of Darkness. But every
manes that entered Amenta was also blind in the darkness of death.
Thus there are two blind men, or one as the God and one as the
manes; one in the soli-lunar mythos, and one in the eschatology;
Horus in his darkness of night or the eclipse; the mortal in the dark
of death. Miracle for mystery, this may explain the two different
versions of healing the blind in the Gospels.
Three of the
evangelists know of a single blind man only, who was cured by
Jesus, where Matthew reports the healing of two blind men in which
he obviously gives two separate versions of one and the same
miracle. In the Ritual, then, we can identify the one blind man with
Horus in the dark, or without sight (Rit., ch. 18, as Har-Khent-anmaati); the two blind men with Horus and the manes (otherwise
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ANCIENT EGYPT
with Osiris and the Osiris); and the multitudes of blind people above
ground with the manes or the dead in Amenta. There is no need of
limiting the miracle of curing the blind to one or two men. Horus
the light of the world in the earth of Amenta comes to cure the blind
in general who are dwelling in the darkness of the city of the blind,
in which the devil (Sut) was dominant previous to the second advent
of Horus. The dead in Osiris were as blind mummies awaiting the
spiritual light which gave the beatific vision; and Horus comes
to unseal the eyes of the manes waking in their coffins.
The poor blind Horus was given eyes at the time when he became
the anointed son, and the child of twelve years made his transformation into the adult of thirty years with the head and sight of the hawk,
or the beatific vision of Horus in the spirit. He was anointed with
oil at the lustration in Abydos, the place of re-birth. Hence one mode
of making the anointed or the Christ whom Horus became in this
transformation was by anointing with saliva. The lustration of
children by spittle was an old Papal rite, and in the Gospel
the spittle used to open the eyes of the blind is equivalent to
anointing the sightless Horus in Sekhem. In acting the mystery of
Amenta the “Eye of Horus,” the anointed son, the light of the
world, was brought to blind Horus lying in his darkness. This
mystery is reproduced as miracle in the healing of the blind man.
“When I am in the world,” says Jesus, “I am the Light of the
World.” This is equivalent to bringing the eye of Horus to the
benighted manes in Amenta. “When he had spoken, he spat on the
ground, and made clay of the spittle, and anointed his eyes with the
clay.” And in this unsightly way the man is said to have attained his
sight in thus becoming the anointed. Such is the puerility of the
miracle-mongers who misrepresent the mystery-teachers in the Gospels.
To reach the “recovery of sight to the blind” was to teach a doctrine
of the resurrection and the opening of the eyes in death, such as was
set forth dramatically in the mysteries of the Ritual (chs. 20-30). It
was the same also in giving a mouth to the dumb; in making the
dead to rise and the lame to walk; likewise in casting out evil spirits,
and the powers of darkness, the associates of Sut, the Sami or the
Sebau, which originated in physical phenomena, and were afterwards
mis-rendered as obsessing spirits that were primarily human. When
the divine healer and caster-out of demons, Khunsu-Horus, went to
Bakhten to exorcise an evil spirit from the possessed Princess, the
god was carried there in effigy, as the “driver away of evil spirits
that take possession” of the human body, not as a divinized medicineman portrayed in human form. The effigy is an image of the
wonderful healer who originated as a power of renewal in external
nature, and not as a mortal on this earth. The caster-out of demons
is also portrayed as Khunsu offering up the abominable pig in the
lunar disk as a sacrifice to the Lord of Light (Planisphere of
Denderah), the pig being a zoötype of Sut the evil one. Thus we
reach a root-origin in the war of light and darkness, or Horus and
Sut, that is waged for ever in the Moon. The black boar, Sut,
makes his attack upon the eye, which is healed by Horus or Khunsu,
Taht or Ra. The power of light was then the healer of the wound in
nature that was wrought by the representative of darkness as the pig,
the Apap-dragon, or the adversary Sut. Hence the eye of Horus in
THE MYSTERIES AND THE MIRACLES
817
the moon is a symbol of healing, and of safety or salvation; an
amulet, therefore, or fetish, good against the powers of darkness.
There was no miracle in the natural phenomena. There was no
miracle involved or taught in the original mode of representation.
But when a “human mortal” with the name of Jesus is put in place
of Horus, Taht or Khunsu, he becomes the supposed to be, but for
ever impossible, miracle-monger; Jesus, the Jewish Saviour, who is
described as coming into a world of blind people; some of whom
are blind figuratively, others actually. The Scribes and Pharisees are
denounced as blind, “blind guides,” “fools and blind,” “blind leaders of
the blind.” Jesus restores the sight of those who are physically blind,
“to many blind he gave sight.” That is in fitting the canonical Jesus
to the rôle of Horus. A form of blind Horus described by Isaiah
leaves no room for doubt that the Hebrew Messiah was the Egyptian
Horus. This is he who is blind; “my servant, who is blind as he that
is made perfect, and blind as the Lord’s servant” (chs. xlii., xliii.).
This servant of the Lord is the suffering Horus who was portrayed as
the servant of Osiris the Lord, blind, dumb, and therefore deaf, but as
being perfected in serving the Lord, who “confirmed the word of His
servant.” Being perfected marks the change from the servant, as
Horus who was born blind in matter to Horus in spirit, the restorer of
sight to the blind, that is, to the dead. Also the word of the servant
was confirmed by the coming of Horus as the word-made-truth in
Har-Ma-Kheru. But it was in the earth of Amenta that Horus came
to restore the sight to the blind, and in the canonical Gospels Judea,
full of blind folk being cured by miracle, is just Amenta wrong-side
uppermost, with the drama of the double-earth in a state of topsyturvydom through the conversion of the ancient mysteries into
Gospel-miracles.
In arranging for the resurrection of the dead, as performed in the
mysteries of Osiris, the funeral bed, called the Khenkhat, is prepared
as the couch of the mummy. It is said to the deceased, “I have
fastened thy bones together for thee. I have given thy flesh to thee.
I have collected thy members for thee.” This is in arranging the
deceased upon the funeral couch, for his rising from, or as, the dead
(ch. 170). “Hail N,” it is said to the deceased upon the funeral
couch, “Arise on thy bed and come forth” (Rit., chs. 169-170).
Here is an instructive instance of the way in which the mysteries
of the Ritual have been converted into the miracles of the Gospels.
There are two chapters concerning the funeral bed. The first is
“on making the Khenkhat to stand up”; the other is on “arranging
the Khenkhat.” We repeat, the Khenkhat is the funeral bed on
which the dead were laid out in Amenta, waiting for the coming of
Horus, lord of the resurrection, to wake the sleepers who are in their
coffins or lying breathless on their couches in the likeness of inert
Osiris. It is the couch of the dead that is set up on end like the
mummy-case with the body inside which is thus erected on its feet
as a mode of rendering the mystery of the resurrection or re-erection
of the deceased (Rit., ch. 169). This becomes a miracle in the Gospel,
when the dead are raised, and those who were paralytic take up
their bed and walk. In the next chapter (170) on the arrangement of
the funeral bed it is said to the risen one, “Thou settest forth on thy
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ANCIENT EGYPT
way. Horus causeth thee to stand up at the risings.” Then the
deceased, as the risen mummy, is seen to be walking off. That is
in the resurrection. Here, as elsewhere, the mystery of Amenta
becomes a miracle when represented on this earth. That change
would of itself account for a huge falsification, to say nothing of the
intent and tendency of the writers, which follow and overshadow the
truth of the ancient wisdom all through as darkly as the night the
day; for if ancient Egypt was the light of the world, Christian
theology has assuredly been its impenetrable shadow.
As already shown, a reduced form of the mysteries that were acted
in the Osirian drama may here and there be recognized in the form of
parables and portable sayings. Take the mystery of Tattu in the
17th chapter of the Ritual, by means of which the Sayings of the
Lord, quoted from “the Gospel of the Egyptians” by the two
Clements, can be explicated. The Lord himself being asked by someone when his kingdom would come, replied: “When two shall be one.
When that which is without is as that which is within, and the
male with the female (shall be) neither male nor female” (Clem.,
Rom.). When Salome asked, when those things about which she
questioned should be made known, the Lord said: “When you tread
under foot the covering of shame, and when out of two is made one,
and the male with the female is neither male nor female” (Clem.
Alex., Stromata). This is that blending of the two souls or two
sexes in one which was figured and effected in the mystery of
Tattu. This blending of two halves in one whole, which is a likeness of neither, but a new image of both, is exemplified thrice over in
the Ritual, when a soul was established that should live for ever. Ra
is blended with Osiris; Shu with Tefnut; child-Horus with Horus
the adult. Ra represents the divine soul, and Osiris the body-soul in
matter. Shu represents the male, and Tefnut the female nature.
Child-Horus is the mortal and Horus in spirit the immortal. Thus
the divine soul was blended with the soul of matter; female with
male, and mortal with immortal in the mystery of Tattu. The
mystery was of course performed, and in the present instance, the
drama consists of three acts with six different characters which are
Ra and Osiris, Shu and Tefnut, Horus the sightless, with Horus the
bringer of the beatific vision. In the saying quoted from “the Gospel
according to the Egyptians” the mystery has been reduced to the
male and female becoming neither male nor female in the mystical
marriage, the other factors being omitted. This shows the process
by which the mysteries of the Ritual were reduced and made portable
in the miracles, the parables and sayings, or Logoi, whether as
separate sayings or as miscellaneous collections. A distant echo of
the doctrine is to be heard in the Gospel according to Matthew (xxii.
30): “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in
marriage, but are as angels in heaven.” So remote is this from
the mystical marriage in Tattu that the mystery in Amenta is limited
to sexual conjunction. Now we learn from the Ritual that one mode
of making the change from matter to spirit and of being unified in the
type beyond sex was by discarding the garb of the female in the
preparation of the manes for the funeral bed at the time of the second
birth (Rit., ch. 170). The garment is again referred to in “the
JESUS IN THE MOUNT
819
fragments of a lost Gospel” when the speaker says “he himself
will give you your garment.” “His disciples say unto him, when wilt
thou be manifest to us, and when shall we see thee? He saith,
when ye shall be stripped and not be ashamed” (Grenfell and
Hunt, New Sayings of Jesus, p. 40), which is the same thing as being
freed from the garb of shame upon the funeral bed. This is no
mystical reference to Genesis iii. 7, but to the mystery of Amenta and
a ceremony that was performed in the nether-world, of which it is said,
“Thou puttest on the pure garment and thou divestest thyself of thy
apron when thou stretchest thyself on the funeral bed” (Rit., ch. 172).
“Thou receivest a bandage of the finest linen,” in place of the old
garb of shame, or the apron which was now a symbol of the flesh.
Lastly, amongst the mysteries of Amenta which were converted into
Gospel miracles one of the most arresting is that of the Widow and
her only son whom Jesus raised up from the funeral bier at Nain
(Luke vii. 14), because Isis is the widow by name in the Ritual who
was represented by the disconsolate swallow as the widow who
has lost her mate, and Horus was her only son. The connection of
the child with the widow in Egypt is already seen in the Gospel of
Thomas or Tum, which goes far towards identifying the child-Jesus
with the child of Isis. Moreover, the mystery shows us how the
mother as Isis became a widow. When Osiris had been put to death,
the birth of the child-Horus followed the decease of his father, and
his mother was consequently the widow who had an only son in
Horus, the only child of his mother. In the mystery of Tattu, childHorus was raised up from the dead when Horus in the spirit came to
the funeral couch and the immortal was blended with the mortal in
the mystery of the resurrection. This is repeated in the Gospel as
one of the most telling of the mysteries that were Christianized in the
miracles.
JESUS IN THE MOUNT.
Ascending the mountain of Amenta is a figure of the resurrection
from the dead. When Jesus Aber-Amentho rises after death it is to
take his seat upon the mountain with the twelve preservers of the
light. The group of twelve followers was the latest to gather form
upon the mount. This was preceded by the seven, the four, and the
two. The Ritual of the Resurrection opens with the coming forth
to day of Horus or the Osiris, who ascends the mount of glory, or
Mount Bakhu, the mount of the green olive-tree, which afterwards
was represented in Judea by the local Mount of Olives. In the older
manuscripts of the Ritual this ascent is called “the coming forth to
the divine powers attached to Osiris,” which are the four with Horus
in the mount, or on the Papyrus-column, the four that were his
brethren first, and who are afterwards portrayed as his children. But
in both the Ritual and Pistis Sophia the mount, the scenes upon the
mount, the twelve with Jesus or the four with Horus on the mount,
are all in spirit-world. As we have seen, Pistis Sophia opens
with the resurrection of the Egypto-gnostic Jesus. The life of suffering represented on the earth was over, and the victor rose triumphant
after death, to be invested with the glory of the Father on the mount.
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This is the Peri-em-hru or coming forth to day with which the
Egyptian Ritual of the resurrection begins. Jesus comes forth from
Amenta as the teacher of the greater mysteries to the twelve disciples who are gathered together on the Mount Olivet, which is the
mountain of Amenta in the Kamite eschatology. Thus the mount,
the scene upon the mount, the teaching and the twelve are all postresurrectional, and therefore the transactions are not upon our earth.
There was a double resurrection in the Osirian mysteries, just as
there is a first and second death. The earliest is a resurrection of the
soul that passes from the body on earth and emerges as the Sahu in
Amenta. This is Amsu-Horus, who is still a mummy, but who has
risen to his feet with one arm loosened from the bandages of burial.
It has the look of a corporeal resurrection, for the body is semicorporeal. But Horus has not yet attained the garment of his glory.
The typical mountain likewise had a twofold characters in the
mythology and the eschatology. As solar, it was the mount of sunrise or of the great green olive-tree of the Egyptian dawn. As
eschatological, it was the mountain of Amenta, up which the manes
climbed—the mount of glory and the glorified. It was the mount on
which the human Horus was transfigured and regenerated to become
pure spirit in the likeness of the Father. Hence it is the mount
of transfiguration, of regeneration, of healing, and also the means of
ascent into the land of spirits (Rit., ch. 17).
The second resurrection is from Amenta. When Horus has transformed and made his change into the likeness of his Father and
become pure spirit he ascends from the mount and rises into Heaven
from Bakhu, the mount of the olive-tree, or the Mount of Olives in
the later rendering. This was the meeting-place of Horus and his
heavenly Father Ra when they conversed together in the mount. It
is that Mount of Olives on which Horus, the Egypto-gnostic Jesus,
met the twelve disciples after his resurrection from Amenta, which
meeting-place is repeated when the Gospel-Jesus makes the appointment for the Eleven to meet him in the mountain after he has risen
from the dead (Matthew xxviii. 16). The Kamite founders of the
astronomical mythology had placed the equinoxes high up on the
horizon, or the summit of the mount, as it was figured, at the meetingpoint of equal night and day. Thus the equinox or level place was
one with the top of the mount, and where one writer speaks of the
equinoctial station as being on the mount another might assign it to
the “level place” or plain, when neither of them possessed the
proper clue. In this way one discrepancy may be explained concerning the delivery of the sermon on the mount. According to Matthew,
Jesus delivered it upon the mount. According to Luke, he came
down from the mount and “stood on a level place” (ch. vi. 17). Both
places meet in one, but only on the mountain of the equinox, the
Egyptian mountain of Amenta. According to Matthew, the sermon
was delivered to the four brethren in the mount. This follows the
Ritual. According to Luke, the sermon was delivered to the twelve
on the mount by Jesus standing on the level place.
No rational explanation has ever been suggested why the divine
healer on earth should have compelled the sick and ailing, the
obsessed, the halt and maimed, the deaf and dumb and blind who
JESUS IN THE MOUNT
821
besought him for a cure, to climb a lofty mountain with the cripples
on crutches in order that they might come into his presence and be
healed. When Jesus was followed by the clamorous multitude he
went up into the mountain and sat there. “And there came unto
him great multitudes, having with them the lame, blind, dumb,
maimed, and many others, and they cast them down at his feet, and
he healed them.” The answer is that the mount was mythical,
not geographical; the divine healer was no human thaumaturgist;
the multitudes were manes, not mundane mortals.
The only mountain mentioned by name in the Gospels as the
scene of the miraculous occurrences is Mount Olivet. There was
such a mountain to the east of Jerusalem, but beyond that was the
mythical Mount of Olives, which was localized in many places under
various names as the typical mount of the astronomical mythos. At
first the mount was a figure of the earth that rose up in the waters
of the Nun, or space. Then it was a type equivalent to the horizon.
To be upon the horizon in the mythos is to be upon the mount—the
mount of the double equinox—the four quarters or the twelve
divisions of the ecliptic. It is shown in the Pistis Sophia that
the twelve disciples, teachers, or supporters who sat with Jesus on the
Mount of Olives had originated as the twelve æons or rulers in
the zodiac. As such they were the teachers of time and the preservers of the treasures of light. Their stations were in an aërial
region. This is otherwise called the sphere or circle of the zodiac,
in which the twelve seats or thrones were finally established, with the
central throne of the Egypto-gnostic Jesus towering over all.
In the early Christian iconography the cross of Christ is erected on
a mount. This is shown to be the mount of the four quarters, or the
equinox, by means of the four rivers flowing from the summit. The
Christ stands on the top along with the cross. Sometimes the ram
or lamb is portrayed on the mount of the four quarters in place of
the Christ; and Horus was likewise the lamb as well as the calf upon
the mount. The Christ is also accompanied by seven lambs = seven
rams, supposed by Didron to represent the twelve apostles! (Didron,
Fig. 86). But the ram (Mithraic lamb) is the Egyptian ideograph for
the ba-spirit, and seven rams or lambs that accompany the Christ are
equal to the seven spirits which served Horus in the octonary of the
mount. The ram also appears with seven eyes and seven horns, which
identify it with the seven rams as seven spirits, or the seven souls of
Ra. This shows an earlier stratum of the astronomical mythos in
survival. It is the Egypto-gnostic Jesus, who was Horus, with the
seven great spirits that were earlier than the twelve upon the mount.
When Jesus has transformed, or spiritualized in his baptism, he is
“led up of the spirit to be tempted of the devil” (Matt. iv. 1). He
is then a spirit on the mount that is exceeding high, like the mountain
of Amenta, which is said to reach the sky. To meet upon the mountain
after death could only be as spirits meet in spirit-world upon the mount
of re-union in the mysteries of Amenta. Thus it is obvious that the
meeting-point of Sut and Horus, or of Satan and the Christ, was no
earthly hill; and that the teacher and the teaching on the mountain
are the same in the canonical Gospels as in Pistis Sophia and the
Ritual, that is, they are in spirit-world, and therefore the total
822
ANCIENT EGYPT
transactions on the typical mountain are post-resurrectional and not
humanly historical.
According to John, the earliest discourse of Jesus is not the sermon
on the mount as given by Matthew. In place of this, John presents
the discourse upon regeneration which is the same subject as that
of the sermon on the mount in the Divine Pymander. Jesus says to
Nicodemus, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born
anew (or from above) he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus
saith unto him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he
enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus
answered, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of
water and the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That
which is born of the flesh is flesh: and that which is born of the spirit
is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born from
above. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the voice
thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: So
is everyone that is born of the spirit.” Nicodemus answered and said
unto him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered and said
unto him, “Art thou a teacher in Israel and understandest not these
things? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know,
and bear witness of that we have seen: and ye receive not our witness.
If I told you earthly things and ye believe them not, how shall ye
believe if I tell you heavenly things? And no man hath ascended
into heaven but he that descended out of heaven, the Son of Man,
which is in heaven” (John iii. 1-14). This is a sermon on regeneration. The sermon of Hermes is in the mount of regeneration. The
subject is the same in both. Previous to this discourse Hermes had
told Tat that “no man can be saved before regeneration.” At a
previous ascent into the mount Hermes had promised Tat that if he
would estrange himself from the world and prepare his mind for this
mystery to be unfolded, he would then impart it to him. “Now,” says
Tat, “fulfil my defects and instruct me of regeneration either by word
of mouth, or secretly; for I know not, O Trismegistus, of what
substance or what womb, or what seed a man is thus born.” That is,
how he is to be reborn in the process of regeneration? Hermes replies,
“O son, this wisdom is to be understood in silence, and the seed is
the true good.” “Who soweth it, O father? for I am utterly ignorant
and doubtful.” “The will of God, O son.” Now, this is called “the
secret sermon in the mount,” on the subject of “regeneration and the
profession of silence.” The subject is the same, the characters of
teacher and doubtful inquirer are identical, and the physical misinterpretation regarding the mode of rebirth is one and the same in both
interviews. Hermes describes a form of the Son of Man who is in
heaven, otherwise the heavenly man, when he says, “I see in myself
an unfeigned sight or spectacle made by the mercy of God: and I
am gone out of myself into an immortal body, and am not now what
I was before, but am begotten in mind.” He also says of the physical and
spiritual, “He that looketh only upon that which is carried upward as
fire, that which is carried downward as earth, that which is moist as
water, and that which bloweth or is subject to blast as air; how can
he sensibly understand that which is neither hard nor moist, nor
tangible, nor perspicuous, seeing it is only understood in power and
JESUS IN THE MOUNT
823
operation: but I beseech and pray to the mind, which alone can
understand the generation that is in God.” But Hermes, who wrote
the Ritual in hieroglyphics as the scribe of the Egyptian gods, did not
derive his matter from the Gospels collected by Eusebius and his
co-conspirators in Rome (Divine Pymander, B. 7).
After the prophecy of the immediate coming of the Son, who is
supposed to be speaking of himself, we have the real meaning of the
manifestation identified in the very next verse, which contains a
representation of the entrance of Osiris and his transfiguration as
Horus in the mount on the sixth day of the new moon. We are told
that “after six days”—it would have been more correct if “on the
sixth day”; the discrepancy, however, is but slight—“Jesus taketh
with him Peter and James and John his brother, and bringeth them
up into a high mountain apart. And he was transfigured before
them. And his face did shine as the sun, and his garments became
white as the light. And behold there appeared unto them Moses
and Elijah talking with him. And Peter answered and said unto
Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here: if thou wilt, I will make
here three booths, one for thee, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.
While he was yet speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed
them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is my
beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: hear ye him” (Matt.
xvii. 1-5). Then Jesus retires into his secrecy, saying, “Tell the
vision to no man, until the Son of Man has risen from the dead.”
This identifies the mount of resurrection, which is one with the
mount of regeneration, the sermon on which is obviously postresurrectional. There is a scene of Transfiguration on the Mount in
the mysteries of Amenta. “Ra maketh his appearance at the mount
of glory with the cycle of gods about him.” The Osiris deceased
acquireth might with Ra, and is made to possess power with the gods
—and when men or the manes see him they fall upon their faces.
He is seen in the nether-world “as the image of Ra.” So in the
Gospel, the face of Jesus “did shine as the sun.” The disciples likewise fell upon their faces, and “were sore afraid.” Not only is Jesus
seen in the likeness of Ra, the father in heaven; the voice from the
father proclaims that this is the beloved son. In coming down from
the mount the witnesses are commanded to “tell the vision to no
man,” and of the scene in the mysteries, it is said by the speaker in
the Ritual, “the Osiris N hath not told what he hath seen; he hath
not repeated what he hath heard in the house of the god who hideth
his face” (ch. 133). The point here is the identity of the mythical
mount, whether astronomical or as the seat of the teacher; and the
twelve; or as the mount of the mysteries; the mount of resurrection,
of regeneration and of transfiguration. It is the same mount when
those multitudes that meet upon the summit are described as the
blind, the halt, and maimed. The mount on which the dead were
raised to life, the blind were made to see, the dumb to speak, the
impotent to become virile, like the risen ithyphallic Horus; the mount
upon which the famished multitudes were fed from the illimitable
loaf, or loaves, was the mount of resurrection that rose up from the
nether earth for the departed to ascend as spirits. Hence it is the
mount on which the miracles in the Gospels are alleged to have been
824
ANCIENT EGYPT
performed. The mount of glory in the Ritual becomes the mount of
the glorified in the Gospels. This, according to the gnosis, was the
mount that has been localized in Judea, to which the people were
bidden to flee for refuge when the end of all things should come; not
a geographical mount, but the mount of the manes in Amenta; the
mount of the resurrection, which only spirits could ascend; the
mount from which the swine obsessed by devils were driven down
into the lake when the evil Apap and his host of fiends is hurled back
at dawn from the horizon to be drowned in the bottomless pit of
Putrata (Rit., ch. 39).
Horus in the solar mythos is the prototype of Jesus on the mount.
He is described as the sovereign lord upon the mount = horizon
(ch. 40). Elsewhere he says, “I come before you and make my
appearance on the seat of Ra, and I sit upon my seat which is on
the mount” (or on the horizon) (Rit., ch. 79). Horus has alighted on
the mount or is lifted on his monolith, when he says, “I make my
appearance as that god in the form of a man that liveth like a god,
and I stand out before you in the form of that god who is raised high
upon his pedestal (of the mount, or the papyrus-column) to whom the
gods come with acclamation.” He maketh his appearance on the
mount of glory or upon his pedestal with the cycle of gods about
him (ch. 133). The papyrus being a figure of the earth, Horus,
on his papyrus-column or lotus-plant, is Horus in the mount. Also
the four brethren, Amsta, Hapi, Tuamutef, and Kabhsenuf, who
stand upon the papyrus (or column), are the gods of the four quarters
with Horus in the mount. Now, when the four brothers, Simon and
Andrew with James and John, are called upon to leave their nets and
follow Jesus, they became straightway the four with Jesus in the
mount.
For, according to Matthew, the disciples were only
four in number when the sermon was delivered in the mount
(Matt. iv., v.). Again, the typical group of four in the mount
are represented by Jesus, James, Peter and John at the time of
the transfiguration (Matt. xvii. 1).
Mount Bakhu having been
named in Egyptian from the olive-tree of dawn as a celestial
summit was localized in Olivet, the mountain eastward. This, as
solar, was the one sole mount of the mythos; and in the Gospels,
although the mount is mentioned several times, and apparently in
different localities, there is but one name given to it, that of Mount
Olivet = Bakhu the solar mount, the one typical mount, the Egyptian
mount, equivalent to the horizon, as the summit of the earth and
figure of the ascent into heaven.
The canonical Jesus is also shown to be a form of the son of Ra,
the father in heaven, in his retiring from the world at eventide and
passing the night alone on the mount. It may be worth noting that
there was a temple of the solar Horus, as ancient as the time of
Sebek, upon the eastward side of Mount Bakhu. As it is said in the
Ritual (ch. 108), “Sebek the Lord of Bakhu is at the East of the hill,
and his temple is upon it.” And Sebek was very possibly the most
ancient form of Horus the young solar god. Horus wars against the
serpent of darkness on behalf of his father in the mount by night,
and is the teacher in the temple of heaven by day. Jesus obviously
makes use of both the mount and the temple, for he went up into
JESUS IN THE MOUNT
825
the mountain when “he opened his mouth and taught” the multitudes (Matt. v. 2). The devil took him up into an exceeding high
mountain when he was in the spirit. He was transfigured on a “high
mountain apart” (Matt. xvii. 1, 2). He sat upon the Mount of Olives
when expounding the consummation of the cycle and the gospel of
the kingdom to the disciples privately (Matt. xxiv. 3). Many details
are of course omitted from the “history” and there is no guidance in
the Gospels to the secret meaning of the mysteries. For that we
must “search the Scriptures” which are genuine and self-explanatory
as Egyptian; the scriptures of Maati and Taht-Aan. Of Jesus and his
doings in the mount by night we are told that he went into the
mountain to pray; and he continued all night in prayer to God
(Luke vi. 12). “And when it was day, he called his disciples; and
he chose from them twelve” (vi. 13). It is said in the Ritual
that “Horus is united at sunset with his Father Ra who goeth round
the heaven.” So Jesus at sunset is united with his Father in prayer
all night in the mount. The sun-god has to fight the adversary Sut
for his passage through the mount by night. Horus is said to come
at evening and “seize upon the tunnels of Ra” for making his
passage through the mount. These are elsewhere called the tunnels
of Sut; a synonym for darkness. The sun-god entered the mountain
each night for rebirth every morning. Horus came forth from the
Mount of Olives. He is portrayed in the Ritual walking over the
waters. He ascends the Mount Bakhu to enter the solar bark. It is
said that his “sister goddesses stand in Bakhu”; they receive him
there as the two mothers, they lift him up into his boat (Hymn to
Harmachis). There is a curious conjunction of the Temple and
the Mount in Luke’s description of Jesus as the teacher. Like so many
other fragments it stands by itself in the Gospel. “Every day he
was teaching in the Temple; and every night he went out and lodged
in the mount that is called of Olives. And all the people came
early in the morning to him, in the Temple, to hear him” (ch. xxi.
37, 38). This passage identifies the mount as being named from the
olive-tree, on which the temple of Sebek-Horus stood, and therefore
with Mount Bakhu. On coming forth from the mount of Amenta
Horus entered the bark that was rowed or towed round by the
twelve who were called the twelve kings in the solar mythos, and
afterwards twelve teachers or apostles who were servants to Iu the
son of Atum, the Egyptian Jesus in the eschatology.
It is Horus in the mountain with his father who says, “I am the
Lord on high. I make my nest on the confines of heaven,” that is,
aloft on the mount. “Invisible is my nest.” “From thence I descend
to the earth of Seb” his foster-father, “and put a stop to evil.”
“I see my father, the lord of the gloaming, and I breathe” (ch. 85,
Renouf). Horus in the mount is designated “lord of the Staircase”
or steps at the top of which his father sat enthroned. In this dual
character the peripatetic Jesus is made to journey, betwixt plain and
mountain, town and country, in a vain endeavour to make the track
of Horus become historical. Horus enters the mountain by night
and comes forth by day as the “lord of daylight” divinized. On
coming forth he says, “I have ascertained what there is in Sekhem,”
the shrine in the mount, where dead Osiris lay. “I have touched
826
ANCIENT EGYPT
with my two hands the heart of Osiris, and that which I went to ascertain I have come to tell. . . . Here am I, and I come that I may
overthrow mine adversaries on the earth (even) though my dead body
be buried” as the Osiris (ch. 86, Renouf). In entering the mountain at sunset he has seen the great mystery of Osiris, his death, his
transformation, and his resurrection, and he comes forth as a spirit
divinized to make the experience known as a teacher of the mysteries
to those that became his followers, his children who were adopted by
him as the four brethren two by two, then the seven, and finally the
twelve who row the solar bark or reap the harvest of eternal plenty
in the Aarru paradise of the Amenta.
A specially important feature in the “history” is this retirement of
Jesus into a mountain at sunset to commune with his Father. Jesus
“when even was come went up into the mountain apart to pray,
and was there alone” (Matt. xiv. 23).
“He went out into the
mountain to pray; and he continued all night in prayer to God”
(Luke vi. 12). It is noticeable that he goes into the mountain, and in
the mythos the sun at evening entered the mount which is a figure of
the earth. The type was continued in the eschatology. God the
Father as Osiris had his dwelling-place and shrine in the mount of
earth and it was there that Horus interviewed the father. The
speaker in the “Book of the Dead” says, in the character of Horus the
son, “I seek my father at sunset, compressing my mouth.” This
latter phrase is Renouf’s rendering of the words “hapet ru,” the sense
of which is determined by the ideograph of closing or enclosing.
Therefore the meaning is “I close my mouth” as the synonym for
silence in the mount. He seeks his father in the character of Horus
with the silent mouth. “I seek my father at sunset in silence, and I
feed on life,” is the complete declaration made in this line. Horus
feeds on life in silence when alone with the father in the mount of
earth where souls were fed on sustenance divine. This is the meat
referred to by Jesus when he said, “I have meat to eat that ye know
not of,” “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to
accomplish his work.” Horus says, “I live in Tattu, and I repeat
daily my life after death, like the sun.” For he is Horus risen in
Amenta, where he is the instructor of the manes in the mysteries,
otherwise he preaches to the “spirits in prison.”
In building the house of heaven, which was annually repeated in
the mysteries, the fourfold foundation, the four supports or cornerstones, were laid in the mount. These four supports were personalized
in the four children of Horus, Amsta, Hapi, Tuamutef, and Kabhsenuf, who had already been four of his brothers in the earlier mythos
when they were the four sustainers of the heaven at the four corners
of the mount, and also as the four who stand upon the flower of the
papyrus-plant. Now we have to bear in mind that the rock is
identical with the mount, and that the house or temple of Horus built
upon the mount was founded on the rock. In establishing his father’s
kingdom of the beatified, Horus built upon the typical rock. In the
Gospel Simon is told by Jesus that he will build his church upon this
rock, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. The
gates of Hades or Amenta opened in the rock of the Tser Hill to let
the dead come forth in the glorified train of Horus the conqueror
JESUS IN THE MOUNT
827
whose temple, from the time of Sebek, had been built upon the rock
with the four brethren as the pillar of support, which were finally
extended to the twelve in keeping with the complete number of
zodiacal signs. Peter, in the Gospels, has been assigned the place and
position of the rock or mount (or Tat of stability) because in the Greek
the word petra signifies the rock. But the rock was the same as the
mount; the mount was one and the same all through; and it was the
site of the building, whether this is called the Church of Rome,
the temple of Sebek, or the house of Tum, that was built by his
son Jesus for the divine abode, at the level of the equinox.
Horus in the character of Har-Makhu was the sun-god of the
double horizon, who passed from west to east and united the two in
one. These two horizons of the double earth have been a source of
endless perplexity to the students of the history. The two horizons
reappear in the Gospels as those of the two opposite countries, Judea
and Galilee. Both have been used independently; the result is that
one writer localizes the works of Jesus in the one region, whilst
another places the scenes in the country opposite, as if they did not
know which leg to stand on, or on which horizon to take their stand.
Horus of the double horizon is reproduced in Jesus, who itinerated in
two lands or two parts of the one land which takes the place of the
Egyptian double earth. Horus passes from one horizon to the other
by making his passage through the mount. He makes the passage
in the stellar Atit, or Maatet-boat, which he enters with the seven
glorious ones at sunset. Horus in the mount is one with Horus in
the boat, and thus as teacher of the four, or the seven, or the twelve,
he is the teacher in the boat. In this character Jesus likewise teaches
in the boat. It is said that “he sat down and taught the multitudes
out of the boat” (Luke v. 3, 4). Horus, with the seven on board the
boat, who were portrayed in heaven as the Sahus in Orion, is usually
depicted standing. The nearest likeness to the passage through the
mountain in the Maatet-boat by night occurs when Jesus “withdrew
again into the mountain himself alone,” whereas the disciples go by
water. “When evening came, his disciples went down into the sea;
and they entered into the boat and were going over the sea unto
Capernaum. And it was now dark.” The scribe hardly dared to
send them through the mountain by the boat of the mysteries, therefore Jesus comes to them by walking on the water, “and straightway
the boat was at the land whither they were going” (John vi. 15-21),
that is, by magic or by miracle.
At the summit of the mount the glorified deceased who came up
from Amenta were now given a seat upon the bark of Ra. In one of
his many characters Horus is the divine teacher called “the teller,”
on board the boat. He says, “I am the teller in the divine ship. I
am the unresting navigator in the bark of Ra” (Rit., ch. 109). As
the teacher in the boat he also says, “I utter the words of Ra (his
father) in heaven to the men of the present generation (or to the
living on earth), and I repeat his words to those who are deprived of
breath (or to the manes in Amenta)” (Rit., ch. 38). This, then, is
Horus as the teacher in the solar boat, who utters the words or sayings
of his father Ra, by day and night, to the living on earth and the
manes in Amenta. These are spoken of as those who are in their
828
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shrines, but who are also said to accompany Horus as his guides.
Horus further says, “I have made my way and gone round the
celestial ocean on the path of the bark of Ra, and standing on the
deck (bekasu) of the bark.” It is in this position on the boat that he
utters the words of Ra—the word of God—to both the living and the
dead. He says, “I come forth from the cabin of the Sektit bark, and
I raise myself up from the eastern hill. I stoop upon the eastern hill.
I stoop upon the Maatet (or Atet) bark that I may come and raise
to me those who are in their circles, and who bow down before me”
(Renouf, ch. 77). The boat or bark of the sun has been made
historical in the Gospels. In the time of the celestial Heptanomis
there were seven on board the bark with Horus. And seven is the
number on board the ship with Jesus after his resurrection. In the
heaven of ten nomes there were ten on board the solar bark with
Horus, and there are ten on board the boat with Jesus (not twelve) in
a very early picture given by Bosio. In this scene, Jesus with the
ten in the boat is the child of twelve years, not the man of thirty
years. Ten in the solar boat preceded the twelve in the heaven of
ten divisions, which were earlier than the seventy-two. (Lundy,
Monumental Christianity, fig. 56.)
Horus in the boat is another of the mythical characters assigned to
Jesus by the “sacred historian.” Jesus likewise plays the part of
Horus in the boat as the teller of parables. “There were gathered
unto him great multitudes so that he entered into a boat and sat;
and all the multitude stood on the beach. And he spake to them
many things in parables” (Matt. xiii. 2, 3). Four of the parables are
then told to the people by Jesus, the teller in the boat, which is a cotype with the sayer or logos in person. We find that the Teacher,
now become historic, also addresses two classes or kinds of people
when he utters the words of his father from the boat. One audience
consists of the twelve disciples to whom he is supposed to communicate a knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. These
correspond to the glorious ones who are enshrined, and who accompany Horus as his guides. The others are called the multitude.
To these it is not given to know the mysteries because “seeing they
see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand”
(Matt. xiii.). If the thing were historic, the supposed great democratic Teacher would be excluding the “swinish multitude” from all
knowledge of the kingdom of heaven.
They were not to be
enlightened because they were too densely, darkly ignorant. They
are to be put off with parables, according to Luke (viii. 10), “that
seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand”
these heavenly stories which had for them no earthly meaning. Thus,
in this process of transmogrifying the Kamite mythos into Christian
history, the common people, the ignorant multitude, are assigned the
status of the Pait, the breathless, non-intelligent, unilluminated dead
who were slumbering darkly in the coffins of Amenta, and these are
inevitably mixed up, in the teaching of Jesus, with the deaf and blind
who do not hear and cannot see, and may not perceive, as mortals on
this earth.
Moreover the bark in which the sun-god made his celestial voyage
was double under two different names. “I am the great one among
JESUS IN THE MOUNT
829
the gods,” says the speaker in the Ritual (ch. 136 B), “coming in the
two barks of the lord of Sau.” In the morning it was the Sektit boat,
in the evening the Maatet bark. “Let the soul of the deceased
come forth with thee (the god) into heaven; let him journey in the
Maatet boat till he reach the heaven of the setting stars” (Rit.,
ch. 15). Two boats are also mentioned by Luke where Matthew only
speaks of one—“while the multitude pressed upon him and heard the
word of God, Jesus saw two boats standing by them.” He asks that
one of these may put out from the land in order that he may address
the multitude from the shore. And he sat down and taught the
multitudes out of the boat (Luke v. 4). Again, we meet with Jesus
on board the Maatet bark at evening. In the Gospel according to
Matthew there is a scene in which Jesus is asleep on board the boat.
At sunset, “when even was come,” he entered into a boat and
his disciples followed him.
And behold, there arose a great
tempest in the sea, insomuch that the boat was covered with the
waves, but he was asleep.” Then “he arose and rebuked the winds
and the sea, and there was a great calm” (Matt. viii. 24). The scene
may be paralleled with that on board the bark of Ra at evening
(Rit., ch. 108). In this conflict between Apap and Ra the evil one is
in the western mountain, and it is said of him, “Now at the close of
day he turneth down his eyes to Ra: for there cometh a standing still
in the bark, and a deep slumber within the ship.” Here the solar
god as Ra, or Horus, when sinking to rest in the boat, is described as
being asleep on board when the evil one makes his attack. There is
a contest. “Then Sut is made to flee with a chain of steel upon him,
and he is forced to vomit all that he hath swallowed. Then Sut is put
into his prison” (Rit., ch. 108). The western mountain overlooks the
lake of Putrata. “I know the place,” says the speaker, “where Ra
navigated against adverse winds” (ch. 107). The lake that is crossed by
night amidst the terrors of the tempest is a replica of the dreadful
lake of darkness which the followers of Horus have to cross in
Amenta. It is mentioned in the pyramid texts (Pepi I, 332, and
Merira, 635) as a lake that is traversed by the glorified personage.
In the chapter by which “one dieth not a second time” (Rit., ch. 44,
Renouf) it is spoken of as the lake or chasm of Putrata, where the
“dead fall into darkness,” if not supported by the eye of Horus, their
moon by night. Elsewhere it is described as the void of Apap over
which the bark of heaven sails; the void in which the Herrut-reptile
lurks to prey on those who fall down headlong in the dark (ch. 99).
In this place the deceased pleads that he may be brought into the
bark “as a distressed mariner,” for safety. After crossing the lake of
darkness, the solar god is thus addressed—“O thou who art devoid
of moisture in coming forth from the stream, and who restest upon
the deck of thy bark, as thou proceedest in the direction of yesterday,
and restest upon the deck of thy bark, let me join thy boatmen.” “O
Ra, since thou passest through those who are perishing headlong, do
thou keep me standing on my feet.” That is, in crossing the water—
but not walking on it . Some of the matter may have sunk down a
little too deep to dredge for, but as Herod the monster is the Herrutreptile, the dragon-Apap, in an anthropomorphic guise, we may complete the parallel by pointing out that the murder of John by Herod
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ANCIENT EGYPT
immediately precedes the crossing of the stormy-lake = the lake of
darkness called the void of Apap in Amenta. John is slain, but
Jesus escapes to cross over and to save those who were sinking in the
waters and who are described in the Ritual as “falling down headlong,” and finding nothing to lay hold on by which they can be saved
from the bottomless abyss, until Horus comes to the rescue of the
“distressed mariners” in the “divine form which revealeth the solar
orb,” and with the eye that was an emblem of the moon; the sun by
day and moon by night being called the two eyes of Horus.
In the original mythos the boat is the solar bark; in the eschatological phase it is the boat of souls. It is steered by Horus, who
is called the oar that guides. It is rowed by his followers, who may
be the “four paddles,” or the seven great spirits, or the twelve
mariners; and it is the ark of salvation for souls when Horus
the Saviour is at the look-out. This ark or bark has served for
a model in the New Testament as the boat of souls distressed that is
nearly swamped, and only saved from sinking by the God who is on
board. On entering the bark the speaker pleads: “O Great One in
thy bark, let me be lifted up into thy bark” (ch. 102). The data for
comparison with the story in the Gospel are—the divine bark, which is
solar in the mythos, and the boat of salvation, or of safety, in the
eschatology. In crossing the terrible lake from which the Apap
monster emerges, and the storms and tempests rise to overwhelm the
bark, the god rises unwetted from the water to rest upon the
deck of the bark and insure the safety of those on board. This is
identical with Jesus, who comes on board by walking upon the water,
whilst the individual speaker that makes the appeal for safety in the
place of perishing headlong is equivalent to Peter, who calls for help
when sinking in the lake, saying, “Lord save me,” and is “lifted into
the bark” (Matt. xiv. 22-33), like the rescued manes in the Ritual.
Jesus on board the boat with his disciples in the storm sustains the
character of Horus in the boat, who is the oar, paddle, or rudder of Ra,
and who exclaims, “I am the kheru (paddle or rudder) of Ra who
brings the boat to land” (Rit., ch. 63). In this passage Horus is the
oar or rudder to the boat of the sun, with the ancient ones on
board, in the mythos, and to the boat of salvation for souls in
the eschatology. It is he who brings the boat to the shore.
The germ of the Gospel story concerning Peter sinking in the
waters may be detected in this same chapter. The speaker is a
“wretched one” in the water who was to be saved by him who
is an oar or a boat to the shipwrecked (cf. ch. 125, 38). In the Ritual
it is hot water that the sinking manes has got into, the imagery
being solar, and he speaks of being helpless as a dead person. But
Horus, the oar of the boat, the rudder of Ra, is obviously his saviour,
like Jesus with Peter in the Gospel. A shipwrecked spirit is the
inspiring thought, and Horus was the rescuer as the pilot, or
figuratively the paddle to the boat by which the sinking soul
was saved from drowning in the overwhelming waters.
The Lord appears on the water in the morning watch, the “fourth
watch of the night,” that is, the prw… or dawning (cf. Mark xiii. 35), at
which time the Sun-God begins his march or his “walking,” as it is
termed, upon the waters of the Nun. It is said to the God who walks
JESUS IN THE MOUNT
831
this water at sunrise, “Thou art the only one since thy coming forth
upon the Nun.”
And here we may discover the prototype of
the Gospel version. The deceased addresses Ra at his coming forth
to walk the water and pleads, like Peter, that he may do so likewise.
“Grant,” he says, “that I too may be able to walk (the water) as
thou walkest (on the Nun) without making any halt.” The sun
was seen to rise on the blue above, which was imaged as the water of
heaven. His follower prays that he also may walk the water and
make the passage successfully and without sinking, like the solar God.
In another chapter the deceased exclaims, “I fail, I sink into the
abyss of the flowing that issues from Osiris,” that is, the water of
which Osiris is the source; and in these we find the parallel and prototypes of Jesus walking on the water and Peter sinking into its
engulfing depths.
Horus commands in the boat. Ra annihilates his enemies from
the boat. It is in the boat of the Sun that Ra puts a limit to
the power of his enemies when they pursue him to the water’s edge;
that is, to the horizon of day. So Jesus takes refuge in the boat and
finds protection when he perceives that he is about to be taken
by force; he likewise walks upon the water to the boat. Death
by drowning in the lake was the mode of execution appointed for the
evil Apap and his host of darkness who attacked the solar bark by
night. The fiends of Sut are also included in this sentence of death
by drowning in the emerald lake of heaven, or of dawn. Now the
fiends of the evil Sut were represented as swine. And immediately
after the great tempest in the sea which Jesus stills, the devils
are made to enter the swine, and, like the emissaries of Apap and of
Sut who “causes storms and tempests,” they are driven down
the mountain-side to suffer death by drowning in the lake. It was
on the mount that Jesus met with the man obsessed with a legion of
devils who “entreated him that he would not command them to
depart into the abyss.” “Now there was a herd of swine feeding on
the mountain,” “and the devils came out from the man and entered
into the swine,” and the herd rushed down the “steep into the lake
and were choked” (Luke viii. 33). It was by Sut, in the shape of a
great black boar, that Horus was gored in the eye. It was also the
Pig of Sut that devoured the arm of Osiris in the burial-place. And
when the evil spirits are cast out, as represented in the judgmentscenes, they enter the swine of Typhon and are driven down the side
of the mount to be submerged in the Lake of Putrata or the fathomless abyss of outer darkness.
SUT AND HORUS AS HISTORIC CHARACTERS IN THE CANONICAL
GOSPELS.
The Gospel story of the devil taking Jesus, or the Christ, up into
an exceeding high mountain from which all the kingdoms of the
world and the glory of them could be seen, and of the contention on
the summit, is originally a legend of the astronomical mythos which,
in common with so many others, has been converted into “history.”
As legend it can be explained by means of the Egyptian wisdom.
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ANCIENT EGYPT
As “history” it is, of course, miraculous, if nothing else. Satan and
Jesus are the representatives of Sut and Horus, the contending twins
of darkness and light, of drought and fertility, who strove for
supremacy in the various phenomena of external nature, and in
several celestial localities belonging to the mythology. In the Ritual
(ch. 110) the struggle is described as taking place upon the mount,
that is, “the mountain in the midst of the earth,” or the mountain of
Amenta, which “reaches up to the sky,” and which in the solar
mythos stood at the point of equinox where the conflict was continued and the twins were reconciled year after year. The equinox
was figured at the summit of the mount on the ecliptic, and the scene
of strife was finally configurated as a fixture in the constellation of
the Gemini, the sign of the twin-brothers who for ever fought and
wrestled “up and down the garden,” first one, then the other being
uppermost during the two halves of the year, or of night and day.
The mountain of the equinox “in the midst of the earth” joined the
portion of Sut to the portion of Horus at this the point midway
betwixt the south and north. It was on the mountain of the equinox
and only there the twins were reconciled for the time being by the
star-god Shu (Rit., ch. 110) or by the earth-god Seb (text from
Memphis). Sut the Satanic is described as seizing the good Horus
in the desert of Amenta and carrying him to the top of the mount
here called Mount Hetep, the place of peace, where the two contending powers are reconciled by Shu, according to the treaty made
by Seb. Thus, episode after episode, the Gospel history can and will
be traced to the original documents as matter of the Egyptian
mysteries and astronomical mythology.
The battles of Sut and Horus are represented in both the apocryphal and canonical Gospels. In the Gospels of the Infancy there
are two boys—the bad boy and the good boy. In this form the two
born antagonists continue their altercation with a root-relationship to
the Osirian mythos. Sut is the representative of evil, of darkness,
drought, sterility, negation, and non-existence. It is his devilry to
undo the good work that Horus does, like Satan sowing tares
amongst the wheat. It was Sut who paralyzed the left arm of Osiris
and held it bound in Sekhem (Rit., ch. 1). It is the express delight
of the bad boy, the child of Satan, to destroy the works of Jesus, the
child of light. There is one particularly enlightening illustration of
the mythos reproduced as Märchen. The power of resurrection was
imaged by the lifting of the arm from the mummy-bandages; Horus
in Sekhem is the lifter of the arm. Whilst the arm is fettered in
death, Sut is triumphant over Horus in the dark. When Horus frees
his arm, he raises the hand that was motionless (Rit., ch. 5).
He strikes down Sut, or stabs him to the heart. The power of
darkness, one form of which was Sut, is designated the “eater of
the arm” (ch. 11). This act of the Osirian drama is rendered in the
apocryphal Gospels by the bad boy persistently aiming at injuring
the good boy’s arm or shoulder. In the Gospel of pseudo-Matthew
(29) the bad boy, who is called a son of Satan and the worker of
iniquity, runs at Jesus and thrusts himself bodily against his shoulder
with the intention of breaking or paralyzing him. In the Gospel
of Thomas the boy ran and thrust against the shoulder of Jesus
SUT AND HORUS
833
(ch. 4). Again, the bad boy threw a stone and hit him on the
shoulder (Gospel of Thomas, B. 2, ch. 4). Several times when this
occurs the bad boy is smitten dead by Jesus, just as Sut is pierced to
the heart by Horus. Other evidence might be cited from these
Gospels to show that the bad boy who tries to destroy the arm
of Jesus is one with Sut who renders the arm of Horus (or Osiris)
powerless in Amenta. This being established, we are enabled to
identify Judas the betrayer of Jesus, his brother, with Sut the enemy
of Horus. According to “the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy,” “In
the same place” (with Lady Mary and her child Jesus), “there dwelt
another woman whose son was vexed by Satan. He, Judas by name,
whenever Satan obsessed him, bit all who approached him. He
sought to bite the Lord Jesus, but he could not, yet he struck the
right side of Jesus.” “Now this boy who struck Jesus and from
whom Satan went out in the form of a dog, was Judas Iscariot, who
betrayed him to the Jews” (ch. 35).
We now have the original matter with which to compare the
remains, and the comparative process will prove that these “apocrypha” are not perversions of the canonical Gospels, but that they
preserve traditions derived from the Kamite mythology and eschatology. This can be determined once for all by the contests of
Horus with Sut, and by his warfare with the Apap-serpent or
dragon, which are assigned to the child-Jesus, as they were previously
ascribed to the child-Horus.
There are two types of evil, or, according to modern terminology,
the devil, in the Kamite mysteries. One is zoömorphic, as the Apapreptile, the other anthropomorphic, as Sut, the personal adversary of
Osiris. Apap is the Evil One in the mythology; Sut is Satan the
adversary in the eschatology. In the 108th chapter of the Ritual
there is a curious fusion of Apap with Sut, the anthropomorphic type
of Satan. The serpent of darkness, the old enemy of Osiris-Ra, is
portrayed in the vignette as Apap, and spoken of in the text as Sut.
After the battle “Sut is made to flee with a chain of steel upon him,
and he is forced to disgorge all that he hath swallowed. Then Sut
is made fast in his prison.” At the same time the serpent is described
as “the bright one who cometh on his belly, his hind parts, and on the
joints of his back.” To him it is said, “Thou art pierced with hooks,
as it was decreed against thee of old” (ch. 108). The battle here,
betwixt Ra and Apap, or Sut, is finished on the horizon, that is, on the
mount, from which the devil is hurled down defeated into the abyss.
In the canonical Gospels, Jesus and Satan occupy the place of the
two opponents Horus and the Apap, or Horus and Sut. The Herrutreptile has been paralleled with the monster Herod; Satan is now to
be compared with Sut. Sat = Satan in Egyptian is a name of the
Evil One (Budge, Vocabulary, p. 268).
In Africa the primal curse was drought. Drought was a form of
evil straight from nature. This was figured as the fiery dragon,
“hellish Apap,” that was drowned by Horus in the inundation when
he came as saviour to the land of Egypt in his little ark of the papyrus
plant. Sut warred with Horus in the wilderness as representative of
drought, when the “father of the inundation was athirst” (Rit., ch. 97),
a cry of Horus that was echoed on the Cross (John. xix. 28). Drought,
834
ANCIENT EGYPT
as we have said, was the earliest devil. In the Osirian cult the whole
of nature was expressed in a twofold totality according to the doctrine
of Maati. Night and day, body and soul, water and drought, life and
death, health and disease, were modes of the duality manifested in
phenomena. Sut and Horus were the representatives of this alternation and opposition personified as a pair of twins, now called the
children of Osiris. Osiris Un-nefer is the Good Being, but as with
nature he includes both the good and the evil in the totality. In the
mythos, however, Horus represents the good and Sut the bad. Sut is
said to undo the good that Horus does. Hence he is the adversary or
Satan when personified. As Prince of Darkness he puts out the eye
of Horus, or the light by night. He sows the tares amidst the
grain. He is the “eater of the arm.” He dries up the water of
life with the desert-drought. He lets loose the locusts, the scorpions
and other plagues. He represents negation and non-being in opposition to being, and to the Good Being who is divinized in Osiris and
manifested by Horus. The triumph of Horus over Sut is frequently
referred to in the Ritual. In one of his battles Horus destroyed the
virile member of Sut, as the symbol of his power (ch. 17, 68, 69). In
another, Sut and his associates were overthrown and pierced by Horus
so long as blood would flow. In his resurrection Horus comes to put
an end to the opposition of Sut, and to the troubles he had raised
against Osiris his father (Rit., 137 B). He says: I am the beloved
son. I am come to see my father Osiris, and to pierce the heart of
Sut (Rit., ch. 9). He is armed with horns against Sut (ch. 78, 42).
Horus, “who giveth light by means of his own body,” is the God who
is against Sut when Taht is between them as adjudicator in their
dispute (Rit., ch. 83, 4). In the discourse of Horus to his father he
says to Osiris, “I have brought thee the associates of Sut in chains.”
In the Gospels of the Infancy, which contain some remains of the
more ancient legendary lore, the grapple of child-Horus with the
deadly Apap-reptile is frequently portrayed, as in the Arabic
Gospel of the Infancy, when the boy has been bitten by the serpent,
and the Lord Jesus says to his playmates, “Boys, let us go and kill
the serpent.” He proves his power over the reptile by making it suck
the venom from the wound. Then the Lord Jesus curses the serpent,
“whereupon the reptile was instantly rent asunder” (ch. 42). But the
war of Horus with the Apap-dragon, or serpent of evil, is not fought
out directly by Jesus in the canonical Gospels. Sut as the power of
darkness and as the opponent in the moral domain had taken the
place of the old first adversary of man in the phenomena of external
nature. Jesus promises to give his followers power over the serpent
and the scorpion, but there is no personal conflict with the preanthropomorphic Satan recognized in the four Gospels. Sut, as
Satan in a human form, was a somewhat less unhistoric-looking type
of the devil than the Apap-reptile. Satan, however, retains his old
primitive form of the dragon in “the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy.”
In this it is related that a damsel was afflicted by Satan, the cursed
one, in the form of a huge dragon, which from time to time appeared
to her and prepared to swallow her up. He also sucked out all her
blood, so that she remained like a corpse. She is cured by a strip of
the clothing that had been worn by the child, Lord Jesus (ch. 33).
SUT AND HORUS
835
This is a form of the woman with an issue of blood. Her persecutor
is the dragon of darkness who is the eternal devourer of the light in
the Egyptian mythology, and of condemned souls in the eschatology.
In the gnostic version it is Sophia who suffers from the issue of blood
and who is restrained and supported by Horus when her life is flowing away into immensity. The woman suffering from the swallowing
dragon of darkness was the mother of the child of light in the moon.
Expressed in human terms, Horus the bull, or fecundator of the
mother, stopped her female flow and filled her with the glory of the
light, and thus he overthrew the monster that assailed her in the
dark, which was figured as the wide-mouthed crocodile or devouring
dragon (Rit., ch. 80, 10). Horus puts a boundary round about Sophia.
The child-Jesus cures the damsel with a strip of his raiment; and in
the Gospel according to Matthew the woman who is flowing away
like Sophia with her issue of blood is healed by touching the border
of the garment worn by Jesus (Matt. ix. 20, 21). Here the dragon is
omitted. The suffering lunar lady has been humanized, together with
the Divine Healer; the cure is wrought; the modern miracle remains
in place of the mystery according to the ancient wisdom.
The conflict between Sut and Horus (or Osiris), who are represented
by Satan and Jesus in the Gospels, commences immediately after the
baptism in the river Jordan. One form of baptism in the solar
mythos was derived from the setting of the sun-god in the waters of
the west, the waters in which Un-nefer washes when he has his dispute with Sut—either in the character of Horus or Osiris. Asar in
his baptism is said to plunge into the waters with “Isis and Nephthys
looking on.” Apuat (Anup) is present apparently conducting the
submersion of the god (Inscrip. Of Shabaka from Memphis, line 42).
In his baptism the god Un-nefer was prepared for his struggle with
Sut, the power of drought in the desert of Anrutef. So, in the
Gospels, Jesus is prepared by John in his baptism for the conflict
with Satan in the wilderness, on the pinnacle, and upon the exceeding high mountain. It was only after he had entered spirit-life that
Horus could grapple with Sut, or Jesus with Satan, in the desert, on
the pinnacle of the temple, or on the summit of the mount; consequently the earth-life had ended when the contest betwixt Satan
and Jesus first began, in the phase of eschatology. The wilderness
of Satan in the Gospel represents the desert of Sut in Amenta. When
Satan seized on Jesus and bore him bodily up into the mountain
Jesus had just risen from his baptism and was led up “of the
Spirit.” Otherwise he had made his transformation from the state
of manes to the status of a spirit. This was in the phase of
eschatology and the transaction is in spirit-world.
When Jesus was “led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be
tempted of the devil” he is said to have “fasted forty days and
forty nights,” and, afterwards, to “have hungered,” whatsoever that
may mean. This contention in the wilderness was one of the great
battles of Sut and Horus, or, in the other version of the mythos, of
Sut and Osiris. As Egyptian, the wilderness is the desert of Anrutef,
a desolate, stony place where nothing grew. It was here that Horus
was made blind by Sut, and was a sufferer from hunger and thirst in
this region of stony sterility, and rootless, waterless sand. Horus in
836
ANCIENT EGYPT
Amenta had to make way through the barren desert, in the domain
of Sut, as sower of the seed from which the bread of life was made,
much of which must have fallen on stony ground in the region of
Anrutef. Forty days was the length of time in Egypt that was
reckoned for the grain in the earth before it sprouted visibly from the
ground. It was a time of scarcity and fasting in Egypt, which gave
a very natural significance to the season of Lent, with its mourning
for the dead Osiris, and its rejoicing over the child of promise, the
germinating green shoot springing from the earth. This is represented
in the Gospel as a fast of forty days and forty nights, during which
Jesus wrestled with the devil and was hungry. The struggle then of
Jesus with the devil in the wilderness is a repetition of the conflict
between Horus and Sut in the desert of Amenta; on the mount and
on the pinnacle of the ben-ben or temple in Annu. During the forty
days that Osiris was typically buried in the nether-earth as seed, from
which the bread of heaven was made, the struggle was continued by
Sut and Horus in the mountain. This is repeated in the Gospels
as the contest of Christ and Satan for the mastery in the mount.
The conflict is between the powers of light and darkness, of fertility
and sterility, betwixt Osiris (or Horus) the giver of bread, and Sut,
whose symbol of the desert was a stone. The fasting of Jesus in the
desert represents the absence of food that is caused by Sut in the
wilderness during forty days of burial for the corn, and Satan asking
Jesus to turn the stones into bread is playing with the sign of Sut.
Satan’s jape about converting stones into loaves of bread is likewise
reminiscent of the mythos. The stone was an especial symbol of the
adversary Sut. Also the place of the temple in Annu, and the
pinnacle, or Ha-ben-ben, was the place of the stones by name. Moreover, Annu was the place of bread, or the loaves. As it is said,
“there are seven loaves in Annu with Ra,” the Father in heaven
(Rit., ch. 53 B).
As represented in the Ritual, Sut and Horus are more upon a footing of equality, whether in the wilderness or on the summit of the
mount of glory. Their triumph is alternate, though that of Sut is
much the more limited. As the power of drought and darkness he is
master in the desert, and chief of the powers called the “tesheru deities,”
or gods of the desert. The speaker in chapter 96 exclaims, “I
have come to propitiate Sut and to make offerings to the God Akar
and to the deities of the desert,” where Sut attained supremacy over
Horus for a time. The desert was the natural domain of Sut the
adversary of Horus. Hence Horus at his second coming exclaims,
“I am Horus, the Lord of Kamit and the heir of tesherit” (Rit., ch.
138, lines 3 and 4), which he has also seized. Kamit is Egypt as a
mythical locality: the dark and moist, fat and fertile land. Tesherit,
the red land, is the desert. So that in taking possession of the “two
worlds,” or the double earth, Horus has also seized the domain of Sut,
the wilderness, which was a subject of contention in Amenta. Hence
he says, “I have also seized the desert—I, the invincible one, who
avengeth his father and is fierce at the drowning of his mother” (ch.
138).
In his resurrection Horus cometh forth as “the heir of the temple”
in Annu. He is called “the active and powerful heir of the temple,
SUT AND HORUS
837
whose arm resteth not” in the mummy bandages (ch. 115). That is,
as the avenger of his father Osiris in Annu, where he rises with the
whip or flail in his hand to drive the adversaries from the temple.
Now Annu, the station of the temple, was the place of the pillar. The
temple itself in Annu, or Heliopolis, was known by the name of Haben-ben, the house of the pyramidion or temple of the pinnacle, and
the struggle of Satan with Jesus on the pinnacle of the temple may
be traced to that of Sut and Horus the heir of the temple or the Haben-ben of Annu, following the contention of the twin powers of
darkness and light, or of food and famine in the wilderness. “All the
kingdoms of the world” are more definitely presented to view as
celestial localities upon Mount Hetep. There are ten divisions of this
divine domain. The three scenes of struggle betwixt Jesus and Satan
are (1) in the wilderness, (2) on the pinnacle, and (3) on an exceeding
high mountain; and these can be paralleled in the conflicts between
Horus and Sut. The forty days’ struggle in the wilderness was in
Amenta. Next, there was a struggle on the ben-ben or pinnacle in
Annu. And thirdly, Horus was carried off by Sut to the summit of
Mount Hetep, where the two combatants were reconciled by Shu. The
mount was a figure of the horizon in the solar mythos. On this the
warring twins were constellated as the Gemini, and may be seen continuing their old conflict still, as Sut and Horus in the mythos, or as
Satan and Jesus in the Christian eschatology. The earth, or heaven,
that was first divided in two halves between Sut and Horus in the
mythology is finally claimed to be the sole possession of Horus, the
conqueror and the legitimate heir of God the father in the eschatology.
The triumph of Horus over Sut is denoted by his kindling a light in
the dark of death for the Ka or spiritual image in Amenta (Rit., ch.
137 A). He was not only the light of the world in the mortal sphere.
As it is said in the Ritual, “O light! Let the light be kindled for
the ka!” “Let the light be kindled for the night which followeth
the day.” The light is called the eye of Horus, the glorious one,
shining like Ra from the mount of glory, putting an end to the opposition of the dark-hearted Sut (Rit., ch. 137 B).
The question of an historic Jesus is by no means so simple as
the grossly simple early Christians thought.
It is equally a
question of the historic devil. From first to last the Lord and Satan
are twin, and without Satan there is no Christ-Jesus nor any need of
a redeemer. In the mythology Horus was the lord of light and Sut
the adversary, or the Satan of drought and darkness, from the time
when the two contended as the black bird and the white (or the
golden hawk), or as the two lions (our lion and unicorn a-fighting in
the moonlight for the crown), as the Rehus are described in the 80th
chapter of the Ritual. As there was no Horus without Sut in the
mythos, so there is no Jesus without Satan in the history. The
brotherhood or twinship of Horus and Sut the betrayer is repeated in
the canonical Gospels. Sut was the brother of Horus, born twin with
him in one phase of the mythos, or with Osiris in another. In
like manner Judas is a brother of Jesus. Now, when Horus the
youth of twelve years makes his transformation into Horus the adult,
the man of thirty years, it is as the enemy and eternal conqueror of
Sut who in the earth-life often had the upper hand. But the contest
838
ANCIENT EGYPT
of the personal Christ with a personal Satan in the New Testament is
no more historical fact than the contest between the seed of the woman
and the serpent of evil in the Old. Both are mythical; both are
Egyptian mysteries. In the earlier narrative we have the struggle
between Horus and the Apap-serpent of evil reproduced as Gospel
truth by a writer in Aramaic. In the later the conflict between
Horus and Sut (or Satan in his anthropomorphic guise) has been
repeated as Christian history. As mythos the Ritual explains both,
and for ever disproves their right to be considered historical.
In one of the sayings assigned to Jesus it is promised that “in
the regeneration when the son of man shall sit on the throne of his
glory, the disciples also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the
twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt. xix. 28). Now, when this was said
according to Matthew, Judas the traitor was one of the twelve. Moreover, as reported by Luke, the same thing is uttered by Jesus after
“Satan entered into Judas who was called Iscariot, being of the
number of the twelve,” and therefore one of those who are to sit
on the twelve thrones in the future kingdom, and judge the twelve
tribes of Israel. No defection of the son of perdition is foreseen,
no treachery allowed for. Judas is reckoned as one of the twelve
who are to sit at the table of the Lord and eat and drink in the
kingdom that is yet to come (Luke xxii. 4-30). There is but one
way in which the traitor could remain one of the twelve in heaven.
This belongs to the astronomical mythology, not to any human
history, as when the sign of the scorpion is given to Sut-typhon.
In the newly-recovered Gospel of Peter there is no sign of Judas
the betrayer having been one of the twelve. Immediately after the
resurrection, it is said, the feast of the Passover being ended, “We the
twelve disciples of the Lord wept and grieved, and each of us in grief
at what had happened withdrew to his house” (Harris, page 56).
At the same time, in Matthew, the disciples are but eleven in number
when they go to meet Jesus by appointment on the mount, with Judas
no longer one of them. Sut is as inseparable from Jesus in the Gospels
as from Horus in the dual figure of the Egyptian twins. The name
alone is changed; otherwise it is Sut the devil who is the tempter
of Jesus during forty days and forty nights in the wilderness. It is
Sut who carries Jesus to the summit of an exceeding high mountain.
It is Sut who, as personal opponent, is seen to fall as lightning from
heaven. It is Sut the betrayer who enters Judas to become the
betrayer of Jesus. Also an historical Christ implies, involves, necessitates an historical devil. According to the canonical record the two
must stand or fall together as realities. Both are personal or neither.
And both were pre-extant as Horus and Sut, who were neither personal nor historical. Indeed, it is asserted by Lactantius (Inst. Div.,
B. 2, ch. 8), that the Word of God, the logos of John, is the first-born
brother of Satan. That is honestly spoken and true, if we re-identify
the word with the Horus who was born twin with Sut. He is wrong
in making Horus the logos the first-born, but that is of little
importance. Otherwise, he has got the twins all right. Sut was the
first-born, but the birthright belonged to Horus who was the real
heir. Now the “word of God” is made flesh in Jesus, and the
contention of the twin-powers of darkness and light is rendered
SUT AND HORUS
839
historically in the conflicts between Jesus and Satan in the wilderness,
upon the pinnacle, or the mount, or in the harvest-field. The contest
is also illustrated by Luke (viii. 12): “Then cometh the devil and
taketh away the word from their heart that they may not believe and
be saved.” This is one with Sut in undoing what Horus the Word
had done, especially in sowing the seed of the logos. The contention
of Sut and Horus is carried out betwixt Satan and Jesus to the last.
Sut, the king in his turn, was triumphant over Horus in his suffering
and death. “I go away,” says Jesus, “for the prince of this world
cometh, and he hath nothing in me” (John xiv. 30).
Beelzebub, God of flies, is the particular name assigned to Satan in
the Gospels as the prince of devils. And as Sut was Prince of the
Sebau, it seems probable that the “zebub,” or infernal flies, may have
been identical with and therefore derived by name from that spawn
of Satan the Sebau, the associates of Sut on the night of the great
battle in the Ritual. In the parable of the sower it is said, “When
anyone heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not,
then cometh the evil one (the adversary Sut or Satan) and snatcheth
away that which hath been sown in his heart” (Matt. xiii. 19). And
in “the parable of the tares” it is said, “He that soweth the good seed
is the son of man”; and of the good seed, “these are the sons of the
kingdom; and the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy
that sowed them is the devil” (Matt. xiii. 36-39). This is the contention of Horus and Sut in the harvest-field of Osiris represented in
parables instead of in the mysteries. Horus sows the good seed and
Sut the tares. When Horus rises in Amenta after death it is as the
husbandman or harvester who comes to gather in the harvest previously
sown for the father by Horus in the earth of Seb, and to vanquish
Sut, the sower of the tares, the thorns, and thistles in Anrutef.
The judgment of the world by Horus and the casting out of Sut
is spoken of as a present fulfilment. “Now is the (or a) judgment of
this world. Now shall the prince of this world be cast out” (John
xii. 31, 32). This judgment was annual in the mysteries of Amenta.
Sut as prince of this world and the son of perdition was cast out and
judgment passed on those who were to be no more. This was at the
time when Horus as the son of man was glorified, and Sut with his
associates were once more overthrown by him on the highways of the
damned. In John’s account of the betrayal and arrest, when Jesus
declares himself, the soldiers and officers who are with Judas are
“struck to the ground,” or “they went backwards and fell to the ground”
(John xviii. 6, 7). So when “Horus repulses the associates of Sut,”
they see the diadem upon his head and “fall upon their faces in presence
of his Majesty” (Rit., 134, 11). Sut put out the eye of Horus. This
is parodied in the Gospels when Jesus is blindfolded and then asked
to tell who struck him in the dark.
We get one other passing glimpse of Sut and Horus the contending twins in the parable of the marriage feast (Matt. xxii). The
wisdom of the Kamite mysteries was memorized in the sayings, and
made portable in the parables. And in this the parable represents
the marriage in the mystery of Tattu (Rit., ch. 17). Horus was the
king’s son for whom the feast was made. He is Horus of the royal
countenance in the mythos; the wearer of the Greek cloak of
840
ANCIENT EGYPT
royalty in the Roman catacombs. The king is Ra who issues the
invitation to the festival of “Come thou hither,” which is represented by
the Gospel marriage feast, to which those invited would not come. Sut
as the adversary of Horus is the unbidden marriage guest who had no
wedding garment on. The murderers who slay the servants of the king
are the Sebau and co-conspirators of Sut, and the vindictive treatment
that followed becomes intelligible only by means of the mythos.
The conflict betwixt Satan and Jesus attains a culmination
astronomically. In the betrayal of Osiris the Good Being by the evil
Sut there are seventy-two conspirators associated with the adversary.
Seventy-two on the one hand as the powers of darkness imply the
same number of opponent powers fighting on behalf of Horus or, it
may be, Jesus on the other, the battle being in the seventy-two
duodecans of the zodiac. This war of Sut and Horus is repeated
once more in the Gospel when the seventy-two or the seventy
“returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us
in thy name.” And he said unto them, “I beheld Satan fallen as
lightning from heaven.” “Behold, I have given you authority to
tread upon serpents and scorpions and over all the powers of the
enemy.” The enemy was Sut, and as a symbol in the zodiac Sut was
at one time figured in the scorpion-sign. Thus, the betrayal of
Osiris happened when the sun or the bull of eternity, as the divinity is
also called, was in the sign of Scorpio. The sign of the bull being
secretly assaulted by the scorpion is well known from the Mithraic
monuments according to Hyde (Drummond, Ædipus Judaicus,
Pl. 13). In some of the Greco-Egyptian planispheres, given by
Kircher, Sut is also identified as the scorpion which slew Osiris
(Drummond, Pl. 13).
In the Gospel, power is given for the
seventy-two to tread on the scorpion and to triumph over all the
powers of the enemy (Luke x. 17-20). The two different numbers
of seventy and seventy-two for those whose names were written in
heaven show that both belong to the planisphere which had been
divided at two different periods into the heaven of seventy and the
heaven of seventy-two divisions. We can now see how and why the
betrayer keeps his place as one of the twelve in the Gospel of Peter,
and why he has been cast out in the Gospel according to Matthew.
The Gospel of Peter was not historical, which means that it was
astronomically based; and according to the gnosis the twelve whose
thrones were set in heaven are zodiacal, not ethnical characters. Sut
the betrayer was assigned the scorpion as a type of evil. And as the
scorpion he keeps his place, like Judas in the Petrine Gospel, as one of
the twelve who were to sit on twelve celestial thrones in spite of
his defection, because the twelve originated as astronomical and not
as historical realities.
The Gnostics maintained that Jesus was the Lord for one year only,
and that he suffered in the twelfth month, as did Osiris with the
sun in the sign of Scorpio. Thus, the Egypto-gnostic Jesus throned
upon Mount Olivet with the twelve around him—he being a “little
apart”—is a figure of the solar god with the twelve who row the
bark of Ra around the zodiac.
One result of turning the Egyptian mythos into Christian history
has been to inflict the most nefarious injustice on the Jews. By
SUT AND HORUS
841
shifting the scene of the Mysteries from the nether-earth of Amenta
to the land of Judea the ethnical Jews have been thrust into the
position of the Typhonian enemies of the Good Being, the Sebau and
the Sami, the powers of evil in the mythos and the condemned
manes in the eschatology. The Jews have been transmogrified into
the associates of Sut and the spawn of Satan. That is why the
father of the Jews is called the devil, and a murderer from the
beginning; the liar and the father of all lying. That is why Judas
is a devil; and the Jews as a people figure in the same category with
Herod, slayer of the innocents, with Judas the betrayer of Jesus, and
with the fiends of Sut, because they were charged with doing those
things on earth which had only been and could only be enacted
according to the mysteries in Amenta. For this perversion of the
mythos the Jews have been hunted over the earth and persecuted ever
since. They have suffered precisely in the same way as the redhaired Typhonian animals suffered in ancient Egypt (Plutarch, Of
Isis and Osiris, 30, 31), which were dedicated and doomed to be
slain in an avenging sacrifice because they represented the associates
of the wicked Sut, the liar, the betrayer, the murderer, who put to
death and mutilated the body of the good Osiris. The sufferers on
account of the mythos were the Typhonian ass, the pig, and the goat.
The sufferers on account of the “history” have been and still are
the children of Israel. Whereas the Jews were no more racial in the
Gospels than the accursed Sebau are Egyptians in the Ritual. That
they should be made to appear so is but a result of literalizing and
localizing the Osirian drama in a spurious Judean history.
And here the present writer would remark that, in his view, the
Jewish rejection of Christianity constitutes one of the sanest and the
bravest intellectual triumphs of all time. It is worth all that the race
has suffered from the persecution of the Christian world. The Jews,
like the Gnostics, knew well enough that the Christian schema was a
“fake,” and, although they were unable to explain how it had been
manufactured from the leavings of the past, they knew that it was
false, non-natural and unnecessary. Up to the present time their
victory may have been comparatively negative, in consequence of
their failure to retell the story in the only one authentic way, that is,
with a sufficient grasp of the data. They have not been able to
reinstate the truth once confounded and overthrown, but they have
borne witness dumbly, doggedly, unceasingly, with faces set like flint
unflinchingly against the lie. They would not believe that their God,
though imaged anthropomorphically, had become a man, and so they
have remained non-Christian to this day, never to be converted now.
For at last the long infernal Juden-Hetze nears its end; the time of
their justification and triumph is at hand, when the persecutor with
the stone in his grasp will drop it suddenly and flee helter-skelter for
his life.
THE GROUP IN BETHANY.
The canonical Gospels may be described as different collections of
“episodes” and “sayings,” and one of the most disconnected of these
episodes is to be found in the raising of Lazarus from the tomb that
842
ANCIENT EGYPT
“was a cave” (John xi. 38), which contains a version of the resurrection of Osiris from the cave. The subject of all subjects in the
religious mysteries of the Egyptians was the resurgence of the human
soul from death and its transformation into an eternal spirit. This
is the foundation of the Book of the Dead or Ritual of the resurrection. So far as we know, this resurrection was originally represented in the mysteries of Memphis, where Kheper-Ptah was the
divinity that rose again in mummy-form from which the soul was
seen to issue forth as a divine hawk. On entering Amenta as a still
living being, though but a soul in matter, the Osiris, late deceased,
addresses the god in the character of those powers who effect the
triumph of Osiris over all his adversaries, the chief of whom is Horus,
in whose name he is magically assimilated to the Son of God, and
thus is one with Horus in his resurrection from the dead.
It has now been shown that the resurrection of Osiris in Annu has
been partially reproduced as the raising of Lazarus in Bethany.
Osiris reposing in Annu is an image of the soul inert in matter or in
decay and death. Hence he was portrayed in the likeness of the
mummy called “the breathless one,” also the god with the non-beating
heart, who is laid out in the burial-place as a corpse-like form lying
extended at full length, awaiting his resurrection from the funeral
couch, or the transfiguration into the risen sahu of the glorified. In
his first advent Horus is the son of Seb, God of earth. In his second,
he is the son of Ra, the Holy Spirit. It is in this latter character that
he enters Amenta to represent the resurrection of the Osiris in the
earth of eternity.
The resurrection of the sun from out the grave of night; the
rearising of vegetation from the grip of winter; and of the waters
returning periodically from their source; that is the resurrection in
external nature; it was, in short, the resurrection of new life from
the old, in a variety of phenomena, mystically imaged by zoötypes
like the serpent of Rannut; the frog or beetle of Ptah; the shoot of
papyrus, or the green branch of endless years. The doctrine culminated in a resurrection of the soul of human life from the body
of death that was imaged by the mummy-Osiris, the god who in
his rising again united all phases of the doctrine under one type
of the resurrection, viz., that of the risen mummy defecated to
the consistency of a sahu, or a spiritual body. It is as the reconstituter of his father in Amenta that Horus raises Osiris from the
tomb. He calls the mummy to come forth and assume the likeness of Ra the later god. Osiris is now glorified by Ra the Holy
Spirit. The mummy being an image of the earlier body-soul that
was transubstantialized into spirit. As it is said, Osiris is “renewed
in an instant,” and it is his son Horus who thus establishes him upon
“the pedestal of Tum” (Atum Ra) the god in spirit (Rit., ch. 182).
The resurrection of the human soul in the after-life was the central
fact of the Egyptian religion, and the transfigured, re-erected mummy,
otherwise called the Karast, was a supreme symbol. The opening
day of New Year, the day of “Come thou to me,” was named from
the resurrection, which was solar in the mythos and spiritual in the
eschatology. The mummy-type was divinized to preserve intact that
bodily form which suffered dissolution after death. This, as mummy
THE GROUP IN BETHANY
843
of the god in matter, was a type inviolate and imperishable. Osiris
in his coffin does not see corruption. In him was life for evermore.
And as with the divine exemplar, so was it postulated for all who
died in Osiris. He was terribly mutilated by the evil Sut, and his
mummy had to be joined together again piecemeal, for as it is said to
Osiris, “I come to embalm thee,” thou hast existence “with thy
members” when these were put together. And again, “I have come
myself and delivered the god from that pain and suffering that
were in trunk, in shoulder and in leg.” “I have come and healed
the trunk, and fastened the shoulder and made firm the leg”
(ch. 102, Renouf). This was in reconstituting the personality, which
was performed in a mystery when the different parts of Osiris, the
head, the vertebræ, the thigh, the leg, the heel were collected at the
coffin (Rit., ch. 18). But the god in matter was also the god in spirit
according to the mystery or modus operandi of the Resurrection; or
he became so by being blended with Ra in his resurrection.
In the Kamite mythos as in the totemic sociology, the son (of the
mother) was earlier than the father. When it is said in the texts, “I
am a son begotten of his father; I am a father begotten of his son,”
the sense of the expression turns on the son of the mother having
been earlier than the father of the son. Child-Horus, Har-si-Hesi, is
the mother’s son. Mother and son, as As-Ar; Isis and child, passed
into the complex of Asar or Osiris, the one great god in whom all
previous powers were merged and unified at last. Isis had embodied
a soul in matter or flesh, as her child, when there was as yet no God the
Father, no God the Son, no Horus in spirit. This fatherhood of the
spirit was founded in Atum-Ra the father of spirits.
Thence
followed the sonship in spirit of Horus in his second character as
divine adult. Ra in spirit represented the supreme type of deity
whose symbol is the sun or solar hawk. Osiris remained the god in
matter as the mummy in Amenta; Ra is described as calling on Osiris
in the resurrection and is also said to bid the mummy “come forth,”
when the deity in matter was to be united with the god in spirit.
But Horus, the Son of God, the beloved only begotten son, is now the
representative of Ra and the chief agent in the raising of the mummyOsiris from the dead. He is the son who comes to the assistance, not
only of the father, for the mummy-Asar is both Isis and Osiris in one
body. Hence it is said in the chapter by which the tomb is opened
for the Osiris to come forth, “I am Horus the reconstituter of his
father, who lifteth up his father, and who lifteth up his mother
with his wand (rod or staff)” (Rit., ch. 92, Renouf). As it is said in
the Ritual (ch. 78), “it is Horus who hath reconstituted his father and
restored him”—after the mutilation of his body by the murderer
Sut. He descends into the funeral land of darkness and the shadow
of death. He opens the Tuat to drive away the darkness so that he
may look upon his father’s face. He says pathetically, “I am his
beloved son. I have come to pierce the heart of Sut and to perform
all duties to my father” (ch. 9, Renouf). Horus the prince in Sekhem
also uplifts his father as Osiris-Tat with his two arms clasped behind
him for support (ch. 18). In this mythical character of the son who
gives life, reconstitutes, restores and re-establishes his father, the
Egyptians continued an inner African type of the “Son who makes his
844
ANCIENT EGYPT
Father.” Miss Kingsley called attention to a function of the Oilriver-Chief who has to observe the custom of “making his father”
once every year. The custom is sacred and symbolical, as the
deceased chief need not be his own real father, but must be his
predecessor in the headmanship (Kingsley, M., West African Studies,
p. 146). This custom of “making his father” by the son survived
and was perpetuated in the mythology of Egypt, in which Horus is
the son who makes, or “reconstitutes,” his father once a year, and
describes it as one of his duties in the Book of the Dead. This
resurrection of the father as the soul of life in matter, i.e., the mummysoul, by Horus the son, is the great mystery of the ten mysteries
which are briefly described in the 18th chapter of the Ritual.
In a later scene there is another description of the resurrection
of Osiris, in which the mummy-god is raised by his son Horus from
the tomb. As it is said, “Horus exalteth his father Osiris in every
place, associating Isis the Great with her sister Nephthys” as the two
women at the tomb. “Rise up, Horus, son of Isis, and restore thy
father Osiris”—that was Osiris in the inert and breathless condition
of the mummy. “Ha, Osiris, I have come to thee. I am Horus,
and I restore thee unto life upon this day with the funeral offerings
and all good things for Osiris.” “Rise up, then, Osiris. I have
stricken down thine enemies for thee; I have delivered thee from
them.” “I am Horus on this fair day at the beautiful coming forth
of thy powers (in his resurrection), who lifteth thee up with himself
on this fair day as thine associate God.” “Ha, Osiris, thou hast
received thy sceptre, thy pedestal, and thy flight of stairs beneath
thee.” On the coffin of Nes-Shu-Tefnut, at Vienna, it is said:
“Horus openeth for thee thy two eyes that thou mayest see with them
in thy name of Ap-Uat.” (Renouf, Book of the Dead, ch. 128,
note 8.) Horus as son of Ra the Holy Spirit in the eschatology is
now higher in status than the mummy-god, the father and mother in
matter. Hence he rises in Amenta as the resurrection and the life
to his own father Osiris.
Horus as the divine heir had now been furnished with the double
force. The gods rejoice to meet him walking on the way to Annu,
and the hall of the horizon or house in Annu where divine perfumes
are awaiting him and mourning does not reach him, and where the
guardians of the hall do not overthrow the mysterious of face who is
in the sanctuary of Sekhem. That is Osiris, who is not dead but
sleeping in Annu, the place of his repose, awaiting the call that bids
the mummy to “come forth to day.” Horus, the deliverer of his
father, reaches him in the train of Hathor, who is Meri, the beloved
by name in the Ritual. Thus Horus follows Meri to the place where
Asar lies buried in the sepulchre, as Jesus follows Mary, who had come
forth to meet him on the way to Bethany (John xi. 29, 33). Jesus
reaches the tomb of Lazarus in the train of Mary and Martha.
Horus makes the way for Osiris. He repulses the attack of Apap,
who represents negation or non-being = death. The portrait of Horus
in this scene is very grand. His face is glorified and greatened by
the diadem which he wears as the lord of strength. His double force
is imaged by two lions. A loud voice is heard upon the horizon as
Horus lifts the truth to Ra, and the way is made for Osiris to come
THE GROUP IN BETHANY
845
forth at his rising from the cave. So Jesus “cried with a loud voice,
Lazarus, come forth!” and “he that was dead came forth bound hand
and foot with grave-bands.” In the original the mummy-Osiris
comes forth as Amsu, with one arm only released from the bandages.
In the “discourse of Horus” to his Father at his coming forth from
the sanctuary in Sekhem to see Ra, Horus says, “I have given thee
thy soul, I have given thee thy strength, I have given thee thy
victory, I have given thee thy two eyes (mertæ), I have given thee
Isis and Nephthys,” who are the two divine sisters, the Mary and
Martha of Beth-Annu (Records, vol. 10, p. 163). In showing that
“mourning does not reach him,” Jesus “abode at that time
two days in the place where he was.” After the sisters had sent to
say that Lazarus was sick he waited until he was dead on purpose to
perform the more effective miracle. He was in Bethany, “the place
where John was at the first baptizing” (cf. John i. 28 with John x.
40, 41), but it took him two more days to get there at this particular
time. So that Lazarus had been buried four days when Jesus arrived
in the village. The tomb of Osiris was localized in Annu, the solar
birthplace. Osiris, under one of his titles, is the great one in
Annu. Annu is the place of his repose. “I go to rest in Annu, my
dwelling,” says Osiris. The deceased also goes to rest in Annu
because it was the place of repose for Osiris the god (ch. 57, 4, 5).
Jesus goes to rest in Bethany. The place of repose for Osiris was
his sepulchre in Annu. The place of repose for Lazarus is the cave
in Bethany. It was in Annu that the soul was united to its spiritual
body. Annu is termed the place “where thousands reunite themselves” soul and body. The speaker says, “Let my soul see her
body. Let her unite herself to her sahu”—that is, to the glorified
body which can neither be destroyed nor injured; the future body in
which the soul would be incorporated to pass from out the tomb.
Annu is called the abode of “those who have found their faces.”
These are the mummy-forms, from whose faces the napkin had been
removed. The house or beth of Osiris, then, was in Annu. “He
rests in Annu, which is his dwelling.” The names of its builders are
recorded. Num raised it on its foundation. Seshet (or Sefekh)
built it for him as his house of refuge and of rest (Rit., 57, 4, 5).
The house of Osiris in Annu was called Hat-Saru, the house of the
Prince—that is, the abode of Horus when he came to raise Osiris
from the tomb. It was the sanctuary of Osiris who was attended by
the two Mertæ or Merti, the pair of divine sisters better known by the
names of Isis and Nephthys. The household proper consists of
Osiris and those two sisters who watch over him. Mer denotes the
eye, ti is two, and these are the two eyes or two watchers over Osiris
in the abode that is the place of his burial and rebirth. The two
sisters as watchers are the two Mer, one of whom becomes Mary,
the other Martha, as the two merti in Bethany = Beth-Annu. The
triumph of Osiris was effected over his adversaries by Horus in the
house of the Prince in Annu or Heliopolis, and his supreme triumph
was in his resurrection when he was recalled to life and raised up
from the sepulchre by Horus (Rit., ch. 1). The raising up of
Osiris the father by Horus the son is doctrinally based upon the
father living over again in the son. Under the beetle-type Kheper
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ANCIENT EGYPT
as father transformed into the son. It was the same with Atum-Iu,
in whom the father became the son and then the son transformed
into the father. The mystery was deepened in the Osirian drama by
superadding a more spiritual form of the fatherhood in Ra the Holy
Spirit. The deceased Osiris is in possession of the funeral meals
in Annu. He sits beneath the trees of Annu in the train of HathorMeri (Rit., ch. 68, 10). Annu is the place of provisions for the
manes. Thousands are nourished or fed in Annu (89). Deceased
in Annu (82) receives his vesture or Taau-garment from the goddess
Tait, who is over him. This is an illusion to the mummy-case from
which the left arm was not yet freed when Amsu-Horus rose up in
the sepulchre. The goddess Tait is a form of one of the two divine
sisters. She cooks the food and brings it to the deceased, who is
either Osiris, or the Osiris, the God or the manes. Annu was also
the place of the festivals of Osiris. One of these was kept on the
sixth day of the month. “I am with Horus,” says the speaker on
the day when the festivals of Osiris are celebrated, “on the feast of
the sixth day of the month” (ch. 1, lines 23, 24). With this we may
compare the following statement: “Jesus therefore six days before
the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus raised
from the dead. So they made him a supper there” (John xii.) The
two sisters were present. “Martha served, and Mary anointed the
feet of Jesus and wiped them with her hair.”
Annu is described as a green and pleasant place, an oasis in
the desert of Amenta created for the suffering Osiris, and the two
divine sisters were given him there for his comfort and delight (ch. 17,
138, 139). The tree of life stood in Annu, as the sycamore, tamarisk,
or persea tree, which was personified in Hathor-Meri or Isis. The
manes were feasted “under the foliage of the tamarisk” (ch. 124, 6),
the branches of which are described as the beautiful arms of the
goddess, and the foliage as her hair, when she herself was the tree
beneath which the Osiris found refreshing shade. It seems that not
only the clouds of dawn, but also the foliage of the tamarisk tree may
have imaged the hair of the goddess. Osiris-Ani is found in Annu
with the hair of Isis spread over him (Rit., ch. 17). In another
text the hair is assigned to Hathor—one of whose names is Meri
(ch. 35, 1). And this is probably related to the story of Mary wiping
the feet of Jesus with the hair of her head. Isis is frequently portrayed
kneeling at the feet of Osiris in Annu. It is she who says: “I who
drop the hair which hath loosely fallen upon my brow—I am Isis, when
she concealeth herself” (ch. 17, 135). Osiris in Annu, like Lazarus in
Bethany, was not dead but sleeping. In the text of Har-hetep (Rit.,
ch. 99) the speaker who personates Horus is he who comes to awaken
Asar out of his sleep. Also, in one of the early funeral texts it is said
of the sleeping Asar: “The Great One waketh, the Great One riseth;
Horus raises Osiris upon his feet.” Jesus denies that Lazarus is dead.
“Our friend Lazarus is fallen asleep. I go that I may awake him out
of his sleep” (ch. xi., 11), which is genuine Egyptian doctrine. The
manes in Amenta were not looked upon as dead, but sleeping, breathless of body, motionless of heart. The deity Osiris was not dead.
And in his likeness the Osiris lived. Hence Horus comes to wake the
sleepers in their coffins, or Osiris in his cave.
THE GROUP IN BETHANY
847
It was in Bethany that “Jesus wept.” It is the place of weeping
for the dead Lazarus. Mary wept, the Jews wept, and “Jesus wept.”
No wonder. This is the place of weeping by name in the Ritual,
where the Osiris lay in his burial. It was here he was inert and
motionless. The Osiris says: “I am motionless in the fields of those
who are dumb in death. But I shall wake, and my soul will speak in
the dwelling of Tum, the Lord of Annu.” The abode of Tum in Annu
being = Bethany. Then he rises from the tomb and appears at the
door, and says, “I arrive at the confines of earth. I tread the dwelling
of the god Rem-Rem.” Rem signifies weeping: and in the Litany of
Ra this god is designated “Remi the Weeper.” Thus Jesus is
portrayed in the character of “Remi the Weeper” in the place of
weeping for the dead Osiris in Beth-Annu, who is here represented
as the dead Lazarus in Bethany (Rit., 75, Renouf). Jesus comes
as “Remi the Weeper” to weep for the inert Osiris, that is, as
Horus who comes to the motionless Osiris on the day which is called
“Come thou to me.” Ra is said to make the mummy “come forth”
(The Litany of Ra, 68; Rit., 17). Jesus cries with a loud voice,
“Lazarus, come forth!” and “he that was dead came forth, bound
hand and foot with grave-bands: and his face was bound about with a
napkin” (John xi. 43, 44). The picture is completed in the Roman catacombs, where the risen Lazarus is an Egyptian mummy: the likeness of
the mummy-Osiris, who is beckoned forth by Horus with his staff.
According to the dramatic representation in the Mysteries, Osiris is
slain by the adversary Sut, and is imaged in Amenta as a mummy.
The father lives again in the son; hence his son Horus descends into
the nether-world to avenge, reconstitute and raise Osiris from his
corpse-like state. He comes as a living soul from Ra the Holy Spirit,
who is the Father in heaven, “to raise up the hand which is motionless” (Rit., ch. 5). “He lifts inert Osiris with his two arms” (ch. 18).
He exclaims, “Ha! Osiris, I am come to thee: I am Horus, and I
restore thee to life upon this day, with the funerary offerings and all
good things for Osiris. Rise up, then, Osiris (ch. 128). Horus
hath raised thee.” It is said, “Hail, Osiris, thou art born twice”
(Rit., ch. 170). In some texts it is Ra who bids the mummy come
forth on the day of “Come thou to me” (Rit., ch. 17). Taht says:
“I give Ra to enter the mysterious cave in order that he may
revive the heart of him whose heart is motionless” (ch. 182). After
the raising of Osiris, Taht says, “I have celebrated the festival of
Eve’s provender,” or supper, which came to be called the Last Supper.
The raising of Lazarus is likewise commemorated by a supper. “So
they made him a supper there” (John xii. 2).
When Osiris, or the Osiris, “takes the form of a living soul” (Rit.,
ch. 181), it is said, “thy son Horus reconstitutes thee. Arise, Osiris,
thy hands have been given to thee”—he is freed from the mummybandages—“stand up living for ever.” “The two sisters Isis and
Nephthys come to thee; they will fill thee with life, health, and
strength, and all the joy that they possess. They gather for thee
all kinds of good things within thy reach” (ch. 181). Amongst other
ceremonies performed in the Amenta at the raising of the mummy
who is “called aloud” from the sepulchre the Osiris is freed from
the bandages with which the corpse was bound. So when Lazarus
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ANCIENT EGYPT
was called in a loud voice to come forth, “He that was dead came
forth bound hand and foot with grave-bands, and his face was bound
about.” In the resurrection ceremony of Osiris he is divested of his
funerary garment and receives a bandage of the finest linen from
the hands of the attendant of Ra, the Father in heaven (Rit.,
ch. 172). He eats of “the meat which has been prepared by Ra
in his holy place”; he washes his feet in silver basins, which have
been sculptured by the divine architect Ptah-Sekari (ch. 172). In
the Gospel, Jesus, “knowing that the Father had given all things
into his hands, and that he came forth from God and goeth unto
God, riseth from supper, and layeth aside his garments; and he took
a towel and girded himself. Then he poureth water into a basin and
began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel
wherewith he was girded” (ch. xiii. 4-6).
Taking Lazarus, then, to represent the mummy-Osiris, we find
the “raising of Lazarus” celebrated in a hymn expressly devoted to
the subject. It is one of the ceremonies that were performed in the
underworld. The Osiris is designated him “who is called aloud.”
“O thou who art called aloud, thou who art called aloud, thou the
lamented, thou art glorified. O thou who art raised up, thou art
raised up. N. has been raised up by means of all the manifold
ceremonies performed for him.” The mummy-Osiris lay upon the
funeral couch in the mysterious cave with the two sisters in attendance. Horus enters this cave as representative of Ra, to revive the
heart of him whose heart is motionless. He says, “Hail, Osiris,
thou art born twice! Arise on thy bed and come forth! Come!
Come forth.” Osiris or the Osiris is called with a loud voice. In the
hymn of the resurrection, he is addressed nine times over in the words
“O Thou who art called aloud!” (chs. 170-2). They call him to
come forth “like a god” from the mysterious cave “to meet the
powers of Annu.” The resurrection is celebrated with rejoicings,
“thou hearest how thou art glorified through all thy house!” There
are nine verses in the hymn and each one opens with the address, “O
thou who art called aloud!” That is for his rising up and coming
forth from the cave in Annu (ch. 172). The words “O thou who
art called aloud” had become the title of the hymn, as we say “the
Magnificat,” or “the Te Deum” (Naville, Rit., ch. 172).
The latest dynasty of Egyptian deities were born of Seb the
earth-father and Nut the mother-heaven. This was the Osirian
group, consisting of five persons, viz., (1) Asar, (2) the elder Horus,
(3) Sut, (4) Isis, (5) Nephthys, which may be called the family in
Annu and shown to be the originals of the group in Bethany. Sut,
the betrayer, is the only one omitted from the Gospel. The remaining
four—Lazarus = Asar; Jesus = Horus; Mary = Isis; Martha = Nephthys—are also represented sometimes in the Ritual without Sut (ch.
128). When it is said that Horus exalteth his father Osiris in every
place he associates Isis the Great with her sister Nephthys. Sut is
not included in the group at Annu. On the other hand, Sut, in the
person of the betrayer, is present at the mortuary meal in the
canonical Gospels. At present we only need to identify Lazarus with
Osiris, Jesus with Horus, and the two sisters of Lazarus with the two
sisters of Osiris. Osiris lying as a breathless mummy in the cave,
THE GROUP IN BETHANY
849
when Horus comes to raise him from the dead, is watched over and
protected by the two Mertæ-sisters, one at the head and one at the feet
as keepers of the body, and watchers in the burial-place. The two
mertæ are mentioned in chapter 58. In this the Osiris cries, “Let the
door be opened to me” as the Osiris buried in Amenta. “Who is with
thee?” is asked. The reply is, “It is the mertæ,” the two watchers over
Osiris in the sepulchre. The deceased then asks that he may have
milk, cakes and meat given to him at the house which is in Annu, the
Kamite prototype of Bethany. On the way to the sepulchre in Annu
Horus meets the two sister-goddesses, saying to them “Hail, ye pair of
goddesses Mertæ, sister pair, Mertæ! I inform you of my words of
power. I am Horus, the son of Isis, and I am come to see my father
Osiris,” and to raise him up from the sepulchre. Jesus on his way to
the cave of Lazarus likewise informs Martha of his words of power,
saying “thy brother shall rise again.” “I am the resurrection and the
life.” “He that believeth on me shall never die” (John XI. 25, 26). “Now
as they went on their way a certain woman named Martha received
him (Jesus) into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, which
also sat at the Lord’s feet (like Isis) and heard his word.” And because
Mary took her place at the feet of Jesus it is said that she had “chosen
the good part” (Luke X. 38, 42). The two sisters in Bethany are the
Aramaic or Hebrew replica of Isis and Nephthys, who are the
attendants upon Osiris; the two divine sisters of Osiris in Annu. Mary
and Martha are the two sisters of Lazarus in Bethany. Horus loved
the two dear sisters Isis and Nephthys, and is especially denominated
the son who loves his father, i.e., Asar, whom he raises from the tomb
according to the dramatic representation. Jesus is said to have “loved
Martha and her sister, and Lazarus” (John XI. 5).
Jesus saith, “Our friend Lazarus is fallen asleep, but I go that I
may awake him out of sleep” (John XI. 4, 11). So is it in the Ritual.
Horus says, “I go to give movement to the manes. I go to comfort him
who is in a swoon,” which is equivalent to Lazarus who sleeps (ch. 64).
He goes to give life at some particular spot and in doing this he comes
from Sekhem to Annu where the mummy of Osiris rested in the house
there=Beth-Annu or Bethany. The Osiris does not die. The Ritual has
no recognition of death, save as final extinction when death and evil
die together. Osiris sleeps, he is breathless or in a swoon. He lies
inert, his heart is motionless pro tem. Osiris thus awaits his change
and resurrection; but he cannot die who is the conqueror of death and
the bondage of the grave. The resurrection of Osiris at the coming of
Horus is glanced at when the speaker personates him and says, “I am
the great first heir (or inheritor) taking possession of Urt-hat”—
otherwise the inert, sleeping, motionless Osiris. “Strength of Osiris is
my name. I save him” from the impurities of matter. “He lives by me.”
The speaker is Horus with his father Ra, just as Jesus is with his
father in the scene of raising Lazarus (John 11, 45). The resurrection
applies to Osiris in matter whom Horus comes to quicken and raise up
from the dead or, as it is rendered, “from the impurities of Osiris” in
matter. The “corruption which befell Osiris” in
[849]
his mummy-condition is mentioned in the Ritual more than once. This
also befalls the corpse of Lazarus, but is more grossly stated in the
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ANCIENT EGYPT
Gospel. Jesus comes to raise up Lazarus when he has been in the tomb
four days, and Martha saith, “Lord, by this time he stinketh” (John XI.
39). In the Ritual, when Horus comes to those who are in their cells he
utters the words of Ra to raise the dead, and says, as the passage is
rendered by Budge, “I am the herald of his words (his father’s) to him
whose throat stinketh”; that is, to the sufferer from corruption in the
tomb (Book of the Dead, ch. 38 B, line 4).
Isis not only stands or sits at the feet of Osiris, she is the Seat
personified. She carries the sign of the seat upon her head. Her name
of Hes signifies the seat. And Mary, who takes the place of Isis, is
described as sitting at the feet of Jesus, whilst Martha is busy working
about the house and left serving alone. A further allusion to the Lady
of the Seat may be found when Martha heard that Jesus was coming,
and went forth to meet him, whilst “Mary still sat in the house” (John
XI. 20, 21), thus fulfilling the character of Isis, the seat, or the sitter.
There is more than meets the eye in the sign of the seat which is borne
by Isis. To sit is also to brood as a bird. Isis as sitter is the brood-hen,
the incubator in Annu. Under this type of the sitting-hen she sits at
the feet of Osiris to bring him to rebirth. Mary also sat in the house,
and kept her seat at the feet of Jesus. Nephthys, the other divine
sister in Annu, carries the sign of a house on her head. She is called
mistress of the house. She is the benevolent, saving sister. This in the
“history” is rendered by Martha being the housekeeper and by Mary
sitting in the house while her sister goes forth to meet the Lord (John
XI. 21). In Aramaic, Martha denotes the mistress of the house, and
Nephthys, one of the two mertæ, is the mistress of the house, who
carries the house as a symbol in her head-dress. The name of
Nephthys in Greek represents nebt-hat, the mistress of the house in
Egyptian. The two sisters are the merti or mertæ, who were the
keepers of the double house in attendance upon Horus, or Jesus. They
receive the Sun-God at his entrance to the mountain in the West, and
stand together by him when he issues forth at dawn from Beth-Annu,
or Bethany, in the East. The name of the secret shrine in which the
mummy-Osiris was upraised by “the two arms of Horus, Prince of
Sekhem,” is “the witness of that which is raised,” or the witness to the
Resurrection (ch. 17). Those who are present in this scene are “Osiris,
Isis, Nephthys, and Horus the reconstituter of his Father,” and these,
as we maintain, are the prototypes or original characters of Lazarus,
Mary, Martha and Jesus in the scene of the Resurrection in Bethany.
Osiris rose from the dead to enter the little golden ark of the moon
on the third day. He was buried on the 17th of Hathor and the
resurrection in the lunar ark was on the 19th; that is, on the third day.
In the solar mythos he rises again the day after the burial, and as the
grain he rose again in forty days. But there is another mystery of
Osiris, an account of which is given by Plutarch, probably from the
writings of Manetho. This he calls the “Mourning of the Goddess,”
which began on the 17th of Hathor, the day on which Osiris was
betrayed at the last supper and mutilated by the adversary Sut. He
says the “Mourning of the Goddess” lasted
[850]
“four” days altogether, beginning on the 17th, the day of betrayal and
death of Osiris; and on the 19th it was proclaimed by the priests that
THE GROUP IN BETHANY
851
the lost Osiris was found because he had then entered into the ark of
the moon where the light was once more safe. He tells us that amongst
other melancholy things that were acted on this occasion, as the
mourning of the cow for Osiris the bull of Amenta, a gilded cow, the
golden Hathor, was covered with a black linen pall and exposed to
public view for four days at the mourning of the goddess, or of the cow,
for the lost Osiris. Here, then, are the four days of mourning which are
repeated in the one Gospel that chronicles the raising of Lazarus from
the dead after “he had been in the tomb four days already.” Plutarch
calls this mystery the mourning of the goddess. But there are always
two mourners for Osiris, Isis and Nephthys, who are his sisters.
The process of reducing the fairy-godmother’s coach-and-six to the
status of a one-horse cab may be seen in the Gospel according to Luke
in getting rid of Osiris. The pair of sisters, Martha and Mary, appear
in this Gospel, but without their brother Lazarus, and also without
the resurrection. After all that has now been done towards identifying
Bethany with the house in Annu and the nest of the two sisters, the
two sisters with Isis and Nephthys, and the Christ with Horus, it
cannot be considered far-fetched if we look upon Lazarus as a form of
the Osiris that was dead and buried and raised to life again. As to the
name, the Egyptian name of the Greek Osiris is Hesar, or Asar. And
when we take into consideration that some of the matter came from its
Egyptian source through the Aramaic and Arabic languages (witness
the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy) there is little difficulty, if any, in
supposing that the Al (article the) has been adopted through the
medium of the Arabic, or derived from the Hebrew prenominal stem
ל א, to emphasize a thing, as in the Osiris, which passed into the
article Al for “the” in Arabic, and was prefixed to the name of Osiris as
Al-Asar, which, with the Greek “s” for suffix becomes L-azarus. The
connecting link whereby Al-Asar was turned into Lazarus, the Osiris,
was in all likelihood made in the Aramaic language, which had its
root-relations with the Egyptian. Hieroglyphic papyri are among its
monumental remains, as well as the inscription of Carpentras.
Various representations of the raising of Lazarus in the Roman
catacombs show the mummy risen and standing in the doorway of the
tomb. The figure of the supposed Jesus Christ is in front of the
sarcophagus calling upon Lazarus to come forth, whilst touching the
mummy with a want or rod which he holds in his hand. In the chapter
“by which the tomb is opened to the soul and to the shade of the
person that he may come forth to day and have the mastery of his
feet” (Rit., ch. 92) the deliverer Horus says, “I am Horus who lifteth up
his father with his staff.” This mode of raising Osiris by Horus with
his staff or rod completes the picture of the resurrection of Lazarus.
The rod that is waved by Jesus at the raising of Lazarus is the
symbolic sceptre in the hand of Horus when he raises the Osiris. In
every instance Lazarus is a mummy made after the Egyptian fashion.
It is a bandaged body that had been soaked in salt and pitch which
was at times so hot that it charred the bones
[851]
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ANCIENT EGYPT
(Budge, “The Mummy,” pp. 153-155). Seventy days was the proper
length of time required for embalming the dead body in making an
Egyptian mummy. Lazarus when portrayed in the Roman catacombs comes forth from the tomb as an eviscerated, embalmed and
bandaged mummy, warranted to have been made in Egypt. Now,
according to the Gospel narrative, there was no time for this, as
Lazarus had only been dead four days. The mummy, anyway,
is non-historical; and it is the typical mummy called the Osiris,
Asar in Egyptian, El-Asar in Aramaic, and Lazarus with the
Greek terminal in the Gospel assigned to John. The coffin of Osiris,
constellated in the Greater Bear, was known to the Arab astronomers
as the Bier of Lazarus. Asar, or the Osiris, is the mummy in the
coffin, and with the coffin of Osiris identified as the bier of Lazarus
it follows perforce that the mummy-Osiris in the coffin is
one with Lazarus on the bier.
The gnostic pictures in the
Roman catacombs suffice to prove the identity. They show that
Lazarus was buried as a mummy, and that he rose again in mummyform. Thus the dead Osiris of Egypt, El-Asar or Lazarus, as portrayed in Rome, and the story of the death, burial, and resurrection
are the same wheresoever and howsoever that story may be told. The
bier of Lazarus, followed by the mourning sisters, was only known
by that name because it had been constellated in the starry vault of
the heavens ages earlier than the present era as the coffin of Osiris.
It is satisfactory to find that both forms of Asar are preserved in
the Gospels, one of which was the god Osiris, the other the Osiris as
manes. Lazarus in his resurrection represents the God; Lazarus
the poor man of the parable represents the manes in Amenta who is
designated the Osiris.
The story of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus related in the
Gospel of Luke (ch. xvi. 19) is told at length in the second tale of
Khamuas as Egyptian. This contains a scene from the Judgment in
Amenta which is represented in the vignettes to the Ritual. Setme
and his son Si-Osiris enter the Tuat as manes. They pass through
the seven halls (Rit., ch. 144) into the great judgment hall. They
see the figure of Osiris seated on his throne of gold, “Anup the
great god being on his left hand, the great god Taht upon his right,
the balance being set in the midst before them.” Anup gives the
word, Taht writes it down. The rich man and the poor man enter
to be judged. “And behold Setme saw a great man clothed in
garment of byssus (fine white linen), he being near to the place in
which Osiris was,” in which position he is great exceedingly. SiOsiris says, “My father Setme, dost thou not see this great man who
is clothed in garment of byssus, he being near to the place in which
Osiris is? That poor man whom thou sawest, he being carried out
from Memphis, there not being a man walking after him, he being
wrapped in a mat, this is he.” This refers to the funerals of the rich
man and the poor man on earth previously described (lines 15-21).
When the rich man was judged it was found that his evil deeds were
more numerous than his good deeds; therefore they outweighed them
in the scales of justice; consequently he was cast to the devourer
of souls who did not allow him to breathe again for ever. “It was
commanded before Osiris to cause to be thrown the burial outfit
THE FOUNDERS OF THE KINGDOM
853
of that rich man whom thou sawest, he being carried out from Memphis, the praise that was made of him being great, unto this poor
man named, and that they should take him (the poor man) amongst
the noble spirits as a man of God that follows Osiris-Sekari (the god
in his resurrection), he being near to the place in which Osiris is”
(Griffith, second tale of Khamuas, pp. 149, 158). Thus the parable of
the rich man and Lazarus found in a folk-tale of the first century
written in Demotic is provably Egyptian and demonstrably ancient
by application of the comparative process to the language. Neither
the name of Lazarus nor Osiris appears in the tale of Khamuas,
which is good evidence that the story was not derived from the
Gospels. Thus we identify Lazarus with Osiris the mummy-god
and Lazarus the poor man with Alasar as the Osiris.
THE FOUNDERS OF THE KINGDOM
The elder Horus represented the wisdom of the Mother as her
word or logos in the earth of Seb until he reached the age of twelve
years. Then, according to the drama of the Osirian mysteries, he
passed into Amenta, where he rose again as Horus in spirit. It was
in this, the earth of eternity, that he made his second advent when he
came again to establish the kingdom of the father. In his death and
resurrection or transformation from the body-soul to an eternal spirit,
he had found the father in heaven, who is Ra the holy spirit. And at
his second advent Horus came to tell the joyful tidings to the manes
and to found the kingdom in Amenta for the father who is now
Osiris-Ra instead of the mummy-Osiris. Thus the kingdom of the
Christ was founded for the father by Horus and his followers at his
second coming to be represented in the mysteries of Amenta and the
drama of Egyptian eschatology as the second advent which was in
the spirit, now set forth by Horus the immortal Son of God.
The universe of Ptah, the supreme architect, had been divided into
the three regions of Amenta, earth and heaven. In these there
were three successive forms of a god the father—Seb was the god of
earth, as father of physical sustenance; Osiris was the father in Amenta,
where the dead were reconstituted and made to live again, and Ra the
holy spirit was the father of spirits in heaven. Thus the typical
seven loaves of plenty were called the bread of Seb on earth, the
bread of Osiris in Amenta, and the bread of Ra in heaven. Human
Horus was the heir of Seb, his foster-father, in the life on earth.
At his resurrection in Amenta, Horus, as half-human, half-divine, is
the heir of Osiris. In the resurrection from Amenta when he had
become pure spirit he was Horus divinized as heir of Ra, the father
on high. And on behalf of this, the newly-found father, now the
supreme god, he returns to found the kingdom as the teacher of
the mysteries in Amenta, and the saviour of the manes from the
second death. Seb the father on earth was of the earth earthy.
Osiris in Amenta was a god in matter; hence his mummy-form.
The nature of these had been expounded in the lesser mysteries. Ra
as father in heaven, or Huhi the eternal, is the god in spirit now, and
Horus manifesting in the spirit comes to elucidate the greater
mysteries to the twelve who, as the gnosis shows, had previously
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been the teachers of the lesser mysteries, and who now become
the twelve with Horus, or Jesus, on the mountain in the phase of
eschatology. Horus as the son of Ra was the representative of
power superior to that of Osiris in Amenta, the god in matter, who
was annually overthrown by Sut in physical phenomena, and in
this character he came to the assistance of Osiris in the sepulchre.
Hence he disperses the darkness from his face. He reconstitutes the
body that Sut dismembered. He raises the arm that was paralyzed in
death. He lifts the mummy to its feet. He is the link which
unites matter with spirit, or Osiris with Ra.
He brings the
gnosis or word of life from the father in heaven to the previous
ruling powers which include the earlier father on earth and in the
nether-earth, and therefore to the men on earth and manes
in Amenta. Thus, at his second coming, Horus had found his
father, the father in heaven. He rises as a spirit in Amenta from
the dead to tell them of this father. He repeats his father’s words to
those who are “deprived of breath” (Rit., ch. 38). These are the
words of salvation that “bring about the resurrection and the glory
to the manes” (ch. 1) by means of the gnosis.
We have now to follow Horus in his second Advent. He passed
from the life on earth into the dark of death as Horus-Anaref,
the sightless Horus. Death was imaged as the putting out of sight
by Sut the power of darkness, the manes being the blind. At
his second coming Horus is the giver of sight, or the beatific vision,
to the blind. He shines into the tombs of those who are slumbering
darkly in their cells and wakes them from the trance of death. At
this advent of Horus “the people which sat in darkness saw a
great light, and to them which sat in the region and shadow
of death did light spring up” (Matt. iv. 16; also the Gospel of
Nicodemus ii. 2). But this, according to the Ritual and the “Pistis
Sophia,” was in Amenta, the hidden earth, where the blind are made to
see; a mouth is given to the dumb; the lame are enabled to walk;
and the dead to rise again. Amenta, as he comes, is all in motion
with dead matter turning into spirit-life; and when he rises from the
sepulchre we are in the midst of those mysteries which have been
rendered as Christian miracles in the Gospels.
“I am come,” says Horus, “as a sahu in the spiritual body, glorious
and well equipped; and that is given to me which lives on amidst all
overthrow.” This, we repeat, is the second coming of Horus at the
new birth in spirit which followed the old death in matter, or on earth,
when Har-Ur, the child of Isis, was reborn, and this time begotten as
the anointed and beloved son of God the father. This time he who
was the Word is the doer, the word-made-truth. He comes to found
the kingdom for the father in the earth of eternity or in spiritworld, not in Judea or Palestine. The work of Horus in his resurrection from the dead was to fulfil the kingdom of heaven on this
foundation of the nether-earth, as foothold for eternity, the kingdom
of heaven being spirit-world made palpable in the mythical representation of the mysteries.
All along the line of descent the astronomy supplied the mould of
the eschatology. There was a heaven astronomically raised upon the
two pillars of Sut and Horus south and north. Also on the two
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horizons of Harmachis, the double Horus. The Heptanomis had its
sevenfold foundation. The heaven built upon a fourfold basis was
the heaven founded on the four cardinal points, in the solstices and
equinoxes. Lastly, the zodiac with twelve signs is the figure of
heaven raised upon a foundation that is twelvefold. The mythical
rulers corresponded numerically to the signs: the two, the four, the
seven, the nine, and finally the twelve, at first as astronomical types,
the gnostic Æons, and afterwards as spirits or gods in the phase of
eschatology. Thus there are two categories in phenomenal manifestation, one being astronomical, the other spiritual or eschatological,
as shown and explained in “Pistis Sophia.” It now became the
mission of Horus to make known the newly-found father in heaven to
those who had not so much as heard of the holy spirit. It was
the work of the anointed and beloved son to found the kingdom of
heaven for the father in the father’s name. He became the teacher of
the coming kingdom, previously proclaimed by Anup the herald and
forerunner who was his John the Baptist crying in the wilderness of
the underworld.
When Horus in his second advent comes to establish the kingdom
for his father, who is Ra in the solar mythos and the holy spirit
in the eschatology, he has Two Witnesses who testify that he is
verily the son of God the father in heaven and the true light of the
world. These are the two Osirian Johns, Anup and Aan, or rather
they are the originals of the two Johns in the canonical Gospels.
They are portrayed as the two witnesses to the bird-headed Horus in
his resurrection at the vernal equinox. The planisphere of Denderah
shows the jackal of Anup and the cynocephalus of Taht-Aan figured
back to back upon the equinoctial colure as the two principal witnesses for Horus, who are thus portrayed as supporters of the Eye
which was renewed in Annu once every year (Planisphere in A Book of
the Beginnings). As Egyptian, these two witnesses for Horus are
Anup the baptizer and Aan the divine scribe who is the penman of
the gods in the Ritual. We have seen them acting as the two
witnesses for Horus in the Osirian judgment hall (see p. 705). They
are also described as the two magi, or magicians.
Where John begins his preaching in the canonical Gospel Anup is
the typical opener of the way (Rit., ch. 26). He is the forerunner
who announces the day of reckoning; he makes the call to judgment;
he judges the world, just as John is the judge of the world who calls
men and baptizes them to repentance (Rit., 31, Birch). Anup is
also the educator preparatory to the advent of Horus who comes after
him although he was before him in status and authority (Rit., ch. 44).
Anup abode darkling in the desert of Amenta until the day of his
manifestation in the heliacal rising of Sothis, the morning star of the
Egyptian year, which heralded the birth of Horus. John dwelt in the
wilderness till the day of his theophany or “shewing unto Israel”
(Luke i. 80). The solar god was superior to either the lunar or
stellar deity. As star-god, Anup had been the precursor. The
moon-god, Aan, was the witness for Horus by night as reflector of the
hidden sun. This, however, was but the mythical mould for the
eschatology, in which Horus was no longer merely the “little sun” of
winter, but the son of Ra in spirit and the typical demonstrator of
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immortality to the manes in Amenta and to men upon the earth.
The two Johns might be distinguished from each other in the
Gospels; John the Baptist from John the Divine, by means of Anup,
the baptizer, and Aan, the writer of the record in the Ritual. The
baptism does not actually take place in the Gospel according to
John. In this there is only a description of the scene. And, although one
John is present as the baptizer, there is no attempt made to distinguish
John the baptizer from John the scribe. But John the speaker is
John the scribe, and therefore to be discriminated from John the
Baptist, who is not named as the baptist by John the writer. John
the scribe is, of course, the writer, and he likewise bears witness as
well as John the Baptist. For it is he who says, “and we beheld his
glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father.” This was
manifested in the baptism when the heavens were opened and Jesus
“saw the spirit of God descending as a dove and coming upon him;
and lo! a voice out of the heavens saying, “This is my beloved Son
in whom I am well pleased” (Matt. iii. 16, 17). Consequently John
the scribe was present at the baptism to have beheld the glory of the
only begotten of the Father which was manifested in the one
particular way at one particular time, but he was not John the
Baptist. Anup, like child-Horus, was born of the motherhood but
not of the fatherhood, whereas the Horus of thirty years was the only
begotten Son of God the Father. So, in the Gospel, John the Baptist
is among the greatest of those who were born of woman (minus the
fatherhood, in accordance with the primitive status), whereas Jesus,
the Christ, was begotten of God. The first Horus was born, the
second Horus is begotten. Such is the status of John and Jesus. Hence
the saying “among them that are born of women there hath not
arisen a greater than John the Baptist; yet he that is least in the
kingdom of heaven is greater than he” (Matt. xi. 11). The characters
all through are to be determined and differentiated by the doctrines.
John the Baptist does not enter the kingdom of heaven, which he
helps to found as preparer of the way. So Anup is the guide of ways
in the wilderness of the under-world; he makes straight the path for
the future life, but he does not enter the coming kingdom of the Son
of God when the double earth is unified in the future heaven. His
place is with the dead awaiting their resurrection. He watches, he
bends over the mummy; he embraces and supports it with tenderest
solicitude; he is master in the mountain of rebirth for heaven, but he
himself remains in the lower earth. His rôle and his domain come to
an end where those of the divine heir of Osiris as the son of Ra
begin. When Horus rises again to take possession of his kingdom,
Anup is portrayed as crouching in the tomb. He gives Horus his
shoulder. He raises him up, but does not pass from out Amenta.
Therefore the least in the kingdom of Horus, which is a spiritual
kingdom, is greater than the highest in the kingdom of Anup or
John the Baptist, who was only the precursor and proclaimer of the
Christ or the Horus of the resurrection.
A glimpse of the cyclical and non-human nature of the witness,
John, may be inadvertently given in the words attributed to Jesus,
“If I will that he tarry till I come, what (is that) to thee?” “Yet,
Jesus said not unto him that he should not die.” The ending here
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predicated was not in the category of human phenomena, and may
therefore be claimed as pertaining to the astronomical mythos, which
was at the root of all the mysteries of Amenta. Once a month the
lord of light, as Horus, was reborn in the moon, and Aan = John was
his attendant. “Let him stand unchanged for a month” is equivalent
to his tarrying until Horus came again.
It is said of John, “this is the disciple which beareth witness of
these things, and wrote these things.” Aan, in Egyptian, is the scribe
by name, and he was the divine scribe as Taht-Aan, the lunar deity
and registrar of time. Aan was the witness to Horus; his writings
are the Ritual, and “we know that his witness is true.” It was TahtAan = John who had power to confer the Ma-Kheru on the solar god
himself, that is, the gift of making truth by means of the word,
because he told time for the sun and was his true witness in the
moon. “Let him stand unchanged for a month,” may be read by the
legend which tells us that Ra created Taht-Aan to be his lamp by
night and his witness in heaven, and whether we reckon nightly or
monthly, Taht-Aan = John was the witness until Horus came again
at the end of the period. Anup the baptizer and Aan the saluter
are the first two witnesses for the risen Horus as his helpers in
establishing the kingdom for the father in heaven. Next there is a
group of four, as followers of Horus and founders of his fold (Rit.,
ch. 97). These four were born brothers with Har-Ur, the elder Horus,
in the company of the seven powers that were from the beginning in
relation to certain phenomena of external nature. They are now called
upon to become foundational pillars of support to the new heaven in
the eschatology. In this phase the group commences as four and
terminates as twelve, who reap the harvest in the fields of Amenta,
for Horus-Khuti, the master of joy and lord of the spirits, who
are called the glorified elect, the heirs to the kingdom of heaven,
which, as Osirian always was but which as Christian is always coming.
The change from Horus the mortal to Horus divinized in spirit, as
the son of Ra, is indicated as occurring at the time when the four
brethren became the four children of Horus, and, as it is said, when
his name became that of Horus upon his column (Rit., ch. 112,
Renouf).
Now Horus on his column, pedestal, or monolith is
equivalent to the Egypto-gnostic Jesus with the disciples on the
mount. In this position the four brethren are his four arms of
support, the same as the four brothers with Jesus in the mount. In
their several characters they are the servants of Horus, whether as
four supports, four fishers, four shepherds, or other forms of the
primordial four who are characterized as the foremost of the final twelve.
The issuing forth from Amenta on the day of the resurrection is
described in the opening chapter of the Ritual as the coming to the
divine powers attached to Osiris. These divine powers are Amsta,
Hapi, Tuamutef and Kabhsenuf, the four children of Horus who
stand upon the papyrus-symbol of the earth amidst the waters of the
Nun, otherwise rendered on the mount or on the monolith. The
pyramid text of Teta (270) refers to this raising of the dead. It is
said that Horus hath given his children power that they may raise
thee up. These children are the four who were foremost of the seven
(or later, twelve) great spirits in Annu. This did not mean that four
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human followers of Horus on earth had the power to raise the dead
on earth. But so misrendered has the teaching been in the Gospels
when Jesus bids his disciples to go forth on earth and raise the dead
(Matt. x. 8). In the chapter of the baptism (Rit., ch. 97) the
speaker “propitiates” “those four glorified ones who follow after
the master of all things.” They are the four supporters on whom
Horus relies in founding the kingdom for his father. Speaking,
as it may be, of his sheep-fold in the character of the good shepherd,
Horus says, “Now let my fold be fitted for me, as one victorious
against all adversaries who would not that right should be done to
me—I (who) am the only one, just and true,” or faithful and true
(Rit., ch. 97). These four, then, are founders of the fold that is to be
fitted for the good shepherd with the crook upon his shoulder as AmsuHorus in the resurrection scenes. They are the four brethren who,
in the later phase, are called his children. Hence Horus is described
as coming to light in his own children and in his name of Horus
(Rit. ch. 112) on his column = on the mount. To found the fold
was to establish the kingdom. That was founded on the four supporters at the four corners of the mount.
There is a rebirth of Horus at his second coming. It is the same
with his train of companion-powers, the four of the seven who had
been with him as his brothers in the astronomical mythos. These in
the rebirth become his four children, who, at the same time, are
designated by him “brothers of this my own body” (Rit., ch. 112).
Whether called the brothers or the children of Horus they are the same
four in the two characters. These four reappear in the Gospels, also
in both characters. The four as brothers are the fishers, Peter,
Andrew, James and John. The other four, called James, Joseph,
Simon and Judas, are represented as brothers of his own flesh and
blood. At their birth Amsta, Hapi, Tuamutef and Kabhsenuf were
the brothers of Horus Anaref. These had no father. In the rebirth
Horus has himself attained the status of a father or begetter in spirit.
Hence it is said, “As for Amsta, Hapi, Tuamutef and Kabhsenuf, Horus
is their father and Isis is their mother,” in this new setting of the four.
In the Gospel Cleopas and Mary take the place of Horus and Isis
as the actual father and mother in the flesh. When Horus rises in
Amenta he is the active and powerful one of Annu filled with might
divine as the son whom the father hath begotten (Rit., ch. 115),
whereas in his previous advent he was the child of the Virgin Mother
as the puny impubescent impotent weakling who was born but not
begotten. Horus now beseeches Ra to grant that he may have his four
brothers or his children for his assistants. He says, “Give me my
brother in the region of Pa; give me my brother in Nekhen—my
brother for my tender affection,” or give me my brothers to
love. Only two brethren of the four are mentioned here, and
for these Horus asks of his father that his brothers may sit with
him in his kingdom as eternal judges, as benefactors of the
world, as extinguishers of the Typhonian plagues and as the
bringers of peace (Rit., ch. 112).
The prayer of Horus is followed by the Osiris deceased, who identifies the two brethren
as Amsta and Hapi, and he exclaims: “Rise up, gods, who are
in the lower heaven, rise up for the Osiris, make him (also) to
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become a great god.” The deceased continues: “I know the mystery
of Nekhen.” The mystery is that which the mother of Horus (who
was also the mother of the two brethren) had done for him when she
said “let him live” (ch. 113), in which we have the mother making
her request on behalf of her son.
This new foundation for the kingdom of heaven was made on the
night of erecting the flagstaffs (or pillars) of Horus, and of establishing
him as heir to his father’s property. The pillars were erected when
Horus said to the four who followed him, “Let the flagstaffs be erected
there,” on the night of one of the ten great mysteries of Amenta
(Rit., ch. 18). The two brothers first given to Horus in Pa were Amsta
and Hapi (ch. 112). The other two that were given to Horus in
Nekhen are Tuamutef and Kabhsenuf, the adorer of the mother and
the refresher of his brethren. Thus, the kingdom announced by
Anup the baptizer, and founded by Horus for his father, was
established upon the four supports. These in one shape were four
brothers, only one of whom, Amsta, wears the human form. They
are adopted by him as his Shus, his servants or fishers, two by two—
two in Pa and two in Nekhen, the region where Sebek was the great
fisher in the marshes. The four are given by Ra to Horus as his
children who are brothers of his own body, to be with him in token
of everlasting renewal and of peace on earth, and these are the four
pillars, flagstaffs, fishermen, or supports, on which the kingdom of
heaven was to be founded in Amenta, as a spirit-world by Horus,
who was the fulfiller for the father at his second coming.
We repeat that Horus had four brothers with him in the mythos who
had been with him from the beginning, just as Jesus has his four
brothers on earth; and when Horus makes his change and rises in
Amenta from the dead the four brothers become his children as the
four supports of the future kingdom (Rit., ch. 112), the “four glorified
ones” who are foremost among the seven great spirits of Annu (Rit.,
ch. 97). They who were the brothers of Horus when he was the
son of Seb, or, as we say, on the earth, are, after his resurrection,
called his children. Coincident with this change the risen Lord, in
the Gospels, addresses his disciples as his children when he has risen
from the tomb. He comes to the seven fishers in the boat, and says
to them, “Children, have ye aught to eat?” (John xxi. 5). This being
after the resurrection. It is the only time that the disciples are
addressed as the children of Jesus, and the conditions are identical
with those in the Ritual where the brethren of Horus in the earth-life
become his children in the spirit-life beyond the tomb. Thus, to
recapitulate, Horus of the resurrection at his second coming was
accompanied by Anup, the baptizer, Aan, the divine scribe, as lunar
god, and the four brethren Amsta, Hapi, Tuamutef and Kabhsenuf,
one of which four was Amsta, the only brother in the human form.
These four are the divine powers who were with Horus in the mount
when he rose from the dead and came forth to day. They can be
paralleled thus with characters in the canonical Gospels as: Horus,
or the Egypto-gnostic Jesus = Jesus; Anup, the baptizer= John the
Baptist; John, the divine scribe = Aan, the divine scribe; Amsta, the
one human brother of the Lord = James, the one human brother of
Jesus;
Hapi = Andrew;
Tuamutef = John;
Kabhsenuf = Peter.
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Simon Peter is the one who perceives and proclaims that Jesus
is the Christ. “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God”
(Matt. xvi. 16). The name of Peter is here identified with the Greek
Petra for a rock. But if the other characters, Jesus = Horus; John
= Aan; James = Amsta, are Egyptian, it follows that Peter is Egyptian
also. The word Petra or Petar is Egyptian; it signifies to see, look
at, to perceive, to show forth, to reveal. Moreover, Petar is the name
or title of an Egyptian god who had been already divinized as the one
who discovered and made known the only begotten son of that living
god, who was Atum-Ankhu, the father of Iusa, the Egyptian Jesus
(Budge, Vocabulary, p. 122). Probably the deified perceiver, or Petar,
was the hawk-sighted Kabhsenuf, the refresher of his brethren, one
of the four children of Horus, who had previously been his brothers
from the beginning in the astronomical mythology.
Horus in one character is the Fisher. “Know ye what I know,” saith
the manes, “the name of him who fishes there, the great prince who
sits at the east of the sky?” (Naville, Rit., 153 B). “I know the name of
the table on which he lays them (the fishes); it is the table of
The Four as Fishers for Horus.
Horus.” In this character the Osiris saith, “I shine like Horus. I
govern the land, and I go down to the land in the two great boats. I
have come as a fisher” (Naville, ch. 153 A). Horus or Jesus in the
Roman catacombs also comes as the fisher who at the same time is
portrayed as the bringer of the grapes for the Uaka festival (Lundy,
Monumental Christianity, fig. 54). The four as fishers for Horus are
depicted as the fishers in the Ritual. They are spoken of as having
been amongst the earlier elemental powers called “the ancestors of
Ra.” Otherwise stated, they are four of the seven souls of Ra.
In fact, they are Hapi, Tuamutef, Kabhsenuf and Amsta, now to be
identified as the four children who became the four fishers for Horus,
and who are one with the four fishers for Jesus in the canonical
Gospels. A vignette to the Book of the Dead (ch. 153 A, Pl. 55, Naville
and Renouf) shows the four fishers as four men pulling the drag-net
through the water in the act of fishing for Horus. These are they who
are described as fishers for the great prince who sits at the east of the
sky (ch. 153 B), and who is said to mark them as his own property.
Horus was the prototypal fish, the same type of sacrifice that is still
eaten in the penitential meal to-day as it was in On when SebekHorus was the Saviour as the fish that brought the food and water of
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the inundation. Horus as the fish preceded Horus as the fisher when
Sebek, the crocodile-headed god, was the typical great fisher. It
is said of the first two fishers, “These are the two hands of Horus
which had become fishes,” that is, as types of Horus the fisher,
according to the mystery of Nekhen (Rit., ch. 113). The followers of
Horus as fishers (ch. 153 A) are called “the fishermen who are fishing.”
Thus the total group who were the twelve as reapers in the harvest-field
of Amenta are also the twelve as the fishers. Hence the twelve
fishermen of the later legend. The two first fishes caught for Horus
are then eaten at the sacramental meal. As it is said (Rit., ch. 153 A),
the fishes are laid on the table of Horus. They had been brought to
him when the festival was founded by Ra; “they were brought to
Horus and displayed before his face at the feast of the 15th day of
the month, when the fishes were produced” (Rit., ch. 113).
In the Ritual (ch. 97) there is a scene of the Seven Fishers at the
boat with Horus, which can be paralleled in the Gospel of John.
The scene in John’s Gospel is post-resurrectional, therefore not in the
earth of time. As it is said, “This is now the third time that Jesus
was manifested to the disciples after that he was risen from the dead”
(John xxi. 14). And that which follows the resurrection is in spiritworld. Therefore Jesus and the seven disciples in this scene are
spirits like the seven with Horus, which were the seven great
spirits of Annu, four of whom became the first fishers for Horus
(Rit., chs. 97 and 153 A). this view is corroborated by the appearance of Peter, “for he was naked,” and a naked man in Signlanguage means a spirit. Thus the seven with Jesus at the boat
are a form of the seven great spirits with Horus at the bark in Annu,
four of whom—the foremost four—become the founders of the fold
for the Good Shepherd, in the same chapter of the Ritual but
in another character. In this character Horus had shepherded the
flocks of Ra, his heavenly father, in the deserts of Amenta (Book
of Hades). In this character of the shepherd Horus of the resurrection rose up from the sepulchre with a crook instead of the later
lamb or kid upon his shoulder. And it is in this character Horus
chooses the first four of the seven great spirits of Annu to become
the founders of his fold as well as his first four fishers. In the Gospel
Jesus likewise assumes the character of the so-called good shepherd.
Hence the injunctions to Peter, and the sayings, “Feed my lambs,”
“Tend my sheep,” “Feed my sheep” (John xxi. 16-18).
According to Matthew, the four brethren first chosen by Jesus are
Simon, Andrew, James and John. It is noteworthy, however, that
in the Johannine account the first four followers of Jesus are Andrew
and Peter, Phillip and Nathaniel. Moreover, Nathaniel was one of
those who were under the fig-tree aforetime with Jesus. There is no
Zebedee, father of the fishers, and there is no fishing in the opening
chapter of John; that is, as supposed in the life on earth. The fishers
only appear in this Gospel after the resurrection of Jesus, which takes
us, as does the baptism, into the spirit-world of the mythos, where
the seven fishers answer to the other group of the seven in the boat
with Horus.
The mysteries of Amenta show us Anup calling the world to
judgment in the character of the judge. He is the precursor of
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Horus in the wilderness, and the announcer of the kingdom that
follows at the second coming. Under the title of Ap-Uat he is the
opener or guide of roads who “makes ready the way of the Lord,”
and levels the path in the equinox. In the Gospels the proclamation
that the kingdom of heaven is at hand was first made by John the
baptizer and precursor of Jesus. The cry of the coming kingdom
immediately at hand is then taken up by Jesus after the baptism in
which he has become the adult of thirty years, and the co-type of
Horus the anointed son of God the second born who was Horus in
the spirit. Also in the Gospel of Nicodemus, John the Baptist is the
teacher in the earth of eternity. The baptism and transformation of
Jesus into the spirit symbolled by the dove was in the earth of
eternity. The descent of the holy spirit, as God the father, in
authentication of the anointed son was enacted in the earth of
eternity, not in the world of time. According to the genuine mythos
or gnosis which is Egyptian, and we have no other criterion, the
double advent of Horus depended on his birth and rebirth, in the
two earths; the birth of a human soul in matter and the rebirth of
an immortal soul in Amenta. The second coming of Horus is the
mystery of that second birth in which the human soul is divinized
from its two halves as an enduring spirit or eternal entity. This
transformation follows death and burial, and therefore can only take
place in spirit-world. When it does take place the second advent is
accomplished as represented both in the Ritual and the Egyptognostic writings. But it is otherwise in the canonical Gospels,
because in making out a history solely human the concocters were
limited to the human life in the earth of time. For example, in the
Gospel according to John, when Jesus is about to leave the disciples
and is telling them of the second advent, he says, “I have yet many
things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now” (ch. xvi. 12).
These things that are to come, in some indefinite future (which
has not come yet), relate to the nature of God the father. They
constitute the mysteries which are to be unfolded in the future at the
second coming of the son in the person of the judge, the avenger, the
harvester, the spirit-of-truth, the comforter, the fulfiller who fulfils
both in the Ritual and in the gnostic Gospel. Jesus had hitherto
taught in parables. Now he says the hour cometh when he will tell
them “plainly of the father” and speak to them no more in parables
(xvi. 25). This is at the second coming which had been already fulfilled
in the Gospel of “Pistis Sophia” and in the Ritual of the Resurrection.
The Egypto-gnostic Jesus who, as the “little Iao” of “Pistis Sophia,”
only spoke in parables, and was not empowered to expound the profounder mysteries of the fatherhood, is a form of the child-Horus
whom Plutarch called the “inarticulate discourse.” At his second
coming he unfolded the spiritual mysteries. The chief of these was
the mystery of mysteries, namely, the mystery of “the father in the
likeness of a dove” (B. 1, 1). Nevertheless, the second advent, and
the mysteries pertaining thereto (according to the genuine gnosis), do
leak out in the canonical Gospels, however carefully disguised or
surreptitiously inserted.
The gnostic manifestation of the first
mystery, namely, that of the father as a dove, is made to the GospelJesus at the time of his baptism, in the life on earth. The second
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863
coming is also illustrated in the scene of transfiguration on the mount.
Likewise in the resurrection when the risen Christ has transformed
into a spirit, Luke notwithstanding, with power to impart the holy
spirit and share it with his followers (John xx. 22). Each of these
manifestations, with others belonging to the second advent of Horus
in Amenta, are assigned to Jesus in the human life in fulfilment of
the history. In the Ritual the father, as the holy spirit, calls from
heaven to Horus (or Osiris) the anointed son, “Come thou to me.”
This is Ra the bird-headed, whose likeness is then assumed by Horus
the beloved son. In the Gospel, the Father, as the holy spirit,
descended on Jesus in the form of a dove, and in that guise “abode
upon him.” The exigency of a human history with only a single
advent did not permit of the death and resurrection of Jesus occurring
at the time when the youth of twelve years made his change into the
adult of thirty years. Yet the baptism and ascension of Jesus from
the water into the opening heavens are identical with the Egyptognostic resurrection. The Horus or Jesus of twelve years is the mortal
on this side of death. The Horus or Jesus of thirty years is a spirit
on the other side, in spirit-world. The baptism of Jesus represents
the resurrection of Horus from the water. Hence Jesus in his baptism
becomes a spirit. He is led up from the water “of the spirit,” “in
the spirit,” or as a spirit into which he had made his transformation.
When Sut put out the eye of Horus, the darkness represented death.
But, in the Gospel, death, or the transformation, is only represented
at this point by the baptism. If it had been actualized the history
must have ended there and then, which was not in accordance with
the Gospel schema. Still, the “history” notwithstanding, Jesus does
become a spirit in this scene of transformation which belongs to the
mysteries of Amenta. Bird-headed beings are spirits, not historical
Jews. Only as a spirit could the foster-child of Seb, or Joseph,
transform into the son of Ra the holy spirit; and only in the earth of
eternity could the change occur in which the Virgin’s child became
the father’s son by being born again of Nut the heavenly mother, one
of whose names was Meri. According to the gnosis, the following
are a few of the events that occur after the resurrection: the transformation of Jesus, the Virgin’s child, into the beloved son of the
father with the spirit of God descending on him as a dove; the
contests with Satan in the spirit; the adoption of the four disciples
in the mount; Jesus with the seven on board the bark; the founding
of the fold; the miracles of healing; giving sight to the blind; raising
the dead; casting out the devils; causing evil spirits to enter the
swine; walking upon the water; founding the kingdom of heaven on
the four fishers, or disciples, and conferring the holy spirit, after death,
upon the twelve.
The Gospel doctrine of the Holy Spirit is true enough, according
to the Egyptian wisdom, when properly applied, but only as
Egyptian is it to be understood. Certain manifestations of the holy
spirit in the Gospels are strictly in keeping with the mysteries of the
Ritual or Book of the Dead. In the words of John “the holy spirit
was not given” at the time when Jesus “was not yet glorified” (ch.
vii. 39). The glorifying was by descent of the holy spirit; the spirit
that was given to Horus and by him to the disciples in the mystery
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ANCIENT EGYPT
of Tattu upon the resurrection-day when the God in heaven called
to the mummy-Osiris in Amenta “Come thou to me,” when the two
halves of the soul were blended in the eternal oneness, and human
Horus, the soul in matter, was transformed to rise again as Horus
divinized. This was in the resurrection after death, in baptismal
regeneration, or in the Christifying of the Osiris-mummy.
The Ritual shows us how the apostles were established on the same
foundation, beginning with the two brothers, who were followed by the
four brethren, the cycle being completed by the twelve in the fields of
divine harvest. The four as brothers of Horus had been figures in
the astronomy.
The four as his children are figures in the
eschatology; the four who are “foremost among the spirits of Annu”
with the aid of whom “the fold” was constructed for him, as for one
victorious against all “adversaries” (Rit., ch. 97). The two fours
are thus equated in the Gospels. The four brothers of Horus = the
four brothers of Jesus. Amsta, Hapi, Tuamutef, Kabhsenuf = James,
Joseph, Simon, Judas. The same four in the character of his children
with Horus = the four brethren, Simon, Andrews, James and John,
whom Jesus addresses as his children (John xxxi. 5). At a later
stage the followers in the train of Horus are the twelve who are his
harvesters in the cornfields of Amenta. “Pistis Sophia” in agreement with the “Book of Hades” shows us how the twelve as followers
of Horus were constituted a company that consisted at first of seven
to which the five were added in forming the group of twelve. The
disciples of Jesus likewise become the twelve who reap the harvest.
“Then saith he unto his disciples, the harvest truly is plenteous but the
labourers are few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that he
send forth labourers into his harvest. And he called unto him his
twelve disciples”—who were previously but four (Matt. iv. 18, 21)—
“and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to
heal all manner of disease and all manner of sickness.” At this
point the names of the twelve are for the first time given (Matt. x.
1-5). The same words are uttered in Luke concerning the harvest
and its reapers, but now the number of disciples appointed and sent
forth for the ingathering of harvest-home is seventy or seventy-andtwo—one for each subdivision of the decans in the twelve signs, both
the seventy and seventy-two being identifiable astronomical numbers.
The twelve with Horus in Amenta are they who labour at the
harvest and collect the corn (otherwise the souls) for Horus. When
the harvest is ready “the bearers of sickles reap the grain in their
fields. Ra says to them, on earth as bearers of sickles in the fields of
Amenta,” “Take your sickles, reap your grain” (“Book of Hades,”
Records, vol. 10, 119). Here the labourers who reap the harvest in
Amenta are the object of propitiatory offerings and of adoration on
the earth, as the twelve disciples of Horus, son of Ra, the heavenly
father. And this was ages before the story was told of the twelve
fictitious harvesters in Galilee. Moreover, the Harvest is identical
with the Last Judgment. Atum-Ra says at the same time, “Guard
the enemies, punish the wicked. Let them not escape from your
hands. Watch over the executions, according to the orders you have
received from the Founder, who has marked you out to strike”—as
executioners. So is it in the Gospels, where the harvest is one
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865
with the judgment at the end of the world, or consummation of
the age.
As before said, when the narratives in the canonical scriptures had
taken the place of the primitive drama, certain mysteries of Amenta
were made portable in parables, and thenceforth the Gospels repeat
the same things in parables and logoi that were represented dramatically in the mysteries.
The harvest-home and judgment-day,
described in the Gospels, which are to occur at some indefinite time
in the future on this earth, belong to the Osirian mysteries of Amenta.
The great judgment at the last day supplies an illustration of the
mystery extant in parable. A first and second death occur, likewise
a first and second resurrection in the mysteries of Amenta. The first
is the death which takes place on earth, and the apparition of the
manes in the nether-world constitutes the first resurrection from the
dead. Then follows the great judgment of the righteous and the
wicked. Those found guilty are doomed to suffer the second death.
There is for them no other resurrection. Those who escape from the
dread tribunal uncondemned pass on to the second resurrection as
the spirits of the just made perfect, called the glorified. These are
the inheritors of eternal life.
Jesus says, “This is the will
of my Father, that every one that beholdeth the Son, and believeth
on him, should have eternal life, that I should raise him up
at the last day,” “and I will raise him up at the last day” (John vi.
40, 44).
The pitiful pretence of an historical Jew being the
raiser up of the dead at the last day is a miserable mockery of
the actual transaction in the mysteries of Amenta with Horus as the
resurrection and the life. In these, the deceased is shown as Ani in
the hall of judgment. He has emerged from the earth-life and risen in
Amenta, but not yet from it. He must be judged in the Maat or
great hall before he rises from the dead as one of the just made
perfect for the life to come. If he passes, sound of heart and pure in
spirit, he will enter the presence of the great god. Ani succeeds and
passes pure. His resurrection from the dead and from Amenta, the
world of the dead, is assured. Horus the Son of God, the Intercessor,
the paraclete, now takes him by the hand as the raiser of the dead
to life and introducer of the risen Ani to his father. In one scene
the hair of Ani is black. The next shows him kneeling in presence
of Osiris with his hair turned white. He has passed in purity. He
has been raised by Horus at the “last day” or at the end of the
cycle when the dead were judged, once every year or other period at
the great gathering of “all souls.” This took place “in presence of
the gods,” as one of the ten great mysteries described in the Ritual
(ch. 18) when “the glorious ones were rightly judged, and joy went
its round in Thinis”; when judgment was passed upon those who
were to be annihilated “on the highway of the damned”; when “the
evil dead were cast out,” and the goats divided from the sheep. As it is
said—“when the associates of Sut arrive, and take the form of goats,
they are slain in presence of the gods so long as their blood
runneth down, and this is done according to the judgment of those
gods who are in Tattu,” the place of establishing the soul for ever,
from its two halves, as the double Horus, the divine avenger of the
suffering Osiris, who at his second coming was the revealer of
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ANCIENT EGYPT
eternal justice. This culminating event, which was the subject of
so much Old Testament prophecy that is reproduced in the New,
is here fulfilled, according to the knowledge of the wise men “which
knew the times” and who also “knew the law and the judgment”
(Esther i. 13). The advent might be on the millennial scale of
Horus in the house of a thousand years according to the cycle, but
there was a Coming once a year and an ending of the cycle, the age,
or the world as it was called by the Christians every year. And it is
on this one-year period derived from the solar mythos that the second
advent and the immediate ending of the world were ignorantly based.
The end of the world or the cycle of the annual sun came once a
year in the Egyptian mythos. The second advent of Horus, like the
first, was also annual. He came in the terror of his glory as avenger of
his father; as the great judge, as lord of the harvest with the glorious
ones for reapers who were the typical twelve in number, and as the
fulfiller of the heavenly kingdom in which he reigned according to
the mythos for one year, whether as Horus the shoot, the fish, the
fisherman, or the harvester. The gnostic Christ was likewise known
to be the ruler for one year.
At the festival of Ha-ka-er-a, or “Come thou to me,” the blessed
ones were welcomed by Horus to the kingdom which had been
prepared from the foundation of the world, or the earlier cycle of
time, in the Kamite astro-mythology, if anywhere on earth, but
which preparation and founding were repeated every year as a mode
of the mysteries in Amenta. These mysteries were extant, and
periodically performed some thousands of years ago. So ancient is
some of the imagery in the Maat, that when Ani passes pure, the
crown of glory placed upon his head to be worn in heaven is a
form of the top-knot, which is still assumed at puberty by the Kaffirs
and other African black races. But this great judgment, in common
with the other events that were fulfilled at the second advent, still
remains the subject of prophecy in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.
In the Gospel according to Matthew the last judgment is to
take place at the veritable ending of the world (Matt. xxv. 31-46).
“When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the angels
with him, then shall he sit on the throne of his glory, and before him
shall be gathered all the nations, and he shall separate them, as
the shepherd parteth the sheep from the goats; and he shall set
the sheep on the right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall
the King say unto them on his right hand, Come ye blessed of my
Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of
the world: for I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was
thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger and ye took me in:
naked and ye clothed me, sick and ye visited me. Then shall he say
unto them on the left hand, Depart from me ye cursed, into the
eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels.” In the
original, the devil and his angels are Sut and his Sami, and the goats
on the left hand are also the representatives of Sut. Nevertheless,
the two judgments of the Ritual and in the gospel are fundamentally
the same; there was but one origin and one meaning for both. The
great judgment in the hall of righteousness which remained the subject
of Hebrew prophecy gone dateless was an annual occurrence in the
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867
Kamite mysteries. In this the Osiris pleads: “I have done that
which man prescribeth and that which pleaseth the gods. I have
propitiated the god with that which he loveth. I have given bread to
the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothes to the naked, a boat to the
shipwrecked. I have made oblations to the gods and funeral offerings
to the departed: deliver me therefore; protect me therefore: and
report not against me in presence of the great God. I am one whose
mouth is pure, and whose hands are pure, to whom it is said by those
who look upon him, Come, come in peace” (Ritual, ch. 125, Renouf).
The great judgment was periodic in Amenta at the end of a cycle,
which might be a year, a generation, or, as it was also exoterically
figured, at the end of the world. The uninitiated, who had but an
outside view, mistook it for the actual and immediate ending of the
world. “The harvest is the end of the world” (Matt. xiii. 39). “The end
of all things is at hand” (1 Peter iv. 7). “It is the last hour” (1 John
ii. 18). “The kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. iii. 2; iv. 17;
x. 7). This was according to the literalization of the Illiterate. Paul
is the only writer or speaker in the New Testament who knew better.
He warns his followers amongst the Thessalonians against believing
this teaching of the uninitiated.
He says: “We beseech you,
brethren, touching the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our
gathering together unto him; to the end that ye be not quickly shaken
from your mind, nor yet be troubled, either by spirit or by word, or
by Epistle as from us (i.e., by a forged ‘Epistle of Paul’), as that the
day of the Lord is (now) present: let no man beguile you in any wise”
(2 Thess. ii. 1, 3). He was the only one who knew the esoteric
nature of this end of the æon, and the coming of Christ or Horus, the
anointed, the Messiah in Israel, or the Jesus who was Iu the Su of Atum,
whom he calls the second Adam = Atum, and who had been to him
the pre-Christian Christ, the spiritual rock, from which the people drank
the water of life whilst in the wilderness. When Tertullian denounced
Paul as “The Apostle of the Heretics” he meant the Egypto-gnostics.
Paul was epopt and perfect amongst those who knew that the historic
version was a lying delusion. This we hold to have been aimed at in
his “Second Epistle to the Thessalonians,” when he says of his
opponents, the fleshifiers of the Christ, “for this cause God sendeth
them a working of error, that they should believe a lie.”
The mould of the mythos being solar, once every year the heir of
Ra assumed his sovereignty as Horus of the kingly countenance,
whose rule was for one year. Every year Osiris, the great green
one in vegetation, died to rise again in the fruits of the earth. Every
year in the solar drama he was buried in Amenta to make the road
that united the two earths in one, for establishing the coming kingdom on earth as it was in heaven. Every year the prophecy was
fulfilled in natural phenomena, and every year the coming kingdom
came. Every year was celebrated this foundation of the world that
was laid and relaid by the buried body of the god; this union of the
double earth in Tanen, at the equinox, this resurrection of the soul
that supplied the bread of life, this completion of the cycle by the sun
that rose and travelled on the eternal round as representative of the
author of eternity. A glimpse of this annual coming is permitted when
the Christ is made to say, “Ye shall not have gone through the cities of
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Israel till the son of man be come” (Matt. x. 23). “There be some
of them that stand here which shall in no wise taste of death till they
see the son of man coming in his kingdom” (Matt. xvi. 28). Such
prophecy is in accordance with the true mythos, but for ever fatal to
the falsely-founded history.
THE LAST SUPPER: THE CRUCIFIXION AND THE
RESURRECTION.
As the legend is related by Plutarch, the death of Osiris was preceded by his betrayal, and the betrayal, which was the work of his
twin brother, Sut, took place in the banqueting-room. Sut, having
framed a curious ark just the size of Osiris’s body, brought it to
a certain banquet. As this was on the last night of Osiris’s life or
reign, and on the last night of the year, the meal may fairly be called
the Last Supper (Of Isis and Osiris, 13). Now this mystery of the
Last Supper can be traced in the Ritual as the first of a series acted
in Amenta. Sut and his associates had renewed the assault upon
Osiris on the night of laying the evening provisions upon the altar,
called the night of the battle in which the powers of drought and
darkness were defeated and extinguished. The coffin of Osiris is the
earth of Amenta. Dawn upon the coffin was the resurrection; and
this provender is imaged as “the dawn upon the coffin of Osiris,”
which shows that the evening meal, or eucharist, was eaten in
celebration of the resurrection and the transubstantiation of the
body into spirit. The night of laying provisions on the altar is
mentioned twice: once when Osiris is in the coffin, provided by
Sut and his associates, the Sebau, who entrapped him in the ark.
The second mention follows the erection of the Tat-sign which
denoted the resurrection; hence the “dawn upon the coffin of Osiris,”
which is equivalent to the resurrection morn. The resurrection on
the third day originated in lunar phenomena. Twenty-eight days
was the length of a moon, and this is no doubt the source of the
statement that Osiris was in his eight-and-twentieth year at the time
of his betrayal. The moon is invisible during two nights, which
completed the luni-solar month of thirty days.
The assault upon Osiris the Good Being made by Sut was periodically renewed. This has just occurred when the first of the ten
mysteries is enacted (Rit., ch. 18). The scene is in the house of
Annu (Heliopolis), where Osiris lay buried and Horus was reborn.
The triumph of Osiris over his adversaries is in the resurrection
following the dramatized death of the inviolate god. This is called
the night of the battle, when there befell the defeat of the Sebau and
the extinction of the adversaries of Osiris. It is also described as
“the night of provisioning the altar,” otherwise stated “the night of
the Last Supper,” when “the calf of the sacrificial herd” was eaten at
“the mortuary meal,” which represented the body and blood of
Osiris, “the bull of eternity” (Rit., ch. 1).
The second mystery of the ten is solemnized upon the night when
the Tat-pillar was set up in Tattu, or when Osiris in his resurrection
THE CRUCIFIXION AND THE RESURRECTION
869
was raised up again as a type of the eternal. The third mystery is
on the night of the things that were laid upon the altar in Sekhem
which imaged the altar and the offering in one. This was the circle
of Horus in the dark, the sufferer made blind by Sut, the victim in
the Tat who was the prototype of Jesus on the cross, and representative of the god in matter.
As we have seen, a great Memphian festival, answering to the
Christmas-tide of later times, was periodically solemnized at the
temple of Medinet Habu in the last decade of the month Choiak
(from December 20th to 30th), which lasted for ten days. One day,
the 26th of the month = December 24th, was kept as the feast of
Sekari, the god who rose again from the mummy, and this was the
principal feast-day of the ten. In all likelihood the whole ten
mysteries were performed during the ten days of the festival that was
celebrated at Memphis (Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, Eng. tr.,
pp. 277-9). Prominent among these was the feast of the erection or
re-erection of the Tat-pillar of stability, which was an image of PtahSekari, the coffined one who rose again, and who in the later religion
becomes Osiris-Sekari, “Lord of resurrections, whose birth is from
the house of death.” The resurrection of Osiris, which, like other
doctrines, was based on the realities of nature, would be appropriately
celebrated in the winter solstice. At that time the powers of darkness,
drought, decay and death, now personalized in Sut, were dominant, as
was shown in the lessening water and the waning light of the enfeebled sun. The tat-type of stability was temporarily overthrown,
by the adversary of Osiris and his co-conspirators, the Sebau. Here
begins the great drama of the Osirian mysteries, in ten acts, which is
outlined in the Ritual. The putting of Osiris to death—so far as a
god could suffer—was followed by the funeral, and the burial by the
resurrection. The opening chapters of the Ritual, called the Coming
forth to day, are said to contain “the words which bring about the
resurrection and the glory,” also the words to be recited on the day of
burial that confer the power of coming forth from the death on earth,
and of entering into the new life of the manes in Amenta. Horus is
described as covering Tesh-Tesh (a title of the mutilated Osiris); as
opening the life-fountains of the god whose heart is motionless, and
as closing the entrance to the hidden things in Rusta (ch. 1, 18-20).
The two divine sisters are present as mourners over their brother in
the tomb. They are called the mourners who weep for Osiris in
Rekhet (line 15, 16). The mysteries thus commence with the burial
of Osiris in Amenta—as a mummy. The mummy-making that was
first applied to preserving the bones and body of the human being
had been afterwards applied to the god or sun of life in matter,
imaged as the typical mummy of Osiris that was buried to await the
resurrection in and afterwards from Amenta. In both phases it is
Osiris, as the god in matter, who is represented in the nether-earth.
And the rearising of the human soul and its blending with the
eternal spirit were dramatically rendered in the mysteries as the
resurrection of the Osiris or the soul of mortal Horus rearisen in
Amenta as the son of Ra.
In the Gospels, Judas the brother of Jesus in one character, elsewhere called the familiar friend, is the betrayer on the night of the last
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supper, and Judas “the son of perdition” answers to Sut the twinbrother of Osiris (in the later Egyptian mythos), who was his betrayer
at the last supper called the messiu or evening meal that was eaten
on the last night of the Old Year, or the reign of Osiris. The twelve
disciples only are present at the last supper in the Gospels. In the
betrayal of Osiris by Sut the number present in the banqueting-hall
is seventy-two. These were officers who had been appointed by
Osiris. The number shows they represent the seventy-two duodecans as rulers in the planisphere, but the twelve have been chosen
to sit at supper with the doomed victim in the Gospels instead of the
seventy-two who were also appointed by the Lord, and are dimly
apparent in their astronomical guise, as the seventy-two (or seventy)
who are present in the scene where Jesus triumphs over Satan as he
falls like lightning from his place in heaven (Luke x. 17).
One of the most striking of the various episodes in the Gospel
narrative is that scene at the Last Supper in which Jesus washes the
feet of the disciples, compared with “the washing” that is performed
by the Great One in the Ritual. In the Gospel Judas is waiting to
betray his master. Jesus says to the betrayer, “That thou doest, do
quickly.” Now it should be borne in mind that the Ritual, as it comes
to us, consists to a large extent of allusions to the matter that was
made out more fully in performing the drama of the mysteries.
Washing the feet was one of the mysteries pertaining to the funeral
of Osiris, when the feet of the disciples or followers of Horus were
washed. It was one of the funeral ceremonies. As it is said in the
Ritual (ch. 172), “Thou washest thy feet in silver basins made by the
skilful artificer Ptah-Sekari.”
This was preparatory to the
funeral feast, as is shown by the context (ch. 172). In the Gospel
(John xiii.) the funeral feast becomes the “Last Supper” when Jesus
“riseth from supper and layeth aside his garments; and he took
a towel and girded himself. Then he poureth water into a basin and
began to wash the disciples’ feet.” And here is a passage of three
lines, called the chapter by which the person is not devoured by
the serpent in Amenta. “O Shu, here is Tattu, and conversely,
under the hair of Hathor. They scent Osiris. Here is the one who
is to devour me. They wait apart. The serpent Seksek passeth
over me. Here are wormwood bruised and reeds. Osiris is he who
prayeth that he may be buried. The eyes of the great one are bent
down, and he doeth for thee the work of washing, marking out what
is conformable to law and balancing the issues” (Rit., ch. 35, Renouf).
This brief excerpt contains the situation and character of the great
one, who with eyes bent down in his humility does “the work of
washing,” and explains why this ceremony has to be performed by
him in person. The “washer” is he who is in presence of the one
who waits to betray him, devour him, or compass his destruction,
and he beseeches a speedy burial. Osiris in this scene is a form of
the typical “lowly one” who had been in type as such for ages previously.
But the most arresting fact of all is hidden in the
words “O Shu, here is Tattu (the place of re-establishing) under the
wig (or hair) of Hathor,” the goddess of dawn, one of whose names is
Meri. And it is here, beneath the hair of Hathor-Meri, they perfume
and anoint Osiris for his burial. This when written out as “history”
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871
contains the anointing and perfuming of the feet of Jesus by Mary,
who wiped them with her hair (Luke vii. 38). The two bathings of
the feet are separate items in the Gospels, whereas both occur
in this one short chapter of the Ritual in which Osiris is anointed for
his burial, and at the same time he does for others the work of washing and purifying, “marking out what is conformable to law and
balancing the issues.”
Osiris also is “he who prayeth that he may be buried,” and Jesus,
“knowing that his hour has come,” says to Judas the betrayer, “That
thou doest, do quickly.” And later, “Friend, do that for which thou
art come” (Matt. xxvi. 50), which is the equivalent of Osiris praying
that he may be buried. The wormwood bruised, or crushed, and the
reeds are utilized in the crucifixion for furnishing the bitter drink,
which was offered to the victim with a sponge placed upon a reed.
A reed was also put in his right hand. These things were portrayed
in the drama of Amenta. They were acted in the mysteries and explained by the mystery-teachers. The Osiris passes through the
same scenes and makes continual allusion to the sufferings of Osiris
(or Horus) his great forerunner, and finally the drama was staged on
earth and reproduced as history in the Gospels. That is the one final
and sufficient explanation of episode after episode belonging to the
mysteries of Amenta reproduced according to the canon as veritable
Gospel history.
The scene in Gethsemane may be compared with the scene in Pa,
where Horus suffered his agony and bloody sweat when wounded by
the black boar Sut. Pa was an ancient name of Sesennu, a locality
in the lunar mythos, which was also called Khemen, later Smen, a
word signifying number eight, applied to the enclosure of the eight;
and the suffering of the wounded Horus in Am-Smen is, as now
suggested, the Osirian original of Jesus bleeding in Gethsemane. Pa
is not called “a garden,” but it is described as a “place of repose”
for Horus that was given to him by his father for his place of rest.
Ra says, “I have given Pa to Horus as the place of his repose. Let
him prosper.” The story is told in “the chapter of knowing the
powers of Pa” (Rit., ch. 112). The question is asked, “Know ye why
Pa hath been given to Horus?” The answer is, It was Ra who
gave it to him in amends of the blindness in his eye, in consequence
of what Ra said to Horus: “Let me kook at what is happening in
thine eye to-day,” and he looked at it. Ra said to Horus, “Pray,
look at that black swine.” He looked, and a grievous mishap befell
his eye. Horus said to Ra, “Lo, mine eye is as though Sut had made
a wound in it.” And wrath devoured his heart. Then Ra said to the
gods, “Let him be laid upon his bed that he may recover.” “It was
Sut who had taken the form of a black swine, and he wrought the
wound which was made in the eye of Horus. And Ra said to the
gods, “The swine is an abomination to Horus; may he get well.”
And the swine became an abomination to Horus. (Rit., ch. 112,
Renouf.) It was in Pa that Horus was keeping his watch for Ra by
night when the grievous mishap befell his eye. He was watching by
command of Ra, who had said to Horus, “Keep your eye on the
black pig.” The eye was lunar, with which Horus kept the watch for
Ra; and Sut in the form of the black boar of darkness pierced
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the eye of Horus with his tusk, the moon being the eye of Horus as
the watcher by night for Ra. Sut on whom he kept the watch
transformed himself into a black boar, and wounded Horus in the eye
whilst he was watching on behalf of Ra as his nocturnal eye in the
darkness.
Jesus in the Gospels keeps the watch by night in
Gethsemane, as is shown by the disciples failing to keep it. The
watch by Horus was necessitated on account of Sut, who is the
typical betrayer in the Kamite mythos, as Judas is in the Christian
version. Sut knew the place in the original rendering and sought
out Horus there when he caused the agony and bloody sweat by
mutilating him. “Now Judas also which betrayed him knew the
place” (to which Jesus “often restored” with his disciples) and
there the betrayer seeks him out to betray him, not in the form
of a black boar that put out the eye which was the light of the
world, but as a dark-hearted person befitting the supposed historical
nature of the narrative. The scene of the drowsy watchers in
Gethsemane is apparently derived from a scene in the mysteries.
There is a reference in the Ritual (ch. 89) to “those undrowsy
watchers who keep watch in Annu.” In the Gospels Jesus asks
his followers to watch with him in the garden, and on both occasions
he found them sleeping. The moral is pointed by the “undrowsy
watchers in Annu” being turned into the drowsy watchers who
slept in Gethsemane, and who failed to keep the watch. “I know
the powers in Pa,” says the speaker; “they are Horus, Amsta and
Hapi.” That is, Horus and the “two brothers,” who correspond to
the two brethren James and John, the sons of Zebedee, in the Gospels,
and who are here the two with Jesus in the garden. The conversation betwixt Horus the son and Ra the father, the watching
by night, and the bloody sweat are followed by the glorification of
Horus. Ra gives back the eye, the sight of which was restored
in the new moon. In the Gospel (John xvii.) this glorification of
Horus as the son of the father—Horus, who had previously been the
son of the mother, Har-si-Hesi only—is anticipated and described as
about to occur when the torment and the trial are over. “These
things spake Jesus; and lifting up his eyes to heaven, he said,
Father, the hour is come; glorify thy son, that thy son may glorify
thee; even as thou gavest him authority over all flesh”—that was in
the character of Horus the mortal—“Now, O Father, glorify me with
thine own self”—in the character of Horus divinized or glorified.
The temporary triumph of the treacherous Sut (the power of darkness)
is acknowledged by Jesus when Judas betrays him with a kiss and
he succumbs. “This,” he says to his captors, “this is your hour,
and the power of darkness (Sut). And they seized him” (Luke xxii.
53, 54). But when the associates of Sut saw the double-crown of
Horus on his forehead they fell to the ground upon their faces
(Rit., ch. 134, 11). And when the associates of Judas = Sut the
betrayer, came to take “Jesus of Nazareth,” and he said “I am!”
(not I am he!) “They went backward and fell to the ground.”
Scene for scene, they are the same. One of the titles of Horus is
“Lord of the Crown” (ch. 141, 9), which possibly led to Jesus being
crowned “King of the Jews.” In this scene the title of “Jesus of
Nazareth” has the same effect on the associates of Judas that the
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873
assuming of his crown by Horus had upon the associates of Sut
when it caused them to fall on their faces before him. The crowning
of Jesus on the cross is as Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.
The crown of triumph is assigned to Horus by his father Atum, and
all the adversaries of the Good Being fall on their faces at the sight
of it (Rit., ch. 19).
The scene in the garden of Gethsemane, and the cry to the father
from the sufferer on the cross are very pitiful—the essence of the
tragedy working most subtly on account of the supplication that was
all in vain, which makes all the more profound appeal to human
sympathy. In the Egyptian representation there is no such cruel
desertion by the father of his suffering son in his agony of great darkness. It is far otherwise in the Ritual. When Horus suffers his
agony in the darkness, after being pierced and made blind by Sut,
Ra, the father-God, is with him to comfort and sustain him. He
tenderly examines the bleeding wound and soothes him in his great
affliction. Ra charges his angels concerning Horus, or bids the gods
to look to his safety and see to his welfare. Ra said to the gods,
“Let him be laid upon his couch that he may recover.” He also
gives the eye of Horus fire to protect him, and consume the black
boar of darkness. There is no sightless sufferer groping helplessly
with empty hands outstretched and left unclasped in the dark void
of death; no vain and unavailing cry of the forsaken son that stuns
the brain and scars the human conscience, and is of itself sufficient to
empty the Christian heaven of all fatherhood, and ought to be
sufficient to empty earth of all faith in such a father.
According to the synoptists, Jesus did not carry his own cross to
the place of execution; it was borne thither by one Simon of Cyrene.
This is denied in the Gospel attributed to John, who declares that
Jesus went out from the Judgment Hall “bearing the cross for
himself.” John is generally truest to the Egyptian original, and here
the figure of Jesus bearing his own cross is equivalent to the figure of
Ptah-Sekari or Osiris-Tat. The Tat of a fourfold foundation was
the prototype of the cross, and the victim extended or standing with
arms akimbo is equivalent to the victim stretched upon the cross of
suffering. Sekari was the sufferer in, or on, or as the Tat, and Osiris
was raised in, or as the Tat where Jesus carries the cross. The
scourging of Jesus previous to his being crucified has never been
explained. According to the record he was not condemned to both
modes of punishment. It is probably a detail derived from the
mysteries of Osiris-Sekari, Jesus scourged at the pillar being an
image of Osiris or Ptah as the suffering Sekari in or on the Tat, the
pillar with arms, that was superseded by the cross in the Christian
iconography. In the Egyptian drama of the passion Horus was
blinded by Sut and his accomplices, in suffering his change from
being the human Horus to becoming Horus in spirit. The incident
that is almost omitted from the Gospel account was preserved in the
mysteries. It is a common subject in the passion-play and in
religious pictures for the Christ to be blindfolded and brutally
buffeted by the soldiers before he is crucified. This occurs in the
Townley mysteries and in the Coventry mysteries, and is referred to
in the “Legends of the holy rood” (pp. 178, 179, E. E. Text Society).
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Christ blindfolded to be made a mockery of suggests a likeness of
Horus without sight in An-arar-ef, the region of the blind. In one
representation Horus has a bandage over his eyes, and the grotesque
image of the humorous Bes appears to introduce a comic element
into the tragedy of the blind sufferer. The blinding, buffeting and
scourging, practised in the mysteries, as in passing through fire and
water, was evidently continued and extended in the sports and
pastimes. Still, the blindfolding of the victim for the buffeting is
implied in the Gospel according to Matthew. “Then did they spit in
his face and buffet him; and some smote him with the palms of their
hands, saying, Prophesy unto us, thou Christ: who is he that struck
thee?” (Matt. xxvi. 68).
It was a common popular tradition that the Christ was of a red
complexion, like the child or calf which represented the little red sun
of winter and also the Virgin’s infant in its more mystical character.
Moreover, there is a tradition of a crucified child-Christ who was
coloured red like “the calf in the paintings.” Among “the portraits
of God the son” Didron cites one in a manuscript of the fourteenth
century which answers to the red Christ as a co-type of the red calf.
The manuscript “contains a miniature of the priest Eleazar sacrificing
a red cow,” and “opposite to this miniature is one of Christ on the
cross.” “Jesus is entirely naked, and the colour of his skin is red;
he is human, poor and ugly.” The red Christ, equivalent to the red
Horus, is here identified with the red cow and therefore with the red
calf of the Ritual, which was a symbol of the little red sufferer, the
“afflicted one” in the winter solstice. In some of the mystery-plays
the Christ wore a close-fitting, flesh-coloured garment, through which
the nails were driven into the wood of the cross. The resurrection
robe was always red. Satan wants to know who this man in the “red
coat” may be. And when Horus rises again, in the character of the
avenger, it is as the “red god.” The manes thus addresses him,
“O fearsome one, who art over the two earths; Red God, who
orderest the block of execution!” (Rit., ch. 17, Renouf).
Jesus
likewise appears to have been represented as the red God, or the
god in red. For “they stripped him and put on him a scarlet
robe” (Matt. xxvii. 28).
A papyrus reed was the throne and
sceptre of Horus, the sign of his sovereignty. In the pictures he is supported by the reed, and one of his titles is “Horus on his papyrus”
(Rit., ch. 112, Renouf). The reed also has been turned to historic
account in making a mockery-king of Jesus. “And they plaited a
crown of thorns and put it upon his head, and a reed in his right
hand; and they kneeled down before him, and mocked him, saying,
Hail, king of the Jews! and they spat upon him, and took the reed
and smote him on the head” (Matt. xxvii. 27, 29, 30). Jesus is
posed in another form of the Osirian sacrificial victim. One meaning
of the word “sekari” is the silent. This is the typical victim that opened
not his mouth, as the inarticulate Horus. So, having been assigned
the character of the silent one before Pilate, “Jesus no more answered
anything.”
It is possible that the crown of thorns placed upon the head of the
crucified was derived from the thorn-bush of Unbu, the solar god,
especially if we take it in connection with the papyrus reed, another
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875
type of Horus, “And they plaited a crown of thorns and put it
upon his head, and a reed in his right hand” (Matt. xxvii. 29). The
god and the branch, which is a bush of flowering thorn, are identified,
the one with the other, under the name of Unbu, and the god in the
Unbu-thorn is equivalent to the crucified in the crown of thorn.
Moreover, Unbu, the branch, was a title of the Egyptian Jesus. “I
am Unbu of An-arar-ef, the flower in the abode of occultation” or
eclipse (Rit., ch. 71). And if Horus was not figured on a cross with
the Unbu-thorn upon his head, as the crown was afterwards made
out, he is the sacrificial victim in the place of utter darkness or sightlessness. Horus in An-arar-ef is Horus, Lord of Sekhem—Horus in
the dark. He is also “Unbu,” that is, Horus in the thorn-bush. Thus
the Unbu-thorn was typical of the god, who was personified as
Unbu by name, and who is Unbu as Horus the sufferer in the dark,
equivalent to and the prototype of the victim on the cross as wearer
of the crown of thorn. It is also possible that Pilate’s question,
“What is truth?” may now be answered for the first time. Jesus
says, “I come into the world that I should bear witness unto the
truth. Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice” (John
xviii. 37, 38). And, in his second character, Horus the king, Horus
the anointed and beloved son, not only came into the world as
testifier to the truth, he was also given the title of Har-Makheru, the
name of the Word that was made truth by the doing of it in his death
and resurrection, and the demonstration of a life hereafter at his
second coming.
The typical darkness at the time of the crucifixion might be
nocturnal, or annual, according to the mythos. When Atum, god of
the evening son, is setting from the land of life, at the point of
equinox, with his hands drooping, which is equivalent to the victim
who was extended on the cross, a great darkness overspread the earth,
and Nut, the mother, is said to be obscured as she receives the dying
deity in her supporting arms. The figure is the same, whether the
scene be on the cross or at the crossing (Rit., ch. 15). Still more
express is the darkness spoken of in the Egyptian faith, or gospel
(ch. 17), which contains the kernel of the credo. Here we learn that
“the darkness is of Sekari.” Sekari is a title of Osiris as the mutilated
and dismembered god. It is explained that this darkness of Sekari,
the god who is pierced, wounded, cut in pieces, is caused by Sut “the
slayer,” who has “terrified by prostrating.” Sekari is Osiris in the
sekru, or coffin; and to be in the coffin, or in the cruciform figure of the
mummy, has the same meaning (with a change of type) as if the divine
victim might be embodied in the Tat, or extended on the cross. The
darkness of Sekari was in the coffin; the darkness of Jesus is on the cross.
It is observable that the sixth division of the Tuat in Amenta, corresponding to the sixth hour of the night, has no representation of Ra
the solar god, and in his absence naturally there was darkness. But
the three hours’ darkness that was over all the earth at the time of
the crucifixion has no witness in the world to its being an historic
event. In the mythical representation it was natural enough. As the
night began at six o’clock, the sixth hour according to that reckoning
was midnight, and from twelve to three there was dense darkness.
This was then applied to the dying sufferer in the eschatology, and
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there was darkness for three hours in the mysteries. The great
darkness is described in the Ritual as the shutting up of Seb and Nut,
or heaven and earth, and the Resurrection as the rending asunder. The
manes saith, “I am Osiris, who shut up his father and his mother when
(or whilst) the great slaughter took place. I am Horus, the eldest of
Ra, as he riseth. I am Anup on the day of rending asunder” (Rit.,
ch. 69, Renouf).
In the coming forth from the cavern the risen one exclaims, “Let
the two doors of earth be opened to me: let the bolts of Seb open to
me: and let the first mansion be opened to me, that he may
behold me who hath kept guard over me, and let him enclose me
who hath wound his arms about me, and hath fastened his arms
around me in the earth” (ch. 68). The one who had held him
fast with his arms about him in the earth, and who was the keeper of
the dead on earth, is Seb; hence it is he who kept guard over the body
that was buried in the earth. The part of Seb is also assigned to
Joseph of Arimathea, who took the body when it was embalmed with
a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes, and made a mummy of, and
laid it in his own tomb. The tomb of Seb, the earth (John xix. 38-41),
becomes the garden of Joseph; the “bolts of Seb” are replaced by the
great stone that Joseph rolls against the door of the sepulchre (Matt.
xxvii. 60), and he who kept guard over the mummy-Osiris in the
sepulchre is represented by the guard who watches over the tomb in
the history. “Pilate said unto them, Ye have a guard, go your way,
make it sure as ye can. So they went and made the sepulchre sure,
sealing the stone, the guard being with them” (Matt. xxvii. 66).
The guard that is set to keep watch and ward at the sepulchre may
be compared with the “wardens of the passages,” who are “attendant
upon Osiris” in the tomb. These are the powers that safeguard the
body or mummy of Osiris and keep off the forces of his adversaries.
The Passages are those which lead to the outlet of Rusta in the resurrection (Rit., ch. 17). In the chapter by which one arriveth at Rusta,
the deceased has risen again. He says, “I am he who is born in
Rusta. Glory is given to me by those who are in their mummied
forms in Pa, at the sanctuary of Osiris, whom the guards receive at
Rusta when they conduct (the) Osiris through the demesnes of Osiris.”
In this scene of the resurrection the deceased comes forth triumphant
as Osiris risen (ch. 117). The dead are there in mummied forms, and
these are received by the guards as they rise and reach the place of
egress in Rusta. In the Gospel according to Matthew a watch was
set upon the sepulchre; the guard is spoken of as “the centurion, and
they that were with him watching Jesus” (Matt. xxvii. 54). These
were watching when the graves were opened and the dead “in
their mummied forms” were raised to come forth from the tomb.
As nothing occurs in the Gospel except by miracle, the graves are
opened by an earthquake for the passages to be made, which passages
were very ancient in the geography and pictures of the Egyptian
nether-world. The guards, or soldiers, in attendance on Jesus are four
in number. At least it is said that they took the garments of the
dead body and “made four parts, to every soldier a part” (John xix.
23). These guards correspond to the four guardians of the coffin
Hapi, Tuamutef, Kabhsenuf and Amsu, who watch by the sarcophagus
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877
of the dead Osiris, one at each of its four corners. In a German
passion-play the four are invincible knights named Dietrich, Hildebrant, Isengrim, and Laurein.
At the time of the death upon the cross there is a resurrection
which is not the resurrection. This is a general rising of the Manes,
not the resurrection of the Christ. “And behold the veil of the
sanctuary was rent in twain from the top to the bottom: and the
rocks were rent and the tombs were opened: and many bodies of the
saints that had fallen asleep were raised.” In short, a general rising
must have preceded the personal resurrection of Jesus on the third
day after the crucifixion. It is added, however, that the manes who
had already risen came forth “out of the tombs after his resurrection”
and “appeared unto many.” Therefore they stayed in the open
tombs a day or two longer in order that he might have the precedence. When Horus rises as a spirit, the Lord of Mehurit, the risen
one, is represented by a hawk, and he says, “I am the hawk in
the tabernacle, and I pierce through the veil,” or, in another lection,
through that which is upon the veil. To pierce through the veil of
the sanctuary is equivalent to rending the veil of the temple. The
hawk is a type of the sun-god in the solar mythos and of the spirit in
the eschatology. Thus the veil was pierced or rent asunder when
Horus rose in the shape of a divine hawk to become the Lord of
heaven. In the Gospel (Matt. xxvii. 51), at the moment when Jesus
“yielded up his spirit,” it is said, “and behold the veil of the sanctuary
was rent in twain from top to bottom: and the earth did quake: and
the rocks were rent: and the tombs were opened,” and, in brief, this
was what the Ritual terms “the day of rending asunder,” when the
rocks of the Tser hill were opened, which is the day of resurrection in
the mysteries of Amenta. The death of Osiris was followed by the
saturnalia of Sut, in a reign of misrule and lawlessness which lasted
during the five black days or dies non of the Egyptian calendar when
everything was turned topsy-turvy—a saturnalia, which to all
appearance, is yet celebrated in Upper Egypt (Frazer, Golden Bough,
I, p. 231). The mutilation of Osiris in his coffin, the stripping of his
corpse and tearing it asunder by Sut, who scattered it piecemeal, is
represented by the stripping of the dead body of Jesus whilst it still
hung upon the cross, and parting the garments amongst the spoilers.
In John’s account the crucifixion takes place at the time of the
Passover, and the victim of sacrifice in human form is substituted for,
and identified with, the Paschal lamb. But, as this version further
shows, the death assigned is in keeping with that of the non-human
victim. Not a bone of the sufferer was to be broken. This is
supposed to be in fulfilment of prophecy. It is said by the Psalmist
(xxxiv. 20), “He keepeth all his bones; not one of them is broken.”
But this was in strict accordance with the law of totemic tabu. No
matter what the type, from bear to lamb, no bone of the sacrificial
victim was ever permitted to be broken; and the only change was in
the substitution of the human type for the animal, which had been
made already when human Horus became the type of sacrifice instead
of the calf or lamb. When the Australian natives sacrificed their
little bear, not a bone of it was ever broken; when the Iroquois
sacrificed the white dog, not a bone was broken. This was a common
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custom, on account of the resurrection, as conceived by the primitive
races, and the same is applied to Osiris. Every bone of the skeleton
was to remain intact as a basis for the future building. After the
murder and mutilation of Osiris in Sekhem, the judgment is executed
on the conspirators in the mystery of ploughing the earth on the
night of fertilizing the soil with the blood of the betrayer Sut and his
associates. This is done before the great divine chiefs in Tattu! In
the Gospels (Matt. xxvii. 6) the chief priests take the place of the
divine chiefs in the mystery of ploughing the earth and fertilizing or
manuring it with the blood of the wicked: they buy the potter’s
field, and this was called Aceldama, the field of blood. The field of
blood here bought with the price paid for the betrayal takes the
place of the field that is fertilized with blood in the Ritual. In the
Acts it is Judas himself, not the “chief priests,” who “purchased a
field with the reward of his iniquity.” According to this version,
Judas fertilizes or manures the field with his own blood, as does the
betrayer Sut, on the night of fertilizing the field in Tattu. When, in
his resurrection, Jesus reappeared to the disciples, they thought it an
apparition. This it should have been if the life had been human, the
death actual, the story true. In the Egyptian, however, the day of
reappearance is termed the “day of apparition”; but reappearing =
apparition is not necessarily manifesting as the human ghost. The
Christ as Horus was not a human ghost reappearing on the earth;
and Horus the pure spirit, the typical divine son of god, the reappearing one, might have denied being a phantom or a ghost, for he would
not be manifesting to men, but to other characters in the religious
drama. This being denied on behalf of the divinity, the carnalizers
then had recourse to their human physics to illustrate the denial by
making the risen Christ corporeal. In John’s account, which is
always the nearest to the Egyptian original, there is no denial of the
ghost theory, no declaration that the risen one is not a spirit but a
veritable human body of flesh and bone.
He merely “showed
unto them his hands and side,” as Horus might have shown his
wounds, and no doubt did show them, in the mysteries—the wounds
that were inflicted by Sut. In fact, when Sut has wounded Horus in
the eye, he shows the wound to Ra, his father (Rit., ch. 112).
When Horus, or the Egypto-gnostic Jesus, rises in the sepulchre
on coming forth to day it is in the semi-corporeal form of the Karestmummy that is not yet become pure spirit and therefore has not yet
ascended to his father in the hawk-headed likeness of Ra. This
figure can be studied in the tomb as that of Amsu. The scene of
the resurrection is in Amenta, the earth of eternity, the earth of the
manes, not on the earth of mortals. It is here the risen Horus
breathes the breath of his new life into the sleeping dead to raise
them from their coffins, sepulchres and cells. When the Egyptian
Christ, or Karest, rose up from the tomb as Amsu-Horus it was in a
likeness of the buried mummy, as regards the shape, with one arm
loosened from the swathes or bandages. But this resurrection was
not corporeal on earth. Osiris had been transformed into Horus, and
although the mummy-shape was still retained, the texture had been
transubstantiated; the corpus was transfigured into the glorious body
of the Sahu or divine mummy. The mystery of transubstantiation
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was not understood by the writers of the Gospels, who did not know
whether Jesus appeared in the body or in spirit, as a man or
as a god. They carried off all they could, but were not in possession
of the secret wisdom which survived amongst the Egypto-gnostics.
They wrote as carnalizers of the Christ. It follows that the risen Jesus
of the canonical Gospels is not a reality in either world; neither
in the sphere of time, nor as divine Horus transfigured into spirit.
’Tis but a misappropriated type; the spurious spectre of an impossible Christ; a picture of nobody. The Christian history fails in
rendering Horus as an apparition of Osiris. When Horus came from
Sekhem he had left the earthly body behind him in the sepulchre,
and was greeted as pure spirit by the glorified ones who rejoiced to
see how he continued walking as the risen Horus, he who “steppeth
onward through eternity” (Rit., ch. 42). Jesus in this character
comes forth from the tomb in the same body that was buried and
still is human, flesh and bones and all. Thus, as a phantom, he
is a counterfeit; a carnalized ghost, upon the resurrection of which
no real future for the human spirit ever could or ever will be permanently based. A corpse that has not made the transformation
from the human Horus into Horus the pure spirit offers no foundation for belief in any known natural fact. Horus in his resurrection
is described as being once more set in motion. At this point he
says, “I am not known, but I am one who knoweth thee. I am not
to be grasped, but I am one who graspeth thee. I am Horus, prince
of eternity, a fire before your faces, which inflameth your hearts
towards me. I am master of my throne, and I pass onwards.”
“The path I have opened is the present time, and I have set myself
free from all evil” (ch. 42, Renouf). But when he is transubstantialized, it is said of the deceased in his resurrection: “The gods
shall come in touch with him, for he shall have become as one of
them.”
Now let us see how this was converted into history.
Jesus is the prince of eternity in opposition to Satan, Sut, or Judas,
the prince of this world. In his resurrection he is supposed to have
opened the pathway from the tomb historically and for the first
time some 1800 or 1900 years ago. When he rises from the dead he
is unknown to the watchers, but he knows them. Mary knew not
that the risen form was Jesus. He is not to be grasped, saying,
“Touch me not,” or do not grasp me, “for I am not yet ascended
unto my Father” (John xx. 14, 17). On the way to Emmaus Jesus
appears and inflames the hearts of the disciples towards him, after
calling them “slow of heart,” and “they said one to anther, Was not
our heart burning within us?” (Luke xxiv. 13, 32). Horus had opened
a path from the tomb as the sun-god in the mythos, the divine son of
God in the eschatology, and he ascended to his father and took his
seat upon the throne of which he had become the lord and master.
So Jesus goes on his way “unto the mountain,” where he had appointed
to meet his followers (Matt. xxviii. 16). The mountain in the Ritual
is the mount of rebirth in heaven, whether of the sun-god or of
the enduring spirit.
The change from bodily death to future life in spirit was acted
as a transformation-scene in the mysteries of the resurrection.
The mummy-Osiris was an effigy of death. The Sahu-mummy
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Amsu-Horus is an image of the glorious body into which Osiris transubstantiated to go forth from Sekhem as pure spirit. It is the
mummy in this second stage that is of primary import. First of
all the dead body was smeared over with unguents and thus
glorified. During the process of anointing it was said, “O Asar (the
deceased) the thick oil which is poured upon thee furnishes thy
mouth with life” (Budge, “The Mummy,” p. 163). It is also said that
the anointing is done to give sight to the eyes, hearing to the ears, sense
of smell to the nostrils and utterance to the mouth. To embalm the
body thus was to karas it and the embalmment was a mode of
making the typical Christ as the Anointed. Thus the mortal Horus
was invested with the glory of the only God-begotten Son. Now
this making of the Krst, or mummy-Christ, after the Egyptian fashion
is apparent in the Gospels. When the woman brings the alabaster
cruse of precious ointment to the house of Simon and pours it on the
head of Jesus he says, “In that she poured this ointment upon my
body, she did it to prepare me for my burial” (Matt. xxvi. 12).
She was making the Christ as the anointed-mummy previous to
interment. After the description of the crucifixion it is said that
Nicodemus came and brought a “mixture of myrrh and aloes, about
a hundred pound” and “they took the body of Jesus and bound it in
linen cloths with the spices as the custom of the Jews is to bury”
(John xix. 39, 40). This again denotes the making of the Karestmummy = the Christ. Moreover, it is the dead mummy in one version
and it is the living body in the other which is anointed, just as
Horus was anointed with the exceedingly precious Antu ointment, or
oil, that was poured upon his head and face to represent his glory.
The two Mertæ-sisters are the watchers over the dead Osiris.
They are also the mourners who weep over him when he is anointed
and prepared for his burial. It is said of Osiris that he was triumphant
over his adversaries on the night when Isis lay watching in tears over
her brother Osiris (ch. 18). But the Mertæ-sisters both watch and
both weep over the dead body. In the vignettes to the Ritual one of
the two stands at the head and one at the feet of the body on the bier.
These two mourners, weepers, anointers, or embalmers, appear in the
Gospels as two different women. According to John it was Mary the
sister of Martha who anointed Jesus for his burial. And as these are the
two divine sisters in historic guise we ought to find one at the head of
the victim and one at the feet, as, in fact, we do so find them. In the
account furnished by Luke it is said that the woman who stood behind
at the feet of Jesus weeping “began to wet his feet with her tears,
and wiped them with the hair of her head” (Luke vii. 38). No name
is given for the woman who was “a sinner,” which seems to denote
the other Mary called Magdalene. Matthew also omits the name of
the woman with an alabaster cruse or flask. In keeping with the
mythos this other one of the two Mertæ-sisters should be Martha,
but the point is that the woman with the cruse does not anoint the
feet of Jesus. She poured the ointment “upon his head as he sat at
meat” (Matt. xxvi. 7). Thus we see there are two different women who
anoint Jesus, one at the head, one at the feet, even as the two divine
sisters of Osiris called the Mertæ, or watchers, stand at the head and
feet of Osiris, when preparing him for his burial, or watching in
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tears, like Isis, the prototype of the woman who never ceased to kiss
the feet of Jesus since the time when he had come into the house
(Luke vii. 45-6). We have identified the other sister Nephthys, the
mistress of the house, with the housekeeper Martha, and as Nephthys
also carries the bowl or vase upon her head, this may account for the
vessel of alabaster that was carried by the “woman” who poured the
ointment on the head of Jesus, whereas Mary the sister of Martha
poured it on his feet. Martha is one of the two Mertæ by name. In
the Egyptian mythos the two Mertæ are Isis, the dear lover of Horus
the Lord, bowed at his feet, and Nephthys mourning at his head
(Naville, Todtenbuch, v. 1, kap. 17, A. g. and B. b.).
The Karast-mummy was the body of the dead in Osiris who were
prepared by human hands to meet their Lord in spirit when wrapt in
the seamless vesture of a thousand folds, which was typically the robe
of immortality, when they were baptized and purified and anointed
with the unction of Horus taken from the tree of life. The process
of preparing, embalming and Christifying the mummy obviously survives in the Chrisome or krisum of the Roman Catholic Church. The
chrisome itself is properly a white cloth which the “minister of
baptism places on the head of the newly-anointed child.” The
chrisom as ointment is made of oil and balm. In the instructions for
private baptism it is charged that the minister shall put the white
vesture, commonly called a chrisome, upon the child. The chrismcloth is still the vesture of immortality, for if the infant dies within
a month after birth, the chrisome is its shroud and the chrisom-child
becomes an image in survival of the Karast-mummy in Amenta.
Let it be assumed that to all appearance the resurrection in
Amenta is corporeal. The human Horus, or the Osiris, who had
passed through death, and been laid out as the mummy in the Tuat,
still retains the form of the mummy that was made on earth. The
difference is in Horus having risen to his feet and freed his right arm
from the burial bandages. Indeed, the dead were reincorporated in
Amenta as the Sahu-mummy. The Egyptian word Sahu signifies to
incorporate, and in this physical-looking form they were reincorporated for the resurrection in the earth of eternity. Amsu had made
a change in rising to his feet, but was not yet the Horus glorified
with the soul of Ra; therefore he has not yet ascended to the
father. To the sense of sight he is corporeal still, and has not transubstantiated into spirit. When he does, the hawk or Menat will
alight to abide upon him and he will assume the likeness of his
father Ra, the bird-headed holy spirit. It is the body-soul that rises
in Amenta which has to suffer purgatorial rebirth before it can
become “pure spirit” as the Ritual of the resurrection has it, to
attain eternal life. So far as reincorporation of the soul in Sahushape could go, the resurrection is corporeal. Yet this was only
a dramatic mode of representation in the mystery of transubstantiation, which included several acts. It is in this character of AmsuHorus reincorporated as the Sahu-mummy issuing from the tomb that
Jesus is described by Luke: “See my hands and my feet, that it is I
myself” (ch. xxiv. 39). In the absence of the gnosis the reincorporation in Amenta led to the doctrine of a physical resurrection at the
last day on this earth. The power of resurrection was imparted by
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Ra, the father in spirit, to the anointed and beloved son. And Horus
is said to be the “bringer of the breaths” to his “followers” (Rit.,
chapters on breathing 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59). Horus as he issues
forth to day, in his resurrection, comes to give the breath of life to
the manes in Amenta, saying, “I give the breezes to the faithful dead
amid those who eat bread.” This chapter of the Ritual follows the
decease of Horus, which is equivalent to the crucifixion of Jesus. In
this the speaker says, “I have come to an end on behalf of the Lord
of heaven. I am written down sound of heart, and I rest at the table
of my father Osiris” (ch. 70). It is also said in the Rubric, “if this
scripture is known upon earth he (the Osiris) will come forth to day;
he will have power to walk on the earth amid the living.” Jesus in the
Gospel has “come to an end for the Lord of heaven.” He likewise manifests on earth “amid the living.” He gives “the breezes to the faithful
dead” when he breathes on them, saying, “Receive ye of the holy spirit.”
It is “the woman” in the Gospels who announce the resurrection
and proclaim that Jesus has left the tomb. According to Matthew
“the woman” are “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary,” who “ran
to bring the disciples word” (xxviii. 1, 8). According to Mark (xvi. 1)
the women were Mary Magdalene and Mary (the mother) of James, and
Salome, who discovered that Jesus had arisen but were afraid to make
it known. Here it is Mary Magdalene, who proclaims the resurrection.
It is Mary Magdalene in John (xx. 1, 2) who first announces that the
Lord has arisen. Luke xxiv. 10 has it that “Mary Magdalene and
Joanna, and Mary (mother) of James and other women” first
found the sepulchre empty and “told these things unto the apostles.”
These conflicting accounts agree in the one essential point, that it was
the woman or the women who proclaimed the resurrection, and this
is as it should be according to the data in the Ritual. When
the deceased comes forth from the tomb and reaches the horizon of the
resurrection he exclaims, “I rise as a god amongst men. The goddesses
and the women proclaim me when they see me!” It is the goddesses and
the women who see the risen Horus first and proclaim him to the
others. Usually the woman and the female deities are identical as
the two divine sisters who are represented in the Gospels by the two
Marys, but in some of the scenes there are other women in
attendance as well as the two sisters-Mertæ. Now, as the two
Marys are originally goddesses we have the same group of goddesses
and “the women” (in Luke xxiv. 10) as in the Ritual (79, 11) and
both agree in proclaiming the resurrection and hailing the risen Lord
with jubilation. This chapter contains all the data necessary to
construct the story of the “historic” resurrection in which the
Christ arises as a god amongst men, and is proclaimed by the
women. The allusions in the Ritual are very brief. The style
of the writing is economical as that of the lapidary. The Egyptians
neither used nor tolerated many words; verbosity was prohibited
by one of their commandments. But these allusions refer to a
drama that was represented in the mysteries, the characters and
scenes of which were all as well known as are those in the Christian
Gospels when the play is performed at Ammergau. And this statement, made at the moment of his resurrection—“I rise as a god
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amongst men. The goddesses and the women proclaim me when
they see me”—contained a germ that was pregnant with a whole
chapter of the future Gospel “history.”
In the Gospel according to John there is but one woman weeping
at the tomb. This was Mary Magdalene, who corresponds to the
first great mother Apt, she who bore the seven sons that preceded the
solar Horus of the pre-Osirian cult. She, like Anup, lived on in the
burial-place with those that waited for the resurrection. She is called
Apt, the “mistress of divine protections.” Apt is portrayed as
kindler of the light for the deceased in the dark of death (ch. 137,
Vig. Papyrus of Nebseni). Thus the old bringer to rebirth is the
kindler of a light in the sepulchre. Mary Magdalene who takes her
place comes to the tomb, “early, while it was yet dark,” and finds the
stone moved away and light enough to see by kindled in the tomb.
Isis also was a form of the great mother alone. She is mentioned
singly as watching in tears over her brother Osiris by night in
Rekhet (Rit., ch. 18). So Mary Magdalene is described as “standing
without at the tomb weeping” alone as the one woman. But, according
to Matthew, there were two women at the tomb. “Mary Magdalene
was there and the other Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre (ch.
xxvii. 61). And in the Osirian representation Isis and Nephthys are
the two women called the “two mourners who weep and wail over
Osiris in Rekhet” (ch. 1).
Isis and Nephthys, the two divine
sisters, are the two women at the sepulchre of Osiris. They are
portrayed, one at the head the other at the feet of the mummy.
They sing the song of the resurrection as a magical means of raising
their dear one from the dead. A form of this is to be found in the
evocations addressed to the dead Osiris by the two sisters, who say:
“Thy two sisters are near thee, protecting thy funeral bed,
calling thee in weeping, thou who art prostrate on thy funeral bed”
(Records of the Past, vol. 2, pp. 121-126). Horus rises in his Ithyphallic form with the sign of virility erect; the member that was
restored by Isis when the body had been torn in pieces by Sut. This
may account for the Phallus found in the Roman Catacombs as a
figure of the resurrection, which, if the Gospel story had been true,
would denote the phallus of an historic Jew, instead of the typical
member of Horus whose word was thus manifested with pubescent
power in the person of the risen Amsu.
In the Osirian legend there are three women, or goddesses, who
especially attend upon Osiris to prepare him for his burial. These
are the great mother, Neith, and the two divine sisters, Isis and
Nephthys. It was related in the ancient version that Neith arrayed
the mummy in his grave-clothes for the funerary chamber called “the
good house,” the house in which the dead were embalmed and
swathed in pure white linen. This is described in the Book of the
Dead (ch. 172) when it is said to the Osiris N, “Thou receivest a
bandage of the finest linen from the hands of the attendant of Ra.”
The raiment put on Osiris by Neith was said to be woven by the two
watchers in the tomb. In the preparation of Osiris for his burial, the
ointment or unguents were compounded and applied by Neith. It
was these that were to preserve the mummy from decay and
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dissolution. These three may be compared with the three Marys in the
Gospels, thus: Neith, the great mother = Mary Magdalene, the great
mother; Isis = Mary; Nephthys = Martha. There was also a group
of seven ministrants in attendance at the birth of Horus or rebirth of
Osiris. These, in the astronomical mythology, were constellated in
the female hippopotamus—our Great Bear—as those who ministered
“of their substance” to the young “bull of the seven cows” (Rit.,
ch. 141-3), which were seven forms of the great mother, seven Fates or
Hathors in the birthplace, from the time when this was in the year of
the Great Bear, with the seven in attendance on the child. In the
legend related by Luke, the whole of the seven women who
ministered of their substance to Jesus (or the sacrificial victim),
appear to have been grouped together with the dead body in the
sepulchre.
“Now they were Mary Magdalene and Joanna and
Mary the mother of James and the other women with them”
(Luke xxiv. 10). These are called “the women which had come with
them out of Galilee.” They are also termed “certain women of our
company” (ch. xxiv. 22). The number is not specified; this being one
of those sundries that were safest if left vague. Thus we find the
foremost Great Mother at the tomb; the two divine sisters; the
three women with Neith included, and as we suggest, the company of
ministrants, who were the seven mothers, seven Hathors, seven Meri,
or seven women in three different versions of the historic resurrection.
In the version given by Matthew there is but one divine visitant at
the tomb, in addition to the two women here called the two Marys.
As the Sabbath day began to dawn “came Mary Magdalene and the
other Mary to see the sepulchre. And behold there was a great
earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and
came and rolled away the stone and sat upon it. His appearance
was as lightning, and his raiment was as white as snow” (Matt.
xxviii. 2, 3). The angel that rolls the stone away from the tomb in the
Gospel for the buried Christ to rise corresponds to the god Shu in
the Ritual, who is described as uplifting the heaven when the god
Atum or Horus comes forth from the sarcophagus and passes
through the gate of the rock to approach the land of spirits. It is
said the gate of Tser is where Shu stands when he lifts up the
heaven (Rit., 17, 56-7). The Tser was the rock of the horizon in
which the dead body of Osiris was laid for its repose when it was
buried in Annu. Shu is not only the uplifter of heaven or raiser of
the gravestone, he is also the opener of the sepulchre as the bringer
of breath to the newly awakened soul.
The Egyptian knew well enough that his body would remain
where it was left when buried. For that it had been mummified.
His difficulty was concerning his soul, and how to get this freed from
its surroundings in the speediest fashion and the most enduring form.
The Ritual speaks of the “shade,” the “soul” and “spirit” as being
in the tomb with the mummy-Osiris who rises from stage to stage
according to the evolution of his spirit from the bonds of matter.
Chief of these are the body-soul and spirit-Ka. The deceased, when
in the tomb, is thus addressed, “Let the way be opened to thy Ka
and to thy Soul, O glorified one; thou shalt not be imprisoned by
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those who have the custody of souls and spirits and who shut up the
shades of the dead” (Rit., ch. 92). Thus the body-soul and Ka
made their appearance in the tomb previously to being blended in
the manifesting soul, called the double of the dead which constituted
the risen Horus, and which was the only one of the seven souls that
bore the human lineaments (Rit., ch. 178). The god who rises again
is described in the Egyptian litany of Ra (58) as “he who raises his
soul and conceals his body.” His name is that of Herba, he who raises
the soul. The body being hidden as Osiris, the soul was raised as
Horus. Hence, as it is said, the mummy of Osiris was not found in
the sepulchre.
In one sense the body vanished by transubstantiation into spirit. The night of the evening meal on which the
body was eaten sacramentally is called “the night of hiding him who
is supreme of attributes” (Rit., ch. 18).
The body was eaten
typically as a mode of converting matter into spirit; this was the
motive of the eucharist from the beginning when the mother was
the victim eaten. In one of the texts cited by Birch concerning the
burial of the god Osiris at Abydos, it is said the sepulchral
chamber was searched but the body was not found. The “Shade, it
was found” (Proceedings Bib. Archy., Dec. 2, 1884, p. 45). The
shade was a primitive type of the soul; it is the shadow of an
earthly body projected as it were into Amenta, and was portrayed in
some of the vignettes lying black upon the ground of that earth, like
the shadow of the human body on this earth. In Marcion’s account
of the resurrection there is no body to be found in the tomb; only the
phantom, or the shade, was visible there. So in the Johannine version
(ch. xx. 17) the buried body of Jesus is missing; the Shade is
present in the tomb; but this is of a texture that must not be
touched. Like Amsu it neither represents the dead corpus nor the
spirit perfected. It is quite possible that we get a glimpse of the
“Ka” as that personage in the sepulchre described by Mark, who
relates that when the women entered the tomb they “saw a young
man sitting on the right side, arrayed in a white robe and they were
amazed” (ch. xvi. 5). According to the gnosis, the Ka had here
taken the place of the missing mummy which had risen, or as the
Egyptians said, Osiris had made his transformation into AmsuHorus. According to Luke, when the women came to the tomb with
their spices and ointments they “found not the body of the Lord
Jesus.” But, “behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel,”
who said to them “why seek ye the Living (One) among the dead?”
(Luke xxiv. 5). These, in the Johannine Gospel, are “two angels in
white, sitting one at the head and one at the feet, where the body
of Jesus had lain” (John xx. 12).
Now, if the “young man”
represented the Ka-image in the human form we may suppose the
“two men” to have been the soul and spirit called the Ka and the
soul of the glorified, that were portrayed in the Egyptian sepulchre
and which are to be read of in the Ritual. One of the numerous
Egypto-gnostic scriptures which at one time were extant has lately
been discovered in the fragment of a gospel assigned to Peter. This
from the orthodox point of view is considered to be “docetic”—which
is another name for non-historical. From this we learn that in the
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resurrection “the heavens opened and two men descended thence
with great radiance” “and both the young men entered” the tomb.
Two men entered and three figures issued forth. “They behold
three men coming out of the tomb, and two of them were supporting
a third, and a cross was following them; and the heads of the two
men reached to the heaven, but the head of him who was being led
along by them was higher than the heavens.” And they heard a
voice from heaven which said, “Hast thou preached to them that are
asleep?”
And a response of “Yea” was heard from the cross.
This has no parallel in the canonical Gospels, but, as Egyptian, it is
the scene of Atum (Ptah or Osiris) rising again in or with the
two sons Hu and Sau. Also, in the pre-Osirian mythos, Hu and
Sau, the two sons of Atum-Ra, support their father when he issues
from the tomb and makes his exit from Amenta. These are two
young men who are in the retinue of Ra, and who accompany their
father in his resurrection daily (Rit., ch. 17).
To a spiritualist the doctrines of the fleshly faith are ghastly in
their grossness. The foundation of the creed was laid in a physical
resurrection of the body; and the flesh and blood of that body were
to be eaten in the eucharistic rite as a physical mode of incorporating
the divine. It is true the doctrine of transubstantiation was added
to gild the dead body for eating. But the historical rendering of the
matter necessitated the substitution of the physical for the spiritual
interpretation. The founders only carried off the carnalized Horus,
the Karast-mummy, for their Christ. They raised him from the
grave corporeally; whereas the Egyptians left that type of Osiris in
matter, that image of Horus on earth in the tomb. Horus did rise
again, but not in matter. He spiritualized to become the superhuman
or divine Horus. The Egyptians did not exhume the fleshly body,
living nor dead, to eat it with the expectation of assimilating Horus to
themselves or becoming Horus by assimilating the blood and body of
his physical substance. This was what was done by the Christian
Sarkolatræ. Hooker asks: “Doth any man doubt that even from
the flesh of Christ (eaten sacramentally) our very bodies do receive
that life which shall make them glorious at the latter day?” This
was an inevitable result of making the Christ historical, and of
continuing the carnalized Horus in a region beyond the tomb by
means of a physical resurrection of the dead. The Christians having
carried off the Corpus Christi, which the Egyptians transubstantiated
in the sepulchre, have never since known what to do with it. But as
the Christ rose again in the material body and ascended with it into
heaven, leaving no mummy in the tomb, they can but nurse the
delusive hope that a physical saviour may redeem the physical corpse,
so that those who believe may be raised by him at the last day and
follow him bodily into paradise. In this way the foundations of the
faith were corporeally laid. Also in this way the pre-extant “types”
of the Christ are supposed to have been realized: the fore-shadows
substantialized, and Horus the Lord who had been the anointed
Christ, the immortal Son of God in the Egyptian religion for at least
ten thousand years, was at last converted into a Judean peasant as
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the unique personage of the Gospels, and the veritable saviour of the
world.
It is not alleged in the Gospel history that the victim was torn
piecemeal as well as crucified. And yet the bread which represents
his body in the eucharistic meal is religiously torn to pieces in
commemoration of the event that does not occur in the Gospels; a
performance that is suggestive of those poor Norway rats which lose
their lives in trying to cross the waters where there was a passage
once by land. Jesus is not torn in pieces, but Osiris was. When Sut
did battle with Un-Nefer, the Good Being, he tore the body into
fragments, and that is the sacrifice still commemorated in the
Christian eucharist. Under one of his many titles in the Ritual
Osiris is “the Lord of resurrections.” But this does not merely
denote the periodicity of the resurrection. There were several
resurrections of the god in matter and in spirit. Osiris rose again
to life in the returning waters of the Nile. He rose again in the
renewal of vegetation represented by Horus the branch of endless
years; and as the papyrus shoot. He rose again upon the third day,
in the moon; or as the sun, the supreme soul of life in physical nature.
These were followed in the eschatology by the god who rose again
from Amenta as Horus in spirit; as the Bennu-Osiris, or as Ra the
holy spirit. Jesus is likewise portrayed as the Lord of resurrections.
He is said to have risen on the third day; also on the fourth day,
after being three nights in the earth; also after forty days, when
he ascended into heaven from the mount; and when he rose up from
the dead with power to pass where doors were shut, and to impart
the Holy Spirit (John xx. 19) to his followers, the same as
Horus in the Ritual (ch. 1).
The first act of Horus in his
resurrection is to free his right arm from the bandage of the mummy.
The next is to cast aside the seamless swathe in which the body had
been wrapped for burial. Now, after so much of the mythos has
been established in place of the “history,” it will not be so very
incredible if we suggest a mythical and recognizably Kamite origin
for an episode in the Gospel according to Mark which has no record
elsewhere. When Jesus is arrested in the garden or enclosure of
Gethsemane preparatory to his death and resurrection it is said that:
“A certain young man followed him having a linen cloth cast about
him over his naked body; and they laid hold on him; but he left the
linen cloth and fled naked” (Mark xiv. 51). Such a statement
standing alone, purposeless and unexplained, is perfectly maniacal as
history; clearly it is a fragment of something that is otherwise out of
sight. The Greek word sindon represents the Egyptian shenti, a
linen garment which is derived from shena, a name for the flax from
which the fine linen of the mummy was made. The shenti is a linen
tunic. The mummy-swathe was also made from shena, and this was
the garment woven without a seam. Therefore we infer that the
“young man” was a form of the manes risen with the bandages about
him, and that when he “left the linen-cloth and fled naked” he had
made his transformation into spirit like any other of the mummies.
So soon as the risen Lord had ascended into heaven from the
summit of Mount Olivet, after the space of forty days, the disciples
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are described as meeting in the “upper chamber” with Mary, the
mother of Jesus, and his brethren who were gathered together for the
purpose of prayer (Acts i. 13, 14). Now, “the upper chamber” was
the cubiculum attached to the sepulchre, both in Rome and Egypt,
for the meeting of the bereaved relatives and the solemnizing of the
mourning for the dead. One of the inscriptions in the catacombs
calls it “the upper chamber to celebrate the memory of the dead”
(“Cubiculum superius ad confrequentandum memoriam quiescentium.”
De Rossi, Roma Sotteranea, 3, 474.) There were two funerary
chambers in the Egyptian sepulchre; one was for the mummy and
one for the Ka. Also the Ka-chamber was without a door, it being
held that the risen spirit could pass through matter without a doorway. This is repeated in the Gospel according to John. When Jesus
came into the room, “the doors being shut,” and stood in the midst
of the disciples, it was in the character of the Ka or double of the
dead endowed with power to rise again, to pass through matter, and
reappear to the living. The same dual figure is to be found in the
pre-Christian catacombs with the subterranean sepulchre for the
mummy or corpse beneath, and the chamber above which was known
as the cubiculum or cubiculum memoriæ. It was the pre-Christian
custom for the relatives and friends of the deceased to meet together
in this upper chamber at the funeral feast, or eucharistic meal, for
the purpose of celebrating the resurrection from the dead, and of
making their offerings and oblations to the ancestral spirits in the
mortuary sacrament.
The last scene in the personal “history” coincides with the ascent
of Atum-Horus from Amenta, and the soul ascending into paradise,
called the Aarru-fields. Jesus, in his final disappearance from the
earth, ascends the typical mount, called Olivet, at the end of forty
days. “And when he had said these things as they were looking, he
was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. And
while they were looking steadfastly into heaven as he went, behold,
two men stood by them in white apparel which also said, Ye men of
Galilee, why stand ye looking into heaven?” (Acts i. 9-11). The
ascent of Jesus from the mount into the clouds of heaven can be
traced twice over, in the two different categories, mythical and
eschatological. It was made “from the mount called Olivet.” This,
we repeat, was Mount Bakhu, the mount of the olive-tree of dawn.
The ascent at the tree was made each day, and also yearly in the
annual round, by the god in his resurrection from Amenta. Thus
the sun-god in the mythos makes his ascent by the Mount of Olives,
or the olive-tree of dawn, when “approaching to the land of spirits in
heaven” (Rit., ch. 17). In this character Nefer-Tum the young
sun-god is the Egyptian Jesus risen from the northern door of the
tomb, or the northern gate of the Tuat. In the phase of eschatology
it is the risen soul upon its upward journey to the circumpolar
paradise “north of the olive-tree” where the eternal city was
eventually attained.
The olive (Bakhu) also figures in the
eschatology as well as in the astronomical mythology. “He who
dwelleth in the olive-tree” is a name of Horus in the burial-place;
and in his resurrection the Osiris says, when coming forth from the
THE RESURRECTION
889
judgment-hall, “I pass on to a place that is north of the olive-tree.”
Or it might be the fig-tree at the meeting-place of Jesus with
Nathanael. It was no earthly mount on which the typical teacher
gave instruction to the four called fishermen or to the twelve as
reapers of the harvest. It was the mountain of Amenta and the
double earth that we have traced all through the Ritual called the
mount of resurrection and of glory. This, in the mythos, was the
mount of the green olive-tree of the Egyptian dawn and a figure of the
ascent to heaven in the eschatology. Up this mount the risen
manes attained the circle of the divine powers attached to Osiris
(Rit., ch. 1 in the older MSS.). And up this mount the solar god, as
Atum-Horus, makes his ascent to heaven, termed the land of spirits;
that is, from the Mount of Olives, the track which is here followed
by the canonical Jesus (Rit., ch. 17). Moreover, in his coming forth
to day and making the ascent to heaven, Atum was attended by his
two sons, Hu and Sau, who are said to accompany their father daily.
The copy, in this instance, is so close to the original that it may be
possible to identify the “two men in white apparel” who say to the
disciples, “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing into heaven?”
(Acts i. 10, 11). Those two men in white apparel correspond to Hu
and Sau in the Ritual (ch. 17, 60-64) who accompany the sun-god in
his resurrection from the place of burial in Amenta. In the vague
phase, Jesus disappears into a cloud and passes out of sight. In the
Ritual of the resurrection the departed spirit is received with greetings
by the lords of eternity, who open their arms to embrace and bid him
welcome to the table of his father at the festival that is to be eternal in
the heavens.
THE RESURRECTION
FROM
TO
AMENTA,
DAY.
OR
COMING FORTH
In Annu shines the ray
Of resurrection on the judgment-day.
The dark Amenta quakes
As with diviner dawn Osiris wakes
And with his key1 hath risen
To free the arm of Amsu from its prison.
Out of our mortal night
He suddenly flashed and fleshed his lance of light.
Jaw-broken lies the black
Grim Boar, mouth open, with its fangs turned back.
Egypt the living Word
Of the eternal truth once more is heard;
Nor shall her reign be o’er
While language lasts till time shall be no more.
1
The Ankh-key of life.
890
ANCIENT EGYPT
THE SAYINGS OF JESUS.
Of late years certain Sayings of Jesus or Ih, as the name is
abbreviated, written in Greek on the leaf of a papyrus-book, have been
discovered in the rubbish-heaps of Oxyrhynchus. These were at
once assumed to be the sayings of Jesus, an historic Jew. The
present object is to prove that all such Logia were the sayings of him
who is here set forth as the Egypto-gnostic Jesus, who had many
types and names but no individual form of historic personality.
The Book of the Dead, or Ritual of the resurrection, chiefly
represents the mysteries of Amenta in the Osirian phase of the
religious drama. But there is an older stratum than that of the
Osirian eschatology. The Sayer of the Kamite Logia Kuriaka is
identifiable in at least three different Egyptian religions; in one as
the Osirian Horus who predominates by name in the Ritual; in
another as Iu, the Sa or son of Iusāas and Atum-Ra; and a third as
Iu-em-hetep, the son of Ptah. Two of these titles of the typical
Egyptian “sayer” are cited in the “Festal dirge” when it is said, “I
have heard the words of Iu-em-hetep and Hartatef. It is said in
their sayings,” some of which sayings are then quoted. These two
answer to the Horus and Jesus of the Egypto-gnostics, which are
two names of the same original character that was Egyptian from the
root. The so-called “Christian eschatology” may be said to have had
its origin in the mysteries of Ptah at Memphis. So far as known, it
was there the doctrine of immortality was first taught; there that the
Son of God was figured in the act of issuing from the mortal mummy
as a living spirit. It was likewise there the teacher of the religious
mysteries was first impersonated as the sayer, Iu-em-hetep, who, as
Iu the coming Su, was the son of Ptah.
Iu as a form of Tum, proclaims himself to be the Sayer in the
Ritual (ch. 82). He says: “I have come forth with the tongue of Ptah
and the throat of Hathor that I may record the words of my father,
Tum, with my mouth which draweth to itself the spouse of Seb.”
That is the mother on earth who was Isis in the Osirian mythos, and
Hathor-Iusāas in the cult of Tum or Atum-Ra. The speaker here is
Horus as Iu the coming Su, or son, who in Egyptian is Iu-su, or
Iusa, the child of Iusāas, the consort of Atum-Ra. This sayer as
Iu, the Su or son in one character, is Tum himself as father in the
other. As Ra the father he is the author of the sayings; as Iu the
son (Iusa) he is the utterer of the sayings “with his mouth” or in
person on the earth as the heir of Seb. To the Egyptians “the
words of Tum” were the teachings of an everlasting gospel of truth,
law, justice and right, “not to be altered is that which Tum hath
uttered” (Rit., ch. 78) by the mouth of the sayer, Iu-em-hetep, or by
the pen of the writer, Taht-Aan. Thus we can identify Tum or
Atum-Ra as the author of the sayings which are to be spoken on
earth by God the Son. Tum was the earlier name of Atum-Ra,
when the character was that of child-Horus, or the infant Tum, and
the sayings together with the sayer were pre-Osirian. In other
words the “sayer” is Iu-em-hetep, the prince of peace in the
THE SAYINGS OF JESUS
891
cult of Annu, whom we trace back to the time of Ptah as the
Egyptian Jesus. Hence this 82nd chapter is the one by which the
manes is said to “assume the form of Ptah” in the course of becoming
a pure and perfect spirit.
Upon this line of descent, distinguished from the Osirian, Ptah
represented the grandfather of the gods; Atum the father, and Iu
the Su, the ever-coming son of Atum at Annu. It was Ptah, the opener of
the nether-earth, who made the resurrection of the manes possible
that was acted in the mysteries of Amenta. And Iu the Su came to
say what he had seen and had to tell as witness for the father
(Rit., ch. 86), that is, as the “sayer” to whom the sayings were
attributed. Hence the speaker tells us that he comes with “the
tongue of Ptah” “and the throat of Hathor” to record the words of
his father Tum with his own mouth, or as the sayer who was reborn
at Annu as Iusu, or Iusa of Hathor-Iusāas, she who was great with
Iusa, the son of Atum-Ra, and grandson of Ptah.
The “sayings” may be divided and differentiated in two categories
corresponding to the two characters of the double-Horus, the child of
twelve years, and Horus the adult of thirty years; Horus the afflicted
one who suffered and died and was buried, and Horus who rose again
as the demonstrator of eternal life in his resurrection from the dead.
At first child-Horus was the word-made-flesh as Logos of the mother.
This was Hathor-Iusāas in relation to Atum-Ra (Rit., ch. 82). Next
he was the word-made-truth as sayer for the father and teacher of the
greater mysteries. Thus there are two classes of the sayings—those
of the childhood and those of the adultship; those that pertain to the
earth of Seb and those that are uttered in Amenta the earth of
eternity. It is said in the Ritual that the words of Taht are “written
in the two earths,” the earth of Seb or time, and the earth of eternity
or Amenta (Renouf and Naville, ch. 183). So the sayings were
uttered by Horus, Tum, Iu, or Jesus, in the double earth of time, and
of eternity. It is also said of certain sayings in “Pistis Sophia” (or
Books of the Saviour, 390, Mead), “Jesus spake these words unto his
disciples in the midst of Amenta,” whence they went forth three by
three to the four points of heaven to preach the gospel of the
kingdom. This likewise was in the earth of eternity, versus the earth
of time. But, whether the god be represented as the heavenly father
by Ptah at Memphis, by Atum-Ra at Annu, or by Osiris at Abydos,
the infant was Horus or Heru the lord by name, who was the
only lord as a little child. Iu, Iusu, Iusa, Tum, Aten, Sekari,
Iu-em-hetep, are but titles of Horus the lord of the Logia Kuriaka
who became the “Sayer” as the Egypto-gnostic Jesus, Iu-Su, the
ever-coming Messianic son.
Now, amongst the gods of Egypt that were canonized as Christian
saints the deity Tum has been converted into the Apostle Thomas.
The Gospel according to Thomas is also known to have existed in
several forms, some of which are yet extant in the Gospels of the
Infancy, assumed to be the childhood of an historic Christ.
Hippolytus cites one of these as a Gospel of the Nasseni. He says
they hand down an explicit passage occurring in the Gospel inscribed
“according to Thomas,” expressing themselves thus: “He who seeks
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ANCIENT EGYPT
me (the higher soul) will find me in children from seven years old;
for there concealed I shall, in the fourteenth year (or æon), be made
manifest” (Refut. v. 7). This passage contains the doctrine of the
double-Horus, the Horus of the incarnation and Horus of the
resurrection, or the child-Horus and Horus the adult. The duality
of Horus as the word made flesh and the word made truth is also
exemplified in the Gospel of Thomas by the boy whose every word at
once became a deed (ch. 4).
In the introductory word to the “New Sayings of Jesus,” found on
the site of Oxyrhynchus by Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt, it is said:
“These are the (wonderful) words which Jesus the living (Lord) spake
to . . . and Thomas, and he said unto (them) everyone that hearkens to
these words shall never taste of death” (p. 11). The wonderful
words, the words of power in the Ritual, are the words of Atum-Ra
the holy spirit. The speaker is Horus or Iu the living, he who rises
from the grave and does not die a second time, or who is the
resurrection and the life, that was represented as the first fruit or
type of them that slept. He is one of those to whom Nut, the
mother heaven, has given birth or rebirth (Rit., ch. 1), and this
power he afterwards confers on his four brethren or children that they
likewise may raise up the dead (Pyramid Texts, Teta, 270). It is in
this character he says, “I am the living soul” (Rit., ch. 5). That is, as
Horus the lord of the resurrection from the land of death. “I am
he that cometh forth.” “I open all the paths in heaven and on
earth” (ch. 9). “That has been given to me which endureth amidst
all overthrow” (ch. 10). Thus Horus is the demonstrator of a
resurrection for the human soul in a mystery of Amenta. He says, “I
am he who establishes you for eternity.” “I am he who dieth not a
second time” (ch. 42). “I am he whose orbits are of old; my soul
is divine, it is the eternal Force” (ch. 85). “It is I who proceed from
Tum”—the father of a soul that is immortal.
An original Egyptian source for the Gospels of the Infancy is
recognizable in the Ritual. In his incarnation Horus, or Iu the Su,
indicates that he “disrobes himself” to “reveal himself” when he
“presents himself to the earth” (ch. 71). In his birth he says, “I am
the babe” born as the connecting link betwixt earth and heaven, and
as the one who does not die the second death (ch. 42). He issues
from the disc or from the egg. He is pursued by the Herrut-reptile,
but, as he says, his egg remains unpierced by the destroyer. He
escapes from the slaughter of the innocents or the Hamemmat in
Suten-Khen. On entering the earth-life Horus knows it to be in
accordance with his lot that he should suffer death or come to an
end and be no more (Rit., ch. 8). He also knows that he is a
living soul.
As such he has that within which surviveth all
overthrow; even though he may be buried in the deep, dark grave, he
will not be annihilated there. He will rise again (ch. 10 and
ch. 30 A). But before quoting further what Horus says, we cite a few
more of the Logoi which tell us what Horus is. And what Horus is
in the Osirian religion the same was the Egyptian Jesus in the cult of
Atum-Ra, and Iu-em-hetep still earlier in the mysteries of Memphis
and the cult of Ptah.
Apart from the Osirian dynasty of deities, the two chief divine
THE SAYINGS OF JESUS
893
personages in the Ritual are Atum-Ra and Atum-Horus, as Huhi
the eternal father, and Iu the ever-coming Messianic son, who
as the Su is Iusu, the Egyptian Jesus. Now Tum, or Atum-Ra the
inspiring spirit, was the author of the sayings in the Ritual which he
gave to Horus the Iu-su or coming son, as Sayer, for him to utter to
men and manes in the two characters of the infant Horus and Horus
the adult. Tum as Egyptian, is the earlier form of Atum’s name;
and in the Greek inscriptions Tum (or Atum) is called Tomos. We
also find that the twin-totality of Tum is registered in the name of
“Thomas called Didymus”; Thomas the twin being equivalent in
name to the character of the twofold Tum. From this we infer that
the apocryphal Gospel of the Infancy assigned to Thomas is, or was,
based upon the Egyptian Gospel of Tum. This duality may also
explain the relationship of Jesus to Thomas in the “sayings” or
Logoi, recently recovered from the mounds of Oxyrhynchus, which
are called “the sayings of Jesus,” who is described as the Lord, and the
living one.
Now Tum, in the Ritual, is pre-eminently “the lord.” In one
chapter (79) he is addressed as “the lord of heaven,” “the lord
of life,” “the lord of all creatures,” “the lord of all.” Thus the Ritual
contains “the sayings of the lord.” The Hebrew formula “thus
saith the lord” had been anticipated in the Ritual by the “so saith
Tum” whose word is “not to be altered” (Ritual, ch. 78).
As
Egyptian, Tum is the one god called “the living.” And the sayings
are the words which Jesus “the living” is said to have spoken to
Thomas, the son Iu here being given the foremost position of the
two. The sayings of the lord, in the Ritual, then, are the sayings
spoken by Tum the father to Iusa the son, who utters them to men on
earth and to the manes in Amenta. It is as Atum-Horus that
the son says, “I am the bright one in glory whom Tum himself
brought into being, who hath made and glorified and honoured those
who are to be with him,” as his followers or his children (Rit., ch. 78).
It is the same speaker who says, “I have come upon this earth and I
take possession of it with my two feet. I am Tum, and I come from
my own place.” That is as Iusa the manifesting son. Thus the
sayings of Horus Iu-em-hetep can be traced to Tum as Ra the
inspiring spirit and to Horus as the sayer in the Ritual.
“Tum” in Egyptian was also a name for the mythical child as the
inarticulate one, the little Tum, who survives in various countries.
Tom Thumb and little Thumbkin of our nursery tales. We also
consider that this was the Tum who passed into India as the
“historic” Thomas and who is claimed by Christians to have been
the Apostle of that name. The god Tum is there identifiable in
half-a-dozen features assigned to the Apostle or Saint Thomas. For
one thing he is the patron of builders and architects, and his symbol
is the mason’s square. He is reputed to have built a superb palace
in heaven for the poor of earth. Tum survives by name as the
Thoma of the Indian Christians on a peninsula of the Indus this
side of the gulf: also in Cochin and beyond.
The so-called
Christians of India who are frequently supposed to have been the
followers of an historic Thomas have their own tradition which is
894
ANCIENT EGYPT
both congruous and explicable. They say that “a certain holy
man called Mar-Thome, a Syrian, first came to them with a number
of beasts from Syria and Egypt” (Calmet, Thomas).
That is
with the hieroglyphic signs. Thome we take to be the Egyptian god,
Tum. The Mar or Mer, as the surname of the holy man, is an
Egyptian title for a superintendent.
The “Mer-Tetu” was the
superintendent of books, and also the royal mage in one person.
Thus read “Mar-Thome” was one of the Egyptian Magi or Rekhi
as the superintendent of a college or body of priests who went to
India from Syria as missionaries and who promulgated the worship of
Tum as God the Father, and Iusa as the son in the religion of Annu.
This dual character of Tum as the father and Iu the Su or son, equal
to Jesus, will enable us to identify the child-Jesus in the Gospel of
Thomas and that Gospel itself as a form of the Egyptian Gospel.
This is one of the most ancient of the Gospels of the Infancy called
Apocryphal, the origin and true significance of which are hitherto
unknown. These have been denounced as idle tales, foolish traditions:
pious frauds, disguised heresy, anti-evangelical representations and
fables forged to supply an account of “Our Lord’s History,” in that
infancy which the evangelists have perforce omitted. The representations, however, are anti-evangelical; hence they are supposed to favour
Docetism: in other words, they are non-historical. As already demonstrated, the great god Tum was the father in one character, and Iu or
Horus in the other; he is the divine son who is Iu-em-hetep the
Egyptian Jesus. Tum is Tomas or Thomas in Greek, and the Gospel
of Tomas in Greek is the Gospel of Tum as Egyptian. Also Tum the
father and Iu the son will show why the history of the infancy should
be related of a mythical Jesus in the Gospel of Tum or Thomas, and
in relation to Thomas. Thus we can identify Tum as the author of
the sayings which are to be spoken by Iu-em-hetep, in the person of
God the Son. Tum was the earlier name of Atum-Ra, when the
character was that of child-Horus, or the infant Tum, and the sayings
together with the sayer were pre-Osirian. In other words, the “sayer”
is Iu-em-hetep, the prince of peace in the cult of On, whom we trace
back to the time of Ptah as the Egyptian Jesus. Hence this chapter
is the one by which the manes is said to “assume the form of Ptah”
in the course of being spiritualized. In one of the sayings ascribed
to Jesus he says, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavyladen, and I will give you rest” (Matt. xi. 28). This had then become
“one of the sayings.” But the sayer himself had been personalized
or typified in earlier ages as Iu-em-hetep at Memphis, and again
at On, and later still at Alexandria. And Iu-em-hetep the bringer
of peace by name was the giver of rest by nature as the Egyptian
Jesus; he who settled the matter of immortality in his resurrection
from the tomb. As we have already seen, a tap-root of the Jesus
legend in the eschatological phase can be traced in the Egyptian
Ritual to the time and to the cult of Ptah at Memphis (Rit., ch. 82).
Ptah was the earliest form of an eternal father manifesting in the
person of an ever-coming son, who, as the coming one, was Iu, or
Iu-em-hetep, he who comes with peace. Hence we derive the name or
title of the Egypto-gnostic Jesus from Iu-Su, or Iusa, the coming son.
Indeed, the question asked by the messengers of John in the Gospel,
THE SAYINGS OF JESUS
895
art thou he that should come, or must we look for another? is equivalent
to asking “art thou Iu-em-hetep, he who comes with peace as
manifestor for the father?”
It is also said of Jesus that he had compassion on the people
“because they were as sheep without a shepherd.” And this has
been looked upon as one of the foundational pillars of the history,
and proof positive that he was the original Good Shepherd. But
Horus had long been extant as the good shepherd in the mythos, the
eschatology, and the iconography of Egypt. Again, it is said of Jesus
(Matt. vii. 29), that he taught the multitude as one having authority,
and not as their scribes. So was it with Horus, who claims that
authority to teach had been divinely delegated to him as the beloved
son of God the Father. Hence the sayings, “I have come forth with
the tongue of Ptah and the throat of Hathor that I may record the
words of my father Tum with my mouth” (Rit., ch. 82). “I am arrayed
and equipped with thy words of power, O Ra” (ch. 32). “I utter his
words to the men of the present generation, and I repeat his words to
him who is deprived of breath” as the manes in Amenta (ch. 38).
It was the work of Horus to exalt the father at all times and
in every place. He is exalted as Un-Nefer, the good being who
is the one alone that is good, perfect and unique. The same mission
is assigned to the Gospel-Jesus. Hence the saying, “Why callest thou
me good? None is good save one, even God alone . . . the Father
alone” (Mark x. 18), who represents the same Good Being UnNefer as did Osiris. This duality of the Deity as father and son
is also manifest in the saying, “Whosoever shall speak a word against
the Son of Man it shall be forgiven him, but whosoever shall speak
against the Holy Spirit it shall not be forgiven him” (Matt. xii. 32).
That is said in exaltation of the father in heaven who was the holy
spirit represented by the son on earth or in Amenta. The Ritual
likewise proves that Seb, the god of earth and foster-father of Horus,
when he was the child of the virgin mother only, is the prototype or
original of Joseph. Horus says that as the heir of Seb, from whom
he issued, he was suckled at the breast of Isis, the spouse of Seb, who
gave him his theophanies (Rit., ch. 82). Horus on earth lies down to
embrace the old man who keeps the light of earth, and who is Seb the
earth-father (Rit., ch. 84). Horus is lord of the staircase or mount of
rebirth in heaven. In his first advent as the heir of Seb Horus
says, “I am come as a mummied one” (that is, in his embodiment
when made flesh, the Hamemmat being the unmummied ones)
(Rit., ch. 9). “I come before you and make my appearance as that
god in the form of a man who liveth as a god”—otherwise stated, as
Iusu the son of Atum-Ra (ch. 79). “I repeat the acclamations at my
success on being declared the heir of Seb” (Seb was the father on
earth (ch. 82), Osiris in Amenta, Ra in heaven). “I descend to the
earth of Seb and put a stop to evil” as the bringer of peace, plenty,
and good will on earth. “I shine forth from the egg which is in the
unseen world” (ch. 22). “Lo, I bring this my word of power” from out
the silence in which the gods originated. “I am arrayed and equipped
with thy words of power, O Ra” (ch. 24, 32). “I utter his words to
the living and to those who are deprived of breath. I am Horus,
prince of eternity” (ch. 42). “I am yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow”
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ANCIENT EGYPT
(ch. 64). “I am” (or, am I not) “the bull of the sacrificial herd. Are
not the mortuary gifts upon me, and the supernal powers?” (ch. 105).
“Witness of Eternity is my name, the persistent traveller on the
highways of heaven. I am the everlasting one, I am Horus, who
steppeth onwards through eternity.” But Horus in the Ritual is
chiefly the son of God the Father in heaven, and the subject-matter is
mainly post-resurrectional.
After the life with Seb on earth, Horus is reborn in the earth
of eternity for the heaven of eternity (78, 25). He is divinized
with the flesh or substance of god (ch. 78). By means of Horus, his
manifestor, Osiris is said to re-live. Horus is Osiris in his rebirth.
Horus rises as a god and is visible to the gods (or divine spirits) (79)
in his resurrection. Horus rises as the living soul of Ra in heaven
(127). Horus strikes the wakers in their cells or coffins for the resurrection of the manes in Amenta (ch. 84). “I raise myself up, I renew
myself, I grow young again” (ch. 43). “Not men or gods; or the
glorified ones, or the damned, can inflict any injury on me” (ch. 42).
“I do not die a second time in the nether-world” (ch. 44). “I am the
victorious one” (ch. 47). “I am seized (in possession) of the two
earths” (ch. 50). “There hath been assigned to me eternity without
end. Lo, I am the heir of endless time and my attribute is eternity”
(ch. 62). “I, even I, am he who knoweth the paths of heaven. Its
breezes blow upon me. I advance whithersoever there lieth a wreck in
the field of eternity, and I pilot myself towards the darkness and the
sufferings of the deceased ones of Osiris” (ch. 78), as the deliverer or
saviour of souls whose supreme concern and object is to be saved
from the second death in Amenta by earning and attaining the life
of the soul that is eternal. “It is I, even I, who am Horus in glory.
I am the lord of light and I advance to the goal of heaven.” Jesus
says, “I go unto him that sent me” (John vii. 33). “I know whence
I came and whither I go” (John viii. 14). “I go to prepare a place
for you.” “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one cometh to
the Father but through me” (John xiv. 6). “I go unto the Father”
(xiv. 12). But there is nothing so striking in the Gospel as this image
of Horus the saviour in the boat of souls who steers his own bark that
tosses in distressful agitation over the water, whilst he carries rescue
wheresoever there has been a wreck amongst the suffering and
deceased ones of his father Osiris.
Horus was the sole one of the seven great spirits born of the
mother who was chosen to become the only-begotten son of God the
Father when he rose up from the dead. This is he who says in the
Ritual, “I am the bright one in glory, whom Atum-Ra hath called
into being, and my origin is from the apple of his eye. Verily before
Isis was, I grew up and waxed old, and was honoured beyond those
who were with me in glory” (Rit., ch. 78, Renouf). Those who were with
him in glory were the seven great spirits, the Khuti or glorious ones.
Amongst these, Horus became the divine heir of all things, the son
of God who claims to have existed before Isis his mother, when
speaking as manifestor for the holy spirit. This is the son and heir
of God who is described in the Epistle to the Hebrews as the
“appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the worlds.”
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He was thus exalted above the angels or great spirits through
“having become by so much better than the angels” and by inheriting a more excellent name than they. “For unto which of the
angels said he at any time, thou art my son?” Horus exalts his
father in every place; “associating himself with the two divine sisters,
Isis and Nephthys,” as his two mothers. It is Taht-Ani who speaks
by him the favourable incantations which issue from his heart through
his mouth. Horus overthrows the serpent Apap daily for Ra. Horus
unites both Osiris and Ra in one triune personality, or trinity in
unity.
The sayer personalized as son of God and utterer of the logia in
the Ritual says: “I am the one proceeding from the one, the son
from a father, the father from the son” (Sarcophagus of Seti I). Jesus
is credited with having the magical power of being known or unknown, seen or unseen at will. When the Jews took up stones to
cast at him he was suddenly invisible, even in their midst (John viii.
59). Again, whilst uttering the sayings to the multitude, he was
hidden from them (John xii. 36). When risen bodily, he is the unknown one to Mary at the sepulchre. He is also the unknown one
to the disciples on the way to Emmaus (Luke xxiv). This character,
like all the rest, is according to copy supplied by the Ritual. “I am
he,” says Horus, “who cometh forth and proceedeth, and whose name
is unknown to men” (ch. 42). The Osiris has a word of power by
means of which he can conceal or manifest himself. He says: “I
am in possession of that word of power which is the most potent one
in my body here; and by means of it I make myself either known or
unknown” (Renouf, ch. 110), which is equivalent to becoming visible
or invisible at will.
“Before the feast of the Passover, Jesus, knowing that his hour was
come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having
loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the
end” (John xiii. 1). The end is here indicated by the feast of the
Passover and the last supper. In the parallel scene Horus says: “I
have come to an end for the lord of heaven, I rest at the table of my
father Osiris” (Rit., ch. 70). This immediately precedes his piercing
the veil of the tabernacle and coming forth as the divine hawk of soul
(Rit., 70-71, Renouf). Horus when addressing Ra the father on
behalf of the four brethren, his followers, says, “Be they with thee so
that they may be with me” (Rit., ch. 113). Jesus says of his followers,
“Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou hast given me that
they may be one even as we are.” “I will that where I am they
also may be with me” (John xvii. 11, 12, 24). In the same passage
of the Ritual Sut is referred to as invoking the powers of Nekhen.
In the same passage of the Gospel it is “the son of perdition.”
In this way the canonical Gospels can be shown to be a collection
of sayings from the Egyptian mythos and eschatology. The original
likeness is somewhat defeatured at times in the process, but sufficient
remains in the Ritual for the purpose of comparison and reclamation.
When Horus returns to his father with his work accomplished on earth
and in Amenta he greets Osiris in a “discourse to his father.” In
forty addresses he enumerates what he has done for the support and
assistance of Osiris in the earth of Seb. Each line commences with
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ANCIENT EGYPT
the formula, “Hail, Osiris, I am thy son Horus. I have come!”
Amongst other of the assistances he says, “I have supported thee.
I have struck thine enemies dead. I have brought the companions
of Sut to thee in chains. I have cultivated thy fields. I have watered
thy grounds. I have strengthened thine existence upon the earth. I
have given thee thy soul, thy strength, thy power. I have given thee
thy victory. I have anointed thee with the offerings of holy oil.”
This last in sign-language is, I have given thee the glory (Renouf
and Naville, Rit., ch. 173). This we parallel with the sixteenth
chapter of John, in which the position and character of Jesus are the
same with those of Horus, and in which Jesus addresses the father at
the end of his career. “I have come to thee,” says Horus to Osiris.
“Now I come to thee,” says Jesus to the Father. “Father, the hour is
come; glorify thy son that the son may glorify thee.” “I glorified
thee on earth, having accomplished the work which thou hast given
me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self
with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. I
manifested thy name unto the men whom thou gavest me out of the
world. I am no more in the world. But now I come to thee. I
kept them in thy name, which thou hast given me. I guarded them,
and not one of them perished, but the son of perdition” (xvii.
5-12). The glory of God the father was reflected by the sacred oil
upon the face of Horus the anointed son, which was a sign of his
divinity. This was “the glory as of the only-begotten from the
father” who was Horus in spirit, Horus the adult, the anointed
one with the father, and thus the representative type of a soul of
life that is eternal and attainable by all as in the only-beloved son.
It is an utterance of the truth that is eternal to say that Horus as
the son of God had previously been all the Gospel Jesus is made to
say he is, or is to become. Horus and the father were one. Jesus says
, “I and my Father are one.” “He that seeth me, seeth him that
sent me” (John xii. 45). Horus is the father seen in the son (Rit.,
115). Jesus claims to be the son in whom the father is revealed.
Horus was the light of the world, the light that is represented by the
symbolical eye, the sign of salvation. Jesus is made to declare that
he is the light of the world. Horus was the way, the truth, the life,
by name and in person. Jesus is made to assert that he is the way, the
truth, and the life. Horus was the plant, the shoot, the natzer. Jesus
is made to say, “I am the true vine.” The deceased says, “I spring
up as a plant” (Rit., 83, 1). The deceased, in the character of Horus,
or one with him by assimilation, also makes these claims for himself.
Hence the sayings—the sayings which are repeated in the Gospels,
more especially in the Gospel according to John = Aan. To parallel
a few of the sayings in the Gospels with those of the Ritual: In the
Gospel according to John, Jesus says of himself, “I am the bread of
life” (vi. 35), “I am the light of the world” (viii. 12), “I am the door of
the sheep” (x. 7), “I am the good shepherd” (x. 11), “I am the
resurrection and the life” (xi. 25), “I am the way, the truth, and the
life” (xiv. 6), “I am the true vine” (xv. 1). And Horus was the
original in all seven characters. Horus was the bread of life, also the
divine corn from which the bread of life was made (Rit., ch. 83).
Horus was the good shepherd who carries the crook upon his shoulder.
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899
Horus was the door of entrance into Amenta, which none but he
could open. Horus was the resurrection and the life. He carries the
two symbols of resurrection and of life eternal, the hare-headed
sceptre, and the Ankh-key in his hands. Horus was the way.
His name is written with the sign of the road (Heru). Horus was
the true vine, as the branch of Osiris, who is himself the vine in
person. Now the original of all these identifiable characters could
occur but once, and that prototype was Horus, or Jesus in the cult of
Atum-Ra. Horus says, “It is I who traverse the heaven. I go
round the Sekhet-Aarru (the Elysian fields). Eternity has been
assigned to me without end. Lo! I am the heir of endless time, and
my attribute is eternity” (Ritual, ch. 62). Jesus says, “I am come
down from heaven. For this is the will of the Father that every
one who beholdeth the son and believeth in him should have eternal
life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” He, too, claims to be
the lord of eternity. When Horus is “lifted up” to become glorified
and is “Horus in his glory” (ch. 78), “master of his diadem,” he says,
“I raise myself up.” Then he adds, “I stoop upon the Atit-bark
that I may reach and raise to me those who are in their circles, and
who bow down before me” as his worshippers (ch. 77). “And I,”
says Jesus, “if I be lifted up out of the earth (as Horus was lifted up
from out the nether-world), will draw all men after me” (John xii.
32, 33). Horus says, “I open the Tuat that I may drive away the
darkness.” Jesus says, “I am come a light into the world.” Horus
says, “I am equipped with thy words of power, O Ra” (the father in
heaven) (ch. 32), “and repeat them to those who are deprived of
breath” (ch. 38). These were the words of the father in heaven.
Jesus says, “The Father which sent me, he hath given me a commandment, what I should say and what I should speak. The things
therefore which I speak, even as the Father hath said unto me, so I
speak” (John xii. 49, 50). “The word which ye hear is not mine, but the
Father’s who sent me”(John xiv. 24).
Horus repeated to his
followers that which his father Osiris had said to him in the early
time (Rit., 78). Jesus says, “As the Father taught me, I speak these
things” (John viii. 28). “All things that I heard from my Father I
have made known unto you” (John xv. 15). Horus comes on earth
to report what he has known and heard and seen and handled with
the father. “I have touched with my two hands the heart of Osiris.”
“That which I went to ascertain I have come to tell.” “I know the
mysterious paths and the gates of Aarru (or Paradise) from whence
I come. Here am I, and I come that I may overthrow mine
adversaries on earth, though my dead body be buried” (Renouf, ch. 86).
Horus eats the bread of Seb on earth, but he teaches the manes in
Amenta to pray for the bread of heaven. Let him ask for food from
the Lord, who is over all (ch. 78). In this we have the germ of
the Lord’s Prayer addressed to “our Father in heaven” for “our daily
bread”: Ra being the heavenly father of Horus and the supplier of
food to souls; the daily giver of eternal life, that was represented by
the typical seven loaves of plenty. There is a prayer in the Ritual
(ch. 71) which opens with an address to the Lord of Heaven who
“reveals himself, who derobes himself, and presents himself to the
earth” in the person of Horus his son, the divine hawk or soul that
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pierces through the veil of the tabernacle. It is here referred to for
the refrain which occurs seven times over—“May his will toward me
be done by the Lord of the one face,” that is, by the one and only God
who is the father in heaven, he who “revealed himself, who disrobed
himself, and presented himself to the earth” (Renouf, ch. 71) in the
person of his beloved son.
Horus who comes from heaven says, “I am the food which
perisheth not, in my name of the self-originating force” (Rit., ch. 85).
Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. This is the bread which cometh
down out of heaven that a man may eat thereof and not die. I am
the living bread which came down out of heaven” (John vi. 48-51).
Horus was not only the bread of life derived from heaven and the
producer of bread in the character of Amsu the husbandman; he also
gave his flesh for food and his blood for drink. This, however, was
not in the cannibal form of human flesh and blood, but as the typical
calf or the lamb. Jesus says, “The bread which I will give is my
flesh.” “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his
blood ye have not life in yourselves,” that is, in the human form,
which is proclaimed to be the bread which came down out of heaven
(John vi. 53, 58). Horus says, “I am the possessor of bread in Annu.
I have bread in heaven with Ra” (ch. 53 A). “There are seven loaves
in heaven at Annu with Ra” (ch. 53 B). Ra is the father in heaven.
He is the provider of the bread of life that is given by the son, and
by Jesus in the Gospel. Jesus says, “My Father giveth you the true
bread out of heaven. For the bread of God is that which cometh
down out of heaven, and giveth life unto the world,” that is, in the
person of Jesus or of Horus. “Jesus said unto them, I am the bread
of life” (John vi. 32-35). Jesus, like Horus, is the giver of the water
of life which likewise cometh from the Father (John iv. 10 and vii. 37).
“Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and
cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.
He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly
shall flow rivers of living water” (John vii. 37, 38). In passing, we
may notice that the great feast corresponds to the Uaka festival by
which the return of the water of life in the inundation was celebrated;
and that Osiris was the lord of the water as well as of the wine.
Moreover, the miracle of converting water into wine is very simply
illustrated by the picture of Osiris as the vine and also as the water
of renewal in which the vine springs out of the water of life that
issues from beneath his throne. On the ground of natural fact, Osiris
was the water of life to the land of Egypt in the inundation of the
Nile. He was adored in the temple of Isis at Philæ as “Osiris of the
mysteries, who springs from the returning waters.” He was the water
of life to the souls in Amenta; and in the eschatology Osiris is the
water of life in Hetep, the paradise of peace, to spirits perfected. In
the Ritual, Horus is the son of God through whom is given the water
that cometh from the father, which is called the Ru of Osiris, the
divine liquid that flows from him as the ichor of life. Horus speaks
of quenching his thirst with the drops (the Ru) of his father Osiris.
So Jesus draws and drinks and gives drink from the well of living
water which is the father’s; not the well of Jacob (John iv. 10, 15),
but a well of water springing up unto eternal life.
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901
Again and again, the status and character of Jesus as the Sayer in
the Gospels are only to be determined by the mythical or mystical
relationship. “Before Abraham was, I am,” is one of the sayings
ascribed to the supposed historical Christ. Abraham is of course
referred to as the typical progenitor of the Jews. So in the Gospel
of Thomas, or Tum, the child-Jesus says to his earth-father Joseph,
“It is enough for thee to see me, not to touch me. For thou knowest
not who I am. If thou knewest thou wouldst not grieve me. And
although I am now with thee I was made before thee” (ch. 5). The
son who existed before the father claims an immense antiquity, as a
character entirely mythical, but if the statement were made a hundred
times over in the märchen the meaning would be the same. It is a
saying of the Divine Child who came into being earlier than God the
Father as the offspring of the Virgin Mother who is Jesus the fatherless Child of Mary in the Gospels, and of Neith or Iusāas in the
Ritual. Joseph also plays the part of Seb, the father, to Horus on
earth. “Seb giveth me his theophanies,” says Horus, but “more
powerful am I than the lord of time (Seb), I am the author and the
master of endless years” (Rit., ch. 82) as an image of the Eternal.
In the inscription of Hatshepsu, the child-Horus is called “the
elder of his mother’s husband.” That is, he was older than Osiris,
who became the father according to the later sociology (Obelisk of
Karnak, l. 4). Such is the sole ground of origin upon which the
father can be later than the son whether his name is Atum, Osiris or
Abraham.
The sayings involve a sayer who became the typical teacher in
person as Horus in the Osirian cult and Iu-em-hetep in the religion
of Atum-Ra, or Iao of the Egypto-gnostics in the Pistis Sophia.
These are mentioned in the texts as the divine enunciators of the
“sayings.” Each of them is a form of the sayer, word, logos,
announcer, or revealer in person, precisely the same as the Jesus of
the Gospels, whether Apocryphal, Egypto-gnostic or Canonical. The
elder Horus was the virgin’s child; he imaged the soul in matter, or,
the body-soul in the life on earth. He was the teacher of the lesser
mysteries in the mythology. He was solar; hence the leader of that
glorious company of the twelve now stationed in the zodiac as rowers
of the bark for millions of years. The primary twelve were the great
gods of Egypt twenty thousand years ago as the twelve powers that
rowed the solar bark for Ra around the circle of the zodiacal signs.
They became the Æons of the gnostics, twelve in number. As
preservers of the light, they were twelve teachers in mythology,
twelve followers of Horus who are the twelve apostles or disciples of
the Egypto-gnostic Christ; the seven and five being grouped
together to constitute the twelve.
At his second coming when Horus of the resurrection rose again as
a spirit in the image of the holy ghost—he became the teacher of the
greater mysteries to the twelve who likewise had attained the status
of spirits in the eschatology, and who were now the twelve to whom
twelve thrones were promised in the heaven of eternity.
Horus the word in person was the sayer to whom the sayings were
assigned.
Hence the “sayings,” attributed to Iu-em-hetep and
Hartatef in Egypt: the one as child of the mother; the other as son
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ANCIENT EGYPT
of the father who wore the Atef-crown of Atum-Ra. Now this
mystical “word” of the mother, and the word-made-truth in
Har-Mat-Kheru are both apparent in the opening chapter of the
Gospel according to John. “In the beginning was the word,” he
says; as it had been in Iu-em-hetep, or child-Horus. “And the
word became flesh,” which it did in the virgin-blood of the immaculate
Isis or of Hathor-Iusāas. The doctrine of the second Horus follows,
but is inserted parenthetically. “And we beheld his glory; glory as
of the only begotten from the father.” But the Jesus of the genuine
legend was not yet begotten by or from the father. He was begotten
or christified in his baptism. Matthew has it that when Jesus was
baptized he went up straightway from the water; and lo the heavens
were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a
dove, and coming upon him; and lo a voice out of the heavens, saying, This is my beloved son (ch. iii. 16, 17). In the original transformation scene this occurred when the child of the mother made his
change into the beloved son of God the father at the time of the
baptism in the Osirian mystery of Tattu (Rit., ch. 17). It was in his
resurrection from the dead, here represented by the rising from the
water, and becoming bird-headed as a spirit, that Horus became the
beloved son of the father (Rit., ch. 9). John then proceeds to
describe the transformation of Jesus in his baptism when “the spirit
descended as a dove out of heaven, and it abode upon him,” which
change had already taken place before the glory of the father could
have been visible in the person of the son. Now, this word that was
in the beginning had already manifested as the “sayer” of the
sayings in the Ritual. This is he who says, “I have come forth with
the tongue of Ptah and the throat of Hathor (Iusāas) that I may
record the words of my father Atum with my mouth.” That is, as the
utterer of the “sayings” which were ascribed to the Egyptian Jesus as
Iu-em-hetep, the son of Hathor-Iusāas and Atum-Ra. We have no
need to go further back for the beginning of the Word, as utterer of
the sayings. The canonical Gospels are based upon the “sayings”
of Jesus; the Jesus that we claim to have been the son of Atum at
On; genealogically, the grandson of Ptah at Memphis, and the
author of the books of wisdom attributed to him as the Jesus of the
Apocrypha, and Gospels of the Infancy.
Enough has been cited to show that the revelation ascribed to
Jesus, the Christ of the canonical Gospels, had been previously
published in the Ritual of the resurrection and uttered by Iu the Su of
Atum-Ra (Iusa = Jesus or Tum = Thomas), who was and is and ever
will be the Egyptian Jesus independently of any personal historical
character.
The Egyptian Ritual contains the “sayings” or the words of
wisdom that were attributed to Ra the inspiring holy spirit. As god
the father this was Tum (or Thomas). The utterer of the “sayings”
“with his mouth” was god the son, Iu (or Iu-em-hetep) the Su (son)
who was Iu-Su, the ever-coming son in the religion of Annu, and
Iusu when rendered through the Greek is Ihsoàj or Jesus.
A large part of the Egyptian Book of the Dead consists of
“sayings.” The forty-second chapter contains at least fifty sayings
uttered by Horus in person respecting himself, his father and his work
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903
of salvation. These are the sayings of Horus, or of the Osiris by
whom they are repeated in character. And as Horus the divine
word in person is the Lord whose name of Heru signifies the Lord,
these sayings of Horus are the Logia Kuriaka; assuredly the oldest
in the world, which we have now traced to Iu-em-hetep, the Egyptognostic Jesus as the sayer for Atum-Ra. These might be called the
sayings of Ra or Horus, of Tum or Thomas, of Iu or Iu-em-hetep, of
Aan, Taht or Hermes. But above all other names or titles they were
known as the words of Mati.
Also, the Gospel of the Egyptians, represented by the Ritual, was
the Gospel according to Mati (or Matiu, with the U, inherent). And
as Mati was inculcated by means of the sayings, the sayings in the
Ritual are the sayings of Mati as the words of truth, justice, law, and
rightfulness, and the revelation of the resurrection. In Dr. Birch’s
translation of “the funeral Ritual” he has given the word “Mati” as
a title of Taht-Aan the divine scribe; and from this title the present
writer deduced the names of Matthias and Matthew, as the true
reckoner, the just reckoner, and keeper of the tablets for Maati in the
hall of Maat. Taht-Aan might be designated Mati. But, whether
we take the word Mati as a proper name or title of the scribe Taht
(whether called Hermes, Aan or Mati), he was the recorder of the
sayings or Logia Kuriaka in the Ritual. But even if we do not take
the name of Mati to be a title of Tehuti, whence the names of
Matthias and Matthew, the character remains. Taht was the scribe
in the Maat or judgment-hall, also the recorder of the sayings that
were given by the Father in Heaven to be uttered by Horus, and
written down by the fingers of Taht. Now, according to the oftenquoted testimony of Papias, recorded in his last “commentary” on
the “sayings of the Lord,” the basis of the canonical Gospels was
laid in a collection of sayings that were attributed to “The Lord.”
He tells us that Matthew wrote the sayings in the Hebrew dialect,
and every one interpreted them as best he was able. This was the
current hearsay on the subject as reported by Papias, Bishop of
Hierapolis. And here we might repeat, in passing, that the sayings
of Horus the lord in the Ritual were collected and written down by
Taht-Mati the scribe, and that Matthew, or Matthias, corresponds to
Mati both in character and by name. We have no further use for the
statement beyond noting that the extant Gospel of Matthew was
evidently founded on a collection of those “wise sayings, dark
sentences and parables” that constituted the wisdom of the Egyptognostic Jesus, one late version of which has been preserved in the
Book of Ecclesiasticus, entitled “the wisdom of Jesus.” The present
writer has previously suggested that the “sayings” collected by
Matthew, which Papias had heard of as the source of the Christian
Gospels, were a form of the sayings of Mati collected from the
papyri of the Ritual. The Catholic Christians were sorely troubled
about the Egypto-gnostic Gospels in possession of the “heretics”
when they came to hear of them. These are especially associated
with the name of Valentinus, an Egyptian gnostic, who came with
these Egypto-gnostic Gospels from Alexandria, and to whom Pistis
Sophia and the “Gospel of Truth” have been attributed.
The
“Gospel of Truth,” known to the Valentinian gnostics as Egyptian, is
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ANCIENT EGYPT
the Gospel of Mati, or a collection of the sayings of Mati = Matthew.
The Logia of Matthias was the authentic gospel of the Carpocratean
gnostics. Clement of Alexandria quotes from the “Traditions of
Matthias” two sayings which are not to be found in the canonical
Matthew. This proves the existence of other sayings, oracles and
divine words than the canonical in the time of Clement, which were
assigned to Matthias = Mati. These sayings and traditions were
acknowledged as genuine by the gnostic followers of Carpocrates,
Valentinus and Basilides, who never did acknowledge any historical
founder, and whose Christ was the Egypto-gnostic Jesus—he who was
the utterer of the sayings and traditions first written down by the
divine scribe Taht-Aan = John; or Taht-Mati = Matthew.
In writing his Gospel, Basilides appealed to a secret tradition which
he had received from Matthias; and Hippolytus reports that this
secret tradition was derived by Matthias during his private intercourse
with the Saviour. But the gnostics never did acknowledge any
historic saviour. Their Christ was Horus, or the non-historical Jesus,
and therefore the private intercourse of Matthias with the Saviour was
that of Mati with Horus the Christ of the Ritual which contains the
history of that intercourse.
We are told that it was after his Resurrection that Christ revealed
the true gnosis to Peter, John and James. (Clem. Alex. Eusebius,
H. E. 2, 1). But it was only the spiritual Horus or Christ that could
reveal the true gnosis, which is here admitted versus the historic
personage. This revelation is post-resurrectional, the same as with
the gnostic Jesus in the Pistis Sophia who expounds the mysteries to
his twelve apostles on Mount Olivet after he has risen from the dead.
The “Manifestation of Truth” is the title of the great work of Marcus
the gnostic in the third century. The lost work of Celsus was the
Word of Truth or Logos Alethea. In these instances the gospel is
that of truth, the word of truth; the true gospel. And the gospel of
Mati, we repeat, is equivalent to the gospel or the sayings according
to Matthew which had been heard of by Papias as the nuclei of the
canonical Gospels. Epiphanius, in speaking of the “Sabelian Heretics,”
says, “The whole of their errors and the main strength of their
heterodoxy they derive from some apocryphal books, but principally
from that which is called the Gospel of the Egyptians (which is a name
some have given to it) for in that many things are proposed in a hidden,
mysterious manner as by our Saviour” (Ad. Haeres, 26, 2), just as
they are in the sayings of the Ritual, the sayings of Hartatef, Iu-emhetep or the sayings of Jesus. In his tirade against gnosticism
Augustine echoes the name of Mati (for truth) and shows its twofold
nature in a peculiar way as “The Truth and Truth.” He says of the
gnostics: “They used to repeat ‘Truth and Truth,’ for thus did they
repeat her name to me, but she was nowhere amongst them; for they
spoke false things, not only concerning thee who art the Truth in
Truth, but even concerning the elements of this world of ours, thy
creation; concerning which even the philosophers, who declared what
is true, I ought to have slighted for love of thee, O my father, the
supreme God, the beauty of all things beautiful. O truth! truth!
how inwardly did the marrow of my soul sigh after thee even then,
whilst they were perpetually dinning thy name into my ears, and
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905
after various fashions with the mere voice, and with many and huge
books of theirs.” (The Gnostics and their Remains, King, p. 157.)
The Book of the Dead or Ritual of the resurrection virtually
contains the Gospel of the Egyptians which was assumed to have
been lost. This is the Gospel according to Mati or Matiu, the
original, as we maintain, of that which Papias attributes to one
“Matthew,” and which was a collection of the sayings assigned
to the Jesus whom the non-gnostic Christians always assumed to
be historical. The Ritual preserves the sayings of the Egyptian
Jesus who was Iu the Su, or Sa of Atum-Ra and Iusāas at On, and
who was otherwise known as the Lord in different Egyptian religions.
This was the sayer to whom the sayings are attributed in the “Festal
Dirge” (Records, vol. IV, p. 115), and also in the Ritual and other
Hermetic Scriptures. And now we have a form of the genuine
Gospel of the Egyptians in the Ritual itself. This is the original
Evangelium Veritas: The Gospel according to Mati = Matthew; to
Aan = John; or Tum = Thomas. From this we learn, by means of
the comparative process, that the literalizers of the legend and the
carnalizers of the Egypto-gnostic Christ have but gathered up the
empty husks of Pagan tradition, minus the kernel of the Gnosis; so
that when we have taken away all which pertains to Horus, the Egyptognostic Jesus, all that remains to base a Judean history upon is
nothing more than an accretion of blindly ignorant belief; and
that of all the Gospels and collections of “Sayings” derived from
the Ritual of the resurrection in the name of Mati or Matthew,
Aan or John, Thomas or Tum, Hermes, Iu-em-hetep or Jesus, those
that were canonized at last as Christian are the most exoteric,
and therefore the farthest away from the underlying, hidden, buried,
but imperishable truth.
APPENDIX
A comparative list of some pre-existing and pre-Christian data
which were christianized in the Canonical Gospels and the Book of
Revelation.
Egyptian.
The Mysteries
The Sem, or mythical representations
The Ritual as the book of resurrection
The sayings of Iu or Iu-em-hetep
Huhi the father in heaven as the
eternal, a title of Atum-Ra
Ra, the holy spirit
Ra the father of Iu the Su, or son of
God, with the hawk or dove as the
bird of the holy spirit
Iu or Horus, the manifesting son of God
The trinity of Atum (or Osiris) the
father, Horus (or Iu) the son, and
Ra the holy spirit
Iu-Su or Iusa, the coming son of Iusāas,
who was great with Iusa or Iusu
The ever-coming Messu or Child as
Egyptian
Horus (or Heru), the Lord by name, as
a child
Isis, the virgin mother of Iu, her Su
or son
The first Horus as Child of the Virgin,
the second as son of Ra, the father
The first Horus as the founder, the
second as fulfiller for the father
The two mothers of Child-Horus, Isis
and Nephthys, who were two sisters
Meri or Nut, the mother-heaven
The outcast great mother with her
seven sons
Isis taken by Horus in adultery with
Sut
Apt, the crib or manger, by name as the
birthplace and mother in one
Seb, the earth-father, as consort to the
virgin Isis
Seb, the foster-father to Child-Horus
Seb, Isis and Horus, the Kamite holy
trinity
Christian
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The miracles.
The parables.
The Book of Revelation.
The Sayings of Jesus.
Ihuh, the father in heaven as the
eternal.
God the Holy Ghost.
God, the Father of Jesus, with the dove
as the bird of the Holy Spirit.
=
=
Jesus the manifesting Son of God.
The Trinity of the Father, Son and
Holy Spirit.
=
Jesus.
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The Hebrew Messianic Child.
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Child-Jesus as the Lord by name
(Gospels of the Infancy).
Mary the virgin mother of Jesus.
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Jesus the Virgin’s child, the Christ as
son of the father.
Jesus as the founder, and the Christ as
fulfiller for the father.
The two mothers of Child-Jesus, who
were sisters.
Mary as Regina Cœli.
Mary Magdalene, with her seven
devils.
The woman taken in adultery.
The manger as cradle of the ChildChrist.
Joseph, the father on earth, as putative
husband to the Virgin Mary.
Joseph, as foster-father to the ChildJesus.
Joseph, Mary and Jesus, a Christian
holy trinity.
908
APPENDIX
Egyptian.
Seb, the builder of the house, the
carpenter
Seb, the custodian of the mummied
dead
Sut and Horus, the twin opponents
Horus, the sower, and Sut, the
destroyer, in the harvest-field
Sut and Horus contending in the
desert
Sut and Horus contending on the BenBen or Pyramidion
Horus carried off by Sut to the summit
of Mount Hetep
Sut and Horus contending on the
mount
Sut undoing the good that Horus does
S’men, for Khemen, a title of Taht
S’men, who held Child-Horus in his
arms as the young solar god
Anna or Annit (a title of Hathor),
with Taht-S’men
The Petar or Petra by name in
Egyptian as Revealer to Horus
The house of Annu
The group in the house at Annu
Horus in Annu
Asar or Osiris
The two sisters Mertæ
Osiris, whom Horus loved
Osiris perfumed for his burial
Osiris prays that he may be buried
speedily
Osiris prepared for burial under the
hair of Hathor-Meri
Osiris, who slept in the tomb at Annu
Osiris raised from the tomb by Horus
in Annu
The mummy Osiris bidden to come
forth by Horus
The Great One who does the work of
washing
The star, as announcer for the ChildHorus
The seven Hathors (or cows) who
minister to Horus
Anup, the Precursor of Horus
Anup, the Baptizer
Aan, the saluter of Horus
Aan, a name of the divine scribe
Hermes, the scribe
Mati, the registrar
Taht, Shu, and black Sut
Nut at the pool of the Persea, or
sycamore-tree, as giver of divine
drink.
Horus born in Annu, the place of
bread
The vesture put on Horus by the
Goddess Tait
Christian
=
Joseph, the carpenter.
=
=
Joseph of Arimathea, the keeper of
the Corpus Christi.
Satan and Jesus, the twin opponents.
Jesus, the sower of the good seed, and
Satan, the sower of tares.
Satan and Jesus contending in the
wilderness.
Satan and Jesus contending on the
pinnacle.
Jesus spirited away by Satan into an
exceeding high mountain.
Satan and Jesus contending on the
mount.
Satan sowing tares by night.
Simeon.
Simeon, who took the Child-Jesus in
his arms.
Anna, the prophetess, with Simeon.
=
Peter, the revealer to the Christ.
=
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Bethany.
The group in the house at Bethany.
Jesus in Bethany.
Lazarus.
The two sisters Mary and Martha.
Lazarus, whom Jesus loved.
Jesus anointed, when the odour fills
the house.
Jesus begs that his death may be
effected quickly.
Jesus prepared for his burial beneath
the hair of Mary.
Lazarus, who slept in the tomb at
Bethany.
Lazarus raised from the tomb at
Bethany.
The mummy Lazarus bidden to come
forth by Jesus.
Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.
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The Star in the East that indicated
the birthplace of Jesus.
The seven women who minister to
Jesus.
John, the forerunner of Jesus the
Christ.
John the Baptist.
John, the saluter of the Christ.
John, the divine scribe.
Hermas, the scribe.
Matthew, the clerk.
The three kings, or Magi.
The woman at the well as giver of the
water.
Jesus born in Bethlehem, the house of
bread.
The swaddling clothes put on the
infant Jesus.
APPENDIX
Egyptian.
Offerings made to the child by the
worshippers in Annu
Child-Horus with the head of Ra
The Bull of Amenta in the place of
birth
The ass, Iu, in the birthplace
The lions of the horizon attending upon
Horus
Child-Horus
emerging
from
the
Papyrus-reed
Horus, the ancient child
Horus, the gracious child
Horus, one of five brethren
Horus, the brother of Sut the
betrayer
Amsta, the one brother of Horus in
the human form
The two sisters of Horus
Horus the lad in the country and youth
in town
Horus baptized with water by Anup
Horus in the tank of flame
Horus in his baptism becoming the
beloved Son of God the Father
Horus the husbandman with the fan in
his hand
Horus the Good Shepherd, with the
crook upon
his shoulder
Horus with the four followers in the
Mount
Horus with the seven great spirits in
the Mount
Herrut the Apap-reptile, slayer of the
younglings in the egg
Isis commanded to take her child
down into Egypt for safety
Horus as the typical fish
Horus as the fisher
The four fishers with Horus as
founders of the kingdom
Sebek, the father of the fishers
Two fisher-brethren, Kabhsenuf and
Hapi
Two other fisher-brethren, Amsta and
Tuamutef
The seven on board the bark with
Horus
The wonderful net of the fishers
Horus as the lamb
Horus as the lion
Horus (Iu) as the black child
Horus as Ahi, the striker with the
flabellum
Horus identified with the Tat or Cross
The blind Horus, in two characters, as
the God and Manes
Horus of twelve years
Horus made a man of thirty years in
his baptism
909
Christian
=
Offerings and worship of the Magi.
=
Child-Jesus with the solar glory round
his head.
The ox in the birthplace of the Child.
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The ass in the birthplace (catacombs).
The lions attending the Child-Christ
(pseudo-Matthew).
The Child-Jesus in the catacombs
issuing from the Papyrus.
The little old Jesus in the catacombs.
Jesus, the child full of grace.
Jesus, one of five brothers.
Jesus, the brother of Judas the
betrayer.
James, the human brother of Jesus.
The sisters of Jesus.
Jesus as the child in the country and
youth in town.
Jesus baptized with water by John.
Jesus the baptizer with fire.
Jesus becoming the Son of God the
Father in his baptism.
Christ coming with the fan in his hand.
Jesus the Good Shepherd, with the
lamb or kid
upon his shoulder.
Jesus with the four disciples in the
Mount.
Jesus with the seven spirits in the
Mount (Rev.).
Herod, the murderer of the innocents.
Mary warned to take her Child down
into Egypt for safety.
Jesus as Ichthus the fish.
Jesus as the fisher.
The four fishers with Jesus as founders
of the kingdom.
Zebedee, the father of the fishers.
Two fisher-brethren, Simon and
Andrew.
Two other fisher-brethren, James and
John.
The seven fishers on board the bark
with Jesus.
The miraculous draught of fishes in the
net.
Jesus as the lamb.
Jesus as a lion.
Jesus as the little black bambino.
Jesus wielding the scourge of cords as
the striker.
Jesus identified with the Cross.
The two blind men of the Gospels.
Jesus of twelve years.
Jesus, the man of thirty years in his
baptism.
910
APPENDIX
Egyptian.
Horus (Iu), the son of a beetle
Horus (or Ra) as the great cat
Horus as the shrewmouse
Horus, the healer in the mountain
Horus as Iusa, the exorcizer of evil
spirits as the Word
Horus, born as the shoot, branch, or
plant from the Nun
Osiris as the vine-plant, Aarru
Horus, the bringer of the fish and the
grapes in Egypt
Horus, the child standing on two
crocodiles which adore him
Horus, the child of a widow
Horus, the child of the widow in
Sutenkhen
The golden Horus
Horus full of wine
Horus, who gives the water of life
Christian
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Horus in the lentils and the grain
Horus as Unbu in the bush of thorn
Horus the just and true
Horus-Mat-Kheru, the Word made
truth at the second coming
The human Horus glorified in becoming a (Khu) spirit
The world made through Horus
Horus the bridegroom with the bride
in Sothis
Horus of both sexes
=
=
=
=
Horus who exalteth his father in every
sacred place
Horus as Remi the weeper
Dumb Horus, or the silent Sekari
Horus behaving badly to Isis
Horus the gladsome
Horus as prince of the divine powers
Horus the uplifted serpent
Horus as the Bennu
Horus who giveth light by means of
his own body
Horus the hider of himself as HarSheta
Horus the word-made-flesh
Horus the word-made-truth
Horus in the bosom of Ra
Horus the Krst
Horus the avenger
Iu-em-hetep who comes with peace
Horus called the illegitimate child
Horus the afflicted one
Horus the unique one
Horus the lord of resurrections from
the house of death
Horus as the type of life eternal
Iu (em-hetep) the child-teacher in the
temple
=
=
=
=
=
Jesus, the good Scarabæus.
Jesus as the cat.
The mouse of Jesus dedicated to
“Our Lady.”
Jesus, the healer in the mountain.
Jesus, the caster out of demons with a
word.
Jesus born as the Natzer of Nazareth,
so rendered in the course of
localizing the legend.
Jesus as the vine.
Jesus as bringer of the fish and the
grapes (catacombs).
The Christ-Child adored by dragons =
crocodiles.
The Child-Christ who lodges with a
widow in Egypt.
The Child-Christ with the widow in
Sotenin (pseudo-Matthew).
The corn-complexioned Jesus.
Jesus the wine-bibber.
Jesus as giver of the water of
life.
Jesus the bread of life.
Jesus in the crown of thorn.
Jesus the faithful and true.
Jesus the spirit of truth at the Second
Advent.
The spirit not given until Jesus is
glorified.
The world made through Jesus.
Jesus the bridegroom with the bride.
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Jesus as the bearded Sophia; Charis,
the female Christ.
Jesus who exalteth his father in every
place.
Jesus as the weeper.
Jesus silent before his accusers.
Jesus speaking brutally to his mother.
Jesus the jocund.
Jesus the prince.
Jesus uplifted as the serpent.
Jesus as the phœnix.
Jesus the light of the world.
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Jesus the concealer of himself.
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Jesus the word-made-flesh.
Jesus the doer of the word.
Jesus in the bosom of the Father.
Jesus the Christ.
Jesus who brings the sword.
Jesus the bringer of peace.
Jesus called the Mamzer.
Jesus the afflicted one.
Jesus the unique one.
Jesus the resurrection and the life.
=
=
Jesus the type of eternal life.
The Child-Jesus as teacher in the
Temple.
APPENDIX
Egyptian.
Child-Horus as sower of the seed
Har-Khuti, lord of the harvest
Horus the founder
Horus the fulfiller
Horus as master of the words of
power
Horus Ma-kheru
Horus as the lily
Horus the link
Horus who came to fulfil the law
Horus as bearer of the Ankh-symbol
of life and the Un-sceptre of resurection
Horus (or Khunsu) the chaser of
boastfulness
Horus of the Second Advent
Horus the hidden force
Horus as Kam-Ura, the overflower,
and extender of the water illimitably
Horus, who came by the water, the
blood and the spirit
Horus the opener as Unen
Horus of the two horizons
Horus as teacher of the living generation
Horus as teacher of the spirits in
Amenta
Horus as teacher on the Atit-bark,
with the seven glorious ones on
board
Horus uttering the words of Ra in the
solar bark
Horus walking the water
The blind mummy made to see by
Horus
Horus and the Hamemmat or younglings of Shu
The children of Horus
Horus the raiser of the dead
Horus the raiser up of Asar
Horus, who imparts the power of the
resurrection to his children
Horus entering the mount at sunset to
hold converse with his father
Horus one with the father
Horus transfigured on the mount
Amsu-Horus in his resurrection as a
Sahu-mummy
The blood of Isis
The field manured with blood in Tattu
The mummy-bandage that was woven
without
seam
Seven souls of Ra the Holy Spirit
Seven hawks of Ra the Holy Spirit
Seven loaves of Horus for feeding the
multitude reposing in the green
fields of Annu
Twelve followers of Har-Khuti
911
Christian
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Child-Jesus as sower of the seed.
Jesus, lord of the harvest.
Jesus the founder.
Jesus the fulfiller.
Jesus whose word was with power.
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Jesus, “the witness unto the truth.”
Jesus typified by the lily.
Jesus the bond of union.
Jesus who comes to fulfil the law.
Jesus as the resurrection and the life
personified.
=
Jesus the humbler of the proud.
=
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The coming Christ.
Jesus the concealed.
Jesus, giver of the water of life without limit.
=
Jesus, who came by the water, the
blood and the spirit.
Jesus the opener with the keys.
Jesus of the two lands.
Jesus as teacher on the earth.
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Jesus as preacher to the spirits in
prison.
Jesus the teacher on the boat, also with
the seven fishers on board.
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Jesus uttering the parables on board
the boat.
Jesus walking the water.
The blind man given sight by Jesus.
=
Jesus and the little ones.
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The children of Jesus.
Jesus the raiser of the dead.
Jesus the raiser up of Lazarus.
Jesus who confers the same power on
his followers.
Jesus entering the mount at sunset to
hold converse with his father.
Jesus one with his father.
Jesus transfigured on the mount.
Jesus rising again corporeally or incorporated.
The issue of blood suffered by the
woman.
Aceldama.
The vesture of the Christ without a
seam.
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Seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Seven doves of the Holy Spirit.
Seven loaves of Jesus for feeding the
multitude reclining on the grass.
=
Twelve followers of Jesus, as the twelve
disciples.
912
APPENDIX
Egyptian.
Horus with the twelve in the field of
divine harvest
The twelve who reap for Horus
Horus as the intercessor
Horus as the great judge
The judgment of the righteous, who
are the sheep of Horus, the good
shepherd
The judgment of the guilty, who are the
goats of Sut
Horus parting off the evil dead
The condemned spirits entering the
swine
The glorious ones that wait on Horus
Horus ascending to heaven from
Bakhu, the Mount of the olive tree
Christian
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Jesus with the twelve in the harvestfield.
The twelve who reap for Jesus.
Jesus as the paraclete.
Jesus as the great judge.
Judgment of the righteous, who are
the sheep of Jesus the Good
Shepherd.
Judgment of the wicked, who are the
goats of Satan.
Jesus parting off the accursed.
The evil spirits entering the swine.
The angels that minister unto Jesus.
Jesus ascending to heaven from Mount
Olivet.
——————————————
The revelation of Horus, given by
Ra, his father, to make known the
mysteries of divine things to his
followers
The revelation written down by Aan
(Tehuti), the scribe of divine words
The saluter Aani, who bears witness
to the word of Ra and to the testimony of Horus
The secret of the Mysteries revealed by
Taht-Aan
The books in Annu
The books and their bringer
Seven dungeon-seals
The great mother Apt, the pregnant
water-cow
The crocodile as great mother
The great mother as Hathor, the
abode
The great or enceinte mother in her
lunar character
Isis, who brought forth Horus in the
marshes
Isis pursued by the great crocodile
Isis, hawk-winged
The bride as Hathor-Isis, with the
calf or lamb upon the mount of
glory
Atum-Huhi, the closer and the opener
of Amenta
Atum-Ra, the holy spirit
Hathor-Iusāas the bride, with Horus
the lamb (or earlier calf) upon the
mount
Anup and Aan, the two witnesses for
Horus
The seven Khuti or glorious ones
Horus, with the seven Khabsu stars, or
gods of the lamp
Sebek-Horus the lamb on the mount
Horus the morning star
=
The revelation of Jesus Christ which
God gave him to show unto his
servants.
=
The Revelation written by John the
divine.
John, who bears witness to the Word
of God and the testimony of Jesus
Christ.
The secret of the Mysteries made
known by John.
The book of doom and the book of
life in Patmos.
The book and its opener.
The book with seven seals.
The woman sitting on the waters.
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The dragon as great mother.
The woman that was the great city
personalized.
The woman arrayed with the sun
about to bring forth the child
The woman who brought forth in the
wilderness.
The woman persecuted by the dragon.
The woman with eagle’s wings.
The bride as the lamb’s wife upon
the mount.
Ihuh, who carries the keys of death
and Hades as closer and opener.
The spirit.
The bride with the lamb upon the
mount.
The two Johns as witnesses for Jesus.
The seven spirits of God.
Jesus in the midst of the seven golden
lamp-stands.
Jesus the lamb on the mount.
Jesus the morning star.
APPENDIX
Christian
Egyptian.
Horus, who gives the morning star to
his followers
The Har-Seshu, or servants of Horus
The seven spirits of fire around the
throne of Ra
The fathers, or the ancient ones
The four corner-keepers
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The solar god of golden form
=
Iu the son of man (or Atum)
Horus as the first-born from the dead
=
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Horus in the house of a thousand
years
Sebek the solar dragon
=
Seven souls or powers of Ra
The eighth to the seven
Ten Tata-gods or powers
The war in heaven
Har-Tema as the avenger, the red
god who orders the block of execution
Har-Makhu
Sut the accuser
Sut and Horus
The celestial Heptanomis
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The seven children of the old earthmother
Horus at the head of the seven
The last judgment
The mount of glory
=
The mount as judgment-seat
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The lion-faced throne of steel
The great judge seated on his throne
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The god in lion form
=
The god in the solar disc
=
The god whose dazzling mouth sends
forth breezes of flame
Osiris-Tat, the sufferer in the Lower
Egypt of Amenta
The Apap-reptile, the serpent of
evil
Apap, the power of evil in the Abyss
=
The binding of Apap in chains and
casting the beast into the Abyss
Apap and Sut bound in chains and cast
into the Abyss
The Ankh-key of life and the Unsymbol of the resurrection
The first resurrection and the second
death in Amenta
913
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Jesus, who gives the morning star to
his followers.
The servants of Jesus Christ.
The seven spirits of fire before the
throne.
The four-and-twenty elders.
The four living creatures at the four
corners.
The form with feet like unto burnished
brass, and countenance as of the
sun.
Jesus the son of man.
Jesus the Christ as first-born of those
that slept.
The Millennial reign of Jesus.
The scarlet-coloured beast with seven
heads.
Seven heads of the solar dragon.
The eighth to the seven.
The ten horns or kings.
The war in heaven.
The word of God, faithful and true,
with raiment dipped in blood.
Michael the Archangel.
Satan the accuser.
Christ and the Anti-Christ.
The seven mountains of earth or
islands in the sea.
The seven kings of the earth.
Jesus at the head of the seven.
The last judgment.
The throne set in heaven on the
mount.
The mount as throne of the Great
Judge.
The great white throne.
The Great Judge on the judgmentseat.
The god who is the lion of the Tribe
of Judah.
The god with the sun-like countenance.
The god from whose mouth proceeded
the two-edged sword.
The Lord who was crucified in Egypt.
Abaddon, Apollyon, or Satan, that old
serpent.
Abaddon or Apollyon, the angel of the
Abyss.
The binding of the dragon, that old
serpent, and casting him into the Pit.
The Devil and Satan bound in a great
chain and cast into the Pit.
The keys of death and Hades in the
hands of the opener.
The first resurrection and the second
death.
914
APPENDIX
Egyptian.
The Lake of Putrata where the lost
souls fall headlong into everlasting
night
The beatified in their white garments
of glory
The name of Ra on the head of the
deceased
The little column of white stone given
as a talisman to the initiates
The mount of the double earth in
Hetep
The eternal city at the summit
The water of life as lake or river
The two divine sycamores over the
water of life
The water of life proceeding from the
throne of Osiris.
The great lake in Hetep upon which
the gods and glorified alight
The great white lake of Sa
The calf (later lamb) of Horus standing on the mount with Hathor the
bride
The lunar goddess Hathor bearing the
solar orb
The glorified in Hetep stoled and
girdled and crowned
The emerald dawn around the mount
or throne of Ra
The Ba enclosure of Aarru, in twelve
measures
Heaven according to the measure of a
man
The paradise of the pole-star
The ark of Osiris-Ra
Christian
=
The lake of the second death.
=
=
The beatified spirits arrayed in
white.
The name of the Father written on the
forehead.
The white stone given to the initiated.
=
The mountain great and high.
=
=
=
The Holy City.
The river of the water of life.
The tree of life on either side of the
water of life.
The water of life proceeding from the
throne of God.
The glassy sea on which the victors
stand triumphant.
The sea of crystal.
The lamb standing on Mount Zion with
the bride.
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
The woman arrayed with the sun, and
the moon at her feet.
The angels girt about the breasts with
golden girdles.
The rainbow like an emerald round the
throne.
The walled enclosure of the New
Jerusalem, in twelve measures.
Heaven according to the measure of a
man.
The Holy City lighted by one luminary
that is neither the sun nor the moon
= the pole-star.
The Ark of the New Covenant in
heaven.
INDEX
Aaiu, the Egyptian Jews, worshippers of the
Kamite deity Iu, 511, 653; —, in the
Underworld, 647, 653
Aan, the divine Scribe, 691; witness for
Horus, 706, 855
Aarru Garden, 196, 363, 373, 640, 658;
sown with wheat and barley, 228, 460;
harvest field, 239, 372; Paradise, field of
papyrus reeds, 259, 304; the Upper and
the Lower, 347; in the north, Paradise
of the Eight Great Gods, 348, 355; allotments for cultivation, 359, 416, 447, 468,
659; Paradise repeated in Amenta, 420;
the Celestial, 421; on the eastward side of
Amenta, 460, 642; title-deeds of; its wheat
and barley seven cubits high, 460; divine
domain, divided into fourteen sections, 577;
the Egyptian and the Jewish, 687
Abait: see Bee
Aber-Amentho, the Gnostic Jesus in Amenta,
772-3; lord of the Resurrection, 780, 803
Abraham, seven footprints of, 606
Abut or Abtu, a form of Apap, 714
Abyss, of waters, habitat of hideous beings,
280-2; the Mystical, 284, 302; the first,
underground, 284; source of water, 282,
299, 300, 412, 446; repeated in Amenta,
446; Song sung on the steps of the, 472
Aceldama, the field of blood, compared with
fertilizing the earth with the blood of the
wicked, 878
Achernar, starting-point of the astronomical
Nile, 286
Achor, Hebrew valley of sorrow, Egyptian
Akar, 474
Adam, two wives of, Lilith and Chavvah,
78; two, the mortal on earth, Manes in
Amenta, 423, 425; a dweller in the Celestial
Heptanomis, 428; the first and second,
432, 442; the generations of, 435; the first,
born with a tail, 436, 442
Adultery, penalty for, 85; with spirits, 174
Æsculapius, the Greek Iu-em-hetep, 755
Agapæ, Phallic festival of fertilization, 105,
108, 223, 747; Christian celebration of,
223-4
Aiu, ass-headed god, with the solar disk,
647, 653; followers of Iu, later Jews, 648;
accompanying the sun-god as the “Flocks
of Ra,” 653
Airyana Vaêjô, Paradise described in the
Avesta, 378
Ak, star to which the rope of the solar boat
was made fast, 395
Akar, a name of Amenta, 396; burial-place
of Gog and his multitude, 473; valley of
Amenta, sepulchre of Osiris in, 474; resurrection in, 475; covert in the midst of,
476; the lowest story of the Ark, 574
Akar or Khar, an underworld presided over
by the Sphinx, 337
Akerit, Goddess of Akar, 337
Akhemu-Seku, the non-setting stars, 323,
387, 627
Akilles, Sun-god, 364
Alban Hills, the seven, 609
Alcheringa, mythical past, 66; ancestors,
half woman, half man, 179; no men or
women in, 429
Alexander, as Ichthus, the fish, 743
Ali, the Associate Gods with Ptah, 344, 405,
409, 410, 413, 414, 432-8, 594
Altar, Coffin, the first, 221; of the Palmyrene
at Rome, 343; of the Cyclops, 386; for
sacrifices after the Deluge, 569; of the
Pole, Mound, 587; built by Moses, 666;
astronomical in the Constellation Ara, 786;
night of provisioning the, 868
Amalek, compared with the Egyptian Am,
644; war of, 661
Amemit, the typical devourer, 643
Amen, the ram-headed, Constellation Aries,
302
Amen-Ra, the Egyptian Apollo, 714; the
“Entire God,” 717
Ame-no-mi-Hashira, Japanese divine
pillar of the heavens, 351
Ame-no-mi-naka-Nushi-no-Kami,
Japanese God of the Pole-star, 379
Amenta, meeting place of sun and moon, 31;
resurrection of the soul in, 152; Manes put
together in, 198; mystical Abodes in, 201;
Solar god in, 211; night of the great battle
in; ten great mysteries on ten different
nights, 220; entrance to, a movable stone,
227; traditions of, continued in Rome, 241;
mysteries of, purification by fire, 247; eater
of the Shades in, 318; excavated by Ptah
and his Seven Ali, 344, 411, 413, 638;
subterranean country of the nocturnal sun,
916
INDEX
dawn and sunset its gates, road to heaven for
the Manes, its firmament upraised by Ptah,
347; earth of the Manes, 355; entrance
to, a blind doorway, 358; its purgatory,
hells, mount, tree, solar bark, ladder
of ascent to heaven, 360; the Irish —, 366;
Paradise of Atum, 397; Dante’s Inferno,
Purgatory, Paradise, domains in, 415; place
of purification and preparation for Paradise,
415; a funeral valley in the West, mount of
resurrection in the East, 416; a new dynasty
of deities founded; various stars, constellations, &c., repeated in, 420; the making
of, repeated as the Creation in Genesis,
425; entrance to, in the West, 460; fourteen
domains in, 461; the valleys of Achor,
Rephaim, Siddim, Hinom, figures of, 475;
land of monsters, compared with Psalms,
481; entrance to, 639-40; the place of
graves, 644; twelve domains, gates, astronomical divisions, 649, 774; battles in,
652; abodes of; height of its giants; size of
its corn, 657; Hades in the eleventh
abode; the devouring demon, Am-Moloch,
658; war of light and darkness in, 713;
twelve divisions in, corresponding to the
twelve hours of darkness; twelve gates or
doors guarded by twelve serpents, repeated
in the Pistis Sophia, 774; the secret earth
of the nocturnal sun, in the Mythos; spirit
world of the dead once more living, in the
Eschatology, 806
Am-Khemen, Paradise of the Eight Great
Gods, 304, 321, 322, 348, 350, 364, 379,
397, 422, 445, 448, 584, 603, 621
Ammah, place of refuge in Amenta, 643; a
region reserved for the gods and glorified
spirits; land of Goshen; sixth abode;
salutation of the Manes to, 651
Amsta, Hapi, Tuamutef, and Kabhsenuf, brothers, children, of Horus, gods
of the four quarters, 782, 824, 826, 857-9;
paralleled with James, Andrew, John, Peter,
859, 864; the four who guard the coffin of
Osiris, 877
Amsu, the awaking of, 477; the staff of,
buried with the deceased, found in the
oldest coffins; type of protecting power, 487
Amsu-Horus, type of resurrection, 190,
753; the Christ who rose from the mummy
as spirit; the Kamite Christ, 215; the man
of thirty years, 332, 367; Shepherd
of the Flocks of Ra, 487, 753; the bull of
his mother, 515; “lifter of the arm,”
531-3, 832; the husbandman, 710; the
transformation of, at thirty years of age;
the Good Shepherd, 798; the risen Sahu,
identical with the Christ of Paul, 800
An, an ancient throne name, 277
Ancestor-Worshippers, Spiritualists, 154,
162-3
Ancestors, festival of, 121; mythical, of the
Arunta, 149; Two Spirits of the Japanese,
402
Ancestral Spirits, worship of, 146, 150-1;
in the Book of the Dead, 152; prayers to,
154-5
Ancestral Spirits and Animistic Nature
Powers, difference between; 145-8; offer
food to the voyagers in the Ark of Nnu
when they arrive in the eternal city, 555
Angels who fell from heaven, 618; the
seven in Revelation, 700
Anhur, uplifter of the sky, 314, 658; name
of Shu, 631; equivalent of Moses, 658,
661; uplifter of the firmament at night;
leader of the upper heaven; Regulus; lifter
of the solar disk at dawn, 660. Shu —
compared with Moses, 663, 665-6, 682-3;
compared with Onouris, 665; the smiter of
the rock, 667
Ani, picture of, 412; with his wife Tutu in
Amenta, the Adam and Eve of Genesis,
463-4, 469; the resurrection of, 865
Animal sounds, foundation of words, 41,
43, 49, 50
Animal types, 9, 10, 12, 16, 44, 50
Animals, symbolical language of, 9; hieroglyphic signs, 12, 33, 42-3; Totemic, 51
Ankh, key of life, Egyptian, 717, 889; keys
of death and hell, Revelation, 717
Ankhu, Mount in the West, 368; the eternal
God, a title of Atum-Huhi, 717
Annedoti, seven fish-men, 597
Annu, of the South, Hermonthes; of the
North, Heliopolis; station of the Pole, 266;
Celestial locality, the eternal city, 363,
397; lamp of, 397; meeting-place of the
two earths; peace between Sut and Horus
proclaimed in, 414; Horus, heir of, 529;
Nome of the Prince of, 550; Books of
Taht, kept in, 703; the place of bread,
812; seven loaves with Ra in, 812, 836;
Horus, the avenger of his father in; Horus
drives his adversaries from the temple of,
837; resurrection of Osiris in, 842; paralleled with Bethany, 845; place of provisions
for the Manes; place of the festivals of
Osiris; an oasis in the desert of Amenta
created for Osiris; the two divine sisters
given to him there, 846
Annunciation, Conception, Birth, Adoration, four scenes depicted in the temple
of Luxor, 757
Anointed, of the Lord, 521
Anointing, the boy when he became an
adult, 95, 217; the mortal Horus when he
became Horus in spirit; Roman Catholic,
95; the mummies, 95, 216; statue of the
deceased, with oil, 214; the Mummy,
making the typical Christ, 215; Jesus, 846,
871, 880; Horus, 880
Anrutef, a land of darkness, 416; the
wilderness of; the place where Isis sought
the water of life, 528; the Desert in
Amenta, 642, 676; the wilderness where
Horus was made blind by Sut, 835
Ansar and Kisar, creation of, 400
Anu, “King of the Seven Sons of earth,” 323
Anunaki, Seven Spirits of earth, 272, 323,
338, 412; guardians of the water of life,
338, 412
Anup, as jackal, 2, 436; god of the Pole, 126,
369; the embalmer, 217-8; eighth god,
deity of the north celestial Pole, 322-3;
son of Nut, 323; portrayed on a gnostic
gem holding two scorpions, 324; great
Judge in heaven, 331, 386, 861; the
INDEX
baptizer, 364; with Tehuti on the equinoctial colure; jackal god, guide of ways, 369;
master of the inundation, 377, 550; the
Crier in the wilderness, preparer of the way
of the Lord, 523, 862; bark of, 559;
witness for Horus, 706, 855; baptizer of
Horus, 787; the typical baptizer, 794
Anup and Bata, legend of, compared with
Joseph, 27; the twin brothers, 512; form
of Sut and Horus, 512-3; Bata the bull,
514
Apap, water reptile, 9, 258, 448, 712;
dragon, piercing his eye, 19; prototype of
evil, 121; figure of, made in wax to be
destroyed, 209; “Old Serpent,” 240;
Constellation Hydra, 259, 270, 287, 298;
dragon of drought, 287, 291, 298; devourer
of the moon; a snake, the type of, 287;
bringer of death into the world, 288;
speared by Isis, 288, 417; dragon of darkness, 291, 369, 417; the drowning of, 292,
298, 634; fighting Horus in the decans of
the Twins, 295; dragon of evil, 320; the
lair of, 361; void of, 394, 448; cause of
strife in Amenta; the Jewish evil serpent,
447; the battle with, in Amenta, in Aarru,
462, 653; dragon, the Pharaoh who kept
the people in bondage, 655; the monster
that drank up all the water; the Fall of,
713; the zoömorphic type of evil, the Evil
One in mythology, 833
Apapa, Arunta whirlwinds, 287
Ape, saluter of the light, 4, 691; typical
talker, 39; type of Taht, 556, 691; a giant,
of seven cubits; eight cubits, 594; one of
the giants of the Pole-star constellations;
zoötype of Shu, 613
Apes, Seven spirits of fire round the throne of
Ra, compared with the Seven in Revelation,
721
Apsaras and Dragon, Japanese myth, origin
of Japan, 603
Apt, as water-cow, 2, 261, 306, 387, 589;
the Old first mother, 59; as hippopotamus
type of the Great Mother, 97, 260; Great
Mother in four manifestations; mother of
sparks, 123; Goddess of the Great Bear,
187, 321; the “Living Word,” 193;
“Mother of beginnings”; “Mother of the
starry revolutions,” 221; Great Mother in
Nubia, 251; compound figure of the Great
Mother, 274; as crocodile, 277; Mother of
the fields of heaven, 305, 321-2; giver of
liquid, 306; Cow of earth, 311; Ark of
souls, 387, 558; Mother of the Seven
Primeval Powers, 421; Protector of the
dead, 455; the Chinese Dragon a form of,
589; the red hippopotamus; the Scarlet
Lady of the Ritual, 698; the female dragon,
707; kindler of light for the deceased, 883
Apta, Egyptian name of the equator, 259;
Mount of earth, figure of the equator, 261;
the old primeval home, 270; highest point
of earth in, 348; Mount of earth, 376
Apuat, jackal, 86, 369, 387; opener of
roads, 862
Aquarius, sun in, end of inundation, 300;
Menat, 302
Ara, Southern altar, 270
917
Aralli, land of, Babylonian, 349
Argo Navis, bark on the waters of the
Milky Way, 362, 575; a form of the Ark
of heaven, 396; collector of souls, 579;
receding backwards in Precession, 580
Arg Roud, Cow of heaven, 313
Aries, Amen, the ram-headed, 302
Arits, mansions, seven in the great house of
the eternal city, 600
Ark, of eight measures in the Paradise of AmKhemen, 324, 577; earliest figure of, Horus
on his papyrus reed, 394; of the moon, 550;
of souls, 551; type of helpfulness and
charity, 552; of Nnu, 553, 558, 565, 575; of
Ra, 553-4; that rested on Mount Nizir,
Mount Ararat, Mount Manu, 553, 554,
556; of seven cubits, 551, 577; of eight
cubits, 555-6, 577; of four cubits, 577;
the Pleiades an — for the Khuti; the Lesser
Bear an — for Anup and the seven voyagers
round the Pole; Orion an — for the holy
Sahus, 558; the crescent moon — of Taht,
558, 563; — of the four quarters, 559,
575; eight persons in the — of Ra, eight in
the — of Noah, 560, 564; the two birds
that flew out of the, 563; — of Osiris, 564;
of Noë; Noah; of the Seven; of the
heaven in ten divisions, of the heaven
in twelve divisions, 565; of Menwyd,
formed of serpents joined together, 573; of
Noah; figure of three worlds, 573; of Nnu
on the sarcophagus of Seti, 574; of Noë on
an Apamean coin; of the Sphere; coffin, a
type of, 576; lunar measurements of, solar
measurements of, 578; a geometrical figure
of the heaven, 579; an — of safety for the
Seven, 594; of Noah, Armenian tradition,
608; tortoise, a Mandan image of the, 617;
descent of the human race from the, 621;
of bulrush, of papyrus reed, 663; — or
sanctuary, Moses commanded to make, 668;
— shrine, 669-70
Ark-city, Surippak; Erech-Suburi; Seven
at the seven stages of the Pole, 587; at
Mycenæ; Erech of the seven stones, 604
Arm, of the Lord, 529, 531-2; of Osiris, 529,
531; holy — of retribution; right — lifted,
sign of resurrection; Amsu-Horus, “lifter
of the arm,” 531-3, 832; Fijian custom of
burying a hero with his right — out of the
ground, 531; freeing the — of the mummy
from the bandages, type of resurrection,
832
Arth, Goddess of the Great Bear in ancient
Welsh mythology, 309, 376
Arthur, the eighth in the Company of eight
British gods, 322, 368; the Irish Horus,
366; — and his knights, 376; Round Table
of, 381; glass fort of, 391
Asenath, wife of Joseph; a form of Neith,
515
Ashmunein, town of Taht, 304
Ashtoreth, Solomon’s temple to; Mount of
the Mother, 538
Ass, type of Tum, 24; Saluter of the Gods,
39; type of Iu, 503, 506, 732; Iao and
Aiu, god with the head of an —, 506, 647;
Iao-Sabaoth, god with the face of an —;
—headed god in the Collegio Romano, 506;
918
INDEX
—, type of the solar sufferer in Amenta,
507; type of the solar power divinized in
Atum, 507, 753; statue of a man sitting on
an, 507
Astronomical Signs, personified Nature
powers, 123; compared with Egyptian gods
and goddesses, 302
“Aten,” ancient form of Har-Makhu, 339
Athamas, the twofold, at Samothrace, 500
Atlantis, name, 549; Lost Islands of, 550,
581, 583, 603, 609; Seventh island sank
when the seventh station of the Pole subsided, 621
Atlas, the Egyptian Shu-Anhur, elevator of
the sky, 352
Atum (Atum-Ra, Atum-Horus, Atum-Iu),
man perfected in, 88; begetter of souls,
182; the One God, 183-4; son of Ptah,
234-5, 411, 431, 434; a voluntary sacrifice,
234-5; creator by blood, 235; Sign of
Leo, 302; Great Judge, 358, 386, 473, 704,
720; crosser in the solar bark, 411, 431,
434; Ra at his first appearance in Amenta,
412; earliest representative of the nocturnal
sun, 416; his war with Apap, 417; creator
of eternity; enlightener of the double earth,
419; twelve gods in the heaven of, 422;
—s, two, corresponding to the two Adams,
424; one god in the two characters of
Father and Son, 424, 520, 668; Kamite
Holy Spirit, 428, 721, 763; represented by
the lion, 436, 504; development of, 436;
original of the Hebrew Adam, 437; first
god delineated in the form of a man, 437-8,
442, 724, 793; male and female creator in
one; giver of breath, 441; two wives of,
456; seven souls of, 479; represented at
Annu by the fish of the inundation, also by
Iu-em-hetep as Ichthon the fish, 500; the
Lion of Judah, 503; represented by an
ass, 506; the god of Justice, Truth, and
Righteousness, 537; the ass-headed god in
Amenta, 647; the sun in Amenta, 648; the
One God worshipped at On or Annu, 668,
680; the bull, 677; divine lawgiver, 678;
god the father in Revelation, 717; the closer
and opener of Amenta, 717-8; the red god,
718; god with the lion’s face, portrayed
standing on a lion, “god in lion form,” 731;
the fish of Iusāas and bread of Nephthys,
734; the resurrection of, supported by his
two sons, 886, 889
Atum-Huhi, the only deity in Egypt worshipped as the living Lord, 717
Audhumla, Cow of heaven, 312-3
Augustine, his tirade against Gnosticism,
904
Augustus, in the character of “Prince of
peace,” the Messiah of astronomical mythology, 742, 760; rebuilder of the Temple of
Hathor at Denderah; proclaimed himself
God on Earth and was worshipped; a
Greek Inscription respecting the birthday
of, 760
Aurora Borealis, light of the Esquimaux
Mount of Glory, 378
Avaiki, mute land, Mangaian myth, 67;
mother and daughter, 86
Avalon, an ancient British island in the
north, on which the “Loadstone Castle”
stood, 381.
Avilix, Mexican god turned into stone, 605
Ba, human-headed soul, 479
Baal, the name of, 498
Baalim, the seven Ali or Companion Gods,
497-8
Baba, the eternal devourer; banquet of, 714
Baboon, the judge in Namaqualand fable,
252
Bacchus, male-female, 717
Bahu, god of the inundation, 277; source of
the inundation, 278
Baiame, God of some Australian tribes, 376
Bakhu, the solar Mount, 348, 824; Egyptian
Mount of Olives, 754, 772, 820-1; mount
on which the dead were raised, 813;
Mount of Glory, 819; Sebek, Lord of,
824
Balance, figure of the equinoctial level, 344,
679; seven arms of the, 344; Amsu-Horus,
his eyebrows “two arms of the,” 533; arms
of the, 422, 551, 600, 705; in the circumpolar Maat, 602; symbo of Maat, 679; for
weighing the good and evil deeds, 705, 709;
in Revelation, 709
Ballima, heaven in New Holland mythology,
244
Bambino, the black child-Christ, 754
Baptism, the deceased baptized ten times,
235; in natron, nitre, salt, 236; in the lake
of propitiation, 375; Jesus proclaimed the
Son of God the Father at his, 790, 856; in
the waters of the setting sun; Jesus
prepared by his — for his conflict with
Satan, 835
Bark (or boat), the Maatit and the Sektit,
361; of heaven; of millions of years, 395;
of Ra, 347, 411; of souls, 395, 554, 656,
737; of heaven, its arrival greeted, 396;
of Orion, 550; solar, 551; type of helpfulness and charity, 552; of the sun,
directed by the Osiris Nnu, 570; four gods
of, 574; an ark of safety for the Primordial
Seven, 594; of Hasisadra, 600; the
papyrus —; — of Peter, 763; Horus the
teacher in, with the Four, Seven, or
Twelve, Jesus the teacher in, 827-8;
—s, two, of the Lord of Sau; two mentioned by Luke, 829
Bata, the bull beloved by Pharaoh, 514-5:
see also Anup and Bata
Beast, with seven heads and ten horns, 700,
707-8
Bee, type of soul; “telling the bees,” 14;
—, Mantis or bird-fly, conductor of spirits
to their home; tiller of the rudder of
Neshemit, 383; type of Ra; guide to the
Aarru Garden, 656
Beer, the divine drink in the Egyptian and
Irish Earthly Paradise, 375
Beetle, type of transformation, 137;
harbinger of the inundation; figured in the
Crab Constellation, 295; representative of
Cancer; Sign of Khepera, as Horus of the
two horizons, 335; two —s mark the
station where Horus manifests as solar
deity, 335; zoötype of Ptah, 405
INDEX
Behemoth, female monster, 279; hippopotamus of Sut, 496; Egyptian Bekhmut,
the hippopotamus; female zoötype of the
Great Mother, male image of her son
Sut, 588
Bekhi, the frog, 29
Bel, a Pole-star God, deluge of, 570
Belus, creation from the blood of, 89, 429;
“inventor of sidereal science,” 585
Bennu, herald of the inundation, prototype
of the Phœnix, 295; image of the soul
ascending, 388; emblem of the solar god,
493
Bes, figure of Horus, 250; Negroid pygmy,
437
Bethany, the group in, 841, 848; paralleled
with Annu, 845; the group in, compared
with the group of Osiris, Isis, Nephthys
and Horus, 850-1
Bethlehem, the Divine Child born in a
manger, 733, 764-5
Bifrost, the rainbow as celestial bridge, 393
Bishop’s Apron, a feminine garment, 238
Biune parent, Ptah, male-mother; Masai
customs; Australian; Ptah the earliest, 434
Blood, the mother, customs to keep it pure,
59, 61-2, 68, 70-1; the mother eaten to
preserve it, 71-4; human beings created
from the — of the gods, 88; man’s, to
establish descent from the father, 88; circumcision, a — covenant, 90-1; — covenant, 91, 95; sacrificial offering for food;
buried to secure good crops, 103; the tie or
buckle representative of, 116; last of the
seven elements from which a soul of life was
derived; Adam created from, 136; offered
to spirits, 158; offered to the Ka, 178;
offered to the Shades, 202; — sacrifice,
222; first recognized source of human
life; Horus, the child of, 232; of Isis,
salvation by; purification by, 233; — of
the damsel, sucked out by the dragon, 834;
woman with the issue of, in the Gospels,
Sophia in the gnostic version, 835
Boat: see Bark
Bobowissi, a deity of the Gold Coast
Africans, 377
Book, of the Dead, the Egyptian, 186; of
Seven Seals, 690, 700, 704, 705; — or
Papyrus which when swallowed conferred
knowledge, 697; of the Seven Mysteries of
Amenta, 705; the opening of, in Revelation, 704, 720; the sacredness of, not to
be tampered with, Revelation and Ritual,
726
Bran and Maelduin (Irish), voyage of, 368
Branch of Palm, symbol of victorious renewal of life, 696
Bread, kneaded by Nephthys in the House
of, 735; seven baskets of, 737-8; eight
baskets, 738; of God from heaven, the
imperishable food of soul, 790; the supreme
source of soul; Annu, the place of, 812;
Jesus the — of life; Horus the possessor of
— in Annu, 900
Bride, in Revelation, 690; Iusāas, a form
of Hathor, 717; Hathor-Iusāas, HathorSothis, 721-2; astronomical; marriage of
the, 722
919
Bridge, typical means of crossing the celestial
water; “Brigg o’dread,” 393; the Japanese
floating — of heaven, 597
Brother and sister, marriage of, 70
Buddha, the seventh, or divine man, seven
—s, 431; the footprints of, 606; Pole-stars
representative of, 609
Bull-roarer, a magical instrument, 308-9
Burial Customs, the dead buried in the
figure of an embryo, 163; buried under a
building to protect it; buried alive to
become spirit watchers, 164; fairy loaves,
254; bodies laid on their left side, head
to the north, Pyramid of Medum, 351;
kindling a fire at the grave for the spirit to
rise to heaven in the smoke, 392; the dead
buried in sand, 416; wives strangled or
buried alive in their husbands’ graves to
secure immortality, 439; the right arm of a
hero left uplifted from the ground, Fijian
—, 531; dead chiefs buried in boats on
hills, Norse —; dead laid in boats upon
the funeral pile, Garrows of Bengal —, 576
Burial Mounds, 251
Burning Bush, the, 672-3
Cader Idris, a mount of 365 steps, 393
Cain and Abel, contest between, the same
as the conflict of Sut and Horus, 457-8
Calamitico, magnetic mountain in the north
of Greenland, 381
Caleb, dog, jackal, guide of souls, 656-7
Calf, the golden, 673-5; dual in the Book
of Kings, 674; figure of both sexes, 674,
677; dual image of Hathor and Horus, 677;
type of Horus, 721
Cancer, Sign of, represented by the beetle;
two beetles in, Horus in his double power,
335
Canopus, Pilot of the Argo, 291, 294;
Decree of, 740, 742
Capricornus, Num, the goat-headed, 302
Capultepec, Mexican Mount, 348
Cassiopœia, and the milch cow of heaven,
286; Egyptian Meskhen, 394
Cat, type of the moon, 16; of black, inimical
power, 21; seer in the dark, 93; —s made
into mummies and preserved in the city of
Bubastes, 215; — representative of the nocturnal sun; protector of the Tree of Life,
371; the youthful solar god, its struggle
with the Apap serpent, 462; living type of
the historical Christ; finest Tom — dressed
up and exhibited at the festival of Corpus
Christi at Aix, 463; zoötype of Atum-Iu,
567
Cave, a figure of Mother earth, 100; spirits
of the; Arunta Amenta, 244; seven —s of
the celestial mount, 572; seven —s, a form
of the heptanomis, 573
Ceremonial rites, as means of memorizing,
46, 49; “Young-man-making,” 47, 88, 90; of
puberty, 60, 61, 76; mysteries of the
Arunta; erection of the Kauaua, 248
Chang, who finds the entrance to the underworld, 357
Charms, protecting fetishes, 113, 115
Chavvah, one of Adam’s wives, 78, 456;
920
INDEX
the Great Mother Kefa, Khep, Khev, or
Eve, 456, 504-5
Chemmis, a floating island shown to Herodotus, 583
Chow, Dynasty of, 597
Chow Yi, divining book, 597
Chrisom, ointment of oil and balm used in
the Roman Catholic Church, 881
Chrisome, the white cloth used in the Roman
Catholic baptism, which becomes the child’s
shroud if it dies within a month, a survival
of the mummy’s seamless vesture, 881
Christ, the anointed, 216, 792; anointed for
burial, 217; the Osiris karast, 218; the
same as Osiris in his death and resurrection,
219; he who came by water and blood, 695;
as Saint Sophia, the male-female, 717;
the Egypto-Gnostic; a spirit, types of, 756;
Jesus after his baptism and the descent
of the dove, 792; the red, 874
Christian, name derived from unction, 217
Christmas Day, day of rebirth for Osiris
or Horus in the moon, 740; old Uaka
festival of the Nile; the festival of intoxication, 743
Church, a figure of the double house, 350
Churinga, Arunta emblems, 60, 76; two
kinds of, 80; charm to give courage, 113;
sign of a spirit-child, 133, 134; female
emblem, 308
Circumcision, a mode of marking the
change of descent from the mother to that
from the father, 90; the rite of, continued
in the religious Mysteries, 799; a — “not
made with hands,” 800
City, of the blessed; the holy, of the great
king; the Eternal, 363; of the white wall;
Ha-Ptah-Ka, Annu, Thebes, Jerusalem,
Troy, 364; the eternal on the Mount of
Glory, form of the ark of heaven, 575;
Seven mansions in the great house of the
eternal, 600; Egyptian, names repeated in
the planisphere, 637; of the Two Eyes,
725
Clairvoyance, Egyptian and Ethiopian, 153
Clava Corona, the star Alpha, 601, 602,
623
Clothed, the, and the naked, the elect and
the rejected Manes, 645, 696
Cocaigne, Le pays de, land of plenty, 382
Coffin, the earliest altar, 221; of Penpii,
picture on, 459; pre-Osirian type of the
ark, 576; of Osiris, in the Greater Bear,
593, 644; of Osiris, in the earth, 706
Colours, assigned to various Gods, 144;
white, a magical, 176
“Come thou to me” (“Come thou
hither,” “Come thou to us”), great festival
in Amenta, 220, 323-4, 705, 813, 866;
Ra’s call to the mummy Osiris, repeated in
Revelation, 700; opening day of the New
Creation in Revelation, 716, 718; Resurrection day, 737; day of Investiture, 772, 864
Commandments, the ten, 666, 679, 680;
the Negative Confession, 679, 681; compiled from the Egyptian, 680; compared
with the Egyptian, 681; the forty-two
which the deceased has to plead that he
has kept, 774
Communal Connubium, 84
Corona Borealis, ancient Pole-star in, 601;
a possible representative of an ancient
Crown constellation, 695
Corpus Christi, compared with the mummy,
217-8; festival of, cat dressed up, exhibited
and worshipped as the Corpus Christi, 463;
exhibited in Rome on Holy Thursday, 747
Corvus, constellation, scavenger of the
inundation, 293
Covenant, circumcision, 90-1; the drawing
of blood, 91, 95; established by cutting a
calf in two, 506; of Ra, 562; Arabian,
by smearing seven stones with blood,
605
Coyote, type of Mother-earth, 100; only
creature saved from a deluge, 570
Creation, in the South, 303; Egyptian
thought on and mode of representation,
398-400; in water, 399; the Hebrew compared with Egyptian, 401-2, 406, 409-10,
424-6, 437, 442-3; the Japanese, 402,
405; of Kheper-Neb-er-ter, 402; Egyptian
a mode of representing astronomical
mythology; Chaldean account of, 403;
Aztec, 404; Egyptian account of, in
the Papyrus of Nes-Amsu, 406; by the
Word, 408, 409; by naming, 409; the
Hawaiian, 427; two different creations in
Genesis, 424, 436, 440; woman dominant in
the first, man in the second, 440; of man
when the Pole passed into the Constellation
Herakles, 619; Seventh, of man, 620; of
man in the Cycle of Precession, 622; the
New, of Atum-Ra, 728
Creation Legends, Man created from red
clay, Maori, 88; man created from a bone
and blood of the gods, Mexican, 88;
woman cut in two, 89, 280; from the blood
of Belus, 89, 429; from the blood of Atum,
90; from the ground, 100; white and
black men, Kabinda, 128; Inapertwa
creatures from fire, 132; the toad, creator
of the primal pair, 265; warriors, with the
body of a bird, Cuthean, 272; Babylonian,
Assyrian, Hebrew, 400; Adam created
with a tail, 436; of the Melbourne Blacks,
of the Arunta, 440; men created by an
eagle and coyote, Californian Indian, 511;
the Primal pair of New Guinea; the woman
and her son, Samoan; female bear and dog,
Ainu, 589
Crocodile, type of soul, 9, 13; as Neith,
type of the Great Mother, 97; as Apt, type
of the Great Mother, 123; Sebek-Horus,
124, 276; mythical dragon, 274; old type of
the fish, 276; in the planisphere, 289;
fish of Neith and Sebek-Horus, 300; Horus
standing on two —s, 317; the Good
Dragon, 320; —s, two, the Two Fishes, Sign
of Horus in his double glory, 335; Great
fish, type of the Great Mother, 496; constellation of the Great Mother, 589; the
typical devourer, 643; the solar dragon on
which the woman rode; an image of
Sebek, 707; sevenfold figure of, a talisman
in the Berlin Museum, 707; Pursuer of Isis
and Horus, 714; eaten as a type of SebekHorus, 735
INDEX
Cross, figure of an ass-headed man on the
Roman — in the museum of the Collegio
Romano, 506; the Roman or Latin — a
figure of the longest night and the shortest
day; of the Winter Solstice, 507, 750; the
Christian preceded by the Egyptian TatCross, 697; the Swastika, origin of, 724;
the Swastika, figured on the tunic of the
Good Shepherd in a Roman Cemetery, 725;
of the four quarters, 724; religion of, first
established in the Mysteries of Memphis as
the cult of Ptah and his son Iu-em-hetep,
749, 751; faith of the, dead in Egypt buried
in, 6,000 years ago, 749; figure of the fourfold
foundation of heaven; — with equal arms
denotes the time of equal day and night, a
figure of the equinox; Ka-chambers in the
Pyramid of Medum built on the plan of,
750; of Christ, erected on the mount, 821;
Jesus carrying the, compared with PtahSekari and Osiris, 873
Crown, double, of Horus, 414, 419, 695;
white, of Horus, red of Sut, 419; key
of the, 597, 601; of heaven, 602; of
life eternal; the — of crowns, 602, 695-6;
on the May-pole, 602; floral, placed on
the mummy; golden, on the head of the
Son of Man; of Makheru, 695; of
triumph, given by Atum, 695-6; the
“Atef” crown of Osiris, 705; of thorns,
placed on Jesus, possible origin of, 875
Crucifixion, different dates of, 748
Culhuacan, Mexican mount of ascent to
heaven, 390; the “Crooked Mountain” in
the midst of the water, 380, 588, 594, 614,
624
Custom of Women, 31-2
Cyclops, Titans, 386; figures of the Pole,
594; one eye between them, 611
Cygnus, a station of the Pole-star, 580;
Pole in the constellation of, legend of men
turned into ducks, 614
Dagda and his sons, rulers over an Irish
netherland or underworld, 635
Danan, divine mother of the Tuatha, 635
Dancing, a religious mystery, 11; in the
likeness of animals, 46, 48, 61, 84; in the
ceremony of “young-man-making,” 47;
Totemic, 48; for the dead, 48-9; Aleutian dance of the spirits, 128
Daphne, Egyptian Tafne, legend of, 28
David, the Beloved, pleading in the Cave,
equivalent to Osiris in the Cavern of Sut,
478; — and his adversary, equivalent to
Osiris and Sut, or Horus and Sut, 485
Delilah, survival of the Great Mother, 686
Deluge legends, not keeping the secret of
the water source, 265, 592, 612; of the
Dyaks of Borneo, 502; of darkness, three
days and three nights, 545; Mexican, at the
end of fifty-two years; Assyrian, seven
days; of Sekhet; of Scomalt, 546; sinking
of the pole; tortoise, monkey, cause of;
taking out a star, cause of, 547, 585;
failure in keeping time, cause of, 547;
Gaogao, causer of the seven days’, Samoan,
548; of Sut employed to destroy evil
creatures; the devastating, 553; in conse-
921
quence of rebellion against Ra, 556, 559;
Hawaiian, legend of the god Kane, 564;
end of a Patriarchate; in the Avesta, 567;
a mode of measuring time; of Bel, Polestar god; change of Pole-star; Deucalion;
Greek tradition of two; Californian Indian,
570; Navajo Indian; Arawak, 571; Red
Indian, Taoist, Indian Tribes of Guiana,
Mexican, 572, 614; Uganda, 573; Marquesan, preparations for, 576; of the ten
kings or patriarchs, 581; based on astronomical mythology, 584; of Huythaca,
Muyscas myth, 585; at the celestial Pole;
of the Miztec Indians, 586; the survivors of,
588-9; of Ialdabaoth, 590; Lake Tanganyika, 592; American Indian tradition,
594; British stones of, 605; of Manu, 607;
Navajo, a possible time-gauge, 613; the
Gippsland Blacks, 614; let in by the “black
serpent monster,” myth of Manabozho; of
the Indians, 616; six, before the creation
of man, 619; last great, when Herakles
went under and men were drowned, 620,
623; at the end of a Cycle in Precession,
622; story told to Solon, 623
Dhruva, one of the Rishis who meditated and
forgot, 593; Hindoo name of a Pole-star;
a god, 606
Diarmait and Finn MacCamail (Irish),
their voyage, 367
Dinga Pennu, the Khond Judge of the dead,
362
Dionysius, solar, lion-headed god, 504
Divine Child, born in various Signs of the
Zodiac, types of, 733-6; born in a manger
at Bethlehem, 733; born in a cave at
Bethlehem, 745; born at Christmas and
at Easter, 746; conception of, 759, 761-2;
why born in a manger, 764; Horus, SiOsiris, Jesus, their twelve years of child life,
776
Divinity and the divine personage,
difference between, 148
Dodo, a supreme god worshipped by the
Israelites of the northern kingdom, 524
Double earth, made by Ptah, 412, 414
Dove, type of a soul, 482, 762; of day, of
Isis, 553; female type of spirit, 762, 773;
bird of Hathor, 762; Horus rising from
Amenta as a, 763; Holy Spirit imaged by,
763, 787; Spirit of God as a, at the baptism
of Jesus, 763, 790, 902
Draconis, figure of the Good Dragon or
crocodile, 458; station of the Pole, 580;
constellation of Horus-Sebek, the crocodiledragon, 590
Dragon, cause of drought, 20; crocodile, the
mythical, 274; constellation, 274, 590; two
in the Abyss, 278; the Drowning of, 287;
crocodile, the Good, 320, 458; starry image
of Horus, 320; barring the way to the
Norse paradise, 359; of Wantley, 367;
first slayer of, female, 417; repeated in
Amenta, 420; the Chinese form of the Old
First Mother, 589; Apsaras and the origin
of Japan; that fell from heaven; with
twelve heads, 603; with seven heads, 698,
703; that came up out of the sea, in Revelation, 708; bound for a thousand years,
922
INDEX
712; pursuer of the woman, seeking to
destroy the child, 714; —s that adored
Jesus, 767; Satan in the form of, that tried
to swallow the damsel and sucked out all
her blood, lunar myth, 834
Duck, mother totem, 65
Dwyvan and Dwyvach, Welsh first parents,
saved from the Deluge in an ark, 589
Dzimwi, evil power, 15
Ea, the fish-man, 276-7
Eagle, one of the seven constellations of the
Pole-stars; one of the seven Welsh Old
Ones; eagle of Gwernabwy, 615
Earth, mother of life, 36; as Water-cow, 52;
First Mother, 80; the Great Mother, giver
of food, 98, 104, 149; universal great grandmother, 99; Mother of various tribes, 100;
stone representative of; people born from,
133; goose, the zoötype of, 149; as a
Mount, 270; Great Mother of life from
water, 279; Mother as Apt, Rerit, Neith,
Hathor, 284; earliest representation of,
583; Coffin of Osiris; represented by a
lotus or papyrus, 706
Earth of Eternity, 359
Eden, garden of, garden eastward; the Tree
of Life and river in, repeated in the garden
of Aarru in Amenta, 446; watered by a
mist, like Egypt, 448; four rivers in, 459;
of Ezekiel in the lowermost parts of the
earth, 470; the enclosure at the Pole, 591
Edin, divine Lady of, Goddess of the Tree of
Life, 447
Egypt, derivation of the name, 303
El, the star-god on the summit of the mountain, 499
Elders, the four and twenty, 700, 702, 720
Eldest sister, ruler next to the mother, 77
Elemental Powers, represented by animals,
6, 9, 273; deified, 122; astronomical figures,
123; earliest superhuman powers, 125;
seven primary powers; Holy Watchers (in
Book of Enoch), 143; Horus, highest of,
181-2; soul of man derived from Shu, the
third of the — born of the Ancient Genetrix,
325; their place of exit from Amenta, 337;
six groupings of, 429; the seventh, the soul
of blood, 432; the Seven, 497
Elijah, talking with Jesus in his transfiguration, 823
Elohim, the, compared with the three first of
the Seven Powers, Sut, Horus, and Shu,
401; creation by, 401-10; the Seven
Associate Gods or Ali of Ptah, 409, 414,
422-3, 435, 497; equivalent to the Put
Circle or Cycle of nine, 420, 422; equivalent to the Egyptian “First Company of
Creators,” 422
El-Shaddai, Sut at the Pole, 497; change
from the worship of, to the worship of Ihuh,
499; a form of Sut-Anup, 670
Enoch, his Vision, 693; Great Judgment
Day described by, 694
Ephraim, the heifer, 505
Epiphi, month of, 301
Equinox, Autumn, battle of; Jewish New
Year, 661; Mountain of, where the
warring twins were reconciled, 832
Eran Veg, Paradise in the Avesta, 445
Eratosthenes, his testimony as to the position of the Autumn and Easter equinoxes,
730
Erech, ark city on the summit, 575; —
Suburi, ark city, 587
Eridanus, the Nile in the heavens, 270,
285, 293, 728; meaning of the name, 293
Eridu, Gulf of, 282; place of the eternal tree
at the centre of the circumpolar paradise;
in the firmamental water, 447; from which
the seven fish-men ascended, 597
Erithipa stone, figure of Mother earth and
birthplace, 133
Eschol, the grapes found there, 657
Eucharist, eating the Mother, 72-3;
eating the Mother by proxy, 74; Cow,
Calf, Sow, as types of the Great Mother,
97; victim slain and eaten, 105; the
Mummy provisions laid on the Altar;
Osirian Mystery, Christian sacrament, 221;
body, bread, blood, wine; wine made hot
with water to represent living blood, 222;
a mortuary meal, 223; bread and wine
substituted for flesh and blood, 235; eaten to
give strength, 318; the sow eaten at, by the
Jews, 456; Osiris eaten at, 526; eaten as a
mode of converting matter into spirit, 885
Eve, see Chavvah
Exodus, of the Israelites, origin of, 631-2,
639, 656; begun by Moses, ended by
Joshua, 683-5; Egyptian, a Mystery of
Amenta, 637, 648; Egyptian, represented
on the Mendes Stele, 638; Egyptian, origin
of, 639; Egyptian, the “Coming forth to
day,” 639; described by the Psalmist, 641;
Legends of the, astronomical mythology;
inscribed on the sarcophagus of Seti, 648
Eye, of Nu, 407; of Horus, the lunar lamp,
418, 816; figure of the cycle, 607; the,
full on the last day of the month Mechir,
adoration of, 720; symbol of healing, salvation, an amulet, 816-7; of Horus, the light
that was kindled for the Ka in Amenta,
837; of Horus, pierced by Sut, 870-1
Eyes, seven, seven periods of the Pole-stars;
seven on one stone; seven of the Lord,
607; two, city of, 725
Ezekiel, Oblation of, 676
Fairyland, the Kamite earth of eternity in the
nether world, 372
Fairy loaves, 254
Fall, the, change of Pole-star, 268, 591;
through eating forbidden fruit, 453; of
Adam; of Atum, astronomical, nightly and
yearly, 467; of Sut; Lucifer, 591; of the
Pair who failed to guard the Tree of Knowledge at the Pole, 591
Fans, flabella, types of soul, 222
Fatherhood, demonstrated, 88, 89
Festival, of fructification, 83; Phallic, 105-7,
111; of the Ancestors, 121; of the Staves,
211; of “Hak-k-er-a” (“Come thou to
me”) in Amenta, 220, 323-4, 705, 740,
813, 866; Uaka, of the inundation, 290,
296, 301, 536, 705, 743; Sut Heb,
celebrated by the Egyptians every thirty
years, 307, 596; of the Tail, 307, 427, 729;
INDEX
of the suspension of the sky, 345; of Corpus
Christi, cat dressed up and exhibited, 463;
New Year, after the deluge, 562; of the
Six, 610; Egyptian Feast of the Dead,
639; of the Golden Calf of Hathor-Iusāas,
674; monthly, of the sixth, seventh, fifteenth
of Taht; of the birth of Osiris; of Amsu,
705; of the Resurrection, 738, 740, 813; of
the Winter Solstice; Easter equinox; two
divine births of Horus, 739; of Christmas,
identified with the rebirth of Osiris or
Horus, 740; Christmas a survival of the
Uaka, 743; of Lady Day, kept in Rome in
commemoration of the miraculous conception, 745; of Ra, 746-7; of Osiris, 746; of
the Tenait, 746-7; of “Eve’s provender”
(later, the Last Supper), 847; a ten days’
Memphian; of the erection of the Tat,
869
Festivals, time kept by means of, 742
Fetish images, protecting charms, buried
with the dead, 113, 116; type of superhuman power, 114-7; mental medicine,
118; image of the Virgin, 234
Fetishism, a form of sign-language, 110-2
Finn, the Irish Horus, 366; Diarmait and
—, 367
Fire, gift of, Guatemalan legend, 91; Soul
derived from, 132, 134; purification by,
247; kindled on the grave for the spirit to
ascend in the smoke, 392; Spirits of, in
Revelation, 721
Fish, crocodile, the typical, 276; — man; —
mother, 277; the Southern, 279, 282-3;
birth of the water in, 281, 293; bringer
forth of water; the Great, 282; month
of, 283; Ichthus, Horus as, 291, 695;
signifying water, 298; in the Zodiac, 301,
404-5; figure of plenty brought by the
inundation; emblem of Ichthus; title of
Jesus in Rome; sacrificial food, 734-5;
advent of Atum-Horus or Jesus as the —
when the Eastern equinox was in Pisces;
still eaten on Good Friday, 735; sign of, on
the Pope’s ring; the Saviour who came in
the inundation, 736
Fishes, sign of the, figured as two — laid out
on two dishes, scene in the Catacombs,
astronomical, 737; pictures of two — and
eight baskets of bread, and of two — and
seven baskets of bread, 738; the miraculous
draught of, 807; miracle of the loaves and
—, 811; two, caught for Horus, 861
Fomalhaut, star of Annunciation, 283, 294
Food, Gods and Goddesses, givers of;
primitive paradise, a field of, 288; inundation, the bringer of, 727
Force, Shu, god of, lion, zoötype of, 2; two
lions of the double force, 731
Foundation of the world, 723, 866
Four, brothers, husbands to four sisters, 78;
pillars in Amenta, 220; props to the
firmament, 281; heaven of — quarters,
328, 536; rivers in Eden, 459; pillars of
the — quarters, 502; oars at the — cardinal
points, 551; quarters, New heaven founded
on, 564; paddles of the bark; the — who
row it, 574; ark of — quarters; gods of, 575;
the — books of Taht compared with the
923
Pentateuch, 682; — “Living Creatures”
in Revelation, 699, 700, 702, 706; the —
who kept the quarters, 703; the — who
were stationed at the — corners of the
Coffin; disciples who accompanied Jesus on
the Mount; eyes, stars, spirits, angels, at
the corners of the earth, 706; herds of
oxen and asses driven round the walls —
times at the ceremonies of re-erecting
the Tat pillar, 741; — foundations of the
New heaven; brothers, children of Horus,
previously gods of the — quarters, Amsta,
Hapi, Tuamutef, Kabhsenuf, 782, 824, 826,
857-9; — who follow Jesus, Simon,
Andrew, James and John, 824, 858;
Jesus, James, Peter and John on the
Mount of Transfiguration, 824; — fishers,
857, 860; — shepherds; — foremost of
the seven Great Spirits in Annu, 857, 861;
soldiers who guarded the Sepulchre; who
watched the sarcophagus of Osiris, 876;
invincible knights in a German Passion
Play, 877
Four and twenty elders, the, 700, 702,
715
Frog, feminine ideograph, 8; foreteller, 11;
type of transformation, 11, 30; resurrection, 12; swallower of the water, 21;
Khnum, King of the, 30; Creator; constellation Piscis Australis; a figure of the
earth, 265
Funeral customs, of the Amandabele, 155;
mortuary meal for the departed spirit;
of the Yucatanese, fasting for the dead;
Egyptian Lent, a funeral fast, 159; Australian, for relatives of the deceased to cut
themselves, 163; Conical loaves, 254
Funeral statuettes, made to work for a
person, 655
Ganges, type of a celestial source of water,
313
Garment, of shame, feminine, 237-8;
Bishop’s Apron, a feminine —, 238; the
long —, type of both sexes, 674, 717; —
discarded in preparation for the Funeral
bed, 818-9; pure — put on, 819.
Gautama, the Buddha, 431
Gawain and Gareth, (Irish), fight between,
child born to be king, 366
Gemini, Sign of the twin brothers, Sut and
Horus, 302, 832, 837
Gethsemane, scene in, compared with Horus
in Am-Smen, 871-2
Giant, heart of the, 20; eater of the Shades,
201, 319; of seven cubits, 321; Irish
Gruagach, 367; —s, the glorified and the
wretched; representative of the Elemental
Powers, 372; —s, one-eyed, 386; co-type
with the Apap monster, 589; seven —s,
Pole-stars, 593-4; seven —s who bore the
world on their shoulders, 594; the, and his
staff, 624; —s, Emim, Anakim, Rephaim,
Zamzummim; —s in Amenta, 658
Gilgames, slayer of the Apap reptile, 275,
291, 350; piled up the great stones, 575,
587; his search for the Tree of renewal,
673
Gizeh, pyramid of, 303
924
INDEX
Glass, pillar, tower, fort, 391; hill in the
Norse Tales, 392
God, the earliest, 124-6; Father and Son
under various names; of Israel, known to
Moses under two different names, 518; the
Father in Revelation, Atum-Huhi, 717;
the red, in Revelation, compared with Atum,
the red, 718
Gods, Mexican, turned into stone, 605
Great Bear, Water-cow of earth, 286, 573;
position of, indicative of water, 299;
goddess of, Mother of the Fields of heaven;
Mother of the Time Cycles, clock of the
four quarters, 305; birthplace of the
waters, 305-6; year of; tail of, pointer,
307; cult of the goddess of, amongst the
Mandaites of Mesopotamia; Sign of the
Great Mother, 309; Coffin of Osiris, 387,
593, 644, 737, 852; Mistress of the waters,
578; Bier of Lazarus, 852
Great Mother, primal parent, 6; Water-cow,
the typical, 9, 121, 387, 612, 715; Seven
Children, 25; sacrificial victim under
animal types; bringer forth of animal and
vegetable life, 97; animal types of, 97, 101,
301, 496, 504; bringer forth of the four
elements, 123; Sekhet-Bast, the, 179, 250;
Apt of Nubia, 251; form of mother earth,
271, 279, 537; Tepht, Tiavat, 277; in the
Southern Fish, 281; Season of, 295; seat of,
303; Great Bear, the Sign of, 309; Ta-Urt,
the oldest form of, 376; Jeremiah’s
rejoicing when her worship was superseded,
497; her worship never quite given up,
537, 675; Solomon’s Temple to Ashtoreth,
537; constellated as the female Hippopotamus or Crocodile, 589; “Mistress of
the Mountain,” Goddess of the double
horizon, 608; surrenderer of the city, 686;
denounced as a harlot in Revelation, 698;
— and her Seven Sons, 703; as Hathor,
imaged by the milch cow, 715
Great one God, the, 126
Grogoragally, the Divine Son in New
Holland mythology, 244
Grotto, custom of building a, 357
Gruagach, Irish giant, 367
Gunung Danka, West Java mountain, site
of paradise, 390
Gwasgwyn, Welsh happy abode of the dead,
380
Gwymwesi, the blissful white abode, Welsh,
380
Hacavitz, Mexican god turned into stone,
605
Ha-k-er-a, “Come thou to me,” festival in
Amenta, 220, 323-4, 705, 740, 813, 866
Hall of Justice, the Manes examined in,
195
Hamemmat (or Hamemet), future generations, 385; germs of souls, pre-existing
souls, 770
Han-cycle, 596
Hapi, ape, 2, 86; Nome of, 550; bringer of the
inundation, 572; soul of water, 598
Hare, lunar zoötype; totemic type of the
Nome; imaged as a primitive constellation
at the feet of Orion, 317; the six who were
turned into —s, 610
Harlot, the Great Mother, 498, 686
Harmachis: see Har-Makhu
Har-Magedon, the Battle of, periodically
repeated in the Mysteries, end of the Heptanomis and substitution of the heaven of
twelve divisions, 711-3
Har-Ma-Kheru, the Word made Truth, the
second Horus, demonstrator of the resurrection to eternal life, 792, 817
Har-Makhu, solar god of both horizons, 187,
711-2, 536; Libra, 303, 366; sun-god on
the Western horizon, 332; Horus of the
double equinox, 334; god of the double
equinox, 341, 679; represented by the
cleaver or axe, 341; cult of, doctrines of,
incarnation and resurrection established in,
344; the Great Judge; Lord of the equinoctial level, 523; the avenger, 536; laws and
commandments placed under the feet of,
679; fighter of the Battle of Har-Magedon,
713
Har-Tema, the mighty Avenger, 530; the
Great Judge, 535, 711
Har-Ur, Child of Isis, 290, 854; First born
Horus, 332
Hathor, as fruit tree, 2; seven —s, 26; fruit
tree type of the Great Mother, 97; mother
of food and goddess of fecundity, 105, 392,
451; milch cow, 140, 261; Mistress of the
Mines, 263; Feast of, 296; Sycamore of,
303; Mistress of the year, 308; — and her
infant Horus in Sothis, 340; continued as
Venus, 340, 675; offers fruit to the deceased,
370, 415; goddess of love and music; provider of food and drink for the Manes, 370;
the amorous queen, 370-1; —s, the seven,
figured as seven cows in the Irish paradise,
375; portrayed inside the coffin as the
mother of life, 449; Sycamore of, discoverer
of water, 450, 452; dove of, type of a soul,
482; lunar goddess, 557; goddess of the
golden calf, 674; worshipped at Sarabit el
Khadim, 677-8; — Iusāas, — Sothis, the
Bride, 721; temple of, at Denderah, 743
Hathor-Meri, mother of Horus in the
“House of a thousand years,” prototype of
Mary the Virgin mother, 733; Osiris
anointed for burial under the hair of,
870
Hati, breathing heart, one of the Seven
Souls, 479
Hatshepsu, Queen, expedition of, 262; as
Mat-Ka-Ra, personator of both sexes, 440,
787; temple of, at Deir-el-Bahari, 575
Haunch (or Thigh), ideographic sign in the
northern heaven, birthplace, seat, 260, 303,
310, 675; pyramid of Gizeh in the Nome of,
303; clock by which the moon-god
measured the hours, 305; sign of the Great
Mother; position of, in the planisphere,
309; head of the milch cow portrayed
upon; in the Zodiac of Denderah, 310;
place of rebirth above, 312; name of
the King of kings written on; image of
power; instrument to open the mouth of
the dead, 710
Hawk, type of soul, 19, 482-3, 603, 877;
INDEX
image of Horus, 301; bird of the Holy
Spirit, 773, 790; type of the sun-god,
877
Heart, the two hearts, 201
Heaven, uplifted by Shu, 261-2, 384; raised
on high by two brothers, Greek myth, 267;
water, a figure of; created from water,
281; represented as a milch cow, 286; in
two parts, domains of Sut and Horus, 325,
576, 854,; in three divisions, 325, 575; of
four quarters, 328, 536, 564, 611, 855; —’s
one pillar, a name of the Japanese island of
Ski. 351; of Atum Ra, 366; means of
reaching it, 386, 392; the Kingdom of,
founded once a year by Horus or Jesus,
536; of seven divisions changed to one of
eight, 555; imaged as firmamental water,
558; of seven, ten, twelve divisions, 649;
684, 694, 700, 715, 855; the vanishing, in
Revelation, the celestial Heptanomis, 697;
the triangular, of Sut, Horus, and Shu, gods
of the South, North, and Equinox, 715;
the New on twelve foundations, in Revelation, 716; the New in Revelation, according to the “measure of a man,” cross of
the four quarters, 724; the New on Mount
Hetep, 725; the New, based on the
equinoxes, 731
Heitsi-Eibib, crossing the waters, which
divided, 634
Hekat, as frog, 2, 12, 30; Cinderella, 12;
Sati, 12, 366
Hekau, great magical Word of Power, 408
Helen of Troy, survival of the Great Mother,
686
Hell-fire, Lake or tank of flame in Amenta,
240
Hephaistos, architect of the house of the
gods, 359; Greek Vulcan, 386
Heptanomis, the Greater and Lesser Oases,
parts of, 305; the Celestial, 305, 379, 855;
seven pillars of; of the old Great Mother
and her seven sons, 321; repeated in
Amenta, 420; seven divisions of, 426-7;
type of the underworld, 428; seven mounds
of, 502; seven lands divided by seven
waters; seven divine princes of; various
types of, 550, 580-1, 609; superseded by
the Octonary, 556; seven caves, a figure of;
serpent with seven heads, a figure of, 573;
borne up by seven giants, 594; seven
pagodas an image of, 606; Jericho a form
of, 686
Herakles, twelve labours of, zodiacal, 319;
Horus the prototype of, 320; Station of the
Pole, 580, 619; creation of man when the
Pole passed into the constellation of, 619;
the sinking of, in the last great deluge of all
when men were drowned, 620, 623
Hermes, legend of, 306, 384; his discourse
on regeneration, 822
Herrut, reptile, prototype of Herod, 829
Hervey Islands, Mangaian account, 609
Hesi, Greek Isis, the milch cow, 306
Hesit, giver of liquid life, 312, 384-5,
387
Hetep, Mount, Land of Promise depicted in
Amenta, 207, 394; Mount of Glory in the
Polar Paradise, 324; Paradise over the
925
celestial water, 373; table of the Mount;
Garden of, 375; heaven at the summit;
divided into ten divine domains, 379, 384,
837; a table heaped with provisions, ideograph of, 381-2, 676; the land flowing with
milk and honey, 383, 659; isle of rest;
meaning of the name, 426; mount of peace
and everlasting plenty in the circumpolar
paradise, 539; landing place for the bark of
the blessed, 554; paradise of spirits perfected, 659; Aarru —, 675; mount of the
oblations, 676; the new heaven on, 725;
the harvest field in; object of deceased to
attain it, 802; Mount where Sut and Horus
were reconciled by Shu, 837
Hippopotamus, appeal for rain, 35; mother
totem, 65; as Apt, type of the Great
Mother, 97, 123, 497, 588; zoötype of
mother earth, 259; the “monster” on dry
ground, 279; hieroglyphic sign for the hour,
305; constellation of the Great Mother,
589; constellation as male, zoötype of Sut,
602
Hivel Zivo, the Subban Creator, 324
Hop, King, representative of the Pole;
Siamese ceremony; Scotch, game of, 606
Horeb, mountain of God, 675
Hornet, type of Ra, Pharaoh, 656
Horus, the child, the bastard, 27; bringer of
food, 52, 288-9, 729; soul of light, 121,
127, 401; the white god, 128; children of,
born from water, 131; as the shoot springing from the plant, 140, 180; the eighth
soul, 182; triumph of, over Sut, 189;
typical of the human soul, 190; the blind,
192, 223, 246, 471, 533, 816-7; “Word
of Power”; Word made Truth, 194; first,
born of the Virgin, second, begotten of the
Father, 215, 854; ladder of, to the Upper
Paradise, 207, 362; the cripple deity in
Amenta, 211; the mortal transformed into
the immortal, 220, 529; the risen Osiris,
225; rendering the veil of the tabernacle,
225, 877, 897; the avenger of his father
Osiris, 228, 522, 532, 741, 803; the divine
model, the Saviour, 229; triumphant in
Amenta; manifestor of immortality, 230;
eaten as the “Bread of life,” 235; of the
long lock of childhood, 245, 529; on his
Papyrus reed, 257-8, 289, 394, 450, 663;
as hawk or vulture; child of Hathor, 263;
the Good Power, 268; as Sebek, great fish
of the inundation, 274; solar, of the
double horizon, 274, 331, 334, 827; crocodile god, 276; the fish-man, 277; Sebek
in the abyss, 278; African Jack and the
beanstalk, 289; representative of the
resurrection; bringer of water, 290;
Ichthus, the fish, 291, 695, 743, 861;
Bruiser of the Serpent, 292, 318; born of
the Virgin, prince of peace, 293, 418;
prototype of Bacchus, 296; victory of, 301;
of the inundation, 307, 744, 753; maker of
music in the spheres, 315; represented by
various constellations; the wars of, 316;
prototype of Herakles, 319, 320, 352; his
triangle, 327, 752; of the double equinox,
334, 336; of the two lions, 334; transformer as Khepera; in his Double Glory,
926
INDEX
represented by two crocodiles, two fishes
in Pisces, two lions in Leo, two
beetles in Cancer, two twins in Gemini,
335; wearer of the double crown, ruler
of the double earth, 414, 419, 695;
Kamit given to; the white crown
given to, 419; the shoot of the Papyrus,
450; protector and deliverer of Atum-Ra,
463; deliverer of the “spirits in prison,”
479; the Good Shepherd, 487, 532; his
advents in Amenta, 491-2; the hawkheaded; the Comforter, 491; the suffering
Messiah, 522; the afflicted sufferer depicted
by Isaiah, 526, 529, 535-6; by Paul, 534;
the voluntary sacrificial victim, 527, 728;
Child, in the Catacombs; heir of Annu,
529; Child of twelve and adult of thirty,
529, 776; described in the Psalms, 530;
the branch, 536; the Nome of, 550; the
soul of light, 598; Light of the world, 692;
he who came by water and blood; his
crown, the Crown of Life, 695; the Word,
706; divine husbandman, 710; the Elder,
child of the mother, one of the seven; of
the resurrection, child of the father, 716,
786; representative of the divine malefemale, 717, 786; his second advent, description of, 719; the “traveller of eternity,” 728; his birthplace in the Zodiac
changed from Sign to Sign according to
Precession, 730; “Witness for eternity,”
“He who steppeth onwards through
eternity,” “persistent traveller,” Egyptian
Jesus, 730, 896; portrayed with the fish on
his head and crocodile under his feet, 735;
figure of, on a Maltese coin, wearing a fish
mitre, 736; two divine births of, at Christmas and Easter, 741-2, 745; types of, reproduced in Rome, 752; the Double —,
753, 786, 893; his coming, his history,
compared with those of Jesus, 764-71;
with his mother up to twelve years of age,
at thirty baptized by Anup and transformed into the only begotten son of the
father; “owner of twin souls,” 787; the
“Two Horus Gods,” a title of — in the
Pyramid Texts of Teta; born of two
mothers, Neith and Sekhet, Iusāas and
Nebhetep, Isis and Nut, two Marys, 788;
An-Mut-ef and Si-meri-ef, titles of —,
789; the first — ruler in the circle of the
Lesser year, the second — “traveller of
the heavenly road” in the circle of Precession, 791, 866; the heir of Seb, Osiris,
Ra, 793; sower of seed in the field of
Osiris, 801, 805; the peaceful and the
avenger, 803; the intercessor, 805; giver
of sight to the blind, explanation of, 815,
817, 854; image of, taken to Bakhten to
exorcise an evil spirit, 816; in the Mount,
825; teacher in the boat, 827; founder of
the kingdom in spirit world, 854; the
fisher, 860; wounded in the eye by Sut
whilst keeping watch for Ra, 871-2; the
Sayer, 890; his attributes when reborn
for the heaven of eternity, 896; his discourse to Osiris, 897; teacher of the Lesser
Mysteries in his first advent, teacher of the
Greater in his second, 901
Horus-Maat-Kheru, the Word made
Truth, 709
House of a thousand years, Cycle of
Precession, 712, 733, 734, 744, 866; Lord
of the Balance reborn in, 746
Huhi, God, the eternal, 498, 893; title of
Ptah, Atum and Osiris, 499
Huythaca, deluge of, 585
Hwang-ti, or Hien Yuan, first celestial
builder, 626
Hyades, the, harbingers of water or Spring,
301
Hydra, figure of the Apap reptile, 259, 270,
291, 396, 458, 729; drowned in the inundation, 292, 298, 418
Hyena, mother totem, 65
Hymn, to the Nile, 286; to the early
Elemental Powers, found on the walls of a
temple in El-Khargeh, 412; to Osiris, compared with Isaiah xxxiv. and xxxv., 490;
“O thou who art called aloud,” 848
Hyperboreans, dwellers in the celestial
Pole-land, 386
Iah, the Mighty deeds of, 499, 500; the
Messiah, 500; typical lion, 504
Iahu, or Ihuh, Jehovah, the Father god in
Israel, 423; also god the son, 503; Hebrew
Creator, 424, 435; son of Ptah, 437; the
One God in Israel, 498, 680; the name,
499; worshipped as a bull calf, 505; the
self-existent and eternal God, 516, 668; one
with Atum-Huhi, 680; God the Father in
Revelation, 717
Iah-Elohim, his creation compared with that
of Ptah, 409; planter of the garden in
Genesis; equal to Iu and his associate gods,
435
Iah-Jehovah, names of father and son in one
god, 519
Ialdabaoth, a form of Sut, 422; elder
brother and creator, 428
Iao, the god with an ass’s head; the assheaded, grasping two serpents; portrayed
on Gnostic gems as a double-headed ass,
506
Iau, the Sage of the gods, 502; Jehoavah,
506
Ieou, the Two great books of, 500; the
“Wisdom of Jesus” and “Wisdom of
Solomon” possibly versions of, 500, 771;
books containing the Lesser and the Greater
Mysteries, 771, 781; the First Man, 793
Ili, the Seven, 397
Immortality, Horus the Manifestor of, 230
Inapertwa, Arunta tradition of, 67; born
from the elements, 132; pre-human creatures,
429; traditions of, amongst six Arunta
totems, 429
Incarnation, the doctrine of, 231
Inundation, dates of, 260; Uaka festival of
the, 290; birthday of the, the birthday of
the world, 291; beetle, bennu, heralds of,
295; end of, sun in Aquarius, 300; birth of
the New, 301; birthplace of the, 307, 728;
type of an overwhelming flood, reproduced in heaven and in Amenta, 552;
bringer of food, 727
INDEX
Investiture, the Mystery of, 772-3; the day
of “Come thou to us” in the Pistis Sophia,
“Come thou hither” in the Ritual, 773
Irminsul, mythical pillar which joined
earth and heaven together, 353
Ishtar, the descent of, 299, 412; form of the
goddess Hathor, 559; House of, 575;
Mistress of the mountain of the Pole, 591
Isis, mother-moon, 23; veil of, 31; blood
of, 69, 137, salvation by, 233; as field,
type of the Great Mother, 97; typical
Virgin, blood mother, 136; watching over
Osiris in Amenta, 220, 880; lunar goddess,
spearing Apap, 288, 417; swallow representative of, 296; in Virgo, 296; seeking for
water, 299, 528; tears of, 299; hiding
herself and her child, 714; the widow,
769
Isis and Nephthys, two Mothers, two
Sisters, two Wives of Osiris; two Ancestresses, Virgin and Nurse, 77-9, 550, 664;
watching by Osiris, 224; brought back to
Osiris by Horus, 228, 844-5; represented
by two birds, 553; at the tomb of Osiris,
844, 883
Isis-Serkh, scorpion goddess, 297; Scorpio,
302
Isle of flame, 691, 693
Isle of truth, 374
Israel, Children of, their “backslidings” a
return to the worship of the Great Mother,
497; mother of, a lioness, 504-5; the god of,
known to Moses under two different names,
581; in Sheol, 541; — and his twelve
sons, Ra in the heaven of twelve divisions,
649; Children of, travel through Amenta
with Moses, enter the Promised Land with
Joshua, 686; people of, only mentioned
once on the Monuments; the Seed of, 687;
Marauders in Egypt, 687-9
Iu, the son of Ptah, 423, 437, 500, 891; the
ever-coming son, type of the eternal, 424,
499, 500, 680; a name of Atum, 434; —
and his Associate gods compared with IahuElohim, 435; represented by the ass, 436;
his fight with the serpent, bruiser of the
serpent’s head, 462; the Jesus of the
Sayings, 500; son of Ptah, an astronomical
builder; son of Atum, a great builder;
Kamite Solomon; Prince of peace; divine
healer, 502, 668, 751; son of Atum-Ra,
portrayed as a calf, 505; represented by
an ass, 506; the Sayer or Logos, 517, 890-1;
a form of Tum, 890; the Egyptian Jesus,
902
Iu-em-hetep, Horus as Prince of peace, 290,
424, 498, 674, 728, 751; builder of the temple
of heaven, 365, 502; coming to
stop the strife in Amenta, 417; bringer of
peace and goodwill, 434, 755; conqueror of
the Dragon in Hydra, bruiser of the Serpent
in Ophiucus, Conqueror of Sut in the
Twins, 418; a name of Atum, 434; Kamite
Jesus, 457, 500, 516, 680, 704, 728; a
name of Solomon, 516; Jesus in Revelation, Pistis Sophia, Apocrypha, and the
Books of Taht Aan, 717; the Saviour who
brought food with the inundation, 727; one
of the eight great gods of Egypt 20,000
927
years ago; child of Iusāas and Atum, 728;
Temple of, at Philæ, Inscription on, 752;
teacher in the temple, divine healer;
temple built in honour of, 755; a title of
Atum-Horus, 756; teacher of twelve years
old, 776; the Sayer, 890, 902; son of
Ptah at Memphis, son of Atum at Annu,
891
Iusa (or Iusu), Jesus in Revelation, 717;
the son imaged by the calf or lamb, 722;
son of Iusāas and Atum, 728, 749; prototype of the Gospel Jesus, 749; the evercoming Messianic son, 749, 751; represented by the ass and ox; portrayed with
ass’s ears, 753; temple built for his worship
at Sakkara, a link between him and the
Jesus of the Gospels, 756; compared with
Jesus, 764, 771; Iusāas and Nebhetep,
the two mothers of, 786; the ass-eared god
who hauled up the solar disk from Amenta,
799
Iusāas, cow-headed goddess, 505, 677;
mother of Iu, 506; the Bride of Revelation, 717; the consort of Atum, mother of
Iusa, 763, 788
Iusāas and Nebhetep, Atum’s two wives,
456, 674
Ivan, Prince, finder of the way into Amenta,
357
Izanagi and Izanami, Japanese two
Elemental Spirits, 402; identical with Shu
and Tefnut, 402, 583; divinely deputed to
make the Island of Japan, 583
Izanami, sister of the Japanese Kami, 328
Jabma Aimo, Lapp House of the dead in
the nether earth, 354
Jack and the beanstalk, Horus, 299
Jackal, zoötype of the Judge, Seer, Guide
of ways, 330, 612, 632; representative of
Polaris, 330; Guide of the dead, 354, 360;
dog of Sut, 612; figure of the Pole, 626
Jacob and the Ten Tribes, Ra and his ten
cycles, 649
Jacob-El, worshipped as a divinity in
Northern Syria, 508, 654; name on
one of the Scarabæi, 653-4; Mummy
of; burial-place of; the well of, 654
Jericho, a form of the Heptanomis, 686
Jerusalem, the two; the City of truth, 539;
seven footprints of Abraham at, 606; —
above, 687; the new, 712; built on the
square; the heaven of Atum based on the
four quarters of the solstices and equinoxes,
724
Jesus, figured as the type of a soul of both
sexes, 237, 717; the Sayings of, 517; the
Christ that came by water, blood, and
spirit, 695; first-born from the dead, 702,
708; the husbandman, compared with
Horus, 710; in Revelation, the Egyptian
Iusa or Coming Son, 717, 764, 771; Manifestor for the Father, various types of, 722;
Jesus legend in Egypt, 727; born from
the fish’s mouth, 734; his seven attendant
spirits, names of; various forms of the
seven attendant on, 737; birthday of, date
disputed, 745; Virgin motherhood, divine
sonship, miracles, sayings, all ascribed in
928
INDEX
earlier ages to Iusu, 749; riding on two
asses, 753; Jesus legend in Rome, 756; his
birth and history compared with those
of Horus, 764-71; the Christ, 786; Mary
the Virgin and Mary the wife of Cleopas,
the two mothers of, 787; with his mother up
to twelve years of age, at thirty baptized by
John to become the only begotten of the
father, 787-9, 794; teaches in the temple,
796, 825; turns water into wine, 798,
827; drives out those that bought and sold
in the temple; curses the fig-tree,
compared with Horus, 798; the two —es
in the Catacombs, 801; bringer of peace
and bringer of the sword, 803; sends the
evil spirits into the swine, explanation
of, 810; gives sight to the blind, explanation of, 815; in the Mount, 819; his
discourse on regeneration, compared with
that of Hermes, 822; transfiguration of,
823; prays in the Mount all night;
lodges in the Mount, 825; calms the tempest, 829; — and Satan representatives
of Sut and Horus, 832; the two women who
anointed —, 846, 871, 880; washes the feet of
the disciples, 848, 870; the Good Shepherd,
861; the first four disciples chosen by,
differently given by Matthew and John,
861; transformed into a spirit at his
baptism, 863; crowned “King of the Jews,”
compared with Horus; carrying his cross,
compared with Ptah-Sekari and Osiris, 873;
the scourging and buffeting of, origin of,
874; his Crown of thorns, possible origin
of, 875; the resurrection of, compared with
that of Horus, 878-9; anointed with precious ointment before his death, anointed
after his death by Nicodemus, compared
with the anointed of Horus and embalming of the mummy, 880; his ascension
from the Mount of Olives compared with
the solar god rising from the Mount of the
Olive-tree, 888-9; glorifying his father,
paralleled with Horus’s address of Osiris,
898; — the Bread of life, Light of the world,
Door of the sheep, Good Shepherd, Resurrection and the Life, the True Vine, compared with Horus in the same characters,
898-900
Jesus (the Egyptian), Expounder of the
Mysteries, the Sayer, the Word, 500; two,
grandfather and grandson, 516; the Sayings
of, 517, 771; born as the Fish of Iusāas
and Bread of Nephthys, 734; portrayed
with the fish on his head and crocodile
beneath his feet, 735; brought on by the
Pistis Sophia, 771; throned on Mount
Olivet with the twelve around him, a figure
of the solar god with the twelve who rowed
the bark of Ra, 840; traced back to the
time of Ptah, 891
Jesus (of the Apocrypha), adored by the
dragons; attended and adored by lions,
767; the flight into Egypt, astronomical
origin of, 768; at three years of age makes
dead fish live; at five, models sparrows out
of clay and makes them fly, 777, 809; sows
one grain of corn and makes a hundred
quarters of it, 802; puts many cloths into
one dye and brings them out each a different
colour, explanation of, 809
Jesus (the Gnostic), the Egyptian Horus,
752, 777-86; New Sayings of, 755, 771;
goes down into Amenta like Horus, 772-3;
Aber-Amentho, the —, 773; Lord of the
Resurrection, 780; his mother’s description
of him, 791
Jewish New Year, preceded by ten days of
penitence, 220
Jews, the pre-historic; their dispersion over
the world, a religious community, not a
race, 501; great typical builders, their
name, 503; the Aaiu in Egypt, the followers
of Ihuh, 551; worshippers of the Father
only, 520-4
Job, Book of, imagery in, Egyptian; characters in, compared with Horus, Osiris, Sut,
&c., 492-6; hunted by the Lord as a lion,
504; in Sheol, 541
John (the Baptist), born of woman, does
not enter the Kingdom, but helps to found
it, 856
John (the Divine), the Revelation of, 690;
the Christianized form of Taht-Aan, 691-2,
699
Jonah, carried by the fish, 276, 468
Joseph, the canal of, 503; Lion in the pit
with, 504; bullock, a zoötype of, 505;
— El, worshipped as a divinity in Northern
Syria, 508, 654; a leader of the Israelites;
a sacred scribe; Peteseph, Egyptian name
of; a mythical divinity, 509; Iu, the Sif,
508-10; dreamer and interpreter of
dreams, 510; thirty years of age when he
went out as a ruler over all the Land of
Egypt; the Adon of the Pharaoh, 511,
515; the young solar god, 512; compared
with Bata, 513-5; Potiphar’s wife, 513;
the Sheaves, 650
Joshua, the Hebrew representative of Shu,
657-8, 683-4; commanded to cross the
Jordan, 684; the Children of Israel enter
the Promised Land under, 686
Judah, triple lion, 504
Judas, identical with Sut; the bad boy who
struck Jesus and afterwards betrayed him to
the Jews, 833; a brother of Jesus, 837
Judea, derivation of the name, 503
Judgment, the, in Amenta, 240; twofold, 247; the Great, at the end of the
world; Jewish ceremonies, 475, 694; Valley
of, 475; the Great, described by Enoch,
694; the Great, periodic, astronomical,
694, 712; the last, harvest identical with,
864; the last, prophecy concerning, in the
Gospels, 866; periodic in Amenta, 867
Judgment Hall, examination of the Manes
in, 205; forty-two types of terror in, 318;
those who pass it become the clothed, 466;
Revelation, 703; the Osiris pleading in, 867
Ka, the Double of the dead, 177, 885;
Mexican Custom; offerings to; Horus the
manifestor of, 178; type of eternal
duration, 202; depicted in the Temple of
Luxor; food offered to, at the Mortuary
meal, 203; priests of the; the highest of
the seven souls, 204, 790; the Ritual read
INDEX
to, whilst preparing the mummy for burial,
213; the I or Ego, one of the seven souls,
479; the final form of soul, 488
Kabhsenuf, the hawk, 86, 436; one of the
four brothers, children of Horus, gods of
the four quarters, 782, 824, 826, 857-8,
859
Kabirim, the Seven, 497, 594
Kagu, the Japanese double Mount, 349
Kahi, the child, pseudonym for Child-Horus;
book of his second divine birth, 739
Kakad-i-Dâîtîk, Mount, centre of the earth,
350
Kalikalange, Inner African child-hero, 252
Kami, Japanese eight gods; three and their
sister Izanami, 328; the three Japanese
creators, one with Sut, Horus, and Shu, 402
Kamit, the cultivated land given to Horus,
419
Karast, the god or person embalmed,
anointed, 218; type of Christ, the anointed,
765, 881
Kartaphiles, called Joseph, in a trance every
century, who rises again at thirty years of
age, 509
Kâs, “the god who is in the Tuat,” 218
Kâsu, Osirian place of burial, 418, 420, 479,
643
Kaylasa and Kanagiri, invisible mountains,
380
Kenset, Egyptian name for Nubia, 304
Kep, the mystery of, 698
Kepheus, a station of the Pole, 580; Pole in
constellation of, legend of men turned into
monkeys, 613
Keridwen, the cauldron of, 382
Ketos or Khetos, the Monster fish, 279,
280, 282, 404-5
Keys, of Death and Hell, 717
Khabit, the Shade, one of the Seven Souls,
479
Khabsu, tree; gods, form of the Seven Great
Spirits, 604, 699; stars, lamps, 699
Khamuas, Tales of, 759, 776, 852
Kheb, in mythological Lower Egypt, 651
Khebt, Goddess of the Great Bear, 308;
bearer of the “Bull-roarer,” 309; watercow of, 310
Khemenu, town of, 304
Khenkhat, funeral bed in Amenta, 817
Kheper, the transformer; a type of HarMakhu, 332; a title of Ptah, 405; male
creator, 408; the beetle-headed, 437
Kheper-Neb-er-ter, his creation, 402
Kheper-Ptah, Sign of the Beetle, Crab, 302;
Creator of all things, 408; Creator by his
Word, 409
Kheph, a thigh-shaped instrument for
“opening the mouth,” 710
Khept, celestial locality, 305; as Apt, Watercow, with a woman’s breasts, 306
Kheru, Child-Horus, the Word, the Victim,
792
Kherufu, Twin Lions, throne of the solar
deity; succeeded by the Crab and Scarab,
455; the Cherubim, 671; the lion forms,
731; stationed at the doors of ancient
churches, 754
929
Khnemmu, the Seven moulders or metallurgists who assisted Ptah, 345, 386, 401,
411, 414, 428, 593; as pygmies, 372
Khnum, king of frogs, 30; divine potter,
portrayed at Philæ, forming the image of
man, 437
Khu, the glorified soul, 202-3; one of the
Seven Souls, 479
Khuti, Mount, name of the Pole; race name,
627
Kimmerians, Kimmeroi, of Homer, 627
Kina-Balu, Mount, landing-place of the
ancestral souls of the Natives of Borneo,
390
King of Glory, glorification of; the sun-god
in astronomical mythology, 486
Kingdom, The Founders of the; Horus in
his second advent, came to found it for his
father, 853; founded by Horus in Amenta
as a spirit world, 859
Kings, seven begetters, 600; two, of fire and
water, custom of the Chréais, Cambodia,
609; the seven sons of the Great Mother,
698; the seven rulers of the Heptanomis,
702; King of —s, 710
Kintu, First Man in Central African legends,
253
Knowledge, the lamp of light, 196
Korah, sons of; rebels; the Psalms of, 471
Koro Island and the bird lamenting its loss,
615
Krater, Sign, Urn of the inundation, 300,
698, 729; cup of Horus, 744
Kuni-no-mi-Hashira, Japanese divine pillar of earth, 351
Kurahashi, Japanese mythical mountain,
393
Kwenluns, two Chinese mountains, 349
Laa Maomao, “great step of the god,”
Samoan rainbow, 393
Ladder, of Sut and Horus to the Upper
Paradise, 207; staircase of Shu, 322; to
Odainsakr, 359; to save the sinking souls;
of Sut, 361; of Horus, 362; means of
ascent to heaven, 389; the conjuror’s spiral
coil of shavings, a form of, 392; of knives,
of Tâoist jugglers in China; the dark —,
Japanese mythical Mount Kurahashi;
Steps Hill, a — mountain, 393; — raised
in Amenta to see the gods, 445; erected by
Sut in Amenta, by Horus for Pepi to reach
heaven, 472; Dyaks of Borneo, to attain
heaven, 502; type of ascent, 603
Laegaire, the Irish land of heart’s delight, 369
Lake, of spirits, 132; of flame, in Amenta,
240, 551; of the “Thigh,” 260, 310, 548;
of “Equipoise” at the Northern Pole, 260;
Tanganyika, 260, 303, 400, 592; of Kharu; of
Puanta, 278; of the Great Fish; of Meoris,
282; of Natron; salt; darkness; 361, 394; of
emerald,
374;
of
Sa
in
the
polar paradise, 378, 385; of Putrata, 395,
418; of fire and brimstone, 696, 714
Lamb, and Bride, in Revelation, 690; Son of
God imaged as, alone has power to open the
Book of Seven Seals, 690; on Mount Zion,
702; type of Horus, 721, 733; persistence
of, in Gnostic Christianity, indicative of the
930
INDEX
Vernal equinox in the Sign of Aries; Jesus
the, 723
Last Supper, Kamite; Roman Catholic,
747; in the Gospels, 748; Osiris betrayed
by Sut at, 868, 870; night of, “the night
of provisioning the altar,” 868; Jesus
betrayed by Judas at, 869
Lazarus, the raising of, by Jesus, compared
with the raising of Osiris, 845, 853; representation in the Catacombs, 851-2; the Bier
of, constellated in the Great Bear, 852; the
risen, representative of Osiris the god; the
beggar, representative of the Osiris, 852-3;
the beggar and the rich man, story of, told
in the second tale of Khamuas, 852
Leg, of Nut, of Ptah, figure of the Pole, 310,
311, 551, 554, 586; of the Lake, co-type
with the Tree, 614
Legends, Drug of immortality, 12; Hottentot, jackal and the sun, 15; Lion transformed into a man, 16; Giant with no
heart, 17, 18; Petit Yorge; Marlbrook,
18; Piercing the dragon, 19; Giant’s
heart, 20; Sleeping Beauty, 24; Child
born to be king, 26; Two brothers, 27;
Daphne, 28; Ivan and Helen, 32; Guatemalan, Gift of fire, 91; Kaffir, of Simbukumbukioana, 253; American, Two
brothers and their canes, Grimm’s two
Gold children, 267; Egyptian, recorded by
Plutarch, concerning Rhea and Saturn, 306;
Maori, of Maui, 355-6; of Chang finding
the entrance to the underworld; Prince
Ivan finding the way into Amenta, 357;
Diarmait, voyage of, 368; Maelduin, voyage
of, 368-74; Merlin, imagery, 380; Sir
Owain, 394; the Temptation in the garden,
Assyrian Cylinder; the Fall, Babylonian,
453; Jonah, 496; Chapewee planting the
Pole, Dog-rib Indian; Arthurian, of the
Welsh Owein, 594; of the Jayas, of the astronomical rulers being condemned to be reincarnated seven times, 595; Hottentot, the
Nama woman and her brothers, for whom
the stone divided, 634; of the Mountains
which crushed the Moabites, 640; of Moses,
Sargon, Horus, born from the water, 664;
The Jesus Legend, 727
Lent, the Egyptian, 638, 836; the Egyptian
and the Christian, 746
Leo, Atum, 302; in relation to the inundation, 307; Two Lions in, Sign of Horus in
his double glory, 335
Leopard, Royal Totem, 66
Lesser Bear, its seven never-setting stars,
310, 329, 330, 395, 423, 551; bark that
voyaged round the Pole, 395; the Seven
that pull at the rope; Arms of the Balance;
Bonds of the universe; Towers; Rowers,
551; Station of the Pole, 580; seven typical Eternals; Assistants of Taht; the Wise
Masters; seven hawks, the offspring of
heaven; seven Pygmies, little sailors with
Ptah; the Watchers, 499; Leg of the seven
non-setting stars, 606
Leviathan, Dragon of the deep, 279; the
crocodile of Sebek-Horus, 496
Libra or Scales, point of equipoise for the
inundation, 297
Libyan Campaign, 687-9
Lien-Shan, Kwei-Tsang, Kwei-Chang, Chinese diving books, 610
Lilith and Chavvah, Adam’s two wives,
78, 456
Lion, zoötype of force, 2; image of superhuman power, 251; Sign of the inundation,
295; Sign given to Horus, 328; zoötype of
Atum-Iu, 503; type of the terrible; the
hinderpart, the forepart of, 671; — of the
Tribe of Judah, power to open the book of
seven seals, 704; Atum, god with the face
of a, 731
Lions, two, figures of, on glass plaques from
Mycenæ, 342; twin, throne of the solar
deity, 455; the triple, 504; the Sheniu,
671; Two, the double force, 731; Two, at
the doors of ancient churches, 753; Two,
attendant on Horus, the Osiris, the Gnostic
Jesus, 767
Lizard, author of marriage, 7; soul, 13; type
of transformation, 62, 67
Loaves, (or cakes), Fairy —, 254; — eight, in
the Catacombs and in the Ritual; eight,
Persen, Shenen, Khenfer, Hebennu, to be
offered at each of the Seven Mansions of the
Celestial Heptanomis; eight baskets of,
seven baskets of, 738; — and fishes, miracle
of; Seven, equivalent to the seven souls of
Ra, 811; the typical seven called the Bread
of Seb, on earth, Bread of Osiris, in Amenta,
Bread of Ra, in heaven, 853
Loch Nan Spoiradan, the lake of spirits,
132
Logia Kuriaka, the Sayer of, identifiable in
three different Egyptian religions, 890;
Horus, the Lord of the, 891, 903
Logia of Matthias, Gospel of the Carpocratean Gnostics, 904
Lord, the, as a lion, 504; representative of
solar force, 505; the — and his anointed,
521, 524; House of the, Mountain of the,
Word of the, 542; “men began to call upon
the name of the,” 590
Lu, Samoan Nut, maker of the water, 313
Lyra, a station of the Pole, 580, Tortoise,
Arabic name of, 617
Ma, goddess, co-worker with Ptah, 407-8;
goddess of truth and justice, 661, 680; one
of Shu’s
names, 661
Maat, seat of judgment, 347, 365, 386, 473,
535, 602, 901; of Amenta; above; the
double, 348; land of truth, 374; the Lords
of, 421; Great Hall of Judgment, House of
the Lord, 542; on Mount Sheniu, 678;
equilibrium of the universe, 679; the
Judges in the, twelve on twelve thrones,
704
Maati, scales of, 242, 537; truth, righteousness, justice, 537, 704; the doctrine of, 804;
the Tablets of, 903
Maatit, bark, 361
Macrocosm and Microcosm, 718
Maelduin and Bran, voyage of (Irish),
368-74
Mafek or Mafkhet, a title of Hathor,
264
INDEX
Mafeking, name of, 264
Maha-Bali, capital of, name signifying seven
pagodas, 605
Makhu, the balance or scales, 334
Makurti, Mount of the Todas, 349
Mana, magical power, 171
Manannan, a form of Mercury, guide of ways,
369; the fortress of, 375
Mane, Samoan Paradise, 354
Manes, put together in Amenta, 198-9;
transformation of, 198, 488; examination
of all his organs in the Judgment Hall; his
pleas of justification, 205; his journey
through Amenta, 360, 460, 461; becomes a
spirit by eating of the fruit of the Tree of
Hathor, 464-5; his pleadings, 551-2, 655; his
transformation into a swallow, 563; his
desire to obtain command over the waters,
640; Horus utters the words of his father
Ra to the, 827; the young man in the
Garden of Gethsemane, a form of the —
risen with his bandages about him, 887
Mangaia, meaning of the name, 609
Mangochi, the great hill the Yao people left,
377
Mankind, races of, origins, 629
Manna, Hebrew, the Egyptian Tahen, 646;
given “to him that overcometh,” 696
Manu, ship of, the earth, 575
Marriage, of mother and son, 59; brother
and sister, 70, 71; four brothers with four
sisters; ten brothers with ten sisters; two
sisters, two wives, 78; group, 79; Malayan
custom, 84; for one month; Leap Year
custom, 85
Mary, the Virgin, mother of Jesus; wife of
Cleopas, mother of Jesus, 788; the mother
of the Gnostic Jesus, her description of him,
791; the woman who anointed the feet of
Jesus and wiped them with her hair, 846,
871, 880; who “sat at Jesus’ feet” compared with Isis at the feet of Osiris, 850;
the two —s who proclaim the resurrection
of Jesus, 882; — Magdalene compared
with the Great Mother Apt, 883-4
Mary and Martha, the two Mertæ, divine
sisters, 845; the two sisters in Bethany,
849; Mary compared with Isis, Martha with
Nephthys, 850, 881, 884
Mashonaland, symbolism in the ruined cities
of, 263
Massacre of the Children, origin of, 769
Matarathos, the Seven, 324
Mates, the typical devourer, 643
Mati, Tablets of, 678-9; Great Hall of,
where the Balance was set up, place of the
equinox, 732; a title of Taht-Aan, recorder
of the Sayings in the Ritual, compared with
Matthew, 903; the Gospel of, equivalent to
the Saying in Matthew, 904-5
Mat-ka-Ra, Queen Hatshepsu, a type of both
sexes in one, 440
Maui, Maori legend of, 355; his descent into
the nether world, 356; Polynesian Shu;
hurling his father aloft, 663
Mediums, the first divine persons, 167, 170,
172-3; Angekok, — for divine descent;
Eskimo, Cambodian, Brahmanic customs,
173
931
Memphis, the Celestial, 375; the Ten Mysteries performed at, 740-1; doctrine of
immortality first taught at, 890
Menat, Wateress in the Zodiac, 299; type of
the Great Mother, 301; Aquarius, 302;
the wet-nurse, 306
Menwyd, Ark of, 573
Merenptah, King, Inscription of, 687-9
Meri, a name of Nut, the heavenly mother, 863
Meropes, people of the Thigh, 386
Mertæ, or Merti, the Double Eye; two Poles
in Equatoria; — a place name in Egypt, 725;
two eyes, 845; the two divine sisters, Isis
and Nephthys, Mary and Martha, who
watched and wept over Osiris, 849, 880
Meru, Mount, figure of the Pole in heaven,
353, 378
Meshech (or Meska), the place of scourging,
473
Mesiu, last night of the old year, first day of
the new, 742
Meskat, Egyptian Purgatory, 241, 481
Meskhen, group of stars, 260, 310; Birthplace, 310, 312, 385, 548, 600, 675, 701;
Cassiopeia, 394
Mesore, month of, 294, 301
Messiah, the son, 521; he who came in
water, blood and spirit, 525; the bringer of
peace, 528; two forms of the, 533; — BenJoseph; — Ben-David, 534; the Divine
Child; the typical Calf, Lamb or Branch;
his advent periodic, 727; reborn in various
signs of the Zodiac, types of, 733-6;
celebration of his birthday for 10,000 years,
744; the blind Horus, 817
Messu, the, or Messianic Prince of Peace,
Egyptian Jesus born at Memphis, 728
Mikoshi, Japanese Ark-Shrines, 669
Milky Way, 262, 285-6, 310; source of, 310;
pictured as celestial water, 312-3; the canal
on which the Manes voyaged, 316, 361-2,
394; paradise of the Namoi, Barwan Tribes,
376; divider of the Okeanos, 405; the river
that went out from the circumpolar paradise,
446
Miracles, a mode of demonstrating divinity;
— of Jesus in the Apocrypha, at three years
of age makes dead fish live, at five models
sparrows out of clay and makes them fly,
777, sows one grain of corn and makes a
hundred quarters of it, 802, puts many
cloths into one dye and brings them out
each a different colour, explanation of, 809;
— of Jesus in the gospels, turns water into
wine, 798, 827, 900, curses the fig-tree, 799,
the miraculous draught of fishes, 807, the
loaves and fishes, two versions, explanation,
811, gives sight to the blind, explanation,
815, raising the widow’s son at Nain,
Egyptian origin of, 819, walking on the
waters, 827, calming the tempest, 829,
raising Lazarus, compared with the raising
of Osiris, 845, 853; — in the Gospels a
repetition of the mysteries in the Ritual,
806-7, 811, 813, 818; a Pagan mode of
symbolical representation, 809
Miriam, compared with Tefnut, 661, 667
Mishkena-Meskhen, a tabernacle of the
Mandaites of Mesopotamia, 309
932
INDEX
Monkey, prototype of Taht-Aan, 15; cause
of the Arawak deluge, 572
Monotheism, foundation of, 407
Moodgeegally, first man of the Aborigines
of New Holland, 377
Moon, zoötypes of, 8; frog in, 10; the
Crescent Bow in heaven, 562; ark of, circle
of a lunar zodiac, 577
Moses, a mythical personage, 509; the rod of,
646; the Hebrew equivalent of Anhur, 658,
661, 682-3; tradition that he was a woman
named Musu, 661; compared with Shu;
veil of, 662-3, 665-6, 683; born from the
water; adopted by Thermutis, 663; his
neck made invulnerable to the sword; born
circumcised; the “Crazy man”; altar
built by, 666; Mount of, 678; previously
Osarsiph, priest of On, 682; disappearance
of, 683; Children of Israel travel through
Amenta with, 686; talking with Jesus at
his Transfiguration, 823
Mother, the Abode, 36-7; sons, the consorts
of, 59; first founder of the Totem, 62, 64;
two —s, 69; eating the —, 71, 73, 234;
— and eldest daughter, 76-7; — the human
and superhuman, 97; earliest, the Virgin,
sacred heifer of Isis, vulture of Neith, 136;
the — cast out for the god to be imaged by
the father only, the goddess continued in
her types of the birthplace, 674
Mother blood, importance of, 68; origin of
the human race, 69; to preserve it pure,
70; descent by, 71
Mother earth, giver of food; universal
great grandmother, 98-100; as Fish, 282,
289; primordial bringer-forth, 398
Mother Totems, 65, 68, 81
Mouse, type of disappearance, 16; emblem
of the human soul, 136-7
Mount (Mountain, Mound), type of Mother
earth, 36, 100; Mexican mother, 100;
some races trace descent from, 101, 624;
figure of the earth, 270, 585, 588; astronomical, 312; Shu standing on, to uplift the
firmament, 314, 322; of Glory in the
heavens, 330; figure of the birthplace, 340;
of earth, heaven, Amenta, 347-8; two —s
of the Chinese, twofold of the Todas, of the
Babylonians, 349; the Pahlavi two —s,
350; — of earth, type of the Great Mother,
of heaven, typical of the fatherhood, 354;
the double, of the Karens, 357; the Polar,
Mont Blanc in heaven, 363; Hebrew
paradise on the summit, 383; means of
ascent to paradise, 388-90; staircase of the
Great God; heavenly Jerusalem on, 473;
Zion, 473, 675; of earth, seat of the Great
Mother, 538; of the Navajo Indians, 571;
type of emergence from the waters, 585;
figure of the Pole, 594, 624; seven —s of
the Zuni Indians; of stone; of the
Papyrus reed; the Ever-white of the
Koreans; the Pearl, 610; the seven submerged —s, 622; — “of Mankind,” 624;
of the “Nations,” 625; of Venus, discovered by Constantine; Horeb, 675; of
Oblations, 676; of Moses, 678; of Congregation; as Judgment Seat, 703; Final
Judgment on, 704; of Resurrection, where
the blind, deaf, dumb, palsied, or dead were
restored, 812-3; 821; Jesus in, 819;
scenes in the Ritual and Pistis Sophia, on
the — in the spirit world, 819; solar, and
means of ascent to spirit world; equinox on
the top of the; Sermon on the; Cross of
Christ erected on, 820, 821; meeting-place
in spirit world, 821; — of the Mysteries,
Miracles, Resurrection, Regeneration, Transfiguration, 823-4; Jesus taken by the devil
to the; Jesus praying in, lodging in, 825
Mount of Glory, in the heavens, 330, 384;
in the double equinox, 335; coincident with
the Vernal equinox, 336; Solar in the east,
Stellar in the north, 354; at the north
celestial Pole, 360, 397; of the “never
setting stars,” 376; of the Esquimaux, 378;
in Amenta, 420; the solar; — of God;
Sinai, 536, 676, 678; Great Judgment Hall
on, 537, 704; Eternal City on, 575; Crown
of life given on, 602; Promised Land seen
from; the summit of Amenta, 678; figured
in Revelation, 702; — of the Resurrection,
819
Mount of Olives, in Amenta, 772
Mtanga (or Mulunga), god or spirit, 377
Mummy, a type of the eternal, enfolded in a
seamless swathe hundreds of yards in length,
216, 887; prepared for burial covered with
a golden gum as type of a spiritual body,
217; type of resurrection in the Roman
Catacombs, 219; borne on the back of a
cow, 387; flight of stairs, pedestal, sceptre,
tat, buried with, 472; the solar god represented as a, 644; Horus the raiser of, 479,
654, 842; Jacob’s, 654; mode of embalming
the, 851, 852
Mut-em-Ua, the Virgin Mother, 757-8
Mysteries, of Amenta, 186, 805; ten Great in
Amenta, 220, 247, 702, 844; the seven
Great, 705; the Jewish, annual, equinoctial,
737; the Ten performed at Memphis, 740;
in the Pistis Sophia, 774; the Great
and the Lesser, 775; the Lesser, astronomical, 778; the Greater, spiritual, 784;
Second Horus, the expounder of, 791, 901;
— of Totemism, spiritual in the eschatology,
794; double baptism in, 795; the dead in
the, 814; first and second resurrection in
the; — made portable in parables; resurrection of Ani one of the, 865; ancientness
of, 866; — of Ptah at Memphis, doctrine of
immortality first taught in, 890; the
Lesser, taught by the elder Horus, the
Greater, by Horus in his second advent, 901
Mystery, of the Great Mother, of the Dragon
with seven heads, of the Seven Stars, of
the First-born from the dead, 694, 699; the
Mother of, 698; the Two witnesses, the
Four living creatures, the War in heaven,
God, Renewal in the ancient heavens, 699;
of the Woman and the beast with seven
heads and ten horns, 699, 700, 707; of
Messiahship, 725, 727; of the Mystical
Book, 726; of the Cross, 749; of Tattu, 772,
818, 839; of Investiture, 772; the First
Great, 773; — teachers, 775; of Looking
Within; Looking Without, 783; of the
resurrection of the dead, 784, 805-6; of
INDEX
the Five Supports, 785; of the Double
Horus, 790; of Tattu, Gnostic version
of, 792; of the resurrection in Amenta,
817-8; of Osiris, the “mourning of the goddess,” at which a cow was covered with a
black linen pall and exposed to view for four
days, 851; of Nekhen, 859; of the Father
in the likeness of a dove, 862; of the Last
Supper; of the erection of the Tat pillar, 868
Mythos, the origin of folk-tales, 23
Nakauvandra, Fijian Sacred Mountain,
pathway for the dead, 390
Nature Powers, 3
Neb-er-ter, Ptah or Osiris the Creator, 407
Nebhetep, one of Atum’s two wives, 456; a
name of Iusāas, 674; a mother of Horus, 788
Neb-Ua, Osiris the one and only Lord, 184
Negative Confession, the, 679, 681
Neith, wet-nurse, 13; blood mother, 69; the
crocodile, type of the Great Mother, 97,
884; represented by the vulture, bird of
blood, 136, 263, 290; Virgo, 302; suckler
of crocodiles, 306; earlier form of the
Virgin mother than Isis, 333; the evervirgin, 757, 761; mother of Horus, 788;
the preparer of the mummy for the funerary
chamber, 883
Nephthys, nurse of the child, 69; lady of
darkness, lady of the moon, consort of Sut,
pre-monogamous Great Mother, 514. (See
Isis and Nephthys.)
New heaven and earth, a creation of
astronomical mythology, 410
Ngalalbal, wives of Daramulun, 78
Nile, source of, two festivals of, 259; inundation of, dates of, 260; figured as Eridanus
in astronomy, 270, 293; Hymn to the, 286,
306; festival of the, 290, 296, 301, 536, 705;
serpent supposed to be at the bottom, 292;
the New, tears of Isis, 300; river of the
South, 310; the water source of life in
Amenta, 446; the Celestial, called the
Father of the gods, 459
Nina, fish mother, 277
Nine Bows, the invaders of Egypt, 687, 689
Nine Maidens, 20
Nnu, soul of water, 121; firmamental water,
400; heaven as the celestial water, 548;
the ark or bark of, 553, 558, 575; lord of
the celestial water, 555, 569; turner back of
the flood, 555; “Lord of the primordial
water”; “Father of the gods,” 564;
Sanctuary of, rebuilt by Tahtmes III, 565;
“the Old Man”; the later Noah, 566;
name of the inundation; Rest, 569; ark of,
on the Sarcophagus of Seti, 574; solar orb
in, 579
Nomes, zoötypes of, 54; the seven, of Egypt,
305; Nui, a name of, 609
Nui, islands, nomes, 609
Num, the goat-headed Capricornus, 302;
Lord of the inundation, 565, 579; his ark
represented by the city of Thebes, 565
Num-Kufu, his dream of a deluge; his
pyramid a form of the ark, 566
Nun, the firmament, 281, 284, 662; the land
beneath the billow, 367; firmamental water,
400, 401, 404, 565; Horus, a plant out of
933
the, 529; form of the god Num, 565; father
of Joshua; father of Shu, 662
Nunu, a company of Gods or Powers, 404
Nurtunja pole, of the Aruntas, 60, 76, 267
Nut, name of heaven, 262; heavenly mother,
285; tree of, 285, 415; sycamore of, 303,
450; Leg of, image of the Pole, 310-1,
551, 554; milch cow of, 310, 557; the cow
of heaven, 311, 323; house of the firmament,
405; represented on the coffin lid as the
bringer to new life above, 449; giver of
dew and rain, 450; as cow carrying the god
Ra, 557, 668; Meri, a name of, 863
Oannes, divine fish-man, 277
Oases, the seven, 264; greater and lesser,
305
Oasis, considered a sort of paradise, 264;
primitive paradise, 304, 397, 444; model of
the garden of Aarru, 446
Oblation, described by Ezekiel, 676; —s
made in Tattu, adorations in Annu, compared with the Magi at Bethlehem, 765
Odainsakr, Norse paradise, 359; guarded by
the seven sons of Mimir, 593
Ogg, Jewish giant who kept the ark afloat,
594
Ogyges and his companions saved from the
flood, 570
Okeanus, the celestial water round the world,
362, 405, 627; divided by the Milky Way,
405
Okikurumi and the six who turned into hares,
610
Omoroca, the woman cut in two by Belos,
280, 283
Onoatoa, the seven islands of, 609
Onogoro, Isle of, made by Izanagi and
Izanami, 584
Onouris, Greek warrior, the same as ShuAnhur, 665
Opening the mouth, of the Manes in
Amenta; rite still performed in Rome,
208; instrument for, 710
Ophiuchus, Horus crushing the serpent in,
318, 418
Orion, the conqueror, 270; as Horus of the
inundation, 286, 291, 316; the stellar
representative of Horus, 316; the hunter,
317, 318; bark of, 550; ark of souls, 551;
ark of, 570
Osarsiph (Moses), priest at On, 682
Osirian group of five deities, 420
Osiris, the hare-headed Un-Nefer, 12; male
and female, 184, 439; the one and only
Lord, 184; the One God, 185; torn in
fourteen pieces by Sut, 187, 843; God of
Amenta, 197; Winter Sun, 212; Coffin of,
221, 329, 593, 644; coffin of, altar for the
eucharistic meal; his resurrection “dawn
upon the coffin” of, 221, 868; giver of his
flesh and blood for sustenance, 221; transfigured into the risen Horus, 225; the Lost,
299; “Bull of eternity,” 302, 505; Sign of
Taurus, 302; the Judge, 323, 386, 473, 704;
Creator, 406; the Mummy God, 420; the
Voluntary sacrifice, 527; the Vine, 536;
Lord of the flood, 553; the Power of the
Pole, 574; temple of, 639; seated on his
934
INDEX
throne of gold with Anup and Taht, 705;
his entry into the moon at the annual resurrection, 740; his sufferings and death
memorized in the Mysteries, 741; his arm
paralyzed by Sut and held bound in Sekhem,
832; reconstituted by Horus after his mutilation by Sut, 843, 854; raised from the
tomb by Horus, 844, 853; watched over by
the two Mertæ sisters, 849; the god in
matter, 853; the betrayal at the Last
Supper, 868
Osiris, the, his permanent soul made up of
seven constituent parts, 203, 430, 479; his
progress through Amenta, 204, 461; examination of his organs, 205; his pleas, 205,
209, 238, 318; opening the mouth of, 208;
learning the Mysteries of Amenta, 226; his
journey to reach the circumpolar paradise,
360; the necessity of his knowing the name
of every part of the boat, 396, 574; prototype of the Corpus Christi; his cries compared with those of the sufferer in the
Psalms, 477-85; his pleadings, 551-2,
867. (See Manes.)
Osiris-Sahu, the risen Christ of the
Osirian cult, 215, 842
Ouranos: see Urnas.
Pagodas, the seven, image of the
Heptanomis, 605
Pait, human beings of the past, 385
Palladium, Roman, 605
Pantomime, characters in, compared with
Egyptian gods, 329; the Giants and religious Mysteris of Amenta represented in
the, 658
Papyrus reed, type of the Great Mother, 97;
roll of the Manes, 195; country of, human
birthplace, 255-7; roll of, primeval food,
241; lily loaves; Amenta rising from a bed
of; Japan named from, 256; symbol of the
primeval birthplace, 257; Horus on, 258;
field of, the Aarru paradise, 259, 264, 304,
305, 571; means of climbing heavenward;
type of ascent to heaven, 388; Horus on,
figure of an ark in heaven, 394, 612; Horus
saved on, 571; symbol of the Pole, 612;
ark of, 663; figure of the earth; Horus and
the gods of the four quarters on, 824
Parable, of the Sower, 805, 839; of the
marriage feast, marriage in the Mystery of
Tattu, 839; of the rich man and Lazarus, 853
Parables, of Jesus in the Apocrypha and
Jesus in the Gospels, 783; Horus in his first
advent teacher by means of, in his second,
speaker without, 791; Jesus speaks in,
803-4; promises to speak without, 862
Paradise, mode of ascent to, 207; primitive
African, 249; the Lost, change of Pole-star,
268; primitive in Equatoria, 269; of Plenty,
304, 383, 687; primitive in the heavens, 304;
primal on the summit of the Mount amongst
the stars that never set, 346, 359, 376, 572,
694; the first, stellar, last, solar; of AmKhemen, 346, 397; at the north, 348; the
Chinese terrestrial, Chinese celestial, 349,
379; the terrestrial and celestial, 350;
entrance to the earthly in the west, 356;
Odainsakr, the Norse, 359; Hetep, 373
(see Mount Hetep); Irish, two, 374; up the
Milky Way, 376; of Airyana Vaêjô, 378;
Hebrew, on the summit of the Mount; circumpolar, 384, 397, 420, 440; four types
of; of the Oasis; of Atum; on the Mount
of Glory; Irish, four types of, 397; founded
on the Oasis, 444; Upper and Lower of the
Jewish Kabalists, names of, 445; in Amenta,
divided into four, 459; of Adam, the garden
of Atum, 500; conical huts, a figure of, 575;
lost through the unwatchful dog, 612; the
double, 627; the stellar, in the region of the
Pole, 725
Passion Week, prototype of, seven days of
mourning for Osiris, 748
Patriarchate, the Hindu, 71-2 years, 595
Patriarchs, Adam, Seth, Enoch, Kenan,
Jared, Methuselah, Noah, their ages, 595;
Hebrew, two groups; Babylonian, two
groups, 597
Paul, his warning to the Thessalonians; the
“Apostle of the Heretics,” 867
“Peach-tree of the Gods,” Chinese image
of the Pole, 583
Penpii, scene on the coffin of, serpent offering fruit, 459
Pentateuch, allegorical nature of, 641; the
“Four books of Taht,” the original of, 682
Pepi, rebirth of, throne of, guide of, 721
Peri-em-Hru, the Coming forth to day, 648,
820
Phact, star, announcer of the birth of Horus;
of the inundation, 289, 291, 294, 307
Phallic customs, mediums, source of divine
descent, 173; Spartan custom, 174
Phallic festival, 105-111; surviving in
religious Mysteries, 224, 674
Phallic worship, origin of, 36-7; a cult of
the Great Mother, 105-6
Phallus, as a type of solar force; type
of resurrection, 38, 135; type of resurrection also found in the Roman Catacombs,
883
Pharaoh, mines of, 263; representative of the
double Har-Makhu, sun-god of the twofold
horizon, 332; derivation of the name, 689;
— the, and his son, representatives of Ra
and the Repa, 760
Phœnix, or bennu, emblem of the solar
god, 493
Phœnix cycle, seven patriarchates, 595
Pig, black, sacrifice for rain, 21; type of evil,
645; type of Sut, the evil being, 809, 816
Pi-ha-hiroth, before Baal-Zephon, 655, 656
“Pilgrim’s Progress,” an outline of the
Egyptian Ritual, 243
Pillar, figure of the northern Pole; figure of
the birthplace, 340; “Heaven’s one —,”
a name of the Japanese island of Ski;
Japanese — at the centre of the world, 351;
of Shu, 352; Hebrew, of the Lower and
Upper Paradise, 353; between the Lower
and Upper Paradise, 445; of cloud; of fire,
639; of crystal, 697
Pillars, the Four, erection of, in Amenta,
220; Two, in the land of Siriad; Two, of
Sut and Horus, 266, 406; repeated in
Amenta, 420; the Ziggurat, 271; Seven, of
the Heptanomis, 321; Two, in the gateway
INDEX
of the House of Ptah, 326; Two, erected by
Queen Hatshepsu; Two, of Sut and Horus,
two Poles in Equatoria; Japanese Two, of
Earth and Heaven; Two, in Amenta, the
doorway from one world to another, 351;
Two, in a temple of Herakles at Tyre, 352;
Germanic Irmin; Hebrew, “the strength
of the hill Zion,” 353; Four, of the four
quarters, 502; Twelve, of the twelve Tribes,
685
Pisces, sign of, Horus of the Two Crocodiles,
302
Pisciculi, the Primitive Christians, why so
called, 734, 736
Piscis Australis, the birth of water in,
299
Pisgah, Promised Land viewed from, 678;
vanishing of Moses on, 683; the mountain
of Amenta, 685
Pistis Sophia, a means of bringing on the
Jesus Legend from its Egyptian source, 771,
773; matter of, post-resurrectional, 771,
820; the Mysteries of Amenta, of Revelation, repeated in, 772; twelve dungeons of,
corresponding to the twelve divisions in
Amenta; the necessity of knowing the
magical names in, as in Amenta, 774; the
Mysteries in, Egyptian astronomical mythology, 775-82; Mystery of the Five Supports referred to, 785; the Saviour Twins
in, the Dual Horus, 787; the true version
of Horus and Jesus in Amenta, 803; the
resurrection or “Coming forth to day” of
the Egypto-Gnostic Jesus, 820
Plagues of Egypt, 632, 641, 645, 652
Planisphere, its starting-point, 305; names
of Egyptian cities in, 637
Pleroma, star of the, 709
Pole, erected at the ceremonies of puberty,
60, 76; two sacred —s of the Arunta, 267;
the greasy, in British Pastimes, 391
Pole, celestial, images of, 265, 311, 377,
607-8; Mount of, “Heaven’s Eye mountain,” 265; —s, two, in Equatoria, 266,
268; the sinking of, 302, 547; centre of the
starry system, 302; of the Thigh, 310;
Yoke or Bond of heaven, 311; “Leg of
Nut”; “Leg of Ptah,” 310, 311, 551,
605; Staff of Anup; Backbone of Osiris,
311; cord or chain attached to the, 323;
Apex of the Mount, at the; backbone a
figure of the, 352; two —s as two trees,
353; Mount of Glory at the, 360; imaged
as a pillar of glass, 391; a mooring post,
397, 553-4; represented by the Mount, 499,
607; type of fixity, 552; staff of Shu, 555;
Great Reed of the Navajo Indians, 571;
“Tip of heaven”; conical huts, a figure of,
575; seven stations of, 580, 601; types of,
580-1; Draconis, Lesser Bear, Kepheus,
Cygnus, Lyra, Herakles, stations of, 580;
change of, 3,714 years, 582; “Peach-tree
of the Gods,” 583; Dog-rib Indian legend,
584; re-erecting the, customs in connection
with, 587; the Great Mother and her son
Sut, founders of the, 588; represented by
seven trees or a tree with seven branches,
by horns, the dragon, fish, fish-men, eyes,
caves, church, city, 608
935
Pole-star, the Southern, 302; centre of the
stellar universe, 323; ancient deity of, 324;
emblem of stability, type of the eternal, type
of supreme intelligence, 330; Eye of Anup;
Chinese deity of, 331; above the Chinese
terrestrial paradise, 349; Japanese god of,
379; Sut ruler of the primal, 590; guide to
the Ship of heaven; “Star of the eagle”;
“Star of the wain”; “Star of the Shep-herd
of the heavenly flocks”; “Key of the
crown,” 597, 601; “Crown of heaven,”
602; representative of Buddha, 609;
change of, a star falling from heaven, 701;
Light of the stellar paradise, 725
Pole-stars, on the two horizons, 265
Polutu, Samoan Hades, 354
Pool, of baptism, purification, Bethesda, 236
Pope, dressed in the likeness of both sexes,
736
Prayer, modes of, 34-6, 103; — offerings,
144
Precession, circle of, one great year in, 423,
595; seven Pole-stars seven stages in, 428,
607, 613; reference to, in the Book of Job,
496; Circle of the Eternals, 581; Herodotus’
report on, 582; the Circle of Sidi, 605;
Creation of man in the Cycle of; great
deluge of all at the end of the cycle of, 622;
changes in, changes of birthdays for Jesus
and for Horus, 739; Horus in the Circle of,
“witness for eternity,” “he who steppeth
onwards through eternity,” “persistent
traveller,” 730; “traveller of the heavenly
road,” 791
Primeval Powers, “first company of the
gods of Aarru,” 421; identified with the
Hebrew Elohim, 422
Primordial Powers, the seven, two sets of
names, 322; various types and names of,
422; seven elemental forces, 698
“Prince of Peace,” Horus the, 290, 293,
424, 498, 532; Iu-em-hetep, 417-8, 457,
500, 516; Augustus in the character of, 742
Promiscuity, modification of, 84, 107; continued in religious festivals, 224
Promised land, Mount Hetep, 207; — of
the Negroes of the Southern States of
America, 382; the Hebrew, 383; of Aarru,
garden of Hetep, 385, 460, 540, 657;
Ammah, the Goshen of the Ritual, 652;
account of the abundance found there, compared with Amenta, 657; across the firmamental waters, 678; on the other side of
Jordan, 684
Procepis, battle of, 688
Psalms, of the sons of Korah, 471; of “degrees”; “sung on the steps of the Abyss,”
472-3; the “wicked” in, the Sebau, 478; VII,
XVI,
XXX,
LVII,
references
to
the Constituent Souls, 480; Pleas of the
speaker compared with the Pleas of the
Manes, 484-5; the “still waters” as in
Hetep, 488; Exodus of the Israelites
described in, 641
Ptah, as beetle, 2, 405, 433; frog, 11, 30;
the husband of his mother, 86; elemental
souls blended with the human in, 182; first
form of god the father; cult of, at Memphis,
234; pygmy, 250; suspender of the heavens,
936
INDEX
267; Leg of, image of the Pole, 311; the two
horizons united in his mansion, 326;
excavator of Amenta, 344; the passage
through the Mount tunneled by, 345, 407,
411-2; supreme craftsman of the gods,
345; the Kamite Vulcan, 359, 365-6; builder
of the Hall of Truth and Justice, 359; a
dwarf, 372; Egyptian first creator, 405,
407; Kheper and Tanen, titles of,
405; great architect of the universe, 406,
413; “Let the earth be!” title of, 409, 410;
lifter of the firmament of the lower earth,
410; types of him as worker, 411, 433;
builder of the Ark of the dead, 412; former
of the egg of the sun and moon, 413;
supreme god; former and transformer;
father of beginnings, 413, 420; the Putcycle of, 422, 433-4; supreme ruler for
9,000 years, 422; his name as opener; the
one god of Genesis; God the father and Iu
the son, 423; link between the elemental
powers and spirit ancestors; portrayed on
the Monuments as creator of the human
soul, 433; male mother, 434; male and
female in one, 439; opener of the mouth;
giver of breath, 441; Huhi, Ihuh, Iao, Ieou,
names of, 500; the wise god who spoke the
words of wisdom to his son, 517; the universe of, divided into three regions, Amenta,
earth, heaven, 853; grandfather of the
gods, 891; earliest form of the eternal
father manifested in an ever-coming son, 894
Ptah-Hetep, Proverbs and Sayings quoted
from, 517
Ptah-Sekari-Osiris, Feast of, yearly festival
of the resurrection, 740
Ptah-Tanen, his land below the waves, 369;
the opener of the earth, 404; maker of the
earth, 406; hailed as creator, 410
Ptah-Tatanen, of the Lower earth, Lord of
eternity, 414
Puanta or Punt, name of, land of, 262-4;
water of the Abyss, 278; Atum rising from,
459; conical huts on piles, 575; land of the
gods, 635
Puberty, ceremonies of, 60, amongst the
Yao people, 254; transformation at, 61;
seclusion previous to, 69, 135; opening rite,
75-6; running through the rain, 134; connected with mysteries of mediumship, 169;
Top-knot assumed by the Kaffirs at, 866
Pungel, god of the Melbourne Blacks, 440
Pung-Lai, Chinese island of, brought by a
tortoise, 618
Purgatory, in Amenta, 415, 480
Put, cycle or circle of the gods, 344, 422, 432;
equivalent to the Elohim of Genesis, 420,
423; number nine, Egyptian plural, 421
Putrata, gulf of, 240, 361-2, 396, 613;
Caverns of, 361; Lake of, 395, 418, 829;
the Red Sea, 640
Pygmies, 249; the seven primal powers, 594
Pyramid, Sut buried in (Arab tradition),
266; of Sakkarah, seven-stepped, 391;
artificial figure of the Mount; tubular shaft
of the — of Gizeh representative of the way
to heaven, also pointer to the Pole-star, 394;
nine —s of the Mexicans representing the
sun, moon, and seven stars; the Great, a
sign of seven, 607; of Medum, evidence
that 6,000 years ago the dead in Egypt were
buried in a faith of the Cross, 749; the Ka
Chambers in, built on the plan of the Greek
and Roman Crosses, 750
Ra, soul of the sun, 121; Sun-god, 126;
Holy Spirit, source of divine descent, 165,
853; seven souls of, 172, 422, 430; first
god in the trinity of Ra, Atum, and Horus,
188; the Litany of, 420, 442; adoration of,
420; men, stars, souls, the children of, 630;
the “flocks” of, 648-9, 651, 653; children of,
650; Ra revealing himself to Shu, compared with the god of Moses, 667; Huhi,
the eternal, Ihuh, 668; the “Ancient of
days,” 704; the supreme type of deity,
solar hawk the symbol of, 843; the father in
heaven as god in spirit, 853
Rahab, survival of the Great Mother, 686
Rainbow, bride of the gods from earth to
heaven; the snake bridge of the North
American Indians; bridge for the souls of
the Maori chieftains; the Samoan Laa
Maomao, “Long step of the god,” 393
Ram, Sign of, solar resurrection in, 543
Rannut, as serpent, 2, 126, 272; type of the
Great Mother, goddess of plant life, 140,
271; serpent of, type of transformation,
421; goddess of harvest, vegetation; —
Parmuti, the eighth month, 734
Regeneration, Jesus and Hermes on, 8223; baptismal, 864
Rehu, the two lions, Sut and Horus, 253, 837
Rekhit, living human beings, 385
Religion, of the Wanyamwezi, pygmies of
the Ituri forest, mainly a worship of spirits,
150-1; beginning of, worship of providence
figured as the Great Mother, 497
Religious Cult, earliest form of a, 146
Rem-Rem, the place of weeping, 373
Rephaim, valley of, 475-6; the dead in Sheol,
476; giants, 476, 658; King of Bashan,
Goliath, 476
Reproduction, festival of, for food, 104-8
Rerit, the sow, type of the Great Mother, 97,
301; the suckler, 306
Resurrection, phallus, type of, 38; AmsuHorus, type of, 190; the Ritual of,
193; trepanning and inserting the bones
of little children; other customs showing
belief in; carrying round the ka image;
elevation of the Host, 213; Mummy,
type of, in the Roman Catacombs, 219;
Arunta Mystery of, 245; Horus representative of, 290; Osiris, Horus, Amsu, in
Amenta, 740; Paul’s struggle to attain, 790;
a Mystery of Amenta, 813, 818; on the third
day, 814, 868, 887; in Amenta, repeated in
the Gospels, 817; ascending the mountain
of Amenta, a figure of, 819; of the soul,
first represented in the Mysteries of Memphis, 842; events in the Gospels which
occurred after the, 863; the first and second,
in the Mysteries, 865; the Annual, 867; a
general, at the time of the Crucifixion,
877; of Jesus compared with that of Horus,
878-9; two kinds, 881; of Jesus, proclaimed
INDEX
by the “Women,” of Horus, proclaimed by
the “goddesses and the woman,” 882
Revelation, Book of, based on Egyptian
astronomical mythology, 690; matter of,
compared with the writings of Taht-Aan,
699; chief subject-matter, the Last Judgment
as portrayed in the Mysteries of Amenta,
715; Astronomy of, time of the Vernal
equinox in the Ram, 722
Rhea, the legend of, 306
Rock, type of Mother earth, 36, 100-2; a
co-type with the Mount, 353, 826; of
Manannan, 375; of safety amidst the waters
in Sheol, 484; the waters from the, 667;
Horus established his father’s Kingdom on;
Jesus built his church on; gates of Amenta
in the; — of the Tser Hill, 826
Rod, of Moses, 646, 667; of the Egyptian
Priests, 646
Roma, the fish-goddess, 736
Roman Church, at root Egyptian, 242
Rome, probable derivation of name; Mother
Church in, a living likeness of the FishMother, 736
Rusta, the jaws of, 703
Sa, magical fluid, 175, 795; lake of, in the
Polar paradise, 378, 385; lake in which the
gods were vitalized, 795
Sabaoth, also Iao-Sabaoth, deity with the
face of an ass, 506
Sabbath, origin of; Jewish, Christian,
Egyptian, 426-7, 746-7; the Hawaiian; a
sixth day of the Monomatapas, 427;
Assyrian, 748; origin of two dates for,
748-9.
Sacrifice, Mother the first, 71, 234; of
Meriah, 74; a virgin, 75; cow, calf, sow, as
types of the Great Mother, 97; victim slain
and eaten, 105; “without blemish,” 148;
of human blood, 158; blood, feminine, 234;
after baptism, 364; black boar of Sut
offered up by Khunsu-Horus, 366; after
the deluge, 568-9; Mexican, of children;
Hebrew, of rams, bulls, 604; lamb and calf,
types of, 695; Great Mother; ever-coming
child, 727; Horus, the voluntary, 728;
to Osiris, the Lord of Eternity, at the Festival
of resurrection, 740; not a bone of the
sacrificial animal to be broken, 877
Safre, the sun of yesterday, 334
Sagittarius, compound of Shu and Tefnut,
297, 302, 366
Sahu, glorious body, 198, 319, 395, 479; in
the Planisphere, representative of the Manes
rising from Amenta; Babylonian constelation, 319; spiritual body, one of the Seven
Souls, 479; seven —s with Horus, 593; the
Invested, 781; the risen Amsu-Horus, 800
Sais, the city of, when founded, 623
Sakkarah, pyramid of, 391
Salem, Mount, 675
Sami: see Sebau
Samuel, his soul invoked from Amenta, 480
Sang-gye, seven Buddhas, 431
Saturn, legend of, 306; Mount of, one of the
seven hills of Rome, 610
Saturnalia, the, in relation to the equinoctial
level, 327; of Sut, 877
937
Savaiki, Mangaian migration from, 634
Saviour, earliest known, 292; the bringer of
food; shower of the way to attain eternal
life, 727
Sayings of Jesus, Horus, Iu, Iu-em-hetep
the Sayers of, 890; two classes of, those of
the childhood, and those of the adultship,
891
Scarlet, Lady, 698; robe put on Jesus,
874
Scomalt, earth-mother of the Okanagaus,
deluge of, 546
Scorpio, Sign of, 297; — Isis-Serkh, 302
Sea-goat, compound figure of, 298
Seasons, two, in Egypt, 295
Seb, as goose, 2, 52, 126, 436; father of food,
37, 124; soul of earth, 121; arbitrator
between Sut and Horus; upper earth of,
414; Sut and Horus children of, 420; god
of earth; foster-father of Horus, 825, 853,
895; latest dynasty of Egyptian deities born
of, 848; prototype of Joseph, 895
Sebau, or Sami, demons of darkness, 121,
241; bound in chains, 241; inimical powers
of nature, 273; spawn of the reptile Apap,
272, 286; repeated in Amenta, 420; coconspirators with Sut, 471; the “wicked”
in Psalms, 478; destroyed in the deluge,
553, 557, 634; slaughtered in the battles of
Amenta, 652
Sebek, as crocodile, 2, 59, 86, 387, 436, 677;
fish of the inundation, 274; crocodile-headed
deity; oldest type of the solar Horus; the
solar dragon; origin of the beast with seven
heads, 708; Lord of Bakhu, 824
Sebek-Horus, in the abyss, 278; the fishman, 278, 301; Nome of, 550; crocodile,
594, 708; the seven-headed dragon, 709
Sekari, a character of Ptah, 234, 416; ship
of, laid on the stocks, 413; the sandy realm
of burial, 416, 643, 697; burial in, compared
with Numbers xiv. 41, and Exodus xiv. 11,
643-4; the darkness of; a title of the
mutilated Osiris, 875
Sekhem, where Horus suffered, 471; burialplace of the Mummy Osiris where he rises
in spirit, 654, 825; where Sut paralyzed and
held bound the arm of Osiris; where Horus
frees his arm and is triumphant over Sut,
832; Horus the Prince of, 843
Sekhet, lunar goddess, slayer of the serpent,
462; the cat-headed consort of Ptah, 462,
505, 689; ancestress of the human race,
505; deluge of, 546; solar goddess, 557; a
mother of Atum-Horus, 788
Sekhet-Bast, Great Mother, “mighter than
all the gods,” 179, 698; goddess of sexual
passion, 250, 698; the Lady of the scarletcoloured garment, 698
Sekhet-Hetep, or Sekhet-Aarru, origin of the
Iranian paradise, Semitic Garden of Eden,
Greek Elysian Fields, 385; “stream of the
lake” in, compared with the river in Eden,
405; fields of, called into existence by Ra,
557
Sektit bark, 361
Sephiroth, ten gods or powers, 422
Sepulchre, the four soldiers who guard it
paralleled with the four guardians of the
938
INDEX
coffin of Osiris, 876; the “women” at,
882-4; the angel that rolled the stone
away compared with Shu, 884; the young
man sitting in, arrayed in white, compared
with the Ka; two men, two angels, sitting
in, 885
Serapis, Soul of both sexes; Egypto-Gnostic
Christ, 753; born of the Virgin mother;
worship of, 756
Serkh as scorpion, 2
Serpent, type of feminine transformation, 62,
421; Mother Totem, 66; as Rannut, type of
the Great Mother, 97, 274; symbol of
renewal, 119, 273; the seven Uræus Powers,
273; believed to be at the bottom of the
Nile, 292; — and Tree, male and female
figures, 453; type of the Great Mother
Kep, giver of fruit, 457; offering fruit in a
scene on the coffin of Penpii, 459; also on
the tomb of Rameses VI, and on a statue
in the Museum at Turin, 460; Menwyd’s
ark made of —s; the Sesha Naga, 573; the
evil, symbolical of drought, darkness, dearth,
592; the rod turned into; the Good and
the Bad, 646; the fiery; the brazen, 647;
that bit Horus going down into Egypt, 768
Serpentarius, figure of Horus-Ophiuchus,
315
Seshu, the seven servants of Horus, 692;
given to Jesus, 693
Seven, Children of the Great Mother, 24,
497, 600, 700, 703; Mothers, Cows, Fates,
25, 407; Hathors, 26, 96, 375, 407; Sons,
consorts of the mother, 59; Souls, Powers
of the elements represented by Zoötypes, 86,
437; Males, group of, Babylonian, Zuni
Indian, deities, 87; Glorious ones, 120, 323,
350, 359, 395, 592, 598, 614, 698, 703, 716,
737; Souls of Ra, 172, 422, 430, 593; Contituent souls of the deceased, 245; Oases,
264, 604; Anunaki, 272, 323, 338, 412;
Serpents, Demons, Winds, Evil spirits,
Plagues, 273; Cows, Sows, 301, 510, 884;
Nomes of Egypt, 305, 428, 550; Powers,
Spirits, 310, 322, 395, 422, 497, 592, 699,
707; Stars which never set, 310, 324, 329,
423, 593, 612, 699, 705, 716, 720; Pullers
round the Pole, 395, 551; Pillars of the
Heptanomis, 321, 600; Powers, two sets of
names, 322; Lu Masi, 323, 329, 597;
Rishis, 324, 329, 546, 593, 595; Great
Gods, 329; Khuti, 329, 407, 422, 593, 599,
607, 614, 703, 737; Khnemmu, 345, 372,
386, 401, 411, 414, 428, 593; Steps for
ascending the Mount of heaven, 361; Cows,
Women, figures of plenty and felicity, 383;
Steps of the Pyramid of Sakkarah, 391;
Ali, 401, 407, 497, 626; Associate Gods,
the Elohim, 409; “Arms of the balance,”
422, 551, 600, 705; Divine ancestors, 422;
Days of creation, 426; Divisions of the
Heptanomis, 426-7; Buddhas, 431; Manions for the righteous, 445; Steps of Ascent
from Amenta; Steps of the solar bark,
472; Years of plenty, famine; fat and lean
kine, 510; Astronomes; Islands of Atlantis,
Waters, Canals, 550; Great dungeons, 555;
Caves in the Mexican Mount, 556; Book of
— seals in Revelation, 556, 690, 700, 704,
05, 720; Kabiri, Hohgates, 565, 594, 600, 626;
Companions of Arthur, 565, 600; Caves;
Serpent with — heads, 573; Piles, Poles,
Mountains, Pyramids, Gates, Steps, 576-7,
609; Stations of the Pole, 580,
601; Tree with — branches, 591; Stations of the Cross, 592; — with Anup at
the Pole; Wise masters of Art and Science
with Taht; Rulers of the world; Lords
of eternity; Sleepers of Ephesus; Sons
of Mimir, 593; Superseded Watchers in
heaven, 593, 693; Sahus with Horus, 593,
737; Giants who bore up the Heptanomis,
594, 605; Patriarchs, 595; Gods of fortune,
Japanese; Magical treasures; Fish-men,
597; Tesu; Horses to the chariot of the
sun, 598; Begetters, 598, 600, 618; Swans,
representative of — souls, 599; the Babylonian, the Egyptian — who caused the
deluge; Lords of law, truth and justice,
600; Eyes, Watchers, 600, 607; Dwarf
sons of Pinga, 600, 626; Arits or Mansions
in the eternal city, 600, 705; Isles of the
blessed; Children sacrificed on — hills;
bulls, rams, on — altars; Trees, Lampstands,
Candlesticks (Revelation), 604, 610, 693,
699, 716; Blood sprinkled — times; Stones
of Covenant, Arabian; Pagodas, 605;
Footprints of Buddha; Gems in the
Buddhist sacred horseshoe; Footprints of
Abraham, 606; Japanese mountains,
seats of the gods, 608; Nui, 609; Mountains,
Zuni Indian, and in Revelation, 610,
693; Round the throne, 612; Princes
who digged the well, 638; Priests encompassing Jericho — times, blowing — times
on — horns, 686; Spirits of god, 690, 699,
724; Seshus, servants of Horus and of
Jesus, 693, 737; Constellations of the
Heptanomis, 693; Beast with — heads, 700;
Dungeons; Angels; Thunders; Trumpets,
701, 703, 705; Churches, 703; Mysteries
of Amenta; Festivals, 705; Spirits of Fire
(Revelation), 721; Lambs, Rams, Doves,
Fishers, Stars, Solar Rays, with Jesus, 737,
821; Fishers, Lambs, with Horus, 737, 861;
Loaves, miracle of; Loaves in Annu,
812
Shade, the first form of the soul after death,
153, 885; figured in Amenta; Macusi
Indian, 200
Shades, Two, 200; Eaters of, 201, 318
Shang-ti, Chinese supreme ruler, his abode
near the Pole, 331; heavenly palace of, 349
Shebti figures, ploughing and hoeing,
239
Shechem or Sichem, 654
Sheniu, group of spirits, 612, 627; the two
lions on the Mount of the horizon, 671;
attendants on Osiris, 677; in the Egyptian
Maat, 678
Shennu, Mount, spirits round the throne,
474, 627; title of the Pole; Japanese
Shintu gods, 627
Sheol, Semitic version of the Egyptian
Amenta, 470-1, 480, 489; Sons of
Korah in, 471; the monsters in, compared
with those in Amenta; the sufferer in, compared with the Osiris, 477-85; everlasting
INDEX
rock in; resurrection in, compared with the
resurrection of the Manes in Amenta; pleas
of the speaker in, compared with the pleas
of the Manes, 484; land of darkness and
shadow of death, 492, 658; Israel in; Job
in, 541; Great Waters in, 551
Shepherd, the Good, pictures in the Cataombs; Horus rises from the dead as, 343;
the Lord; Horus leader of the flock; AmsuHorus — of the Flocks of Ra, Horus the
Good, 487, 532
Shichi Fukujin, Japanese seven gods of forune, 597
Ship, of heaven, Chinese constellation, 395;
an ark of salvation; names of the parts conigurated in the stars, 396; of Nu, Egyptian
Ship of heaven, 395-6, 461, 554; of Sekari,
laid on the stocks, 413
Shu, as lion, 2, 59, 126; God of force, 2,
86; Soul of air, 121; elemental power
divinized as male, 129; uplifter of the
heavens, 261-2, 314, 325, 384, 401, 410,
558, 631, 657, 884; breathing force, 298,
401; warrior god, the Archer, 298; the
kneeler, 314; uplifter of the solar orb, 314;
third of the elemental powers; establisher
of the equinox, 325; the “reckonings” of,
327; bringer of the eyes of Ra, 402; raiser
of the four pillars of the four quarters, 502;
Nome of, 550; as lion, a giant, 594; soul
of breath, 598; imaged in the constellation
Kepheus, 630; “the younglings of,” 644;
leader of the people to the Promised Land,
represented by Joshua, 657, 684; feather of,
type of duality, 679; the lord of truth, 681;
—, Sut and Horus, gods of the South, North
and Equinox, 715; representative of the
male, 818
Shu-Anhur, carrier of the staff of the Pole,
also the noose of the rope of the Pole, 598;
uplifter of the firmament, 659, 660; leader
to the Aarru paradise; the original of Moses
and of Joshua, 662, 681, 684; the supporter
of the sun-god, 662; compared with Moses,
663, 665-6, 683-4; compared with Onouris,
665; smiter of the rock, 667; the writings
of, preserved at On, 681; his disappearance,
683
Shu and Tefnut, Archer, Sign of Sagittarius,
302, 366; image of the dual soul, 439;
raisers of the Paradise of Am-Khemen, 583;
the two lions attendant on Horus, 767
Sid (Irish), mound of, 373-4
Sidi, the circuit of Precession, 605
Sign-language, the types of, applied in
astronomy, 270
Simbukumbukioana, Kaffir legend of, 253
Sinai of Shennu, the lion-mount, 504; the
place or point of crossing, 670; derivation
of name; the geographical and the sacred,
Egyptian, 676-7; commandments, law,
given to Israel on Mount —, 680
Si-Osiris, son of Setme-Khamuas, his miraculous conception, story of, 759; his twelve
years of childhood, 776
Sir Owain, legend of, 394
Ski, Japanese island of, 351
Skin, sign of renewal, resurrection, 93, 109;
masks of, type of superhuman power, 94,
939
119; sign of transformation, 94; on the
girdle of kings of Egypt, 251; Adam and
Eve clothed in —s by Iahu-Elohim; the
Nem —, a garment for the soul, 466; a new
— a new existence, 467; sign of re-embodiment after death, 495
Snap-dragon, fiery dragon, 298
Solar bark, in Amenta, 207; on the firmamental water round the earth, 412
Solomon, the wise youth; a name of Iu-emhetep, 516
Solstice, Summer, opening of the Egyptian
sacred year, 307
Solstice, Winter, custom of carrying a cow
seven times round the temple on the eve of,
299; celebration of, 345; Roman cross a
figure of the longest night and shortest day
when the sun was in the, 507; Horus, child
of Isis, born in, 534, 665, 739
Son of Man, in Revelation, 710; a twofold
figure on the Mount in Patmos, 710; a title of
Jesus and Horus as son of the god in the
likeness of the perfect man, 793
Sons, consorts of the Mother, 59, 498; seven
of Japheth, of Quanwon, of Albion, 611
Sothiac Cycle, 596, 722
Sothis, opener of the year; birthplace of
spirits in Amenta, 189; star of annunciation,
291, 308; Hathor and her infant Horus in,
340; herald of the inundation; star of
Hathor, 729; morning star of the Egyptian
year; herald of the birth of Horus, 855
Souls, types of, 12-14, 482; derived from the
air, 129-31; derived from fire, 132;
totemic, 135, 138, 142; derived from blood,
earliest human, 136, 434; escaping from the
body as beetle, red mouse, 136; derived
from elemental powers, types of, 138-9;
zoötypes of, 140, 142; the, in Amenta, 152;
seven types of personality; divided into
Shade and Spirit, Aleutian belief, 200; the
one enduring, both sexes in one, 237, 245,
439; the “breath of the gods,” 408; the
twin, 431; of blood, the seventh elemental power, 432; derived from Atum,
divided into Adam and Eve, 439; as a
dove, 482; Ka, the final, 488; the immortality of, taught at Memphis; four different
figures of, 752; the incarnation of, 789;
resurrection of, and its transformation into
an eternal spirit, 842
Souls, six elemental, seventh human, 69, 86,
122, 428; of darkness and light, 129, 201,
elemental, masculine, 181; seven constituent, 203, 245, 479 (reference to, in Psalms,
480); boat of, 395, 554; created during the
six days of the beginning; of the Israelites,
derived from the Holy Spirit, 428; seven, of
Ra; speech the property of the seventh,
430; their ascent to heaven by water, 550;
supplied to men from the eternal fires, 598;
the children of Ra, 630; the blending of
two, in the Mystery of Tattu, 818
South, domain of Sut; beginnings of the astral
mythos; abyss of water; earth mother and
her monsters; tree first planted in the
abyss; deluge; Sycamore of Hathor, in
the, 303
Sow, as Rerit, type of the Great Mother, 97;
940
INDEX
sacred in Israel; eaten at the Mortuary
meal; prohibited as ordinary food because
sacred, 456
Spark, see Fire
Speech, property of the seventh soul, 430
Sphinx, the riddle of the; of Gizeh, symbolical of the Nile; representative image of
the god Har-Makhu, 336; presiding over
Akar, 337; a means of crossing the Abyss;
a monument to commemorate the founding
of the equinox of the double horizon, 338; a
figure of the double horizon, 339; guard of
the water source; figure of the primitive
abyss, 400
Spirit, the, in Revelation, Atum-Ra, 717
Spirits, elemental and ancestral, 120; white,
emblematic of, 128; incorporated from the
air; Virgin Mary and lily, 130; from
water, 132; various colours of, 143; Egyptian beliefs in, 151; offerings to, 154,
156-8, 160, 253-4; Peruvian custom of
burying clothes, &c., to be worn by the,
156; funeral custom of the Amandebele of
introducing the — of the deceased, 155;
vdcustoms to prevent the return of the,
156-63; Kaffirs in battle leave space for
the — to help, 156; reappearance of,
foundation of religion, 162; return of, to
see their bodies, 163; skulls of the deceased
arranged for a — circle, 164; world of,
underground, Arunta Amenta, 244; huts
erected for, 254; leaving their bodies, their
journey to the West, Samoan belief, 356;
Torres Straits Islanders’ belief that they
wing their way as flying foxes; Australian
Natives’, that their dead climb to heaven by
a tree, 388; Nature —, six orders of, 429,
430; the Manes become — through eating
the fruit of the Tree of Hathor, 464-5; the
beatified, invested with the robe of righteousness, 466; supplied to men from the
eternal fires, 598; of fire; of god, 699; of the
four corners, 706; bird-headed beings
synonymous with, 863
Spiritualism, beginning of, 150
St. Columbkille, 284
Star, soul of life in the dark, 124; the eightrayed mystical 324; Horus, the morning
—, 721
Stars, once souls, 389; first imaged as
golden isles, 583; the Seven, limestone
peaks at Shang-ling, 608; the Seven, in
Revelation, 612; the Seven, of Enoch, 622;
Children of Ra; synonymous with souls,
630; readjusters of solar time, 729; position
of the equinoxes determined by the, 731
“Stars of the Water,” constellation, 279
Steps Hill, a ladder-mountain, 393;
means of ascent to spirit world, 472; means
of ascent from Sheol, 473
Stone, type of Mother Earth, 36, 100-2;
some Indian tribes trace descent from, 101;
movable — entrance to the Great Pyramid
and to Amenta, 227; the “leaping —“ at
Upolu, 362; seven —s smeared with blood
in making a covenant, Arabian; permanent
figure of the Pole, 605; the white, in Revelation, 696; a symbol of Sut, 836
Stonehenge, “Ship of the World,” 575; a
form of the Seven giants turned into stone,
605
Sun, zoötypes of, 8, 11; golden egg, 18; the
nocturnal firmament of; entrance of, into
Mount in the West, 345; its passage through
Amenta, 346, 411; nocturnal passage of,
represented on the Sarcophagus of Seti I in
the Soane Museum, 358; the nocturnal,
represented as a cat, 371; “Eye of Nu,”
407; revivifier of the dead, 412; the —,
moon, and seven stars, Chinese Nine lights
of heaven, 607; figure of the dead, also of
the living, 648; corrector of stellar time,
742
Surippak, ark city, 587
Sut, as hippopotamus, 2, 59, 436, 594; the
red-haired Egyptian Judas, 17, 86, 471;
soul of darkness, 121, 127; author of
astronomy, 124, 251, 303; Power of darkness, 127, 268, 401-2; Power of darkness
and drought, 268, 287, 832; ladder of, from
Amenta, 207, 361; Egyptian Satan, 240,
712; deity of first Egyptian Nome, 251;
buried in one of the Pyramids, 266; the
“wounding of,” Egyptian Calendar, 301;
domain of, in the South, 303; “Most
mighty one,” 323; “the beginning” in the
domain of, 399; Tesherit given to; the
Red Crown given to, 419; murderer of
Osiris, 457; Nome of, 550; Pre-Osirian
Good Being, 552; deluge of, 553; first-born
son of Apt, the primal pair in Egyptian
mythology, 588; ruler of the primal Polestar; establisher of the Pole; Seth, or Set,
first-born of Chavvah, 590; as hippopotamus, a giant, 594; the soul of shade,
598; builder of the mound, 602; first of
the star-gods, 626; the domain of, place of
all the terrors of nature, 642; —, Horus,
and Shu, gods of the South, North, and
Equinox, 715; Prince of darkness, Sower
of tares, thorns, and thistles in the seed
which Horus sows for Osiris, 802, 805, 832,
834, 839; chained and imprisoned, 829;
paralyzer of the left arm of Osiris, 832, 834;
anthropomorphic type of evil; fiery dragon
of drought drowned by Horus in the inundation, 833; chief of the “Tesheru deities,”
gods of the desert, 836; the black boar of
darkness that pierced the Eye of Horus,
871
Sut-Anup, first male ancestor, 331; ben-ben
of, a figure of Polaris, 575; ruler at the Pole,
586; highest of the Great Spirits in the
stellar mythos, 709
Sut-Typhon, the primary duad of the
Great Mother Apt and her son Sut, 590
Sut and Horus, twin children of the Great
Mother, 127, 457; fighters as two lions,
253; two pillars of, 266, 406; conflict of,
268, 292, 295, 417-8, 457, 471, 833-4;
seasons of, 295; the Gemini their constellation, 302; domains of, 305, 576; brother
builders, 325; their positions reversed,
327; first primordial powers, 402, 457;
older than Osiris; children of Seb, 420; the
warring twins, repeated in Amenta, 420,
457; representative of two contending
nature powers, 458; their struggle in the
INDEX
desert for forty days, the Egyptian Lent,
642, 836; their war for ever in the moon,
816; as historical characters in the Canonical
Gospels, 831; prototypes of Satan and
Jesus, 832, 838-9; the battles of, represented
in the Canonical and Apocryphal Gospels,
832-3, 840
Suten, primitive king of Egypt, 251
Sut-Heb, “Festival of the Tail,” 307, 427,
596, 729
Swallow, representative of Isis, 296; the
deceased calls himself a — on his way to the
celestial country, 387; the bird that flew
out of the ark in the Chaldean deluge-legend,
563; the Manes makes his transformation
into a, 563
Sydik, Phœnician father of the Seven Kabiri;
representative of the Pole, 323
Tabernacle, Horus rending the veil of, 225,
877, 897; Mishkena the Meskhen of the
Mandaites of Mesopotamia, 309; a covert
sanctuary, 476; ark, Siccuth; “of the
tent of meeting,” 670
Tablets or Tables of the Law, 666, 679
Tabu, sexual, 60-1, 82-3; eating the sow,
456
Tadpole, type of transformation, 421
Taera, Mount, centre of the universe, 350
Tahn, or tahen, the transparent gum with
which the mummy was covered to represent
a spiritual body, 216; the Hebrew manna,
645; sacramental wafers made of, 646
Taht, as Ibis, 2, 436, 561, 691; man in the
moon, 8; Moon-god, 126, 353, 556, 561-2;
reader of the record in the Hall of Justice;
the divine words of, 195; the great magician,
Lord of transformations, 198; teacher of the
Mysteries in Amenta, 226-7; the merciful,
239; town of, 304; measurer of time,
305-7, 548, 587; reconciler of the warring
twins, 326; “son of the rock,” 353; lighter
of the darkness in Amenta, 360, 418; the
Egyptian Psalmist; great chief in Sekhem,
471; enlarger of the domains of Ra;
Tehuti, a name of; the cynocephalus of,
561; “Teller of decrees which Ra hath
spoken”; Bow of, set in heaven as a sign
that there shall be no more deluge, 562;
reckoner of the stars, 630; keeper of the
tablets in the Hall of Judgment, 679;
Books of, source of God’s Word, 680-2; the
highest of the Great Spirits in the lunar
mythos, 709
Taht-Aan, the Scribe, 193, 691; saluter of
Horus, 691; recorder of the decrees of Ra,
692; the Egyptian John the divine, 691-2,
699, 904; keeper of the books, 702; witness
for Horus; lunar light of the world, 705; his
books in Annu examined on the great day of
reckoning, 719; Mati, a title of, compared
with Matthew, 903; the Gospel of, equivalent
to the Sayings in Matthew, 904
Taht-Ani, teacher of speech; saluter of the
gods, 39
T’ai, Chinese Holy mountain, 379
Tai Hao, Chinese mythical or Celestial ruler,
equivalent to Sut, 589; the Mystic Diagrams of, 597
941
Tails, the men who lost their —s, Kickapoo
tradition of; sign of the Mother Totem;
worn on great occasions; preceder of the
Judges’ wigs, 68; men with, in the forests
of Borneo, 249
Tait, goddess, cook in paradise, 254, 282;
cook for the deceased; one of the two
divine sisters, 846
Taivo Aimo, Lapp Home of the Gods, 354
Tamuzi, the Pharaoh who detained the
Israelites, derivation of name, 655
Tanan, an Egyptian goddess, 635
Tanen, earth in the waters of the Nun, 404;
a title of Ptah, 404, 406, 635
Tangaloa, Samoan builder of the heavens,
548; Samoan god, originator of men; the
“eight-livered” deity of the Pole, 621
Tanganyika, origin of the name, 260; legend
of, 303; deluge at, 400, 592
Ta-Nuter, divine land of the gods, 378
Tari Pennu and Buri Pennu, primal pair of
the Khonds of Orissa, 592
Tat (Pillar and Cross), a figure of stability,
190, 351, 552; overthrown in Amenta,
re-erected by Horus, 220; erection of, in
the Mysteries of Memphis, 345; the double,
of Ptah, the backbone of the gods, 351; the
double gateway of eternity, 413; pillar of
the four corners, based on the tree as type
of the Pole, 449, 526; shoulder of Horus,
532; annually overthrown and re-erected
in Amenta, 697, 751; pillar that sustained
the universe, 724; re-erected at the festival
of resurrection; pillar on the head of Osiris,
740; type of the eternal, 750-1; re-erection of, sign of resurrection, 751; Mystery of
the erection of, 868
Tattooing, totemic mode of sign-language,
95; — Ancient Britons, 96; — preceded by
raising cicatrices in the flesh, 95-6; — goddesses and queens in the Temples at Philæ,
96
Tattu, immortality established in, 488;
the Mystery of, the Mystery of investiture, 772; the marriage Mystery of,
788, 864; Gnostic version of the Mystery
of, 792; the great hoeing in, 801;
blending of two souls in the Mystery
of, 818, 839; Horus in, 826; the Spirit
given to Horus in the Mystery of, 864; the
place of establishing the soul for ever, 865
Taurus, Osiris, the Bull of eternity, 302
Tefnut, as lioness, 2; of the Tree of dawn,
29; dew of heaven, 297; sister of Shu,
fighter for him, 298, 660; prototype of
Miriam, 661; dawn, the waters of, 667;
the female nature, 818
Tehuti, measurer of time, 306, 562; —
Anup on the equinoctial Colure, 366; name
of Taht, 561
Tekhi, goddess, month, 294; opener of the
year; giver of liquid, 306; giver of the
water of the inundation, 310
Temptation, by the serpent, 453
Ten, brothers, husband to ten sisters, 78;
Tribes of Israel, 384, 649, 684; Circles of
Ra, 443, 715; Sephiroth; 443; Sons of Jacob,
603, 684; Patriarchs; Assyrian prediluvian
kings,
603;
Plagues
of
Egypt,
942
INDEX
632, 641, 645, 652; Divisions, heaven of,
649, 684, 694, 713, 715; Commandments,
judgments, 680; Groups of the Tata gods,
713; Horus of the dragon, indicative of a
heaven in — domains, islands, 715
Tenait, festival, 746-7; measure, division of
time, 747
Tepht, source, 277
Tesherit, the red land given to Sut, 419;
seized by Horus at his second coming, 836
Tesheru deities, Sut the chief of, 836
Tezpi, the Noah of the Mexican delugelegend, 614
Thama, the Karens’ Great Judge in Hades,
358
Thermutis, who adopted Moses, 663; name
of the Great Mother, the original of
Thoueris or Tharvis, Moses’ second wife, 664
Thigh: see Haunch
Thousand years, devil bound for a, 712;
Apap bound in chains for, 713. (See
“House of a Thousand Years.”)
Tiamat, old Great Mother, 271, 274; dragon
horse, 274; destroyed by Bel, 275; one of the
figures first constellated in the heavens, 405
Tiavat or Thavath, form of the Great Mother,
277
Tien Ho, Chinese Milky Way, 363
Titans, giants, assistants of Hephæstus, 386
Tohil, Mexican god turned into stone, 605
Torngarsuk, Great Spirit of the Inoits, 378
Tortoise, zoötype of earth; legend of the
Tuscarora Indians respecting the Great
Mother and her twin sons born on the back
of a, 615; a type of Lyra, 616; Arabic
name of Lyra; the Pole resting on a, in a
Hindu drawing; Pole supported by, Japanese figure; a god with the head of, in
Egyptian tombs, 617; Chinese island of
Pung-Lai brought by a, 618
Totem, origin of the name, 53; ancientness
of, in Egypt, 54; first, from one mother,
62, 64
Totemic animals, 51; food districts, 55; not
to be eaten; to be eaten, 56-7; relationship to totemic man, 91-2; men personifying the, 92-3
Totemism, founded on feminine transformation, 62-3; traditions of the descent of the
human race, 63-4; primary object of, 68;
mythology supplied with its types, 96, 270;
types of, in astronomical mythology, 626
Totems, two Motherhoods first division,
79-81
Tower, of Babel; symbol of the Pole; building the, replacing the Pole, 587
Traditions, Dog-rib Indian, woman and dog;
Mangaian, mother and daughter, 86; Various
tribes issuing from the earth, 100; Witchetty-Grubs transformed into men, 101;
Manx, that their earliest people were fairies,
149; Arab, of the burial-place of Sut, 266;
Aborigines, McDonnell Ranges, sky at one
time inhabited by three persons; Ainu, of
their origin; Korean, of their origin, 379;
Badagas, of their origin, 380; of the Lenni
Lenape Indians, their beginning underground; Mandan, their village underground
and their grape-vine, 632; Quiché, Ha-
waiian, Hottentot, of their ancestors crossing
the waters which divided, 633; of the
Quichés, Aztecs, Bushmen, &c., that their
ancestors existed before the creation of the
sun, 731
Transfiguration, of Jesus; of the Osiris in
Amenta, 823
Tree, type of earth, 4; of food, life, shelter,
5; dawn, 29, 388, 415, 719; sign of prayer,
34; type of Mother-earth, 100-4; gods and
goddesses of, 140; blind man’s, 246; of
Nut, 285, 448; first planted in the Abyss in
the South; terebin, territory of, 303; of the
Pole, 305, 339, 380, 591; figure of the
equinox; figure of the birthplace, 340;
figures of, between two lions, two goats, two
cherubs, two winged unicorns, two rams,
two giraffes, two hare-headed animals, 341;
typical means of ascent to heaven, 388, 603;
Llagdigua, of the Mbocobis of Paraguay,
388-9; Bhuggu in the Rig Veda clinging
to; spirits of the Australian Natives climb
to heaven by means of; strips of bark cut
spirally up a tree to make a pathway for
spirits, 388; Yao-Miao people bind their
dead to; the — that reached to the moon,
389; two, in Aarru corresponding to the —
of Life and — of Knowledge in the garden
of Eden, 415; one, in Eridu; one, in Edin,
447; the eternal, the Pole, 448-9; Chinese
Fu, figure of the Pole, 448, 587; of eternal
life; of Hathor, earth, life; Egyptian
coffins made from the Sycamore, 448-9;
divine drink and food from the, 449; Horus
between two in the Roman Catacombs; of
Adam, legend of, 450; Nut gives the fruit
of the, to the pair in the garden, 451;
cursing the, religious hatred of the Motherhood; the, in the upper paradise, thornless,
452; —, serpent and the pair; male and
female, 453; guarded by a flaming sword,
454; sycamore, of stability and safety in
Amenta, 484; fig and vine, typical —s, 536;
means of escape from the deluge; the ash,
“Refuge of Thor,” 571; seven, twelve,
—s; the Asherah; the Khabsu, 604; on
the mount, 625; grape-vine, typical — of
life, 729; sign of sustenance, foundation of
the Tat-image of stability and support, 750;
the cherry — that bowed down for Mary,
765; of life, in Annu; the sycamore, &c.,
described as the arms and hair of Hathor,
846
Triangle, of Horus, 327, 752; god of, a
threefold nature, 329; the reversed, 752
Trinity, Osiris, Horus, Ra, 184, 897; Sut,
Horus, Shu, god of the triangle, 329;
mother, father, son, 718
Triune Being, mother, child, and adult
male in one, 717
Troy, one of the enclosures on the summit, 625
Tseret, a witch-like goddess, 382
Tsutsowt, talkers in bird-language, 50
Tua, the sun of to-morrow, 334
Tuat, walled-up doorway in, the first of twelve
in the passage of Amenta, 227; entrance to
the underworld, 268, 278; secret source of
the Nile, 278; in the South, from whence
the inundation came, 324; the birthplace of
INDEX
water, 338, 399; in Amenta, 411, 635; the
sixth division of, corresponding to the sixth
hour of the night, no representation of Ra
in, 875
Tuatha de Danan, Irish mythical heroes,
635-6
Tum, sun-god in Amenta; ass a type of, 24;
father of souls, 129; of created man, 431;
son of Ptah, 434; beginning of the human
race in the time of, 630; Atum-Ra, the
setting sun, 655; the Tablets of, 679; the
Lord of Annu, 847; the “words of,” the
teaching of truth, law, justice, not to be
altered; an earlier name of Atum-Ra, 890,
894; author of the Sayings of the Lord,
890, 893; converted into the Apostle
Thomas, 891, 893; continued in Europe in
nursery tales, in India as the historic
Thomas, on a peninsula of the Indus as
Thoma, 893
Tundi, Judicial Assembly of the Australian
Blacks, 365; in the Land of Promise, 397
Twelve, Divisions of heaven; Sons of
Israel; Signs of the Zodiac; Sons of
Jacob; Gods of the earth; Gods
in Amenta; Worshippers of Ra; The
Blessed; Mummies standing upright;
Bearers of the cord; Followers of HarKhuti; Cultivators of corn; Bearers of
food; Typical Reapers; Joseph’s sheaves;
Gods in the — Signs; Rowers of the solar
boat; Fields of divine harvest; Divisions,
gates, of Amenta; Pillars raised by Moses,
649, 650-1, 684-5, 710, 720; Statutes;
Curses in Deuteronomy; Gods; Thrones,
680; — Pillars of the — tribes; stones set
up by Joshua; Gates; Lots, in the Promised
Land, 685; Rulers in the Zodiac, 703;
— Judges on — Thrones in the Maat, also
in Revelation and the Gospels, 704, 712;
Reapers; Gods; Kings; Apostles, 710, 720,
825; Divisions in Amenta; Gates or doors
guarded by serpents in Amenta, 774;
Dungeons of torment and their — guardians,
in the Pistis Sophia, 774; the — with Horus
and Jesus, 778, 864; — Apostles, type of
the — Æons set in the zodiac as timekeepers
and preservers of the light, 779, 821; Great
Spirits in Amenta, reapers for Har-Khuti,
779; — enthroned in the New Kingdom;
Knights with Arthur; Gods with Odin,
780, 901; saviours of the treasure of light,
784; astronomical characters to whom were
given — thrones, 785; the disciples who
were to sit on — thrones and judge the —
tribes of Israel, 838
Twins, first, two males; second, brother and
sister; Shu and Tefnut, figure of Sagittarius, 325; — Lions, 455
Two, Women, 64, 70, 75-7; Mothers, 69, of
Jesus, of Horus, 788; Sisters, 76, 78, 550,
664, 845, 849; Ancestresses, Mother and
Eldest daughter, 77; Isis and Nephthys,
77-9, 550, 664; Wives, 78, 81; Brothers,
earliest Totem of the Arunta, 247; Souls,
431; Witnesses, 705-6, 710, 715, 855;
Eyes, City of, 725
Typical giant, genetrix, twin brothers, twin
brother and sister, virgin, Messiah, chief,
artizan, physician, judge, 9
943
Uaka, festival of the Nile, 290, 296, 301, 536,
705; name of the inundation, 296
Uat, Lower Egypt; the reed, 255; land of
wet, 259; the Great Oasis; field of reeds, 264
Uati, title of Isis, 255; mother of food, 288
Ulthaana, Great Spirit, Aborigines, McDonnell Ranges, 244
Unbu, golden bough, burning bush, 673
Unicorn, type of Sut; figure of the Pole,
supporter of the Royal Arms, 611
Upper Chamber, attached to Roman and
Egyptian sepulchres for the relatives to
assemble in, 888
Urdu, mountain of the world; cradle of the
human race, 385
Ur-heka, symbol of magical power, 194, 710;
instrument for “opening the mouth,” 710
Urn, figure of the inundation, 286, 300
Urnas or Uranas, Ouranos, heaven as water,
362, 483
Uræus divinities, Seven, representative of the
primordial seven souls of life, 200, 272
Uthlanga, birthplace in the reeds, 255, 257-8
Vaiola, Samoan, the water which washed away
all infirmities, 254
Veil, of the Tabernacle, rending of, 225, 877,
897; of Moses, 662
Venus, Mound of, 675; with a beard, male
and female, 717
Vernal equinox, solar birthplace; in Taurus,
type of Horus a calf, 335; horizon of the
resurrection, Mount of Glory, 336; in Aries,
type of Horus a lamb, 721; in the Ram,
astronomy in Revelation, 722; change of
type according to the Sign, 725; traced
through various Signs in Precession, 732;
Horus born as son of god the father, 739;
time reckoned by, 742
Vesica Piscis, 283-4, 734
Vesture without seam, 216
Victoria Nyanza, 262
Vindemiatrix, Sign of grape-gathering, 296
Virgin, the typical, heifer or vulture, 9;
sacrifice of a, 75
Virgin-mother, 69; Isis, 136; Horus born
of, 289, 293; Neith, 333, 761; the Gospel
Jesus born of, 749, 787; Serapis born of, 756;
Mut-em-Ua, 757; the Gnostic Jesus born
of; a survival of the Matriarchate, 761
Virgo, Sign of, Horus conceived in, 289, 293;
Isis in, 296; Neith, 302
Vulture, mother-totem, royal totem, 66; sent
out from the bark after the Mexican deluge,
614; a Pole-star, 615
Waninga, Southern Pole of the Aruntas, 267
Wantley, dragon of, 367
Water, a nature-power brought forth by
Mother-earth; children of Horus born from,
131; running through rain, 134; well of,
source of life, 257, 338; throne of the
eternal, 258; “beginning of all things,”
280; firmamental, 281, 548, 558; ewers of,
in Babylonian temples, 283; from earth,
from heaven; types of the powers in; of the
upper and lower firmament, 285; African
ideal of the divine, 288; birth of, from the
Southern Fish, 293; Isis searching for; the
female, the renewer of, 299; source of, in
944
INDEX
the underworld, 300; salt, holy and purifying, 313; of dawn; the crystal; arch of, 374;
the celestial, the “river of souls”; that
divides the living from the dead, 380;
source of creation, 399; secret of its source
persistently preserved, 400; constellation of,
404; primary element of life, 412, 450,
458; throne of Osiris on; the Lord on
(Psalms and Revelation), 483; the “still,”
of rest, in Hetep, in the Psalms, 488; the
way of the gods, the way of souls to heaven,
550; the Great in Sheol, 551; celestial,
assigned to Nut, 557; turned into wine by
Horus, 569, by Jesus, 798, 827; the —s
which divided, 633, 640; from the rock, of
dawn, of Tefnut, 667; figure of daylight,
713; Osiris the — of life in Egypt, Jesus
giver of living —, 900
Well, the holy; — worship, 284; types of
the power in the, 285
Wet-nurse, first type, 6; Neith, 13
White, emblematic of spirit, 128, 176
White stone, in Revelation; in the totemic
ceremonies and religious mysteries, 696
White wall, district of the, 304
Widow, with whom the Holy Family lodged
in Egypt; Isis the, 769; Child-Horus in
Suten Khen with the; Child-Jesus in Sotinen
with the, 771
Wilderness, of buried corpses, 643; in which
the cloths of the Children of Israel did not
wear out, 645; of Sin, the Egyptian Anrutef,
676; of Anrutef, where Horus was made
blind by Sut, 835; — where Jesus was
tempted of the devil, 835
Witch, a spirit-Medium, 169
Witch’s Sabbath, 382
Witness, the faithful and true, 709
Witnesses, Two in Revelation and in the
Egyptian Judgment scenes, 705-6, 710, 715;
two for Horus, Anup, the baptizer, and
Aan, the divine scribe, 855, 857
Witoba, figure of the crucified without the
cross, 751
Word, of Power, the mystical, female,
“living,” 193-4, 697; “made truth,” 194,
709, 792, 804; made flesh, 231; creation by
the, 408-409; “that was in the beginning,”
408; Horus the, 706; of god, the king of
kings, 709; utterer of the “Sayings,” 902
Words, of Power, the words of Atum-Ra,
892
Yavuah, Supreme Being of the Dyaks of
Borneo, 501
Year, earliest Egyptian, 305; five days added
to the, by Taht-Hermes; Egyptian sacred,
of the inundation, 307; the Great, of the
world, 467, 544, 554, 580, 622-4, 694; of
the Lord, 492, 534; Jewish New —s day,
543, 661; the Alexandrian, 740, 742; old
Egyptian Sacred; — of 360 days, 742; — of
365 days, 742, 744
Yggdrasil, tree with its roots in the underworld and branches in the northern heaven,
353; a single tree, 448
Yima, his enclosure against the deluge, 567,
576
Yin and Yang, Chinese two elemental
spirits, 402
“Young-man-making,” ceremony of, 47,
88; to commemorate change of descent
from mother to father, 88-90; to prove
the manhood, 89; Australian and Inner
African customs, 217; Arunta ceremony,
245-6
Ziggurat, pillar, 271
Zion, Hebrew pillar of the Upper and Lower
Paradise, 353; Mount, Egyptian Hetep,
473; holy mountain, 675; the celestial,
687; the Lamb on, 702
Zosimas the Hermit, Apocalypse of,
description of Paradise, 381
THE END
EDITORIAL NOTE TO THE CELEPHAÏS PRESS EDITION.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
As indicated by the notice preceding the title page, this copy of Ancient
Egypt: The Light of the World was originally typed and formatted (and
images scanned) by Juan Schoch, date unknown, copy-text unknown).
Further proof-reading and formatting was perpetrated by Frater T.S.
(
[email protected]); this mostly consisted of restoring a few lines
apparently omitted through eye-skip in Schoch’s generally accurate keyentry, and conforming layout and capitalisation to the print edition based on
page images of a photocopy of an unidentified edition found online (the
original title page was there omitted; I have made no attempt to match the
typeface). Egyptian hieroglyphs, where they could be identified have been reset using the Glyph-Basic fonts produced by the Centre for Computer-Aided
Egyptological Research, University of Utrecht, Netherlands. The cover
design is loosely based on the cover and spine design of the first edition.
An electronic text of The Natural Genesis has already ben issued by
Celephaïs Press as has an e-text of the lectures (also founded on a key-entry
by Juan Schoch but re-proofed against a print copy); Book of the Beginnings
may follow once I have procured a better copy-text (i.e. one more amenable to
OCR, and not omitting much of the front matter) than the page images I’m
currently working from.
Love is the law, love under will.
T.S.
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