What made it seem more likely to be ‘something else’, and indeed some sort of conspiracy, was the whole mysterious connection that had linked ancient Egypt and particularly the goddess Isis to the city of Paris for centuries. Nor – weird though it admittedly seemed – was it easy to set aside the matter of Campanella's prophecy, made at the birth of the ‘solar-king’ Louis XIV, that Paris was to become a ‘City of the Sun’ modelled on the golden age of ancient Egypt.
It was then that something else suddenly hit Bauval. At about the same time that the French Republicans were planning monumental urban projects to refurbish the city of Paris between 1789 and 1794, there was another group of ‘brothers’ and republicans planning to design a city from scratch on the other side of the Atlantic.
And there, too, strange geometrical layouts and alignments evoking Hermetic and Masonic ideas came to the surface …
The extraordinary truth is that the very existence of the Washington Monument [an obelisk] is intimately linked with the Egyptian star Sirius … How is it that the most important star of the ancient world should find itself, as it were, resurrected in the architecture of the United States?
David Ovason, The Secret Zodiacs of Washington DC
If, as Thomas Jeferson argued, the Capitol represents ‘the first temple dedicated to the sovereignty of the people’, then the [Masonic] brothers of the 1793 ceremony served as its first high-priests.
Steven C. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood
Washington DC can fairly be described as the world's foremost ‘Masonic City.’ Its centre was laid out according to a plan drawn up by the French Freemason Pierre L’Enfant.
Freemasonry Today, Issue 16
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE CORNERSTONE
If a monument or a building – or even, as we now can see, a whole city – can become like a living heart, a talisman charged with powerful ideologies and meaning, then the ‘pacemaker’ of such a talisman must be its cornerstone.
In ancient times, and in many different cultures, the dedication ceremony for a new temple or stately monument often called for elaborate rituals performed by the ruler. During such ceremonies the objective was to call upon a god or goddess to cast his or her benevolent and protective powers on the building – or even to beseech the deity to descend from the heavenly world and reside within the temple. A crucial element was the placing of a permanent marker to commemorate the ceremony, generally in the form of the ‘first stone’ or ‘cornerstone’.
In medieval Europe, in direct continuation of such ancient ideas, the laying of the cornerstone for a church or cathedral was understood to symbolise the ‘raising of the building into the light of day, into consciousness or towards the heavens.’1 In this respect it was vital that the most propitious moment be selected when participants could be assured that the influences of the stellar and planetary deities were at their very best. To that end a ‘horoscope’ was cast.
To modern Freemasons the cornerstone ceremony remains one of paramount importance. It serves not only as a link to their ‘operative’ ancestors who built temples and cathedrals, but also as a potent symbol of renewal and ‘rebirth’. It expresses itself with particular force in the Masonic aspiration (whether taken literally or metaphorically) to ‘rebuild Solomon's Temple’ in Jerusalem and to lay its cornerstone. Indeed, for Masons and non-Masons alike, there are few other talismans that can evoke so much fervour – benevolent or destructive. Think of the Crusades, the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the on-going Palestinian intifada, and you begin to feel the energy that this talisman is capable of unleashing. The finding and re-placing of the cornerstone of a renewed Temple of Solomon would set off an intellectual and spiritual explosion that would have huge ramifications for the Middle East and for the world.
In many ancient buildings we find that the cornerstone was embedded into the wall of a crypt or basement that had been carefully prepared prior to the ceremony. According to Masonic author David Ovason: Symbolically speaking, the crypt is the burial place. It is the earth into which the seed of wheat must be dropped, to grow and resurrect, emerging as a sprouting plant from the coffin. In Masonry, the crypt is the burial place of the Master Mason, under the Holy of Holies … This idea of rebirth is continued even in modern times in the formal ritual of the Freemasonic cornerstone ceremonials, in which participants in the ritual scatter wheat upon the floor, and sometimes even link this seeding with the stars.2
It is known that from the earliest days of their civilisation the ancient Egyptians performed a ‘stellar’ ritual – a form of ‘astral magic’ – during the cornerstone ceremonies for their pyramids and temples. This ritual involved reference to the circumpolar stars in the northern sky, and, in the southern sky, to the stars of Orion and, more especially, the star Sirius.3 In Ovason's view ‘it was this promise of stellar immutability which first led the ancient Egyptian priests, and their pupils, the Greek architects, to orientate their temples to the stars’. The very same promise, says Ovason, leads Masonic architects to ensure that their buildings and city plans are ‘also laid out with a geometry which reflect[s] the wisdom of the stellar lore.’4
The ‘Raising’ of Washington
On 18 September 1793, a little more than a month after the ‘Isis’ ceremony was held at the Place de la Bastille in Paris,5 another ceremony laden heavily with specific symbolic referents took place on a high point known as Jenkins Hill on the other side of the Atlantic. At the climax of this ceremony, America's first president, George Washington, wearing a Masonic apron which had been presented to him by the Marquis de Lafayette, laid the cornerstone of the US Capitol in the presence of a congregation of high-ranking Freemasons.6
Surveyor, farmer, and Episcopalian, George Washington was born at Pope's Creek in Virginia. He grew up near the town of Fredericksburg on his father's plantation. As a young man he studied mathematics and surveying, and eventually joined the Virginia militia where he excelled. In 1775, at the age of 43, he was elected by the Continental Congress to serve as commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary army to fight the British. After the War of Independence was over, Washington retired from the army, and in 1789 the state of Virginia sent him to the Constitutional Convention where he was unanimously elected as president of the United States. He was re-elected without opposition in 1792, refused a third term in 1796 and died at Mount Vernon in 1799 from laryngitis at the age of 67.
George Washington became a Freemason in 1752 in Fredericksburg, and was ‘raised’ as a Master Mason the following year.7 In 1777, when the Freemasons in the American colonies sought to form a ‘United’ Grand Lodge independent from England, they offered the position of Grand Master to Washington, but he modestly declined, saying that he was not qualified for this high office. In 1788, however, he did become Master of the Alexandria lodge, today known as the Alexandria-Washington Lodge No. 22, situated on the south side of the Potomac River near the city of Washington, DC. Since 1932 this famous lodge has been engulfed within a huge Masonic monument built around it. The monument is modelled on the ancient Lighthouse of Alexandria in Egypt,8 the Pharos, and bears the official name of the George Washington Masonic National Monument.9 According to Harvey Wiley Corbett of the New York firm Helmle & Corbett who designed this monument: … the Pharos was erected to guide the ancient mariners safely to shore; what would be more appropriate than a facsimile of that Lighthouse in Alexandria, Virginia on top of the highest hill and overlooking the Potomac River?10
Isis of the Suez Canal
Both H. W. Corbett and Louis A. Watres – the latter representing the ‘client’ – were themselves Freemasons, and as such would have known that the ancient Pharos of Alexandria had been dedicated to Isis and also to her star, Sothis-Sirius. Nor was this the only time that Freemasons would evoke Isis and her star in a landmark monument in the United States. According to Bernard Weisberger, Isis was also in the mind of the designer of the Statue of Liberty that now stands in New York Harbor: The sculptor who made the great statue
was Italian. His name was Auguste Bartholdi. His work was greatly influenced by the ancient sculptor Phidias who made gigantic statues of the ancient goddesses, particularly Athena, the ‘goddess of wisdom’ and Nemesis, a goddess who held a cup in her right hand. Before beginning the Statue of Liberty project, Bartholdi was seeking a commission to construct a giant statue of the goddess ‘Isis’, the Egyptian Queen of Heaven, to overlook the Suez Canal. The statue of Isis was to be of ‘a robed woman holding aloft a torch’.11
Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi was born in France, at the city of Colmar in Alsace. He had studied in Paris at the prestigious Lycée Louis-le-Grand, and, in 1855, when he was only 21, he embarked on a voyage to Egypt with three friends, the orientalists Léon Gerôme, Léon-Auguste-Adolphe Belly and Narcisse Berchère. There, while visiting the ancient temples of Thebes and Abu Simbel, Bartholdi became enchanted by the gigantic works of the ancient Egyptian sculptors. He spent eight months documenting the Colossi of Memnon and returned to France with numerous sketches and photographs.
It was during that first voyage to Egypt that Bartholdi met the celebrated French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps, and thus began a friendship between the pair that was to last a lifetime. De Lesseps was negotiating funding with the authorities in France and Egypt for the construction of the Suez Canal to join the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea. Bartholdi was deeply impressed with de Lesseps's vision and began to think how he might complement it by creating a gigantic statue of a goddess holding a torch. Bartholdi imagined this statue positioned at the entrance to the canal and representing ‘Egypt Enlightening the East’ – a name, as most French Freemasons knew in those days, which was strangely reminiscent of Cagliostro's famous saying that ‘All Enlightenment comes from the East, all initiation from Egypt’.12
Khedive Isma'il of Egypt, another Freemason, was much enamoured with the beautiful French Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, and indeed with all things French. Eugénie was a cousin of Ferdinand de Lesseps, and it was she who put in a good word to the khedive to look favourably on the Suez Canal project. We saw in Chapter Eighteen that de Lesseps's father, Mathieu, together with Muhammad Ali, Isma'il's grandfather, had founded the Société Secrète Égyptienne which practiced a form of Scottish Rite Freemasonry merged with Cagliostro's Egyptian Rite.13
It seems that Bartholdi did manage to discuss his idea of a giant statue for the Suez Canal with Khedive Isma'il, but nothing came of it, probably because of the financial crisis that had then struck Egypt due to overborrowing from European bankers. But, Bartholdi was not disheartened in the least and took his project elsewhere.
Isis of New York, a Talisman to ‘Liberty’
The idea of a similar monument to commemorate the friendship between France and the United States for the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence was first discussed by Bartholdi and others at the home, near Paris, of Édouard René de Laboulaye, an authority on North American culture. It seems that Bartholdi simply ‘converted’ his original project for Egypt and proposed it instead as a ‘Statue of Liberty enlightening the world’ for New York. To this end the so-called Union Franco-Américaine (Franco-American Union) was established in 1875 to raise the necessary funds.
Not unexpectedly, several members of the Franco-American Union turn out to have been Freemasons, including Bartholdi's own cousin, who was the French ambassador to the United States. Other Freemasons also actively involved were Henri Martin, the Count of Tocqueville and Oscar de Lafayette. Bartholdi himself had been initiated into Freemasonry in 1875 at the Paris lodge Alsace-Lorraine, and was raised as a Master Mason in 1880.
Although Bartholdi was to be the designer of the Statue of Liberty, the actual task of building it fell on Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, the celebrated French structural engineer who would also design and build the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Eiffel, too, was a Freemason – so let us note in passing that the first two levels of his famous steel tower, according to French engineer Jean Kerisel, are shaped like a pyramid.14 Eiffel would certainly have been aware that about a century before, in 1792, a pyramid had been erected on the very same spot on the Champs de Mars in Paris to commemorate the French Revolution.15
Here's what the Reader's Companion to American History has to say about the inspiration behind the Statue of Liberty: Sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi combined elements of the Egyptian pyramids he admired with his mother's face to serve as a model for the statue, which he finished early in 1884.16
There has been much dispute about whether the face of the Statue of Liberty was modelled on that of Bartholdi's own mother, and the matter, though trivial, has not been settled. What is more certain is that the statue was linked to the ‘cult of Liberty’ or the ‘Cult of Reason’ of the French Revolution, both of which, in the minds of Republicans, were intimately connected to Masonic ideals. It is certain, too, as we saw in Chapter One, that figures representing ‘Liberty’ and ‘Reason’ were often modelled on the Egyptian goddess Isis or her Greek and Roman counterparts.
Interestingly, according to French Egyptologist Bernard Mathieu, Bartholdi used to refer to the Statue of Liberty as the ‘Pharos’ before it was raised in New York, and he even designed a base for the statue just like the one believed to have been used for the ancient Pharos of Alexandria.17 Bartholdi, who had spent much time in Egypt and had studied the origins of this ancient ‘wonder of the world’, would certainly have known the association of the Pharos with the goddess Isis – and, by extension, her star, Sirius – that we explored in Chapter Ten. In this respect, it seems highly likely that his giant statue of ‘a robed woman holding aloft a torch’ to serve as a sort of lighthouse for the Suez Canal and, later, for New York Harbor, may well have been imagined by him as Isis-Pharia and the Lighthouse of Alexandria.
Garibaldi, ‘Hero of the Two Worlds’
There is, too, an aspect of Bartholdi's life that is rarely considered in this context but which, we think, had a bearing on his state of mind when he designed the statue.
Bartholdi was a close friend of the Italian revolutionary hero, Giuseppe Garibaldi, the leading military man behind the Italian Unification known as the Risorgimento. Along with the politicians Camillo Benso, the Count of Cavour, and Giuseppe Mazzini. Garibaldi is regarded as one of the founding fathers of modern Italy. It was said that Cavour was the ‘intelligence’ behind the Risorgimento and Mazzini its ‘spiritual drive’. Garibaldi was the ‘fighting force’ that was essential to bring it to fruition. His famous quip, ‘Give me the ready hand rather than ready tongue’, encapsulates the spirit of this remarkable man. Not surprisingly, we find that for his heroic deeds in Italy and also in the revolutions in South America, Garibaldi – like the Marquis de Lafayette before him – earned the title ‘Hero of Two Worlds.’
Garibaldi was born in Nice and served as a sailor in the merchant navy for many years. In 1833 while in Marseilles he met the great Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini who recruited him into the so-called La Giovane Italia (‘Young Italy’), that spearheaded the Italian National Movement. The charismatic Mazzini was to have a deep and lasting impact on Garibaldi who, throughout his life, often referred to him as his ‘Master.’ Freemasonry was particularly active in the liberation movement,18 and Giuseppe Mazzini, who was often called the ‘apostle of the Italian Republic’, was a staunch Freemason. He was elevated as a 33rd degree Mason of the Scottish Rite by the Grand Orient of Palermo in 1864.19
Garibaldi himself was initiated into the Carbonari secret society in 1833,20 and then into regular Freemasonry in 1844. In 1862 he was made a 33rd degree Mason in Palermo, and in 1864 was elected in Florence as the Grand Master of all Italian Freemasonry. In 1870, when the Prussians put Paris under siege, Garibaldi, ever the hero, rushed to the rescue with a contingent of Italian volunteers to defend the newly declared Third Republic of France headed by France's first president, the Freemason Léon Gambetta.21 For his military successes against the Prussians, Gambetta, invited Garibaldi to become a member of the National Assembly
in Paris. In 1880 Garibaldi joined the ‘Egyptian’ Rite of Memphis and, a year later, he was appointed as the first General Grand Master of a ‘united’ Masonic order, the Ancient and Primitive Rite of Memphis-Misraïm.22
An ‘admirable spot’ for a global talisman
It was in France, during the military campaign of 1870, that Garibaldi was introduced to the sculptor Bartholdi, who was then a major in the French army. Bartholdi served for a while as Garibaldi's personal aide-decamp , but a few months later went to America proposing ‘to glorify the Republic and Liberty over there.’ He arrived in New York in July 1871. Upon entering New York Harbor, he knew immediately where his gigantic statue of ‘Liberty’ should one day stand: The picture that is presented to the view when one arrives in New York is marvellous … When one awakes, so to speak, in the midst of that interior sea covered with vessels … it is thrilling. It is, indeed, the New World … I’ve found an admirable spot. It is Bedloe's Island, in the middle of the bay … just opposite the Narrows, which are, so to speak, the gateway to America.23
In the US Bartholdi made good use of the letters of introduction he had been given by high-ranking French Freemasons. He met with many notables and veterans of the Civil War, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Horace Greeley, Senator Charles Sumner, and President Ulysses S. Grant. To each in turn he talked up his big idea while showing them drawings and a model of the statue which he now called ‘Liberty Enlightening the World’.