Fingerprints of the Gods

  in Egypt in the First Time were Ra, Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, Osiris, Isis,

  Nepthys and Set. The offspring of these deities included well-known

  figures such as Horus and Anubis. In addition, other companies of gods

  were recognized, notably at Memphis and Hermopolis, where there were

  important and very ancient cults dedicated to Ptah and to Thoth.1 These

  First Time deities were all in one sense or another gods of creation who

  had given shape to chaos through their divine will. Out of that chaos they

  formed and populated the sacred land of Egypt,2 wherein, for many

  thousands of years, they ruled among men as divine pharaohs.3

  What was ‘chaos’?

  The Heliopolitan priests who spoke to the Greek historian Diodorus

  Siculus in the first century BC put forward the thought-provoking

  suggestion that ‘chaos’ was a flood—identified by Diodorus with the

  earth-destroying flood of Deucalion, the Greek Noah figure:4

  In general, they say that if in the flood which occurred in the time of Deucalion

  most living things were destroyed, it is probable that the inhabitants of southern

  Egypt survived rather than any others ... Or if, as some maintain, the destruction

  of living things was complete and the earth then brought forth again new forms of

  animals, nevertheless, even on such a supposition, the first genesis of living

  things fittingly attaches to this country ...5

  Why should Egypt have been so blessed? Diodorus was told that it had

  something to do with its geographical situation, with the great exposure

  of its southern regions to the heat of the sun, and with the vastly

  increased rainfall which the myths said the world had experienced in the

  aftermath of the universal deluge: ‘For when the moisture from the

  abundant rains which fell among other peoples was mingled with the

  intense heat which prevails in Egypt itself ... the air became very well

  tempered for the first generation of all living things ...’6

  Curiously enough, Egypt does enjoy a special geographical situation: as

  1 Kingship and the Gods, pp. 181-2; The Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt, pp. 209, 264;

  Egyptian Myths, pp. 18-22. See also T. G. H. James, An Introduction to Ancient Egypt,

  British Museum Publications, London, 1979, p. 125ff.

  2 Cyril Aldred, Akhenaton, Abacus, London, 1968, p. 25: ‘It was believed that the gods

  had ruled in Egypt after first making it perfect.’

  3 Kingship and the Gods, pp. 153-5; Egyptian Myths, pp. 18-22; Egyptian Mysteries, pp.

  8-11; New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology, pp. 10-28.

  4 See Part IV.

  5 Diodorus Siculus, volume I, p. 37.

  6 Ibid.

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  is well known, the latitude and longitude lines which intersect just beside

  the Great Pyramid (30° north and 31° east) cross more dry land than any

  others.7 Curiously, too, at the end of the last Ice Age, when millions of

  square miles of glaciation were melting in northern Europe, when rising

  sea levels were flooding coastal areas all around the globe, and when the

  huge volume of extra moisture released into the atmosphere through the

  evaporation of the ice fields was being dumped as rain, Egypt benefited

  for several thousands of years from an exceptionally humid and fertile

  climate.8 It is not difficult to see how such a climate might indeed have

  been remembered as ‘well tempered for the first generation of all living

  things’.

  The question therefore has to be asked: whose information about the

  past are we receiving from Diodorus, and is the apparently accurate

  description of Egypt’s lush climate at the end of the last Ice Age a

  coincidence, or is an extremely ancient tradition being transmitted to us

  here—a memory, perhaps, of the First Time?

  Breath of the divine serpent

  Ra was believed to have been the first king of the First Time and ancient

  myths say that as long as he remained young and vigorous he reigned

  peacefully. The passing years took their toll on him, however, and he is

  depicted at the end of his rule as an old, wrinkled, stumbling man with a

  trembling mouth from which saliva ceaselessly dribbles.9

  Shu followed Ra as king on earth, but his reign was troubled by plots

  and conflicts. Although he vanquished his enemies he was in the end so

  ravaged by disease that even his most faithful followers revolted against

  him: ‘Weary of reigning, Shu abdicated in favour of his son Geb and took

  refuge in the skies after a terrifying tempest which lasted nine days ...’10

  Geb, the third divine pharaoh, duly succeeded Shu to the throne. His

  reign was also troubled and some of the myths describing what took

  place reflect the odd idiom of the Pyramid Texts in which a non-technical

  vocabulary seems to wrestle with complex technical and scientific

  imagery. For example, one particularly striking tradition speaks of a

  ‘golden box’ in which Ra had deposited a number of objects—described,

  respectively, as his ‘rod’ (or cane), a lock of his hair, and his uraeus (a

  rearing cobra with its hood extended, fashioned out of gold, which was

  worn on the royal head-dress).11

  A powerful and dangerous talisman, this box, together with its bizarre

  7 Mystic Places, Time-Life Books, 1987, p. 62.

  8 Early Hydraulic Civilization in Egypt, p. 13; Egypt before the Pharaohs, pp. 27, 261.

  9 New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology, p. 11.

  10 Ibid., p. 13.

  11 Ibid., pp. 14-15.

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  contents, remained enclosed in a fortress on the ‘eastern frontier’ of

  Egypt until a great many years after Ra’s ascent to heaven. When Geb

  came to power he ordered that it should be brought to him and unsealed

  in his presence. In the instant that the box was opened a bolt of fire

  (described as the ‘breath of the divine serpent’) ushered from it, struck

  dead all Geb’s companions and gravely burned the god-king himself.12

  It is tempting to wonder whether what we are confronted by here might

  not be a garbled account of a malfunctioning man-made device: a

  confused, awe-stricken recollection of a monstrous instrument devised by

  the scientists of a lost civilization. Weight is added to such extreme

  speculations when we remember that this is by no means the only golden

  box in the ancient world that functioned like a deadly and unpredictable

  machine. It has a number of quite unmissable similarities to the Hebrews’

  enigmatic Ark of the Covenant (which also struck innocent people dead

  with bolts of fiery energy, which also was ‘overlaid round about with

  gold’, and which was said to have contained not only the two tablets of

  the Ten Commandments but ‘the golden pot that had manna, and

  Aaron’s rod.’)13

  A proper look at the implications of all these weird and wonderful

  boxes (and of other ‘technological’ artefacts referred to in ancient

  traditions) is beyond the scope of this book. For our purposes here it is

  sufficient to note that a peculiar atmosphere of dangerous and quasitechnological wizardry seems to surround many of the gods of the br />
  Heliopolitan Ennead.

  Isis, for example (wife and sister of Osiris and mother of Horus) carries

  a strong whiff of the science lab. According to the Chester Beatty Papyrus

  in the British Museum she was ‘a clever woman ... more intelligent than

  countless gods ... She was ignorant of nothing in heaven and earth.’14

  Renowned for her skilful use of witchcraft and magic, Isis was particularly

  remembered by the Ancient Egyptians as ‘strong of tongue’, that is being

  in command of words of power ‘which she knew with correct

  pronunciation, and halted not in her speech, and was perfect both in

  giving the command and in saying the word’.15 In short, she was believed,

  by means of her voice alone, to be capable of bending reality and

  overriding the laws of physics.

  These same powers, though perhaps in greater degree, were attributed

  to the wisdom god Thoth who although not a member of the Heliopolitan

  Ennead is recognized in the Turin Papyrus and other ancient records as

  the sixth (or sometimes as the seventh) divine pharaoh of Egypt.16

  12 Ibid.

  13 Hebrews 9:4. For details of the Ark’s baleful powers see Graham Hancock, The Sign

  and the Seal, Mandarin, London, 1993, Chapter 12, p. 273ff.

  14 Cited in Egyptian Myths, p. 44.

  15 Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, Egyptian Magic, Kegan Paul, Trench, London, 1901, p. 5; The

  Gods of the Egyptians, volume II, p. 214.

  16 New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology, p. 27. If Set’s usurpation is included as a

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  Frequently represented on temple and tomb walls as an ibis, or an ibisheaded man, Thoth was venerated as the regulative force responsible for

  all heavenly calculations and annotations, as the lord and multiplier of

  time, the inventor of the alphabet and the patron of magic. He was

  particularly associated with astronomy, mathematics, surveying and

  geometry, and was described as ‘he who reckons in heaven, the counter

  of the stars and the measurer of the earth’.17 He was also regarded as a

  deity who understood the mysteries of ‘all that is hidden under the

  heavenly vault’, and who had the ability to bestow wisdom on selected

  individuals. It was said that he had inscribed his knowledge in secret

  books and hidden these about the earth, intending that they should be

  sought for by future generations but found ‘only by the worthy’—who

  were to use their discoveries for the benefit of mankind.18

  What stands out most clearly about Thoth, therefore, in addition to his

  credentials as an ancient scientist, is his role as a benefactor and

  civilizer.19 In this respect he closely resembles his predecessor Osiris, the

  high god of the Pyramid Texts and the fourth divine pharaoh of Egypt,

  ‘whose name becometh Sah [Orion], whose leg is long, and his stride

  extended, the President of the Land of the South ...’20

  Osiris and the Lords of Eternity

  Occasionally referred to in the texts as a neb tem, or ‘universal master’,21

  Osiris is depicted as human but also superhuman, suffering but at the

  same time commanding. Moreover, he expresses his essential dualism by

  ruling m heaven (as the constellation of Orion) and on earth as a king

  among men. Like Viracocha in the Andes and Quetzalcoatl in Central

  America, his ways are subtle and mysterious. Like them, he is

  exceptionally tall and always depicted wearing the curved beard of

  divinity.22 And like them too, although he has supernatural powers at his

  reign, we have seven divine pharaohs up to and including Thoth (i.e., Ra, Shu, Geb,

  Osiris, Set, Horus, Thoth).

  17 The Gods of the Egyptians, volume I, p. 400; Garth Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes,

  Cambridge University Press, 1987, pp. 22-3. see also From Fetish to God in Ancient

  Egypt, pp. 121-2; Egyptian Magic, pp. 128-9; New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology,

  pp. 27-8.

  18 Manetho, quoted by the neo-Platonist Iamblichus. See Peter Lemesurier, The Great

  Pyramid Decoded, Element Books, 1989, p. 15; The Egyptian Hermes, p. 33.

  19 See, for example, Diodorus Siculus, volume I, p. 53, where Thoth (under his Greek

  name of Hermes) is described as being ‘endowed with unusual ingenuity for devising

  things capable of improving the social life of man’.

  20 Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, volume II, p. 307.

  21 Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt, p. 179; New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology,

  p. 16.

  22 New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology, pp. 9-10, 16; Encyclopaedia of Ancient

  Egypt, p. 44; The Gods of the Egyptians, volume II, pp. 130-1; From Fetish to God in

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  disposal, he avoids the use of force wherever possible.23

  We saw in Chapter Sixteen that Quetzalcoatl, the god-king of the

  Mexicans, was believed to have departed from Central America by sea,

  sailing away on a raft of serpents. It is therefore hard to avoid a sense of

  déjà vu when we read in the Egyptian Book of the Dead that the abode of

  Osiris also ‘rested on water’ and had walls made of ‘living serpents’.24 At

  the very least, the convergence of symbolism linking these two gods and

  two far-flung regions is striking.

  There are other obvious parallels as well.

  The central details of the story of Osiris have been recounted in earlier

  chapters and we need not go over them again. The reader will not have

  forgotten that this god—once again like Quetzalcoatl and Viracocha—was

  remembered principally as a benefactor of mankind, as a bringer of

  enlightenment and as a great civilizing leader.25 He was credited, for

  example, with having abolished cannibalism and was said to have

  introduced the Egyptians to agriculture—in particular to the cultivation of

  wheat and barley—and to have taught them the art of fashioning

  agricultural implements. Since he had an especial liking for fine wines

  (the myths do not say where he acquired this taste), he made a point of

  ‘teaching mankind the culture of the vine, as well as the way to harvest

  the grape and to store the wine ...’26 In addition to the gifts of good living

  he brought to his subjects, Osiris helped to wean them ‘from their

  miserable and barbarous manners’ by providing them with a code of laws

  and inaugurating the cult of the gods in Egypt.27

  When he had set everything in order, he handed over the control of the

  kingdom to Isis, quit Egypt for many years, and roamed about the world

  with the sole intention, Diodorus Siculus was told,

  of visiting all the inhabited earth and teaching the race of men how to cultivate the

  vine and sow wheat and barley; for he supposed that if he made men give up their

  savagery and adopt a gentle manner of life he would receive immortal honours

  because of the magnitude of his benefactions ...28

  Osiris travelled first to Ethiopia, where he taught tillage and husbandry to

  the primitive hunter-gatherers he encountered. He also undertook a

  number of large-scale engineering and hydraulics works: ‘He built canals,

  with flood gates and regulators ... he raised the river banks and took

  precautions to
prevent the Nile from overflowing ...’29 Later he made his

  Ancient Egypt, p. 190; Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt, p. 230.

  23 Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, volume I, p. 2.

  24 Chapter CXXV, cited in ibid., volume II, p. 81.

  25 See Parts II and III for Quetzalcoatl and Viracocha. A good summary of Osiris’s

  civilizing attributes is the New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology, p. 16. See also

  Diodorus Siculus, pp. 47-9; Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, volume I, pp. 1-12.

  26 Diodorus Siculus, p. 53.

  27 Ibid.; Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, volume I, p. 2.

  28 Diodorus Siculus, p. 55.

  29 Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, volume I, p. 11.

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  way to Arabia and thence to India, where he established many cities.

  Moving on to Thrace he killed a barbarian king for refusing to adopt his

  system of government. This was out of character; in general, Osiris was

  remembered by the Egyptians for having

  forced no man to carry out his instructions, but by means of gentle persuasion

  and an appeal to their reason he succeeded in inducing them to practise what he

  preached. Many of his wise counsels were imparted to his listeners in hymns and

  songs, which were sung to the accompaniment of instruments of music.’30

  Once again the parallels with Quetzalcoatl and Viracocha are hard to

  avoid. During a time of darkness and chaos—quite possibly linked to a

  flood—a bearded god, or man, materializes in Egypt (or Bolivia, or

  Mexico). He is equipped with a wealth of practical and scientific skills, of

  the kind associated with mature and highly developed civilizations, which

  he uses unselfishly for the benefit of humanity. He is instinctively gentle

  but capable of great firmness when necessary. He is motivated by a

  strong sense of purpose and, after establishing his headquarters at

  Heliopolis (or Tiahuanaco, or Teotihuacan), he sets forth with a select

  band of companions to impose order and to reinstate the lost balance of

  the world.31

  Leaving aside for the present the issue of whether we are dealing here

  with gods or men, with figments of the primitive imagination or with

  flesh-and-blood beings, the fact remains that the myths always speak of a

  company of civilizers: Viracocha has his ‘companions’, as have both