In Heliopolitan theology, all these processes were grouped together, summarized and expressed in a single image—the Bennu bird, the legendary Phoenix which at certain widely separated intervals ‘fashioned a nest of aromatic boughs and spices, set it on fire and was consumed in the flames. From the pyre miraculously sprang a new phoenix, which, after embalming its father’s ashes in an egg of myrrh, flew with the ashes to Heliopolis where it deposited them in the altar of the Egyptian sun-god, Re. A variant of the story made the dying phoenix fly to Heliopolis and immolate itself in the altar fire, from which the young phoenix then rose ... The Egyptians associated the phoenix with immortality.’[528]
Sources vary as to the period of the Bennu’s return, but in his authoritative study on the subject R. T. Rundle Clark mentions the figure of 12,954 years.[529] Let us note that this figure accords very closely with a half-cycle of precession (where the full cycle, as we have seen, is 25,920 years). As such, ‘the return of the phoenix’ could be expressed in astronomical terms either as a slow ‘sweep’ of the vernal point through six houses of the zodiac—for example from the beginning of Leo to the beginning of Aquarius—or, at the meridian, as the number of years required for a star to move between its minimum and maximum altitudes above the horizon.
When considering such co-ordinates in the sky, we are immediately reminded of the Giza necropolis—of how the gaze of the Great Sphinx targets the vernal point on the eastern horizon, and of how the star-shafts of the Great Pyramid lock in to the meridian with machine-age accuracy. Moreover it can hardly be an accident that the capstone or pyramidion placed on top of all pyramids was known in the ancient Egyptian language as the Benben and was considered to be a symbol of the Bennu bird (and thus also of rebirth and immortality).[530] These capstones were replicas of the original Benben stone—perhaps a conical, ‘orientated’ meteorite[531]—which was said to have ‘fallen from heaven’ and which was kept in Heliopolis, perched atop a pillar in a Temple called the ‘Mansion of the Phoenix’.[532]
Is it not apparent, therefore, that we are confronted here by a tightly knit complex of interwoven ideas, all additionally complicated by masses of Egyptian dualism, in which stone stands for bird, and bird for stone,[533] and both together speak of rebirth and of the ‘eternal return’?
The capstone is of course missing from the summit of the Great Pyramid at Giza. And the Benben of Heliopolis was already long lost to history by the time of the Greeks ...[534]
Will these treasures, too, sooner or later ‘return’?
54. Artist’s impression of the ‘Mansion of the Phoenix’ in Heliopolis with its original pillar and pyramid-shaped Benben stone.
Ancestor gods
‘Underlying all Egyptian speculation’, as R. T. Rundle Clark has observed, ‘is the belief that time is composed of recurrent cycles which are divinely appointed ...’[535] There is furthermore a governing moment amongst all these cycles and epochs—the ‘genesis event’ that the Egyptians called Zep Tepi, the ‘First Time’.
Zep means ‘Time’, Tepi means ‘First’.
But Tepi also has other connotations. For example, it is the word for ‘the foremost point of a ship’ and it can likewise be interpreted as ‘the first day of a period of time’. Moreover, according to the astute analysis of Robert K. G. Temple: ‘The basic meaning of the word Tep is “mouth” ... and even more fundamentally the “beginning or commencement of anything”.’[536]
Perhaps because of this persistent connection with the beginning of things, Tepi can also mean ‘ancestors’. And the Tepi-aui-qerr-en-pet were ‘the ancestor-gods of the circle of the sky’.[537] Also in the Pyramid Texts Tepi-aui is one of the many titles by which the ancestral deities of the ‘early primeval age’ were known—the gods and Sages, or ‘Followers of Horus’, who were supposedly there, at the dawn of civilization, when the phoenix alighted atop the pillar at Heliopolis, uttering a great cry and setting in motion the ‘time’ of our present epoch of the world ...
Curiously, the hieroglyphic sign used to determine the Tepi-aui is the body of a large, slouching lion, with only the paws, breast and head shown. And we find a similar device being used as the determinative for a very similar class of beings called the Akeru, described in Wallis Budge’s Hieroglyphic Dictionary as a group of gods said to be the ancestors of Re.[538]
The reader will recall from earlier chapters that one of the distinguishing features of the Fifth Division of the Duat is the presence there of a giant double-lion Sphinx-god named Aker whom Egyptologist Mark Lehner suggests may be ‘a representation of the Sphinx at Giza’.[539] Since it is from Aker that the Akeru derive their name, it is natural that the hieroglyphs should depict them either in the form of slouching lions, or of two lions back to back, or of a double-headed lion.[540]
So the texts seem to invite us to attach leonine characteristics to the ‘men or gods of olden times’, to the ‘Ancestors’, and to the Sages. But they also invite something else when, as we shall see in the next chapter, they link the whole concept of ancestral dynasties of gods and spirits with another closely related word, Akhu, meaning, variously, the ‘Shining Ones’, the ‘Star People’ or the ‘Venerables’. In this way they will lead us back to the trail of the ‘Followers of Horus’ and to the notion that for thousands of years—spanning both the prehistoric and the historic periods—the members of a hidden academy may have been at work behind the scenes in Egypt, observing the stars with scientific rigour and manipulating men and events according to a celestial timetable ...
Chapter 13
Following the Stars
‘The disposition of the stars as well as their movements have always been the subject of careful observation among the Egyptians ... they have preserved to this day records concerning each of these stars over an incredible number of years, this study having been zealously preserved among them from ancient times.’
Diodorus Siculus, Book V, first century bc
It should be clear by now that the ancient Egyptians had very distinct ideas about the length and scope of their history, and that they set the ‘First Time’, the ‘genesis event’ for their civilization, far back in what the Edfu Building Texts call the ‘Early Primeval Age’. Just how long ago that event actually took place is not an issue that will be easily resolved because the surviving texts—the king-lists, the very few fragments of Manetho’s History that have been preserved, and certain travellers’ tales—are mostly incomplete and at times mutually contradictory. Moreover we are obliged to cut our way through a luxuriant jungle of diverse terminologies—Sages, Ancestors, Spirits of the Dead, the ‘Followers of Horus’, etc., etc.—which further complicates the problem of trying to arrive at a coherent picture. Nevertheless, let us see what we can glean from these ancient sources. Let us try to put the jigsaw puzzle together ...
Shining ones
Amongst the very few king-lists that have survived to the present day, the so-called ‘Turin Papyrus’ reaches particularly deeply into the dark abyss of the past. Regrettably, more than half of the contents of this fragile document from the second millennium bc have been lost because of the gross incompetence with which it was handled by scholars when it was transferred (in a biscuit tin) from the collection of the King of Sardinia to its present home in the Museum of Turin.[541] The remaining fragments, however, offer occasional tantalising glimpses of an astonishing chronology.
Of the greatest importance amongst these fragments is a badly damaged vertical register in which the names and reigns of ten Neteru or ‘Gods’ were originally given. Although in most cases the durations of these reigns are now illegible or completely broken away, it is possible to read the figure of 3126 years ascribed to the rule of the wisdom-god Thoth and the figure of 300 years ascribed to Horus, the last fully ‘divine’ king of Egypt.[542] Immediately afterwards comes a second vertical register devoted to the ‘Followers of Horus’—the Shemsu Hor—the most prominent of that general class of beings variously called ‘Ancestors’, or ‘Sages’ or
‘Ghosts’ or ‘Spirits’ whom the Egyptians remembered as having bridged the gap between the time of the gods and the time of Menes (the supposed first king of the first historical Dynasty circa 3000 bc).[543] Again much of the register is missing, but its last two lines, which seem to represent a summing-up, are of particular interest: ‘The Akhu, Shemsu Hor, 13,420 years; Reigns before the Shemsu Hor, 23,200 years; Total 36,620 years.’[544]
The plural word ‘Akhu’ is normally translated as ‘Venerables’.[545] Yet, as we hinted at the end of the last chapter, a close examination of the full range of meanings that the ancient Egyptians attached to it suggests that another and far more intriguing possibility exists—one that is concealed by so generalized an epithet. To be specific, the hieroglyphs for Akhu can also mean ‘Transfigured Beings’, ‘Shining Ones’, ‘Shining Beings’ or ‘Astral Spirits’—understandably identified by some linguists with the stars.[546] And there are other shades of meaning, too, that cry out to be taken into account. For example in Sir E. A. Wallis Budge’s authoritative Hieroglyphic Dictionary the following additional definitions are provided for Akhu: ‘to be bright’, ‘to be excellent’, or ‘to be wise’ and ‘instructed’.[547] And Budge further informs us that the word was frequently associated with ‘those who recite formulae’.[548]
Such data, we suggest, calls for a rethink of the title ‘Venerables’ as applied to the ‘Followers of Horus’ in the Turin Papyrus.[549] Rather than merely being ‘venerable’, is it not possible that what was meant to be conveyed by the word Akhu in this context was a picture of vastly enlightened and learned people, apparently with some connection to or interest in the stars—in short an élite of highly initiated astronomer-philosophers?
In support of this notion is the fact that the ‘Followers of Horus’ were frequently linked in the ancient texts to another equally enlightened and ‘shining’ class of ancestral beings called the ‘Souls of Pe’ and the ‘Souls of Nekhen’.[550] Now Pe and Nekhen were actual geographical locations in Egypt—the former in the north and the latter in the south.[551] Interestingly enough, however, as Professor Henri Frankfort has confirmed, the ‘Souls’ of both these places were also frequently grouped collectively under yet another title, the ‘Souls of Heliopolis’,[552] who were said ‘to assist the King’s ascent to heaven, a function commonly performed by the Souls of Nekhen and Pe ... A relief depicting this function shows the Souls of Pe and Nekhen in the act, while the text calls them the “Souls of Heliopolis”.’[553]
It is generally accepted that the term ‘Soul’—Ba—as used by the ancient Egyptians had stellar attributes connected to the notion of eternal life in the Duat to which all the historical Pharaohs aspired. Moreover, as Frankfort rightly points out, the Pyramid Texts do indeed define the dominant role of the ‘Souls’ of Pe and Nekhen—and thus the ‘Souls’ of Heliopolis—as being to ensure that when a Pharaoh died he would be ‘equipped’ to ascend to the sky and find his way into the cosmic Kingdom of Osiris.[554] This in turn coincides with what we know of the Sages of Edfu and the ‘Followers of Horus’, both of whom, as we have seen, may be identified with a single and originally Heliopolitan ‘brotherhood’ of temple-makers whose function was to prepare and initiate the generations of the Horus-Kings in order to bring about the ‘resurrection’ of what was remembered as ‘the former world of the gods’.[555]
Legacy
The notion that some form of invisible college could have established itself at Heliopolis thousands of years before the Pharaohs, and could have been the initiating force behind the creation and unfolding of ancient Egyptian civilization, helps to explain one of the greatest mysteries confronted by Egyptology—namely the extremely sudden, indeed dramatic, manner in which Pharaonic culture ‘took off’ in the early third millennium bc. The independent researcher John Anthony West, whose breakthrough work on the geology of the Sphinx we reported in Part I, formulates the problem especially well:
Every aspect of Egyptian knowledge seems to have been complete at the very beginning. The sciences, artistic and architectural techniques and the hieroglyphic system show virtually no signs of a period of ‘development’; indeed, many of the achievements of the earliest dynasties were never surpassed or even equalled later on. This astonishing fact is readily admitted by orthodox Egyptologists, but the magnitude of the mystery it poses is skilfully understated, while its many implications go unmentioned.
How does a complex civilization spring full-blown into being? Look at a 1905 automobile and compare it to a modern one. There is no mistaking the process of ‘development’. But in Egypt there are no parallels. Everything is right there at the start.
The answer to the mystery is of course obvious, but because it is repellent to the prevailing cast of modern thinking, it is seldom seriously considered. Egyptian civilization was not a ‘development’, it was a legacy.[556]
Might not the preservers of that legacy, who eventually bequeathed it to the Pharaohs at the beginning of the Dynastic Period, have been those revered and secretive individuals—the ‘Followers of Horus’, the Sages, the Senior Ones—whose memory haunts the most archaic traditions of Egypt like a persistent ghost?
Gods and heroes
In addition to the Turin Papyrus other chronological records support the notion of an immensely ancient ‘academy’ at work behind the scenes in Egypt. Amongst these, the most influential were compiled, as we saw earlier, by Manetho (literally, ‘Truth of Thoth’), who lived in the third century bc and who ‘rose to be high priest in the temple at Heliopolis’.[557] There he wrote his now lost History of Egypt which later commentators tell us was divided up into three volumes dealing, respectively, with ‘the Gods, the Demigods, the Spirits of the Dead and the mortal Kings who ruled Egypt’.[558]
The ‘Gods’ it seems, ruled for 13,900 years. After them ‘the Demigods and Spirits of the Dead’—epithets for the ‘Followers of Horus’—ruled for a further 11,025 years.[559] Then began the reign of the mortal kings, which Manetho divided into the thirty-one dynasties still used and accepted by scholars today.
Other fragments from Manetho’s History also suggest that important and powerful beings were present in Egypt long before the dawn of its historical period under the rule of Menes. For example Fragment 3, preserved in the works of George Syncellus, speaks of ‘six dynasties or six gods who ... reigned for 11,985 years’.[560] And in a number of sources Manetho is said to have given the figure of 36,525 years for the entire duration of the civilization of Egypt from the time of the gods down to the end of the last dynasty of mortal kings.[561]
A rather different total of around 23,000 years has been handed down to us by the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus who visited Egypt in the first century bc and spoke there with priests and chroniclers. According to the stories he was told: ‘At first Gods and Heroes ruled Egypt for a little less than 18,000 years ... Mortals have been kings of their country, they say, for a little less than 5000 years.’[562]
Time bridge
An overview of all the available chronologies in context of other related documents such as the Pyramid Texts and the Edfu Building Texts leaves two distinct impressions. Despite the conflicts and confusions over the precise numbers of years involved, and despite the endless proliferation of names and titles and honorifics and epithets:
• It is clear that the ancient Egyptians thought in terms of very long periods of time and would never have accepted the Egyptological view that their civilization ‘began’ with the First Dynasty of Pharaohs.
• It is clear that they were aware of an ‘influence’ at work in their history—a continuous, unbroken influence that had extended over many thousands of years and that was wielded by an élite group of divine and semi-divine beings, often associated with leonine symbolism, who were called variously ‘Gods and Heroes’, the ‘Spirits of the Dead’, the ‘Souls’, the ‘Sages’, the ‘Shining Ones’, the ‘Ancestors’, the ‘Ancestor-Gods of the Circle of the Sky’, the ‘Followers of Horus’, etc., etc.
It is clear, in other words, that the ancient Egyptians envisaged a kind of ‘time bridge’, linking the world of men to the world of the gods, today to yesterday and ‘now’ to the ‘First Time’. It is clear, too that responsibility for maintaining this ‘bridge’ was attributed to the ‘Followers of Horus’ (by this and many other names). And it is clear that the ‘Followers’ were remembered as having carried down intact the traditions and secrets of the gods—always preserving them, permitting not a single change—until finally sharing them with the first dynasties of Egypt’s mortal kings.
55. It is clear that the ancient Egyptians were aware of an ‘influence’ at work in their history—a continuous, unbroken influence that extended over many thousands of years and that was wielded by an élite group of divine and semi-divine beings.
Following the vernal point