We do not think that this talk of ‘Unification’ was ever entirely to do with events that happened on the ground. Although we do not dispute that some form of political unification did indeed take place at around 3000 bc, we suspect that in dualistic Egypt a wider understanding of the whole issue will not be possible unless events in the sky are taken into account as well. Building on earlier work done by Egyptologist and archaeoastronomer Jane B. Sellers,[579] we suggest that the original notion of ‘Unification’—to which all later attempts to ‘Unify the Two Lands’ were directly related—had something to do with the precessional drift of the stars ...
High and far-off times
In her landmark study The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt Sellers sets out persuasive astronomical and textual evidence to show that the prehistoric Egyptians—at least as far back as 7300 bc—had observed and tracked the slow precessionally induced changes that constantly relocate the cosmic ‘address’ of the constellation of Orion. And she argues that, although political unity was credited to Menes, there was a much older notion of the ‘Unification’ based not on events on earth but those observed in the sky ...[580] Indeed, she goes so far as to claim that Menes merely brought to fruition a very ancient and archetypal vision of cosmic duality which so perfectly harmonized with the mentality of the ancient Egyptians ‘as to appear both inevitable and perennial’: ‘A dual monarchy united under the rule of one was a form that came from the mists of distant antiquity. It was a form that had been created for gods in the heavens, and how inevitable it was that an imitation of the cosmic order should prevail for men on earth.’[581]
Sellers supports her case by drawing on the late Henri Frankfort’s studies of ancient Egyptian kingship. Like her, the former Professor of Preclassical Antiquity at the University of London was firmly of the opinion that it was ‘possible to view the unification of Egypt, not as the ephemeral outcome of conflicting ambitions, but as the revelation of a predestined order’.[582] And he was further convinced that ‘the dual monarchy centred round Memphis realized a divine plan’, that the social and state order established by Menes-Narmer was presented ‘as part of the cosmic order’,[583] and that Menes-Narmer, in establishing himself as sole ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt, was performing ‘an act in harmony with the Egyptian tendency to understand the world in dualistic terms, “a series of pairs of contrasts balanced in unchanging equilibrium” ...’[584]
What Sellers was able to add to this, as a result of her own powerful insights into ancient Egyptian cosmology and observational astronomy, was the notion that events taking place on the ground were somehow directly conditioned by observations of the sky—and also that what was observed in the sky was described more or less accurately in certain ‘myths’:
I am postulating the creation of specific myths to deal with distressing alterations in the sky, followed by an artificial duality, or symmetry, imposed, not just on the deities, but on geographical centres of worship, and this duality remained a constant in Egyptian affairs throughout its history. It was harking back to a wonderful Golden Age, now lost, an age when the skies had had a magnificent balance, and the religion had been fresh and new ...’[585]
The Golden Age to which Sellers is referring is, of course, Zep Tepi, the ‘First Time’. And the ‘distressing alterations in the sky’ which she believes that certain myths were created to explain were caused by the phenomenon of precession—specifically the precessional drift of the great constellation of Orion away from the station that it had occupied at the ‘First Time’.[586]
These are daring and dangerous steps for an otherwise orthodox Egyptologist to have taken. Nevertheless, as we shall see in the next chapters, Sellers could be wrong in understanding the myths—by which she means principally the Pyramid Texts and the Memphite Theology—merely as accounts fabricated by superstitious priests to ‘explain’ precessional drift. The possibility needs to be confronted square on that elements of these ancient traditions, and the monuments and rituals that are so inextricably linked to them, could have been deliberately contrived as vehicles to carry an elaborate and ingenious ‘message’ from a past epoch otherwise long forgotten to a specific epoch in the future—from the ‘First Time’ to an astronomically defined ‘Last Time’[587]—perhaps even to the very epoch in which we ourselves live today. Perhaps both epochs thus linked together are susceptible to accurate dating and decoding if only the right key can be found. And perhaps we may yet be able to read and understand the great cosmic blueprint that the ‘Followers of Horus’ sought to implement ...
Who knows what might result?
There might even come, to quote the words of Giorgio de Santillana, ‘some kind of “Renaissance” out of the hopelessly condemned and trampled past, when certain ideas come to life again ... We should not deprive our grandchildren of a last chance at the heritage of the highest and farthest-off times.’[588]
Chapter 15
When the Sky Joined the Earth
‘My Kingdom is not of this world. ...’
John 18:36
‘Great is the Cosmic Order, for it has not changed since the time of Osiris, who put it there ...’
Ptahotep, a high priest of the Pyramid Age
According to the Creation narrative of the ancient Egyptians, Nut, the Sky-goddess, and Geb, the earth-god, joined in sexual union, but were then rudely separated by the intervention of Shu, the god of air, atmosphere and dryness. Nevertheless the union did produce offspring in the form of Isis and Osiris, Nepthys and Seth. And in due course, as we have seen, Osiris became the ruler of the idealized ‘Kingdom of the “First Time” ’, was murdered by Seth, experienced resurrection, and then finally ascended into the heavens where he established the cosmic ‘Kingdom’ of the Duat. The reader will remember that a crucial role in effecting his ‘astral rebirth’ was played by Horus, his son by the widow Isis, the archetype for all the historical Horus-Kings of ancient Egypt—who revenged himself on Seth and later reunified the divided Kingdom.
It can thus be said that a kind of cosmic blueprint to establish—or reestablish—a unified ‘Kingdom of Osiris’ on earth had been devised from the outset by the ‘gods’ and thus long before the advent of ‘historical’ kingship by Menes-Narmer at the beginning of the third millennium bc.
Separation
In the Shabaka Texts (which express the Memphite Theology) we read that the defeat of Seth by Horus was followed by a convocation of the gods, under the leadership of Geb, who sat in judgement over the two ‘contenders’. Initially each one was given authority to rule over his own area: ‘These are the words of Geb to Horus [of the north] and Seth [of the south]: “I have separated you”—Lower and Upper Egypt ... Then Horus stood over one region and Seth stood over one region ...’[589]
Later, however, as the reader will recall from Part III, Geb ‘gave to Horus [Seth’s] inheritance’: ‘Then Horus stood over the land. He is the uniter of this land ... He is Horus who arose as king of Upper and Lower Egypt, who united the Two Lands in [the region of Memphis],—the “place” where the Two Lands were united ...’[590]
The curious phrase ‘I have separated you’ which Geb uttered, is symbolic of the ‘separation’ that he, too, had endured from his consort the sky-goddess, Nut. With this in mind, should we not consider the possibility that the notions of ‘Upper Egypt’ and ‘Lower Egypt’—though obviously relating at one level to the geographical south and north of the earthly country—might also at another level have been intended to suggest ground and sky?
Doubles
There is much in the Memphite Theology which supports the proposition that the areas which were traditionally regarded as the southern and northern sacred regions of Osiris—Abydos and Memphis—were not only meant to be considered in terrestrial terms but also in cosmic terms.
In particular, a metaphor is relayed around the imagery of the huge ‘body’ of Osiris ‘drifting’ with the waters of the Nile from his southern shrine at Abydos to reach his northern shrine in the ‘
land of Sokar’—i.e. the Memphite necropolis in general and in particular the Giza plateau where, in the form of the three great Pyramids, we suspect that the ‘body’ of Osiris lies outstretched upon the sand to the present day ...
At any rate, this same basic imagery of Osiris lying on the western bank of the Nile near Memphis also crops up in the Pyramid Texts, which add a further clue: ‘They [Isis and Nepthys] have found Osiris ... “when his name became Sokar” ...’[591] The term ‘when his name became Sokar’ does clearly seem to imply that the ‘body’ of Osiris merged with the land of Sokar i.e. the Memphite necropolis, and that his image—i.e. the ‘astral’ image of the Orion region of the sky—was somehow grafted onto it. The impression that this ‘image’ must have something to do with the Pyramids of Giza is then confirmed elsewhere in the Pyramid Texts. In the following passage, for example, the Horus-King addresses the ‘Lower Sky’ to which he ‘will descend to the place where the gods are’ and utters this powerful and cryptic declaration:
If I come with my ka [double], open your arms to me; the mouths of the gods will be opened and will request that I ascend to the sky, and I will ascend.
A boon which Geb (earth) and Atum grant: that this Pyramid and Temple be installed for me and for my double, and that this Pyramid and Temple be enclosed for me and for my double ...
As for anyone who shall lay a finger on this Pyramid and this Temple which belong to me and to my double, he will have laid a finger on the Mansion [Kingdom]... which is in the sky ...[592]
It is beyond the scope of this book to present a detailed treatise on the concept of the ka—the ‘double’, the astral or spiritual essence of a person or thing—and of its role in ancient Egyptian funerary beliefs. Much confusion has been generated around this important subject.[593] At the very least, however, it is certain that what confronts us in the ka is yet another example of the prevailing dualism in Egyptian thought. Moreover its use in context of the utterance quoted above reminds us that the ‘image’ of Osiris ‘when his name became Sokar’—i.e. the Memphite Pyramid necropolis—should at all times be considered as having a cosmic or celestial ‘double’. And it should be obvious, too, that this ‘double’ can only be the Osirian Kingdom in the Duat—which the Pyramid Texts declare to be ‘the Place Where Orion Is’. Indeed as Margaret Bunson notes in her Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt: ‘Kas ... served as guardians of places ... Osiris was always called the ka of the Pyramids ...’[594]
Other passages from the Pyramid Texts support this general analysis:
O Horus, this King is Osiris, this Pyramid of the king is Osiris, this construction of his is Osiris, betake yourself to it ...[595]
Awake [Osiris] for Horus ... spiritualize yourself [i.e. become an astral being] ... May a stairway to the sky be set up for you to the Place Where Orion Is ...[596]
Live, be alive, be young ... beside Orion in the sky ...[597]
O Osiris-King, you are this great star, the companion of Orion, who traverses the sky with Orion, who ‘sails’ in the Duat with Osiris ...[598]
Link-up
Strangely, despite the obvious sky-ground dualism and profoundly astronomical ‘flavour’ of the Texts, no scholar other than Jane B. Sellers[599] has ever given serious consideration to the possibility that references to the ‘Unification’ of the ‘Upper’ and ‘Lower’ Kingdoms of Osiris might have something to do with astronomy. Indeed the only Egyptologist even to get close to such an unorthodox way of thinking was Selim Hassan when he observed: ‘the Egyptians held the idea of the existence of more than one sky, possibly superimposed ... Certain lines in the Pyramid Texts strongly suggest that “Upper” and “Lower” Egypt each had its own particular sky ... i.e. the two skies in opposition to the Two Lands of Upper and Lower Egypt.’[600]
In his monumental study of ancient Egyptian cosmology, Hassan also drew attention to an intriguing papyrus, now kept at the Louvre Museum in Paris,[601] which suggests that the ‘Two Skies’ in question were considered as being ‘one for the earth and the other for the Duat’.[602] ‘These plural skies’, wrote Hassan, ‘were superimposed one above the other.’[603]
Pursuing such lines of thought, we were to discover that similar ideas are depicted in the Coffin Texts. There reference is made to the ‘Upper’ and ‘Lower’ landscapes which are said to be bound to the ‘Two Horizons’—one in the east (the sky) and one in the west (the earth i.e. the Memphite necropolis[604]): ‘Open! O Sky and Earth, O eastern and western Horizons, open you chapels of Upper and Lower Egypt ...’[605]
The language of all these texts is exotic, laden with the dualistic thinking that lay at the heart of ancient Egyptian society and that may have been the engine of its greatest achievements. In the Pyramid Age, as we have seen, the gigantic ‘image’ of Osiris appears to have been physically defined on the ground with the creation of the ‘Lower’ landscape of the Memphite Pyramids—a development referred to in the Pyramid Texts by means of the obvious metaphor ‘When his name became Sokar’. Likewise, it should come as no surprise that the gigantic celestial ‘image’ of Osiris in the sky is referred to in the same texts by means of the same metaphorical device, i.e. ‘When his name became Orion’: ‘Horus comes, Thoth appears ... They raise Osiris from upon his side and make him stand up ... when there came into being this his name of Orion, long of leg and lengthy of stride, who presides over “Upper” Egypt ... Raise yourself, O Osiris ... the sky is given to you, the earth is given to you ...’[606] Selim Hassan, again almost but not quite getting the point, comments as follows: ‘this line shows that Osiris was given the dominion of heaven and earth.’[607]
57. (Left) The sky-Duat of Osiris ‘in his name of Orion’. (Right) The ground-Duat of Osiris ‘in his name of Sokar’.
Yet clearly there is more to say. These ‘dominions’ were by no means vague and general but were defined in the sky by the pattern of Orion’s stars, and were defined on the ground—in the land of ‘Sokar’ (i.e. the Memphite necropolis)—by the pattern of the Pyramids.
We wonder whether the first major ‘station’ of the quest-journey of the Horus-King, reached after he had been prompted to ‘find the astral body of Osiris’, might not have been the initiate’s dawning awareness that the body in question was a duality that could only be approached by linking Orion with the pattern of the Great Pyramids in the Memphite necropolis.
Riding the vernal point
The reader will remember that the starting point of the Horus-King’s ‘journey in the sky’ was when the sun’s position along the zodiac (during the solar year) was close to the Hyades, at the ‘head’ of the constellation of Taurus, standing, as it were, on the banks of the Milky Way.
If we now transpose this sky image to the ground then the Horus-King would have to place himself near the ‘Bent’ and the ‘Red’ Pyramids of Dahshur some 20 miles south of Giza (but nevertheless still very much part of the extensive Memphite necropolis). As we saw in the last chapter, the trigger for the construction of these two Fourth-Dynasty monuments appears to have been the slow precessional drift of the vernal point into the Hyades-Taurus region of the sky in the third millennium bc. Indeed it is more than possible that by building those Pyramids (which map the two brightest stars in the Hyades) Pharaoh Sneferu (2575-2551 bc) was deliberately laying down a marker for the position of the vernal point in his epoch.
If he was doing that, as all the evidence seems to suggest, then it is probable that such a highly initiated Horus-King would also have known that by metaphorically ‘boarding’ the solar bark at the spring equinox, and crossing the Milky Way, he would effectively be ‘sailing back in time’—against the flow of precession—riding the vernal point towards the distant constellation of Leo.
But why, then, all this parallel emphasis in the texts on Orion-Osiris moving from somewhere in the distant ‘south’ to his final resting place in the Memphite necropolis?
Secret spell
We suspect that for thousands of years before the Pyramid Age, hundreds of generati
ons of Heliopolitan astronomer-priests had kept the constellation of Orion continuously under observation, paying particular attention to its place of meridian-transit—i.e. the altitude above the horizon at which it crossed the celestial meridian. We think that careful records were kept, perhaps written, perhaps orally encoded in the ancient ‘mythological’ language of precessional astronomy.[608] And we suppose that note was taken of Orion’s slow precessional drift—the effect of which was that the constellation would have seemed to be slowly drifting northwards along the west ‘bank’ of the Milky Way.
It is our hypothesis that the mythical image of the vast body of Osiris slowly being carried to the north, i.e. ‘drifting’ on the waters of the Nile, is a specific piece of astronomical terminology coined to describe the long-term changes being effected by precession in Orion’s celestial ‘address’. In the Memphite Theology, as the reader will recall, this drift was depicted as having commenced in the south, symbolically called Abydos (in archaeological terms the most southerly ‘shrine’ of Osiris), and to have carried the ‘body’ of the dead god to a point in the north symbolically called Sokar, i.e. the Memphite necropolis (the most northerly ‘shrine’ of Osiris). As we saw in Part III, the Shabaka Texts tell us that when he reached this point: