Osiris was drowned in his water. Isis and Nepthys looked out, beheld him, and attended to him. Horus quickly commanded Isis and Nepthys to grasp Osiris and prevent his [submerging]. They heeded in time and brought him to land. [. He entered the hidden portals in the glory of the Lords of Eternity. Thus Osiris came into the earth at the Royal Fortress [Memphis], to the north of the land to which he had come [Abydos].[609]
58. The effect of Orion’s slow precessional slide up the meridian between 10,500 bc and 2500 bc is that the constellation would literally have appeared to be ‘drifting’ very slowly northwards along the course of the Milky Way.
In the light of what we now know it is hard to imagine that the reference to Osiris coming ‘into the earth’ (or down to earth?) could signify anything other than the physical construction of the ‘body of Osiris on the ground’ on the west banks of the Nile—in the form of the great Pyramid-fields of the sprawling Memphite necropolis. Since Osiris is Orion the desire to achieve such an effect would more than adequately explain why the three Pyramids of Giza should have been arranged in the pattern of the three stars of Orion’s belt. Moreover, since we know that the stated goal of the Horus-King’s quest was not only to find the astral ‘body’ of Osiris but to find it as it was in the ‘First Time’, we should not be surprised by the fact that the Pyramids, as we saw in Part I, are set out on the ground in the pattern that they made at the beginning (i.e. ‘southernmost point’) of that constellation’s upward (i.e. ‘northerly’) precessional half-cycle.
So we wonder whether it is possible that the quest of the Horus-King might have had as its ultimate objective the acquisition of knowledge concerning the ‘First Time’—perhaps even the acquisition of specific knowledge from that remote epoch when the gods had walked the earth?
Several passages in the Pyramid Texts invite such speculation. For example, we are told that the Horus-King must ‘travel upstream’—i.e. must push against the natural drift of ‘time’—in order to reach Orion-Osiris in his proper ‘First Time’ setting:
Betake yourself to the Waterway, fare upstream [south], travel about Abydos in this spirit-form of yours which the gods command to belong to you; may a stairway [road] to the Duat be set up for you to the Place Where Orion Is ...[610]
They have found Osiris ... ‘When his name became Sokar’ [Memphite necropolis] ... Wake up [Osiris] for Horus ... raise yourself ... fare southward [upstream] to the lake, cross over the sea [sky], for you are he who stands untiring in the midst of Abydos ...[611]
Betake yourself to the Waterway, fare upstream ... traverse Abydos. The celestial portal to the Horizon is open to you ... may you remove yourself to the sky, for the roads of the celestial expanses which lead up to Horus are cleaned for you ... for you have traversed the Winding Waterway [Milky Way] which is in the north of the sky as a star crossing the sea which is beneath the sky. The Duat has grasped your hand at the Place Where Orion Is ...[612]
Likewise there is a striking passage in the Coffin Texts which refers to some secret ‘spell’ or formula to allow the deceased to use the ‘path of Rostau’ on the land and in the sky (i.e. the path to the Giza necropolis on land and to Orion’s belt in the sky) in order to ‘go down to any sky he wishes to go down to’:
I have passed on the path of Rostau, whether on water or on land, and these are the paths of Osiris [Orion], they are in the limit of the sky. As for him who knows the spell [formula] for going down into them, he himself is a god in the suite of Thoth [meaning he is as wise as Thoth, ‘the controller of the stars’[613]] [and] he will go down to any sky he wishes to go down to ...[614]
Special numbers
We suspect that the phrase to ‘go down to any sky’ suggests an awareness—and recording—of precessionally induced changes in the positions of the stars over long periods of time. And we also note its implication that if the chosen initiate was equipped with the correct numerical spell then he would be able to work out—and visualize—the correct positions of the stars in any epoch of his choosing, past or future.
Once again Sellers stands out amongst Egyptologists for being the first to have entertained such apparently outlandish notions. ‘It is possible’, she writes, ‘that early man encoded in his myths special numbers; numbers that seemed to reveal to initiates an amazing knowledge of the movement of the celestial spheres.’[615]
Such numbers, she argues, appear to have been derived from a sustained, scientific study of the cycle of precession and a measurement of its rate and, puzzlingly, turn out to be extremely ‘close to the calculations made with today’s sophisticated procedures’. Intriguingly, too, there is evidence not only ‘that these calculations were made, and conclusions drawn’, but also that ‘they were transmitted to others by secret encoding that was accessible only to an élite few’:[616] In short, Sellers concludes, ‘ancient man calculated a special number that he believed would bring this threatening cycle [of precession] back to its starting point ...’[617]
The ‘special number’ to which Sellers is referring to is 25,920 (and multiples and divisions of it) and thus represents the duration, in solar years, of a full precessional cycle or ‘Great Year’.[618] She shows how it can be derived from a variety of simple combinations of other numbers—5, 12, 36, 72, 360, 432, 2160, etc., etc.—all of which are in turn derived from precise observations of precession. Most crucially of all, she shows that this peculiar sequence of numbers occurs in the ancient Egyptian myth of Osiris where, notably ‘72 conspirators’ are said to have been involved with Seth in the murder of the God-King.[619]
As was shown in Fingerprints of the Gods, the sun’s perceived motion through the signs of the zodiac at the vernal equinox proceeds at the rate of one degree every seventy-two years. From this it follows that a movement of the vernal point through 30 degrees will take 2160 years to complete, 60 degrees will take 4320 years, and a full 360-degree cycle will require 25,920 years.[620]
Curiously enough, as the reader will recall from Part I, the Great Pyramid itself incorporates a record of these precessional numbers—since its key dimensions (its height and the perimeter of its base) appear to have been designed as a mathematical model of the earth’s polar radius and equatorial circumference on a scale of 1:43,200. The number 43,200 is, of course, exactly 600 times 72. What we have in this remarkable monument, therefore, is not just a scale model of a hemisphere of the earth but also one in which the scale involved incorporates a ‘special number’ derived from one of the key planetary motions of the earth itself—i.e. the rate of its axial precession.
In short it seems that secret knowledge is indeed available in the myth of Osiris and in the dimensions of the Great Pyramid. With this secret knowledge, if we wanted to fix a specific date—say 1008 years in the future—and communicate it to other initiates, then we could do so with the ‘special number’ 14 (72 x 14 = 1008). We would also have to specify the ‘zero point’ from which they were to make their calculations—i.e. the present epoch—and this might be done with some kind of symbolic or mathematical marker to indicate where the vernal point presently is, i.e. moving out of Pisces and into Aquarius.
A similar exercise could likewise be carried out in reverse. By following the ‘eastwards’ direction along the ecliptic path we can ‘find’ (calculate, work out) where the vernal point was at any epoch in the past. Thus if today we wished to use the precessional code to direct attention towards the Pyramid Age we would need to confide to other initiates the ‘special number’ of 62.5 (72 x 62.5 = 4500 years ago = approximately 2500 bc). Again, we could rule out any ambiguity as to the zero date from which the calculations were to be made if we could find a way to indicate the present position of the vernal point.
We have seen that this is what Sneferu appears to have done with the two Pyramids at Dahshur, which map the two sides of the head of the celestial bull—the ‘address’ of the vernal point in his epoch. And in a sense, though with a great deal more specificity and precision, this could also be exactly what the bu
ilders of the Great Pyramid were doing when they deliberately targeted the southern shafts of the King’s and Queen’s Chambers on the meridian-transits of such significant stars as Orion and Sirius in the epoch of 2500 bc. To be clear about this, it seems to us well worth investigating the possibility that by setting up such obvious and precise ‘time markers’ they were trying to provide an unambiguous zero point—circa 2500 bc—for calculations that could only be undertaken by initiates steeped in the mysteries of precession, who were equipped by their training to draw out the hidden portents concealed in certain ‘special numbers’.
We note in passing that if the Horus-King could have been provided with the ‘special number’ 111.111, and had used it in the way described above, it would have led him back to (72 x 111.111 years =) 7,999.99 years before the specified ‘ground zero’, i.e. to almost exactly 8000 years before 2500 bc—in short, to 10,500 bc.
We know this seems like wishful numerology of the worst sort—i.e. ‘factoring in’ an arbitrary value to a set of calculations so as to procure spurious ‘corroboration’ for a specific desired date (in this case the date of 10,500 bc, twelve and a half thousand years before the present, that we have already highlighted in Chapter 3 in connection with the Sphinx and the Pyramids of Giza). The problem, however, is that the number 111.111 may well not be an arbitrary value. At any rate, it has long been recognized that the main numerical factor in the design of the Great Pyramid, and indeed of the Giza necropolis as a whole, is the prime number 11—a prime number being one that is only divisible by itself to produce the whole number 1. Thus 11 divided by 11, i.e. the ratio 11:11, produces the whole number 1 (while 11 divided by anything else, i.e. any other ratio, would, of necessity, generate a fraction).
What is intriguing is the way that the architecture of the Great Pyramid responds to the number 11 when it is divided, or multiplied, by other whole numbers. The reader will recall, for example, that its side length of just over 755 feet is equivalent to 440 Egyptian royal cubits—i.e. 11 times 40 cubits.[621] In addition, its height-to-base ratio is 7:11.[622] The slope ratio of its sides is 14:11 (tan 51 degrees 50’).[623] And the slope ratio of the southern shaft of the King’s Chamber—the shaft that was targeted on Orion’s belt in 2500 bc—is 11:11 (tan 45 degrees).[624]
Arguably, therefore, the ratio 11:11, which integrates with our ‘special number’ 111.111, could be considered as a sort of mathematical key, or ‘stargate’ to Orion’s belt. Moreover, as we shall see, a movement of 111.111 degrees ‘backwards along the ecliptic from ‘ground-zero’ at the Hyades-Taurus, the head of the celestial bull, would place the vernal point ‘underneath’ the cosmic lion.
Is it not precisely such a location, underneath the Great Sphinx, that the Horus-King is urged to investigate as he stands between its paws ‘with his mouth equipped’ and faces the questions of the Akhus whose initiations have led him this far? Indeed, does it not seem probable that the ‘quest-journey’ devised by the ‘Followers of Horus’ was carefully structured so as to sharpen the mind of the initiate by requiring him to piece together all the clues himself until he finally arrived at the realization that somewhere underneath the Great Sphinx of Giza was something (written or pictorial records, artefacts, maps, astronomical charts) that touched on ‘the knowledge of a divine origin’, that was of immense importance, and that had been concealed there since the ‘First Time’?
In considering such questions, we are reminded of the Hermetic doctrines which transmit a tradition of the wisdom god Thoth who was said to have ‘succeeded in understanding the mysteries of the heavens [and to have] revealed them by inscribing them in sacred books which he then hid here on earth, intending that they should be searched for by future generations but found only by the fully worthy’.[625] Do the ‘sacred books of Thoth’, or their equivalent, still lie in the bedrock beneath the Great Sphinx of Giza, and do the ‘fully worthy’ still seek them there?
Seekers after truth
Other questions, too, have been raised implicitly and explicitly in the foregoing chapters:
1. Were the Great Sphinx and the great Pyramids of Giza designed to serve as parts of an immense three-dimensional ‘model’ of the sky of the ‘First Time’?
2. Could other features of the necropolis also be part of this model?
3. If so, then has enough survived for us to compare the model with computer simulations of the skies above Giza in previous epochs and thus arrive at an accurate archaeoastronomical dating for the ‘First Time’, i.e. for the true ‘genesis’ of the extraordinary civilization of Egypt?
4. By looking at simulations of the ancient skies would we not, to use the language of the Egyptian funerary texts, be ‘going down to any sky we wished to go down to’?
5. Is it an accident that so many of these texts have survived for thousands of years, or could their compilers have intended them to survive and carefully designed them in such a way that human nature would ensure their copying and recopying down the ages (a process that has been promiscuously resumed in the last century and a half, since the decipherment of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, with the Coffin Texts, the Pyramid Texts, the Book of the Dead, etc., etc., now translated and reprinted in dozens of modern languages and editions—and even available on CD-ROM)?
6. In other words, is it not possible in our readings of the texts, and in our analysis of the rituals to which they were linked, that we have stumbled upon a message of primordial antiquity that was composed not just for the Pyramid Age, and not just for the Horus-Kings of ancient Egypt, but for all ‘seekers after the truth’—from any culture, in any epoch—who might be ‘equipped’ to put texts and monuments together and to view the skies of former times?
Chapter 16
Message in a Bottle?
‘We have reached this fascinating point in our evolution ... we have reached the time when we know we can talk to each other across the distances between the stars ...’
Dr. John Billingham, NASA Ames Research Center, 1995
Together with the ancient texts and rituals that are linked to them, could the vast monuments of the Giza necropolis have been designed to transmit a message from one culture to another—a message not across space, but across time?
Egyptologists reply to such questions by rolling their eyes and hooting derisively. Indeed they would not be ‘Egyptologists’ (or at any rate they could not long remain within that profession) if they reacted with anything other than scorn and disbelief to suggestions that the necropolis might be more than a cemetery, that the Great Sphinx might significantly predate the epoch of 2500 bc, and that the Pyramids might not be just ‘royal tombs’. By the same token, no self-respecting Egyptologist would be prepared to consider, even for a moment, the outlandish possibility that some sort of mysterious ‘message’ might have been encoded into the monuments.
So whom should we turn to for advice when confronted by what we suspect may be a message from a civilization so far distant from us in time as to be almost unknowable?
Anti-cipher
The only scientists actively working on such problems today are those involved in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence—SETI for short. They endlessly sweep the heavens for messages from distant civilizations and they have therefore naturally had to give some thought to what might happen if they ever did identify such a message. According to Dr. Philip Morisson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
To begin with we would know very little about it. If we received it we would not understand what we’re getting. But we would have an unmistakable signal, full of structure, full of challenge. The best people would try to decode it, and it will be easy to do because those who have constructed it would have made it easy to decode, otherwise there’s no point. This is anti-cryptography: ‘I want to make a message for you, who never got in touch with any symbols of mine, no key no clue, nevertheless you’ll be able to read it ...’ I would have to fill it full of clues and unmistakable clever devices ...[626]
&nbs
p; In his book, Cosmos, Professor Carl Sagan of Cornell University makes much the same point—and does so, curiously enough, with reference to the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic system. He explains that the ‘Egyptian hieroglyphics are, in significant part, a simple substitution cipher. But not every hieroglyph is a letter or syllable. Some are pictographs ...’ When it came to translation, this ‘mix of letters and pictographs caused some grief for interpreters ...’ In the early nineteenth century, however, a breakthrough was made by the French scholar Champollion who deciphered the famous ‘Rosetta Stone’, a slab of black basalt bearing identical inscriptions in Egyptian hieroglyphics and in Greek. Since Champollion could read the Greek, all he needed was some kind of ‘key’ to relate specific hieroglyphs to specific Greek words or letters. This key was provided by the constant repetition in the Greek text of the name of Pharaoh Ptolemy V and an equal number of repetitions in the Egyptian text of a distinctive oblong enclosure—known as a cartouche—containing a repeated group of hieroglyphs. As Sagan comments:
The cartouches were the key ... almost as though the Pharaohs of Egypt had circled their own names to make the going easier for Egyptologists two thousand years in the future ... What a joy it must have been [for Champollion] to open this one-way communication channel with another civilization, to permit a culture that had been mute for millennia to speak of its history, magic, medicine, religion, politics and philosophy.[627]