by Harvey Kraft
Djedefre (approx. 2530 BCE) appeared to have buried two long boats at the foot of his father’s Great Pyramid to facilitate his trip. The boats would be used on the underworld equivalent of the Nile River that ran through the tunnel the Sun God used to cross the world during the night. It ran from the gate of the setting sun (where the soul entered the underworld) to the gate of the rising sun (where it would be launched into the stars).
Another part of the effort to insure that Khufu would not be troubled during his underworld trek may have been the reason for Djedefre to build the Sphinx. The image may have been designed to represent Khufu’s sovereignty over Anubis, the golden-jackal judge of the dead, the god of embalming, and guardian of Heaven’s gate. In the Sphinx, the depiction of Anubis, who was usually imagined in the form of a human body with a jackal head, seems to have been reversed with the lionized head of Khufu placed on the prone body of the jackal god. The Sphinx was laid exactly on the east-west axis of Giza, facing due east at the rising sun, confirming Khufu’s conquest of the underworld and the success of his solar resurrection propelling his soul towards the stars.
Djedefre’s modifications appeared to have assuaged the concerns of the priesthood. As their mission was to insure the soul’s crossing, they were determined to put at a pharaoh’s disposal all possible assistance for his soul to cross the underworld. As a pharaoh was too important to be challenged by the Scale of Destiny at the court of Anubis, Khufu and his entourage would sail through non-stop. Once the boats reached the sunrise gate the Sun God placed them on a beam of sunlight that carried them across space to the Orion stargate through which the pharaoh entered the realm of heavenly rebirth.
Given the potential pitfalls of such a long and arduous journey, the priesthood developed detailed navigational guidelines (Pyramid Texts or Book of the Dead) later inscribed on pyramid tombs, temple walls, and sarcophagi. Inside the burial chambers the Pyramid Texts provided a map of the star paths. “Accompanied” by the sun, the soul would navigate through the branches of the “Cosmic Tree” (paths to the stargate) until it reached its destination and crossed into the eternal realm beyond.
Even with the aid of the guide maps, however, the vast distance across the great divide of space was deemed to be exceedingly precarious. Therefore, as an additional guarantee for a successful crossing, during the funerary “Opening of the Mouth” ceremony, the high priest in his role as shaman-seer (Egy. Sem) would enter a trance state wherein he “previewed“ the journey, evoked incantations for safe passage, and signaled the moment for the procession to commence.
A RACE TO THE TOP
Before Egyptians built any pyramids, the idea of a man-made Cosmic Mountain first appeared in Sumer (4000 BCE). Evolving from the prehistoric Cosmic Mountain of the shamanic Mondial Cosmology, the larger structures of the Era of Divine Architecture represented the Cosmic Mountain in the center of the world and its channel access to Heaven. Sumerian builders constructed multilevel ceremonial platforms with temples on top designed to overlook the city-state. Each of these platform towers (Sum. ziggurat) defined the location of an axis mundi and provided a landing base prepared to receive a patron god. Egypt first constructed (3000 BCE) similarly shaped step-pyramids (Egy. mastaba), but their “Houses of Eternity“ were built in remote areas of the desert. Evolved from the ancient uses of sacred mounds and megalith temples, both types of structures were deployed for reaching the heavens.
Passionately driven by a growing desire to connect with the immortals, Egyptian and Sumerian models expanded in proportion and grandeur over time. Sumer built increasingly larger ziggurats with interleaved terraces and stairways topped with a home fit for a god. Their purpose was to draw the public to worship and provide their priests with sacrificial platforms. Egyptian designs evolved into flat external surfaces sealed to keep people out and off the structure. But Egypt had an edge in engineering, building pyramids of large granite stones so they would last undisturbed and impenetrable for eternity. Sumer primarily used mud bricks and limestone.
But why was it necessary to build structures of such colossal size?
The megalithic stature of Khufu’s Great Pyramid (approx. 2600 BCE) may have been the pinnacle creation of a race to the top between two kings seeking personal immortality—one headed for Heaven through soul-transport, while the other tried climbing to Heaven while he was still alive.
Khufu’s counterpart, the Sumerian King of Uruk, Gilgamesh, was ruler of the largest city in the world at the time. With an estimated population between 50,000–80,000 residents Uruk was an urban magnet for people of many tribal origins speaking a variety of tongues. King Gilgamesh (approx. 2600 BCE), the legendary seeker of immortality25 in Sumerian myth, had aspired to raise his city’s monumental ziggurat, the Anu, “Stairway to Heaven,” to its ultimate height.
Finished with white gypsum plaster, the towering ziggurat’s mirror-like facings would produce a blinding reflection of sunlight. But Khufu’s Great Pyramid also boasted bright reflective facings aiming its signal beams to the stars. The Great Ziggurat of Uruk and Khufu’s Great Pyramid may have been designed to compete for the attention of the gods as the brightest spot on Earth.
Fourteen times, once every century or so (4000–2600 BCE), the kings of Uruk kept adding to the Anu Ziggurat widening its base and pushing it higher and higher. Perhaps due to the structural weakness of its limestone and mud-brick frame, their heavenly tower may have collapsed before Gilgamesh would see its head raised to the top. Could the collapse of this Ziggurat have been the basis for the Epic of Gilgamesh wherein he climbs to the top of the Cosmic Mountain in quest of immortality—only to fail at the end? Could it also be the model for the Mesopotamian-inspired biblical story of the Tower of Babel?
If so, it would appear that Khufu won the race to immortality.
THE SUN OUTSHINES ALL
What was the origin of the Egyptian fascination with the astral plane? Nabta Playa located in the south of Egypt was a pre-historic site (10000–9000 BCE) decorated with megalith stone circles. Its thirty calendaring stone circles were measuring devices used to track celestial alignments, such as the summer solstice. To Egypt’s shaman ancestors this was their celestial observatory. In particular they focused on the brightest objects in the night sky such as the megastar Sirius (Egy. Sopdet) or the three super-giant stars in the belt of Orion. The data collected here was later used by Egyptian clergies to develop the astral knowledge they needed to accurately direct the celestial leg of the soul’s journey toward the divine gates of Heaven.
When the ancient shaman astronomers began their studies the constellation Orion was at its lowest position near the horizon. Aker, the God of the Horizon and one of Egypt’s earliest deities, took the form of twin-lions. The lions represented the two ends of the day, dawn and dusk. They guarded the two peaks of the Cosmic Mountain, Manu, to the west and Bakhu in the east, thus symbolizing the cosmic polarities of beginnings and endings. The two peaks were the location for the cosmic gates. The gates were a polar portal with three missions: (a) the east and west gates the Sun used to enter and exit the world, (b) the gates for engaging with past wisdom and future knowledge, and (c) the gates to and from the Underworld and Heaven. The twin lions were the symbol of the shamans charged with guarding the gates to the celestial knowledge of the unseen realms. With a visionary roar these lion-shamans could open the gates and peer into these remote dimensions.
In those early days of the Old Kingdom, Hathor, the bovine-faced goddess of the Nile Delta, personified the life-nurturing aspect of nature. Like Ninhursag, the Sumerian milk-giving Earth Mother, Hathor also brought forth the green pastures, inspired the domestication of the cow and the establishment of Egyptian farms. Just as the Sumerian deity had been designated the cosmic Mountain Goddess, Hathor was associated with the emergence of the galactic Cosmic Mountain, the portal to Heaven in the Egyptian creation story, thus she served to inspire the religious compulsion to build pyramids.
Memphis was located right on the
bank of the Nile. A high wall designed to keep the floodwaters out surrounded the city. The dam stood as proof of their civil engineering prowess. This was the religious center of the Old Kingdom dynasty during the Age of the Pyramids. They were also the inventors of mummification for preserving the body through its journey to the divine heaven where it would be reincarnated.
Their god, Ptah, the designer, modeler, director, and crafter of Universal Order, created the concept of a Pyramid Universe and willed it into existence with a single word. Simply by naming an idea or a god, Ptah could conjure them into being, which he did when he named the creator Atum, who built the layers of the world just as Ptah had conceived of them. Complimentary with Ptah’s considerate nature and grand imagination, his lion-headed goddess consort, Sekmet, embodied inspiration, which Egyptians admired as the generative spark of the creative mind. The Memphis priesthood was first to recognize Rae, the Sun God, as the one who gave the world the light that Ptah had conjured.
Another clergy, the priest-seers in the city of Iunu (aka Heliopolis), capital of the Nile Delta (aka Goshen), embraced the Creator, Atum, the god charged with making the world. In their edition of Creation, at the Beginning of Time, after he produced all the forces and elements (that is, the other gods), Atum finished his work by merging with the God of the Midday Sun, Rae. These two gods were deemed to be interchangeable or were worshipped as the One God, Atum-Rae (Heaven-Sun).
Atum-Rae first emerged from a blue Cosmic Lotus, the color of birth and rebirth. When he became a boy he cried and his tears formed the creatures on Earth. Then Atum-Rae proceeded to create the Air and Rain and then the Land and Sky.
After the Epic Drought brought the era of pyramid constructions to a close, the Egyptian clergy erased Hathor’s cow-face and morphed her into the Goddess of Beauty, Joy, and Love26 although they kept her headdress of long horns holding the Sun Disc to honor her traditional Earth Mountain role. The reformation of nature’s divine personalities into more adored figures had been inspired by Egypt’s new priestly cult centers. Influenced by political and popularity factors they sought to craft myths empowering their favorite deities to respond to wider audiences.
The scribes of the priesthood of Khmun (aka Hermopolis), located between the Upper (south) and Lower (north) sections of the Nile Delta, developed a pre-creation pantheon named the Ogdoad, featuring four pairings of frog-gods and snake-goddesses. Together the four frog-snake couples represented the elements of creation endowed within the imperceptible, mysterious, boundless, and chaotic Primordial Cosmos—the original dark ocean of space. Their patron god was the ibis-headed Thoth, the god of scribes, initiator of knowledge, magic, healing, and writing. He provided the world with the wisdom and power of stability, thereby preventing its collapse back into the primal state of endless chaos. Originally conceived of as the God of the Moon, Thoth had laid the Cosmic Egg that hatched the Sun. Because of his role as the igniter of the celestial light bodies illuminating the day and night, he was also hailed as the God of Justice, the illuminator of Truth. Using his knowledge and wisdom about darkness and light to arbitrate disputes, Thoth gave his clergy the mantel of judicial power in a decentralized Egypt following the Pyramid Age.
But it was the priesthood of Thebes (aka Waset) who would dominate religion in the Middle Kingdom (2100–1800 BCE) and New Kingdom (1500–1000 BCE). Their temples at Luxor and Karnak in the southern part of Upper Egypt heralded their patron champion, Amun, the transcendent Supreme God of All Gods, described as the self-created universal force hidden behind all phenomena.
His all-encompassing scope reached from the heavens above the sky to the low realm of the underworld. He was the One who made the First Sound that broke the stillness of the Nu, propelling the Beginning of Time and causing the world to form. Amun embodied the unseen essence, nature, and scope of the Divine Mystery in that he was concealed even from the other gods.
As the era of the Epic Drought finally came to an end, and the Nile rains returned to normal, the country experienced an economic recovery. Thebes claimed credit for realigning the land with divine order. But by this time a weakened Egypt had broken apart. Foreigners27 entered its lands in the north, as the pharaonic system collapsed in favor of territorial governors. The Thebes clergy held their own in the south, but desperately sought a way back to national glory by again unifying Egypt under a pharaoh.
To bring Egypt back together again they merged the invisible god Amun with the visible Sun-God Rae. Amun-Rae declared Egypt to be the manifestation of divine purpose and claimed his dominance over the pantheons of other patron-god centers in Egypt. When the pharaohs re-established their sovereign primacy and unified Egypt’s many gods under one roof, it was Thebes that ruled the day.
After the Age of the Epic Drought had finally passed the clergy gained strength by wisely expanding the accessibility of immortality in the afterlife to wealthy governors, powerful individuals, and, in time, even made it available to ordinary people. Because they were willing to make religion more inclusive, influential families could purchase their way to afterlife glory.
They reorganized the gods into families to reflect the mainstreaming of Egyptian religion. Some gods were killed off and replaced with new gods, a few were promoted to higher status, others were reconceived, and several deities were syncretized into one. During this period, most Egyptian cults agreed to merge the Sun God with their favored patron deities, indicating the importance of the sun’s role in the present and the afterlife. His power to light the way to the stars and to bring forth days was the essential element for existence, without which the world would fall into never-ending darkness, and all souls would fall into the abyss of doom.
The Amun-Rae reformers replaced Anubis with Osiris, signaling their willingness to grant access to the immortal realm to a much wider audience. As the new judge of the underworld, Osiris would be more compliant and forgiving, willing to let souls of good law-abiding citizens go through on their voyage towards immortality. Thereafter, people would be allowed to aspire to eternal life if only they passed the test of moral fortitude and made positive contributions to social harmony. These Egyptians enjoyed life but believed in an easier one awaiting them in a heavenly afterlife, if they could get there, that is. Henceforth, anyone contributing to the harmony of Egyptian life or living a “clean” life free from the stains of pernicious behaviors, could hope for a chance at immortality.
The clergy of Thebes promoted the god Amun-Rae as a nearly monotheistic deity, with all other divinities considered mere aspects of him. But his dominance was challenged during the reign of Akhenaten (1352–1336 BCE); a pharaoh who decided that it was time for Egyptians to truly embrace only One Immortal God. Akhenaten (aka Amenhotep IV) established a pseudo-monotheistic religion banishing all gods but one—the Sun Disc God, Aten. He abandoned the Amun-Rae center at Thebes where he had resided with his queen, and built a new capital and religious center at Amarna (pop. 20,000).
Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti were designated as the earthly manifestations of the god Aten and his cohort goddess. Ordering massive idols to be erected in their image meant that they would be worshipped as living gods. With the death of Akhenaten, the Amun-Rae clergy of Thebes, much offended but never more powerful, reclaimed their dominant role in Egypt’s religious establishment. Immediately they ordered the obliteration of Amarna and its “God” from historical records. Although during Akhenaten’s reign Egypt stretched as far north as Syria, his religious experiment had drained the nation’s treasury leaving it too weak to hold on to its occupied states. After this episode, Egypt became more insulated. As the golden days of its religious creativity dimmed, its clergy became more bureaucratic. Increasingly, they focused on providing ritual functions and social services.
IN SEARCH OF IMMORTALITY
Egypt’s priests had no qualms about the deification of pharaohs as living gods with an immortal destiny, but the Sumer/Akkad clergy resisted the idea of royal immortality. Declaring themselves as the Sons of Gods,
they held fast to the notion that the gods were not and never could be human beings. They believed that to acquiesce to the demands of kings to be given the full stature of immortal gods would bring the wrath of heaven upon them all. Reflecting their position on this matter, they wrote the Epic of Gilgamesh, about a tyrannical, self-centered ruler based on the legendary King of Uruk28 and his quest for immortality. Although he was born a demigod—one-third human, two-thirds divine—he was haunted by the looming prospect of his ultimate demise. Undertaking an adventurous quest to obtain immortality he traveled up and through the Cosmic Mountain into the celestial lands, but at the end he failed to achieve his purpose. Unable to undo the inevitability of death he returned to his city a wiser and kinder man reconciled with his mortal destiny.
In the beginning of the story Gilgamesh befriended a hairy wild man, Enkidu, whom the Earth Mother (Ninhursag) had placed in the earthly Paradise (Dilmun), an area to the east of Uruk. Enkidu may have represented primitive peoples living in the beautiful wilderness east of Sumer but west of the Indus civilization at Harrapa (4000–2000 BCE). The Harrapans were a serene, non-threatening, culturally-advanced people. They lived near the Saraswati River, a long lost river29 that once ran parallel with the Indus from the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea.
The Indus-Saraswati civilization was Sumer’s source for lapis lazuli stones. Its planned cities featured wide streets, public buildings and baths, reservoirs and wells, three-story brick homes with bathrooms, sewer and drainage systems, and beautiful art and jewelry. Clearly, the lush river valley (prior to the Epic Drought), gems, and demeanor of the graceful Harappan culture made for the ideal model of Dilmun, mythologized as the Paradise of the Gods. The Sumerian legends populated the beautiful forests of Dilmun with two kinds of people, innocent-wild primitives and advanced-civil beings, indicative of two co-existing human cultures representing the past and the future.
