The Message of the Sphinx AKA Keeper of Genesis

by Graham Hancock

  Looking east also means that we are looking at the Duat. And as our computer reconstructs the skies our eyes are drawn to that region of the Duat known as Rostau which manifests the celestial counterparts of the three great Pyramids—the three stars of Orion’s belt glimmering in the pre-dawn.

  Having registered this image we set our direction towards the west, towards the Pyramids. The bodies of the distant monuments are still cloaked in darkness but the first hint of the rising sun lights up their capstones with an astral glimmer ...

  So we can see that there is a sense in which the Giza necropolis is itself a kind of ‘horizon’—i.e. that its three pyramids form a reflection in the west of the three ‘stars of Rostau’ that observers in 2500 bc would have seen on the eastern horizon of Heliopolis in the pre-dawn at the summer solstice. Perhaps this is precisely what was meant by an otherwise cryptic inscription on the granite stela between the paws of the Sphinx which speaks of Giza not only as the ‘Splendid Place of the “First Time” ’ as we have seen, but also as the ‘Horizon of Heliopolis in the West’.[346]

  Astronomer-priests

  When the Pyramid Texts were compiled in the epoch of 2500 bc, the religious centre of the Pharaonic state was at Heliopolis—the ‘City of the Sun’, called On or Innu by the ancients, which now lies completely buried under the Al Matareya suburb of modern Cairo.[347] Heliopolis was the earliest cult centre of the sun-god Re in his form as Atum, the ‘Father of the Gods’. The Heliopolitan priests were high initiates in the mysteries of the heavens and their dominant occupation was the observation and recording of the various motions of the sun and the moon, the planets and the stars.[348]

  Much leads us to conclude that they benefited from a vast heritage of experience based on such observations, accumulated over enormously long periods of time. At any rate, the ancient Greek and Roman scholars—who were at least two millennia closer to the ancient Egyptians than we are today—were constantly in awe at the high knowledge and wisdom of the Heliopolitan and Memphite priests and especially of their astronomical science.

  For example, as early as the fifth century bc, Herodotus (the so-called ‘Father of History’) displayed great reverence for the priests of Egypt and attributed to them the discovery of the solar year and the invention of the twelve signs of the zodiac—which he says the Greeks later borrowed. ‘In my opinion,’ he wrote, ‘their method of calculation is better than that of the Greeks.’[349]

  In the fourth century bc the learned Aristotle—who was tutor to Alexander the Great—similarly recognized that the Egyptians were advanced astronomers ‘whose observations have been kept for very many years past, and from whom much of our evidence about particular stars is derived’.[350]

  Plato, too, relates how the Egyptian priests observed the stars ‘for 10,000 years or, so to speak, for an infinite time’.[351] Likewise Diodorus of Sicily, who visited Egypt in 60 bc, insisted that ‘the disposition of the stars as well as their movements have always been the subject of careful observations among the Egyptians’ and that ‘they have preserved to this day records concerning each of these stars over an incredible number of years ...[352]

  Perhaps most significantly of all, the Lycian Neoplatonist, Proclus, who studied at Alexandria in the fifth century ad, confirmed that it was not the Greeks but the Egyptians who discovered the phenomenon of Precession: ‘Let those, who believe in observations, cause the stars to move around the poles of the zodiac by one degree in one hundred years [meaning the Precession rate] towards the east, as Ptolemy and Hipparchus did before him know ... that the Egyptians had already taught Plato about the movement of the fixed stars ...’[353]

  Modern historians and Egyptologists, who are unanimous in the view that the Egyptians were poor astronomers,[354] choose to discount such statements as frivolous outcries by misinformed Greeks and Romans. These same scholars all do accept, however, that the priestly centre at Heliopolis was already remotely ancient at the dawn of the Pyramid Age and that it had been sacred since time immemorial to the supreme deity named Atum, the ‘Self-Created’.[355]

  So who or what exactly was Atum?

  Living image of Atum

  Addressing the first annual meeting of the prestigious Egypt Exploration Fund on 3 July 1883, the eminent Swiss Egyptologist Edouard Naville had this to say about Atum: ‘there can be no doubt that the lion or the sphinx is a form of Atum ...’[356]

  Naville went on to cite what he considered as sufficient evidence for such a conclusion:

  I will cite only one proof, this is the deity Nefer-Atum. This deity can be represented with the head of a lion ... normally he has a human form, and wears on his head a lotus from which emerge two straight plumes. Sometimes the two emblems [lion and human] are united and between the head of the lion and the plume there is the bird [hawk] of Horus.[357]

  Though initially a confusing element, we shall see that the hawk symbolism of Horus crops up frequently in connection with this mystery and gradually begins to take its place in the overall pattern that will emerge. Meanwhile, much else confirms that Atum, the primordial creator god, was regarded by the ancient Egyptians as being primarily leonine or sphinx-like in form.

  In the Pyramid Texts, for example, we frequently encounter the designation Rwty, normally translated as the ‘double-lion’[358] because the hieroglyphic sign shows two lions either side by side or one above the other.[359] It is generally accepted, however, that a finer meaning for the term is ‘the creature who has the form of a lion’ or ‘he who resembles the lion’, and that the significance of the double-lion hieroglyph is that it emphasizes the dual and cosmic nature of Rwty.[360] The Egyptologist Le Page Renouf wrote that Rwty represents ‘a single god with a lion’s face or form’.[361] And for Selim Hassan ‘Rwty was a god in the form of a lion’. In Hassan’s view the choice of the double-lion hieroglyph was very probably linked in some way to the fact that: ‘sphinxes are always found in pairs when guarding temple door-ways, and the function of Rwty is also that of a guardian.’[362]

  Moreover, in line 2032 of the Pyramid Texts, as Hassan points out: ‘it is said of the King: “He is taken to Rwty and presented to Atum” ... [and] in the so-called Book of the Dead ... it says (Ch. 3, line 1): “O Atum, who appears as master of the lake, who shines as Rwty” ...’[363]

  Indeed, there are many such places in the texts where Rwty and Atum are linked. One typical passage states: ‘O Atum, spiritualize me in the presence of Rwty ...’[364] And elsewhere we read: ‘Lift up this king’s double to the god, lead him to Rwty, cause him to mount up to Atum ... The King’s rank is high in the Mansion of Rwty.’[365]

  Such syncretism with Rwty strongly supports a ‘lion-like’ or ‘sphinx-like’ appearance for Atum. We should therefore not be surprised to discover that in ancient Egyptian religious art Atum is often depicted as a sphinx wearing the characteristic headgear of this god—a tall crown with a plume and lotus.[366] From such depictions many leading Egyptologists have concluded that the Great Sphinx at Giza, though allegedly bearing the face of Khafre, may also have been regarded as an image of Atum.[367] Indeed, as we saw in Part I, one of the most enduring of the many titles by which the Sphinx was known to the ancient Egyptians was Sheshep-ankh Atum (literally ‘living image of Atum’)[368]—so we need be in little doubt about this identification.

  Atum, Re and Horakhti

  Despite all of Atum’s well-known Lion-Sphinx characteristics, modern Egyptologists have a tendency to ignore his intense leonine symbolism when discussing his cosmic attributes. More often than not they confine themselves to dishing out certain vague generalities to the effect that Atum was the ‘sun-god and creator of the universe’, and that his name: ‘... carries the idea of “totality” in the sense of an ultimate and unalterable state of perfection. Atum is frequently called “The Lord of Heliopolis”, the major centre of sun worship. The presence of another solar deity on this site, Re, leads to a coalescence of the two gods into Re-Atum ...’[369]

  Egyptologist Rosa
lie David informs us that at the opening of the Pyramid Age ‘the god Re [or Ra] had taken over the cult of an earlier god Atum ... [thus] Re-Atum was now worshipped as the creator of the world according to the Heliopolitan theology, and his priests sought to distinguish his various characteristics’.[370]

  One of these important characteristics, Davies adds, was Re’s manifestation as ‘Re-Horakhti’.[371] Since the literal meaning of Horakhti is “Horus-of-the-Horizon”,[372] it would seem that what we are to envisage in this latest piece of ancient Egyptian syncretism is a coalescence of the sun’s disc with such a deity. Furthermore, as astronomers and astrologers are well aware, the disc of the sun does, in fact, ‘coalesce’ with (or ‘enter the house’ of) certain star groups—the twelve constellations of the zodiac—at regular intervals throughout the year. So it is reasonable to wonder whether ‘Horus-of-the-Horizon’ i.e. Horakhti, could in fact be one of these zodiacal constellations.

  The Egyptologist Hermann Kees also gave consideration to the subjects of Heliopolis and Horakhti. In the light of what is about to follow, his remarks are extremely relevant: ‘The particular worship peculiar to Heliopolis was that of the stars. From the worship of the stars evolved the worship of Re in the form of ‘Horus-of-the-Horizon ...’[373]

  We suggest that this conclusion is in the main correct, though not quite in the manner Kees saw it. We believe that it was not merely from a general ‘worship of the stars’ but rather from an ancient stellar image—that of a specific zodiacal constellation—that the composite deity Re-Horakhti was derived.

  Horakhti is represented in ancient Egyptian reliefs as a man with a hawk’s head, on top of which rests the solar disc.[374] In this way both the god Horus (symbolized by the hawk) and the sun in the ‘horizon’ are identified with the Pharaoh-King—regarded as the living embodiment of Horus.[375] The Orientalist Lewis Spence noted additionally that the lion ‘was identified to the solar deities, with the sun-god Horus [and] Re’.[376] Frequently, too, we find composite lion-hawk representations of the King in ancient depictions. For example, there is a relief from the sun-temple of Pharaoh Sahure at Abusir (Fifth Dynasty, circa 2350 bc) which shows the King as a winged lion and also as a lion with a hawk’s head.[377]

  41. The path of the sun (the ecliptic) passing through the twelve zodiacal constellations as they are depicted in the famous Denderah Zodiac from Upper Egypt. The sun’s disc ‘coalesces’ with (and is said to be ‘housed by’) each of these constellations, one after the other, month by month, during the course of the solar year.

  42. Horakhti, ‘Horus-of-the-Horizon’, was frequently depicted in ancient Egyptian reliefs as a man with a hawk’s head on top of which rests the solar disc.

  In summary, therefore, we seem to be looking at the various symbolic expressions of a lengthy process: in prehistoric times a primordial god, Atum, whose form was the lion or the Sphinx, was worshipped by the Heliopolitan priests; then, in the Pyramid Age, Atum was ‘coalesced’ with Re, whose form was the sun’s disc, and finally with Hawk-headed Horakhti—Horus-of-the-Horizon—symbolizing the Horus-King.

  The result was the syncretized deity Atum-Re-Horakhti whose combined symbolism originated from the leonine or Sphinx-like image of Atum. Somehow this composite or ‘coalesced’ image was then made manifest in the ‘Horizon’ in the early Pyramid Age.

  In that epoch, as the reader will recall, the focus of the astronomer-priests was on the summer solstice, when the Duat was active in the eastern sky. In what zodiacal sign, seen on the eastern horizon, did this all important ‘coalescence’ take place?

  Horus, Dweller-in-the-Horizon

  When Edouard Naville was excavating certain New Kingdom remains in Egypt’s delta region north of Cairo in 1882-3, he was struck by the fact that a large number of the monuments he uncovered were dedicated to a composite deity he called ‘Atum-Harmarchis’. Associated with these monuments there would always be a naos, or sanctuary, containing ‘a sphinx with a human head’ which Naville states was ‘a well-known form of the god Harmarchis’.[378]

  We are by now familiar with Atum. But who is this ‘Harmarchis’? Naville noted that in addition to his Sphinx form he was often represented as ‘a god with a hawk’s head, or as a hawk with a solar disc’—symbols with which we are also familiar—and that ‘Atum-Harmarchis was the god of Heliopolis, the most ancient city of Egypt’.[379]

  ‘Harmarchis’ is a Graecianized rendering of the ancient Egyptian name, Hor-em-Akhet, which means ‘Horus-in-the-Horizon’ or ‘Horus-Dweller-in-the-Horizon’.[380] In other words, as should be obvious by now, it is a concept that is extremely close to Horakhti, or ‘Horus-of-the Horizon’—as close, at any rate, as the nuance between ‘of on the one hand and ‘in’ on the other ...

  Both deities are called horizon-dwellers. Both are sometimes depicted as a man with the head of a hawk. Both have a solar disc on their heads.[381] Indeed there is no real difference between them at all except, as we shall see, in the nature of the ‘Horizon’ in which they are said to dwell.

  There is one other thing about Hor-em-Akhet and Horakhti, however, that we need to take account of first. The names of these curiously composite and syncretized lion-hawk-solar deities were both frequently, directly and interchangeably applied to the Great Sphinx at Giza.

  The ‘Two Horizons’ of Heliopolis

  The earliest surviving references to Hor-em-Akhet date from the New Kingdom, circa 1440 bc, and are found on a limestone stela of Pharaoh Amenhotep II, the builder of a small temple that can still be seen on the north side of the Sphinx enclosure. On the stela Amenhotep makes reference to the ‘Pyramids of Hor-em-Akhet’ which Selim Hassan takes as a sign, ‘that he considered the Sphinx to be older than the Pyramids’.[382] Hassan also notes that the stela specifically names the Great Sphinx both as Hor-em-Akhet and as Horakhti.[383]

  43. Artist’s impression of ‘reconstructed’ Sphinx showing south profile.

  In a similar vein, in line 9 of its inscription, the granite stela of Thutmosis IV—which stands between the paws of the Sphinx—refers to the Sphinx itself as ‘Hor-em-Akhet-Khepri-Re-Atum’ and subsequently, in line 13, as ‘Atum-Hor-em-Akhet’,[384] but also refers to Thutmosis as the ‘Protector of Horakhti’.[385] And it is on this same stela, as the reader will recall, that Giza is described as ‘the “Horizon” [Akhet] of Heliopolis in the West’—i.e. as a ‘reflection’ in the West of what viewers in Heliopolis would have seen on their eastern horizon in the pre-dawn of the summer solstice.

  It may also be of relevance that the son of Thutmosis IV, Amenhotep III, is remembered in ancient Egyptian annals as having built a temple in honour of Re-Horakhti, and that Amenhotep’s son, the notorious and enigmatic Pharaoh Akhenaten, raised a great obelisk at Luxor in honour of Re-Hor-em-Akhet.[386] Akhenaten was also to name his famous solar-city Akhet Aten, the ‘Horizon of the sun disc’.[387] And as Selim Hassan points out the Aten or sun disc was frequently identified by the ancient Egyptians with the image of the Sphinx.[388] Last but not least, when Akhenaten ascended the throne of Egypt he chose as his most prominent epithet the impressive title of ‘High priest of Re-Horakhti’.[389]

  It is therefore legitimate to inquire into what exactly is meant by the term ‘Horizon’ (Akhet) in the names Hor-em-Akhet and Horakhti. Are these twin beings known as Horus-in-the-Horizon and Horus-of-the-Horizon to be associated with the celestial horizon—where sky meets land? Or are they to be associated with the ‘Horizon’ of Heliopolis in the West, i.e. the Giza necropolis?

  Or is it not more likely that the texts are prompting us to consider two ‘horizons’ at the same time?

  Interestingly, Egyptologists often translate the names Hor-em-Akhet and Horakhti as meaning ‘Horus-of-the-Two-Horizons’. Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, for example, identifies Re-Horakhti to Re-Harmarchis [Hor-em-Akhet] and translates both names as ‘Ra + Horus-of-the-Two-Horizons’.[390] Likewise the orientalist Lewis Spence writes: ‘Horus-of-the-Two-Horizons, the Harmarchis [Hor-em-Akhet] of the Greeks, was
one of chief forms of the sun-god ... thus we find Harmarchis worshipped principally at Heliopolis ... his best-known monument is the famous Sphinx, near the Pyramids of Giza.’[391]

  So if Hor-em-Akhet is the Great Sphinx in the western ‘Horizon of Giza’, then should we not look for Horakhti, his ‘twin’, in the eastern horizon of the sky?

  These are questions that we shall continue to pursue. Meanwhile, as Egyptologist Ahmed Fakhry confirms, the various stelae that we have reviewed, and numerous other inscriptions, leave no doubt that the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt knew and worshipped the Sphinx (and obviously, too, his celestial counterpart) under the names Hor-em-Akhet and Horakhti.[392] Fakhry also points out something else of relevance: both names are ‘appropriate’ since ‘the ancient necropolis [of Giza] was called Akhet Khufu, the “Horizon” of Khufu’.[393]

  Strange silence

  Because the earliest surviving texts containing the term Hor-em-Akhet date from the New Kingdom, it is the present consensus of scholars that the ancient Egyptians of the Old Kingdom never spoke of the Sphinx. According to Jaromir Malek of Oxford University, for example: ‘Old Kingdom sources are strangely and surprisingly silent about the Great Sphinx of Giza. It was only some 1000 years after the Sphinx had been made ... that it was mentioned ...’[394]