Brief excursion to Paris
According to the French Egyptologist Bernard Mathieu: … Isis was named Pelagia (‘of the sea’), or Euploia (‘of safe navigation’) and Pharia (‘of Pharos’), and was said to have invented the sail and had a temple on the island of Pharos. She was so famous in the whole Mediterranean world that we find her even in 17th century manuscripts, and comfortably installed on the prow of the boat on the coat-of-arms of Paris which Napoleon commissioned in 1811 … 32
The reader will recall from Chapter One the bizarre religious rituals and symbolism of the French Revolution that frequently seemed to link the city of Paris explicitly to the goddess Isis. The comments made by Dr. Mathieu suggest that such a link may have some basis in historical truth. It is also notable that the 17th century writer, Jean Tristan, claimed that the name Paris was actually derived from Isis-Pharia or, more precisely, was from Pharia-Isis abbreviated to Paria-Isis and, finally, to Paris.
Tristan based his hypothesis on ancient coins dating from the time of the Roman Emperor Julian which depict his empress, Helen, as Isis-Pharia or Faria.33 Julian, who reigned some decades after Constantine, brought a very temporary halt to the onward march of Christianity and was commonly known as ‘Julian the Apostate’ for having re-adopted the ancient pagan cults and declared himself a ‘follower of Helios’, the sun-god. Helios in turn was a divinity whom the Romans closely associated with Alexander the Great.
Julian had governed Gaul – ancient France – for five years and had resided in Lutecia, ancient Paris, for three years between AD 358 and AD 360. Julian and his wife Helen were also devotees of the Alexandrian god Serapis and the goddess Isis-Pharia, and may have imposed, or at the very least encouraged, her cult on the inhabitants of Lutecia. At any rate, Jean Tristan was to write: The Parisians received their name of Paria-Isis, because of the cult of this goddess which had been introduced in Illyria and in Gaul, in the region next to the River Seine and in Lutecia, called ‘Lutecia of the Parisians’ or Farisians because of this.34
As further support to this hypothesis, the French classicist Jurgis Baltrušaitis points out that in a fragment of a manuscript from Saint-Hilaire concerning the Council of Rimini, the city of Paris is actually referred by him as Farisea Civitas, i.e. the ‘city of the Farisians’ or, as Jean Tristan has suggested, the city of those who worship Isis-Pharia or Faria-Isis (Pharia-Isis) .35 We shall return to this in a later chapter.
The Canopus Way
The Roman writer Arrian tells us that when Alexander came to the site on the coast where his future city, Alexandria, would rise: … he was taken by a strong desire to carry out his project, and setting out himself the plan of the city, he fixed the place where the Agora should go, the number of sanctuaries and to which deities [they were dedicated]: the Greek gods but also to Isis, goddess of Egypt …36
The Agora was the equivalent of a town hall or square where public meetings were held in Greek cities. In the case of Alexandria the Agora was located at the intersection of two main arteries, the north-south artery known as the Soma and the east-west artery known as the Canopus Way. This arrangement formed a huge cross and it was at the intersection of its two arms, according to most accounts, that was eventually raised a small Doric temple to serve as the mausoleum for the golden sarcophagus of Alexander the Great.
At both ends of the Canopus Way were gates. The west gate was called the ‘Gate of the Moon’ (Selene) while the east gate was the ‘Gate of the Sun’ (Helios).
It has always been assumed that the physical layout of Alexandria was designed in accordance with the principles of Greek city planning based on a rigid grid system with sets of parallel roads crisscrossing each other at right angles. In fact such grid plans were also known in Egypt long before the Greeks. The French Egyptologist, André Bernand, rightly observes that the Giza necropolis in the area of the Great Pyramids is effectively a mortuary city gridded with roads running east-west and north-south. A similar scheme can be seen at Saqqara and, much further south, at Akhetaten (modern el-Amarna), the city of Pharaoh Akhenaten.37
This notwithstanding, what is often not considered as a direct influence on the design of Alexandria is the state of mind of the 24-year-old Alexander the Great at the time of the foundation of the city. He had just conquered the hitherto invincible solar Persian King of Kings, Darius III, and was now the undisputed ruler of the known world. He had been hailed as hero and liberator by the Egyptians, and recognised as the legitimate successor of Pharaoh Nectanebo II. He had been proclaimed the ‘son of Amun’ and ‘son of Isis’ plus all the other titles attributed to a legitimate pharaoh of Egypt. And all this had happened almost certainly immediately before the foundation of the city of Alexandria.
Another factor to note is Alexander's deep psychological identification with the temple complex of Karnak-Luxor at Thebes as an expression of his identification with the god Amun. The French scholar François de Polignac has pointed out that Alexander demonstrated an unusual knowledge and sensitivity to Egyptian religious customs by paying so much attention to the restoration of this temple and, more particularly, by grafting his own name onto the inner sanctuary near the temple's sacred ‘birth room’ or mammisi. These acts suggest that Alexander must have been closely advised by a native Egyptian high-priest, probably much in the same way that the high-priest Oud-ja-Hor-esne of Sais had acted as advisor to the Persian king, Cambyses, and the high-priest Manetho of Heliopolis was to become senior advisor to Ptolemy I Soter, the successor of Alexander the Great in Egypt.38
We have seen how Alexander had developed a connection with the star Sirius, the star of Isis and divine birth, when he changed the Greek calendar at Tyre. We have seen, too, how the rising of this star was the ‘calibrator’ of the Nile's flood and we will show in a later chapter how its position on the eastern horizon often served to align the axis of ancient Egyptian temples dedicated to the birth of Horus, the ‘son’ of Isis-Hathor. Finally, we have also noted that the heliacal rising of Sirius during Alexander's lifetime fell on the ‘official’ date of his birth, i.e. 20 – 21 July (Julian).
It would be odd, indeed improbable, if such a rich network of symbols, ideologies and mythical associations had not influenced Alexander when he was about to supervise the design of a city on the Mediterranean shore of Egypt opposite the enchanted island of Pharos …
Brief excursion on Napoleon and Sirius
Before Napoleon invaded Egypt and occupied Cairo at the end of the 18th century he commissioned the famous mathematician Gaspard Monge to round up a group of the finest scholars – called the lumières or ‘lights’ in those days – to accompany the expedition. Comprising a total of 167 men, the group of savants included the mathematician Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier, the chemist Claude Louis Berthollet, the naturalist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, the geologist Déodat de Dolomieu, the geographer Edme François Jomard and the engineer Nicolas-Jacques Conté. Such men were to form the basis of Napoleon's Institut d’Égypte, a sort of academy of science – the first of its kind ever to study ancient Egyptian monuments – founded on 22 August 1798, very soon after the invasion. Dominique Vivant-Denon, a painter and a favourite of the future empress, Joséphine, became the Institute’s first director while Monge was made its first president.
The reader may recall from Chapter One that Monge was a Freemason and a prominent member of the Nine Sisters lodge in Paris. He was instrumental in creating the so-called Republican calendar which, we also saw in Chapter One, was almost certainly modelled on the ancient Egyptian civic calendar ‘calibrated’ by the heliacal rising of Sirius. On 22 September 1798 the first volume of the Institut d’Égypte’s journal was published. Its title was the Décade égyptienne, a name selected by Monge to evoke this new Republican calendar.
It was on 5 March 1798 that Napoleon left Paris for Toulon to meet up with the fleet that he had readied to sail for Egypt. And it was on 21 July 1798 that Napoleon engaged the Egyptian Mameluk army at the Battle of the Pyramids. Whether
by design or by chance is yet to be decided but it is a fact that both these dates have a direct association with Isis, her ‘boat’ and her ‘star’. In ancient Rome 5 March had marked the well-known Feast of Navigium Isidis or Isis-Pharia, when an effigy of the goddess seated in her boat was carried in procession around the city. And 21 July (Julian) was the date of the heliacal rising of Sirius. Coincidence? Perhaps. But we shall return to such issues in later chapters.
Mapping ancient Alexandria
After Napoleon, the fine example set by the Institut d’Égypte later prompted the new ruler of Egypt, Muhammad Ali Pasha, to fund the education and training of Egyptian scholars in France. His most prominent scholar was the astronomer Mahmoud El Falaki, better known as Mahmoud Bey, who was to found the first modern astronomical observatory in Egypt. Mahmoud Bey was also trained as an engineer and geographer, a combination that was to serve him well in his ‘Alexandria mapping project’ that was to come later under Khedive Isma'il in 1865. Perhaps it should be also noted that Mahmoud Bey's numerous other contributions in science, such as the charting of geomagnetic and meteorological phenomena around the globe, earned him the respect and official praise of the Belgian as well as the French Académie des Sciences.
During his Alexandria mapping project, Mahmoud Bey carried out excavations and through them was able to determine that there had been eleven main streets running parallel along the width of the ancient city, and seven main streets also running parallel but at right angles to the other eleven. The two principal arteries were confirmed as the Canopus Way running the length of the city and the Soma running the width of the city, thus, as we've observed, forming a huge ‘cross’ by their intersection.
Some European archaeologists were quick to criticise Mahmoud Bey's ‘reborn’ plan of ancient Alexandria, but according to Dr. Jean-Yves Empereur, director of the Centre of Alexandrian Studies in Egypt: … In spite of the criticisms levelled at it in the later 19th century, this plan is still used by archaeologists today … Mahmoud El Falaki decided to publish his plan in Copenhagen in 1872, six years after he had completed it. It is an outstanding work, reflecting the considerable resources employed in its production, rendered even more effective by the support of the Khedive and the solid training of its maker. Almost a century and a half after its publication it is still used as a reference work by archaeologists working in Alexandria.39
The Gate of the Sun and the Gate of the Moon
After digging several trial pits and trenches, Mahmoud Bey was able to establish that the Canopus Way was approximately 2300 meters long and that its axis was oriented to a point on the horizon about 24° north-of-east. 40 Two factors indicate that this alignment was not accidental but was interwoven in the astronomical ideologies prevailing at the time. The first, of course, is the conspicuous angle of 24° north-of-east which immediately brings to attention a possible solar alignment close to the summer solstice. The other factor, perhaps even more obvious, is that the gate on the eastern side of the Canopus Way was called the Gate of Helios, i.e. the ‘Gate of the Sun’, again strongly suggestive of a solar alignment. The sun's rising points on the eastern horizon as observed from Alexandria fluctuate between 28° south-of-east (winter solstice) and 28° north-of-east (summer solstice), with the mid-point, due east, falling on the spring and autumn equinoxes.
In his Life of Alexander the famous first century author Plutarch tells us: Alexander was born the 6th of Hecatombaeon, which month the Macedonians call Lous, the same day that the Temple of Diana at Ephesus was burnt …41
Hecatombaeon, or Hekatombaion, the first month in the ancient Greek year, began on the first new moon immediately following the summer solstice. From this, many chronologists have calculated that Alexander must have been born on 20 July (in the Julian calendar) or very near to that date. Since this was also the time of year when the Sun rose in the zodiac sign of Leo, it may explain the powerful leonine symbolism that ancient writers associated with Alexander's birth and character.42
The persistent mythological connections between Alexander and Diana, which we explored earlier, are also of interest. Diana, the Artemis of the Greeks, was often identified with the Egyptian goddess Isis, the mother of Horus, the mythical prototype of the solar pharaoh-kings of Egypt with whom Alexander was keen to identify. These ‘Horus-kings’ were traditionally believed to be born under the protection of the star Sirius, the heliacal rising of which was the celestial sign that divinised and legitimised the reign of each and every future king of Egypt. It is a verifiable astronomical fact, and in our view most unlikely to be a coincidence, that the helical rising of Sirius in Alexander's epoch occurred on 20 July as seen from the latitude of Egypt's ancient capital Memphis. Tradition has it that it was Alexander himself who fixed the central axis of the future city of Alexandria, later to be known as the Canopus Way. It is thus also unlikely to be coincidental that this axis turns out to have been aligned approximately 24° north-of-east, targeting the point of sunrise on the day of the heliacal rising of Sirius through the appropriately named ‘Gate of the Sun’.
Alexander, admittedly promiscuous in his choice of divine ancestors, is known to have claimed descent from Dionysos and Heracles – both of whom were associated with the Egyptian god Osiris by Herodotus, one of Alexander's favourite authors. Bearing this in mind, let us note that if we extend the axis of the Canopus Way further in the direction of the horizon we find it passing the ancient city of Herakleion (later submerged by an earthquake and recently relocated by marine archaeologists in Abu Qir Bay). At least since the time of Herodotus it was known that a temple dedicated to Heracles-Osiris had stood at Herakleion.
The Gate of the Moon at the other (western) extremity of the Canopus Way may also have had astronomical connotations linked to the myth of Isis and Osiris. We've seen that Isis, and the many Ptolemaic queens who emulated her, were commonly depicted with the full-moon disc and/or lunar crescent above their heads – a motif that continued to be used for the goddess-queens of Alexandria in Graeco-Roman times. Cleopatra is well known to have identified herself with ‘Isis and the Moon’, and when she bore twins – a boy and girl – by Mark Antony, she called them Selene (Moon) and Alexander-Helios (Sun), clearly an allusion to Isis and Osiris/ Dionysos as well as to the city of Alexandria itself with its Moon and Sun gates. In order for a full moon to occur, it must be in almost direct opposition to the Sun. This seems to explain why the west end of the Canopus Way was named ‘Gate of the Moon’ and the eastern extremity named ‘Gate of the Sun’.
With all such possible symbolic alignments it would seem likely, if not certain, that the city of Alexandria was sacred to Isis or, more specifically, to Isis-Pharia who dovetailed perfectly with the Alexander-Dionysos-Helios myth. Indeed, so important was Isis to Alexandria that she became effectively its co-tutelary deity being held in equal reverence to its very own specially-invented supreme god Serapis. The reader will recall from Chapter Five that it was within the compound of the great Temple of Serapis in Alexandria – the Sarapeum – that a great number of Gnostics and so-called pagans were massacred by Christian mobs in the late fourth century AD.
The making of a universal god
When Alexander the Great died on campaign in Babylon in 323 BC, his vast empire was split into smaller dominions to be shared among his generals. His closest friend, Ptolemy, son of Lagos, inherited the kingdom of Egypt and was crowned pharaoh in 305 BC after the death of Alexander IV (the son of Alexander the Great by the Persian Princess Roxanne). Ptolemy adopted the name Soter, meaning the ‘Saviour’, and thus is best known to historians as Ptolemy I Soter.
A very wise and enlightened man, Ptolemy set out to fulfil Alexander's dream to make his city, Alexandria, a universal centre of wisdom and learning. He recruited as his principal advisor an Egyptian high-priest from Heliopolis called Manetho, and consulted him on all matters related to religion, history and protocol. Manetho, who came from the Delta city of Sebennytos, is best known to Egyptologists for having compiled a ch
ronology of all the dynastic and predynastic pharaohs which, to a great extent, is still used as reference today. It is almost certain, too, that Manetho was the principal contributor to the creation of the ‘new’ god Serapis for the city of Alexandria.
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