We arrived at the site of Akhet-Aten some 30 minutes before sunrise, giving us ample time to set up the cameras along the axis of the Small Temple of the Aten, with its very dramatic view towards the eastern hills between the two standing columns. The gap between the columns acted as a window towards the place of sunrise. Now all that was needed was for the sun to oblige and rise between the columns. I nervously checked my calculations. Sunrise would take place at 7.05 a.m. at about 16° 53′ south-of-east and, hopefully, be in perfect alignment with the axis of the temple. The local inspector of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, a man by the name of Muhamad, was very sceptical. According to him, the sun did not rise there in October but in August. He had worked here for 17 years and he ought to know. I informed him as politely as I could that he was wrong on this. He simply shrugged his shoulders and went to chat with the police officer, who appeared totally uninterested in what was going on.
The eastern horizon began to brighten. The few stars that were still visible quickly faded away as the glow of dawn increased. There was an annoying cloud that hovered over the eastern horizon, threatening to spoil the effect we were hoping to achieve. Then, as if by magic, a gap opened in the cloud allowing the sun disc to be seen in all its glory. And it rose, as I had predicted, smack between the two columns. We were so moved by what we saw that we nearly forgot to turn the cameras on. There was a deathly silence from Muhamad and the smoking policemen as they stared towards the sunrise as if they had seen a ghost. Then Muhamad came to me, smiled, shook my hand, and said: ‘You are a clever man! How did you manage to do this?’ I explained that I had not done anything and that it was simply the laws of celestial mechanics that were responsible.
Driving back to Cairo, I could not help thinking of the solemn oath that Akhenaten had made and had carved for posterity on the boundary stones of his solar city:
In this place that I have said that I will make a House of Rejoicing for the Aten my father, in the island of ‘Aten Distinguished in Jubilees’ in Akhet-Aten. And so it is in this place that I have made a House of Rejoicing for the Aten my father, in the island of ‘Aten Distinguished in Jubilees’ in Akhet-Aten. In this place I do all the works that have to be done for the Aten my father, in Akhet-Aten.
Akhenaten had kept his promise. But the priests of Amun-Ra had shattered his dream with the iron fist of intolerance.
My quest, I knew there and then, was over. I also knew that no one would ever be able to grasp the holy grail of ancient Egypt in their hands. But sometimes it may appear, as it had done on this day, right before your eyes in the glowing light of sunrise, hovering on a distant hill. And all we can really do when this happens is to acknowledge the mystery of our existence on this little lonely planet and rejoice in our resolve to let it be.
CONCLUSION
The ‘Code’ and the Temple of the Cosmos
Ancient Egypt was subjugated to the law of Maat, the cosmic order, which was believed to have come to earth from the gods at the time of creation, a golden age known as
zep tepi
, the ‘First Time’. The Pyramid Texts place the dramatic event of creation and
zep tepi
at Heliopolis, where the cosmic phoenix alighted on the Primeval Mound and set into motion ‘time’, the cycles of the sun, moon and stars. At Heliopolis in the ‘Temple of the Phoenix’, the first sunrise took place on the sacred
benben
stone that crowned the Primeval Mound.
1
After generations of observation and recording the motion of the celestial bodies, the astronomer-priests of Heliopolis had worked out what they believed to be the mechanism or ‘code’ of the cosmic order, and, more importantly to them, how it could be used to regulate events on earth, especially the yearly flooding of the Nile. They concluded that the universe was governed by six principal cycles, three short-term and three long-term, which involved the motion of the sun and the stars. Measured in either ‘days’ or ‘years’, these cycles were as follows:
Short-term Cycles:
1 day:
| solar day
|
365 days:
| solar cycle, the solar/tropical year less 0.243 day
|
365.25 days:
| Sothic year; the period between two heliacal risings of Sirius
|
Long-term Cycles:
1,460 years:
| Sothic cycle; return of New Year’s Day with the heliacal rising of Sirius
|
1,506 years
| Great Solar Cycle; return of New Year’s Day with the summer solstice
|
26,000 years:
| precession cycle or Great Year
|
To symbolically represent the mechanism of the Egyptian cosmic order, we can draw six concentric circles, so that the image produced will resemble a circular labyrinth or a Copernican diagram whose centre is a point representing the observer himself. More realistically, one should draw a circular star map or planisphere showing the zodiacal belt of constellations which will cater for the three solar cycles, and also showing the principal decanal constellations (such as Orion and Canis Major/Sirius) which will cater for the three stellar cycles, and whose centre is a point representing the north celestial pole. This outer rim of the circular star map can then be divided into four parts representing the two equinoxes and the two solstices and also the four cardinal directions. Such a circular star map would much resemble the circular zodiac of Dendera. But the Egyptian astronomer-priests also observed the rising of the celestial bodies in the east, especially the rising of the sun and certain special constellations such as Orion, Canis Major and Leo. They would thus have registered a cycle for the sun from a point north (summer solstice) to a point south (winter solstice) and back again to north in 365 days. Because they did not take into account the 0.243-day difference with the true solar year, they would also have registered a similar but long-term solar cycle of 1,506 years (Great Solar Cycle) with respect to the summer solstice, and another long-term cycle of 1,460 years with respect to the heliacal rising of Sirius. With regards to the stars, they would also have registered a very slow cycle (precession) moving from south to north.
2
To represent this diagrammatically, we would have to draw an elongated rectangle representing the eastern horizon and marking the two extreme north and south points. With this elongated rectangle constellations would be drawn. Such a diagram would also much resemble the elongated rectangular zodiac of Dendera. The question, then, is: Was the temple of Dendera a centre for recording the various long-term astronomical cycles? Or to use ancient Egyptian parlance, could Dendera be a centre to regulate Maat on earth? An indication of the affirmative lies in the fact that the alignments of the double axes of the temple of Isis (at the rear of the main temple of Dendera) tracked the precession shift of Sirius over at least 1,200 years.
According to the ideas presented in this book, evidence that the ancient astronomer-priests ‘followed’ the cosmic order should be found in the choice of location and orientations of the various monuments and religious centres built over a 3,000-year span (from 3000 BC to 30 BC) along the shores of the Nile. To be more specific, the changes in the sky (reflected in the three long-term cycles) should match the changes in the location and orientation of monuments and religious centres. Furthermore, evidence of
zep tepi
/First Time ought to be found in the region of Heliopolis, whence ‘time’ or the long-term cosmic cycles began to be measured.
Zep Tepi
and the Memphite Necropolis-Heliopolis region
Throughout the literature of ancient Egypt - from the Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom to the Hermetic Texts of the Graeco-Roman period - we hear of the belief that Egypt is made in the image of heaven. Its main geographical feature, the Nile Valley, runs from south to north, and in the context of this belief, would correlate with the main feature of the celestial landscape, the Milky Way. Is it therefore a coincidence that the Milky Way also ran from south to north in the epoch of 11,451 BC, which, as we have seen in Chapter Four, was arrived at by going back in increments of the Sothic cycle, starting from 139 AD and arriving at the ‘beginning’ of the cycles of Sirius? We have defined this date of 11,451 BC as
zep tepi
, the ‘First Time’. Controversial as this may at first seem, we have also seen how, when the sky is precessed to 11,451 BC and the three stars of Orion are aligned along the meridian with the three pyramids of Giza, the image of
zep tepi
in the sky (the triangular region of Orion-Pleiades-Leo) bears an uncanny resemblance to the image of
zep tepi
on the ground (the triangular region of Giza-Memphis-Heliopolis). The celestial region that contained the triangle formed by Orion, the Pleiades and Leo was called the Duat, and it would appear that a copy of it was made in the region of the Memphite Necropolis containing the Step Pyramid, and, more especially, where the three Giza pyramids represented Orion’s belt, the Abusir pyramids near Memphis the Pleiades, and Heliopolis the sun in Leo. Were these places, too, centres for regulating the cosmic order on earth?
The Great Solar Cycle and the Sothic Cycle
Testing the ‘code’ further, we would now expect to find evidence of a north-to-south or vice versa displacement of the solar cultic centres in increments of 730 years (half the Sothic cycle) or 753 years (half the Great Solar Cycle). In Chapter Five we have seen how the great solar centre was developed at Heliopolis in
c
. 2781 BC but was moved some 750 years later to Karnak in the south. We have also seen how Akhenaten, some 750 years after the founding of Karnak, sought to return the solar cult to Heliopolis. We have found specific evidence of the Sothic cycle of 1,460 years in the so-called Jubilee date in the axial alignment of the temple of the Aten at Tell El Amarna. We have also found evidence of the Great Solar Cycle of 1,506 years in the axial alignment of the Great Temple of Rameses II at Abu Simbel and also in the axial alignment of the Khafre causeway at Giza.
The Precession Cycle or Great Year
Evidence of the knowledge of the long-term cycle of precession, especially of the star Sirius, was found at the multi-layered Satis temples on Elephantine from 3000 BC to 100 BC; at the Middle Kingdom temple of Horus on Thoth Hill from 3000 BC to 1900 BC, and also at the temple of Isis at Dendera from 1275 BC to 30 BC.
The Mission of Akhenaten
Egypt, it very much seems, was ‘made in the image of heaven’, incorporating in its unique geography and in the locations and alignments of its pyramids and temples the various astronomical cycles that were believed to be regulated by the cosmic order or Maat. What is more, by integrating the cosmic order into the very fabric of the religious mythology and rituals, and into the social and legal systems, an ideal state was created that was itself regulated by the natural laws acknowledged by all. Eventually, however, the pure mechanism of the cosmic order was corrupted by the power-driven priesthood and the complex mythology and iconography that they injected into it. It was left to Akhenaten to clean up the mess, to free the old natural religion from the yoke of the priesthood and to strip it of the confusing iconography and mythology by fixing it only to a single god symbol: the disc of the sun, representing the universal god. After trying for 17 years Akhenaten eventually failed, but nonetheless managed to inject the fragile seed of monotheism that would influence the three great Semitic religions of our modern world.
Postscript
Sadly, the three major religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, have again fallen into the hands of power-driven priests and, we may also now add, the high priests of politics. Again the great human conflict is made to loom dangerously before us. The only way out of this impending disaster is to restore the natural religion and to instigate in people the sense of a cosmic order that attempts to achieve harmony and balance rather than blindly taking us towards the nuclear Armageddon that surely lies ahead. In other words, to restore a gnosis that is based on the laws of nature and that views man not as its master but as its keeper, who will diligently maintain the delicate balance between social and natural living and safeguard it for the generations to come.
As for the scientific investigation that I have presented in
The Egypt Code
, I hope that it has been cogently demonstrated that there is, at the very least, a dire need for an overhaul of the established consensuses and conclusions established by the last two generations of Egyptologists. I hope that the new generation of Egyptologists will come to see, as I did, that ancient Egypt is not a defunct civilisation to be studied in a dispassionate way, but rather a cultural model that is very much alive and needs to be understood, with, perhaps, some of its principles put again into practice for the benefit of mankind. The very wise and observant priests of ancient Egypt taught not with dogmas and doctrines, nor did they threaten the populace with the fear of their god’s wrath; rather they offered a clever and enlightened initiation that would open the mind and sharpen the senses so that nature was seen as the manifestation of the divine principles, and man himself as not only an integral part of nature, but also responsible for keeping it in harmony and balance. Egyptologists, I am well aware, cringe at this sort of talk, which they classify as the ‘mumbo-jumbo’ of New Age writers, and thus much prefer to ignore it and stick to their own dry scientific and dispassionate approach. But they are wrong in doing so. Ancient Egypt cannot be understood in this way. Ancient Egypt is not a science but an idea. For what is more important: the material legacy of ancient Egypt or its spiritual legacy
?
What is more important: the ancient stones of pyramids and temples or the ideas and aspirations they represent? When dealing with ancient Egypt, you are dealing with a spiritual civilisation which believed emphatically in eternity and in an afterlife attained by an adherence to the cosmic order. And it must be studied as such.