America Before
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Egyptologists in general avoid me, but I was fortunate that Louise Ellis-Barrett at the British Museum was prepared to accept the commission. She was curious as to why I wanted a translation at all but I was determined that this should be a proper blind test, in which no preconceptions were inserted into the translator’s mind before she began work, so I declined to tell her.
A few weeks later, after investigating the matter thoroughly, Louise came back to me with her translation of the group of hieroglyphs describing the role of the goddess in the scene:
She lives from the blood of the damned
And from what these gods provide her
That Ba-soul who belongs to the damned
The demolishing one, who cuts the damned to pieces.
For clarification Louise added that the Book of What Is in the Duat is “divided into Hours—each of which is a unit of text and illustration.” The vignette occurs in the Fifth Hour of the journey through the Duat (often also referred to as the “Fifth Division of the Duat”) where, as we shall see, the ancient Egyptian judgment scene was also set. Moreover, although the vignette itself is not a formal part of the judgment, the entire burden of the Fifth Hour, as Louise expressed it in the document she prepared for me, is:
its indication of the turning point in life. Here, life will either be renewed or annihilated. The last scene of the upper register [where the vignette is located] demonstrates the task of the deities whose responsibility is annihilation, the goddess demonstrating how the damned will be dealt with.
They will be dealt with, in other words, just as in the ancient Native American belief system, by having their brains smashed out.
TERRORS AND OBSTACLES OF THE ANCIENT AMERICAN NETHERWORLD
ANTHROPOLOGIST AKE HULTKRANTZ NOTES TRADITIONS among the Ojibwa and the Huron of northeastern North America concerning:
the so-called brain-smasher [who] … deprives travellers to the land of the dead of their brains. … There is in general something demoniac about the brain-catching guardian. … In the eschatological conceptions of the Sauk and Fox Indians … the deceased perishes altogether if he is unable to save himself from the “brain-smasher.”83
George Lankford gives an overview of such myths across North America and confirms the very widespread nature of the “fearsome image of a ‘brain-smasher,’ usually a woman, whose task is to destroy memory (and humanity?) by removing or smashing the brain.”84
An interesting variant, documented by the ethnologist Alanson Skinner in the early 1920s, comes from the Sauk people, who speak of an obstacle on the Path of Souls where the celestial river must be crossed:
A log serves for a bridge, and this is guarded by a being called Po’kitapawa, “Knocks-a-hole-in-the-head,” or “Brain Taker.” Brain taker has a watch-dog who barks the alarm whenever a new soul approaches and the fleeting spirit must be swift indeed to avoid having his brains dashed out. If this happens, he is destroyed or lost forever.85
It seems, therefore, that the Native American “brain smasher” and the ancient Egyptian goddess in the vignette from the Fifth Hour of the Duat both serve exactly the same function, namely, the annihilation and permanent destruction of unworthy souls on the afterlife journey. There are differences in the traditions, to be sure, as one would expect if they descended from a remote common ancestor many millennia ago and then evolved separately, but the fundamental similarities of the role are unmissable.
A further point arising from this material has to do with the more general issue of the trials and tribulations faced by the soul on its postmortem journey. That the precise character of these obstacles should vary between ancient Egypt and ancient Native America is only to be expected. Even so, the striking similarities in the core structure of the “story”—physical death, a journey of the soul on land, a leap to the sky involving Orion followed by a further journey with perils and challenges to be faced, through the valley of the Milky Way—all argue for some as yet unexplained connection.
Monstrous winged serpents of the ancient American Netherworld.
In the case of Native America a bridge, sometimes shaky, sometimes thin as a blade, from which the soul can easily fall and be lost forever in the raging torrent below, is one among several ordeals consistently documented in the ethnographic accounts.86 Another regular character (who, along with the bridge, appears in one of the recensions of the brain smasher tradition cited above) is a dog, often monstrous and ferocious, described by the Algonquin as “the dog with the bloody mouth that devours the souls.”87
In some accounts the bridge has the power to transform into a serpent,88 thus further challenging spirits on the Path. Indeed the Native American afterlife journey is almost as filled with monster serpents as the ancient Egyptian Duat. Most notable in this respect is the presence of the Great Horned Water Serpent, sometimes described as “Master of the Beneath World” and sometimes as “the Great Serpent with the Red Jewel in its Forehead:”89
If the free soul knows how to deal with the Serpent and is permitted to pass, then it enters the realm of the dead.90
In the ancient Egyptian tradition, too, the guardians of various gates and passageways in the Duat, often in serpent form, would permit the soul to pass so long as it had “knowledge of certain formulae, or words of power, and magical names.”91
THE UNDERWATER PANTHER AND THE GREAT SPHINX
OTHER NOTABLE CURIOSITIES INCLUDE THE fact, noted earlier, that the serpents of the Duat are very often winged92 and, in addition, are sometimes depicted with legs and feet.93 The same goes for the Great Horned Water Serpent, almost always winged,94 and in addition, in a Sioux account, described as a “water monster which … resembled a rattlesnake, but he had short legs.”95
Because we have the benefit of copious documentation and painted and engraved images, the descriptions of the Duat that have come down to us from ancient Egypt are more vivid and detailed than the descriptions of the Path of Souls that have survived from the Native American oral tradition. Nonetheless, enough remains to confirm that as well as serpents, many of the other monsters and fiends of the Duat also have their counterparts in the Native American afterlife journey.96
Of particular interest in this respect is the Underwater Panther, a bizarre hybrid figure, described by the Ojibwa as “a curious combination of cougar, rattlesnake, deer and hawk”97 and understood to be an avatar, or alter ego, of the Great Horned Water Serpent.98
Different Native American peoples gave different names and aspects to the Underwater Panther—Mishebeshu and Michibichi are the most common—but it was also known among the Algonquian-speaking tribes as Pizha, meaning “panther.”99 On account of this latter name, and of an ancient image of it that was once visible painted on a bluff above the Mississippi at Alton, Illinois, the Underwater Panther became known to interested European travelers as the “Piasa” and was described confusingly both as a “tiger” and as an “animal of the dragon species.”100 In 1839 Arenz and Company of DÜsseldorf published a line drawing of it “taken on the spot by artists from Germany,” which is reproduced above. The original petroglyph no longer exists, as the whole face of the bluff on which it was depicted was quarried away in 1846–47.101
Monstrous serpents of the ancient Egyptian Netherworld—winged (right), and with legs (left).
Other imagery of the Underwater Panther, long since lost, was seen by Nicolas Perrot in 1664, who called it the “Great Panther,” while the Ojibwa today describe it as a “sea tiger,” preserving its watery associations, and as a “huge brown cat.”102 In some accounts it is said that the Piasa has “a human head.”103
If the variety of descriptions is bewildering we should not be surprised, for we are dealing with the Netherworld and its shape-shifting denizens here. That the Underwater Panther was seen as having feline characteristics, however, is certain from a number of surviving images of the creature.
Among them is a pottery figure, reproduced in the collage below, that I was able to see for myself in the muse
um at Moundville. Although the scale is completely different, I suggest that it bears more than a passing resemblance to the Great Sphinx of Giza. The Sphinx, of course, has a human head, not the head of a feline, but let’s keep in mind those traditions in which human-headed Piasas are described. Also possibly of relevance here is the evidence that the original prehistoric Sphinx, perhaps more than 12,000 years old, had the head, as well as the body, of a lion. After suffering severe erosion over several millennia the leonine head was recut into human form during the early Dynastic period.104 Last but not least, Native American traditions of the Underwater Panther speak of a time when “four Piasas existed, each associated with its own cardinal direction.”105 Is it a coincidence that the Great Sphinx of Giza, with its strong family resemblance to the Underwater Panther, is an equinoctial marker, oriented precisely to one of the four cardinal directions to face the sun as it rises due east on the equinox?
TOP: Underwater Panther, Moundville. Note tail position and paws. PHOTO: SANTHA FAIIA. BOTTOM RIGHT: The Great Sphinx of Giza. PHOTO: ALBI, DREAMSTIME.COM [21951]. Note tail position and paws. BOTTOM LEFT: Detail of the tail of the Great Sphinx. Compare with tail of Underwater Panther.
DOGS AND OTHER “COINCIDENCES”
FEROCIOUS DOGS THAT APPEAR AS obstacles and challenges on the Native American afterlife journey have their counterparts among the monsters of the Duat described in the ancient Egyptian books of the dead. “That god who lives by slaughter,” for example, in Spell 335 of the Coffin Texts, “whose face is that of a hound.”106
Nor is that the only curious nexus involving dogs.
As an exception to the general rule among Native American peoples, the Cherokee do not describe the Milky Way as the “Path of Souls” but refer to it, rather, as “Where the Dog Ran.”107 This is on account of a myth of a giant mill standing on one side of the earth-disk where corn was ground into meal. The store of flour was kept in a great bowl and on several mornings the people who attended the mill found that some of the flour was missing. When the thefts continued they investigated and found the tracks of a dog. The next night:
They watched, and when the dog came … and began to eat the meal out of the bowl they sprang out and whipped him.108
At this, the dog, who lived on the opposite side of the earth-disk, leapt to the sky and fled “howling” across it to his home,
with the meal dropping from his mouth as he ran, and leaving behind a white trail where now we see the Milky Way, which the Cherokee call to this day Gi’li-utsun’ stanun’ yi, “Where the dog ran.”109
What’s strange is that in ancient Egypt, too, where the Milky Way was the Winding Waterway, there is an exception. It’s found in a curious “spell” from the Coffin Texts in which no dogs are mentioned but where the deceased declares:
I am made a spirit. … I am he who is in charge of secret matters. … I have come equipped with magic, I have quenched my thirst with it. I live on white emmer, filling the Winding Waterway.110
White emmer is, of course, one of the domesticated varieties of wheat, and one, moreover, that was particularly favored in ancient Egypt.111 As with maize in the Americas, it must be milled to produce usable flour. In this variant ancient Egyptian tradition, as in the variant Cherokee tradition, the path in the sky on which the afterlife journey unfolds is likened to a white trail of milled flour.
There are other curiosities.
Take the case of the hero-deity known as the “Birdman,” of whom multiple depictions have survived in the Mississippi Valley. He is unmistakably part falcon, part man, just like the god Horus of the Nile Valley. Just like Horus, the Birdman’s celestial associations include both the Morning Star and the Sun.112 And just like Horus, the fundamental role of the Birdman is to symbolize the triumph of life over death. “Although everyone must die eventually,” explains Professor James Brown of Northwestern University,
life is the victor through the survival of one’s descendants. The avatar of this struggle of life to reassert itself in the face of inevitable death is the falcon, and one of his guises is the Morning Star. In the pre-dawn light the Morning Star beats back the darkness to make way for the life-sustaining sun. The fact that the [Native American myth of the] Birdman has embedded within it the diurnal progress of night and day, the passage of the heavenly bodies and the cardinal directions tells us that they are properties of a particular cosmology. These elements are not loosely connected.113
This is not the place to elaborate further on the Birdman myth, or on the extensive traditions surrounding the god Horus, one of the most famous and complex figures in the ancient Egyptian pantheon. Entire books could be, and have been, written about each and there are great differences between the two as well as some rather striking similarities. What remains to be resolved is whether these similarities are purely coincidental or whether there is some deep, hidden, and previously undetected connection.
Then there’s the question of pygmies and dwarfs. They enjoyed special favor in ancient Egypt, where their mummified remains have survived in a number of tombs. They were regarded as possessing more than human powers—there is even a pygmy god named Bes—and they were given positions of importance in the funerary texts.114 For example, in a vignette to chapter 164 of the Book of the Dead we see a goddess flanked by two dwarfs, each of whom is depicted with two heads, one of a man and one of a falcon.115 And in the Pyramid Texts, the deceased on his afterlife journey declares:
LEFT: Engraved whelk shell depicting the ancient Mississippian hero-deity referred to by archaeologists as the “Birdman.” PHOTO: THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN (NMAI), SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION [18/9121]. RIGHT: Statue of the ancient Egyptian hero-deity Horus. The fundamental role of both was to symbolize the triumph of life over death. PHOTO: RAOUL KIEFFER.
I am deemed righteous in the sky and on earth. … I am that pygmy of “the dances of god” who diverts the god in front of his great throne.116
Likewise, dwarfs and pygmies enjoyed special favor and respect among ancient Native Americans. Hultkrantz reports “a widespread belief in dwarves on the land, at times associated with the concept of a more or less extinct ‘prehistoric’ race, at times linked to the concept of spirit beings.”117
As in ancient Egypt, the skeletons of dwarfs have been found in ancient Native American tombs, and as in ancient Egypt, dwarfs were believed to possess superhuman and magical powers. There is even evidence of the existence of dwarf shamans in the Mississippi Valley.118
Also worthy of note is the appearance and manifestation of souls, and we have seen already how, in ancient Egypt, the free-flying Ba soul was depicted as a bird or as a human-headed bird. “He opens for you the doors of the sky,” the Pyramid Texts declare:
he throws open for you the doors of the firmament, he makes a road for you that you may ascend by means of it into the company of the gods, you being alive in your bird shape.119
In the case of ancient Native America, the free-soul was likewise very often pictured and spoken of as a bird. Among the Modoc tribe, for example, a boy training to become a shaman fell into a deathlike trance. In this condition he met a female spirit who took out his heart. The boy then heard the spirit talking to his heart, which she held in her hand:
After a while she opened her hand and let go of the heart. Then the little boy thought he saw a bird coming from the west. It came to him and lighted on his breast. That moment he jumped up.120
Hultkrantz reports that among the White Knife Shoshoni the soul has the appearance of a bird while “the Huichol identify it as a little white bird and the Luiseno know that it is a dove. The Kootenay believe that the free-soul can show itself as a tomtit or a jay.”121 … The free-soul of the Bella Coola is like a bird enclosed in an egg [the physical body]; if the shell of the egg breaks and the soul flies away its owner must die.”122
Once again, then, it seems that some of the fundamental ideas and imagery of the death process were held in common in ancient Native America and in ancient Egy
pt and once again the only question we must decide is whether this is a coincidence or not.
JUDGMENT
BOTH THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN AND the ancient Native American afterlife journeys involve a strong element of judgment. Indeed, in a sense, the entire ordeal in both cases concerns the judgment of the soul for its choices—for what it has done and not done, for the use that it made of the gift of life—during its physical incarnation. In both cases the unworthy soul can face annihilation by gods, demons, and monsters at any point on the journey (for example, at the hands of the “brain-smasher” figure) but in both cases also, for those who have progressed thus far through the Netherworld, a specific judgment awaits.
In the ancient Egyptian system the judgment scene occurs in the Fifth Division (or “Hour”) of the Duat, in the Judgment Hall of Osiris, also known as the Hall of Maat—a location that can be reached only by those who are sufficiently provided with spiritual protection to make it through the first four divisions.
I have described the scene at length in previous books, and will not repeat all the details here. In summary, however, the deceased is ushered into a great hall or chamber at the head of which, in partially mummified form, sits Osiris, the high god of death and resurrection, identified in the ancient Egyptian sky religion with the constellation Orion. Also present, wearing a feather headdress, is Maat, the goddess of truth and cosmic justice, and forty-two dispassionate figures, crouched in the manner of scribes poring over papyrus, each wearing the feather of Maat, which symbolizes truth. These are the forty-two Assessors of the Dead, before each of whom the deceased must be able to declare himself innocent of certain acts of moral wrongdoing—notably the act of murder.