America Before
Page 35
After all a vast expenditure of energy, effort, ingenuity, manpower, and organizational skills was required to create a Cahokia or a Moundville or a Newark Earthworks or, for that matter, a Watson Brake, so it makes no sense that such projects would have been undertaken without some enormously important motive that inspired all the participants. In the absence of surviving evidence of what that motive was in North America, could it be possible that the ancient Egyptian funerary texts might provide an answer?
SQUARES, RECTANGLES, ELLIPSES, AND CIRCLES
I REMEMBERED FROM MY EARLIER encounters with the texts that they included references to geometry and sought out those references now.
A few examples.
In chapter 108 of the Book of the Dead we read of the “Mountain of Sunrise … in the eastern heaven. It hath dimensions of 30,000 cubits in length and 15,000 cubits in breadth.”3
That’s a perfect 2-by-1 rectangle, no matter what system of measure you convert it into, equivalent roughly to 15,000 meters by 7,500 meters.
Strange “mountain!”
In chapter 81 there’s an obscure geometrical reference to “four sides of the domain of Ra and the width of the earth four times.”4
Ra is the Sun God and it is the business of “geometry”—literally “earth-measuring”—to know the “width of the earth.”
Turning to chapter 110 of the Book of the Dead, we read:
The god Horus maketh himself to be strong like unto the Hawk which is one thousand cubits in length and two thousand cubits in width.5
It seems a scribe copying from an older source document mixed up the concepts of length and width but what is defined here is nonetheless a 2-by-1 rectangle with dimensions of approximately 1,000 meters by 500 meters.
In the Book of What Is in the Duat another rectangular district is mentioned. Named Sekhet-Hetepet, its long and short dimensions are so close that it is almost, and in the vignettes appears visually to be, a square. Its shape is defined by an unbroken water-filled moat. The land within it is intersected by canals.6
Sekhet-Hetepet (Papyrus of Nebseni, BRITISH MUSEUM).
A second district of the Duat, named “Tchau,” is “440 cubits in length and 440 cubits in width.”7
That’s a perfect square, no matter what system of measure you convert it into, equivalent to roughly 220 meters by 220 meters.
Later, in the Seventh Division of the Duat, another square enclosure of identical dimensions is encountered.8
In the Land of Sokar, part of the Fifth Division, and the location of the Judgment scene, we meet a “goddess of the apex.”9 In that same division we also encounter “the god of his angle” whose hieroglyph incorporates a right triangle,10 fundamental for surveying and trigonometry. The heart of the Land of Sokar, which rests on the backs of two man-headed lion sphinxes set tail to tail, is formed by an elongated ellipse over the top of which looms a pyramid with its apex in the form of the head of a goddess.11
Pyramid over elliptical enclosure in the Land of Sokar.
Turning to the Coffin Texts, we find a gigantic ship or “bark” described with the following dimensions:
A million cubits are half the length of the bark; starboard, bow, stern and larboard are four million cubits.12
That’s around 500 kilometers for “half the length of the bark” and a combined total of 2,000 kilometers for its other listed parts, a geometrical progression with a ratio of 4.
Among the squares, rectangles, and ellipses of ancient Egypt’s starry Netherworld there are also perfect circles everywhere.
Staying with the Coffin Texts, we read of “the circle of the Pillar of Horus which is north of the opening of darkness.”13
In the Book of the Dead we meet “the gods of the Querti”—literally the “Circles”—to whom the soul on its afterlife journey was obliged to sing hymns of praise.14
In the Book of What Is in the Duat, in the Fifth Division and associated with Ra, the Sun God, we are told of a “Circle” that “unites itself with the roads of the Duat.”15 In the Seventh Division a journey is made “in the path of the Circle of Osiris,”16 while in the Eighth Division we learn of “the Circles of the hidden gods who are on their sand.”17 In addition, five “Circles of the Duat,” each entered through a “door,” are described.18
And throughout the texts we hear repeatedly of “the hidden Circle of the Duat,”19 a location of great significance, as we shall see. There are indications that the Duat itself was considered to be circular in form. As Wallis Budge points out, there is a scene in the Book of Gates that depicts “the body of Osiris bent round in a circle and the hieroglyphics enclosed within it declare that it is the Duat.”20
SUN AND MOON
AS WELL AS MULTIPLE REFERENCES to stars and constellations, too numerous and all-pervasive in the funerary texts to require special mention here,21 the moon is frequently encountered on the journey through the Duat. In the Second Division, for example, a vignette shows a boat, the purpose of which, as Budge describes it, is “to support the disk of the full moon. … By the disk kneels a god who is ‘supporting Maat,’ which is symbolized by a feather, and is described by the word MAAT.”22
Central to the ancient Egyptian judgment scene described in the previous chapter, the concept of Maat enshrines notions of cosmic justice, harmony, and balance. Its association with the moon is appropriate since the moon indeed plays a key “balancing” or “stabilising” role for the earth.23
The sun is also often figured as being carried aboard a boat and also features prominently in the Duat, blazing an indomitable path through its terrors each night, a symbol of hope and resurrection in whose company, if they are fortunate, the souls of some of the deceased might be permitted to ride. That much might be expected, but what is interesting are passages in the texts that help us to understand the special attention paid by the ancient Egyptians to the solstices, with several of the greatest temples of the Nile Valley, notably the Temple of Karnak at Luxor, incorporating spectacular solstitial alignments.
A defining characteristic of the solstices, around June 21 and December 21 when the sun reaches its northernmost and southernmost rising and setting points, is that the pendulum swing of the solar disk along the horizon appears to pause or “stand still,” without further northward or southward movement, for an interval of 3 days. In this connection let’s recall the peculiarly geometrical “Mountain of Sunrise.” The passage concerning it in chapter 108 of the Book of the Dead that I cited earlier continues as follows:
There is a serpent on the brow of that Mountain, and he measureth 30 cubits in length; the first 8 cubits of its length are covered with flints and with shining metal plates. … Now after Ra hath stood still he inclineth his eyes towards him and a stoppage of the boat of Ra taketh place, and a mighty sleep cometh upon him that is in the boat.24
It’s difficult to interpret this passage in any other way than a colorful, lyrical, poetic description of a solstice.
Similarly, in the Coffin Texts we read:
I am here from the lifting up of the horizon that I may show Ra at the gates of the sky. … A path is prepared for Ra when he comes to a halt.25
Again, what else but a solstice could possibly bring Ra, the almighty Sun God, to a halt?
EARTHWORKS
THERE ARE CAUSEWAYS IN THE ancient Egyptian Netherworld.
“I will travel on that great causeway,” proclaims the deceased in Spell 629 of the Coffin Texts, “on which those whose shapes are great travel.”26
In Utterance 676 of the Pyramid Texts, in a passage that calls to mind a pilgrimage with relics, we read:
Do for him what you did for his brother Osiris on that day of putting the bones in order, of making good the soles, and of traveling the causeway.27
And in Utterance 718:
The Mourning Woman summons you as Isis, the Mooring-post calls to you as Nepthys, you having appeared upon your causeway.28
Very frequently when causeways are mentioned it’s in specifi
c association with mounds. The above passage continues:
May you travel around your Horite Mounds [i.e., mounds consecrated to the god Horus], may you travel around your Sethite Mounds [i.e., mounds consecrated to the god Seth]. You have your spirit, O my father the King … make yourself into a spirit.29
In Utterance 470 the deceased informs the soul of his mother, the “Lady of the Secret Land:”
“I am going to the sky that I may see my father.”
“To the High Mounds?” she asks, “or to the Mounds of Seth?”
“The High Mounds,” the deceased replies, “will pass me on to the Mounds of Seth.”30
It’s a very curious, obviously coded language, beyond the reach of straightforward translation, that continues throughout the funerary texts.
As well as Horite Mounds and Sethite Mounds there are the Mounds of Osiris,31 and also the Southern Mounds and the Northern Mounds that the soul must travel to and traverse on its journey through the Duat.32 And the structure in the Fifth Division of the Duat that Budge refers to as a pyramid is also sometimes described as a “hollow mound,”33 and as a “mound of earth.”34
In the Coffin Texts we hear of “the gods on their mounds,”35 and later that “mounds will be towns and towns will be mounds.”36
There are also frequent references to “cities of the gods,” as in:
A divine city hath been built for me; I know it and I know the name thereof. Sekhet-Aaru is its name.37
Or:
I come from the city of the god, the primeval region.38
I mention these “city” references because if towns can be mounds and mounds can be towns, then “cities” presumably can also be towns and therefore mounds as well? Moreover, the whole picture immediately becomes much more complicated when we read of a god who “setteth the stars in their places”39 only for the translator to immediately qualify that the word he’s chosen to render as “places” actually means “towns.” What this god is doing, therefore—though it seemed an impossible concept to the translator—is literally setting stars down to earth in “towns.”
And we already know that towns can be mounds and mounds can be towns. That both should also be stars is not at all a contradiction if you just … think like an Egyptian!
HOW TO EQUIP A SPIRIT FOR JOURNEYING
THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS SAW THEIR lives as their opportunity to prepare for the trials of the journey through the Duat that they would have to confront as souls after death. The stakes were high, with both eternal annihilation and immortality being possible outcomes of that journey. There was undoubtedly an ethical aspect to the Judgment, as we’ve seen, but something else was also required, some gnosis, some deep understanding, and very strangely it turns out to be the case that those who truly sought the prize of immortality—“the life of millions of years”—were called upon first to build on the ground perfect copies “of the hidden circle of the Duat in the body of Nut [the sky].”40
Whoever shall make an exact copy of these forms, and shall know it, shall be a spirit well-equipped both in heaven and earth, unfailingly, and regularly and eternally.41
Whosoever shall make a copy thereof, and shall know it upon earth, it shall act as a magical protector for him both in heaven and upon earth.42
If copies of these things be made according to the ordinances of the hidden house, and after the manner of that which is ordered in the hidden house, they shall act as magical protectors to the man who maketh them.43
He who hath no knowledge of the whole or part of the secret representations of the Duat shall be condemned to destruction.44
Whosoever shall know these secret images shall be in the condition of a spirit who is equipped for journeying.45
Wrapped up in the colorful archaic language is a belief—or perhaps the inculcation of a belief—that the immortal destiny of the soul can be influenced by an architectural project to copy on the ground a “hidden” or “secret” part of the Duat sky region, the coordinates of which are set down in archives in the “hidden house.”
Egyptologists already accept that the Milky Way and the constellation Orion on its west bank are key markers in the celestial geography of the Duat, and in 1996 Robert Bauval and I made the case in our book The Message of the Sphinx that the constellation Leo was very much part of the Duat as well. To cut a long story short, our argument, which we stand by today, is that the ideas expressed in the funerary texts were indeed manifested in architecture in Egypt in the form of the Great Pyramid, the leonine Sphinx, and the underground corridors and chambers beneath these monuments.
The complex was constructed, we believe, as a three-dimensional replica, model, or simulation of the intensely geometrical Fifth Division of the Duat, also known as the “Kingdom of Sokar” and always regarded as an especially hidden and secret place.46 Moreover, we suggest that what motivated the population to support this gigantic project was precisely the promise of thus obtaining that “magical protection,” that power to become “a spirit equipped for journeying,” that would ensure a successful afterlife passage through the Duat.
It is not necessary, for the sake of my argument, to enter into any debate about the merits or demerits of such beliefs. It is enough to say that they were clearly held in ancient Egypt over an immensely long span of time and that the proof of this is in the books of the dead and in the Giza architectural complex. Nor is it controversial to add that it was around the belief system expressed in those texts and monuments that the entire extraordinary civilization of the ancient Nile Valley was organized and mobilized from the very beginning—and since that civilization endured and fed its people and nourished their spirituality for more than 3,000 years, it’s also obvious that at some fundamental level something about the system worked.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
SO WE RETURN TO THE question of why, over a period of many thousands of years, sometimes punctuated by long, culturally barren intervals, huge numbers of architectural projects were undertaken up and down North America’s Mississippi Valley linked to a very distinctive set of beliefs about the afterlife journey of the soul that shared many core elements with the spiritual cosmology of ancient Egypt.
If the resemblances are coincidental, we would not expect the ancient Egyptian funerary texts to provide immediate, sensible answers to some outstanding questions about the monuments of the Mississippi Valley. The fact that they do, in my view, increases the likelihood that we’re looking at a real connection.
Why are the Mississippi Valley sites built on such a gigantic scale and why are celestial alignments of such importance within them?
For the same reasons given in the ancient Egyptian funerary texts for the construction of the sky-ground architecture of the Nile Valley—that the sky is gigantic and the purpose of the architecture is to honor, connect with, and above all “resemble the sky.”
Why are the Orion constellation and the Milky Way so important in the funerary symbolism of the Mississippian culture? And why is the Milky Way the “Path of Souls”?
For the same reason given in the ancient Egyptian funerary texts—that within the general frame of the starry sky it is specifically Orion that hosts the portal through which the soul must pass to reach the “Winding Waterway” that in turn leads the soul onward on its journey through the Land of the Dead.
Why is geometry, and its particular manifestation in the form of rectangular, square, circular, and elliptical enclosures, such a significant element of the Mississippi Valley sites?
For the same reasons given in the ancient Egyptian funerary texts for the distinct geometrical character of the sky-ground architecture of the Nile Valley—geometry is a foundational characteristic of the Land of the Dead and the rectangular, square, circular, and elliptical enclosures are the typical forms of celestial “districts” through which the soul must pass on its afterlife journey.
Why do the Mississippi Valley sites feature causeways and mounds?
For the same reasons given in the ancient Eg
yptian funerary texts for the incorporation of causeways and mounds in the sky-ground architecture of the Nile Valley—namely, that causeways and mounds are prominent features of the celestial Land of the Dead that it is the purpose of the architecture to replicate on earth.
Why were the peoples of the Mississippi Valley willing to expend such great quantities of treasure and energy on the creation of spectacular sites such as Moundville, Cahokia, and the Newark Earthworks, and why did they take such care to imbue every one of them with intense geometrical characteristics and to ensure that each in its own way “resembled” and formed intimate connections with the sky?
For the same reason given in the ancient Egyptian funerary texts—the belief that if the sky, or some “hidden” or “secret” aspect of it, were NOT copied on the ground (and in some way explored, navigated, and known prior to death), then those souls who had failed to do this necessary work, and thus were not equipped with the knowledge of “the secret representations,” would be “condemned to destruction.”
SKY AND GROUND
WHEN IT COMES TO MOTIVATIONAL techniques, as the Roman Catholic Church demonstrated throughout the Middle Ages, the prospect of eternal damnation can be very effective. I suggest that in ancient Egypt it was the equivalent prospect of “destruction” or “annihilation” of the soul, and the possibility of avoiding such a fate—as spelled out in the funerary texts—that motivated the construction of the sky-ground temples and pyramids of the Nile Valley. They were all, in a sense, gigantic books of the dead in stone and some–the Giza complex in particular—were undoubtedly seen as “actual gateways, or doorways, to the otherworld.”