The Secret Chamber of Osiris: Lost Knowledge of the Sixteen Pyramids

by Scott Creighton

  The site where the three Giza Pyramids stand—located on the outskirts of the capital, Cairo—used to be completely open and tourists faced a gauntlet of peddlers selling everything from souvenir statues to photographs.4

  CCTV, infrared sensors, motion detectors, metal detectors. When one considers that such security measures are not in evidence at any of the other large pyramid sites, this does seem a bit over the top if it truly is, as Hawass has stated, simply to prevent local people from trying to sell a few souvenirs to tourists—especially so when many of them actually peddle their wares within the Giza complex itself, having paid entry themselves to gain access to the site and all the tourists milling around there. It rather seems to me that there was another unspoken motive for having this additional security put in place at the Giza site. And it occurred to me that this motive may actually be more to do with preventing people from gaining access to restricted areas beyond the wall. As previously mentioned, Could the Egyptian authorities already know about this apex location, and have they perhaps already discovered something there, something that they are perhaps trying to keep under wraps?

  For the moment, however, such questions would have to be set aside. I could go no farther in my quest, and so, as I wearily retraced my footsteps along the desert road, I resolved to return to my hotel and try to find some other means of getting beyond the wall and accessing the apex location in order to complete my journey, to give homage and offer my gift to Osiris. I had come this far and was not about to be beaten so easily. It was time to put Plan B into action.

  5

  THOTH: HARBINGER OF THE DELUGE

  The pyramids themselves, doting with age, have forgotten the names of their founders.

  THOMAS FULLER

  As I trekked back along the desert road, the three giant pyramids of the Giza plateau once more presented themselves to me in majestic fashion, the unified body of Osiris becoming more and more dismembered or disjointed with each and every step. From where I now stood the three great triangular forms appeared against the horizon almost like the sails of a great ship, sailing over the rolling sand dunes of the desert almost like waves on the sea—a group of pyramids known to the ancient Egyptians as Akhet Khufu (Khufu’s horizon).

  According to conventional Egyptology, Akhet Khufu is the name the ancient Egyptians gave to Khufu’s Great Pyramid, although there has been much conjecture over the years as to what this term really means or, indeed, refers to. It is my contention that the name Akhet Khufu, contrary to mainstream opinion, actually refers to the entire Giza site (not solely the Great Pyramid of Khufu) and that this somewhat enigmatic ancient name has been misinterpreted by Egyptologists as meaning “horizon” but instead refers to the coming deluge anticipated by the ancient Egyptians. In brief, the name Akhet Khufu, rather than meaning “Khufu’s horizon,” should more properly be translated as something like “protects [against the] coming deluge of Thoth.”

  As was touched on in chapter 1 of this book, a number of ancient legends associate the building of the early, giant pyramids—in particular the Great Pyramid—with one of the earliest gods of ancient Egypt, Thoth (later paralleled with the Greek god Hermes). Typically the god Thoth is portrayed in the ancient Egyptian pantheon as the god of knowledge, writing, and science. In his anthropomorphic form, Thoth appears with the body of a man and the head of an ibis (figure 5.1), although he is sometimes portrayed in the form of a baboon.

  In Legends of the Gods: The Egyptian Texts, British Egyptologist Sir E. A. Wallis Budge writes of the relationship of Thoth with the ancient Egyptian god Ra and of the various forms Thoth could take.

  Figure 5.1. Thoth, in one of his forms as an ibis-headed man

  Thoth was to be his vicar, to fill his place, and “Place of Ra” was to be his name. He gave him power to send out a messenger (hab), so the Ibis (habi) came into being. All that Thoth would do would be good (khen), therefore the Tekni bird of Thoth came into being. He gave Thoth power to embrace (anh) the heavens, therefore the Moon-god (Aah) came into being. He gave Thoth power to turn back (anan) the Northern Peoples, therefore the dog-headed ape of Thoth came into being. Finally Ra told Thoth that he would take his place in sight of all those who were wont to worship Ra and that all should praise him as God. Thus the abdication of Ra was complete.1

  How then did Thoth come to be associated in these legends with the Great Pyramid and other pyramids too? The following passage (previously presented in chapter 1 of this book) tells how the ancient Egyptians thought of the imminent flood that would destroy their civilization.

  Then Thoth, being the tongue of the Great God declares that, acting for the Lord Tem, he is going to make a Flood. He says: “I am going to blot out everything that I have made. This Earth shall enter into (i.e., be absorbed in) the watery abyss of Nu (or Nunu) by means of a raging flood, and will become even as it was in primeval time. I myself shall remain together with Osiris, but I shall transform myself into a small serpent, which can be neither comprehended nor seen.” Budge explains: “. . . one day the Nile will rise and cover all Egypt with water, and drown the whole country; then, as in the beginning, there will be nothing to be seen except water.”2

  The passage above is believed by the ancient Egyptians to have been the words of the god Ra, although the words were actually spoken through the god Thoth (the “vicar” of Ra), thus Thoth, in speaking these words, is associated with the coming deluge, as the harbinger or messenger of the deluge.

  This is not to say, of course, that the gods Ra and Thoth actually conspired to send a great deluge to destroy the ancient Egyptian kingdom. But to the ancient Egyptians everything, good or bad, was believed to be caused by the desires and the actions of their various gods. That the ancient Egyptian astronomer-priests went away and measured “the height of the stars” (as instructed by Surid) and found something abnormal about their disposition would have been regarded by them as the work of the gods. And the great future deluge they believed would arise as a result of the displacement of the heavens would also have been regarded as the will and work of the gods. And that they had even managed in the first place to obtain this knowledge of the abnormal state of the heavens would also have been deemed as wisdom that was bestowed on them by their great god of knowledge and wisdom, Thoth. In this sense, it can be seen how the god Thoth, by imparting knowledge of a future deluge to the king (via his astronomer-priests), would—by extension—become inextricably associated with the means by which the king hoped his kingdom could survive this anticipated calamity; that is, the construction of the pyramid arks.

  In short then, while Thoth may not have been directly responsible as the actual builder of any of the pyramids, the wisdom that this god imparted to the ancient Egyptians—knowledge of a coming deluge—provided the motivation for these pyramids to be constructed.

  But what evidence, if any, is there of Thoth’s association with the Great Pyramid and what connection is there with this and an anticipated deluge? The evidence of such, in my opinion, has always been available to us and is right there in the very name the ancient Egyptians gave to the Great Pyramid and the Giza plateau—Akhet Khufu.

  As stated at the opening of this chapter, to many Egyptologists the term Akhet Khufu is to be interpreted simply as meaning “Khufu’s horizon,” although this translation itself is bound up with many differing views among academics as to what “Khufu’s horizon” actually meant or was. Most academics believe the term is connected with the idea of rebirth in that as the sun is reborn on the eastern horizon each and every day, so the Great Pyramid, as Khufu’s (personal) horizon, would ensure the transfiguration and rebirth of the king each and every day. As Professor Jan Assmann writes:

  In Egyptian the pyramid of Cheops (whose Egyptian name was Khufu) is called akhet of Khufu. Akhet is the threshold region between the sky, the earth, and the underworld; in particular, akhet is the place where the sun rises. The etymological root of the word has the meaning of “blaze, be radiant”; likewise, the hierogly
ph for akhet has nothing in common with the pyramid, but is a pictogram of the sun rising or setting between two mountains. The pyramid does not represent such an akhet, but symbolizes it in an aniconic way. The term of comparison between akhet and pyramid is the idea of “ascent to heaven.” As the sun god ascends from the underworld to the akhet and appears in the sky, so the king interred in the pyramid ascends to heaven by way of his akhet, his threshold of light.3

  This is, of course, all very symbolic and is only one of several attempts by scholars at interpreting the symbolic meaning of the name Akhet Khufu. The Egyptologists also tell us that it was further believed by the ancient Egyptians that the king’s ba and ka (two aspects of the king’s soul) would undertake some alchemical transfiguration into what is known as an akh and that this transformation was facilitated by and occurred within the pyramid. Egyptology further believes that the word akh is related to the physical horizon by virtue of the akh passing through the watery underworld known as the Duat (symbolically or otherwise) to emerge anew on the horizon, where the sun is reborn each and every day. It stands to reason then (according to the Egyptologists) that Khufu’s akhet—his pyramid—must have been where his akh was created through some mysterious transfiguration of the king’s ka and ba and rose forth as an “effective one” from within his own “personal horizon.”

  However, this interpretation of Akhet Khufu put forward by Assmann is all well and good except for the not-insignificant problem that the akhet pictogram for “horizon” (believed to depict the sun rising between two mountains; figure 5.2) did not actually exist when Khufu was building his Great Pyramid, as is implied in Assmann’s quote above. Indeed, this pictogram only came into being around the end of the Fifth Dynasty, long after Khufu and the completion of the early, giant pyramids.

  Notwithstanding this inconvenient fact, the early Old Kingdom of Egypt used, according to the Egyptologists, a different version of the word akhet (interpreted by many Egyptologists also as meaning “horizon”). The pictogram for this supposedly earlier version of the word akhet (horizon) is entirely different from the sun disc between two mounds and invokes instead the use of the ibis (see figure 5.4), which has various translations, inter-alia, “intelligence,” “illumination,” “shining,” “beneficial,” and “useful.”4

  Lehner was probably one of the first academics to recognize the translation problem that these two quite distinct versions of the word akhet present. In Lehner’s view the older term akhet, with the “crested ibis” (figure 5.4), should not be translated as “horizon” at all but instead is to be associated with the “spirit of Khufu.” Lehner writes, “Joining the stars, the king becomes an akh. Akh is often translated as ‘spirit’ or ‘spirit state.’ It derives from the term for ‘radiant light,’ written with the crested ibis. . . . Akh is also the word for ‘effective,’ ‘profitable,’ ‘useful.’”5

  Figure 5.2. The akhet pictogram is believed to represent the sun rising between two mountains.

  But it seems to me that even Lehner fails to properly grasp the precise nature of the term akhet (with the ibis glyph), for while the root etymology of the ibis glyph (akh) may well be associated in some way with “radiant light,” as Lehner and other scholars believe, this should not necessarily or automatically imply that this “radiant light” is to be related to or interpreted as “spirit” or “spirit state” or “spiritual light”; there is another perfectly logical and contextually appropriate interpretation for the “radiant light” interpretation of this enigmatic hieroglyph.

  Here then, through the use of the ibis hieroglyph, in the earliest version of the name Akhet Khufu, we find the first tangible link of the Great Pyramid to the ancient Egyptian god Thoth, who, as stated at the beginning of this chapter, is often depicted by the ibis. But how then is the ibis connected with the concept of a coming deluge, and, more specifically, how can the ibis (akh) be logically and contextually associated with the various interpretations of “intelligence,” “illumination,” “shining,” “beneficial,” and “useful” that Lehner and other academics believe is to be associated with the term akh?

  If the translations given above of the ibis glyph (akh) truly means “intelligence,” “illumination,” “effective,” and so on, then, in terms of an anticipated deluge, it is possible that we can understand how the ibis bird “illuminates” not so much with “radiant light” or “spiritual light” but rather with the light of wisdom.

  In ancient Egypt the ibis was regarded as an “enlightened” bird blessed with the wisdom of Thoth, a wise bird that “heralded the inundation” (of the Nile). As such, it is my opinion that the ibis should not be regarded so much as “shining” in the sense of radiance like the sun or a star (thereby wrongly associating it with “spiritual light” and, by extension, the pyramid as tomb), but rather with the “radiance” or “illumination” that we would today attribute to a clever or wise person (i.e., a “bright spark” or an “enlightened one”). In short, the ibis (akh) need not be regarded as “spirit light” but rather as “one that illuminates with its wisdom.”

  So if the Arab chroniclers are correct in telling us that the early giant pyramids were built as arks to protect against an imminent deluge, then it seems that the very name of the Great Pyramid—Akhet Khufu—is, through the use of the ibis in this name, inextricably associated with the knowledge of a coming “deluge” or “inundation” spoken by Thoth, himself symbolized by the ibis. In short, the use of the ibis in the name of the Great Pyramid, Akhet Khufu, alludes to foreknowledge of a coming inundation.

  Now, just to add some further intrigue, it so happens that there is yet another ancient Egyptian word akhet (spelled the same way) that actually means “time of the flood” or “flood season,” although this version of akhet is generally believed to be associated only with the annual Nile inundation and not the cataclysmic deluge spoken of by Thoth.

  But we can easily determine the difference between the normal, annual inundation of the Nile and the anticipated catastrophic deluge. To recognize this difference requires an understanding of the very basics of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.

  Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics employ a series of signs to impart meaning but also to phonetically spell out a word. These signs could be written horizontally left to right or right to left, or even vertically. When written horizontally, the signs are always read from the direction in which an animal or person is facing. When reading signs in a vertical column, they are always read from top to bottom. As with any language there are little quirks and exceptions to the general grammatical rule, but we need not concern ourselves with such complications; we need only the basics here.

  The second important thing to understand is that ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs did not employ vowels but used only consonants, although signs for some vowel sounds would be developed much later in ancient Egypt. This means that the word for “horizon” (akhet) would be written as “kh t,” and the word for “flood season or flood period” (akhet) would also be written as “kh t.” (Note: although kh is two of our Western letters, phonetically it represents just one sound that is pronounced “ch,” as in “Bach.”) Of course, the ancient Egyptians did not use our alphabet; they had their own phonetic alphabet, which used signs (or multiple signs) that represented specific sounds (phonograms).

  The two images in figures 5.3 and 5.4 show the hieroglyphs for akhet (flood season) and akhet (horizon).

  Figure 5.3. Akhet (flood season)

  Figure 5.4. Akhet (horizon)

  We can see from figures 5.3 and 5.4 that they have three signs in common—the disk with the crossed lines (kh), the half circle (t) and the ellipse (marsh or flooded land glyph), which has no phonetic sound value in this instance. Many words in ancient Egyptian writing were represented by a single sign known as a logogram (or ideogram), which represented the general idea of the word. However, because it was almost impossible to represent abstract ideas with a single sign, ancient Egyptian scribes would use phonograms to assist the
reader in determining the correct word. A phonogram is a sign that corresponds to a specific phonetic value (i.e., sound), and multiple phonograms could be used to spell out the word.

  However, as stated, because the ancient Egyptians did not use any vowels in their writing, this resulted in many words having very similar spellings, so in order to clarify the specific meaning of a particular word the scribes would add additional signs known as “determinatives” to the end of a word where needed, thus giving the general context of the particular word. To understand this basic concept, let us consider the following example using our modern Western alphabet. Try to identify the word in figure 5.5.

  It is quite impossible to know the intended meaning of the word in figure 5.5 because, without vowels, we are not able to read the two letters as a word. It could be run, rain, ruin, urn, or many others. To help identify the specific word intended, the Egyptian scribes would often present a clue in their writing to make the word clear. This clue might be a logogram at the beginning of the word (or when required, a determinative at the end of the word) to symbolize the general idea of the word.

  Figure 5.5. What is this word?

  Figure 5.6. The cloud logogram symbolizes RaiN.

  With the inclusion of a logogram (the cloud symbol) in the above example we can now understand exactly how the word is to be interpreted—as “rain.” (Note: while logograms at the beginning of the word have phonetic values, determinatives at the end of the word do not and are completely silent. In the example in figure 5.5, the cloud sign would have the phonetic value “r,” which would then be spelled out with the phonetic compliment “r.”)