The above passage presents us with a dramatic scene of the death of the ‘Osiris’ king and tells how his ‘resurrection’ was attended by his son or successor, the new king identified as Horus. The material components of the rebirth rites such as the pyramid tomb itself, and the sarcophagus and coffin, are symbols of the sky-goddess Nut. Mark Lehner has an interesting interpretation of this particular passage of the Pyramid Texts:The king’s tomb was also a cosmic womb, an idea articulated in the Pyramid Texts (616d-f): ‘You are given to your mother, Nut, in her identity of the coffin; She has gathered you up, in her identity of the sarcophagus; You ascend to her in her identity of the tomb.’ This suggests that the sloping pyramid passages descending to the burial chamber was seen in fact as ‘ascending’ to Nut in the Netherworld. The word for Netherworld was the Duat, often written with a star in a circle, a reference to Orion, the stellar expression of Osiris, in the Underworld. Osiris was the ‘Lord of the Duat’, which, like the celestial world (and the real Nile Valley) was both a water world and an earthly realm.
The lines which state that ‘Horus has reassembled your members for you, and he will not let you perish; he has put you together, and nothing shall be disturbed in you. Horus has set you up, and there shall be no unsteadiness’ are very suggestive of a mutilation ritual performed on the king’s body perhaps in re-enactment of the mutilation of Osiris’s body by Seth as reported in other narratives of this god’s death.41 Margaret Murray42 was convinced that the myth of Osiris was constantly re-enacted by the pharaohs, and that was ‘perhaps the most perfect example of that belief which is found in so many countries viz. that God is incarnated in man, which belief is usually accompanied by the rite of killing the Divine Man’.43 According to Murray: The chief centres of Osiris-worship were Abydos in the south and Busiris in the north; the difference in rituals shows that at Abydos the emphasis was laid on the death of the god, at Busiris on the resurrection. At Abydos there seems to have been a mystery play, showing forth the passion, death, burial, and resurrection of Osiris. In Ptolemaic times this was a puppet play, but under the pharaohs the performers were living actors and there is little doubt that in early times the men who took the parts of Osiris and Setekh [Seth] were actually sacrificed . . . in the beginning it was the ruler who suffered, later a substitute was put to death.44 . . . Seth was one of the most important gods of Egypt . . . his worship seems to have been very primitive, and includes human sacrifice, probably the sacrifice of the king . . . Seth is closely connected with the sacrifice of the king. That strange priest, Kha-bau-Seker, who appears to have been the chief officiant in the shrine of Anubis, also held high office in the shrine of Seth; on both accounts I take him to be the executioner of the king or of the royal substitute. He belonged to the Third Dynasty . . . possibly . . . the priest of Seth was the appointed executioner to the divine king.45
Intriguingly, Murray discusses the role of Seshat in the ‘Stretching of the Cord’ ceremony, and adds that:Another of her [Seshat’s] function functions was to record the name of the king on the leaves of the Tree of Life,46 so that his name might remain for evermore. But as her earliest known priest, the sinister Kha-bau-Seker of Memphis, was also the priest of Anubis and Seth and therefore connected with the death of the Incarnated God (the king), it is possible that Seshat was the deity who calculated the length of the king’s life.47
One role for Seshat was that she be ‘the deity who calculated the length of the king’s life’; the other was helping the king in ‘stretching the cord’ to align his tomb towards the circumpolar stars and specifically the constellation of the bull’s thigh (the Plough). This constellation, as we have seen in Chapter Three, is the ‘Thigh of Seth’48 and has seven bright stars. According to Wainwright, the pharaoh were originally allocated by Seshat reigns of seven years or increments thereof. It would be somewhat perverse not to see in the seven stars of the Plough some common denominator between the two roles of Seshat. Be that as it may, Murray’s views that Seshat was the ‘deity who calculated the length of the king’s life’ and consequently fixed the time of his death is also shared by Wainwright, who wrote that:. . . as religious ideas developed and anthropomorphic [human shaped] gods in heaven emerged, the priest or king becomes the incarnated god here on earth, where he acts for his heavenly prototype. But here a difficulty supervenes, for man, even the most divine, is but mortal. Hence the divinity within him would grow old and feeble as its human shrine became more decrepit and infirm. As this cannot be allowed, the holder should lay down his life whilst still in his prime, so as to pass on the power to his successor in its full vigour . . . The manner and period of the divine death vary greatly. Very often the king had to commit suicide at the appointed time . . . In Egypt it will be seen that Seth, the Storm-God, had been liable to death, and tradition states that the death had been by fire. But in historic times he, and the pharaoh his representative, were able to escape . . .49
Wainwright believed that many of these older sky gods ‘were so ancient that they were lost during historic times’, and that among the few that did survive were Horus, Seth and Seshat.50 In Utterances 570-1 of the Pyramid Texts, the king claims that,I escape my day of death just as Seth escaped his day of death. I escape my half-month of death just as Seth escaped his half-month of death. I escape my month of death just as Seth escaped his month of death. I escape my year of death just as Seth escaped his year of death. Do not break up the ground, O you arms of mine which lift up the sky as Shu [the air-god]; my bones are iron and my limbs are the Imperishable Stars. I am a star which illumines the sky, I mount up to the god that I may be protected, for the sky will not be devoid of me and this earth will not be devoid of me for ever. I live beside you, you gods of the Lower Sky, the Imperishable Stars . . .51
I am the redness which came forth from Isis, I am the blood which issued from Nephtys. I am firmly bound up at the waist, and there is nothing which the gods can do for me, for I am the representative of Re, and I do not die. Hear, O Geb [earth-god], chief of the gods, and equip me with my shape; hear O Thoth, in who is the peace of the gods. Open, O Horus; stand guard, O Seth, that I may rise in the eastern side of the sky like Re who rises in the eastern side of the sky.52
Then in the Utterance 572, the goddess Isis greets the reborn king with these words:‘How lovely to see, how pleasing to behold!’ says Isis, when you ascend to the sky, your powers upon you, your terror about you, your magic at your feet; you are helped by Atum just as he used to do, the gods who are in the sky are brought to you, the gods who are on earth assemble for you, they place their hand under you, they make a ladder (pyramid?) for you that you may ascend on it to the sky, the doors of the sky are open for you, the doors of the starry firmament are thrown open for you . . . Have they killed you or said that you shall die? You shall not die, but you shall live forever.53
The events described above which clearly take place among the circumpolar stars do so at dawn and at the time of the heliacal rising of Sirius. This stellar conjunction is further emphasised in Utterance 573, where the departed king addresses Horakhti (Horus of the Horizon) with these words:May you wake [rise] in peace, O Purified, in peace! May you wake in peace, O Horus of the East, in peace! May you wake in peace, O Soul of the East, in peace! May you wake in peace, O Horakhti, in peace! . . . O my father [Osiris], take me with you to your mother Nut, that the doors of the sky may be opened for me and that the doors of the firmament may be thrown open for me. I am on my way to you that you may nourish me, command that I shall sit beside you, beside Him [Horakhti] who at the morning tide is on the horizon . . . give command to Him who has life, the son of Sothis [Horus-Sirius as the ‘son’ of Canis Major], that he may speak on my behalf and establish my seat in the sky . . .54
From the above passages we can reconstruct a complete astronomical image of the sky at the time of the heliacal rising of Sirius in c. 2800 BC for the location of Heliopolis. Using an astronomical programme such as StarryNight Pro. or StarMap, we can see that this event took
place about one hour before sunrise on the day of the summer solstice. At this time the constellations of Orion and Canis Major would have dominated the eastern horizon. We can also see that in the north the Plough/bull’s thigh was standing upright with the ‘hoof’ star at about 4° 30′ east (to the right) of the northern meridian and about 16° above the horizon line. The first appearance of Sirius at dawn after the 70 days in the underworld was the signal for cosmic rebirth, and for the portals of the Duat to open to receive the departed king among the circumpolar stars. We can see why, perhaps, the priestess of Seshat took such great care to assist the king in aligning his pyramid or funerary complex towards this region of the sky and - as in the case of the Step Pyramid - to synchronise the observation with the rising of Sirius in the east. Perhaps it was at this moment that the ‘reckoning of the life-years’ for the new king was worked out by the priestess of Seshat and recorded on the famous notched palm branch. Seshat, it will be recalled, was also closely related to the heb-sed festival. Bearing this in mind, here is what Henri Frankfort, who was Professor of Pre-classical Antiquity at London University and Director of the Warburg Institute, wrote in his book Kingship and the Gods:The Sed festival is usually called a jubilee, but it was not a mere commemoration of a king’s accession. It was a true renewal of kingly potency, a rejuvenation of rulership ex opere operato. Sometimes it was celebrated thirty years after the accession, but several rulers celebrated it repeatedly and at shorter intervals. It is unlikely that the mere counting of years was the decisive factor, but we do not know on what grounds it was decided that the king’s power ought to be renewed . . .
Also according to Frankfort, the heb-sed festival was performed at a very special time of year, which was. . . the same as that reserved for the coronation, namely, the first day of the first month of the ‘Season of Coming Forth’ - the first of Tybi. The last five days of the preceding month, Khoiak, were dedicated to the Osiris mysteries; and it is remarkable that the Sed festival, in contrast to the coronation, does not refer to Osiris at all. But the difference is easily explained. At the (heb) Sed festival the king appears, not as newly ascending the throne, but as its occupant through a number of years. Consequently, it is not the succession - Horus following Osiris - which is the issue, but a renewal of all those beneficial relations between heaven and earth the throne controls.55
Could the priestess of Seshat and her observations of the seven stars of the Plough have been the basis of the computation of the king’s reign and, in primitive times, the determination of the date of his ritual death?
APPENDIX 6
The Cattle People and the Stars
By Robert Bauval
There was a time when the Nile Valley in Egypt was not the docile fertile place we see today but a very inhospitable marshland infested with reptiles and plagued with diseases. And when the last Ice Age began to break at around 12,000 BC, monstrous floods came rolling down the Nile from the lakes in Central Africa that were swollen by the relentless monsoons, washing everything along their way and making life in the Nile Valley unliveable. But gradually the climate warmed up and stabilised. The marshes slowly receded, and the soggy mangroves gave way to a fine green valley bordering the desert. In June the now-more gentle floods would come and drench the adjacent land with rich fertilizers, turning the valley into a giant farm. By September the high waters would recede, and with the warmth and sunshine that is the blessing of Egypt, the valley would become a cornucopia of vegetables, fruits and cereals. By 5000 BC this yearly process made Egypt into a Shangri-la that was the perfect place for the world’s first civilisation to take root and flourish.
West of the Nile Valley was the vast Sahara desert where, from time immemorial, a prehistoric people lived in organised pastoral communities. They were tall, lean and dark-skinned. It was these people who first domesticated cattle, first grew cereals, first created time-keeping methods, first studied the sky, first created a calendar, first used the stars and the sun to keep time and to navigate, and first buried their dead in ceremonial graves. Their cattle were their most precious possession, acting as their ‘walking larder’. Because of this last trait, anthropologists have called these mysterious desert people ‘The Cattle People’.
Each year in June the monsoon rains would drench the Sahara and fill up the depressions. In that way, temporary lakes were formed all over the otherwise-arid landscape. And a few months later, in September, the lakes would dry up, forcing the Cattle People to move vast distances in search of water holes. It was, then, a matter of life and death that they be able to know exactly where and when the lakes would fill up again. One such temporary lake - today known as Nabta Playa - was located 100 kilometres west of the Nile. Here the Cattle People would come in late June and set up camp and remain till the lake dried up in autumn. For several millennia they came each summer to Nabta using the sun and the stars to find their way. Around 5000 BC, however, they stayed permanently at Nabta by digging wells, and thus had water to sustain them during the dry season. With time on their hands and no more need to move, the Cattle People became stargazers and developed a ‘sky-religion’ with complex rituals and ceremonies. They had long known that the monsoon coincided with the rising sun at summer solstice, and also had noted the re-appearance of Orion’s belt and Sirius after a protracted spell of invisibility. They also used the circumpolar stars, especially those of the Big Dipper, to time the rising and setting of stars. Around 4800 BC they developed a huge ceremonial complex, a sort of Stonehenge to observe the sun and the stars. But around 3300 BC the weather changed, the monsoons stopped, and the lakes and wells dried up…forever. Nabta was abandoned, and with their cattle and their cargo of knowledge, the Stargazers migrated eastwards towards the Nile Valley, and the memory of them gradually faded as the centuries rolled by…
In the winter of 1974, after a strenuous drive through the Eastern Sahara, an American anthropologist named Fred Wendorf stopped for a ‘comfort break’ at Nabta Playa. As he looked around him, he noticed strange conglomeration and stones placed in circles and in lines. He also noticed mounds which proved to be cattle burials. It was not until 1997 that astronomer Kim Malville joined Wendorf at Nabta and very quickly realised that the stones had astronomical significance. According to Wendorf and Malville, Nabta is the oldest ceremonial astronomical complex in the world, and that,… the complex and symbolic Nabta culture may have stimulated the growth of the society that eventually constructed the first pyramids along the Nile about 4,500 years ago … The Nabta culture may have been a trigger for the development of social complexity in Egypt that later led to the Pharaonic dynasty ...
The Nabta Playa complex is some 2.5 kilometres long and 1.5 kilometres wide. Its focus is a group of large boulders labelled by Wendorf as CSA (Complex Structure A). From here radiate six lines of standing stones shooting eastwards like the ‘spokes of a bicycle wheel’. Not far from CSA is a ‘Calendar Circle’ or ‘Cromlech’ made of 28 standing stones, with two lines of sight, one north-south marking the equinox sunrise, and the other running 28° southeast marking the summer solstice sunrise. Carbon-14 analysis gave a date of 4800 BC. West of CSA are ten tumuli looking like flattened igloos containing the bones of cattle. One tumulus contained a complete skeleton of a young cow. Carbon-14 gave the date of 5270 BC. South of the tumuli are some thirty small megalithic structures with their stones arranged in oval patterns with a standing slab at their centres. Nearly all the slabs were oriented due north. When CSA was excavated, a large boulder roughly shaped like a cow was found buried at a depth of 3 metres. Many of the standing stones at Nabta resembled human torsos, perhaps representing the ancestors. No human burials were found at Nabta Playa. Human burials, however, were found some 20 kilometres from Nabta at a place called Gebel Ramlah. Carbon-14 analysis gave the date of 4360 BC. All this strongly suggests that Nabta Playa served as a gathering place for the prehistoric people of the Eastern Sahara spanning several millennia and where ‘sky’ rituals were performed in association with a s
acred ‘cattle’ cult - extraordinarily similar to what the pharaohs were to later do throughout their civilisation, as we shall soon see.
According to Wendorf and Malville, at Nabta,there are six megalithic alignments extending across the sediment of Nabta Playa … like the spokes of a wheel, each alignment radiates eastward from Complex Structure A (CSA) … according to our analysis, these lines coincide with the rising position of three prominent stars during the period 4800 - 3700 BC: Sirius (the brightest stars in the sky), Dubhe (the brightest stars in Ursa Major), and the stars in the belt of Orion.
Three lines had tracked the star Dubhe from 4742 BC to 4199 BC. Two other lines had tracked Orion’s belt from 4176 BC to 3786 BC. A sixth line had tracked Sirius around 4820 BC. The implications were enormous. For this confirmed two things: (1) Nabta Playa was the oldest astronomical prehistoric complex in the world, predating Stonehenge by several millennia, and (2) the stargazers of Nabta knew about the precession of the equinoxes, since they had tracked stars over a period of nearly 1,000 years!
But this was not all.
Several years later, in 2003, an independent amateur astronomer named Thomas Brophy made an astounding discovery at Nabta Playa. Wanting more accurate coordinates of the megaliths, Brophy teamed with NASA physicist Paul Rosen who managed to obtain high resolution satellite images of Nabta with the Quickbird satellite. Their calculations showed that one of the sets of lines radiating from CSA had been aimed at Orion’s belt at 6270 BC. Furthermore they also showed that two sets of three stones within the Calendar Circle represented the three stars of Orion’s belt at two dates: 6270 BC and 16,500 BC. In his book The Origin Map: Discovery of a Prehistoric, Megalithic, Astrophysical Map and Sculpture of the Universe, Brophy made extensive reference to the ‘Orion’s Belt Correlation Theory’ involving the Giza Pyramid which, as I had shown in 1994, also represented Orion’s belt at two dates: 2500 BC and 11,500 BC. Realising that this could hardly be a coincidence, Brophy believed there was a link between the astronomy of the Nabta Playa and that of the Giza necropolis. I, too, began to suspect as much. I knew, for example, that the ancient Egyptians since time immemorial had an ‘alignment ceremony’ called ‘stretching the cord’ during which the king assisted by a priestess who impersonated a goddess called Seshat aligned the axis of the monuments to a star in the Big Dipper, probably Dubhe. It is also well-known that they observed and tracked the risings and transits of the stars or also knew that the alignment somehow also involved a star in Orion’s belt and Sirius. With such uncanny similarities it would seem perverse not to suppose that a connection existed between Nabta and Giza, especially when we know that about the time the Stargazers of Nabta made their exit from history in 3300 BC, the pharaonic civilisation made its entry into history at a location less than 100 miles from Nabta!
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