In Ancient Egypt
Aqenenre is believed to have been the throne name of a Hyksos King called Khamudy. Accepted history has it that the Theban King Ahmose drove Khamudy and his Hyksos people out of the Delta Region of Lower Egypt. Consequently Ahmose is thought of as more of an Egyptian King than being Semite himself. Yet there are indications that the Hyksos of Lower Egypt were his relations. The features of his descendant Amenhotep III are undoubtedly Semitic, and not at all like those of the Southern Native Egyptians. Aqenenre is sometimes translated as 'The Spirit of Re', but this doesn't look at all right. The Cartouche contains 'A Sun Disk' - Re, 'A Wooden Column' - Ah Uh, 'A Hill Slope' - K, and two determinatives, an Arm and Two Water Ripples. Reading the Sun disk first, we then have 'Ra Ahuh K', Sacred Water (Baptiser?). A Scribe just reading the first two glyphs could have taken the name as RA Uh, which would account for the different name, Reu instead of Ragau in Genesis. Beketaten is shown in a scene in the tomb of Huya, a steward of Queen Etiye. She is only described as the 'King's Daughter' and it is not clear whether her father was Ymnhtp III or Akhenaten. Outside of the years when 'Aten' was the One God, her name would not have included the God name 'Aten', and instead would have had the name of either the Hidden One, 'YMN', or the older and more general name for God, 'RE'. We can be reasonably certain that her name was then 'Rebeke' or 'Rebeket'. The 't' suffix indicates feminine, and anyone knowing her would not have seen it necessary to add the 't'. Besides we do know that the name Rebecca subsequently became a popular name among her Hprw people. 'How to Read Egyptian' by Collier and ManleyThe term b!k 'servant' was often used as a means of stressing the dependent relationship of one person on another and could be used of people who otherwise had high status." Thus the literal meaning of Reb!ket is 'Handmaiden of God'. Massey - 'Ancient Egypt' - "The Egyptians, who were the authors of the mysteries and mythical representation, did not pervert the meaning by an ignorant literalization of mystical matters, and had no fall of man to encounter in the fallacious Christian sense. Consequently they had no need of a redeemer from the effects of that which had never occurred. They did not rejoice over the death of their suffering saviour because his agony and shame and bloody sweat were falsely supposed to rescue them from the consequences of broken laws; on the contrary, they taught that everyone created his own karma here, and that the past deeds made the future fate. The morality was a thousandfold loftier and nobler than that of Christianity, with its delusive doctrine of vicarious atonement and propitiation by proxy. Horus did such or such things for the glory of his father, but not to save the souls of men from having to do them. There was no vicarious salvation or imputed righteousness. Horus was the justifier of the righteous, not of the wicked. He did not come to save sinners from taking the trouble to save themselves. He was an exemplar, a model of the divine sonship; but his followers must conform to his example, and do in life as he had done before they could claim any fellowship with him in death. Except ye do these things yourselves, there is no passage, no opening of the gate, to the land of life everlasting." Massey - 'Ancient Egypt' - "Whilst the mummy was being prepared for burial, chapters of the Ritual were read to it, or to the conscious ka, by an official who was known as the man of the roll. Every Egyptian was supposed to be acquainted with the formula, from having learned them during his lifetime, by which he was to have the use of his limbs and possession of his soul restored to him in death, and to be protected from the dangers of the nether-world. These were repeated to the dead person, however, for greater security, during the process of embalming, and the son of the deceased, or the master of the ceremonies, took care to whisper to the mummy the most mysterious parts, which no living ear might hear with impunity. (Maspero, The Struggle of the Nations, Eng. trans., pp. 510, 5 I I.) But it is an error to suppose with some Egyptologists, like M. de Horrack, that the new existence of the deceased was begun in the old earthly body (Proceed. Society of Bib. Archaeology, vol. vi., March 4, 1884, p. 126). The resurrection of the dead in mummy form may look at first sight as if the old dead corpse had risen from the sepulchre. But the risen is not the dead mummy, it is a type of personality in the shape of the mummy. It is what the Ritual describes as the mummy-form of a god. The Manes prays, "May I too arise and assume the mummied form as a god", that is, as the mummy of Osiris, the form in which Amsu-Horus rose, a type of permanent preservation, but not yet one of the spirits made perfect by possession of the ka. It was this mistake which led to a false idea that the Egyptians held the dogma of a corporeal resurrection of the dead which became one of the doctrines that were fostered into fixity by the A-Gnostic Christians. The Osiris as mortal Manes, or Amsu-Horus as divinity, does rise in the mummy form, but this is in another life and in another world, not as a human being on our earth. It has the look of a physical resurrection in the old body, and so the ignorant misinterpreters mistook it and founded on it a corporeal basis for the future life. In the Christian scheme the buried dead were to rise again in the old physical corpus for the last judgment in time at the literal ending of the world. This was another delusion based on the misrendering of the Egyptian wisdom. The dead who rose again in Amenta, which was the ground floor of a future state of existence, also rose again for the judgment; but this took place in the earth of eternity which was mistaken by the Christians for the earth of time, just as they had mistaken the form of the risen sahu for the old body of matter that never was supposed to rise again by those who knew. The earthly mummy of the deceased does not go to heaven, nor does it enter the solar boat, yet the Osiris is told to enter the boat, his reward being the seat which receives his sahu or spirit mummy (Rit., ch. 130). Clearly this can only refer to the spiritual body, as the earthly mummy was left on the earth outside the gates of Amenta. Not only is the corporeal mummy not placed on board the boat of souls, the deceased was to be represented by a statue of cedar wood anointed with oil, or, as we might say, Christified (134,9, 10). There is no possible question of a corporeal resurrection. The object, aim, and end of all the spiritualizing processes is to become non-corporeal in the earthly sense - that is, as the Ritual represents it, to defecate into pure spirit. The word sahu (or the mummy) is employed to express the future form as well as the old. But it is a spiritual sahu, the divine mummy. Even the bones and flesh of souls are mentioned but these are the bones of Osiris, the backbone of the universal frame, and the flesh of Ra. The terms used for the purpose of divinizing are antipodal to any idea of return to corporeality as a material mummy. The mummy of the Manes is a sahu of the glorified spirit. This state of being is attained by the deceased in chapter 73: "I am the beloved son of his father. I come to the state of a sahu of the well-furnished Manes". He is said to be mummified in the shape of a divine hawk when he takes the form of Horus (78, 15, 16), not as the earthly mummy in a resurrection on our earth. The resurrection of Osiris was not corporeal. The mummy of the god in matter or mortality rises from the tomb transubstantiated into spirit. So complete is the transformation that he is Osiris bodily changed into Horus as a sahu or spirit The Egyptians had no doctrine of a physical resurrection of the dead. Though they retained the mummy as a type of personality, it was a changed and glorified form of the earthly body, the mummy that had attained its feet in the resurrection. It was the Karast mummy, or, word for word and thing for thing, Amsu-Horus was the Kamite Christ who rose up from the mummy as a spirit. Also it is entirely false to represent the Egyptians as making the mummy and preserving it for the return of the soul into the old earthly body. That is but a shadow of the true idea cast backwards by Christianity. Millions of cats were made into mummies and sacredly preserved around the city of Bubastes, but not with the notion of a bodily resurrection. They were the totems of the great cat clan or its metropolis, the Egyptian "Clan Chattan", which had become symbols or fetishes of religious significance to later times when the totemic mother as the cat, the seer by night, was divinized in the lunar goddess Pasht, and the worshippers embalmed her zootype, not because they adored the cat, but because the deess herself was the Great Mother typified by the cat. Both the mother and the moon were recognized beyond the cat, which was their totemic zootype and venerated symbol. Osiris was the mummy of Amenta in two characters; in one he is the khat-mummy lying laid out with corpse-like face upon the funeral couch, in the other he is the mummy risen to his feet and reincorporated in the glorious body. These two characters were continued as the Corpus Christi and the risen Christ in Rome. Hence in the iconography of the catacombs the Egyptian mummy as Osiris-sahu, and as Horus the new-born solar child, are the demonstrators of the resurrection for the Christian faith, where there is no testimony whatever to an historical event. Any time during the last 10,000 years the mummy made for burial in the tomb was imaged in the likeness of Osiris in Amenta, who, though periodically buried, rose again for ever as the type of life eternal. In making the mummy of Osiris the Egyptians were also making an image of the god who rose again in spirit as Osiris-sahu or as Horus divinized, the risen Christ of the Osirian cult. When the lustrations were performed with water in Tattu and the anointings with oil in Abydos, it was what may be termed a mode of Christifying or making Horus the child of earth into Horus the son of god who became so in his baptism and anointing that were represented in the mysteries. The first Horus was born of the virgin, not begotten. The second Horus was begotten of the father, and the child was made a man of in his baptismal regeneration with the water and with unction, with the oil of a tree or the fat of a bull. Tony Bushby - 'The Crucifixion of Truth' - "Few people will have heard of the Sibylline Books and the insight they contain. They are a collection of prophecies written by a woman named Herophile (circa 500 BC) who lived in a cave near the ancient town of Cumae, in Campania, Italy. Herophile lived some 500 years before the commencement of the Christian era and appeared before the king of ancient Rome, Tarquin the Proud ('traditionally 510 BC'). For the pricey sum of 300 gold pieces she offered to sell him nine volumes of her perplexing writings called The Mysteries of Osiris and Isis. " Tarquin eventually purchased three of the volumes and priests were appointed to interpret the writings. The original collection was jealously guarded in the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus and frequently consulted by priests for guidance before prayers were addressed to some of the ancient Roman Gods. It was believed that the Sibylline books were possessed with the power of divination. Though the originals perished in a fire there were by then many copies in other temples, and eventually some portions of the old Egyptian wisdom found their way into the New Testament and was named 'The Book of Revelation'. Massey - 'Ancient Egypt' - "In the first place, the subject of Revelation was not derived from the canonical gospels. The fundamental matter existed ages on ages earlier. The cult of the lamb and the bride is at least as old in the astronomical mythology as the time when the vernal equinox entered the sign of Aries, and the lamb of Sebek succeeded the calf of Horus on the mount as the type of sacrifice in the cult of the Sebek-heteps in Egypt (Nat.Genesis). The doctrinal teaching of the mysteries is also partially apparent in Revelation and in the other writings ascribed to "John". The process of making Scripture history from the Egypto-gnostic remains, without the gnosis or science of the ancient wisdom, may be seen approaching its climax in the Book of Revelation attributed to John the divine. It has been commonly assumed that this book constituted an historic link between the Old Testament and the New; but the Sarkolatrae, or worshippers of the word made flesh in one historic form of personality, the carnalizers of the Egypto-gnostic Christ, have never yet discovered what the revelation was intended to reveal. It has been taken as a supplement to the Gospels as if the history of Jesus had been continued into the wedded life after the marriage of the bride with the lamb, and that they dwelt together ever after in that new Jerusalem which came "down out of heaven" "as a bride adorned for her husband," when the tabernacle of God which was to dwell with man took the place of the old Jerusalem that was destroyed by the Romans. The present contention is that the book is and always has been inexplicable because it was based upon the symbolism of the Egyptian astronomical mythology without the gnosis, or "meaning which hath wisdom," that is absolutely necessary for an explanation of its subject-matter; and because the d�bris of the ancient wisdom has been turned to account as data for pre-Christian prophecy that was supposed to have had its fulfilment in Christian history. For example, the lamb alone has power to open the book of seven seals. His power comprised the powers of the "seven spirits of God", the primordial seven. And, as represented astronomically, when the vernal equinox passed from the sign of Taurus into the sign of Aries the son of God was imaged as a lamb, instead of the earlier calf or still earlier lion; thenceforth his was the power and the glory and the majesty, and his the book of life then newly-opened, in the cycle of precession for another 2,155 years. But in the Book of Revelation the drama of the mysteries has been mistaken for human history, and a mythical catastrophe for the actual ending of the world. The book as it stands has no intrinsic value and very little meaning until the fragments of ancient lore have been collated, correlated, and compared with the original mythos and eschatology of Egypt. To some extent we are now able to identify the wisdom of Egypt in the Book of Revelation and to "make sense" of the apocalyptic visions, so long and so erroneously assumed to have been unveiled to a Christian named John in the isle of Patmos, for the first time since the ancient astronomy was made nonsense of in the futile and fatuous attempt to turn the hidden wisdom into prophecy intended to prove the truth of a spurious history." Massey - 'Ancient Egypt' - "For the Hebrew versions of the astronomical mythology in Revelation and in the Book of Enoch could not have been comprehended while the world lasts without the restitution of the Egyptian original as gloss and guide. Enoch, like John, was in the spirit. His internal sight was opened, and he beheld a vision which was in the heavens. But his vision was admittedly astronomical. In it he "beheld the secrets of the heavens and of paradise according to its divisions" (ch. 41) The record of his visions is called "the book of the revolutions of the luminaries of heaven"; and is said to contain "the entire account of the world for ever, until a new work shall be effected, which will be eternal" (ch. 71). Enoch says, "I beheld the ancient of days, whose head was like white wool, and with him another whose countenance resembled that of man", and who is called the "Son of Man" in contradistinction to the "son of the woman" (ch. 46). "I beheld the ancient of days, while he sat upon the throne of his glory, and the book of the living was opened in his presence, and while all the powers which were above the heavens stood armed and before him" (ch. 47, 3). Enoch was "elevated aloft to heaven". He saw the new Jerusalem. It was a spacious habitation built with stones of crystal, with walls and pavement all of crystal. He saw that the new heaven contained an exalted throne, the appearance of which was like that of frost. To look upon it was impossible. One great in glory sat upon it, whose robe was brighter than the sun, and whiter than the snow. No mortal could behold him. "Then the Lord with his mouth called me, saying, Approach hither, Enoch, at my holy word" (ch. 14) He sees the giants who had been the watchers in heaven as rulers of the seven colossal constellations of the heptanomis in "their beginning and primary foundation" (ch. 15). Seven watchers are called up for judgment, and when tried are found to have been unfaithful to their trust because they came not in their proper season. They are judged, found guilty, and cast down into the flaming abyss like the seven mountains overthrown in Revelation. There is also another great judgment day commemorated in the Book of Enoch. This is the judgment of the seventy. Enoch says, "I saw the throne erected in a delectable land. Upon this sat the Lord of the sheep, who received all the sealed books, which were opened before Him. Then the Lord called the first seven white ones, saying, Take those seventy shepherds; and behold, I saw them all bound, and all standing before Him. First came on the trial of the stars. Then the seventy shepherds were judged, and, being found guilty, were thrust into the flaming abyss into which the primary seven had been previously plunged" (Enoch, ch. 89). The seventy were rulers, angels, princes, watchers, timekeepers, here called shepherds in a heaven of ten divisions, which preceded the twelve and the seventy-two. This is the heaven of the Ritual, attained by spirits perfected upon the mount of glory; the paradise of peace upon the summit of Mount Hetep at the "Atlantean pole" consisting of ten divine domains which answer in the eschatology to the ten islands or celestial nomes in the Astronomy. Thus, it is apparent that a great judgment of Maat upon the mount, as represented in the Ritual, was uttered in or at the end of the heaven in ten divisions. And this had previously taken place when the seven rulers were overthrown, and the heaven in seven divisions passed away." Massey - 'Ancient Egypt' - "....the injunctions at the end of the book (Revelation) should be compared with the Rubrical Instructions of the Ritual. The writer of Revelation says, "Blessed is he that keepeth the words of the prophecy in this book. I testify unto every man that heareth the words of prophecy of this book. If any man shall add unto them, God shall add unto him the plagues which are written in this book; and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy city, which are written in this book" (22:7,18,19). In the Ritual, at the end of the book by which the soul of the Osiris is perfected in the bosom of Ra, it is said, "Let not this be seen by anyone except the minister of the funeral and the king. By this book (or according to it) the soul of the deceased shall make its exodus with the living and prevail amongst, or as, the gods. By this book he shall know the secrets of that which happened in the beginning. No one else has ever known this mystical book or any part of it. It has not been spoken by men. No eye hath deciphered it, no ear hath heard it. It must only be seen by thee and the man who unfolded its secrets to thee. Do not add to its chapters or make commentaries on it from imagination or from memory. Carry it out (or execute it) in the judgment hall. This is a true Mystery, unknown anywhere to those who are uninitiated" (Rubrical Directions to Rit., ch. 149, Birch; 148, Pierret). Since the Scribe(s) who wrote Revelation did alter the original Rubrical Direction, we can wonder if he or they were cursed. Massey - 'Ancient Egypt' - "It was a common popular tradition that the Christ was of a red complexion, like the child or calf which represented the little red sun of winter and also the Virgin's infant in its more mystical character. Moreover, there is a tradition of a crucified child-Christ who was coloured red like "the calf in the paintings". Among "the portraits of God the son" Didron cites one in a manuscript of the fourteenth century which answers to the red Christ as a co-type of the red calf. The manuscript "contains a miniature of the priest Eleazar sacrificing a red cow", and "opposite to this miniature is one of Christ on the cross". "Jesus is entirely naked, and the colour of his skin is red; he is human, poor and ugly". The red Christ, equivalent to the red Horus, is here identified with the red cow and therefore with the red calf of the Ritual, which was a symbol of the little red sufferer, the "afflicted one" in the winter solstice. In some of the mystery-plays the Christ wore a close-fitting, flesh-coloured garment, through which the nails were driven into the wood of the cross. The resurrection robe was always red. Satan wants to know who this man in the "red coat" may be. And when Horus rises again, in the character of the avenger, it is as the "red god". The manes thus addresses him, "O fearsome one, who art over the two earths; Red God, who orderest the block of execution!" (Rit., ch. 17, Renouf). Jesus likewise appears to have been represented as the red God, or the god in red. For "they stripped him and put on him a scarlet robe" (Matt. XXVII. 28). Massey - 'Ancient Egypt' - "In the mystery of opening the mouth and of giving breath to the breathless ones in Amenta, the Egyptians made use of an instrument called the ur-heka, or great magical power. It is sometimes a sinuous, serpent-like rod without the serpent's head. At others it has the head of the serpent on it, united with the head of a ram. Both ram and serpent were types of the deity Khnef, who represented the breath of life or the spirit, Nef, Hebrew Nephesh, which was assumed to enter the Osiris when the mummy's mouth was typically opened to inhale the breath of future existence. Here then is a magical rod that turned into a serpent, which may be seen figured in the Vignettes to the Ritual as a form of the magical rod with which the mouth of the deceased was opened in the mysteries of Amenta. It is held by the tail in the hand of the magician or priest who performs the ceremony of apru, i.e., opening the mouth, in illustration of the chapters by which the mouth is opened in the nether-world (Vignettes to chs. 21, 22, 23). The rod is changed into a serpent at the time when the Lord is desirous for Moses to become his mouthpiece. Moses objects, whereupon the Lord asks, "Who hath made man's mouth? Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth and teach thee what thou shalt speak." The contest ends in Moses having his own way, and in Aaron becoming a mouth to Moses. Moses is to take in his hand the rod wherewith he is to "do the signs" (Ex.IV.1-17). Here then we identify the serpent-rod of the Egyptian priests that was known by name as the great magical power, and it was sometimes a rod, at others a serpent. This we take to be the original of that rod with which the tricks are played in the Hebrew m�rchen by the Lord God of Israel for the purpose of frightening Pharaoh. "And the Lord said unto him (Moses), What is that in thine hand? And he said, A rod. And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent: and Moses fled from before it. And the Lord said unto Moses, Put forth thine hand and take it by the tail. And he put forth his hand and laid hold of it, and it became a rod in his hand" (Ex. IV. 2-5). The type of great magical power is thus turned to account in astonishing the natives and in giving lessons to the magicians of Egypt. In both scenes we have the opening of the mouth. In both we have the serpent-rod with which the signs and wonders are wrought. And it is admitted that Pharaoh had wise men, sorcerers, "magicians of Egypt," who had rods which became serpents as types of transformation. These rods are to be seen in the hands of the wise men portrayed in the Ritual, but not for any such fool's play as is described in the book of Exodus." |
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