[p.321]

ANCIENT EGYPT THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD

BOOK 6

THE SIGN-LANGUAGE OF ASTRONOMICAL MYTHOLOGY

Part 2

The ancient Apt, the first great mother who was the bringer-forth in Apta, as the womb of life, was elevated to the planisphere as bringer-forth in heaven. She was constellated in the Hippopotamus or Great Bear, and called 'the mother of the fields of heaven'; 'the mother of beginnings'; 'the mother of movement in a circle'; 'the mother of the starry revolutions,' or the cycles of time. As such, Apt was the builder of a heaven that was founded on the seven pillars of the heptanomis. Now the most primitive Egyptian type of building is a figure of turning round, as might be in making pottery. The conical pillar, pile, or mound of earth was also a type of this turning round. Thus the heptanomis was built on seven pillars, and the mother of the revolutions was the founder of the heptanomis. How this was built has yet to be explained according to 'The Mystery of the Seven Stars.'[1] The heptanomis of the old Great Mother and her seven sons was followed by the octonary of Am-Khemen, the park or paradise of the eight great gods. This, as we reckon, is the circumpolar enclosure which was founded when Anup, the power of Polaris north, was added to the primordial rulers, or Nomarchs, and whose animal-type, the jackal, remained as guide star in the Lesser Bear[2]. The octonary was one of the 'upliftings of Shu' which are alluded to in the Ritual. The heaven, that is also called the mansion of his stars, which was again and again renewed[3]. Shu had been one of the sustaining powers of the firmament who were known as the seven giants. He then became the elevator of the heaven that was imaged as the cow of Nut; and lastly his was the sustaining power with Atum-Horus in the double equinox. Apparently this change from the heptanomis of the ancient mother and her seven sons to the heaven of the eight great gods upraised by Shu is indicated in the Magic Papyrus[4]. In this the giant of seven cubits is addressed. A divine command is given to him: 'Get made for me a shrine of eight cubits! And as thou hast been (or vast) a giant of seven cubits, I have said to thee, thou canst not enter this shrine of eight cubits. And, as (or although) thou wast a giant of seven cubits, thou hast entered and reposed in it.' The 'giant of seven cubits' in the shrine of seven cubits now gives place to one who 'has the face [p.322] of a Kafi ape, with the head of hair of a monkey Aani.' The type, that is, of the moon-god, Tehuti-Aani, in the shrine of eight cubits, or the heaven of the eight great gods in the enclosure of Am-Khemen the octonary of Taht, upraised by Shu[5]. Aani, the Kafi ape, was Taht's own especial monkey of the moon, and is a sign that the shrine of eight cubits was the octagonal heaven or octonary of Taht, the lunar god which tends to identify this with the enclosure of Am-Khemen that was upraised by Shu. In all likelihood the giant thus addressed is Shu, the lion of the uplifting force.

It is related in very old Egyptian legends that when Shu-Anhur lifted up the paradise or park of Am-Khemen he was compelled to make use of a mound or staircase with steps to it in order that he might reach the height. This mound, says Maspero, was famous throughout all Egypt[6]. The event (as supposed history) took place at Hermopolis, the city of which Taht was lord; therefore we may look to the lunar deity for the origin of the step-mound. A figure of this mound may be seen in vignettes to the Ritual as a pyramid with seven steps called the ladder or staircase of Shu. How then did the steps or stairs of the mound originate as a lunar type of the ascent? and why should the steps be seven in number? The answer is because they were lunar. The moon fulfilled its four quarters in twenty-eight steps; fourteen up and fourteen down. For this reason, Osiris in the moon was represented by an eye at the top of fourteen steps. The moon in its first quarter took seven steps upward from the underworld to the summit, which in the annual reckoning was the equinoctial mount. In other words Shu now made ruse of a lunar reckoning previously established by the moon-god Taht, when the ark of seven cubits was superseded by Am-Khemen. There are two sets of names in the Ritual given to the seven primordial powers in two of their astronomical characters. The first seven are called (1) An-ar-ef the great. (2) Kat-Kat. (3) The Bull who lives in his fire. (4) The Red-eyed One in the House of Gauze. (5) Fiery face which turns backwards. (6) Dark face in its hour, and (7) Seer in the night. The second seven are (1) Amsta. (2) Hapi. (3) Tuamutef. (4) Kabhsenuf. (5) Maa-tef-f. (6) Karbek-f. (7) Har-Khent-an-niaa.ti. The first four of the latter seven are the gods of the four quarters, who stand on the papyrus of earth and who became the children of Horus in a later creation.

In this new heaven raised by Shu another god was born as eighth one to the seven. This was Anup (a form of Sut), as a deity of the north celestial pole. The Egyptian eight great gods consist of 7 + 1. The Phoenician Cabiri were 7 + 1. The Japanese Kami are 7 + 1. In the Vâyu-Purana[7] the group of Rishis, who are usually reckoned as seven, are spoken of as eight in number, and are therefore another group of the 7 + 1. The company of eight British gods were seven with Arthur as the eighth. The seven powers plus one are also to be seen in the seven sleepers of Ephesus and their dog. Moreover, the dog can be identified with Anup as the golden dog or jackal at the pole. When the god of the polestar was appointed in the north it was as an eighth to the seven, and he who was the eighth became the [p.323] supreme one, the head over all, like the occiput at the top of the seven vertebral joints in the backbone of Anup, Ptah or Osiris (which was a figure of the pole.) The head or headland in Egyptian is Ap (or Tep), and the same word signifies the chief, the first, and also the number eight or the eighth. Anup was distinguished from the seven earth-born powers. He is expressly called 'the son of the cow'. That is the son of Nut the cow of heaven; the heaven that was lifted up by Shu in the shape of the cow which brought forth Anup at the pole. Ap-ta-Urt, the cow of earth, had been the mother of the seven, who were reproduced by Nut as the khuti or glorious ones who are eight with Anup added as the power of Polaris. Anup the highest power at the pole, then becomes arranger of the stars in this new heaven of the eight great gods, that was upraised by Shu the giant, who had been one of the primary seven powers. Anup, the eighth, is said to fix the places of the seven glorious ones, who follow after the coffin of Osiris, on the day of 'Come thou hither'; which was the first day of some new creation in the astronomical mythology[8]. In the solar mythos the sun-god took the place of Sut-Anup, who was the earlier maintainer of the equipoise and equilibrium in the revolving system of the heavens. The speaker in the Ritual[9] says, 'I am the god who keepeth opposition in equipoise, as the egg which circles round.' The egg is the sun. But he continues, 'For me there dawneth the moment of the most mighty one Sut' (or Sut­Anup), who was the most mighty one as prevailer on the side of order at the pole before the equilibrium of forces was known to depend upon the power of gravitation and the revolution of the sun. What the sun is at the centre of the solar system, the polestar had been at the centre of the stellar universe in the most ancient astronomy. In place of gravitation the force that swung the system round was represented by a cord or chain attached to the pole as its symbol of controlling power. This eighth one added to the seven primary powers came at times to be designated father of the seven. Thus the eighth was raised to the headship over the seven Japanese Kami. Anup, as representative of the polar star, is lord over the seven Akhemu or non-setting stars. The Phoenician Sydik is father to the seven Cabiri, and he is the just, the righteous one. Which means that he also was a representative of the pole, identical with Anup, who is the judge. The character is the same in relation to the seven earlier powers now called the sons, as the just one, or the judge. 'King of the seven sons of earth' is a title of Anu. Reference is also made to the king of the seven Lu-Masi[10]. This was the god who, as eighth to the seven and the highest of all, was the chief, the suten or king, that is, Sut-Anup, chief to the Kamite seven in the circumpolar heaven of the eight great gods. The Assyrian seven are likewise designated the sons of Eel as the seven Annunaki or earthly Anunnas. Anup the jackal-headed was the primordial judge, but so anciently that he had been superseded by Atum and Osiris in that character. The pictures to the Ritual show him in the judgment-hall reduced to the position of inspector of weights and measures in the presence of Osiris, who has now become the great judge in Amenta. But allusions to the earlier status still remain. As [p.324] it is said in the inscription of Khnumhetep 'all the festivals on earth terminate on the hill' or over the hill of Anup. That is in the eternal feast upon Mount Hetep, the mount of glory in the polar paradise[11]. In the Rig-Veda[12] the habitation of the one god is placed in the highest north 'beyond the seven Rishis.' These are often supposed to be represented by the seven stars in the Great Bear, but erroneously so. The seven Rishis, Urshi or divine watchers were grouped in the Lesser Bear, the stars of which constellation never set. These were the chief of the Akhemu under Anup, god of the polestar. The Subbas or Mandozo, the 'Ancients' of Mesopotamia, are what is called worshippers of the polestar. To this they turn their faces in prayer, and in going to sleep. The reason assigned is that when Hivel Zivo the Subban creator assumed the government of the worlds which he had formed, he placed himself at the limits of the seven Matarathos, at the extreme point of the universe where the polestar was then created to cover him[13]. The original old man of the mountain was unquestionably the ancient deity of the polestar. Hence the group of seven stars which accompany the head of the 'Old Man' on the gnostic stones showing that he was the head over the seven glorious ones[14]. The old man of the mountain then, is Anup, who arranged the stations of the seven on the day of 'Come thou to me.'[15] It is just possible that we may now discover the origin of the mystical eight-rayed star in the numerical symbol of the eight great gods, who consisted of the seven, with Anup, on his mountain, as the eighth and highest in the stellar mythos. In this way: there is a gnostic gem of loadstone figured in King's book on which Anup is portrayed like Horus holding two monstrous scorpions in his hands. He is accompanied by the sun, as a winged scarab, the crescent moon and a star with eight rays[16]. This emblem was given to the solar god in Egypt, Assyria, India and in Rome, but here it is assigned to Anup the supreme one of the eight great gods, and the first who was the eighth to the seven in the octonary of Taht or the ark of eight measures that was lifted up by Shu in the paradise of Am-Khemen.

As the pictures show, the zodiac was founded on the inundation. The mother of water figured in the southern fish, as the womb of source itself, was afterwards repeated on the ecliptic, as the wateress (later Aquarius) with all her myriad mammae streaming from the fount of liquid life, in the abyss, the Tepht, or Tuat, that was localized in the recesses of the south from whence the inundation came, and from which it was perennially renewed. When the zodiac was established, she who had been the mother of water in the south would naturally be given a foremost place. The waterer was now repeated as the multi-mammalian wet-nurse in the sign of Aquarius; the same in character, whether as the southern fish, the water-cow, or the suckler divinized. However represented, earth as the giver of water was the type, and in Egypt the water was the inundation. The first two children of the great mother came into existence as the twin brothers, who contended with each other in the opposite elements of [p.325] drought and water, or darkness and light, and in other phenomena. These twin powers were constellated in the sign of the Twins at the station where the two combatants were first reconciled, that was at the equinoctial level. These then, we reckon, were amongst the earliest founders of the zodiac on some old common meeting-ground of night and day, or drought and inundation which is yet visible for us in the sign of the Gemini. Moreover it is related in the ancient legends and folktales that once upon a time there was a pair of brothers who were twins, and these twin brethren were the builders of a city. A typical illustration may be cited in Romulus and Remus as the mythical twins who are the reputed founders of the city of Rome. In Egypt the brother builders are the Sut and Horus twins. The city which they built was in the heavens, not on earth, and this, the Gemini remained to show, was in the circle of the ecliptic. Thus Sut and Horus, following the great mother, are also founders of the zodiac. The first pair of twins were male. These were followed by a pair in Shu and Tefnut, that were male and female, called the brother and sister. These were twinned, back to back, Shu in front, Tefnut behind, to form the figure of Sagittarius on the other side of the zodiac exactly opposite the Gemini (oblong zodiac of Denderahi).

We reckon Shu, the lion of breathing force and uplifter of the firmament, to be third of the elemental powers born of the ancient genetrix. Shu upraised the heaven of day in one character and the heaven of night in the other. He is a pillar of support to the firmament as founder of the double equinox. He sustains the heaven with his two-pronged stick, his two arms, or with the two lions of force which represent himself and his sister Tefnut the lioness. It was at the equinoctial level that the quarrel of Sut and Horus was settled for the time being by Shu. Shu thus stands for the equinox as the link of connection between Sut and Horus in the north and south. The heaven in two parts, south and north, as the domains of Sut and Horus was now followed by the heaven in three divisions that was upraised by Shu as establisher of the equinox in the more northern latitudes. And this heaven in three divisions was the heaven of the Triangle which preceded the one built on the square by Ptah. Horus and Sut had been the twin builders and the founders south and north. Shu followed with the new foundation in the equinox, which was double, east and west. Sut, Horus, and Shu then, aided by his sister Tefnut, founded the heaven of the triangle based upon the twofold horizon and the crossing. Shu as the equinoctial power is the third to Sut and Horus of the south and north. With him a triad was completed and the two pillars with a line across would form the figure of the triangle s. Thus, the twins in Gemini and Shu in Sagittarius, being the three first of the seven powers, point at least to the equinoctial line being laid in those two signs of the zodiac. More particularly as his sister Tefnut, a form of the great mother, is joined with Shu in constituting the sign of Sagittarius. Thus the three brothers, Sut, Horus and Shu with one female (as the mother or sister) are found together in these two fundamental signs of the zodiac. A third power born of the [p.326] great mother in heaven was now added to the other two. Another of her seven sons was born, or the lion of force (Shu) joined the crocodile (Sebek-Horus) and the hippopotamus Sut, in a trinity of powers that sustained the firmament.

As elemental forces Sut and Horus had been ever lawless combatants and claimants, always fighting for supremacy. When Shu had lifted up the heaven of Am-Khemen as the paradise of peace upon Mount Hetep, 'he reconciled the two warrior gods with each other' and 'with those who had charge of the beautiful creation which he raiseth up.' Law and order were established by putting 'bounds to the contentions of the powers' and by dividing the whole universe from zenith to nadir into the two domains called the portion of Sut and the portion of Horus. The contention between Sut and Horus had originated ages before the satanic character of the Evil One in his anthropomorphic guise had been assigned to Sut. The twin opponents had been on a footing of equality in the stellar, lunar, and solar mythos. But there always was a question of boundaries to be settled. Shu is the arbitrator in the stellar phase[17]. In the lunar stage Taht the moon god was the judge and reconciler of the warring twins. And in the solar mythos Seb, the god of earth, adjudicates—as shown in the mythological text from Memphis[18]. When Ptah had built his mansion in the double earth the two horizons were united, or, as it is said, the double earth became united, 'the union is in the house of Ptah,' and 'the two pillars of the gateway m the house of Ptah are Horus and Sut. The united ones made peace; they fraternized completely. They made a treaty.' Seb says to Horus and Sut, 'there shall be an arbitration between you.' Seb said to Horus, 'come from the place where thy father was submerged,' that is in the north. Seb said to Sut, 'come from the place where thou wast born,' that was in the south. 'A mountain in the midst of the earth unites the portion of Horus to the portion of Sut, at the division of the earth.'[19] This, in the solar mythos, was the mount of the equinox. Now Horus and Sut each stood upon a hillock; they made peace saying 'the two earths meet in Annu for it is the march (border) of the two earths.' In this legend there is a shifting of boundaries from south and north to east and west in the union that is now contracted in the house of Ptah, 'in the house of his two earths in which is the boundary of south and north' that was drawn from east to west by the equinoctial line. 'Here the united ones fraternized completely. They made a treaty'; which was sustained by Seb. And henceforth the twin powers, Sut and Horus, now called Horus and Sut, who had stood as the two pillars, south and north, for the two poles in Apta, are now 'the two pillars of the gateway to the house of Ptah'; which two pillars are afterwards portrayed as the double Tat of eternal stability in the making of Amenta[20].

In this phase the quarrel of Sut and Horus represents the difference between darkness and light in the length of night and day which went on round the year and was rectified at the point or on the mount of equinox. Before the solar god attained his supremacy as the [p.327] determiner of time Shu was the re-adjuster of the power of the equinox. Hence Shu is said to have kept the contention of these warring powers within bounds and brought about their reconcilement[21]. Thus the 'reckonings of Shu' involved the readjustment of the equinoctial point and re-establishing the equilibrium of the equinoxes in the different reckonings of time. Taht the lunar timekeeper does the same thing when he 'balances the divine pair,' and puts a stop to their strife in the circuit of precession[22]. All the year round, except at this point of place, it was one scale up and the other down in the contention of Sut and Horus for the mastery. But at the vernal equinox the scales were at the perfect level and the twins were exactly equal in power for the time, with Horus the fulfiller about to rise in the ascendant. Horus was the bringer of the golden age to earth. This in Egypt was the time of the inundation; in other lands and later days it is the spring-time of the year. The saturnalia was a mode of celebrating this equality at the time of the equinoctial level, by means of various kinds of levelling customs. Slaves were equal with their masters and mistresses. Women were equal to men, the sexes changed clothing with each other, on the natural ground of equality. This saturnalia survived as a relic of the Golden Age called Saturnian by the Greeks and Romans.

In Egypt Sut and Horus changed positions and were figured as Har-Suti, with the hawk of Horus in front and the black Neh or typhonian animal of Sut behind. This reversal represented the change of seasons in relation to the north and south. In Equatoria the desert and the drought were given to the south, which was the domain of Sut. Refreshing rain and cooling breezes came from the domain of Horus in the life-giving north. In Egypt the water and the food of life were brought by Horus of the inundation from the south. Whereas the north in winter was the realm of darkness and of drought, and therefore the domain of Sut became that of the evil elemental power of the twins. The three powers of earth, water, and breath, or Sut, Horus, and Shu, were given stations in the zodiac; the twins, Sut and Horus, in the sign of Gemini, and Shu, as the Archer, in the sign of Sagittarius. The heaven founded on the south and north by Sut and Horus, the Twin Builders, was now followed by the heaven that Shu uplifted in the equinox as the lion of sustaining power, or rather as the dual lion of Shu and Tefnut, his sister, who is seen to be conjoined with him in Sagittarius. Thus far the zodiac was founded on the Great Mother with two pairs of twins; Sut and Horus as the Rehiu lions, with Shu and Tefnut as the ruti or lions of the double horizon, one at each end of the equinoctial line or level where the lost balance of the contending Twins was periodically restored by the reconciler Shu.

In one character Horus is designated 'Horus of the Triangle,' and a theory has been put forward in Germany to the effect that the figure represents the pillar or cone of the zodiacal light. But the unexplained peculiarity of Horus of the Triangle is that his triangle is figured in a reversed position with the apex downwards and the base above, s. Whereas the pillar of zodiacal light was never seen [p.328] bottom-upwards in that way, and never could have been so represented. On the other hand, the triangle which was constellated in 'Triangula,' is, we hold, the figure of a tripartite division of the Ecliptic, and the triple seasons of the Egyptian year. The water-season being represented by Horus; the season of wind, or breathing life, and of the equinoctial gales by Shu; and the season of dryness, or drought, by Sut. These were called the water season, the green season, and the dry season. The three signs of which are (1) 'water,' (2) 'growing plants,' and (3) a barn or storehouse, which showed the crops were harvested. Four months for the water season gives the correct length of the inundation. The Egyptian harvest occurred in the eighth month of the year. Then followed a season of drought and dearth, which came to be assigned to the destroyer Sut. These three seasons can be traced as a basis for the zodiac that was afterwards extended to one of four quarters and twelve signs. Horus of the inundation was given the Lion as a solar zootype. The Archer, four signs further round, was assigned to Shu, the god of breathing force, and four signs are the correct measure of one season, or a tetramene. The Lion and Archer, or Horus and Shu, represent the two seasons of the inundation and of breathing life. The name of the Archer in the Hermean zodiac[23] is Nephtei, and neft signifies the soul or breath. Sut was continued in conflict with Horus in the constellation of the Twins, the power of drought that was opposed to the water of life. Shu was the reconciler of these two continually warring powers, and in the zodiac he represents the green season of vegetation and breathing life that came between the two seasons of water and of drought. This was fundamental, the rest is filling in. The three seasons of four months each would naturally lead to the circle of the ecliptic being measured and divided into three parts, which tripartite division was followed, at a distance, by the Babylonians in their mapping out of the sphere, and continued by them in a far later calendar of twelve signs. The Egyptian month was divided into three weeks of ten days each, which obviously corresponded to the heaven of the triangle, the tripartite ecliptic, and the three seasons in Egypt. Then followed a heaven of four quarters or sides, in which may be traced the houses of Sut, Horus, Shu and Taht; but the division of the month or moon and the ecliptic in three parts equated with the three seasons in a circle or zodiac that was measured monthly by the lunar god with his 3Í10 = 30 days. The two roads of heaven had been divided between the twin brothers Sut and Horus. The three roads were next divided between Sut, Horus, and Shu in the heaven of the triangle that stood as it were upon a tripod, three roads of the south, north, and equinox.

Type after type, the mythical Great Mother and her children passed into the legendary lore of the whole world. The mother and her twins were followed by the mother in the character of sister, who is the companion of three brothers, our Sut, Horus, and Shu in the triangular heaven or triple division, the uranographic symbol of which was constellated in 'Triangula,'i composed of three stars held in the hand of Horus[24]. Three brothers with one female, then, as an Egyptian group, are representatives of the [p.329] Great Mother and her first three sons or elemental powers; the powers represented in her portrait by the water-cow, the crocodile, and lioness. The mother being indicated by the pregnant womb. The same group is also Japanese, consisting of the three (out of seven, or the eight) kami, with their sister Izanani. The three kami, called the 'All-alone-born Kami', our stellar trinity, were gods of the beginning, and are connected with the sister in the raising up of heaven[25]. And when the Christian divinity of a triune nature is portrayed with a triangular aureole upon his head, that figure relates the deity once more to the phenomena in which a god of the Triangle had originated. The god of the Triangle was of a threefold nature in the trinity of Sut, Horus, and Shu, which three were one with the mother in the heaven of the Triangle, the mount with the triple peaks, the ecliptic in three divisions, the year in the three seasons, the month in three weeks. The Triangle, like the Oval, is a figure of the female, as it was on the goddess Nana in Babylonia. The trinity of three males associated with one female, who was originally the Great Mother, survives in two ways still, for whilst they are performing in church four more primitive representatives of the same dramatis personae still keep it up in the pantomime, as in the dumb show of the more ancient mysteries, in the characters of columbine, clown, harlequin, and pantaloon. Harlequin is Liar (or Horus) the transformer. We might say the double Horus, one with and one without the mask. The clown is Sut, the sly and cunning one, whose zootype was the jackal. Pantaloon and his crutch are the remains of Shu and his celestial prop of the pole. Columbine corresponds to Tefnut, the sister of Shu, which explains her peculiar relationship to pantaloon, whom she rejects in favour of harlequin. Now these four appear upon Mount Hetep when the later heaven is portrayed in the ten divisions that preceded the final twelve as a trinity of primeval powers united with the Great Mother, who was the abode as Triangle when the heaven was not yet built on the square[26]. The other four brothers who make up the group of seven great gods (at least in one form) are Amsta, Hapi, Tuamutef, and Kabhsenuf who stand on the lotus or papyrus, and are the four gods, paddles or eyes of the four quarters. Thus, the seven are (1) Sebek-Horus, the crocodile; (2) Sut, the water-bull; (3) Shu, the lion; (4) Hapi, the ape; (5) Tuamutef, the jackal; (6) Kabhsenuf, the hawk; (7) Amsta, the man, who, together with the Great Mother, were the founders of the zodiac—three in the Triangle and four in the Square.

Whatsoever the seven khuti were as individual stars, they were also configurated as a group in Ursa Minor and called the followers of the coffin of Osiris, which was imaged in the Greater Bear. The seven in the stellar mythos had become the lords of rule, devoid of wrong, and living for eternity. This was as spirits perfected under the type of stars that never set[27]. And here it may be explained that we have all been persistently wrong about the seven glorious ones, the seven Rishis, the seven Lu-Masi, the seven Elohim or the seven Cabiri, the 'Seven Sleepers' being the seven stars in the Great Bear. For this reason, in all the starry vast there is but one group of seven non-set- [p.330] ting stars, and these are in the Lesser, not in the Greater Bear. Polaris was at one time chief of all the heavenly host, on account of its being fixed at the centre as a type of stability and uprightness. The characteristics and qualities assigned to the divinity were first seen in the steadfastness of the pole. The stars in Ursa Minor were circumpolar. These showed the seven in a group who never could be drowned by the deluge of darkness. The waters did not reach them. Not so the seven in the Greater Bear, the seven that were not circumpolar stars. About 5,000 years before the present era there was but one, the star Dubhe in Ursa Major that was circumpolar or non-setting[28]. These, therefore, could not have been the seven never-setting stars, who were the watchers and the rulers in the great year of the world; the starry type of the eternal powers. The typical seven were grouped in the Lesser Bear as an object picture of something out of sight, with Anup as El-Elyon at the pole. In all the mythologies the polestar is an emblem of stability, a seat or throne of the power who is the highest god pro tem, as was Anup in Egypt, Sydik in Phoenicia, Anu in Babylonia, Tai-Yih (the arch-first) in China, Avather, or Zivo, in Mesopotamia, and others. It was not the seat that was worshipped, but the power; the sustainer and the judge that was enthroned upon the stellar Mount of Glory as the god.

The polestar was a type of the eternal, because apparently beyond the region of time and change. It was the earliest type of a supreme intelligence which gave the law in heaven that was unerring, just and true; if only as the law of equipoise or, as we should now say, of gravitation. This was the sole point at which there seemed to be any certainty of foothold in that moving ocean of the starry infinite. And this became a standpoint in the heavens for the mind of man to rest on at the centre and radiate to the circumference. The summit was well-named the Mount of Glory. Around this island-mount the hosts of heaven appeared to wheel by night in one vast, glorious, never-ceasing march past in the presence of the 'Royal Arch' or, more religiously regarded, the Most High God. The earliest law in heaven was given on the mount because the mount was an image of the pole, was administered by the judge, whether as Anup, in the north, or Sut as jackal of the south, because the jackal in Egypt was a zootype of the judge. It is not the mount, then, that was the divinity, but the power that dwelt upon it, as the deity called by the Japanese 'the God Eternal­Stand of the heavens' (Ame-no-Foko-Tachi Kami). The power of stability fixed as the centre of the universe was the typical eternal. This was represented by the jackal, which is to be seen at the centre of the Denderah planispherei. The jackal also is a type, not a divinity, and a type may be variously applied. The jackal itself is 'Ap-Uat,' the opener or guide of roads; probably as the seer and crier in the dark and leader of the pack. But it was the dog of Sut and of Sothis as well as of Anup. Thus the type in sign-language may not always determine the nature of the deity. But, as Horapollo rightly says, the jackal denotes the judge[29]. The governor at an early period was the judge, with the jackal as his sign. There were several kinds of judges in Egypt, and the 'totem' of each is the sab or [p.331] sapient jackal. Hence the jackal, representative of Polaris, was placed above the seven as the judge of heaven because he had imaged the judge on earth. Naturally the type was not always repeated other countries, other fauna. Besides which, the anthropomorphic succeeded the zoomorphic in an indefinitely later time; and the Semitic, Hindaic, Greek, and various other renderings are mainly anthropomorphic. But the judge qua judge thus set in heaven by the Egyptians at the polar centre, with his seat upon the summit underneath the tree, was repeated and continued in other mythologies upon the stellar mount. Anup became the great judge in heaven, and the seven are his ministers, as executioners, upon the judgment-day. They are termed the seven 'arms of the balance on the night when the eye is fixed'; that is the eye of the judge, who saw through the dark[30]. The 'Eye of Heaven that Judges the Wicked' is the name of a Chinese constellation; and the god Anup was the judge whose eye was the polestar in the north. He was the seer in the dark, therefore the jackal was his zootype; and the jackal was followed by the later dog as a symbol of Polaris.

The lunar mythos succeeded the stellar, but the moon-god Taht was not reckoned as the ninth one. Neither was Horus. The eighth was the highest power till the time of Ptah and the put-cycle of the nine. The group of seven remained intact. Anup, as the eighth, was the highest in the stellar mythos; Taht-Khemen (later Smen) was highest in the lunar mythos; and Horus was the highest in the solar mythos, the highest being worshipped as the 'Only One.' Anup and Tehuti then became two witnesses to the supremacy of Horus, the one as the eighth, who in turn became the witness for his father, Ra-Unnefer. The deity of the polestar was known to the Chinese as the supreme god in nature, who has his abode on the Great Peak of Perfect Harmony. When Dr. Edkins asked a schoolmaster at Chapoo who was the lord of heaven and earth, the reply of the Chinaman was that he knew of none but Tien-hwang Ta-ti, god of the polestar[31]. Shang-ti, the supreme ruler, was the highest object of worship. His heavenly abode, Tsze-wei, is 'a celestial space round the north pole'[32] and his throne was indicated by the polar star[33]. This is the most sacred as well as most ancient form of Chinese worship. A round hillock is the altar on which sacrifice was offered to him. It is said in the archaic Chow Ritual (Li) that when the sovereign worshipped Shang-ti he offered up on a round hillock a firstborn male, as a whole burnt sacrifice[34]. Both the mount and the firstborn male are typical. Sut was the firstborn male, and, as Sut-Anup, he was the first male ancestor. The hillock is an image of the mount. This deity was also known to the Chinese as the divine prince of 'the Great Northern Equilibrium,' who promulgated 'the laws of the silent wheels of the heavens palace,' or the cycles of time determined by the revolutions of the stars[35].

[p.332]

HORUS OF THE DOUBLE HORIZON

One of the profoundest secrets in the Egyptian astronomical mythology was the mystery of the twofold horizon, or, more exactly the mystery of the double equinox, and one of the earliest forms of the solar god in the zodiac was Horus of the double equinox, when this had been established by the sky-uplifter Shu, with the aid of his sister Tefnut.

Until the time of Har-Makhu the fatherhood of god had not been individualised in Ra. Har-Makhu was the mother's child when she was a virgin, represented by the white vulture of Neith, or the sacred heifer of Isis. The child could be self-generated as the spirit of life in vegetation, or in light, the phenomena being prehuman from the first. Child-Horus in the solar mythos was the little autumn sun conceived upon the western mount as the calf or child. Adultship was attained upon the horizon east with what was termed the double force. The cult was that of Hathor and Horus, the mother and the child, who was the calf on one horizon and the bull of the cow upon the other. In these two characters he was the double Horus, or the 'double Harmachis,' the solar god of both horizons, and fulfiller annually in the double equinox. The power of evolution was portrayed in Khepra, the transformer. Khepra showed the old beetle changing into the young; the tadpole transfiguring into the frog; the human embryo developing in utero; the enduring spirit emanating from the mortal mummy. Kheper was a form of Har-Makhu, as we learn from the Inscription of the Sphinx[36]. From Har-Makhu, the father-god, Ra-Har-Machis was developed in the mythology which preceded the Egyptian eschatology. Atum was Ra in his primordial sovereignty. The divine fatherhood was developed from Har-Makhu, who became the great god Ra in his primordial sovereignty. Har-Ur, the elder, firstborn Horus in the mythos, was the child of the mother when she had no husband, and he had no father; hence she was the virgin mother who conceived but did not bring forth. There was nothing human in the transaction except the terminology. Horus in the eschatology was he who died and was buried, and who rose again in spirit at his second advent. This time he was imaged in the likeness of the father as the beloved only begotten son of God, who manifested as the fulfiller of his word and doer of his will. Two types in this way were deposited and made permanent in Horus, the child of twelve years, and Amsu-Horus, the man of thirty years. Both characters were united and made one as solar in Horus of the double horizon. This character of Horus, as repa or heir-apparent, may be traced historically at a later time as that assigned to a pharaoh of the 12th dynasty, who represents the double Harmachis, the sun-god of the twofold horizon. He claims a divine origin as the virgin's child that was not begotten by God the Father. As an infant 'in the egg,' he was exalted to be 'the Lord of both parts,' or both horizons, like Har-sam-taui. Speaking of the god he says 'he anointed my forehead as Lord of men, creating me as chief of mortals. He placed me in the palace as a youth not yet come forth from my mother's womb.' He was born in the likeness of elder Horus to be king, or to become the royal Horus in the horizon of the vernal equinox, where [p.333] the two parts were united as east and west in the solar mythos, which followed the stellar Peseshti, or two halves, that were the south and north of Sut and Horus[37].

Without a fundamental knowledge of the mythology as framework it is impossible to comprehend the doctrines of the Egyptian religion. Horus of the double horizon, or the double equinox, was the solar prototype of the double Horus in the eschatology. As sun-god on the western horizon in the autumn equinox Har-Makhu was born, conceived or incorporated as the virgin's child. It was at this point, that Horus entered earth or the matrix of the mother in the mount, and thus became the child of Seb and Isis by adoption, though not by begettal. In the eastern equinox he rose again as Horus of the double force and master of the double feather, or the later double crown. When the sun set at night, or in the autumn season, it sank down into the waters of the abyss below the horizon, which Horus-Sebek swam as the fish. The crocodile, then, expressed the unparalleled power by which the sun-god crossed the waters and rose again. The crossing was from equinox to equinox, from the western to the eastern side of the mount, let us say from the sign of Virgo in the autumn to the sign of Pisces in the vernal equinox.

Neith, the suckler of crocodiles, was an earlier form of the Virgin Mother than Isis, and by her aid we may obtain a foothold in the zodiac, like that of Horus resting on the mystical two crocodiles, which became the two fishes in the sign of Pisces. When the autumn equinox occurred in Virgo that was the place of conception for Sebek, the fish of the inundation. Six months later the sun rose in the sign of Pisces, and in the eastern equinox, where the fish, as child and consort, or as the two crocodiles, became the two fishes with Neith as the mother on one horizon and Sekhet on the other. Thus as we read the signs, the virgin Neith conceived her child as Sebek-Horus, the fish of the inundation, which was duplicated to express the adultship, and there were two typical fishes. A well-known picture of Child-Horus shows the youthful sun-god standing on two crocodiles (see p.317), which we take to express the power of the double, or, more exactly, the doubled Horus. In this representation Har-Ur is described as the old child who becomes young. That is the elder who transforms into the younger Horus on the Mount of Glory in the vernal equinox. Standing on the two crocodiles Har-Ur has now acquired the double power—the power, for example, to take up serpents and other poisonous reptiles in his hands without receiving any hurt[38]. Thus, the crocodile-headed Sebek as the child attributed to Neith in Virgo, crosses the gulf of darkness or the abyss of waters to rise up in the east as Horus of the twofold horizon which he had united in the double equinox as Horus of the doubled power. The doubled power of the sun or god in symbolism was expressed by duplication of the type. For example, it was in the autumn equinox, or, as more primitively imaged, on the western mount—the mount of the cow which was covered with crosses indicating the equinox[39] that Child-Horus was conceived in the mythology or incarnated in the eschatology. In the first he was the little suffering sun of the crossing, or the cross, who went down into the underworld to die [p.334] and be buried; to transform and to rise again. In the zodiac of Denderahi, the sign of the 'Scales' contains a portrait of Har-pi-Khart, or Horus the child, who was conceived or incorporated in that sign as Horus of the double equinox called Har-Makhu. The name identifies Child-Horus with the sign. The word for the scales or balance in Egyptian is Makhu. Further, the scales denote the equinox, as the point of equipoise. The Greek name of Harmachis is derived from the Egyptian word makhu, for the balance or scales, and thence for the level of the equinox, where the balance was erected on the day of weighing words and of reckoning the years. The Horus of the double equinox was also termed 'the double Harmakhu'[40], and this duality was also imaged in the twofoldness of the sphinx, with its tail to the west and its head to the east, pointing to the equinox each way. But how was the crossing from west to east effected at the time when no Amenta had as yet been opened in the underworld?

The passage of the sun-god through the mountain had been imaged as a passage through the cow of earth. We have a perfect survival of the mythos in the märchen of Tom Thumb or Little Tom, whom we claim as a British form of the solar Tum (or Nefer-Atum). In the Egyptian mythos Tum makes his passage through the mount by means of the cow, and is reborn as Little Tum = Tom Thumb, from the Khepsh of the cow Meh-ur. It is said of him in setting from the western horizon, 'Earth stretches her arms to receive thee.' He is embraced by the mother, whose womb is the meskhen of rebirth[41]. And, again, at his going forth to the eastern horizon, it is said, 'Thou hast rested in the cow; thou hast been immerged in the cow Meh-ur'[42]. Sebek-Horus swam the water as a crocodile. The eel of Atum made the crossing through the mud of the morass. Khepra the beetle bored his passage through the earth; Behutet rode upon the vulture's wings; Horus made the aerial voyage as a hawk, and Har-Makhu crossed from one horizon to the other through the hollow body of the sphinx. These were modes of making a passage when the nether earth had not been opened up by Ptah, and the Sekru-sledge, which preceded the boat, had not been laid upon the stocks as the abyss was named Har-Makhu, the god of the double horizon, or the means of travelling by land which was illustrated in the mysteries of Memphis. But, however represented, the Horus who crossed the double equinox. The principle of this duplication on the horizon of the East can be established by means of the two lions, which express the double glory of the double Horus, who was lord of the solar force that was double in the vernal equinox. Horus of the double horizon was also Horus of the two lions. In the Ritual Horus rises again saying, 'I am the twin lions, the heir of Ra'[43]. He is Horus rising in the strength of the two lions as the 'lion of the luminous course.' Again, he says: 'I am the twin lions'[44]. 'I am the double lion'[45]. 'I go out from the dwelling of the two lions to the house of Isis the divine' (which was in Sothis), 'I complete the greatness of Shu the lion'[46]. In a vignette to the Ritual the sun of today rises between two lions, which represent Safre the sun of yesterday and Tua the sun of tomorrow[47]. This is the Horus­ [p.335] sun, and the two lions image the double strength or glory of Horus in the sign of Leo.

One title of Har-Makhu, or Horus of the double horizon, is Har­Khuti-Khepera, the Horus who made his transformation as the beetle-headed Khepra. The astronomical locality for this particular transformation would naturally be in the sign of Cancer, which the Egyptians sometimes represented by two beetles, at others times by one. Either way, the beetle was the sign of Khepra as Horus of the two horizons. Thus, two beetles mark another station in which the Horus of the double horizon manifests, as the solar deity, with reduplicated power; just as he emerges on the double horizon from between the two lions or Kherufu, in the sign of Leo, as the lion of the double force. Under one of his zootypes, Child-Horus was 'the lamb, son of a sheep;' and the lamb on the western horizon or mount attained the double power of the adult, as a ram in the opposite sign of Aries on the eastern mount. Indeed, Pisces is the first of six signs in all of which this duplication of the solar power was represented in the zodiac. In the sign of Aries, Horus was the lamb upon the western mount who became a ram upon the horizon east, as the adult figure of reduplicated power. In the sign of Taurus he was the calf which became a bull. A vignette to chapter 109 of the Ritual shows the 'Horus of the solar mount' as the calf in presence of the god, and of the morning star upon the western mount. Hathor, the divine cow, is also present with the calf upon the mount. This is the calf that is to become a bull, 'the bull of the mother' on the Mount of Glory in the double equinox, where Horus, the fulfiller, attained the double power. Now, if we suppose the autumn equinox coincide at the time with the sign of Scorpio, the vernal equinox would then occur in Taurus, and in that sign the Horus calf would become a bull as symbol of the solar power that was doubled in the vernal equinox. When the autumn equinox coincided with the sign of Virgo the place of double glory was in the sign of Pisces on the opposite horizon. The god was conceived as the child, calf, or youngling, in the rest. As Sebek, his image was the crocodile of Neith, the virgin in the sign of Virgo. The crocodile in the Ritual is the Kamite 'great fish.' Two crocodiles are therefore the two fishes. These are exactly opposite the sign of 'Virgo,' and the two fishes = two crocodiles are the dual sign of Horus in his double glory, as the expression of his double power in Pisces, like the two lions in the sign of Leo. This principle of duplication may be traced in six of the solar signs: There are two lions as supporters of the sun-god in the sign of Leo; two beetles in the sign of Cancer; two twins in the sign of Gemini. Further, Horus was the calf on the western horizon, who became the bull on the horizon east; also the lamb on one side and the ram upon the other. Thus the duplication extends from the sign of Leo to the sign of Pisces inclusive, which represents the sun-god as Horus the child and Horus the adult, whose double power or glory was expressed by two lions, two crocodiles, and other types of twinship, in addition to the twins or Gemini who were figured in the human form.

Or if we read the signs the forward way the two fishes correspond to the two crocodiles of Horus. The sun in Aries answers for the ram and lamb; in Taurus for the bull and calf. In the sign of the [p.336] Gemini there is a pair of twins. The sign of Cancer or the Crab was represented by two beetles in Egyptian planispheresi. In the lion sign two lions, called the Kherefu, supported the young solar god in his resurrection on the horizon in Leo. Thus, when Horus of the double horizon was conceived with the autumn equinox in the sign of Virgo, he was twinned and brought forth with the vernal equinox in Pisces, where two fishes = two crocodiles, mark the birthplace. The lamb and ram are twinned in Aries; the calf and bull in Taurus. If we take these six signs in the circle of precession the two lions correspond to the duality of Atum-Horus; the two beetles to Khepra­Ptah; the two Gemini to Sut and Horus; the bull and calf to Osiris and Horus; the ram and lamb to Ammon-Ra and Khunsu, and the two fishes to the twin crocodiles, as six different illustrations of the sun of the two horizons at six different landing-stages on the other side of the celestial deep. Thus, the double Harmakhis includes two characters corresponding to the two equinoxes on the double horizon. In one he is the concept of a virgin, in the other he is brought forth by the parturient mother. In one he was the calf in time, in the other he is the bull of eternity. In the one he is Horus in matter; in the other he is Horus in spirit. In the one he is the child of twelve years; in the other he is the adult of thirty years. The first was the founder, the second is the fulfiller. The first was Horus of the incarnation, the second is Horus of the resurrection. Horus of the resurrection in the solar mythos was the prototype of Amsu in the eschatology, who rose up in spirit from the inert condition of the mummy, as conqueror of death and all the banded powers of evil. In both phases of character this is Horus of the double force, the double crown, the double feather, the double uraei, the double life, or other types of duplication, including the double equinox.

Thus the doctrine of a twofold advent for an ever-coming child, born of a virgin mother, can be traced in the solar mythos to a beginning with Horus of the double horizon. Whatsoever the point in precession, the horizon of the resurrection or the mount of glory coincided with the vernal equinox. The little sun, the calf, or the child Horus entered the mount at the beautiful gate of entrance in the West, for breeding purposes, and rose again as the great sun, the bull, the lion, the adult Horus, that went forth at the beautiful gate of exit in the East to become the bull of the mother when the godhood consisted of the mother, the child, and the divine adult.

The mystery of the double horizon was indeed a riddle of the sphinx. The great Sphinx of Giza is traditionally reputed to symbolize the river Nile at its rising, when the sun coincided with the signs of Leo or Virgo in the water-season of the year. It is now known, however, to be a representative image of the god Har-Makhu. The sphinx itself has spoken once. On the Stele of Tahtmes IV[48] it is called 'the sphinx of Khepera, the very mighty, the greatest of the spirits and the most august.' Now Khepra, the son of Ptah is, as already said, a form of Tum-Harmakhis who was not simply a solar god of the double horizon. In the eschatology he became the god in spirit, the one god living in truth, the sole power that was worshipped as eternal. This is the 'greatest of spirits' represented by the sphinx of Khepra.

[p.337] There had been a sort of hollow underworld made out before Amenta was established as 'the earth of eternity' by the opener Ptah. This was the Akar, Khar, or Kar, over which the sphinx presided brooding in her mysteries of birth—the birth of light, of water, of food, of the young solar god, and, lastly, of an ever-living son. We learn from the Ritual that the mystery of the sphinx originated with the mount of earth as the place of passage, of burial, and rebirth for the solar god. An ancient Egyptian name for the sphinx is Akar. This also was a name for the hollow of the underworld. The speaker, in the character of the newly-risen solar god, exclaims, 'I am the offspring of yesterday. The tunnels of the earth have given me birth, and I am revealed at my appointed time' in the coming forth to day[49]. It is said that the very bones of the deities quake as the stars go on their triumphant courses through the tunnels of the Akar[50]. It is demonstrable that a passage through the mount of earth, the same that was made through the cow, was followed by the passage through Akar, the sphinx, which was built for the god Har-Makhu, the Horus-sun that was immeasurably earlier than Ra. The speaker is in Akar, which is represented by the goddess Akerit because it was the place of burial and rebirth. The tunnel through the mount of the sphinx is oblong; and it is noticeable that the oldest known pyramid in Egypt, that of Medum, is neither conical nor quadrangular, but oblong. To understand the nature of the Akar, says Renouf, we have to imagine a tunnel starting from the spot where the sun sets and extending through the earth as far as where the sun rises[51]. Each end of the tunnel has a sphinx-like form. A human-headed lion couches at the entrance and also at the end. It is through the paws of this double sphinx that the galley of the sun-god enters on the western horizon and comes out on the eastern mount. In the picture, plate 14i, taken from the tomb of Rameses IV. 'Fair entrance' (Aka Nefer) is written at one end of the tunnel, 'Fair exit' (Par Nefer) at the other[52]. These two gates of entrance and exit on the horizon were called the gates of Akar, and sometimes the gates of Seb, the god of earth. They were the two gates of earth for the sun in the mythology, and the two gates of Akar for the manes in the eschatology. Thus the twofold horizon was imaged for Har-Makhu in the figure of the double sphinx. The traditions lead one to think that profound secrets were buried in the building of the sphinx, as was the way with these builders, who put all they knew into all they did. We gather from the Stele of Tahtmes [53] that the monument was built to commemorate the sacred place of creation, or, literally, 'of the first time,' an Egyptian expression generally used for the creation or 'in the beginning.' This sacred site is said to go back to the days of the masters of Kher or Kar, which as a divine locality was the Neter-Kar of the underworld or the abyss. Kher is likewise an ancient name of the Egyptian Babylon, old Cairo. Like Babylon, this was the gate or pathway of the gods—the place of exit, as we read it, for the seven elemental powers who issued from Amenta, as the uraeus-deities, or seven spirits of earth[54].

In the beginning was the Mother-earth as the womb of universal [p.338] life; vegetable, animal, reptile, fish, bird, and human life. The uterine figure was repeated in the making of Amenta as 'the Tuat' for the birthplace of water and for edible plants, or, more generally, the elements of life. Thirdly, this type was imaged as the abyss of the beginning in the uranographic representation of the southern heaven. Earth was the womb of life when life was born of water. The birthplace was imaged by the abyss of the Tuat, the well, the gorge, or other type of utterance, from the secret source in the sacred place of creation, the creatory of the Mother-earth. The water of life became a type of the eternal, the fabled fount of immortality that was so preciously preserved in the divine underworld; the living water that was sought for by the mother when she periodically lost her child, who was the same to her as the water of life, and who was found in the abyss, which was indeed the place of its rebirth. The generation of life by water, the birth of Horus by water and in food, was the profoundest of mysteries. This was the way that life actually came into the world, before the subject was made doctrinal. This was a life which did save the world when Horus the messu was the saviour who naturally gave fulfilment periodically to the promise that he made. In various legends the secret of this water of life that wells up in the subterranean region is jealously guarded by dragons, crocodiles, or other monsters of the deep. In the Chaldean versions the seven anunaki or spirits of earth are the guardians appointed to keep the secret of the waters of life in this underworld to which the dead descended and from which the elemental powers first ascended to the surface of the upper earth. There is warrant for assuming that the mystery of the beginning from the abyss was also one of the great secrets that was guarded by the sphinx at Giza. The final fact is that the sphinx was carved out of the rock at the exact centre of the earth to commemorate 'that sacred place of the creation' or beginning which goes back to the domain of Sut, and to 'the days of the masters of Kher.' That is the beginning in and with the primordial mundane abyss from which life emanated and from which the elemental powers or seven uraeus-deities were born of Mother-earth. The sphinx, then, like the cow of earth, or the hollow mount, was a means of crossing the abyss in which human handiwork had succeeded to the natural type as the figure of a passage. It was made as the means of crossing for Horus of the two horizons or the double equinox. Thus, the sphinx is a monument that commemorates. the founding of the equinox in the double horizon, and as this was assigned to Atum Harmachis, it may account for the Hebrew traditions which associated Adam with the equinox, Adam being a Jewish form of the Egyptian Atum. Harmachis entered the sphinx at sunset in the west or hinder-part, and was reborn in the east as Horus of the forepart, lion-faced. The means of crossing the dark gulf in the solar mythos was now the bridge in death and the mode of uniting the two worlds in one, when the re-arising of the sun was succeeded by the. resurrection of the soul, the lion having been adopted for the sphinx upon the horizon east as an emblem of the double power which made the passage for the sun-god or the soul. The sphinx is male in front and female in the hinder-part. It is a compound image of the Mother-earth and the young god whom she brought [p.339] forth upon the horizon of the resurrection. Without the mother there was no rebirth. Where the earth opens for the sunrise it was called the unnu or outrance of Neith. As the sphinx appears to us it has the human face. But the god Tum-Harmachis was the lion of the solar glory, and his bringer-forth as Sekhet was the lioness. The perfect type was dual as the lion and the lioness combined, only the forepart has been rendered anthropomorphically in the likeness of the pharaoh who was the lion-ruler at the time. The great sphinx as keeper of these secrets was couched in mountainous repose upon the horizon in the eastern equinox, when the gate of 'fair exit' was in the lion-sign and the gate of 'fair entrance' was in Aquarius, the water-sign that is figured over the abyss of source on the celestial globe. The sphinx then is a figure of the double horizon and the duality of Har-Makhu when the place of conjunction was at the point of precession in the lion-sign. And if, as is the Egyptian way, the fact was registered forthwith, we may date the sphinx as a monument which was reared by these great builders and thinkers, who lived so largely out of themselves, some thirteen thousand years ago.

The 'Aten' of the so-called disk-worship was an ancient form of Har-Makhu, god of the double horizon. This, however, was not a worship of the solar disk. The disk was but an emblem of the circle made by Aten as the god of both horizons. His was a compound type of godhood, in which the mother was dual with the son who was her child on one horizon and her bull or fecundator on the other. The word aten, from at, was an ancient name for the child Horus-Behutet, god of the hut or winged disk, we take to have been the earliest form of Aten. This is the solar god who crossed from the horizon west to the horizon east upon the vulture's wings, which were an emblem of the motherhood. The hut was a dual emblem of the divine infant and the mother as bearer of the child. As the bird she carried him over the intervening void of darkness where the Apap lay in wait. Thus the godhood of Aten consisted of the mother, her child, and the adult male or bull of the mother, in a cult which preceded that of the fatherhood of Atum-Ra. The glory of Aten as the power that is doubled on the horizon of the resurrection was the object of regard in this religion, not the disk.

This cult of the mother and the child who was worshipped in Egypt as Har-Makhu, the child commonly called Horus on the horizon, had an unsuspected development amongst the Mediterranean races. The Mycenean Tree and Pillar Cult is the title of a somewhat recent work by Arthur J. Evans[55]. The title implies the common notion that trees and pillars, 'stocks and stones' were directly worshipped instead of the power that was represented by them in sign-language. But a volume of evidence might be collected showing that the supreme object of worship in this cult was the deity of the double equinox, the youthful solar god who in Egypt was called 'the double Har-Makhu.' Both tree and pillar had been figures of the pole before they were erected in the equinox. The tree was planted in the abyss as a figure of the southern pole, the 'tall sycamore of Sut' or tree of the south. The column of stone was raised in Annu, as the pillar of the northern [p.340] pole. When the equinoxes were established, tree and pillar both were continued and often blended at the point of equipoise as figures of the birthplace that was shifted to the zodiac in the solar mythos. The Mithraic monumentsi show us that the tree was a figure of the equinox, and that two trees represented the double equinox when this was resting in the signs of Scorpio and Taurus[56]. Both tree and pillar had been types of Hathor as the abode of Horus. In the Egyptian Ritual the tree marks the place of coming forth and point of emergence from Amenta in the equinox. 'I am the babe,' says Horus four times. 'I am the god within the ash tree.' 'I am the link which connecteth the solar orb with yesterday'—and also with tomorrow, as is shown by the two lions[57]. This connecting link is Horus of the two horizons, who is here brought forth from the ash tree. When columns could be carved, the raising of the stone pillar took the place of planting the tree, or was added to it as a co-type of station. In the twelfth dynasty the foundation of a solar temple is described. Amenemha and his son Usertsen I were on the throne conjointly as representatives of the solar god of both horizons. The king says, 'Henceforth I will make monuments and erect carved columns to the double Harmachis.'[58] That is, to the sun-god of the two horizons or the double equinox, who was here represented by the pharaoh and his son.

The Mycenean symbolism of the two lions with the central tree or pillar can be read if followed as Egyptian, but not otherwise. The tree, the pillar, or the mount was female as a figure of the birthplace, the place of exit for the babe born from the mount, the meskhen, or its equivalent (in wood or stone). For example, a birthplace in the stellar mythos was in Sothis, the star that showed the birthplace of the babe. Both child and mother met in Sothis as Hathor and her infant Horus. She was the house of Horus. The house was imaged as a cone or a tree. This will explain why the Mycenean figure accompanying the tree-pillar is at times a woman and at other times a child. They are the goddess and her babe, identical with Hathor and Child-Horus in the place of birth. In the gold shrine found at Mycenea[59] the figures on each side are two doves. Now the dove in Egypt was the very ancient bird of Hathor, and the two doves are a figure equivalent to the mother and the child that was born within her shrine, her house, her pillar, or her tree, as her dove of the generative spirit, or the later Holy Spirit. The cult of the mother and child is also illustrated on the impression of a gem from Knossos. A sheep represents the mother as suckler of the child beneath her—that is, her lamb, as Horus was called when this type had taken the place of the calf[60]. In two of the Mycenean pictures the goddess in person is placed between the two lions[61]. This is she who was the tree or pillar, shrine or birthplace, whether as Hathor-Sothis or as bringer forth of the deity of the double horizon in the vernal equinox. Hathor was continued as the Venus of the Mediterranean races. What then was the object of the supposed 'worship'? Was it the tree, the pillar, or both? or was it the goddess who was represented by the tree and pillar? or was it the child who was reborn from the birthplace in the tree or rock or shrine? The solar birthplace on the [p.341] horizon had long been represented by the tree, the mount, the cone, shrine, gate, portal, the unnu or other forms of the opening which was always female, and a figure of childbirth in the mythos, when the mother was the earth. As Egyptian the goddess herself is sometimes portrayed; sometimes the child, and sometimes both the mother and the child, are imaged inside the pillar or cone which stands for the place of birth[62]. The cult, then, whether as Egyptian or Mycenean, was a worship of the mother and child, the divine duad that was so prevalent amongst the Mediterranean races, and not a tree-and-pillar cult, not a worship of 'stocks and stones.'

The double axe of what has been called 'the Mycenean tree-and-pillar cult' is an emblem of the doubled power, and the so-called god of the double axe is consequently a god of the double equinox, who was Har-Makhu, the Horus who passed into Atum-Ra as the Egyptian Zeus. The sun that made its way through the earth or the abyss was known as the divider, or the cleaver. This was the solar power which clove its way from west to east and from horizon to horizon as Har-Makhu, god of the double horizon or double equinox in the annual round. He was the cleaver of the earth, who was represented by the cleaver as an axe which, we take it, was a sign of Horus, the cleaver of the way. The god of the double equinox who completed the course from horizon to horizon was Horus of the double force, which doubled force was variously imaged by the double crown, the double uraei, the double feather, the two lions, the two crocodiles, and other dual types. Hence the god himself is called 'the double Harmachis.' He was cleaver of the way, whose double power was likewise imaged by the two-headed weapon which has been termed the 'divine double axe' of the Mycenean cult. The type itself may have been derived from the Egyptian nuter-sign of divinity (Â), or power divinized, which was the stone axe of the Palaeolithic age; and a double axe would be the visible symbol of the power that was doubled in the vernal equinox. On a Mycenean vase from Old Salamis the double axe is figured between two bull's heads, each of which supports a double axei. If we take the double axe as a sign of the power that was doubled in the equinox, it seems to follow that this representation indicates an equinox in the sign of Taurus; and as the bull's head and the axe are both dual, this will be the equinox that was double at the time of celebration, therefore the double equinox determined by the two bull's heads and the double axe as signs of the solar power that was doubled in the vernal equinox.

The reader has but to take up Count d'Alviella's book The Migration of Symbols[63] to see how widely spread this equinoctial imagery became. In this we find:

Fig. 58. The tree standing between two lions (from the Cathedral of Torcello).
Fig. H, p1. 4. The tree between two lions (from a bas-relief of Bharhut).
Fig. 35. Gilgamesh flanked by two lions, which he holds at arm's length.
Fig. 65. The tree between two goats (Assyrian cylinder).
Fig. A, p1. 4. Tree between two cherubs (Chaldean art).
Tree between two winged unicorns (has-relief of Nineveh).
Fig. B, p1. 4. Tree between two cherubs (from a Phoenician bowl).
Fig. D, p1. 4. Tree between two rams (from a bowl).
[p.342]
Fig. 67. Tree between two giraffes (vase from Curium).
Fig. 71. Tree or stalk and winged solar disk between two hare-headed looking animals (Khetan cylinder).

Two figures guarding the tree upon a Syrian amulet (fig. 110). The tree here is shaped like the ankh-cross, thus showing it to be the tree of life upon Egyptian ground[64].

The Assyrian combination of the sacred tree and winged solar disk unites the tree of dawn with the rising sun, and the symbol has the same significance no matter whether the sun-god climbs the tree or the disk is borne on wings above its branches. The tree of dawn stands in the solar birthplace. This is in the vernal equinox as birthplace of the annual sun. That which brings forth is the female, and the feminine nature of the type explains the fecundation of the tree by the two acolytes or genii who take the place of the two lions, crocodiles, dragons, beetles, cherubs, birds, and other types of the supporting pair. Amongst the co-types of the tree may be reckoned the figure of a god or child, a cone or a cross, a pillar, papyrus-reed, a lotus or a vase, the unnu or opening, the meskhen or birthplace, whence issued the youthful solar deity now fulfilled of his duplicated power. The two confronted lions are common on the Mycenean gems as two heraldic supporters of the central figure. This in one instance is the radiating solar orb itself[65]. In another a male divinity stands between the two lions[66]. In others the figure standing or seated between the two lions is the divine mother who brought forth in the equinox. On two different glass plaques from Mycenea[67] the supports on either side of the tree-pillar are two lions. Amongst other figures may be seen:

Two lions with the sun rising from between them, the same as in the Egyptian representation[68].
Two lions supporting a tat or tree-pillar[69].
Two lions back to back with the tree-pillar between[70].
Two lions with the tree-pillar[71].
Two lions pouring out libations on the pillar[72].
Two lions with the god in person between them in place of the tree or pillar[73].
Two lions, with the goddess in person between them in place of the symbols. This is she who was the tree, the shrine, pillar, or birthplace[74].
Two lions with the goddess seated between them[75].

Other pictures show the mount of the equinox, the tree at the meeting point of sun and moon in the equinox[76], the equinox, as mount, between two bulls[77]. In another scene two bulls support a tree-pillar[78]. In one instance two sphinxes support the tree-pillar[79]. The solution now to be propounded is that the moutit or pillar—the shrine or the tree—determines the point of equinox; that the dual nature of the symbol shows it to be the double equinox as place of rebirth for the god of the double horizon, and that the two lions, two sphinxes, two beetles, two bulls, rams, or goats denote the particular sign of the zodiac in which the vernal equinox and the rebirth of Har-Makhu occurred at the time that is thus visibly portrayed.

The mystery of Har-Makhu and the double equinox was known to Paul, who was a master of the secret wisdom. The doctrine concern- [p.343] ing Tum-Harmachis is well stated by him, only it has been rendered Hebraistically. The two Atums, or Atum and Nefer-Atum, are replaced by the first and second Adam as the man of earth and the man from heaven. The second Atum was 'he who is our peace' with the title of Iu-em-hetep. This, as the second Horus, was 'he who made both one' and 'broke down the middle wall of partition,' 'that he might create in himself of the twain one new man.' 'The middle wall of partition' is a figure in the eschatology of that which was a fact in the equinoctial mythos[80].

Whatsoever the type, the double equinox was indicated by the twofold figure. Thus, if a tree were the symbol, then two trees were the sign of the double equinox, and when Horus of the resurrection rises, let us say, as the good shepherd between two trees, it is, as now suggested, a portrait of Har-Makhu, the connecting link between the two horizons or two lives. Now, one of the commonest scenes in the Roman catacombs is this of the two trees between which rises the so-called 'Good Shepherd', who is sometimes a goatherd. There is a scene from the Roman catacombs in which the good shepherd is the central figure between the two trees, two birds, and also the lamb and ram, by which the resurrection is to be identified with the vernal equinox in the sign of Aries[81]. In another of the pictures from the catacombs the good shepherd is accompanied by both the lamb and the ram, which are at least equivalent to the dual type of the equinox in Aries. He carries the lamb upon his shoulders, whilst the ram is resting at his feet[82]. Horus was the lamb upon the western and the ram upon the eastern horizon, both being united in a figure of the double power. A kindred representation is portrayed upon a gnostic stone now in the British Museum. This is Horus the Gnostic Jesus as Ichthus the fish. That the scene occurs in the sign of the ancient type of the crocodile on which Pisces is shown by the two fishes, one of which is over the head of Horus, the other under his feet. The latter also repeats the divine child was supported in the Cippi of Horus. There is also an altar of the Palmyrene at Rome which has the image of the solar god on one side, and on the other a conical cypress tree, the foliage of which exhibits a child carrying a ram upon its shoulder[83], which shows a singular reversal in the position of the child and adult. But it was the child = the lamb that issued from the maternal tree, to be followed by the adult as the ram. When Horus rises from the dead in the Egyptian tombs it is as the good shepherd. The crook and whip (or flail) of rule are the insignia of his sovereignty. According to the Ritual[84], he rises up between two trees called the 'two sycamores of emerald.' Thus he is the perfect prototype of the good shepherd in the Roman catacombs. The god who rises in this character is Horus of the double equinox in the mythology, and Horus in spirit in the eschatology, who by his resurrection joined the [p.344] two lives together and the two worlds in one. The good shepherd in the catacombs is self-identified by the cloak he wears, which is the cloak of royalty, as a figure of the royal Horus, the child who was born and predestined to be king.

The doctrines of the incarnation and the resurrection had already been established in the cult of Har-Makhu, the Horus of the double equinox. Horus the child in one equinox, who was Horus the adult in the other, constituted the double Harmachis, one as the founder and one as the fulfiller—one as Horus of the incarnation, the other as Horus of the resurrection. The doctrine was at first solar, and next eschatological. In both phases it was earlier than the fatherhood of Ra. The incarnation was at least as ancient as the virgin in the zodiac, who conceived in Virgo, and the mother who brought forth in Pisces, which we calculate may have been some six-and-twenty thousand years ago. The solar god who united the two horizons was the fulfiller of the annual circle, and came to reign as the king of one year, first in the inundation, then in the zodiac. He also came in the character of the great judge to see that justice should be periodically administered. In the stellar mythos Anup had been the judge, with the seat of judgment at the place of equipoise, which was then at the celestial pole. In the solar mythos this was shifted to the vernal equinox, and the mount of glory to the east. An ideal of justice, truth, and righteousness, imaged by the balance or scales, was postulated as established and eternal in the heavens as the reign of law, and there was an annual attempt to make that justice visible and veritable on earth. Har-Makhu came as the great judge, accompanied by the seven great spirits who were his executioners, called 'the seven arms of the balance.' The balance was erected as a figure of the equinoctial level, for the weighing of hearts and of words. The unjust were punished, wrongs were righted, restitution was enforced. The judgment day in the Easter equinox was similar in point of time to what we in Europe call the 'March Assizes.' This was represented as the judgment in Amenta.

THE MAKING OF AMENTA

The puzzle-picture of the astronomical mythology had to be collected from its many scattered parts and put together piecemeal, and the method of presentment is panoramic. It was not practicable to tell the story straight through with chronological sequence. For instance, in portraying the eschatology of the Ritual, in the fourth book, the existence of Amenta had to be taken for granted, before the making of this underworld had been described as the excavation made by Ptah the opener and his seven Ali or co-workers. As a group, the eight great gods of Am-Khemen were followed by the put-cycle or Ennead of the Nine. The word put, whence the name of Putah or Ptah, denotes the number nine, and the put-cycle was formed when Ptah was added to the earlier eight great gods. Neither Anup nor Taht was now the highest one. The groups of seven and eight, however, were not submerged. The group of seven survived as [p.345] the seven Khnemmu, moulders or metallurgists who assisted Ptah the divine craftsman, and the group of eight to which he was the ninth god are sometimes described as the children of Ptah. In an Inscription at Edfu[85] they are called 'the most great of the first time; the august who were earlier than the gods, children of Ptah, who issued forth from him, engendered to take the north and the south, to create in Thebes and in Memphis; the creators of all creation,' according to the later, i.e. solar, mythology. The earliest form of a divine fatherhood was outlined though not perfected in the pygmy Ptah; hence one of his titles is 'the Father of the Fathers,' which indicates the fatherhood that was founded on the eldest brother. Ptah was a solar god who did not attain the status of Ra.

Now, until the time of Ptah, Amenta was not founded as the earth of eternity in the subterranean regions, nor excavated from one horizon to the other as a pathway for the nocturnal sun and the manes. Sebek, the crocodile-headed god, swam in the water round about the earth from west to east upon the outside of the mount. Horus crossed the waters on the wings of the hawk. Behutet or Aten of the disk rode on the wings of the vulture, Tum-Horus was the calf that issued from the cow of earth, and Har-Makhu passed from one side of the mount to the other through the body of the sphinx. The Amenta had not then been hollowed out. The passage through the mount from west to east was tunnelled now by Ptah and his co-workers, who in this character might be called his seven navvies. When Ptah, the supreme craftsman of the gods, constructed his terrestrial and subterranean house of the double earth he built it on the earlier foundations, such as the Akar and Tuat of the abyss that were previously extant, The two pillars of the south and north were likewise utilized. As it is said in the mythological text from Memphis, 'the two pillars of the gateway of the house of Ptah are Horus and Sut,' which had previously represented the two poles of Sut and Horus, the twin founders, as we show, in the beginning.

An inscription found both at Edfu and Esné mentions the 'festival of the suspension of the sky' by Ptah, which was connected with a celebration of the winter solstice[86]. It has been suggested by Krall that this had descended from the time when 'the winter solstice marked the beginning of the year and also of the creation'[87]. Under another figure this suspension of the sky by Ptah in Amenta was celebrated in the mysteries of Memphis by the erection of the double tat-pillar which supported the sky and was originally a twofold figure founded on the pole, but the sky now suspended in the double earth of Ptah was not the sky of day. It is the firmament of the nocturnal sun through which it passed at night when in the netherworld which is for the first time fully opened up by Ptah the great architect of the universe, who followed the earlier sky-supporters, but, Horus, and Shu.

The Kamite Amenta is 'the grave of man's lost world,' where his legendary garden of the beginning may be rediscovered. In this subterranean country can be found a copy of the primary paradise of all mythology, which can be restored from the Ritual and the imagery set in the stars of heaven, and proved to be the work of ancient [p.346] Egypt's wisdom. The most primitive imagery was sacredly preserved in Amenta, which makes the Book of the Dead an eschatological record of the beginnings in mythology that is unparalleled, and not until we have mastered the wisdom of Egypt as recorded in Amenta shall we be enabled to read it on the surface of the earth. First comes the natural fact, next the mythical representation, and lastly the eschatological application of the type, be it the mount, or tree, the deluge, the ark, the evil serpent, or the victorious young hero. All three phases have to be studied, collated, and compared; and for this purpose the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and of Amenta [i.e., Am-Duat], are worth all other sacred writings in the world. The primal paradise of universal legend was above the earth upon the summit of the mount, up which the spirits climbed to reach the region of eternal rest among the stars that never set. It was configurated round about the pole of heaven. This has yet to be depicted as the mount of glory. The later paradise was subterrestrial, the earthly paradise of legendary lore. The first was stellar, the last is solar, and it is this last that was founded on the subterranean path of the nocturnal sun first opened up by Ptah. The duplicating of paradise was partly a result of repeating the imagery of the stellar representation in the solar mythos. The mount of glory in the east was added to the mount of glory in the north, with the wide water of the heavens flowing round between the terrestrial and celestial paradise. Kosmas Indikopleustis (AD 535) tells us that beyond the ocean in every direction there exists another continent which cannot be reached by man, but of which one part was inhabited by him before the deluge. To the east, just as in other maps of the world and in later systems, he placed the terrestrial paradise and the four rivers that watered Eden which came by subterranean channels to water the post-diluvian earth[88]. This can be followed by means of the upper paradise of Am-Khemen, that was raised by Shu, and the lower one now configurated by the opener Ptah, who suspended a sky overhead in Amenta.

In the mythology, Amenta is the subterranean country of the sun by night. The dawn and sunset were its gates of glory. It is called the beautiful Amenta, the earth of eternity. It was the passage of the sun that made the pathway of the solar circle which was completed in the eastern equinox. Hence it is said of the sun-god, 'The junction of the double earth is the head of the coffin of Osiris, the beneficent soul in Sutenkhen, who hath determined the paths of eternity,' that is in completing a circle by making the passage through Amenta[89]. The road to heaven for the manes now began with a pathway through the nether earth, from the place of sunset to the gate of sunrise. Previously the way to heaven was up the mount which was a figure of the north celestial pole. There was no solar passage through the nether regions in the stellar mythos; the sun went round the mount of earth, not through it. Ptah the opener added earth to earth and heaven to heaven, the solar mythos to the stellar. The sky upraised by him is indicated by the figure of heaven reversed. It is called the firmament of Ptah. Hence it is said by the Osiris in Amenta, 'Mine is the radiance in which Ptah floateth over his firmament'[90], his firmament [p.347] being that of the nocturnal sun in the underworld. There was now a firmament above and one below the earth. The firmament uplifted first by Sut, Horus, and Shu was supplemented by a nether sky up­raised and suspended by the opener Ptah. The nnu, nun, or heaven is the celestial water, and this, as sky, was both above and below the earth. Now, the account of creation in the Book of Genesis, with its waters above the firmament and its waters below the firmament, could not have been written until the division of these waters of heaven above the earth and of Amenta below the earth was effected when Ptah created the firmament of the nether-earth and raised another heaven in Amenta. In many places the name of Nut has the sign of heaven in the reversed position, thus . Renouf asks, is this one more proof that the Egyptians believed in a sky below the horizon?[91] This, however, does not touch bottom. The Egyptian wise men did not believe in this nether sky; they created it as a figure in sign-language. Thus in the making of Amenta there was a sky above the underworld as well as over the upper, earth; this is the nether sky that was suspended overhead by Ptah and memorized in the mysteries.

When the sun-god Atum-Ra mounts into heaven from the garden of Aarru it is from the lower Aarru in the secret earth of Amenta. Hence it is said at the same time he 'goeth to the field of Aarru, approaching to the land of spirits in heaven'[92], i.e., to the upper Aarru, which was in the heaven of eternity, not in the netherland of the double earth, called the earth of eternity. This duality has to be completely comprehended before the Ritual can be read, or its traditions followed round the world, as for example, in the Hebrew Genesis and the Assyrian legends of creation.

Paradise in Amenta is said by the deceased to be the 'beautiful earth of eternity.' But the deceased does not stay in it as his place of repose. It is not the eternal dwelling. In passing through Amenta he is bound for the heaven of eternity above. This below is but the earthly paradise, and there is an upper paradise to be attained across the celestial waters by those who can secure a seat in the boat of Ra. The typical mount was doubled; a mountain east was added to the most ancient mount of the north, which sometimes makes it look as if the site of the primitive paradise had been shifted and slewed round from the north to the east. The mistake hitherto made regarding the mount is in supposing the mount of earth, or Amenta, to be identical with the mount of the north, whereas the two belong to two distinct systems of the mythos, stellar and solar. The mount of heaven was stellar in the north; the mount of earth is solar in the east. The mount of heaven had its summit at the north celestial pole; the mount of Amenta was level with the sky-line on the horizon. There is also a double judgment seat, and a twofold judgment. One great hall was in Amenta. The other was at the apex of the hill of heaven, the maat of the final judgment that was given on the last great day. When the two are sundered, we sometimes find the judgment seat is imaged at the north celestial pole; at others, the great judge is seated as the Rhat-Amenta or Rhada­manthus, in the maat of the nether-earth. This double maat or seat [p.348] of judgment can be explained by the Egyptian wisdom. It was the individual judgment that now took place in the maat of Amenta. This was the first judgment of two; the second is the last great judgment in the maat above. The first is beneath the tree of dawn, the second is under the tree of the pole. Those who were condemned as guilty in the primary trial of the dead suffered the second death in Amenta. They went no farther, but were extinguished in the tank of flame or annihilated on the highways of the damned. Thus the two different resurrections are differentiated the one from the other, in the gospel according to John, when it is said the dead are to come forth; they that have done evil to 'the resurrection of judgment,' and they that have done good unto 'the resurrection of life.'[93] Both resurrections occur in the Ritual; one for the judgment in Amenta, the other on the mount for the last judgment and the resurrection to eternal life.

The garden of Aarru or paradise of the eight great gods, whom we identify as a group with the seven in the Lesser Bear, plus the deity of the polestar, was in the north. Not on the horizon north, but at the celestial pole that was figured as the summit of a very lofty mount, the mythical mountain of the north, diamond-pointed at the apex with the polar star, whereas the Semitic Eden is the garden eastward. This is relatively late, because it belongs to the solar and not to the stellar mythos. It is not the circumpolar paradise of earlier tradition. That may be the reason why the mount is omitted from the Book of Genesis. It is not Am-Khemen, the paradise of the eight great gods. It is the enclosure of the pair who in the solar mythos were Atum = Adam and the Great Mother Kefa = Chavah.

The earth itself was figured as a mount; its highest point was in Apta, at the equator. When tunnelled for a passage through it, this became the mountain of Amenta, also the funeral mount. The place of entrance for the sun or the manes of the dead was in the west, or, as it was termed, the western hill. The mount of earth is the mount of birth for Horus in the solar mythology. The mount of heaven is the mount of rebirth for souls in the eschatology. Both have been linked together but not blended in the Egyptian representation, when the Osiris makes his journey from the base of the mount in Amenta to the summit of the heavenly bill, the topmost peak of which is at the pole. In this ascent from the root-land of the mount of earth, or of Amenta, to the summit of Mount Hetep it may look as if the mount were all in one, but it is not so. There was a double mount; the mount of earth which was solar, and the mount of heaven which was stellar. In the Ritual[94] the mount of earth is said to be 'the hill on which heaven resteth.' This is called the hill Bakhu, the solar mount. Its dimensions in length and breadth are given in some of the early papyri. In the Papyrus of Nebseni[95] the hill is 300 cubits in breadth. In the Turin Ritual it is 140 cubits in breadth[96]. Now it happens that in the Mexican mythology there is a 'mountain of the locust' or the mount of Capultepec, and the ideographic signs of this mountain include the following numerical figures:

∩∩∩∩∩
∩∩∩∩∩
∩∩∩∩

These figures are Egyptian. The sign ∩ is a figure of ten, which goes [p.349] back to the origin in digital reckoning, as it is derived from the two hands clasped and cut off at the wrists. The Mexican figures therefore repeat the Egyptian at the value of 10 Í 14 = 140, whatsoever the numbers may mean[97].

The Japanese also have the double Mount Kagu; one is on the earth, or rather it is the earth, the other is in Arne or heaven, the divine mount, that is the heaven, which had the North Pole for its highest peak[98]. The Japanese likewise have the eight great gods of the mount, who are said to have been produced by Kagutsuchi, which we take to be a form of the original eight kami that correspond to the Kamite Khemenu, the eight great gods in Am-Khemen, the heaven upraised by Shu. The same duality of the mount is illustrated in the two Chinese Kwenluns. Here the terrestrial paradise is described as being at the centre of the earth. The Queen-Mother dwells there alone in its midst. At the summit there is a resplendent azure hall, with lakes enclosed by precious gems. Above the clear ether rules the ever-fixed, the polar star[99]. This is the Egyptian mount of Amenta in which Hathor was queen. The 'azure hall' is the empyrean over the summit of the mundane mount, which is here identified as the mother-mount The other mount is celestial on its summit at the north star is the heavenly palace of Shang-ti at the centre of the circumpolar paradise, with its circle of thirty-six gods or rulers, which answer to the thirty-six decans of the zodiac.

The Todas also have the twofold mount. Their mountain of the world is the Makurti, or navel of the earth, the pillar of the firmament. It is a towering rock, upon the table-land of which the souls of the dead assemble for the leap into the abyss of waters that lies between them and the mount of heaven. Either they, in common with some other races, have lost, or never had, the solar boat of the Egyptian eschatology, by which the base of one mount was reached from the summit of the other. But, sink or swim, the journey is the same. So is the celestial chart. Hence the Todas can see the cows that graze the fields of heaven in the nebula of the Milky Way. These correspond to the Kamite cows, the givers of plenty in the meadows of Aarru, that rest by the still waters at the head of the river of light and the twin lakes in the region of the north celestial pole.

This stellar mountain in the northern heaven and solar mountain in the east will likewise account for the twofold mount of the Babylonians. Lenormant describes the two somewhat confusingly, but no explanation of their duality has ever been given. He says, 'Above the earth extended the sky, and revolving round the mountain of the east, the column which joined the heavens and the earth and served as an axis to the celestial vault. The culminating point of the heavens, the zenith (nuzku) was not this axis or pole. On the contrary, that was situated immediately above the country of Akkadia (in the north), and was regarded as the centre of the inhabited lands, whilst the mountain which acted as a pivot to the starry system was to the north-east of this country. Beyond the mountain, and also the north-east, extended the land of Aralli, which was rich in gold, and was inhabited by the gods and blessed spirits.'[100] [p.350] The mount of earth and mount of heaven become the double mount in the Babylonian version. As it is said of Gilgamesh, 'To the mountains whose name is double, to the twin mountains in his course he came.'[101] The mount of earth or Amenta below was entered in the west. The upper mount was also entered at the west in the heaven of the setting stars. There is probably an astronomical datum in the Babylonian legend. The scorpion-men are said to keep the gate and guard the sun. 'Over them rising was the threshold of heaven. Below them the tomb sank down.'[102] The tomb is Arali (or Amenta) in the mount. The threshold of heaven was at the summit of the mount. We take the scorpion-men to denote the western equinox in the sign of Scorpio when that was the gate to the twin mountains, otherwise the mount of earth and heaven, the mount whose summit was the rise in Hetep at the pole. In Pahlavi the two mountains of heaven and earth are known as Mount Taêra, the centre of the universe, and Kakad-i-Dâîtîk, the centre of the earth[103]. Here the earth centre is distinct from the centre of the universe or mount of heaven which preceded the mount of earth, and the two different centres correspond to the two different forms of the mount of earth and the mount of heaven.

The heaven of the beatified had been apparently shifted from the north to the east when certain chapters of the Ritual were written, which is the same as saying the solar had then succeeded and to a great extent superseded the stellar mythos. The sun in its supremacy obscured the stars. Anup was merged in Osiris; the seven glorious ones became the servants of Horus and subsidiary souls of Ra. The place of sunrise in the east was figured as the mount of glory in relation to Amenta instead of the mount in the celestial north otherwise said, it was interpolated in the solar mythos. Paradise now was both terrestrial (or subterrestrial) and celestial; in the east as well as on the northern summit, because it was solar as well as stellar. Not that the upper paradise was obliterated or really lost. That only happened in the absence of the gnosis. Am-Khemen remained aloft, and the upper paradise of two was still led up to by the mount, the tree, the way of souls, or the river of the Milky Way.

One form of this duality was represented in the Ritual by the mythical two houses, the great house and the house of flame. The speaker says, 'Let my name be given to me in the great house. Let me remember my name in the house of flame on the night when the years are counted and the months are reckoned one by one'[104]. The great house was stellar in the heaven at the celestial north; the house of flame (Pa-Nasrut) was solar in the east. Egyptian temples were built upon this dual plan, and each had its great house and its house of flame. The great house was central, like the lady-chapel in European churches, and the house of flame was on one side of it. The great house in a central position corresponds to the mount of heaven with its spire at the celestial pole. The house of flame was a kind of side entrance to the mount in the east, which is equivalent to the gate of sunrise. The church today remains a dual figure of this double house when both are blended together in one building. The nave with its doorway to the east corresponds to the mount of earths and the [p.351] spire is a figure of the pole or mount of heaven. One of the most perfect ways of illustrating this duality is shown by the mode of burying the dead in the pyramid of Medum. Prof. Petrie says the bodies were laid on their left side with the head to the north and the face turned to the east[105]. This position of the dead is also indicated by the prayer of the manes that he may 'feed on the food of Osiris, on the eastern side of the mead of amaranthine flowers' (the kaiu of the oasis)[106]. The face is here turned after death to the eastward side of the paradise that was primarily figured in the northern heaven.

When it was discovered that the earth rotated on its axis and was afloat in space, it was known to revolve on the double poles, and what we call the two poles of the earth were signified by the twofold tat-pillar of Ptah. The tat is a type of stability. The double tat is the sign of tattu as the place of establishing for eternity, and tattu, like other mythical localities, was doubled when Amenta was founded. It is noticeable that when Queen Hatshepsut had erected her two pillars she says she has made two obelisks for him who is the lord of the thrones of the two worlds, or, as we should say, of earth and heaven[107]. This touches the origin of the well-known double pillar, the significance of which is not known. The double obelisk is a co-type with the twofold mount, and the two pillars of Tattu, the place where it was shown that earth was fixed and heaven made stable for ever, on the two pillars of Sut and Horus, which had been the two poles in Equatoria. The two obelisks, then, imaged the thrones of two worlds, the double earth, or earth and heaven; and in Amenta the two pillars form the doorway from the one world to the other. So in the Japanese mythology the divine pillar of earth, Kuni-no-mi-Hashira, was added to the divine pillar of the heavens, Ame no-mi-Hashira[108]. How it was added can be explained by the Egyptian wisdom. The pillar of heaven was first erected. Shu-Anhur lifted up the heaven from the earth with that which constituted the divine support as prop, pillar, or lion-like strength in sustaining the paradise above.

The pillar of heaven naturally stood upon the earth to support the heavens; but when the earth was hollowed out by Ptah, the excavator, there was another earth below in which the pillar had to be re­erected, and this pillar of the double mount was represented by the double tat of Ptah as the backbone of that god, or later of Osiris. The Japanese also have the two pillars called the awful pillar of heaven, the pillar being a co-type with the mount. 'Heaven's one pillar' was an ancient name for the Japanese island of Ski[109]. The Japanese have also a pillar whose foundation is at the centre of the world, where stands the tat or pole of Ptah supporting the nether sky. In Chinese legendary lore there is a pillar that sustains the earth. They also have a pillar which sustains the heaven. These two correspond to the pillar of Shu that supports the firmament above and the tat-pillar of Ptah which supports the earth in Amenta below. These are distinct from each other; they belong to two entirely different mythical creations and cannot be resolved into one single pillar derived from the mount of earth as axis- [p.352] pillar of the heavens. Heaven had rested on the pillar of the earth or the pillars raised upon the mundane mount by Shu. But the tat-pillar of Ptah was erected in the nether earth of two. Consequently our earth was then supported on the pillar of Ptah. This will explain the tradition of the Chinese, the Tlinkeet Indians, and others, that the earth rests upon a pillar. Thus, as Egyptian, there are two divine pillars answering to the double mount, which we call the pillar of Shu and the tat-pillar of Ptah. One is the sustainer of the firmament above the earth, the other is the support of the firmament below the earth. The two together are the double pillars of earth and heaven. This will enable us to read one of the many Greek märchen, which reflect and refract the Egyptian mythos.

There is a legend of Herakles relieving Atlas as sustainer of the heavens, or, in the original, the ceilings of the double earth. Atlas is the Egyptian Shu-Anhur, the elevator of the sky. And the relief of Atlas by Herakles is equivalent to the relief of Shu by the sun-god Ptah as sustainer of all things in Amenta, when the pillar of earth or tat of Amenta was added to the pillar of heaven. When the earth was doubled and the nocturnal sun god passed through Amenta as Ptah or Sekari with his tat, he was the sustainer in the nether earth who might be said to relieve Shu of his burden in the upper earth. Horus is the prototype of Herakles, and Horus or Ptah in Amenta is the mighty Herakles of this Greek fancy which so often takes the place of fundamental fact. There is no trusting the märchen in their Greek or Hindu, Hebrew or Christian guise, without comparing them with the originals. Greek legends also assert that Herakles separated two mountains to form the two columns or pillars which were a dual figure of the twofold mundane and celestial mount. This helps to identify the double columns with the mount of earth and the mount of heaven. Many illustrations could be cited of these, two pillars erected at the entrance to the temple or house of a god. Herakles, says Herodotus, was worshipped in a temple at Tyre, and in the temple 'were two pillars, one of fine gold the other of emerald stone, both shining exceedingly at night'[110]. These are, to say the least, somewhat suggestive of the green mount of earth, the Egyptian mount of emerald, and the golden mount of heaven, which survive as the 'green hill' far away and 'Jerusalem the golden' in the Christian hymns[111].

The backbone was a figure of the pole: it is at one time the backbone of Sut, at another the backbone of Anup, at another of Ptah or Osiris—the backbone being a natural type of sustaining power. This at first was single as a figure of the pole. It was duplicated in Amenta, the same as was the pillar of support and other figures of sustaining power. The power of Ptah in Amenta is not simply that of the pillar or backbone. These are doubled in the earth of eternity to express his power as sustainer of the universe. The figure is referred to in the magic papyrus as the long backbone of Ptah, the Nemma. 'O Nemma of the great face, of the long backbone, of the deformed legs! O long column which commences in (both) the upper and the lower heaven. O lord of the great body which reposes in Annu,' the place of the column or pole, now doubled in Amenta[112]. There was a tendency to blend the twofold mount in one as in the double Mount [p.353] Meru, which is sometimes denominated the North Pole, but was primarily a figure on earth of the pole in heaven, like the mound of earth and the cone or pillar. But Meru was doubled or divided into upper and lower, called Su-Meru and Ku-Meru, when it imaged the mount that was opened for the passage of the heavenly bodies through the nether earth. One mountain standing in the east and one in the north were not vertically blended in one. They were symbolical of the double mount of earth and heaven as a figure, but this was in the end, not at the starting-point.

The Kamite teachers also imaged the two poles as the two trees called the two sycamores of the south and north. The later tree in Erich, as well as the Norse tree Yggdrasil, was compounded of the two as the tree which had its roots down south or in the underworld, and its branches high up in the northern heaven; a twofold tree that corresponded to the double mount. Again, the rock is a co-type with the mount, and the double rock is equivalent to the twofold mount. These two were also blended in one as in the rock that 'begat' the Israelites. The rock and the double rock are both mentioned in the Ritual[113]. Taht the moon-god is said to be the 'son of the rock proceeding from the place of the two rocks' in Anruti[114]. The name of Anruti identifies the double rock with the double horizon, which was also called the double mount. The son of the rock who proceeds from the two rocks is the moon-god as the son of earth and heaven, or son of the double mount of earth and heaven, the two rocks having been blended in one as a typical figure of Osiris, the rock of eternity, imaged as the pole of heaven. The twofold origin of the mythical mount is now sufficiently established in relation to identifiable natural facts which alone can furnish the proof that the mount, the pole, the tree, the paradise, pillar, column, or backbone were single in the stellar and are duplicated in the solar mythos, and that this duplication followed on the making of Amenta.

The Rig-Veda speaks of 'him who, as the collective pillar of heaven, sustains the sky'[115]. This collective pillar was the dual type of the twofold mount of earth and of heaven imaged in one figure of support. The Hebrew pillar of the lower and upper paradise that is called 'the strength of the hill Zion' was another form of the collective pillar. As Egyptian, this collective pillar was the double tat of Ptah erected in Amenta. The tat-pillar of Ptah and Osiris was continued in the ancient Germanic Irmin pillars, which were mostly made of wood. The mythical pillar Irminsul was that which joined together earth and heaven, like the mount of Amenta and the tat-support of the gods. The Irmin­pillars were a form of the Hermae in Greece that were set up as boundary signs at crossroads and street corners to mark the extent of certain lands. This points to an origin for their name. In Egyptian the word remen or ermen denotes the extent as far as the limit or boundary. Rema or erma is a measure of land. The deity Irmin, like Hermes of the pillar, was a god of boundaries.

If the mount or the pillar had been single and not double, there would have been no voyage across the water that flowed between the mount of earth and the mount of heaven; no need of boat or bridge [p.354] or place of 'jumping off' from one side to the other. If the mythical mount had simply been a single figure of the universe axis (as O'Neill describes it[116]), the climbers would have gone straight up to heaven, whereas the solar mount of glory in the east did not and could not blend vertically with the stellar mount of glory in the north. The mount was dual; the water ran between the two, and that necessitated the means of crossing from one to the other. Nothing could make the universe axis twofold, in keeping with the double mount of earth and heaven. And this duality alone will explain why one type should be considered female, the other male. The mount or pillar of earth was an image of the Great Mother as bringer-forth, and the mount or pillar of heaven was typical of the fatherhood, the 'rock that begat,' or rather of two sexes in one nature as they were blended in the deity Ptah, Atum, Osiris, Ihuh, and Brahma. The type of this duality is to be seen in the navel, the umbilicus, and the nabhi-yoni united and imaged in one as a figure of the birthplace and prototype of the navel mounds; the pit below and the pile of stones above, the well and pyramid, the church and steeple, the grave and monument.

When the solar mythos had been added to the stellar, the pathway to paradise was through the netherworld. The road of the sun in the mythos now became the road of souls in the eschatology. The entrance to the underworld was consequently in the west. The maker of the road was the nocturnal sun as the bull or god of the west. One name of the western hill is Manu. It is said to Ra when setting, 'Wake up from thy rest; thine abode is in Manu'[117]. This apparently survives in the Samoan Mane. At death, the soul went to a paradise in the western horizon called Mane = Manu. 'The dying,' says the missionary Turner, 'were urgent in begging those around them to see and make the tapunea or pessomancy go all right, and so secure an entrance to the Mane paradise'[118]. If the pebbles used for divination turned out odd instead of even it was thought that the soul would be caught and crushed between two great stones at the entrance to the mount. The 'hollow pit' was a name of the Samoan Hades. At the bottom there was a running stream which floated the spirits away to the Hades of Polotu. They were but little more than alive and only half conscious until they reached Polotu, where there was a bathing-place called Vaiola or 'the water of life.' In this water all infirmities were washed away and the aged recovered their lost youth. Their new bodies were singularly volatile, like the Egyptian sahu. They could ascend to earth at night, become luminous sparks or vapour, revisit their old homes and retire at early dawn to the bush or to Polotu[119]. The subterranean world of the Lapps is identical with the Amenta of the Egyptians. Jabma-Aimo is the house of the dead in the nether-earth, which is a place of transition for those who have their bodies renewed, who pass on and are taken up to heaven. Their home of the gods, Taivo Aimo, also answers to the upper Aarru-paradise of the Ritual. The jackal or dog is the guide of the dead through the paths of darkness in the nether-earth, and the Inuit dead are said to descend by the 'dog's path' into their underworld. This is a most obscure road, answering to the path of darkness in Amenta. The subterranean region described at times as being [p.355] submarine is the common subterrestrial paradise of the Inuit people generally.

When the netherworld had been completely excavated by Ptah, Amenta was established as the lower storey of two in the mount of earth which henceforth becomes the mount of Amenta. The name denotes the hidden or secret (Amen) earth (ta). It is also called the earth of eternity, the land of the living; for the Egyptians call those the living whom the less spiritualistic moderns designate the dead. The mount of earth became the mount of Amenta because Amenta had been tunnelled through the lower earth. It became the funereal mount because Amenta was the earth of the manes. In the Egyptian chart the west is the beautiful gate of entrance to this divine netherworld, otherwise called the land of life. It is not paradise itself, but the way to it through purgatory. The beautiful gate of exit was at the place of sunrise, not sunset, in the garden eastward, and this was the locality of the terrestrial paradise, which was a copy of the garden of Aarru first configurated in the circumpolar heaven of the stellar mythology. The dead in Egypt were called 'the westerners.' On the way to the place of burial the mourners sang the funeral song 'To the west, to the west, to the west!' The mummy was ferried over the water to the western mount, where Hathor-Isis or the cow waited to receive the solar god, and in his track the souls of the departed. The entrance to the mount was shown as the mouth of the cow, or cleft in the rock, such as was see it in the immediate neighbourhood of Abydos, which was reached through a narrow gorge in the Libyan range, whose 'mouth' opened in front of the temple of Osiris-Khentamenta a little to the north-west of the city[120]. Here the souls of the departed were supposed to enter and descend into the netherworld. The sun-god is described in his passage to the western horizon (or mount), whilst earth, as the mother, stretches her arms out to receive him. 'In rapture is thy mother, the goddess Meru, as thou dost emit the irradiation of light till thou reachest that mountain which is in Akar,' i.e., till sunset, when he will enter the female receptacle for his new birth. Taking this to be imaged by Isis as the sacred heifer, the place of entrance is her mouth, and the place of exit was uterine, to the east of the mount[121].

The entrance into the mount of earth which was personified as the old first mother is one of the exploits of Maui in the märchen of the Maori. Maui, at the end of his victorious career, that is at sunset, comes back to the country of his father and the land of his great ancestress Hine-neu-te-Po, the grea