Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

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Stele inscriptions, King Djoser (2650 BCE) is informed that “there is a town in the midst of the deep surrounded by Hapy [the Nile], Yebu by name [Elephantine]; It is first [town] of the first nome to Wawat [Nubia], [it is known as] ‘Earthly Elevation,’ ‘Celestial Hill,’ and ‘Seat of Re’ when he prepares to give life to every face. Its temple’s name is ‘Joy-of-life.’ ‘Twin Caverns’ is the water’s name, they are the breasts that nourish all. It is the house of sleep of Hapy. He grows young in it in [his time]. [It is the place whence] he brings the flood . . .” 31 The author of the texts was the high official of the region, Mater. He duly informs King Djoser that the ideal flood is when the water level reaches “twenty-eight cubits high at Elephantine [and that] he [the Nile] passes [the town of] Semabehdet at seven [cubits].” 32 The name Semabehdet is that of the Seventeenth Nome of Lower Egypt, which borders the coastline of the Mediterranean, some 920 kilometers (572 miles) downstream from Elephantine as the crow flies. Today it is called Tell Balamun. The difference in the level of the Nile between Elephantine and Tell Balamun is about 85 meters (279 feet). This provides the natural fall from south to north, allowing the river to flow northward at about 16 knots. 33 A sudden rise of 28 cubits, nearly 14 meters (46 feet), at Elephantine would bring about a rush of water, causing the banks to overflow and the water to flood the adjacent land. Even so, the flooding of the land could be somewhat controlled—but any higher water levels would cause overflooding and untold structural damage to the land and crops. Any flooding lower than necessary would cause a drought that could lead to food shortage and, eventually, famine. It was thus crucial that some sort of early warning system be installed, hence the nilometer. Although the nilometer at Elephantine was far from being the refined hydraulic instrument that we would use today, it gave a good indication of what type of flood to expect. Part of the early warning system came from the stars. Around early June, as the sun approached its most northerly rising at the summer solstice, the constellation of Orion appeared again at dawn in the east, followed by Sirius. At this time of year, the nilometer was watched with great care. No wonder, then, that the temple of Satis, divine protector of the Nile and the flood, from where officials monitored the rising of Orion and Sirius, was located only a short distance away from the nilometer of Elephantine. Intriguingly, Ron Wells showed that the ancient designers of the temple seemed to have demarcated the two extreme variations of the Big Dipper constellation as it revolved around the north celestial pole. We can recall how the stars of this particular constellation, as well as those of Orion and Sirius, were specifically used by the star people of Nabta Playa. Yet can such astronomical similarities be regarded as evidence of a progressive cultural link between Elephantine and Nabta Playa? A new trend in archaeology and cultural anthropology is open to what has been loosely termed nontangible evidence, which, as its name implies, cannot be physically evaluated—it does not, for instance, include artifacts. Nonetheless, conclusions are valid because they can be reasoned to be so—there is a sort of silent eyewitness account from the past. Astronomical evidence is nontangible regarding understanding ancient cultures, especially in the case of ancient Egypt. It has been known for some time that the ancient Egyptians performed a very important ritual for aligning their religious monuments toward the sun and stars. From earliest times, they performed a ceremony called stretching the cord to align royal pyramids and temples. This ceremony, which we have seen in chapter 4, required the participation of the pharaoh and a priestess, who assumed the role of a deity called Seshat. The goddess Seshat was unique among all the other goddesses of ancient Egypt in that she was said to be supremely proficient in the sacred sciences, particular astronomy and sacred architecture. Depicted as a slender woman, Seshat was especially venerated by scribes, for she was also the patroness of the sacred hieroglyph writing and keeper of the royal annals. 34 Her companion-husband was Thoth, the god of wisdom and astronomy, and she often appears next to him on temple reliefs. Such a prestigious union gave Seshat enormous status and respect. Nonetheless, her most important role was participating with the kings in the stretching the cord ceremony to establish the four corners of temples and pyramids and to align them toward specific stars, usually the Big Dipper. In this capacity, Seshat is always shown in a leopard-skin dress with spots that are sometimes shown as stars, which is apparently symbolic of her ability to see in the dark, like the leopard. 35 On her head, Seshat is depicted wearing a golden tiara with a seven-pointed star or rosette. Her many epithets included Foremost in the Library, Mistress of Writing in the House of Life, Keeper of the Royal Annals, and Lady of the Stars. 36 The French scholar Anne-Sophie Bomhard, an expert on the ancient Egyptian calendar, writes, “The recognition of the annual cycle and its definition, the linking of celestial phenomena to terrestrial happenings, are essential preliminaries to establishing any kind of calendar. This enterprise requires long prior observations of the sky and the stars, as well as the recording, in writing, of these observations, in order to verify them over long periods of time. It is quite natural, therefore, that the divine tutors of Time and Calendar should be Thoth, God of Science, and Seshat, Goddess of Writings and Annals.” 37
Egyptologists have established that the stretching the cord ceremony was known since at least 2900 BCE, and it was a “crucial part of a temple foundation ritual.” 38 Textual knowledge of this ceremony comes mostly from inscriptions on the temples at Edfu and Dendera, although much earlier evidence is found in drawings and reliefs depicting the ceremony. Sir I. E. S. Edwards, the foremost expert on Egyptian pyramids, writes that [i]n spite of the relative late date of the inscriptions referring to the episodes of the foundation ceremonies, there is no reason to doubt that they preserved an ancient tradition. Some indication that similar ceremonies were already current in the Pyramid Age is provided by a fragmentary relief found in the Vth Dynasty sun-temple of Niuserre, which shows the king and a priestess impersonating Seshat, each holding a mallet and a stake to which a measuring cord is attached. The scene is in complete agreement with the text in the temple at Edfu, which represent the king saying: “I take the stake and I hold the handle of the mallet. I hold the cord with Seshat.” 39 During the stretching the cord ceremony, both the Seshat representative and the king carried a peg and a mallet and faced each other, probably from some twenty paces apart. A cord was looped between the pegs while the king and Seshat determined the alignment of the axis of the future temple or pyramid by sighting a specific star in the northern sky. Once the sighting was successfully made, they stretched the cord and fixed the line by hammering the two pegs into the ground with the mallets. From inscriptions at Edfu and Dendera we can read: “[The king says]: ‘I hold the peg. I grasp the handle of the mallet and grip the measuring-cord with Seshat. I turn my eyes to the movements of the stars. I direct my gaze towards the bull’s thigh [the Big Dipper]. . . . I make firm the corners of the temple . . .’” 40 “[Seshat says]: ‘The king stretches joyously the cord, having turned his head towards the Big Dipper and establishes the temple in the manner of ancient times. [The king says]: ‘I grasp the peg and the mallet; I stretch the cord with Seshat; I observed the trajectory of the stars with my eye which is fixed on the Big Dipper; I have been the god who indicates Time with the Merkhet instrument. I have established the four corners of the temple. [Seshat says]: ‘The king . . . while observing the sky and the stars, turns his sight towards the Big Dipper . . .’” 41 In the many years that we have investigated the astronomical alignments of Egyptian pyramids and temples, it has often occurred to us that there may be more than just a religious purpose in fixing the axes toward the rising stars or the sun. If we attribute a knowledge of precessional astronomy to the ancient builders—and recent studies have shown that there is much reason to do so 42 —then it is quite possible that these ancient megalith builders may have used their monuments for long-term calendric computations in order to hark backward to distant epochs that had special significance to them. Further, this stretching the cord ceremony may well have been a ritual to verify, upon inauguration of a new temple building site, that the stars in the heavens were continuing to operate as the astronomer-priests expected they should, and so the earthly and heavenly events could be unified in the temple to maintain sacred order. Indeed, as we have seen in chapter 4, all the signatures of the precursor to the stretching the cord ceremony were present at Nabta Playa, even if it was not the same ritual itself. Yet there is more evidence that Old Kingdom temples were in fact encoded with sophisticated calendar functions, but to verify this we must first grasp the essential features of the ancient Egyptian calendar and how it may have been applied to such a lofty purpose. THE TIME MACHINE OF THE ANCIENTS Today we need not have years of direct observations of the night sky to be initiated into this ancient system of astral knowledge, for with the use of sophisticated astronomy software such as StarryNightPro plus a common home computer, we can speed up the cycles of the celestial bodies to condense a year into a minute—or even, at the touch of a button, hop into the distant past or future. All it takes to operate such user-friendly software is basic knowledge of celestial mechanics and a keen interest in the sky. Nonetheless, we must consider the sky from the perspective of the ancient stargazers of Egypt, and for this we must understand how they computed short- and long-term cycles for their timekeeping needs. A SENSE OF ETERNITY The so-called civil calendar of ancient Egypt was a timekeeping device of elegant simplicity. It had the amazing benefit of requiring no adjustment as well as serving as a device for eternity. “The quest for Eternity,” wrote the French scholar
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For my daughter, Candice, and my so
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book was not a
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More Mysteries at Nabta Playa The S
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INTRODUCTION ANCIENT EGYPT REBORN N
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1 STRANGE STONES In Nabta there are
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desert” emerge from the surroundi
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stage the CPE anthropologists were
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arguments—and especially on the B
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This time, some archaeologists took
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who’s who of famous men: it inclu
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huge rocky massif sprouting out of
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Almasy planned an expedition to Gil
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of Setu and Irtet after having expl
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Sahara, and their bones were brough
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Djedefre Water Mountain, as Bergama
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Figure 2.5. Abu Ballas Pottery Hill
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can imagine how these scholars felt
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followed by the same determinative
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The surface of the now-covered bedr
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indeed, one of the main objectives
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In addition to tumuli tombs of catt
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since fallen. The largest ones were
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ALIGNMENTS TOWARD THE STARS: WHEN A
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elated not only to the gates of the
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dates within thousands of years of
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the largest stone. Again, the dista
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thus sent in an order to Quickbird
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Finally, to our relief, the light f
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Page 139 and 140: APPENDIX 2 SOTHIC CYCLES AND IMHOTE
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Page 154 and 155: Endnotes CHAPTER 1. STRANGE STONES
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41. Thomas Brophy, The Mechanism De
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34. G. A. Wainwright, “Seshat and
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100. The story is told in the Westc
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Bibliography Abed, Wael T. The Othe
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Genzlinger, Neil. “Chasing Mummie
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Millennium: A Reassessment.” Jour
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About the Authors Egyptian-born Rob
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BOOKS OF RELATED INTEREST Lost Know
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