THE SUPREME WISDOM (The African Origin of The Flood & Atlantis pt. 1) At first sight the general effect of the innumerable deluge-legends is to suggest the existence of a primitive kind of catastrophobia resulting from fear of the water-flood. The arkite symbolism originated in the mount and tree, the cave or enclosure being a natural place of refuge when the waters were out upon the earth; and these were followed by the raft, the boat, or ark that swam the waters as a means of human safety. Before the legends of a deluge could have been formulated, the deluge as an overwhelming flood of water had become a figure used in sign-language to express the natural fact in a variety of phenomena to which the type might be and was applied. It is expressed in English still by what is termed a flooding. But a deluge is not only an overflow of water. There is a deluge of blood (both Egyptian and Polynesian). Night brings its deluge of darkness, and dawn lets loose the floods of day. The so-called deluge-legend comprises a hundred legends and a hundred applications of the same type, from one single origin in sign-language as the primitive mode of representing a fact in nature. The deluge is universal because it was not local. The human race spread out over all the earth would not have been greatly troubled about an excessive overflow of water once upon a time in Mesopotamia. The legend is coeval with all time, and current amongst all people, because the deluge did not occur once upon a time. On the grand scale it was the mythical representation of the ending and submergence of an old order of things in the astronomical mythology; but there were various distinct deluges with that meaning, and not merely one. The Egyptian deluge in the so-called destruction of mankind is described as continuing for three nights and days. The time is measured by three days length in navigation through a deluge of blood[1]. Now, three nights and days is the length of time that was computed for the monthly absence of the moon in the netherworld. Hence there was a deluge of darkness on that scale in mythology. But the deluge occurred in at least four categories of phenomena. There was a deluge of blood and a deluge of darkness, as well as a deluge of water. There is also the deluge that was a type of periodic time; and by no black art of bibliolatry can these four kinds of deluge be combined in one. A deluge being an ending of a cycle in time, we can understand the [p.546] language of the Codex Chimalpopoca[2] concerning the flood, when it says, Now the water was tranquil for forty years plus twelve. All was lost. Even the mountains sank into the water, and the water remained tranquil for fifty two springs.[3] In this account, the well-known Mexican cycle of fifty two years is measured by means of a deluge at the end of the period. In inner Africa the year was reckoned by the periodic great rain; in Egypt by the inundation; and a deluge, we repeat, became the natural type of an ending in time in the uranographic representation. In India, a solar pralaya, in which the waters rise till they reach the seven Rishis in the region of the pole, is of necessity kronian, and applies solely to the keeping of time and period astronomically. The Assyrian deluge is described as lasting seven days. This agrees with the seven days silence in the Wisdom of Esdras[4], by which the consummation of the age, or ending of the period, was to be commemorated like as in the former judgments, deluges, or endings of the cycle or age in time. The flood of Noah is on the scale of the year or thereabouts. The deluge of time, as it was called by the Chaldean magi, is a breach of continuity, a phase of dissolution. It was a period of negation that was filled in with a festival as a mode of memorialising the dies non or no time. It was a condition of the lawlessness of misrule, of promiscuous intercourse, of drunkenness, that characterized the saturnalia by which it was celebrated. A starting-point in various deluge-legends is from the world all water. This originated with the firmament as the celestial water that was called the Nnu, or Nun. Now one meaning of the word nun in Egyptian is the flood. Thus the water of heaven is synonymous with the deluge. In one aspect the deluge, as a figure in the sign-language of the astronomical mythology, was a mode of representing the sinking of the pole in the celestial ocean which was figured as the world of water. This is the world all water in the legendary lore. The flood upon which Jehovah sat as king was no other than the firmamental Nun[9]. So the throne of Osiris was based upon the flood, that is upon the Nun. In the vignettes to the Ritual Osiris sits upon the throne in Amenta as the great judge and ruler, and his throne is balanced as it is described, upon the flood. Water being the primary element of life, it was also based on figuratively and Osiris with his throne resting on the water takes the place of the earlier Nnu, or later Noah, resting in his ark as master of the deep. Nnu was god of the celestial water. The wateress in one form was the goddess Nut. This, then, and nothing short of it, is the root of the matter when, as in the Navajo-Indian legend, certain persons, who are so often one female and one male, make their escape from the overwhelming waters by climbing up a reed to the land of life which, as a land of reeds, was the primal paradise, or the fields where the papyrus was in flower above the waters of a universal deluge, as represented in the veriest dawning of mythology. We have to learn the sign-language before we can understand the nature of mythology. When it is said that Horus inundates the world like the sun each morning, that is with the light as the deluge of day. There is a white water and a black, equivalent to the white bird of light and the black bird of night, as opposite figures of Sut and Horus for the dark and the day. The evil Apap, who drinks the water cubit by cubit at each gulp as the sun goes down, is slain by Horus at daybreak, when he once more sets free the waters of light which are designated the waters of dawn. In like manner, the waters of day rush forth when Indra slays the serpent of darkness, who was thought of as the swallower of the light water of heaven. Osiris is called the overflower, the great extender, the shoreless one, who in this imagery of the deluge brings to its fullness the divine force which is hidden within him.[10] Thus, in continuing the primitive mode of thinging the concept, Osiris is the water-force personified, instead of being represented as a crocodile, which was also one of the primal types of water. The deluge is only single as a type. There are various deluges known to mythology, and various agents who are held responsible for causing them. In one legend or folktale it was the mischievous monkey. In another it was the tortoise, who sank in the waters and drowned the people who had their dwelling-place upon its back. In another it is caused by the killing of a sacred bird, which might be the vulture or cygnus. In a fourth the fountains of the great deep are opened by the taking out of the star, whereupon the deluge follows. A cause of the deluge is attributed to the star-gods, Sut in Egypt and Bel in Babylonia. It was caused by a failure in keeping time, and the failure is followed in a number of legends by the [p.548] new heaven, in which the supreme timekeeper is the moon or the lunar divinity who is Taht in the Kamite representation. Some most precious remains of the primitive wisdom now extant outside of Egypt are preserved by the oldest races of the world. Much of the matter is found amongst the people of the Polynesian islands, far more to the purpose than anything to be found in the Hindu or the Hebrew sacred books. The Samoans have what may, in a symbolical sense, be termed a deluge legend. Tangaloa, the originator of the heavens, was the builder. Of old the heavens were always falling down when they consisted of water without any bulwark or embankment. To put a limit, to build or make any firm enclosure, was to circumscribe the waters and secure a place of refuge from the dreaded deluge. In the time of Ptah, their great architect, the Egyptians were advanced enough in craftsmanship for the enclosure formed by him to keep out the waters of the deluge in Amenta to be made of either iron or steel, called the ba-metal. An ark was a primitive enclosure formed in the celestial water. This, as Egyptian, is the ark of Nnu, and Nnu is heaven, as water, also a name for the deity of the celestial water. In the Samoan legend, an ark is built before there was any water or water-flood, or before the firmament had been figured as water. Tangaloa of the heavens and his son Lu = Shu built a canoe or vessel up in the heavens.[11] When the vessel was finished there was no water to float it. Gaogao, the ancient mother, told her son Lu to have the vessel ready and she would make the water. She then gave birth to a lake, or the water of life, and also to the salt water, as it is said there was no sea at that time. The lake we identify with the lake of the thigh, or the meskhen of the water-cow. Sea and lake imply both salt and fresh water, the two waters of earth and heaven that were repeated in the two lakes of Amenta. The Samoan deluge lasted until the seventh day, like the Babylonian. As it is said of Lu, He was not many days afloat, some say six, when (on the seventh) his vessel rested on the top of a mountain called Malata.[12] In a papyrus at Turin the god who claims to be self-existent says, I make the waters and the Mehura comes into being.[13] That is heaven as the celestial water. In a hymn to Ptah it is said, The waters of the inundation cover the lofty trees of every region.[14] These, however, are the waters of Nnu or the Nun, and not the overwhelming flood of water on the earth. When the mehura first came into existence it was a heaven imaged as the water that was undivided by the astronomers, the islands or other land-limits that were figured in the aerial vast; and heaven as the celestial water was the Nnu or Nun. A true explanation of the worldwide deluge myths no longer need be sought for in the Book of Genesis or in the tradition of a great flood that swept the plains of Mesopotamia; nor in any vast cataclysm that might have been caused by the melting of the ice at the close of the glacial period[15]. We find by the Egyptian wisdom that the deluge, as it is commonly termed, belongs neither to geography, nor geology, nor history. Geology, the latest of the sciences, was comparatively unknown to the early world. Geology did not furnish the kind of fact with which the ancient science was concerned. Whatsoever [p.549] the Egyptian mystery-teachers of the depths may have known of mines and metals, mythology was not geological in the least degree. Neither did the Kamite chronology include the computation of geological time. It was confidently asserted by Bunsen that the deluge legend was unknown to the Egyptians[16]. But they had all the deluges that ever were, as the Hir-Seshta informed Solon, including the great deluge of all,[17] whereas the Greeks could only muster two. But in no case were these geological catastrophes. M. Lenormant asserted that the story of the deluge was unknown to the black race, and that while the tradition holds so considerable a place in the legendary memories of all branches of the Aryan people, the monuments and original texts of Egypt, with their many cosmogonic speculations, have not afforded one even distant allusion to this cataclysm.[18] The statement sounds authoritative, but it is not true. Professor Sayce, following Lenormant, asserts that no tradition of a deluge had been preserved by the Egyptians.[19] This comes of raking for human history, and for nothing else, in the Semitic debris of the Kamite astronomical mythology. Both are wrong, and both were equally misled through looking for the deluge with the Semitic versions for their determinatives. Bibliology has gone perilously near to ruining Assyriology and Egyptology for the first generations of students in this country. It is fortunate for genuine scholarship that there are livers out of Bible-burdened Britain. To identify the deluge-legend in Egypt you must know how to look for it; no use in peering through the Semitic spectacles. The legend of Atlantis retold by Plato in Timaeus[20] was Egyptian, and no doubt with the legend came the name of lost Atlantis, transliterated through the Greek. As Egyptian, the word atr = atl has several meanings in relation to water. Atru is the water, the waterflood, the water-boundary, limit, measure, frontier, embankment. Egyptian in the early stages had no sign of l. But by substitution of the later letter l for r the word atr becomes atl, the root of such names as Atlantis and Atlantic. With this change of letter the Atarantes of Africa become the Atalantes. The word antu or anti signifies a division of land. Thus Atlanti, whence Atlantis, as a compound of two Egyptian words, denotes the land divided by the waters, or canals of water. Now the earliest nuit or nomes of Egypt were seven in number, and these were seven territories marked out, limited, and bounded by the atlu (atru) as river, canal, conduit, or water-boundaries. In the valley of the Nile, the land was bounded first by water as the natural boundary, and seven nomes would be enclosed by seven atlu, long before the land limit was marked out by the boundary-stones or stele. And atl-antu, we suggest, is the original for the names of Atlantis and the Atlantic Ocean. It is noticeable that in the Nahuatl vocabulary atl is also the water name, and that atlan denotes the border or boundary of the water[21]. Atlan thus becomes a name for the mound, island, or tesh that was placed as a limit to the water in Egypt. This would be the land of Atlan, as we find it both in Africa and America. There were seven such water limits to the land in Egypt when it was [p.550] divided into seven nomes. And seven astronomes named after these become the seven islands of the lost Atlantis, which sank in the celestial waters, the heptanomis of the seven lands below having been repeated in the mapping out of heaven in seven astronomes. The heptanomis above, like the one below, was formed of seven lands that were divided by the seven waters, canals, or atlu (atru), and both together constituted the Atlantis of uranography, the only one that could ever be lost by the celestial waters overflowing the celestial lands. The seven rulers of the astronomes attained the status of divine princes in the celestial heptanomis. And among the nomes of Lower Egypt we find the name of the Prince of Annu; the nome of the prince of Lower Egypt; the nome of Supti (Sut); the nome of Samhutit (Horus); the nome of Sebek; the nome of Shu; the name of Hapi. Here then, if anywhere on earth, we find a geographical prototype for the Atlantis that was lost in seven islands, according to the records kept by the astronomers, which are preserved in the mythography. Among the many types of the heptanomis and its septenary of powers and stations of the pole may be enumerated: A mount with seven caves; seven islands in the sea; the seven-headed serpent whelmed beneath the waters; a tree with seven branches; a fish with seven fins; a pole with seven horns; a cross with seven arms; the seven supporting giants; the ark of seven cubits; the boat with seven Cabiri on board; the group of seven cities. It is not necessary to suppose that the Egyptians were the helpless victims of their own symbolism, who lived in mortal dread of the celestial waters falling down and overwhelming them in a deluge once for all. But there can be no doubt that the water-flood on earth against which the early race was powerless produced a profound and permanent impression, so that the deluge idea became associated with the firmamental water. This can be proved by the mythical deluge dramatically represented in the Ritual. I am the father of the inundation,[22] says Anup at the northern pole, whence the waters issued in the deluge of the Milky Way, or White Nile of the Nun. The Egyptian Ritual affords a study of the deluge mythos in the phase of eschatology. The passage for the soul in death has long and universally been likened to a river or some dark water flowing between the two worlds of earth and heaven. This in Egypt was the Nun. The way of the gods in their ascent and descent to earth was by water. The way of souls in their ascent to heaven is equally by water, whether in the ark of the moon, the bark of Orion, or the boat of the sun. The manes on entering the other life thus addresses the sailors of the solar bark, O ye seamen of Ra, at the gloaming of day let me live after death, day by day, as doth Ra.[23] That is by means of the boat which keeps the sun or the soul of the deceased afloat upon the drowning element. In the chapter for travelling on the road which is above the earth[24], the speaker says, It is I who voyage on the stream which divideth the divine pair. These are the two sisters Isis and Nephthys, whose stations in the Osirian solar mythos were at the western and eastern sides of the river which ran north and south in heaven as in Egypt. Some prophetic tableaux show the deceased in his funeral bark, speeding [p.551] before the wind with all sail set, having started on his way to the next world the very day that he took possession of his new abode in death[25]. Amongst the words that are said on the day of burial to bring about the resurrection and the glory, the deceased asks that he may see the ship of the holy Sahus traversing the sky; that is, the ark of souls represented in the constellation of Orion. He also pleads, Let the divine vessel Neshemet advance to meet me. The Osiris tells us that the name of his bark is Collector of Souls. The picture of it is the representation of his glorious journey upon the canal.[26] Safe in the ark, he crosses the waters in which the helpless souls are wrecked
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 00:33:42 +0000
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