The "Lost Tombs" Revisited:
"Success Has a Thousand Fathers ..."

Part V

"... it must be pointed out that there are some unique features (apart from the exquisite perfection of its sculpture) which set [this Temple] apart from any other Egyptian temple.

"First of all, the plan of the building is not the customary rectangle but is shaped like a capital letter 'L' (right). But this does not seem to have been premeditated. The width of the short arm of the 'L' is exactly the width of the main part. Moreover, the chambers in it should normally be at the extreme western end of the building behind what is now called the 'Osiris Complex.' Furthermore, the thickness of the wall dividing the Chapel of Sety, and the chapels of the Statue Hall from the Hall of Soker and its chapels is the same as that of the outer southern wall of the two hypostyle halls and the two courts. In other words, that was the original southern exterior wall of the building; and all of the rooms to the south of it [the lower part of the 'L' -- above] are additions.

"The reason for this change of plan is, as we have seen, the rediscovery [by Seti's architects] of the Osirion. Had the temple been continued westward, as it should have been, it would have covered the roof of the [much!] older building (see above). This was something the architect [apparently] wanted to avoid at all costs. [By this expensive and radical last-minute alteration, Seti was tacitly acknowledging that] the Osirion was by no means just one of those [other] old temples to be built on [emphasis added] ..!"

Which, apart from the discovery of the potentially revolutionary "glyphs" themselves inside, brings us to the first of several fundamental questions re the "Temple of Seti-I": 

How likely is it that Seti (or his architects) did NOT know of the existence of the Osirion before construction was begun? Out of all of Abydos to choose from (below), how did they uneeringly plan to build Seti's "pride and joy" on the exact same site as "one of the great puzzles of Egyptian archaeology" -- the long buried and forgotten, obviously highly revered and mysterious "Osirion" -- purely by chance?!

Omm Sety has the answer:

"... in normal temples of this period, the roofs of the various halls become lower as one penetrates further into the building. This temple, being built on rising ground, has the same effect but obtained by a reverse process. Instead of the roof being lowered, the ground is gradually raised, and it is not until we reach the extreme western end of the building that the actual roof is lowered.

"This arrangement, entailing the leveling and banking of the different planes, must have meant an enormous amount of [expensive!] hard work before a foundation block was ever set in place. As there were plenty of level sites in Abydos, it bears out the statement made by Sety that the temple was built in accordance with the demands of a divine oracle. This may also explain why Sety abandoned the traditional temple site at Kom el Sultan (which must have been very overcrowded by this time). So far as we know, this was the first temple to be built outside the great Temenos of Osiris [emphasis added] ..."

From this architectural analysis, and his own oblique reference to "oracles," it is very likely then that at least Seti-I himself somehow had "inside" knowledge of where the long-forgotten Osirion was buried. He then deliberately planned (Egyptological opinion notwithstanding) to build his Temple in ultra-close association [see below ñ where the Western Wall of Setiís Temple (top) is clearly abutting the now-excavated Osirion (foreground)].

The reason is also quite obvious: close proximity to a previous "sacred complex" dedicated to Osiris -- perchance, to Osiris "burial tomb" itself! -- would (via sympathetic "magic") only enhance Seti's own "connection" to Osiris. And it was on that connection that the well-being of the entire Kingdom, according to Egyptian beliefs, ultimately depended ... So, why didn't Seti-I inform his own architects of such a plan? Since, it is equally obvious, they were forced to make sudden, last-minute (and somewhat clumsy) changes to their own architectural plans -- to prevent incursion of Seti-I's "Great Temple" into Osiris' "sacred space" Ö when the latter was ìrediscoveredî in the course of the construction. The ultimate answer may never be known. But, it could easily lie in intrigues and power plays within the lifelong Abydos Priesthood vis a vis the ìsecularî wishes of the Pharaoh (the priests would have told him "NO!", if they got wind of what he planned to do Ö before the "accidental" rediscovery); or, it may have involved arcane and internecine fights within Seti's own palace retinue ... or even, a specific injunction against telling anyone Ö delivered by Seti's "divine oracle" itself!

Photo Hanny El Zieni

(After all, many reports are surfacing of similar, modern "visitations," and the delivery of equally arcane "messages" ... some to the heads of major world-class corporations -- such as that claimed recently by Joseph Firmage, when he ran US Web ...)

Whatever the real "source" of Seti's prior knowledge, his decision NOT to simultaneously inform his architects forced their obviously unprepared, last-minute alteration of his Temple's architecture to accommodate the Osirion's sudden rediscovery: "this imposing, fascinating, mysterious building of bewildering charm ..." This, in turn, would serendipitously reveal the presence of this amazing structure once again Ö thousands of years later... to the 20th Century itself, when Egyptologists began seriously exploring the immediate environs of Setiís own, much younger Temple ...

* * *

These ambiguous events surrounding Seti's choice of a building site, though initially contradictory and confusing, are in fact remarkably consistent with Seti-I's lifelong actions vis a vis Egypt's Sacred Traditions of the Past. For--

"When he became King, Sety (right ñ from his Temple) chose as one of his official names, Wehem-musut, which means, 'Repeating Births,' or, in other words, 'Renaissance'; and this name was a proclamation of his policy. For Sety had inherited a kingdom riddled with corruption despite the unceasing efforts of Hor-em-heb to clean up the government departments. Egypt's Asiatic Empire had vanished, her frontiers were threatened and even her ago-old claim on the Sinai Peninsula was disputed by roving bands ...

"Sety's policy of Renaissance aimed at the full restoration of internal law and order, regaining the lost Empire and stamping out all memory of the unorthodox 'Heresy Period' [Akhen-Aton's reign ...] that had preceded Hor-em-heb's coup ...

"Thus most of the first half of Sety's twenty-one year reign was occupied in settling the unrest in the Middle East. Only then did he feel free to embark on his great building schemes ... To him we owe the completion of the building of the great hypostle hall at Karnak (begun by Hor-em-heb), the Temple of Gourna and additions to many existing temples. But his greatest artistic triumph into which he had put his whole heart, soul and energy is his beautiful temple at Abydos (left). The whole building stands as witness to his reverence for the gods and his love of sheer beauty ... "Sety also restored many ancient, ruined monuments ... It is characteristic of Sety that in all these restorations [unlike many other pharaohs] he never attempted to claim an older monument as his own but merely added modestly, and almost timidly, small hieroglyphs that it had been restored by his orders ..."  From which Henri Frankfort saddled the world with the major misimpression ... that Seti-I built the mysterious "Osirion" -- when, in fact, by placing his own Temple right up against it, and doing minor "fix up when he found it, Seti obviously "only" sought to attach its ancient "magic" to his own ...

"Magic" which extended to the interior of his own Temple ... and a set of enigmatic "glyphs" depicting more objects definitely not of his own time ...  * * * Earlier, we mentioned the continuing debate over the potential reality of Osiris as an historic entity: was he an actual, early "civilizing figure" in Egypt's long pre-dynastic past -- later deified (like "Imhotep," IIIrd Dynasty architect of the Stepped Pyramid at Saqqara) for his remarkable accomplishments? Or, did the Egyptian priesthood cleverly camouflage a set of "deeper" truths and meta-physics within this set of endlessly retold "Osiris myths" about an ancient murdered leader ... inextricably interweaving "esoteric knowledge" and a literally "hidden history" in the surficially simple tales of "Osiris/Isis," "Set" and "Horus?"

Others, far more expert than I, have investigated aspects of the latter possibility and decided that it's true: the Egyptians were concealing "secrets" only the "initiated" were supposed to really know ... Schwaller de Lubicz, John Anthony West, Graham Hancock, Alan Alford, etc., have all affirmed this view.

But, as I began investigating the Osiris Myths myself -- part of our continuing inquiry into a potential and astonishing (because it's current!) "Osiris Cult" in NASA -- I noticed some peculiarly significant numbers recurring in these texts.

Numbers that seemed drawn directly from our developing model for "Hyperdimensional Physics" itself !

In the version of the murder where Set gathers his cohorts together for a Feast "in honor of Osiris," and then invites the unsuspecting god to get into a carefully guilded box (which will ultimately become his coffin -- when it's sealed and cast into the Nile, with him inside!), the myth makes particular reference to the number of Set's "co-conspirators" gathered at the "Feast": 72. Not 71 ... or 73. But 72.

Thus, to ìprecessî one full circle, the Earthís axis requires 72 X 360 = 25,920 years, to completely cone once Öcompleting one Great Astronomical Year Ö somewhat like the slow wobbling of a rapidly spinning top (diagram, right).  For several years, we at ìEnterpriseî have been looking into a "Hyperdimensional" reason for this fundamental motion of the Earth. This, as opposed to the commonly accepted theory -- that it is the Moon's simple gravitational pull, tugging on the slightly bulging equator of the Earth, which causes its Precession (directly analogous to the Earthís own gravity pulling down on the precessing top).

(If that were true, with the Moon very slowly receding from the Earth -- as verified for 30 years by the Apollo astronaut-emplaced laser reflectors on the Moon -- the lunar gravitational influence on Earth should be lessening as it recedes. Thus, the rate of Precession should be slowing down, as the force of lunar gravity causing the precession weakens. Instead, it's speeding up! The latest NASA figures quote a period of "only" around 25,828 years ... as opposed to the canonical 25,920. Clearly, something's seriously wrong with the prevailing precessional/gravitational theory!)

I am certainly not the first to notice the potential for hidden ìPrecessionalì codes and numbers in the various Osiris' Myths (right).  Though still ignored as even a possibility by essentially all mainstream Egyptologists, well-known myth-ologists (NOT Egyptologists) Santillana and Von Dechend, attached to MIT, first seriously explored the prospects of ìhidden astronomical codesî indicating knowledge of Precession (including, Egyptian mythologies associated with Osiris), in their epic mythological investigation: Hamlet's Mill: Myth and the Fame of Time (Macmillan, London, 1969).

Later, Jane B Sellers, an Egyptologist educated at Chicago's prestigious Oriental Institute (attached to the University of Chicago), reported on her more than 60 years of similar analyses (The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt, Penguin, London, 1992). She exhaustively looked at both the Osiris Myths, and the Pyramid Texts themselves (in which the earliest written versions of Osiris' death and resurrection were first noted). And, she concurred:

"I am convinced that for ancient man, the numbers 72 ... 2160 ... 25,920 [appearing in these texts] ... all signified the concept of the Eternal Return."

[The "Eternal Return" being when the Great Astronomical Year of the Precession comes full cycle (i.e. the axis "returns" to its celestial starting point) ...]

Ö Osirisí annual Processional statute arriving at Abydos by water Ö Set imprisoning him within a ìfloating coffin" Ö on the water Ö The annual Abydos Procession, culminating with his joyous Resurrection and return to rightful Rulership by boat Ö over water Ö

All these and other curious associations (for an "underground" god), of "Osiris and water,î have been casually accepted by Egyptologists for centuries, but their global significance has apparently been completely overlooked. This includes the following, remarkable reference in the Pyramid Texts themselves:

"O Osiris the King, arise, lift yourself up ... Your sisters Isis and Nepthys come to you that they may make you healthy, and you are complete and great in your name of 'Wall of the Bitter Lakes', you are healthy and great in your name of 'Sea'; behold, you are great and round in your name 'Ocean'; behold you are circular and round as the circle which surrounds the Hw-nbwt; behold you are round and great as the Sn-sk [emphasis added] ..."

The renowned Egyptologist, R. O. Faulkner, in translating the Pyramid Texts, was particularly struck by this reference to Osiris being "circular and round." He was so intrigued that he attached a special commentary, attempting to explain it as "the king's authority and power being all-embracing and universal." 

Obviously, he completely missed the point: Osiris, in these passages, is not only being directly identified with the Ocean ... but with the added, redundant detail that it (he) was "great and round" ... precisely like the ocean which surrounds our "great and round" planet. Clearly, this is a descriptive detail the authors of the Pyramid Texts in no way should not have known!

And, of course, standard Egyptologists are not for an instant going to appreciate an alternative interpretation for this knowledge; coming as they do from a hundred year perspective that these texts originated in a primitive, agrarian society [not by accident was Osiris also represented as "the green god," because of his identification with early Egyptian agriculture (right)], they universally believe, like Faulkner, that these unusual references simply have to be just literary metaphors for ... ìkingly powers."  Literally beyond their comprehension is the possibility that these carefully repeated phrases (and a litany of others) are, in fact, cleverly disguised code ... meant only for "initiates," and signify other awesome possibilities ...

(In fairness, one should cite at least one scholar, Richard Wilkinson, who's found Osiris' repeated textual associations with "water" indicative of some kind of "manifestation of deeper cosmogenic imagery." At least he's closer!)

Even more direct is another quote from the Texts:

"I have come into the Island of Fire, I have set right in it, in the place of wrong, and I am on my way to the linen garments which the uraei guard on the night of the Great Flood which came forth from the Great One [Osiris] ... [emphasis added]."

And, finally, from a contemporary "high-culture" several hundred miles to the east of Egypt, we find this remarkable reference. 

As we've established earlier, in Egyptian, Osiris' actual name is "Ÿsar." In the well-known Babylonian creation myth The Enuma Elish, one of the creator god Marduk's sacred fifty names was A.SAR ... meaningó

"Great Watery King."

Ÿsar ... A.SAR. And no one, before now, seems to have noticed the remarkable "coincidence" Ö

Further linkage to a possible catastrophe in the Egyptian myths is the mystifying association of this Event with the continuing metaphor of ìcut-down trees" (i.e. the death of "Life?") transforming into "pillars" (a fundamental axial support?). This is followed by the need to constantly reerect ìthe Djed Pillarî (the previous axial support?) -- to successfully complete the ìresurrectionî of Osiris. 

Similar metaphors are cited again and again in "Hamlet's Mill" as universal literary themes around the world. In Santillana and Von Dechends epic tome, they are signaled as potential codes for none other than the previously stable rotation of the Heavens (Earth), on an axis represented by a pillar or a tree Ö and the vital need to reestablish that stability (resurrect society, ìOsirisî) after its sudden, catastrophic shift (death!). The great mythologist, Joseph Campbell, writing on this recurring world-wide image, firmly believed:

"... its symbolic function, as representing the axial height joining earth and sky, is evident [emphasis added].

In the Egyptian usage, some representations of the Djed Pillar show it with a pair of curious "stabilizing arms and hands" (left) -- an obvious visual allusion to the axis' disturbing tendency to suddenly and unpredictably shift ... "without a steadying pharaonic influence." This particular Djed image was used throughout the still-mysterious (to most Egyptologists) Heb-Sed ritual -- a major ceremony crucial to periodically renewing a pharaoh's god-like powers, particularly, in maintaining the stability of this vital "bond between Heaven and Earth." In other words, the Osiris Myths actually seem to be a "coded" means of quietly communicating to the "in crowd" ñ then and now! -- ancient, "secret knowledge" of the fundamental relationship between the long-term Precessing Earth, and the semi-periodic, "Hyperdimensional hiccups" that can occur in this Precession ... which cause radical short-term, catastrophic changes in the overall axial orientation of the Earth ...

(And that is NOT in "Hamlet's Mill!")


(Continued in Part VI)