Out of
Downloadable Script of a DVD video lecture, by
Karl W.
Luckert
1.
While no land is holier than any other, there appears to be nevertheless one place on Planet Earth that qualifies as having been the religious and intellectual birth-place of Western Civilization. This place in ancient history was the city of Junu, in Egypt, dedicated to the Sun deity and named “Heliopolis” by the Greeks.[1]
The stones that formerly were assembled here for the sanctuary of Atum-Ra are scattered now. They were re-used among generations of later structures. So little is left of this place, that no travel office could show me a picture of it. I had to come here and see for myself.
The
ancient Sun temple that stood here, in Heliopolis, is known to have contained
the bnbn-stone. And this sacred stone is believed to have been the
prototype of all subsequent Egyptian obelisks. It symbolized the rising of the
sungod Atum-Ra at the moment of creation.
It
is somewhat unlikely that this only surviving obelisk, here in Heliopolis, is
the original one that stood in the main temple. But this being the only one
that remains, its presence at this site is enough of a coincidence to feel
inspired to quote from an ancient Pyramid Text that reminisces the first
sunrise at the moment of creation (1652-55)—according to the ancient
Heliopolitan “trinitarian” theology.[2]
The process begins with light and proceeds to the creation of life:
"O
Atum-Khoprer, you rose on high, you rose up as the bnbn-stone in the
Temple of the Phoenix in Heliopolis, you spat forth Shu, you expectorated
Tefnut, and you put your arms around them in an act of ka-giving, that
your essence—your life—might be in them."
Apparently,
the God in charge of this place, nowadays no longer cares to have this ancient
theology recited at Heliopolis. And who am I to compete with loudspeakers of
four large mosques that, on this holy Friday noon, suddenly decided to call the
faithful to prayer!
Atum,
as primeval Hill, rose from amidst Nun, the watery chaos “of darkness and of
gloom.” Nun was the closest concept that the ancient Heliopolitans had to
signify “nothing”—or rather, an inconsequential “watery mess.”
The
power that emanated from Atum was polarized as male and female
manifestations—as Shu and Tefnut. Shu represented the phallus dimension of
Atum—the rising mountain and the obelisk. Tefnut represented the enclosure, the
hand or vagina dimension of Atum. So, at this second level of divine emanation
we are aware of three divine names—Atum, Shu, and Tefnut (Father, Son, and
Daughter). There is one triune God and Creator—one process of procreation and
creation.
Atum-Ra’s
own creative energy, the soul of Shu as air and breath, was released as an
ejaculation of radiant light and life. Shu was rushing to fill the space—fill
the realm that was delimited by the cosmic womb of Tefnut who, thereby, became
a realm of living creatures. This goddess represents order. She is the boundary
that delimits and contains.
And
so Tefnut holds back the waters of Chaos overhead. Her function corresponds to
the “firmament” that is mentioned in the creation story in the book of Genesis
(1:7-8, 14). To the extent that in ancient Egypt the All-God was envisioned
as a prolific Father, Tefnut and her spacious womb, wherein all life is being
gestated, clearly emerges as the divine Mother. Those who are unrelentingly
opposed to such feminine theology are free to think, instead—as the ancient
Egyptians also did sometimes—about Atum’s self-pleasuring, all-surrounding
Hand.[3]
Atum
is the power that creates the world. When he rises in the east, as Atum-Ra, he
radiates life-giving splendor with each new day of creation.
The
meaning of obelisks, as symbolic hill or phallus of Atum’s creation, was
obvious at Heliopolis. But the problem of a mortal pharaoh was how to rule
forever as the virile Son of God that he pretended to be. The perceived
solution was to wrap oneself into a geometric abstract symbol—into something
like Atum’s obelisk.
Accordingly,
King Snefru tried to build a taller superstructure than Djoser. We do not have
the tip that was built or intended, so we cannot tell for sure that it
culminated like an obelisk. However, we know what was on his mind, because his
later so-called “Bent Pyramid,” approximates some rise as well as the upper
slant of an obelisk.
Subsequent
pharaohs were satisfied with letting only the tips of their gigantic egos
protrude from the ground. The biggest of these protrusions belongs to Kufu,
Snefru’s son. A human likeness, less than three inches tall, is all that
remains for us to contemplate, of the remainder of his person.
2.
Not
much remains of Memphis, the oldest imperial city in Western Civilization. Five
thousand years ago the city stood and functioned at this place. A few
monuments, statues, and a sphinx have survived from later times when ambitious
Memphites were hoping and plotting for a renaissance.
The
most impressive thing nowadays, at this site, is an unfinished colossal statue
of Ramses II. This most vainglorious among the pharaohs had statues of himself
placed all over Egypt—four colossal statues of himself just at this one temple
front, in Upper Egypt. He knew his Egyptian history and concluded that Memphis,
the first imperial capital, was a significant enough place where to leave a
colossus of himself.
Deified vanity, in Memphis, also has inspired very serious intellectual activity. Some 2800 years ago, a king named Shabako had a monument carved to preserve an ancient version of Egyptian political theory and theology. When looking at a theocracy one must remember that political theory, law, and theology are the same thing. The Memphite writer reveals much about how statecraft and religion were interrelated. He tells about the unity of divine words and pharaonic commands, and about the absolute power that the deified pharaoh claimed over the life and death of his people.
The
Shabako monument is now exhibited in the British Museum. Apparently the stone had
been put to ordinary uses for a while, as a grinding stone. So, we are
fortunate that not everything political and theological has been milled off the
surface. The text speaks for the primacy of the city of Memphis over other
Egyptian cities, and for the supremacy of the Memphite All-god, Ptah, who has
absorbed every attribute that had been ascribed to deity in other cities by
other imperial theologies.
“There came into being as the heart and there
came into being as the tongue (something) in the form of Atum…”[4]
This short theological sentence is all it took to incorporate the most ancient
imperial cult, the one of Heliopolis, into “Ptah” theology of Memphis. The
existence of the great Atum was not denied in Memphis, but henceforth the
All-God of Heliopolis was acknowledged only as a vague apparition on the heart
and on the tongue of Ptah—whose name was to be exalted in Memphis.
3. Thebes and Sinai
More than a thousand years
before the time to which the Abraham saga refers, Egypt has become an empire
that was on its way to define Western civilization. Later culture centers, like
Jerusalem and Athens, are heavily indebted to the ancient Egyptian influence.
It is said about Moses and
Aaron, the alleged founders of the old Israelite religion, that they spent
their formative learning years in Egypt. Then, here at Mount Sinai, God spoke
to Moses and identified himself merely as “the one who is”—Yahweh. No
theological innovation or surprise is implied. Back in Egypt, Moses has studied
the religion of the All-God of Thebes, who was known as Amun, the Hidden One.
Not only was Amun hidden beyond his images, he also kept his name hidden from
everyone. So the Yahweh revelation to Moses, in the Sinai mountains, conformed
nicely to Egyptian theological expectations.
Here at Karnak (the site of
ancient Thebes) are the impressive ruins of the central sanctuary of the Amun
religion—of the God who answered the prayers of all who earnestly approached
him, and who bestowed extra blessings on those whom he loved. These temples all
are marked by a progression of spaces, leading from an outer court to an inner
Holy of Holies chamber. Back there used to be the Holy of Holies at Karnak.
Here is the temple of Isis, on Philae Island. Seen from the lake, its holiest
chamber is situated to the right. Also in the well-preserved temple of Horus,
at Edfu, one finds the Holy of Holies still enclosed—minus the divine statue,
of course.
4.
Monotheism: Amun versus Aton
During
most of the New Kingdom era the designation “Amun” referred to the supreme
Godhead. A brief interruption in the history of Amun religion was caused by the
pharaoh Akhenaton. Scholars have hailed him as the world’s first monotheist.
But his religion was more an aberration of Egyptian monotheism than a good
example of it. Aton, the Sun-deity, whom Akhenaton addressed in hymns of
praise, appeared focused essentially on the well being of his “only beloved
Son, Akhenaton.” The deity’s goodwill just barely included the king’s wife.
Aside from the legitimization of despotism, there was little that would support
his fame as a reformer.
Of course, the Theban cult
of Amun was not a bastion for religious purity either. But during the New
Kingdom period, temples of Amun were being built far and wide. Amun religion
has broadened its theology to accommodate the hopes and fascinations of people
in all walks of life. The Amun cult has become an organization, a sort of Check
and Balance system against the ambitions of individual pharaohs. Akhenaton
tried to reverse this trend of losing power to the priests—and to the people.
But he failed. He lost his shepherd’s crook to the priests of Amun and, like
his statue, he stood as lonely despot, only holding a whip. Before Akhenaton,
Amun was the highgod of Egypt, and after Akhenaton the God of Egypt was Amun,
still.
Of course, a singular
deity, such as Amun, even though he is the Hidden One, has revealed himself
unabashedly in certain pro-created forms. So for instance, here at Thebes, the
God of Egypt can be seen wrapped in symbolism that is almost Christian. While
he is not exactly a Lamb of God, he appears nevertheless as Ram of God.
Manifest with impressive multiplicity, Amun is guarding here the smaller images
of pharaonic protégés. But one must look a little closer.
While indeed, one can find
in the British Museum, and elsewhere, some genuinely hoofed Amun-Ram figures
that guard the human pharaohs, those here at the Karnak temple are quite unlike
rams that would cohabit with sheep. They have the paws and bodies of lions.
They are ram-headed imperial sphinxes. The lion bodies indicate that we are
here still in a temple domain controlled by pharaohs—by men of predatory power.
Nevertheless, the fact that
faces of rams—on these sphinxes—have replaced the faces of pharaohs, and that
pharaohs are portrayed as small humankind, indicates that the egos of deified
emperors were being constrained by priests and theologians.
Monotheism
in Egypt is as old as the empire. During the Old Kingdom, when the All-God of
Egypt had not yet gone into hiding as Amun, here at Thebes, Egyptian religion
was defined by theologians at Heliopolis.
5.
Heliopolitan Theology
Every
schoolbook tells us that the ancient Egyptians worshipped the sun. This
statement is true, but superficial. It would be better to say that they recognized
the sun as life-giving and life-sustaining entity, and for this reason they
learned to think, and to explain, everything in terms of light and shadows cast
by the Sun. The Sun became their key to understanding the remainder of what
exists. Creation reoccurs with every sunrise—as the world around us reappears
anew.
Atum
rises as primeval hill and sends forth Shu, to fill Tefnut’s space with life.
You cannot see Shu, but you can rise with him, at sunrise, and breathe his air.
You cannot see Tefnut, but you benefit from how she keeps Chaos away. She sees
to it that clouds do have an underside, and that there is space for you to live
underneath.
Saying
the same thing a little more abstractly, Shu and Tefnut are radiated, or
emanated, from the original Source, Atum. His rays continue to travel far away
from the Source until they arrive at the low intensity level where we live. We
live in a realm between light and darkness—between life and death.[5] In
our boundary region, where light and shadows interplay, there we “live and move
and have our being,” for a while. Yes, by the grace of the radiant energy of
Atum we appear here for a while.
“Degrees
of focus” are the key word for understanding Egyptian cosmology. We are able to
focus on light-and-shadow play with our eyes. And because our minds are being
furnished with what the eyes provide, our minds can go on with focusing until
they see more than the eyes can see. What no eyes have seen, that the minds of
ancient Egyptian priests have focused upon, until they were able to paint
images of what they saw. There is only one deity—Atum—who is putting on this
entire polytheistic show.
From
Atum come Shu and Tefnut, and their offspring are Geb and Nut. It is up to
human intelligence to discover the Many in the One—and it is for human mystic
contemplation to see the One that embraces the Many.
Atum,
Shu and Tefnut, Geb and Nut, Osiris and Isis with Nephthys and Seth together
make up the “Ennead,” which is a Ninefoldness—something like Trinity Squared!
The
masculine line of Atum-Shu comes into clearer focus as Geb (which is the land
E-Geb-t). Geb lies under Tefnut who, meanwhile, has come into better focus as
her daughter Nut—or Lady Sky!
But
keep in mind, these are not two gods interacting. Atum is moving in both his
male and female dimension. These two dimensions (of sexual “dualism”)
reverberate all the way down to creatures that temporarily live along the light
and darkness boundary. [6]
Most
people today would insist that Lady Sky is evenly blue—also that the cloud
ceiling that we see is not being held up by a lady called Tefnut. But the fact
that today we teach molecular theory without referring to Tefnut or Nut, has
not stopped the priests of Atum from seeing her. The mystery of why things are
what they are, and why they are not different than what they are, can never be
fully explained either mythically or scientifically.
Place
masculine and feminine together, and you get more life mysteries. In the case of
Geb and Nut, their union resulted in the birth of a next generation of
divinities.
Down
in our realm, still unseen by most—but inferable from their activities—the twin
pairs Seth and Nephthys, and Isis and Osiris, are doing their thing. Seth
causes death and Nephthys, embarrassed by her brother’s violence, soothes pain
by helping her sister Isis in the funeral proceedings. These two pairs of
divine twins, at our level, thereby account for our mortality and our
salvation. They make mortals die and point the way for souls to travel home—to
the divine Parent, to be again “nearer to the heart of God.”
Back
in the early Egyptian days, such grand salvation was reserved for the God-king
when he returned as soul to the divine ancestral Source. The earliest Heliopolitan
story of creation, as we find it in the Pyramid Texts and Coffin
Texts, was intended to support divine imperial destiny, rank, and
continuation of the dynasty.[7] It
defined the begetting and conception, the birth, the death and resurrection of
every new pharaoh, as a Son of God.
Whenever
a pharaoh died, a next Son of God, a successor Horus-Falcon, was begotten by
God the Father. For his act of begetting, the deity was present as Father
Osiris—as transubstantiated corpse of the deceased pharaoh. When the embalmed
Osiris was laid to rest in the sarcophagus, his sister Isis was positioned to
hover above him.[8]
Merneptah, when he commissioned carving his coffin, like many pharaohs before
him, was thinking on a large scale. The lady under the lid is speckled with
stars and represents Nut. Whether Isis or Nut, they are both one in Tefnut.
Isis is Nut downscaled from her mother’s cosmic dimension—in order to
participate in the divine-human political theater of imperial succession.
From
the perspective of the gods, the pharaoh’s burial signified the wedding night
for Isis and Osiris. And in the darkness of their wedding chamber Isis
conceived the next ruling king, a Horus-Falcon child.[9]
The
new Horus is born on his day of coronation. For that event, Isis becomes
visible as Mother Throne, guarded in the back by four cobras that are poised to
strike.[10]
But there is more. The pharaoh is seated upon the lap of Isis, as a young
Horus-Falcon, situated between two lions. These lions are the “Ruti pair” and
represent Shu and Tefnut. The two winged serpents, outside each armrest,
probably point back as far as Atum. In either instance, this means that the
ruler’s birth upon this throne participated in the first moment of
creation—somewhere between Shu and Tefnut, at the very crotch of Atum. Every
ancient pharaoh therefore was born as “a singular begotten Son of God” and he
was promptly “resurrected” to God-Father status when he died.
While
imperial status was theologically and sanctimoniously confirmed, there was
plenty wiggle-room for political hype. Ramses II, for instance, has dated back
his Horus status far into early childhood. “I was born and nursed to rule,”
this statue says.
6.
Ka, Ba, and Resurrection
Now
briefly something about Ka and Ba—in order to prepare for understanding
the later Christian doctrine of Resurrection.
The
ancient Egyptians called the invisible life force, the spark of life that
energetically manifests itself from within, the ka.[11] They
named outward manifestations that register in human vision and perception the ba.
Both ka and ba are what we might call soul. But these
soul-aspects differ according to their progress along the path of divine
emanation. The ba, appearing along the outer reaches of divine
emanation, is a shadow-tainted estranged unit of ka and it is therefore
“material” and visible. Those among us, who have studied so-called Neo-Platonic
philosophy, already know these two soul concepts as “high soul” and “low
soul.” For the ancient Egyptians they
were ka and ba.[12]
Everything
visible of a person—body, mummy, artistic image, or ghost—is ba. Once
the ka-soul has left a body, in order to return to its primeval Source,
its shadow-dependent visible ba remnants begin to shrink and disappear.[13]
The
ba has sometimes been represented as a human bird in a state of flux—a
primitive angel of sorts, half human and half animal—availing itself of wings
that enable it to fly upward in the direction of light where its ka has
already gone. This figurine represents the ba of a prominent official.
It was found in his tomb. The ba of Nebseny, depicted on papyrus, still
clings to its mummy, while a little farther along the ba of Ani seems
adept at using its wings as it hovers above its mummy.
No
doubt, this bird symbolism owes its existence to the Horus and Isis mysteries.[14]
Homeward bound souls loved to identify with the winged imperial
Horus-Falcon. The Osirization of the
body, and the homeward flight of ka, have been celebrated in ancient
Egypt over millennia. Theirs is probably the mythic lineage by which biblical
angels, later on in Christendom, gradually grew wings.
But the Christian gospel story subscribed to
the Egyptian ka and ba model before wings were envisioned on
angels. The resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is narrated as a flash of
overwhelming light—at Easter sunrise. Afterward the Lord continued appearing to
his followers. Only weeks later did his apparitional body ascend to Heaven. In
Egyptian terms this means that his ba has followed in the direction of
his ka.
7.
Dualism in
Up
north, in Greece, the gospel of Christ’s resurrection was initially rejected,
because the mode of thinking there called for a simple distinction of spirit
and matter. Perhaps the best example of
Greek dualism can be found in the words of Socrates, as recorded in Plato’s Phaedo.[15] For
Socrates the experience of death, and even the pursuit of philosophy, amounted
to a separation of soul from body.[16]
For contrast one may consider an encounter of the Apostle Paul on Areopagus, a
rocky hill seen from the Acropolis in a northwesterly direction. Because of the
prevailing dualistic orientation of his listeners there, Paul had to retreat
from discussions about “resurrection.”[17]
8.
Alexander of
Soon
after his arrival in Lower Egypt in the year 331 B.C.E., and welcomed as
Egypt’s liberator from the Persians, Alexander of Macedonia came to Memphis to
be crowned pharaoh of Egypt. He learned about the pomp and circumstance that
over three millennia has provided continuity and rhythm—if not political
stability—to the pharaohs.
Had
the primary sanctuary of the “Hidden God,” Amun, been still functioning here at
Thebes, surely, Alexander of Macedonia would have petitioned to be blessed and
legitimized here, in Upper Egypt. But
when he was looking for Amun’s most prominent priest, this Vatican lay already
in ruins and had ceased to function. Alexander needed not to come here.
9.
Alexander at Siwa
In
the western Egyptian desert there is a place that existed from ancient times.
It is the oasis-town Siwa. There the religion of Amun has survived the two
centuries of destruction by Persian overlords. Here at this former temple of
Amun the path of Western Civilization was quietly altered one day, by Egyptian
influence. When Alexander of Macedonia came here, in 331 BCE, the priest of
Amun greeted him with the words—“O Paidios”—which means “O Child of God!”
Spoken
to the de facto pharaoh of Egypt, this salutation acknowledged that Alexander
was a legitimate Son of Amun. So, from the moment that he accepted this title,
the style of Western imperialism was Egyptianized. Not until Theodosius the
Great, seven centuries later, has an emperor explicitly abolished this
sacerdotal imperial system—including the high-priestly office of the Pontifex
Maximus.
The Ptolemaic rulers who
inherited Alexander’s empire, as well as the Roman emperors who followed them,
availed themselves of the religious legitimization that Alexander has obtained.
Did
Alexander think of this approach himself, of playing Egyptian Son of God as a
foreigner? It does not appear that way. Over a period of two centuries, prior
to the great Macedonian’s arrival, the Persians invaded and occupied Egypt
twice. Almost all Persian overlords set out to destroy the country and to loot
its temples—with one notable exception. Darius the First has benevolently
developed Egypt. For his reward Amun, and the people, awarded him Son-of-God
status and blessed him with a prosperous reign of thirty-six years. He
succeeded because he ruled as a traditional Egyptian Son of God. Alexander had
the wisdom to adopt the policies of a wise ruler from among the ranks of his
enemies.
10.
During
the Hellenistic Period, this bay in Alexandria was one of the world’s busiest
harbors. The harbor facilities meanwhile have sunk into the sea. Here, at this
city the learned Philo Judaeus took Egyptian emanational “philosophy” and
filtered it through the Judaic Torah.
Ammonius
Saccas taught here the principles of his common-sense philosophy to Clement,
and later Clement reconciled that Egyptian worldview with Christian theology.
Ammonius also taught Plotinus, from whose hands we took these teachings to be
some new variety of Platonism.
Here Clement and Origen
drew up the outlines of what became orthodox Christian doctrine. Then
Athanasius, another Egyptian, summarized their thoughts as official Christian
credo, for the Council of Nicaea.
Christian founders and
Neo-Platonic philosophers achieved their formulations from within the ancient Egyptian
worldview—concerning the All-God who reveals himself by a process of emanation.
11. Jesus of Nazareth
Two millennia ago a Jewish
boy named Jeshu, latinized Jesus, grew up roaming this countryside. The
parents of Jesus lived in Nazareth, Galilee, over there, along the bottom of
the hill. He became the founder of the Christian religion. So, in light of what
we learned about religion in Egypt, what could have been some of his
motivations?
Early in the history of
their religion, Christians became engrossed with their personal destiny after
death, with salvation as a transfer into a heavenly state of being.
Nevertheless, this “individualistic” craving for salvation appears to have had
much broader socio-political roots. Afterlife status of the dead is what
defines the status of the families of descendants.
Gradually over three
millennia, commoners in Egypt have succeeded in usurping the “resurrection”
status of their imperial masters. The time was getting ripe for a new kind of
Horus to appear—one that would redeem the awakening masses from their
subjugated status. Christianity has spread not primarily because people became
scared of dying, but rather, because it lifted its followers to a new political
and social status as children of God.
12. Crucified in Jerusalem
When Jesus was about thirty
years old he was arrested down south, in Judea, at this slope facing the city
of Jerusalem. Some churches have been built at this place since then, in his
honor.
Jesus was then taken across
the narrow Kidron Valley into the city. Back in the days of Jesus, at the place
were now stands an Islamic prayer-center, stood the temple that King Herod had
built to fortify his hold on the land and the people of Judea.
Apparently the Judaic
religious authorities apprehended Jesus for causing turmoil and for pretending
to be Son of God—or at least, for not having rejected such public acclaim. The
appellation “Son of God” was quite meaningless to those who arrested him—their
God was not known to procreate human sons. The Roman emperor, whose authority
to reign was legitimized by his title “Son of God,” would have been equally
illegitimate by the logic of Judaic religion.
Nonetheless in Judea, under
Roman occupation, Jesus could be arrested for undercutting the emperor’s unique
divine status—or at least for staging a Jewish parody at the expense of Roman
authority. He could be bound over for trial to the Roman procurator who lived
some distance behind the temple area, at the far side of the city.
Yes, Pontius Pilate
probably resided here, at this citadel. And Jesus of Nazareth in all likelihood
was tried and sentenced somewhere behind this tower and these walls. Jesus was
condemned to die by the Roman method of crucifixion—a cruel procedure reserved
for executing non-Romans. The body of Jesus was deposited in a tomb that may
have looked like this one.[18]
The first version of this
Church of the Holy Sepulcher has been built already in the year 325 by the
emperor Constantine—because, in all likelihood Jesus was crucified and buried
around here.
The revolutionary claim of
Jesus being “Son of God”—to which his followers confessed—was an affront to the
three thousand years of theocratic imperialism and of so-called “civilization”
that had befallen Planet Earth. The pharaohs of Egypt, the Ptolemies who
imitated Alexander, and Roman emperors beginning with Augustus, ruled as “sons”
of God. Here is the Roman emperor Augustus playing his Egyptian role.[19]
He even included “Son of God” in his Latin title—Imperator Caesar Divi filius
Augustus.
Jesus was executed for
committing high treason against the imperial order. The governor Pontius Pilate
condemned the accused as a pretender, guilty of a somewhat lesser crime. “Jesus
of Nazareth, King of the Jews,” read the indictment that was attached to the cross.
It was a Roman diatribe against the subjugated Judaic people. A Roman governor
could hardly have published the indictment that to him mattered most—“Jesus of
Nazareth, Son of God.” Every Jew would have understood this to be a diatribe
against the Roman emperor.
The story of the
crucifixion of Jesus—of the “commoner Son of God”—and of its aftermath has
become well known. His followers proclaimed their Lord’s “resurrection” from
among the dead. Thereby they usurped the process by which ancient emperors, at
death, would be resurrected to divine status. The celebration of Christ’s
ascension into heaven eventually became more popular than the pagan
“apotheosis” that was being done for Ptolemaic and Roman rulers.
Certainly, Jesus was not
the first thinker who thought that people were children of God. But he was
unique in that he stubbornly accepted the full consequences of his conviction,
to a bitter end—here at this Place of Skulls.
Three and a half centuries
later a Roman emperor declared Christianity to be the official religion of the
empire. The title Divi filius from then on officially belonged to the
commoner who was crucified here on a Roman cross—during the reign of Tiberus,
an imperial Son of God.
Nearly two thousand years
after the crucifixion, the secular offspring of redeemed Christians, no longer
convinced about the need of being equal children of God, nevertheless insist on
the Jeffersonian formula of equality among all the children of humankind.
Moreover, the vestiges of Egyptian civilization continue to reverberate even in
the far west of Western Civilization.
13. Coptic
Saint Mark suffered
martyrdom in Alexandria, but for better strategic positioning, his tomb has
been moved to the Coptic cathedral, in Cairo. This is one of those places where,
before entering, one takes off shoes without being told.
A week from today will be
Easter Sunday, and upon this throne will sit His Holiness Pope Shenouda III,
head of the Coptic Church. He will be seated here—flanked by the two pharaonic
lions, Shu and Tefnut. Here in Egypt—in the land where our Western imperialism
and monotheism began—why not!
What
did ancient Egyptian religion sound like? What was its language and its music?
Coptic Christianity has preserved a goodly measure of the ancient Egyptian
language. I have no reason to suspect, therefore, that they have intentionally
thrown away the ancient harmonies and rhythms. Today is Palm Sunday, this
Coptic sanctuary is filled to overflowing. But if one succeeds in worming along
the back wall, one can witness an easily recognizable Christian ritual.
The
melodies and harmonies take us back millennia, and the priestly attire is
reminiscent of the ancient imperial courts. These contemporary Christians are
still going about their business of miming and usurping ancient imperial
ritual—changing it in a process that elevates commoners. Priests now wear the
headpieces and crowns of the rulers. Bishops have appropriated the shepherd’s
crook, which was one of the emblems of pharaonic authority—and noticeably discarded
the flail.
Keep
in mind that Jesus of Nazareth founded this church by miming and usurping the
status of the dying Horus. And by rising as Christ he rendered Osiris obsolete.
Christianity inherited the desire of Egyptian commoners for democratized
salvation, and the proof of the Christian gospel lay in the fact that it would
effectively raise the status of the downtrodden.
We
are challenged to leave this ritual and to visit the squalor of Cairo’s garbage
collectors, in Moqattan village. There one can observe the Christian Church of
Egypt, still engaged in its original business of raising paupers to the level
of being children of God. Extensive sanctuary projects in the quarry caves,
next to their village, demonstrate the Christian gospel method—of salvation by
status redemption.
14.
Heliopolis: the Virgin’s Tree
We
will end our journey to Egypt where we began, in Heliopolis. If Christ ever was
brought to Egypt as a child refugee, then from the Egyptian perspective the place
to which he came must have been Heliopolis. There, nowadays, flourishes a
church that for all these reasons is dedicated to the Holy Nativity. And there
is more.
This
old tree is called the Virgin's Tree. According to legend, it shaded the holy
family—Joseph, Mary, and the baby Jesus—when they came here after fleeing
persecution in Palestine. Of course, this tree is not that old, and the
original would take us several sycamore-tree generations back. But such
quibbling misses the point. The story of Christ's flight into Egypt was not
told to establish a tourist site. Matthew 2:15 says precisely why this
story was told. "…to fulfill what the Lord has spoken by the prophet (Isaiah
and Hosea), "Out of Egypt I have called my son." But why were the
words of these prophets relevant?
Heliopolis is the place where the story of emanational monotheism, the rational structure of Christian salvation, began to take shape five thousand years ago—three thousand years before Jesus was born and before his gospel story exploded in Jerusalem.
15. Out of Egypt—an Other
Woman
And then, another miracle of quiet transformation has happened. As divine mother of the imperial Horus Falcon, and as conveyor of homeward-bound souls, Isis became accustomed to wearing wings. Because she was a daughter of the celestial Nut, whom Egyptian farmers envisioned as a Cow, she took to wearing horns.
When the Horus Child upon her lap revealed himself as Baby Jesus, who was not about to be a bird of prey, she gave back her wings to the ba-birds and angels. When she realized that he did not like horns, her own horns were diminished—and later given to Michelangelo, who placed them on the head of Moses.
So, out of Egypt, God not only has called forth an other Son, but also an other Woman—Mary, mother of Christ, to be exalted in heaven alongside her divine Son. The ancient emanation theology of the first three manifestations of Atum's Ennead—Father, Son, and Daughter/Spouse—was replicated by Christendom over time.
Christianity is a universal salvation religion, endowed with Hebrew scriptures that enshrine a herders' tradition of sacrifice, and that engendered a Kingdom-of-Heaven reaction against the tyrannies of theocratic imperialism. But Christianity also has been given the ancient Egyptian presence of a Son of God, together with emanation logic that invites mortals to participate in resurrection—that also has enabled Western Civilization to develop enduring structures and egalitarian democracy, and that invites children of humankind to belong to the universal Family of God.
Return to Luckert Bibliography