6 - THE GATES OF HEAVEN

The Sumerians bequeathed to humanity a long list of "firsts" without which ensuing and modern civilizations would have been impossible. To those that were already mentioned, another "first" that has endured almost without a break has been Kingship. As all others, this "first" too was granted to the Sumerians by the Anunnaki. In the words of the Sumerian King Lists, "after the Flood had swept over the Earth, when Kingship was lowered from Heaven, Kingship was in Kish."

It was, perhaps, because of this - because "Kingship was lowered from Heaven" - that kings have deemed it a right to be taken aloft, to ascend unto the Gates of Heaven. Therein lie records of attained, attempted, or simulated Divine Encounters filled with soaring aspirations and dramatic failures. In most, dreams play a key role.

The Mesopotamian texts relate that, faced with the reality of a devastated planet, Enlil accepted the fact of Mankind’s survival and bestowed his blessings upon the remnants. Realizing that henceforth the Anunnaki themselves could not continue their stay and functioning on Earth without human help, Enlil joined Enki in providing Mankind with the advancements that we call the progress from Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) to Mesolithic and Neolithic (Middle and New Stone Ages) to the sudden Sumerian civilization - in each instance at 3,600-year intervals - that marked the introduction of animal and plant domestications and the switchover from stone to clay and pottery to copper tools and utensils, then to a full-fledged civilization.

As the Mesopotamian texts make clear, the institution of Kingship as an aspect of such high-level civilizations with their hierarchies was created by the Anunnaki to form a partition between themselves and the surging masses of humanity. Before the Deluge Enlil complained that "the noise of Mankind has become too intense" for him, that "by their uproar I am deprived of sleep."

Now the Gods retreated to sacred precincts, the step-pyramids (ziggurats) at whose center were called the "E" (literally: House, abode) of the God; and a chosen individual who was permitted to approach close enough to hear the deity’s words, then conveyed the divine message to the people. Lest Enlil become unhappy again with humanity, the choice of a king was his prerogative; and in Sumerian what we call "Kingship" was called "Enlilship."

We read in the texts that the decision to create Kingship came only after great turmoil and warfare among the Anunnaki themselves - conflicts that we have termed Pyramid Wars in our book The Wars of Gods and Men. These bitter conflicts were halted by a peace treaty that divided the ancient settled world into four regions. Three were allocated to Mankind, recognizable as the locations of the three great ancient civilizations of,

• the Tigris-Euphrates (Mesopotamia)

• the Nile River (Egypt, Nubia)

• the Indus Valley

The Fourth Region, a neutral zone, was TILMUN ("Land of the Missiles") - the Sinai peninsula - where the post-Diluvial Spaceport was located. And so it was that,

The great Anunnaki who decree the fates
sat exchanging their counsels regarding the Earth.
The four regions they created,
establishing their boundaries.

At that time, as the lands were being divided among the Enlilites and the Enki’ites,

A king was not yet established
over all the teeming peoples;
At that time the headband and crown
remained unworn;
The scepter inlaid with lapis lazuli
was not yet brandished;

The throne-dais had not yet been built.

Scepter and crown, royal headband and staff

still lay in heaven before Anu.

When finally, after the decisions regarding the four regions and the granting of civilizations and Kingship to Mankind were reached, "the scepter of Kingship was brought down from Heaven," Enlil assigned to the Goddess Ishtar (his granddaughter) the task of finding a suitable candidate for the first throne in the City of Men - Kish, in Sumer.

The Bible recalls Enlil’s change of heart and blessing of the remnants by stating that "Elohim blessed Noah and his sons and said unto them: Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the Earth." The Bible then, in what is called the Table of Nations (Genesis chapter 10), proceeds to list the tribal nations that have descended of the three sons of Noah - Shem, Ham, and Japhet - the three major groupings that we still recognize as the Semitic peoples of the Near East, the Hamitic peoples of Africa, and the Indo-Europeans of Anatolia and the Caucasus who had spread to Europe and India. Plunked into the list of sons and sons of sons and grandsons is an unexpected statement regarding the origins of Kingship and the name of the first king - Nimrod:

And Kush begot Nimrod,
he who was the first Mighty Man
upon the Earth.
He was a mighty hunter before Yahweh,
wherefore the saying, "A Mighty Hunter
like Nimrod before Yahweh.
And the beginning of his kingdom:
Babel and Erech and Akkad,
all in the Land of Shine‘ar.
Out of that land there emanated Ashur,
where Nineveh was built,
a city of wide streets;
and Khalah, and Ressen - the great
city which is between Nineveh and Khalah.

This is an accurate, though concise, history of Kingship and kingdoms in Mesopotamia. It compresses the data in the Sumerian King Lists wherein Kingship, having begun in Kish (that the Bible calls Kush), indeed shifted to Uruk (Erech in the Bible) and after some meandering to Akkad, and in time to Babylon (Babel) and Assyria (Ashur).

They all emanated from Sumer, the biblical Shine’ar. The Sumerian "first" in Kingship is further evidenced by the biblical use of the term "Mighty Man" to describe the first king, for this is a literal rendering of the Sumerian word for king, LU.GAL - "Great/ Mighty Man."

There have been many attempts to identify "Nimrod." Since according to Sumerian "myths" it was Ninurta, the Foremost Son of Enlil, who was given the task of instituting "Enlilship" in Kish, Nimrod might have been the Hebrew name for Ninurta. If it is a man’s name, no one knows what it was in Sumerian because the clay tablet is damaged there.

According to the Sumerian King Lists, the Kish dynasty consisted of twenty-three kings who ruled for "24,510 years 3 months and 3’/2 days," with individual reigns of 1,200, 900, 960, 1,500, 1,560 years and the like. Assuming the mispositioning of "1" as "60" in transcribing over the millennia, one arrives at the more plausible 20, 15, and so on individual reigns and a total of just over four hundred years - a period that is supported by archaeological discoveries at Kish.

The list of names and lengths of reign is deviated from only once, in respect to the thirteenth king. Of him the King Lists state:

Etana, a shepherd,
he who ascended to heaven,
who consolidated all countries,
became king and ruled for 1,560 years.

This historical notation is not an idle one; for there does exist a long epic tale, the Epic of Etana, that describes his Divine Encounters in his efforts to reach the Gates of Heaven. Although no complete text has been found, scholars have been able to piece together the story line from fragments of Old Babylonian, Middle Assyrian, and Neo-Assyrian recensions; but there is no doubt that the original version was Sumerian, for a sage in the service of the Sumerian king Shulgi (twenty-first century B.C.) is mentioned in one of the recensions as the editor of an earlier version.

The reconstruction of the tale from the various fragments has not been easy because the text seems to weave together two separate stories. One has to do with Etana, clearly a beloved king known for a major benevolent achievement (the "consolidation of all countries"), who was deprived of a son and natural successor because of his wife’s malady; and the only remedy was the Plant of Birth, which could be obtained only in the Heavens.

The story thus leads to Etana’s dramatic attempts to reach the Gates of Heaven, borne aloft on the wings of an eagle (a part of the tale that was depicted on cylinder seals from the twenty-fourth century B.C. - Fig. 30).

Figure 30
 

The other story line deals with the Eagle, its friendship at first and then quarrel with a Serpent, resulting in the Eagle’s imprisonment in a pit from which it is saved by Etana in a mutually beneficial deal: Etana rescues the Eagle and repairs its wings in exchange for the Eagle’s acting as a spaceship that takes Etana to distant heavens.

Several Sumerian texts convey historical data in the form of an allegorical disputation (some of which we had already mentioned), and scholars are uncertain where in the Eagle-Serpent segment allegory ends and a historical record begins. The fact that in both segments it is Utu/Shamash, the commander of the Spaceport, who is the deity that controls the fate of the Eagle and who arranges for Etana to meet the Eagle, suggests a factual space-related event.

Moreover, in what scholars call The Historical Introduction to the interwoven episodes, the narrative sets the stage for the related events as a time of conflict and clashes in which the IGI.GI ("Those Who Observe and See") - the corps of astronauts who remained in Earth orbit and manned the shuttlecraft (as distinct from the Anunnaki who had come down to Earth) - "barred the gates" and "patrolled the city" against opponents whose identity is lost in the damaged tablets. All of this spells actuality, a record of facts.

The unusual presence of the Igigi in a city on land, the fact that Utu/Shamash was commander of the Spaceport (by then in the Fourth Region), and the designation of the pilot-cum-spacecraft of Etana as an Eagle, suggest that the conflict echoed in the Etana tale had to do with space flight. Could it be an attempt to create an alternative space center, one not controlled by Utu/Shamash? Could the Eagleman who was involved in the failed attempt, or the intended spacecraft, be banished to languish in a pit - an underground silo?

A depiction of a rocketship in an underground silo (showing the command module above ground) has been found in the tomb of Hui, an Egyptian governor of the Sinai in Pharaonic times (Fig. 31), indicating that an "Eagle" in a "pit" was recognized in antiquity as a rocketship in its silo.

Figure 31
 

If we accept the biblical data as an abbreviated version, yet one that is chronologically and otherwise correct, of the Sumerian sources, we learn that in the aftermath of the Deluge, as Mankind proliferated and the Tigris-Euphrates plain was drying up sufficiently for resettlement, people,

"journeyed from the east, and they found a plain in the land of Shine’ar and they settled there. And they said to one another: Let us make bricks, and burn them in a kiln. And thus the brick served them for stone, and bitumen served them as mortar."

This is quite an accurate if concise description of the beginning of Sumerian civilization and some of its "firsts" - the brick, the kiln, and the first City of Men; for what ensued was the building of a city and of a "Tower whose head can reach unto heaven."

Nowadays we call such a structure a launch rower, and its "head" that can reach the heavens is called a rocketship... We have arrived, in the biblical narrative and chronologically, at the incident of the Tower of Babel - the unauthorized construction of a space facility. So "Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower that the Children of Adam were building."

Not liking at all what he was seeing, Yahweh expressed his concerns to unnamed colleagues.

"Come, let us descend and confound there their tongue, so that they may not understand one another’s speech," he said.

And so it was. "And Yahweh scattered them from there upon all over the Earth, and they ceased building the city."

The Bible identifies the place where the attempt to scale the heavens had taken place as Babylon, explaining its Hebrew name Babel as derived from the root "to confuse." In fact the original Mesopotamian name, Bab-ili, meant "Gateway of the Gods," a place intended by Marduk, the Firstborn son of Enki, to serve as an alternative launch site, free of Enlilite control. Coming in the wake of what we had termed the Pyramid Wars, the incident was timed by us to circa 3450 B.C. - several centuries after the beginning of Kingship in Kish and thus in about the same time frame as that of the Etana events.

Such correspondences between the Sumerian and biblical chronologies shed light on the identity of the divine beings who, like Yahweh in the biblical version, had come down to see what was happening in Babylon, and to whom Yahweh had expressed his concerns. They were the Igigi, who came down to Earth, occupied the city, barred its seven gates against the opposing forces, and patrolled the place until order was restored under a new chosen king capable of "consolidating the lands."

That new ruler was Etana.

His name can best be translated as "Strongman," and must have been a favorite name for boys in the ancient Near East for it is encountered several times as a personal name in the Hebrew Bible (as Ethan). Not unlike executive searches in our times, he too was selected after "Ishtar was looking for a shepherd and searching high and low for a king."

After Ishtar had come up with Etana as a candidate for the throne, Enlil looked him over and approved: "A king is hereby affirmed for the land," he announced; and "in Kish a throne-dais for Etana he established." With this done, "the Igigi turned away from the city" and presumably returned to their space stations.

And Etana, having "consolidated the land," turned his mind to the need for a male heir.

The tragedy of a childless spouse, unable to bear a successor for her husband, is a theme encountered in the Bible beginning with the Patriarchal tales. Sarah, the wife of Abraham, was unable to bear children until a Divine Encounter at age ninety; in the meantime, her handmaiden Hagar bore Abraham a son (Ishmael) and the stage was set for a succession conflict between the Firstborn and the younger Legal Heir (Isaac). Isaac in turn had to "entreat Yahweh in behalf of his wife, because she was barren." She was able to conceive only after Yahweh had "let himself be entreated."

Throughout the biblical narratives the belief persists that it is from the Lord that the ability to conceive is granted, and in turn withheld. When Abimelech the king of Gerar took Sarah away from Abraham, "Yahweh closed up every womb in the house of Abimelech" and the affliction was removed only after an appeal by Abraham. Hannah, the wife of Elkanah, was deprived of children because "the Lord had shut her womb." She gave birth to Samuel only after she vowed to give the boy, if she bears a son, "unto the Lord all the days of his life and there shall come no razor upon his head."

In the case of Etana’s wife the problem was not an inability to conceive, but rather repeated miscarriages. She was afflicted with a LA.BU disease which prevented her bringing to full term the children that she did conceive. In his desperation, Etana envisioned dire forebodings. In a dream "he saw the city of Kish sobbing; in the city, the people were mourning; there was a song of lamentation." Was it for him, because "Etana cannot have an heir," or for his wife - an omen of death?

Thereafter, "his wife said to Etana: the God showed me a dream. Like Etana my husband, I have had a dream." In the dream she saw a man. He held a plant in his hand; it was a shammu sha aladi, a Plant of Birth. He kept pouring cold water on it so that it might "become established in his house." He brought the plant to his city and into his house. From the plant there blossomed a flower; then the plant withered away.

Etana was certain that the dream was a divine omen. "Who would not reverence such a dream!" he said. "The command of the Gods has gone forth!" he exclaimed; the remedy to the malady "has come upon us."

Where was this plant, Etana asked his wife. But, she said, in her dream "I could not see where it was growing." Convinced however that the dream was an omen that must come true, Etana went in search of it. He crossed rivers and mountain streams, he rode to and fro. But he could not find the plant. Frustrated, Etana sought divine guidance.

"Every day Etana prayed repeatedly to Shamash." Coupling appeals with remonstration, "O Shamash, you have enjoyed the best cuts of my sheep," he said. "The soil has absorbed the blood of my lambs. I have honored the Gods!" "The interpreters of dreams," he continued, "have made full use of my incense."

Now it was up to the deities themselves, those "who have made full use of my slaughtered lambs," to interpret the dream for him.

If there is such a Plant of Birth, he said in his prayers,

"Let the word go forth from your mouth, Ho Lord, and give me the Plant of Birth! Show me the Plant of Birth! Remove my shame and provide me with a son!"

The texts do not state where Etana had thus appealed to Utu/Shamash, the commander of the Spaceport. But apparently it was not a face-to-face encounter, for we read next that "Shamash made his voice heard and spoke to Etana." And this was what the divine voice said:

Go along the road, cross the mountain.
Find a pit and look carefully at what
is inside it.
An Eagle is abandoned down there.
He will obtain for you the Plant of Birth.

Following the God’s instructions Etana found the pit and the Eagle inside it. Demanding to know why Etana had come hither, the Eagle was told of Etana’s problem, and told Etana his sad story. Soon a deal was struck: Etana would help raise the Eagle out of the pit and help him fly again; in exchange the Eagle would find for Etana the Plant of Birth. With the aid of a six-runged ladder Etana brought the Eagle up; with copper he repaired his wings. Fit to fly, the Eagle began to search for the magical plant in the mountains. "But the Plant of Birth was not found there."

As despair and disappointment engulfed Etana, he had another dream. What he told about it to the Eagle is partly illegible because of damage to the tablet; but the legible portions refer to the emblems of lordship and authority, coming from "the bright heights of heaven, lay across my path." "My friend, your dream is favorable!" The Eagle said to Etana.

Etana then had one more dream in which he saw reeds from all parts of the land assemble into heaps in his house; an evil serpent tried to stop them, but the reeds, "like subject slaves, bowed down before me." Again the Eagle "persuaded Etana to accept the dream" as a favorable omen.

Nothing however happened until the Eagle, too, had a dream. "My friend," he said to Etana, "that same God to me too showed a dream":

We were going through the entrance
of the gates of Anu, Enlil and Ea;
we bowed down together, you and I.
We were going through the entrance
of the gates of Sin, Shamash, Adad and Ishtar;
We bowed down together, you and I.

If we take a look at the route map in Fig. 17, it will at once be realized that the Eagle was describing a reverse journey - from the center of the Solar System where the Sun (Shamash), the Moon (Sin), Mercury (Adad), and Venus (Ishtar) are clustered, toward the outer planets and the outermost one, Anu’s domain of Nibiru!

The dream, the Eagle reported, had a second part:

I saw a house with a window without a seal.
I pushed it open and went inside.
Sitting in there was a young woman amidst a brilliance,
adorned with a crown, fair of countenance.
A throne was set for her;
around it the ground was made firm.
At the base of the throne lions were crouching.
As I went forward, the lions gave obeisance.
Then I woke up with a start.

The dream was thus filled with good omens: the "window" was unsealed, the young woman on the throne (the king’s wife) was amidst a brilliance; the lions were obliging. This dream, the Eagle said, made it clear what had to be done: "Our objective-target has been made manifest; come, I will bear you to the heaven of Anu!"

What follows in the ancient text is a description of space flight, as realistic as any reported by modern astronauts.

Soaring skyward with Etana holding on, the Eagle said to Etana after they had ascended one beru (a Sumerian measure of distance and of the celestial arc):

See, my friend, how the land appears!
Peer at the sea at the sides of the Mountain House:
The land has indeed become a mere hill,

the wide sea is just a tub!
Higher and higher the Eagle carried Etana heavenward;

smaller and smaller the Earth appeared.

After they had ascended another beru,

the Eagle said to Etana:
My friend,
Cast a glance at how the Earth appears!
The land has turned into a furrow . ..
The wide sea is just like a bread-basket . . .

After they had journeyed another beru, the land was seen no larger than a gardener’s ditch. And after that, as they continued to ascend, the Earth was totally out of sight.

Recording the experience, Etana said thus:

As I glanced around, the land had disappeared;

and upon the wide sea mine eyes could not feast.
They were so far out in space

that Earth had disappeared from view!

Seized with fright, Etana called out to the Eagle to turn back. It was a dangerous descent, for the Eagle "plunged down" to Earth. A tablet’s fragment identified by scholars as "the Eagle’s prayer to Ishtar as he and Etana fall from Heaven" (viz. J.V. Kinnier Wilson, The Legend of Etana: A New Edition) suggests that the Eagle had called out to Ishtar - whose mastery of the Earth’s skies was well attested in both texts and drawings, such as in Fig. 32 - to come to their rescue.

They were falling toward a body of water mat, "though it would have saved them at the lop, would have killed them in its depths." With lshtar’s intervention, the Eagle and his passenger landed in a forest.

Figure 32
 

In the second region of civilization, that of the Nile River, Kingship began circa 3100 B.C. - human Kingship, that is, for Egyptian traditions held that long before that Egypt was ruled by Gods and demigods.

According to the Egyptian priest Manetho, who had written down the history of Egypt when Alexander’s Greeks arrived, in times immemorial "Gods of Heaven" came to Earth from the Celestial Disc (Fig. 33). After a great flood had inundated Egypt- "a very great God who had come to Earth in the earliest times" raised the land from under the waters by ingenious damming, dyking, and land reclamation works.

Figure 33
 

His name was Ptah, "The Developer," and he was a great scientist who had earlier had a hand in the creation of Man. He was often depicted with a staff that was graduated, very much like surveyors’ rods nowadays (Fig. 34a). In time Ptah handed the rule over Egypt to his Firstborn son Ra ("The Bright One" - Fig. 34b), who for all time remained head of the pantheon of Egyptian Gods.

Figures 34a and 34b
 

The Egyptian term for "Gods" was NTR - "Guardian, Watcher" and the belief was that they had come to Egypt from Ta-Ur, the "foreign/Far Land." In our previous writings we have identified that land as Sumer (more correctly Shumer, "Land of the Guardians"), Egypt’s Gods as the Anunnaki, Ptah as Ea/Enki (whose Sumerian nickname, NUDIMMUD, meant "The Artful Creator") and Ra as his Firstborn son Marduk.

Ra was followed on the divine throne of Egypt by four brother-sister couples: first his own children Shu ("Dryness") and Tefnut ("Moisture"), and then by their children Geb ("Who Piles Up the Earth") and Nut ("The Stretched-out Firmament of the Sky"). Geb and Nut then had four children: Asar ("The All-Seeing") whom the Greeks called Osiris, who married his sister Ast, whom we know as Isis; and Seth ("The Southerner") who married his sister Nebt-hat, alias Nephtys.

To keep the peace, Egypt was divided between Osiris (who was given Lower Egypt in the north) and Seth (who was assigned Upper Egypt in the south). But Seth deemed himself entitled to all of Egypt, and never accepted the division. Using subterfuge, he managed to seize Osiris, cut up his body into fourteen pieces, and dispersed the pieces all over Egypt. But Isis managed to retrieve the pieces (all except for the phallus) and put together the mutilated body, thereby resurrecting the dead Osiris to life in the Other World.

Of him the sacred writings said:

He entered the secret gates,
the glory of the Lord of Eternity,
in step with him who shines in the horizon,
on the path of Ra.

And thus was born the belief that the king of Egypt, the Pharaoh, if "put together" (mummified) like Osiris after death, could journey to join the Gods in their abode, enter the secret Gates of Heaven, encounter there the great God Ra, and, if allowed to enter, enjoy an eternal Afterlife.

The journey to this ultimate Divine Encounter was a simulated one; but to simulate one has to emulate a real, actual precedent - a journey that the Gods themselves, and specifically so the resurrected Osiris, had actually taken from the shores of the Nile to Neter-Khert, "The Gods’ Mountainland," where an Ascender would take them aloft in the Duat, a magical "Abode for rising to the stars."

Much of what we know of those simulated journeys comes from the Pyramid Texts, texts whose origin is lost in the mists of time that are known from their repeated quoting inside Pharaonic pyramids (especially those of Unas, Teti, Pepi I, Merenra, and Pepi II who had reigned between 2350 and 2180 B.C.). Exiting his burial tomb (which was never inside a pyramid) through a false door, the king expected to be met by a divine herald who would "take hold of the king by the arm and take him to heaven." As the Pharaoh thus began his Journey to the Afterlife, the priests broke out in a chant: "The king is on his way to Heaven! The king is on his way to Heaven!"

The journey - so realistic and geographically precise that one forgets it was supposed to be simulated - began, as stated, by passing through the false door that faced east; the destination of the Pharaoh was thus eastward, away from Egypt and toward the Sinai peninsula. The first obstacle was a Lake of Reeds; the term is almost identical to that of the biblical Sea of Reeds that the Israelites managed to cross when its waters miraculously parted, and undoubtedly refers in both instances to the chain of lakes that still run almost the whole length of the border between Egypt and the Sinai, from north to south.
 

In the case of the Pharaoh, it was a Divine Ferryman who, after some tough questioning regarding the Pharaoh’s qualifications, decided to let the king cross. The Divine Ferryman brought the magical boat over from the lake’s far side, but it was the Pharaoh who had to recite magical formulas to make the boat sail back. Once the formulas were recited, the ferryboat began to move by itself and the steering oar directed itself. In every respect, the boat was self-propelled!

Beyond the lake there stretched a desert, and beyond it the Pharaoh could see in the distance the Mountains of the East. But no sooner had the Pharaoh alighted from the boat, than he was stopped by four Divine Guards, who were conspicuous by their black hair that was arranged in curls on their foreheads, at their temples, and at the back of their heads, with braids in the center of their heads. They, too, questioned the Pharaoh, but finally let him pass.

A text (known only from its quotes) titled The Book of Two Ways described the alternatives that now faced the Pharaoh, for he could see two passes that led through the mountain range beyond which the Duat was. Such two passes, nowadays called the Giddi and Mitla passes, offered since time immemorial unto the most recent wars the only viable way into the center of the peninsula, be it for armies or nomads or pilgrims. Pronouncing the required Utterances, the Pharaoh is shown the correct pass. Ahead lies an arid and barren land, and Divine Guards pop up unexpectedly.

"Where goest thou?" they demand to know of the mortal who appears in the Gods’ region. The Divine Herald, alternately seen and unseen, speaks up: "The king goes to Heaven, to possess life and joy," he says. As the guards hesitate, the king himself pleads with them: "Open the frontier . . . incline its barrier ... let me pass as the Gods pass through!" In the end the Divine Guards let the king through, and he has finally reached the Duat.

The Duat was conceived as an enclosed Circle of the Gods, at the headpoint of which the sky (represented by the Goddess Nut) opened so that the Imperishable Star (represented by the Celestial Disc) could be reached (Fig. 35); geographically it was an oval valley, enclosed by mountains, through which shallow streams flowed. The streams were so shallow, or sometimes even so dry, that the Barge of Ra had to be towed or, otherwise, moved by its own power as a sled.

Figure 35
 

The Duat was divided into twelve divisions, which the king had to tackle in twelve hours of the day above ground and in twelve hours of the night below ground, in the Amen-ta, the "Hidden Place."

It was there that Osiris himself had ascended to an Eternal Life, and the king offered there a prayer to Osiris - a prayer that is quoted in the Egyptian Book of the Dead in the chapter titled "Chapter of Making His Name":

May be given to me my Name
in the Great House of Two.
May in the House of Fire
a Name to me be granted.
In the night of computing the years
and of telling the months,
May I become a Divine Being,
may I sit on the east side of Heaven.

As we have already suggested, the "Name" - Shem in Hebrew, MU in Sumerian - that ancient kings prayed for was a rocketship that could take them heavenward, and by making them immortal become "that by which they are remembered."

The king can actually see the Ascender for which he prays. But it is in the House of Fire that can be reached only through the subterranean passages. The way down leads through spiraling corridors, hidden chambers, and doors that open and close mysteriously. In each of the twelve parts companies of Gods can be seen; their dress differs; some are headless, some look ferocious, some are with hidden faces; some are menacing, others welcome the Pharaoh.

The king is constantly put to the test. By the seventh division, however, the underworld or infernal aspects begin to diminish and celestial aspects, emblems and Birdmen Gods (with falcon heads) start to appear. In the ninth hour-zone the king sees the twelve "Divine Rowers of the Boat of Ra," the "Celestial Boat of Millions of Years" (Fig. 36).

Figure 36
 

In the tenth hour-zone the king, passing through a gate, enters a place astir with activity, whose Gods are charged with providing the Flame and Fire for the Celestial Boat of Ra. In the eleventh hour-zone the king encounters more Gods with star emblems; their task is to provide "power for emerging from the Duat, to make the Object of Ra advance to the Hidden House in the Upper Heavens." Here is where the Gods equip the king for the celestial journey, shedding his earthly clothes and putting on a Falcon-God’s garb.

In the final twelfth hour-zone, the king is led through a tunnel to a cavern where the Divine Ladder stands. The cavern is inside the Mountain of the Ascent of Ra. The Divine Ladder is bound together by copper cables and is, or leads to, the Divine Ascender. It is the Ladder of the Gods, used previously by Ra and Seth and Osiris; and the king (as inscribed in the tomb of Pepi) has prayed that the Ladder "may be given to Pepi, so that Pepi may ascend to heaven on it."

Some illustrations in the Book of the Dead show at this point the king, receiving the blessings of or being bid good-bye by the Goddesses Isis and Nephtys, being led to a winged Ded (the symbol of Everlastingness, Fig. 37).

Figure 37
 

Equipped as a God, the king is now assisted by two Goddesses "who seize the cables" to enter the "Eye" of the celestial boat, the command module of the Ascender. He takes his seat between two Gods; the seat is called "Truth which makes alive." The king attaches himself to a protruding contraption, and all is ready for takeoff:

"Pepi is arrayed in the apparel of Horus" (the commander of the Falcon-Gods)

"and in the dress of Thoth" (the Divine Recordskeeper);

"the Opener of the Ways has opened the way for him; the Gods of An" (Heliopolis)

"let him ascend the Stairway, set him before the Firmament of Heaven; Nut" (the sky Goddess)

"extends her hand to him."

The king now offers a prayer to the Double Gates - the "Door of Earth" and the "Door to Heaven" - that they may open. The hour is now daybreak; and suddenly "the aperture of the celestial window" opens up, and "the steps of light are revealed!"
Inside the Ascender’s "Eye" "the command of the Gods is heard." Outside, the "radiance that lifts" is strengthened so that "the king may be lifted up to heaven." A "might that no one can withstand" can be fell inside the "Eye," the command chamber. There are sound and fury, roaring and quaking:

"The Heaven speaks, the Earth quakes, the Earth trembles... The ground is come apart... The king ascends to Heaven!"

"The Roaring Tempest drives him... The guardians of Heaven’s parts open the Gate of Heaven for him!"

The inscriptions within the tomb of Pepi explain to those who were left behind, the king’s subjects, what had happened:
He flies who flies:

This is the king Pepi who flies away
from you, ye mortals.
He is not of Earth; he is of the Heaven.
This king Pepi flies as a cloud to the sky.
Having risen in the Ascender toward the east,

the king is now orbiting the Earth:
He encompasses the sky like Ra,
He traverses the sky like Thoth . . .
He travels over the regions of Horus.
He travels over the regions of Seth . . .
He has completely encircled the heavens twice.

The repeated circling of the Earth provides the Ascender with momentum to leave the Earth for the Double Gates of Heaven. Down below, the priests’ incantations tell the king: "The Double Gates of Heaven are opened for thee!" and assure him that the Goddess of Heaven will protect and guide him in this celestial journey: "She will lay hold of your arm, she will show you the way to the horizon, to the place where Ra is." The destination is the "Imperishable Star" whose symbol is the Winged Disc.

The sacred utterances assure the faithful that when the departed king shall reach his destination, "when the king shall stand there, on the star which is on the underside of heaven, he shall be judged as a God."

The incantation utterances envision that when the king shall approach the Double Gates of Heaven, he will be met by "the four Gods who stand on the Dam-scepters of Heaven." He will call out to them to announce the king’s arrival to Ra; and without doubt, Ra himself will step forward to greet the king and lead him past the Gates of Heaven and into the Celestial Palace:

Thou findest Ra standing there.
He greets thee, lays hold on thy arm.
He leads thee into the celestial Double Palace.
He places thee upon the throne of Osiris.

After a series of Divine Encounters with major and minor deities, the Pharaoh now experiences the utmost Divine Encounter, with the Great God RA himself. He is offered the throne of Osiris, making him eligible for Eternity. The celestial journey is complete, but not the mission. For though the king has become eligible for Eternity, he now must find and attain it - one final detail in the translation to an everlasting Afterlife: the king now must find and partake of the "Nourishment of Everlasting," an elixir which keeps rejuvenating the Gods in their celestial abode.

The priestly incantations now address this last hurdle. They appeal to the Gods to "take this king with you, that he may eat of that which you eat, that he may drink of that which you drink, that he may live on that which you live. Give sustenance to the king from your eternal sustenance."

Some of the ancient texts describe where the king now goes as the Field of Life; others refer to it as the Great Lake of the Gods. What he has to obtain is both a beverage that is the Water of Life and a food that is the Fruit of the Tree of Life. Illustrations in the Book of the Dead show the king (sometimes accompanied by his queen, Fig. 38) within the Great Lake of the Gods, drinking the Waters of Life - waters out of which the Tree of Life (a date-palm tree) grows.

Figure 38
 

In the Pyramid Texts it is the Great Green Divine Falcon who leads the king to the Field of Life, to find the Tree of Life that grows there. There the Goddess who is the Lady of Life meets the king. She holds four jars with whose contents she "refreshes the heart of the Great God on the day when he awakens." She offers the divine elixir to the king, "therewith giving him Life."

Watching the proceedings, Ra is happy.

Behold, he calls out to the king -

All satisfying Life is given to thee!

Eternity is thine . . .

Thou perishest not,

Thou passest not away,

for ever and ever.

With this last Divine Encounter on the Imperishable Star, the "king’s lifetime is eternity, its limit is everlastingness."

Back to Contents