Crux Ansata

5th-century relief featuring the Coptic "crux ansata" (Christianised ankh), from a 5th Century AD Coptic Church. 

According to Socrates of Constantinople (380 – 439 AD), when Christians were dismantling Alexandria's greatest temple, the Serapeum, in 391 AD, they noticed cross-like signs inscribed on the stone blocks. Pagans who were present said the sign meant "life to come", an indication that the sign Socrates referred to was the ankh; Christians claimed the sign was their own, indicating that they could easily regard the ankh as a Crux Ansata.

This is Crux Ansata:

The explanation that the Ankh symbol meant "life to come" is very interesting indeed. Here is why:

In my 2018 post "Square and compasses" and in my 2019 posts "Etemenanki" and "An-Ki-Ankh" discussed the origin of the Ankh symbol. 

And I proposed that the ankh symbol came from Mesopotamia where it originally looked like this:

A hand (of god, the great architect) holding measuring line (for measuring domed sky, An) and measuring rod (for measuring flat earth, Ki). 

Basically, primitive Square and Compasses...

There is actually Serbian saying "Pomoću štapa i kanapa" (Using stick and rope) meaning "in the old primitive way"...

This symbol, meaning An (Sky) - Ki (earth) eventually became Ankh...

In these old posts I also wrote that: 

Early examples of the ankh sign date to the First Dynasty (c. 30th to 29th century BC). There is little agreement on what physical object the sign originally represented. Most scholars believe the sign is a knot formed of a flexible material such as cloth or reeds or rope... The below stone ankh was actually made to resemble ankh made from reeds.

This ankh is made by bending one piece of reed into a loop, and then tying it to a handle created from  another piece of reed bent to form T shape. Like this:

Here is one I made today :)

What does the intercourse between the Father Sky and Mother Earth produce? Life. Living nature including us humans...Life is materialised divine, (sky) god who became (earth) matter...

So An+Ki = Father+Mother = Life... 

What did the intercourse between God (Father Sky) and Mary (basically symbolical replacement for Mother Earth) produce? Christ who is God who became Man. God materialised. So based on the above analogy, Christ is just a symbol. Symbol of life itself. 

I wrote about Christ as Life in my post "Living nature", but I will repeat it here...

 

If Christ is life, living nature, then his immaculate conception and virgin birth become easy to understand...

If Christ is life, living nature, then his death and resurrection become easy to understand...

If Christ is life, living nature, and we are part of life, living nature, then we are Christ. We truly live and move and have our being in Christ...This too then becomes easy to understand...

If Christ is life, living nature, then god who became matter is easy to understand too...

If Christ is life, living nature, then we are all Christ, we are all god. Just like the mystics the world over have been teaching for millennia...

Apparently this is too "Pagan" for "Christians" and too "Christian" for "Pagans"...So everyone gets offended...

This is Christ on the cross from "Plaque from the Maskell ivories", AD 420-30, Rome 

This is also crux ansata, Ankh, AnKi, life...

On the original Coptic relief, the priest (saint?) is using ankh to point at the green plants, symbol of life. Which can't grow without (rain, flood) water...It is (rain, flood) water that makes life possible. It is the (rain, flood) water that contains the essence of life...

I recently wrote an article "Sycamore tree goddess" in which I talked about the link between ankh (life) and (Nile flood) water (the source of life) in Egypt...

Which is why (rain, flood) water is holy. Cause, despite all our accomplishments, we owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact it rains (floods)...

This link between the Nile flood, life and Ankh is symbolically depicted through this, most likely the oldest, the original Egyptian Ankh: A hand holding a knot made from Papyrus (flowers during and therefore marks the beginning of the the Nile flood) and Lotus (flowers during and therefore marks the peak of the Nile flood). I talked about this first in my post "Goddess on a horse"...

Which is why this is super interesting: A relief from the ancient Egyptian Temple of Hatshepsut. It shows a platter with food arranged to look like a duck by making an (ankh) knot using lotus, the symbol of the Nile flood without which there will be no food in Egypt...

I talked about the blue lotus as the plant calendar marker for the Nile Flood in many of posts. For instance "Lotus and papyrus" in which I explain why the Egyptian god Hapi, who was the god of the annual flooding of the Nile in ancient Egyptian religion, was associated with papyrus and lotus flowers, and is often depicted as twins, tying papyrus and lotus flowers together...

And my post "Beautiful boy", about Nefertem, the Egyptian Beautiful Boy, originally a lotus flower at the creation of the world, who had arisen from the primal waters...Nefertem emerging from the lotus blossom, from the tomb of Tutankhamun...

PS: Now I understand why the Innana knot, the symbol of fertility and plenty, made from reeds and directly linked to the annual Tigris and Euphrates flood...Will write more about this soon...

BTW, I already talked about some other aspects of the Inanna cult found in Egypt in my post "Inanna in Egypt"... 

That's it. If you are interested in reading more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, which are at the root of all our mythologies, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...

Sycamore tree goddess

Sycamore tree goddess, originally Hathor, and later Isis, both goddess of flood, or Nut, goddess of Heavenly Nile (Milky Way), pouring water which is depicted with ankh (life) symbols inside it...Tomb, Siwa Oasis, 400-600 BC. Egypt...

Why would a goddess of flood be depicted as a sycamore fig tree?

Most likely because sycamore bears fruit between May and Sep...

The time of the rise of the water level in the Nile. Which means that the sycamore full of fruit announces the arrival of the flood, the thing that makes life possible in Egypt...

I talked about Hather, the sycamore tree and the Nile flood in my post "Holy cow"...

And in my post "The white calf", in which I tried to answer the question why is this white calf standing between two sycamore trees under a red sun? 

Why was Nile Flood water depicted containing ankh (life) symbols? Cause the Annual Nile flood is what makes life possible in the Nile Valley, what originally created Egypt and what recreates it every year...Without the annual Nile flood there would be no Egypt...I talk about this in my post "Beautiful boy"...

BTW, Speaking about Ankh = Water, check my post "Goddess on a horse"...

Post in which I talk about the link between ankh, papyrus (flowers at the beginning of the Nile flood), lotus (flowers at the peak of the Nile flood) and the flood...And few other related things...

You also might like this: Baboons feed on figs in a sycamore tree on a painting in the tomb of Khnumhotep at Beni Hasan c. 1950 BC…

Both Sycamore tree and Baboons were animal calendar markers found imbedded in parts of Egyptian mythology related to water and flood. I talk about this in my post "Baboon"...

Finally I think that it's very interesting that we find "sacred fig goddess" in both Ancient Egypt and Ancient Indus Valley civilisations...

Check my post "Sacred fig goddess", in which I talk about the Indian one (different fig same link to water, this time monsoon rain water) with references to the Egyptian one...And about plant and animal calendar markers in both cultures...

That's that. 

If you are interested in reading more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, which are at the root of all our mythologies, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...

Horizon

I am continuing my series of posts about Horus. In this one I would like to talk about a hieroglyph which we find often associated with Horus, the "mountain" hieroglyph, and I will try to show that our current understanding of its meaning is...incomplete...

Big claim I know. But hear me out...

This is Egypt, this blue green flower of life growing out of the red desert of death...Everyone who ever contributed to the creation of the Egyptian civilisation lived within this narrow blue green fertile strip along the River Nile...

Surrounded on both sides by first high sand dunes, then even higher distant hills, then even even higher and even more distant (few and far between) mountains...

This is elevation map of Egypt...

And this is what this all looks like from the Nile water level, from the fertile land which is flooded by this same Nile water, from Egypt...

Looks familiar? I believe that the "mountain" hieroglyph does not represent any mountain. It represents the banks of the Nile river, its dunes, hills and mountains...With Nile and Egypt lying between them...

That I could be right about the original deep meaning of the "mountain" hieroglyph can be seen from the fact that this symbol had its mirror in ancient Egyptian architecture: the pylon, the front part of Egyptian temples...

The pylon consists of two pyramidal towers, each tapered and surmounted by a cornice, joined by a less elevated section enclosing the entrance between them...

This design makes no sense if the towers represented any two mountains. It makes a lot of sense if the two towers represented the banks of the river Nile...

Because then the Temple would have been a symbolic representation of (heavenly and earthly) Egypts, the place where men and gods meet...

According to the people from The Met, the ancient Egyptians viewed the temple as the place where "the (re)creation, (re)birth, of the world was thought to be continuously repeated, and the building itself was regarded as an image of the natural world"...

Knowing that for Egyptians "The World" was equal to Egypt, the fertile land along the Nile, which was (re)created by the Nile ever year, making the temple to look like the Nile River Valley, like Egypt, makes so much sense...

I talked about the continuous (re)creation of The World (Egypt) by the River Nile in my post "Beautiful boy" about Nefertem, The Beautiful (Lotus) Boy from Egyptian mythology... 

I wonder if "the lotus flower at the creation of the world, who had arisen from the primal waters" just means: "the lotus flower who arrises from the waters of the Annual Nile Flood"? 

I also talked about this in these two posts about the origin of the Sphinx mythology, "Sphinx" and "Giza lioness"...

Anyway, apparently, in ancient Egyptian religion, the pylon didn't mirror the "mountain" hieroglyph. Instead it mirrored the "horizon" hieroglyph, which is basically the "mountain" hieroglyph with the sun above it. This thing...

Now according to this paper the hieroglyph "horizon" was "a depiction of two hills between which the sun, the giver of life, rose and set on the first morning of the universe"...

As I said many times before, this "first day of the universe", when the world emerged from the primordial waters is not something that happened once in a distant past. It is something that happens every year, on the first day of the flood...

Remember, continuous (re)creation...

Interestingly, according to the same paper, "in another symbology, the hieroglyph horizon was a depiction the two banks between which the Nile River flows, this too being a giver of life"....

TA!....TA!....TAAAAAAAA!!!!! 🙂

Now if the "mountain" hieroglyph was indeed symbolic depiction of the Nile River valley, the way it was seen from it, from Egypt, then the "horizon" hieroglyph doesn't depict sun rising and setting between the mountains on the first day of creation of the world...

It depicts the sun, the giver of life, above the Nile River valley, above Egypt. At noon, when it is right above the Nile, the actual giver of life...

And when we overlay the "mountain" hieroglyph over this map, it perfectly fits the movement of the sun from east to west over the Nile River Valley...

The movement described by the "horizon" hieroglyph...

Also, the "horizon" hieroglyph, when overlayed over the map of Egypt, shows something else: The direction from which the annual Nile River flood comes...

It comes from the south, from the direction of the midday sun, and it fills the Nile River with the water of life, which then spills over the river banks into the Nile River valley (re)creating Egypt...

So I believe that the "horizon" hieroglyph has another meaning: "The Sun filling the Nile River valley with water". Basically "The Annual Nile River Flood". I first started thinking about this meaning of the sun as the source of the flood in my post "White calf", in which I tried to answer the question: why is this white calf standing between two sycamore trees under a red sun? 

I mean this has to be the other meaning of the "horizon" hieroglyph, or this "strange" image from the "Funerary Papyrus of Khonsu (c. 1070–712 BC) would make no sense...

I mean it would make no sense from the natural world point of view. This post gives some possible explanations for this scene from the Mythological point of view, and you will see that the nature and mythology again overlap...

If we accept that the "horizon" hieroglyph also meant "The Sun filling the Nile River valley with water" then then this image depicts Egypt (circular part with farmers digging the new fertile black soil brought by the flood) being (re)created by the Sun caused Nile flood...

The two female figures could be the White and Blue Nile, pouring water into the Nile River valley. The water is sometimes depicted as dark red (like blood) because this is the colour of the flood water, due to the sediment it brings down from the Ethiopian highlands...

The two female figures are sometimes named as Isis, and Nephthys, the two twin sisters of Osiris, the god of "the black soil", the fertile soil of the Nile River valley...

Osiris who IS "the black soil", the fertile soil of the Nile River valley, is depicted being watered by the flood and hoed by the people, being prepared for grain sowing...

Egyptians actually believed that grain grows from the (dead) body of Osiris...I talked about this in my posts "The beard of Osiris" and "Braided beard"...

So his two twin sisters pouring water (White + Blue Nile = Nile), the water of life, which makes Osiris (god of) the fertile black soil get reborn makes a lot of sense to me...

The water of life, the flood water. Being here poured by the Sycamore goddess, Nut (Hathor, Isis)...depicted with ankh (life) symbols inside it...Tomb, Siwa Oasis, 400-600 BC. Egypt...

Ok, ok...That's all great. But where is Horus?

Right here, on the same papyrus of Khonsu. 

From left to right:

Khonsu offers sacrifice to Ra-Horachte, the hybrid of Ra of the sun at noon 🙂 and Horus of the horizon 🙂.

Khonsu then takes water of life from the sycamore tree goddess. BTW, sycamore tree is full of fruit during the Period May/Jun (when Nile water levels start to rise) - Sep (when Nile water levels peak) 🙂.

After which we have the scene depicting (re)creation, resurrection (of Egypt) through annual flood 🙂.

And symbolically, resurrection of Osiris together with Khonsu...

If you are interested in reading more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, which are at the root of all our mythologies, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...