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...