Chapter 43
Here is what the Ancient Egyptians said about the First Time, Zep Tepi, when the gods ruled in their country: they said it was a golden age1 during which the waters of the abyss receded, the primordial darkness was banished, and humanity, emerging into the light, was offered the gifts of civilization.2 They spoke also of intermediaries between gods and men – the Urshu, a category of lesser divinities whose title meant ‘the Watchers’.3 And they preserved particularly vivid recollections of the gods themselves, puissant and beautiful beings called the Neteru who lived on earth with humankind and exercised their sovereignty from Heliopolis and other sanctuaries up and down the Nile. Some of these Neteru were male and some female but all possessed a range of supernatural powers which included the ability to appear, at will, as men or women, or as animals, birds, reptiles, trees or plants. Paradoxically, their words and deeds seem to have reflected human passions and preoccupations. Likewise, although they were portrayed as stronger and more intelligent than humans, it was believed that they could grow sick – or even die, or be killed – under certain circumstances.4
Records of prehistory
Archaeologists are adamant that the epoch of the gods, which the Ancient Egyptians, called the First Time, is nothing more than a myth. The Ancient Egyptians, however, who may have been better informed about their past than we are, did not share this view. The historical records they kept in their most venerable temples included comprehensive lists of all the kings of Egypt: lists naming every pharaoh of every dynasty recognized by scholars today.5 Some of these lists went even further, reaching back beyond the historical horizon of the First Dynasty into the uncharted depths of a remote and profound antiquity.
Two lists of kings in this category have survived the ravages of the ages and, having been exported from Egypt, are now preserved in European museums. We shall consider these lists in more detail later in this chapter. They are known respectively as the Palermo Stone (dating from the Fifth Dynasty – around the twenty-fifth century BC), and the Turin Papyrus, a nineteenth Dynasty temple document inscribed in a cursive form of hieroglyphs known as hieratic and dated to the thirteenth century BC.6
In addition, we have the testimony of a Heliopolitan priest named Manetho. In the third century BC he compiled a comprehensive and widely respected history of Egypt which provided extensive king lists for the entire dynastic period. Like the Turin Papyrus and the Palermo Stone, Manetho’s history also reached much further back into the past to speak of a distant epoch when gods had ruled in the Nile Valley.
Manetho’s complete text has not come down to us, although copies of it seem to have been in circulation as late as the ninth century ad.7 Fortuitously, however, fragments of it were preserved in the writings of the Jewish chronicler Josephus (AD 60) and of Christian writers such as Africanus (AD 300), Eusebius (AD 340) and George Syncellus (AD 800).8 These fragments, in the words of the late Professor Michael Hoffman of the University of South Carolina, provide the ‘framework for modern approaches to the study of Egypt’s past’.9
This is quite true.10 Nevertheless, Egyptologists are prepared to use Manetho only as a source for the historical (dynastic) period and repudiate the strange insights he provides into prehistory when he speaks of the remote golden age of the First Time. Why should we be so selective in our reliance on Manetho? What is the logic of accepting thirty ‘historical’ dynasties from him and rejecting all that he has to say about earlier epochs? Moreover, since we know that his chronology for the historical period has been vindicated by archaeology,11 isn’t it a bit premature for us to assume that his pre-dynastic chronology is wrong because excavations have not yet turned up evidence confirming it?12
Gods, Demigods and Spirits of the Dead
If we are to allow Manetho to speak for himself, we have no choice but to turn to the texts in which the fragments of his work are preserved. One of the most important of these is the Armenian version of the Chronica of Eusebius. It begins by informing us that it is extracted ‘from the Egyptian History of Manetho, who composed his account in three books. These deal with the Gods, the Demigods, the Spirits of the Dead and the mortal kings who ruled Egypt …’13 Citing Manetho directly, Eusebius begins by reeling off a list of the gods which consists, essentially, of the familiar Ennead of Heliopolis – Ra, Osiris, Isis, Horus, Set, and so on:14
These were the first to hold sway in Egypt. Thereafter, the kingship passed from one to another in unbroken succession … through 13,900 years … After the Gods, Demigods reigned for 1255 years; and again another line of kings held sway for 1817 years; then came thirty more kings, reigning for 1790 years; and then again ten kings ruling for 350 years. There followed the rule of the Spirits of the Dead … for 5813 years …’15
The total of all these periods adds up to 24,925 years and takes us far beyond the biblical date for the creation of the world (some time in the fifth millennium BC16). Because it suggested that biblical chronology was wrong, this created difficulties for Eusebius, a staunchly Christian commentator. But, after a moment’s thought, he overcame the problem in an inspired way: ‘The year I take to be a lunar one, consisting, that is, of 30 days: what we now call a month the Egyptians used formerly to style a year …’17
Of course they did no such thing.18 By means of this sleight of hand, however, Eusebius and others succeeded in boiling down Manetho’s grand pre-dynastic span of almost 25,000 years into a sanitized dollop a bit over 2000 years which fits comfortably into the 2242 years orthodox biblical chronology allows between Adam and the Flood.19
A different technique for downplaying the disturbing chronological implications of Manetho’s evidence is employed by the monk George Syncellus (c. AD 800). This commentator, who relies entirely on invective, writes, ‘Manetho, chief priest of the accursed temples of Egypt [tells us] of gods who never existed. These, he says, reigned for 11,895 years …’20
Several other curious and contradictory numbers crop up in the fragments. In particular, Manetho is repeatedly said to have given the enormous figure of 36,525 years for the entire duration of the civilization of Egypt from the time of the gods down to the end of the thirtieth (and last) dynasty of mortal kings.21 This figure of course, incorporates the 365.25 days of the Sothic year (the interval between two consecutive heliacal risings of Sirius, as described in the last chapter). More likely by design than by accident, it also represents 25 cycles of 1460 Sothic years, and 25 cycles of 1461 calendar years (since the ancient Egyptian civil calendar was constructed around a ‘vague year’ of 365 days exactly).22
What, if anything, does all this mean? It’s hard to be sure. Out of the welter of numbers and interpretations, however, there is one aspect of Manetho’s original message that comes through loud and clear. Irrespective of everything we have been taught about the orderly progress of history, what he seems to be telling us is that civilized beings (either gods or men) were present in Egypt for an immensely long period before the advent of the First Dynasty around 3100 BC.
Diodorus Siculus and Herodotus
In this assertion, Manetho finds much support among classical writers.
In the first century BC, for example, the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus visited Egypt. He is rightly described by C.H. Oldfather, his most recent translator, as ‘an uncritical compiler who used good sources and reproduced them faithfully’.23 In plain English, what this means is that Diodorus did not try to impose his prejudices and preconceptions on the material he collected. He is therefore particularly valuable to us because his informants included Egyptian priests whom he questioned about the mysterious past of their country. This is what they told him:
’At first gods and heroes ruled Egypt for a little less than 18,000 years, the last of the gods to rule being Horus, the son of Isis … Mortals have been kings of their country, they say, for a little less than 5000 years …24
Let us review these figures ‘uncritically’ and see what they add up to. Diodorus was writing in the first century BC. If we journey back from there for the 5000 years during which the ‘mortal kings’ supposedly ruled, we get to around 5100 BC. If we go even further back to the beginning of the age of ‘gods and heroes’, we find that we have arrived at 23,100 BC, when the world was still firmly in the grip of the last Ice Age.
Long before Diodorus, Egypt was visited by another and more illustrious Greek historian: the great Herodotus, who lived in the fifth century BC. He too, it seems, consorted with priests and he too managed to tune in to traditions that spoke of the presence of a high civilization in the Nile Valley at some unspecified date in remote antiquity. Herodotus outlines these traditions of an immense prehistoric period of Egyptian civilization in Book II of his History. In the same document he also hands on to us, without comment, a peculiar nugget of information which had originated with the priests of Heliopolis:
During this time, they said, there were four occasions when the sun rose out of his wonted place – twice rising where he now sets, and twice setting where he now rises.25
What is this all about?
According to the French mathematician Schwaller de Lubicz, what Herodotus is transmitting to us (perhaps unwittingly) is a veiled and garbled reference to a period of time – that is, to the time that it takes for sunrise on the vernal equinox to precess against the stellar background through one and a half complete cycles of the zodiac.26
As we have seen, the equinoctial sun spends roughly 2160 years in each of the twelve zodiacal constellations. A full cycle of precession of the equinoxes therefore takes almost 26,000 years to complete (12 × 2160 years). It follows that one and a half cycles takes nearly 39,000 years (18 × 2160 years).
In the time of Herodotus the sun on the vernal equinox rose due east at dawn against the stellar background of Aries – at which moment the constellation of Libra was ‘in opposition’, lying due west where the sun would set twelve hours later. If we wind the clock of precession back half a cycle, however – six houses of the zodiac or approximately 13,000 years – we find that the reverse configuration prevails: the vernal sun now rises due east in Libra while Aries lies due west in opposition. A further 13,000 years back, the situation reverses itself once more, with the vernal sun rising again in Aries and with Libra in opposition.
This takes us to 26,000 years before Herodotus.
If we then step back another 13,000 years, another half precessional cycle, to 39,000 years before Herodotus, the vernal sunrise returns to Libra, and Aries is again in opposition.
The point is this: with 39,000 years we have an expanse of time during which the sun can be described as ‘twice rising where he now sets’, i.e. in Libra in the time of Herodotus (and again at 13,000 and at 39,000 years earlier), and as ‘twice setting where he now rises’, i.e. in Aries in the time of Herodotus (and again at 13,000 and 39,000 years earlier).27 If Schwaller’s interpretation is correct – and there is every reason to suppose it is – it suggests that the Greek historian’s priestly informants must have had access to accurate records of the precessional motion of the sun going back at least 39,000 years before their own era.
The Turin Papyrus and the Palermo Stone
The figure of 39,000 years accords surprisingly closely with the testimony of the Turin Papyrus (one of the two surviving Ancient Egyptian king lists that extends back into prehistoric times before the First Dynasty).
Originally in the collection of the king of Sardinia, the brittle and crumbling 3000-year-old papyrus was sent in a box, without packing, to its present home in the Museum of Turin. As any schoolchild could have predicted, it arrived broken into countless fragments. Scholars were obliged to work for years to piece together and make sense of what remained, and they did a superb job.28 Nevertheless, more than half the contents of this precious record proved impossible to reconstruct.29
What might we have learned about the First Time if the Turin Papyrus had remained intact?
The surviving fragments are tantalizing. In one register, for example, we read the names of ten Neteru with each name inscribed in a cartouche (oblong enclosure) in much the same style adopted in later periods for the historical kings of Egypt. The number of years that each Neter was believed to have reigned was also given, but most of these numbers are missing from the damaged document.30
In another column there appears a list of the mortal kings who ruled in upper and lower Egypt after the gods but prior to the supposed unification of the kingdom under Menes, the first pharaoh of the First Dynasty, in 3100 BC. From the surviving fragments it is possible to establish that nine ‘dynasties’ of these pre-dynastic pharaohs were mentioned, among which were ‘the Venerables of Memphis’, ‘the Venerables of the North’ and, lastly, the Shemsu Hor (the Companions, or Followers, of Horus) who ruled until the time of Menes. The final two lines of the column, which seem to represent a summing up or inventory, are particularly provocative. They read; ‘… Venerables Shemsu-Hor, 13,420 years; Reigns before the Shemsu-Hor, 23,200 years; Total 36,620 years’.31
The other king list that deals with prehistoric times is the Palermo Stone, which does not take us as far back into the past as the Turin Papyrus. The earliest of its surviving registers record the reigns of 120 kings who ruled in upper and lower Egypt in the late pre-dynastic period: the centuries immediately prior to the country’s unification in 3100 BC.32 Once again, however, we really have no idea how much other information, perhaps relating to far earlier periods, might originally have been inscribed on this enigmatic slab of black basalt, because it, too, has not come down to us intact. Since 1887 the largest single part has been preserved in the Museum of Palermo in Sicily; a second piece is on display in Egypt in the Cairo Museum; and a third much smaller fragment is in the Petrie Collection at the University of London.33 These are reckoned by archaeologists to have been broken out of the centre of a monolith which would originally have measured about seven feet long by two feet high (stood on its long side).34 Furthermore, as one authority has observed:
It is quite possible – even probable – that many more pieces of this invaluable monument remain, if we only knew where to look. As it is we are faced with the tantalising knowledge that a record of the name of every king of the Archaic Period existed, together with the number of years of his reign and the chief events which occurred during his occupation of the throne. And these events were compiled in the Fifth Dynasty, only about 700 years after the Unification, so that the margin of error would in all probability have been very small …’35
The late Professor Walter Emery, whose words these are, was naturally concerned about the absence of much-needed details concerning the Archaic Period, 3200 BC to 2900 BC,36 the focus of his own specialist interests. We should also spare a thought, however, for what an intact Palermo Stone might have told us about even earlier epochs, notably Zep Tepi – the golden age of the gods.
The deeper we penetrate into the myths and memories of Egypt’s long past, and the closer we approach to the fabled First Time, the stranger the landscapes that surround us become … as we shall see.