The Ancient Alien Question (39 page)

The disappointment came because the Pyramid Texts did not contain the doctrine of the ancient Egyptians, but “only” the rituals, the manuals used in that religion, through which contact with the gods was established. To put this in today’s terms, a manual of your television set does not reveal what programs it shows or what you watch on it, nor what the experience of “television watching” really is or feels like. The manual will never reveal the joy you experienced when Goran Ivanisevich finally won Wimbledon, but only how to increase the volume on your set during those agonizing last few minutes of his final against Australian Pat Rafter. The Pyramid Texts were just such a manual, for in ancient Egypt (as elsewhere), the doctrine itself was apparently never put to print. But in Ptolemaic times, when the Greeks ruled over Egypt and when most scholars now accept the Corpus Hermeticum was written, there was a need for Jews and Greeks to learn the religious doctrine of the Egyptians, to
understand the religious life of their neighbors and compatriots. The doctrine was therefore finally written down, though the Greeks and the Jews had no need for the rituals themselves, and hence the Pyramid Texts were not incorporated into the Corpus Hermeticum. Millennia later, when the mystique of the hieroglyph had lifted, the disappointment of not seeing the true breadth of the Egyptian doctrine hung over Egyptology as a black cloud—which is only slowly drifting away.

Though the Pyramid Texts are ancient Egypt’s most extraordinary document, the fact that they contain rituals on how to contact the gods is not well-liked by Egyptologists, who would prefer that they contain anything but. Egyptologists have argued that the Pyramid Texts are the rituals that were said during the funeral of the deceased pharaoh—a logical conclusion, seeing as they were originally written down in the pyramids, which Egyptologists believed to be the tombs of the pharaohs, and later on the coffins of the deceased, thus clearly showing there is a funerary aspect to these rituals.

But Naydler has shown that the Pyramid Texts in no single instance actually imply that the king is dead. Naydler has seen phrases in the Pyramid Texts that suggest that the king is very much alive—physically alive—at the time when that section of the texts is supposed to be read out. Though it is therefore without doubt that the Pyramid Texts focus on the king, Naydler argues that they focus mainly on his role as an active ruler—not as deceased head of state. The Texts thus become records of the rituals that the king performed, at key times of his rule, which Naydler has identified as his coronation and the Heb Sed festivals, which was a renewal of his kingship that occurred at 30-year (or shorter) intervals. These rites specifically confirmed the power of the king over this world and the Otherworld, symbolized by his ability to control the Nine Principles, as well as the union of Egypt and the Otherworld by the king, through which he established his divine rule over the land.

In Naydler’s interpretation, the pyramid was built as a temple, and the inscriptions on its wall were not meant to be read by the funeral cortege, or by the deceased soul of the pharaoh, but by the living pharaoh, as he performed these rituals in the interior of the pyramid during key ceremonies. This would mean that the pyramids of ancient Egypt were—indeed—communication devices, helping the pharaoh establish contact with the gods, through a series of rituals.

Though in ancient Egypt maintaining contact with the gods was seen as the pharaoh’s daily occupation, there were certain occasions, one might say on par with the baktun-ending ceremonies of the Mayan calendar, that stood out more. One of these festivals was the Heb Sed festival, and it is this ceremony that Stone channeled in 1954. As were the baktun-ending festivals, the Heb Sed festivals were held in temple complexes and involved both public and private displays and rituals.

The Heb Sed festival is named after the short kilt with a bull’s tail that the king wore for the culminating rites of the festival. The festival lasted five days in total and took place immediately after the annual Osiris rites, at the time when the Nile’s flooding retreated, at the moment of the rebirth of the land, mimicking the creation of the world—a new age. For the five days preceding the Heb Sed festival, a fire ceremony called “lighting the flame” served to purify the festival precincts. But though much of the ceremony was public in nature, the most sacred parts of the Heb Sed rite occurred in a secret chamber—and the question is where precisely this chamber was located. From the reliefs of Niuserre, the Sixth ruler of the Fifth Dynasty, we know that this chamber contained a bed (a couch?), though other depictions show that in certain cases a sarcophagus was used. Naydler has suggested that this secret chamber was inside the pyramid and that the pharaohs in fact built their pyramids because they were specifically linked with their Heb Sed festivals.

The main purpose of the Heb Sed festival was to confirm that the pharaoh was still fit to rule; that he was still able to maintain his link with the Otherworld. Naydler points out that upon a pharaoh’s death, he was meant to join the gods permanently in the Otherworld, where he would help guide his successors and Egypt as a whole from the other side. Thus the Heb Sed rituals were closely linked with the king’s preparedness to make a successful voyage after death; they were a test run for his ascension to the Otherworld. This may explain the confusion about why pyramids were seen as tombs and why the Pyramid Texts were seen as evidence supporting this conclusion.

The fit state of mind that the pharaoh had to be in, both in life and in death, was known as “akh.” Intriguingly, the pharaoh accomplished this state in a place known as the “akhet,” which is often translated as “horizon,” but which should be interpreted as a place of spiritual illumination, which historian Mircea Eliade labeled an awakening as well as ascension. Egyptologist Mark Lehner has suggested that this “akhet” is the Giza Plateau, further supporting the conclusion that the pyramids were linked with this ceremony.

Naydler titled one of the chapters of his book “The Pyramids as the Locus of Secret Rites,” where he argues that the Heb Sed festivals were performed in the pyramids. He notes that there is an obvious contradiction in the fact that the construction of a pyramid was often abandoned as soon as a pharaoh died. So, when he was most in need of a tomb, all work on that tomb was stopped? Let us also note that several pharaohs who did not live long had no pyramids whatsoever. Djedefra, Khufu’s son, did not live very long, and his pyramid was never completed—though he clearly died the son of a dynasty of pyramid-builders extraordinaire who could surely have spared some men to build at least a small or minuscule tomb for their king. This scenario makes little sense. Surely the pharaoh’s successor—often his beloved son—on occasion would desire to have his father’s tomb
completed, so that his father could be buried inside before work commenced on his own pyramid? If the successor was in his early 20s when he ascended to the throne, there was more than enough time left before he had to wonder about his own death, as the life expectancy of an Egyptian pharaoh was not too different from most of us. But each time a pharaoh dies, construction work on his pyramid is stopped, as if the pyramid is no longer required now that the pharaoh is dead. In the “pyramid = tomb” equation, that practice does not make sense.

But the Heb Sed festival is the key to unlocking the true purpose of the pyramids. The Heb Sed festival was normally to be held for the 30th year of the king’s rule. Is it a coincidence, therefore, that Khufu was said to have taken 10 years to plan his pyramid, which included diverting the river Nile, and that it took a further 20 years of work to actually build his pyramid? According to archaeologist Rainer Stadelman, two of the three pyramids of Sneferu were built between the 14th and 30th years of his reign. Coincidence, or evidence of a link with the Heb Sed festival?

In summary, Naydler has found evidence for the practice of this festival in most pyramids (including the intact pyramid of Third Dynasty Pharaoh Sekhemkhet), but he focuses on the Zoser complex, if only because it is perhaps the best remaining evidence—and was, after all, Egypt’s original pyramid, built by Imhotep. For one thing, the walls of the Zoser pyramid complex are not blank as they are at Giza. Of all the possible scenes they could display, the texts and depictions show various stages of a Heb Sed festival. If they were tombs, why not show scenes from the afterlife? To use Naydler’s own words, “As these are the only reliefs inside the pyramid, there could be no stronger evidence to demonstrate that the interior of the pyramid was as much associated with the Heb Sed festival as were the buildings and architectural spaces in its vicinity.”
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Let us add that the causeway of the Great Pyramid also has scenes of Khufu’s Heb Sed festival.

The Zoser pyramid is the oldest pyramid built in ancient Egypt. The entire complex, both in layout and inscriptions, reveals the true purpose of the pyramids. They speak of a festival in which the pharaoh was said to become one with the gods, so that his power and character as a proper ruler was proven in the eyes of the country.

There is also the famous Heb Sed dance, in which the king circumambulated the courtyard, which represented the country of Egypt—such large courtyards stand in front of the Pyramid of Zoser, and are also present at the Giza pyramids of Khufu and his successor Khafre. In the Heb Sed ceremony, the pharaoh would arrive by boat and moor at the Valley Temple. From there, the procession would make its way up the causeway, which at the time was actually a covered walkway, with only a slit in the roof to allow daylight to penetrate. The next stop would be at the Pyramid Temple, from which entrance to the pyramid would be the logical—and only available—next step. The “tomb chamber” inside the pyramid would thus be the secret chamber, with the sarcophagus being the site where the secret ceremony of the Heb Sed would occur.

What was this ceremony? Details are sketchy, but it was described as the king unifying the two dimensions: the divine realm of the gods, and Earth. In mythology, this occurred at a
“Mound of Creation,” and the pyramid was considered to be just that: a place where heaven and earth met, where the pharaoh communicated with the gods, where he ascended to heaven, and/or where the gods came down to earth. That the pyramids were therefore landing places for the gods is literally true, but should not be interpreted physically, in the sense that their spaceship landed there.

Other aspects of the pyramids confirm that the Heb Sed festival was their purpose. For example, the Zoser complex incorporated chapels for statues of visiting gods of the regions of Egypt who attended the ceremony. This fits with archaeologist Gilles Dormion’s observation that the gallery leading into the Queen’s Chamber originally had niches for statues; other pyramids have similar niched corridors, all of which have been found to be empty, and were therefore interpreted as evidence that tomb robbers had penetrated into the structure. But, if used for the Heb Sed festival, the niches would only ever have contained a statue during the festival; afterward the statues returned to their temples elsewhere in Egypt.

With this interpretation, we have explained the pyramids of Egypt within the emerging framework that is slowly replacing the outdated Egyptological dogma. Remarkably, it appears that the rituals and symbols of the Egyptian pyramids are similar and sometimes identical to their colleagues across the world, such as the baktun-ending rituals of the Maya. But there is more....

The New Fire Ceremony

A series of rituals was also performed at Teotihuacán. They were written down by Martin Matz of the Mazatec Indians, who had transmitted them for several centuries within his community before finally committing them to paper. His text is known as the Codex Matz-Ayauhtla, or “the Pyramid of Fire,”
and describes a series of legends, from the Creation Myth to the New Fire ceremony. The latter is the finale of the initiatory spiritual journey that is encoded in the codex. The text underlines the essence of the Maya’s religious experience, namely that life is a spiritual journey to ascension—a return to God, the One who created the universe. The text states how the supreme deity, Tloque Nahauque, manifested itself as three forces: a duality functioning against a neutral background, from which the four prime elements—earth, water, wind, and fire—were created.

Matz only wrote the texts after he had made the journey himself; he visited an initiatory site with his shamanic guide, where he took a hallucinogenic substance (in his case, mushrooms), entered a cave at a specific moment in the calendar year, and consequently had visions of a landscape of pyramids, including one that was dedicated to the moon. The initiate was then taught about the World Ages and how ascension and World Ages were connected via the New Fire ceremony, as well as how they were performed every 52 years. The American author John Major Jenkins has described this as “the ultimate self-sacrifice that is the ritual death attending the mystic initiation into divine life...in order to merge with Quetzalcoatl,” who is seen as the intermediary deity that connects the living with the Creator God Tloque Nahauque.
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