Saturday, January 15, 2011

Who Were the Horites?

Alice C. Linsley


The Horites were a caste of ruler-priests who were devotees of HR (Hor or Horus) who was called the "Son of God," "Horus of the Two Crowns," and "Horus of the Two Horizons."  In his work Isis and Osiris Plutarch remarked that Horite priests burned incense three times a day: frankincense at dawn, myrrh at mid-day, and kyphi at dusk. These were the three most significant points in the Sun's daily journey and the mid-day (high noon) was considered the sacred center, a time when there are no shadows (James 1:17). The Sun was the emblem of Re, the Creator. His son was sometimes shown flying as a falcon above the Sun, as in this stone image from Anghor Wat in Cambodia. Wat means shrine town or temple. Anghor is "ankh-Hor" in Egyptian and means Life to Horus! or Long live Horus!



Hor the Son (Falcon above the Sun) and Re the Father (in His solar boat)

Horite religious ideas spread across the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion, but originated in the Upper Nile region. Abraham's ancestors came from the Nile region which was called Kush. We first meet Abraham in the Ur-Haran region because he is a descendant of Nimrod who built a vast kingdom in Mesopotamia. Nimrod was a son of Kush.

Horite does not designate a race or ethnicity. It designates a caste or rulers and priests. Jews are one group that descended from the Horites. That is why Jews call their ancestors "horim." Some Jews and Arabs have a common Horite ancestry.

The ancient world of the Afro-Asiatics was structured along caste lines.  Typical of castes, the Horite lines exclusively intermarried (endogamy). The geneologies of the Bible reveal that intermarriage of the ruler-priests lines continued to the time of Jesus.  Jesus is the culmination of the Horim's expectation of the fulfillment of the Edenic Promise. (Gen. 3:15)

It is from the Horite priesthood that the priesthood of Israel developed. Moses' two brothers, Korah and Aaron, were both Horite priests before there was a nation known as Israel. Horite priests served in the temple in Jerusalem on a rotating schedule. I Chronicles 4:4 lists Hur (Hor) as the "father of Bethlehem". The author of Chronicles knew that Bethlehem was originally a Horite settlement in the heart of Horite territory.

The word Horite is related to the Egyptian 'khar', a measurement of fuel used in burnt offerings and to the Egyptian word for priest har-wa. Har-wa is likely a cognate to kor-ah. Kor and tor could be cognates for blood, the symbol of the priesthood. Har, sometimes spelled hor and kor are cognates for Horus. Clearly, blood sacrifice and Horus appear to be inextricably linked.

The Hebrew root "thr" = to be pure, corresponds to the Hausa/Hahm "toro" = clean, and to the Tamil "tiru" = holy. All are related to the proto-Dravidian "tor" = blood. The Horite priest was to be purified before entering the temple. The purification ritual involved shaving their heads. Korah, Moses' half-brother, was a priest. His name means "shaved head" and according to Numbers 16:17-18, he carried the censor to offer incense before God. This further suggests that "kor" and "tor" are cognates.

Josephus calls the descendants of Abraham by Keturah "Horites" and quoting another ancient historian, speaks of them as "conquerors of Egypt and founders of the Assyrian Empire." Doubtless this is a reference to Nimrod (Sargon the Great) who established for himself a vast empire in Sumeria. Josephus failed to note, however, that the Horites already existed before Abraham married Keturah. They are Abraham's Kushite ancestors who spread the Proto-Gospel across the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion. The origins of Messianic expectation can be traced to Abraham's Horite ancestors.

Horite men married only Horite women and according to a pattern which was tied to ancient tradition.  It is not a coincidence that Joseph married Asenath, the daughter of "the priest of On" (Gen. 41:45). The exclusive intermarriage between Horite lines requires that we take these words quite literally: "For me you shall be a kingdom of priests, a holy nation." (Ex. 19:6)

Special care was taken in the selection of the wives of the firstborn sons, and each ruler-priest had four firstborn sons. The firstborn son of the half-sister wife ascended to the throne of his biological father.  The firstborn son of the patrilineal cousin or niece ascended to the throne of this maternal grandfather (as did Nimrod, who ascended to the throne of Nimrod the Elder). Nimrod the Younger was named by his mother after her father.  This was done only by the cousin/niece brides, so while Nimrod's father is not known, we know that his mother was the daughter of the Kushite ruler Nimrod the Elder who conquer Nippur in 2340.

The firstborn sons by the ruler's two concubines, and sons by wives who didn't ascend to established thrones, were given gifts and sent away to conquer territories of their own. Sent-away sons include Cain, Abraham, Ishmael, Jacob, Joseph and Moses. By this means the marriage pattern of the Horites drove Kushite expansion.


The Horite Priesthood
We have no evidence that Horite priests performed the Canaanite practices condemned by the Biblical prophets, who were their descendants. Horite priests were concerned about purity, expecially when preparing for their time of service in the temple.

Horite priests were asked to pray for people because they were recognized as especially holy people. Abraham was asked to pray for Abimelech's household and Job was asked by God to pray for his friends. So the Horite priest's work involved intercessory prayer. That prayer sometimes involved sacrifice. Righteous Job offered sacrifice on behalf of his whole family.

Horite priests are also recognized as shepherds. They kept sheep for the sacrifice and maintained shrines at water systems where they could sustain their flocks. This is why the Horite leaders met their wives at wells.

The trial of Job, in which Satan acts as the accuser, parallels Zechariah 3:2-6 where Satan accuses the High Priest Yeshua. In Yeshua's trial, God acquits Yeshua and commands that he be clothed in clean garments and crowned with 2 crowns (ataroth).

The correspondence between the Horus Myth and the story of Jesus can be explained in two ways. Either Christians borrowed the Horus myth or Christianity emerges in an organic way from the belief system of Abraham and his Horite people. If we decide that Christians borrowed the Horus myth, we must explain why they should have selected this particular myth. There are other great world myths that could have served as the pattern for the story of Jesus. I know of no other religions that prefigure Jesus Christ, the Son of God, other than the faith of Israel as it emerges out of the faith of Abraham's Horite people.

Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that He will receive an eternal kingdom from the Father. He is the Son of God, the fulfillment of the Edenic Promise of Genesis 3:15. He is able to conquer death and deliver sinners from the curse of death. This is the core of Christian belief. Surrounding this are attendant beliefs which logically follow. One is that to receive eternal life, we must acknowledge our need for mercy, forgiveness and salvation. Another is that God does this for us out of His boundless love. John wrote, "This is the revelation of God's love for us, that God sent his only Son into the world that we might have life through him." (1 John 4:9)

When Abraham went to the land of Canaan he did not abandon the tradition of his ancestors. He continued the marriage pattern of his Horite people, believing the promise made to them in Eden that the Seed of the Woman would be born of their bloodlines. That is why Abraham married his half-sister (Sarah) and his patrilineal cousin (Keturah), following the pattern of his ruler-priest ancestors. The Horites anticipated the coming of the Son of God to earth and believed that He would be born of their priestly bloodlines. That is why the lines of priests intermarrried exclusively and why unchaste daughters of priests were burned alive (Lev. 21:9). Sexual impurity was not tolerated.

Joseph, Jacob's first-born son by Rachel, married Asenath, the chaste daughter of a priest of Heliopolis (city of the Sun). Heliopolis, which was called Lunu by the Greeks, was a shrine city of Horus. Lunu means place of pillars because the temple of Heliopolis was constructed with many pillars. Lunu is not the original name for this shrine because the letter L never appears as the initial letter in the Proto-Saharan languages of Abraham’s Kushite ancestors.

In the ancient world Horite priests were known for their purity and devotion to the High God whose emblem was the Sun. Plutarch wrote that the “priests of the Sun at Heliopolis never carry wine into their temples, for they regard it as indecent for those who are devoted to the service of any god to indulge in the drinking of wine whilst they are under the immediate inspection of their Lord and King. The priests of the other deities are not so scrupulous in this respect, for they use it, though sparingly.”


Related reading:  The Afro-Asiatic Dominion; The Christ in Nilotic MythologySent-Away Sons; Abraham and Job: Horite Rulers; The Hapiru Were Devotees of Hor

10 comments:

Sean said...

Alice,

Numbers has Aaron dying on Mount Hor where Moses transfers his garments to Eleazar. Wikipedia suggests one meaning to Aaron's name derives from the mountain. (From the mountain: In Hebrew הר har, which may refer to place of his own death.[6]) Have you commented on this combination of words before? Is the Hor of Mt Hor the Hor of Horus (I can't believe I just wrote that) or is it derivative of the word for mountain (hebrew and arabic are similar).

Alice C. Linsley said...

It makes sense that the Mount where Aaron died should be called Jabal Harun, or Aaron's Mountain. Harun is the Arabic equivalent of Aaron. As Aaron and his half-brother Korah were both Horite priests, we can consider that their names are related to the deity they served, who was Horus, called the "Son of God." He is the prefiguring of Jesus Christ.

The Arabic word for mountain is jabal, but in the biblical material that comes from Abraham's people har designates mountain. The Horites offered sacrifice on the tops of mountains so the word for mountain is also related to Horus.

Among Abraham's Horite ancestors the ideal time and place to worship was on the top of a mountain either at high noon or at midnight. Noon and midnight are the center of the solar day and night, and the mountain top is the center between heaven and earth. The sign of TNT symbolizes the Horite conception of the sacred center. This image shows the sun at the center of an east-west line and resting on the peak of a mountain.

Read more here:
http://biblicalanthropology.blogspot.com/2010/10/sacred-center-in-biblical-theology.html

Kelly said...

You suggest that the Horites were a dark-skinned race which is actually just the opposite of what the Bible suggests. Strong’s Concordance gives two Hebrew meanings for Horite. The first meaning is “white” and the second meaning is “cave-dweller.” It is extremely unlikely that the Horites were “cavemen” in the traditional sense of the word. Like the people of Petra, they were probably a race that cut their homes and buildings into the sides of cliffs, which would have been very logical considering the extreme heat of where they lived.

I quite agree that the Horites at one time inhabited Egypt as the “Wetjeset-hor” or elder race of Egypt, as is told in the tale of Sep Tepi (“the first time”) that is recorded in the Edfu texts. Theirs would have been the race that was displaced by the people who began dynastic Egypt.

The Horite race would have undoubtedly been dedicated to “the Amen, the faithful and true witness; the beginning of the creation of God” (Rev. 3:14) who was the earliest known God of Egypt and the deity originally credited with creation. Amen was evidently known and worshipped long before dynastic Egypt ever came onto the scene. According to the Edfu texts, the original God of creation was worshipped eons before the gods of the Egyptian Ogdoad or the Ennead were established by dynastic Egypt.

According to Wallace Budge, there was originally a small and rather unobtrusive temple dedicated to Amen at Thebes which was primarily a place of pilgrimage for people from all over the Middle East. Then, circa 2250 BC Egypt was invaded by Narim Sin of Sumer (the grandson of Sargon the Great) and he destroyed Ra’s temple complex at Heliopolis.

Ra’s priesthood in turn attacked Thebes and either drove off or murdered the priesthood dedicated to the original Amen. Ra then took the name of Amen and attached it to his own name as a prefix becoming “Amen Ra.” With the addition of ‘Amen” to his name, Ra’s priesthood then declared that it was Ra who had created the Universe.

This curious form of identity theft was evidently par for the course. It’s an historical fact that Ra, the Egyptian sun god had assumed the names of at least seventy-five known gods before Egypt fell to Greece and Rome.

The original Amen of Egypt was called “the Great Cackler” and his animal totem was the goose. It was said that Amen “laid the egg of Creation” and according to the Edfu texts, the Giza Plateau (the “Rostau”) was originally known as “The Island of the Egg.”

Egypt was then attacked by “the great leaping serpent” and Ta (an old spelling for Ptah) and Wa (undoubtedly an alternative spelling for Ra) attacked the Island of the Egg, killing its original inhabitants and took the Giza Plateau over.

If the Horites were indeed the descendant from original elder race of Egypt, I suspect they would have despised the gods of dynastic Egypt

Alice C. Linsley said...

Welcome to Just Genesis, Kelly. You make several good points.

The Horites originated in the Nile valley of Sudan as is evidenced by the oldest known Horite shrine and temple at Nekhen (4000 B.C.) Therefore it is doubtful that they were white. They spread across the Afro-Asiatic Dominion, taking their religious beliefs and practices with them as far as India and Southern Pakistan.

Further the Horites were a caste. One trait of castes is endogamy or exclusive intermarriage. This would have allowed for less variation in skin tone.

Genesis 10:6,7 says that Abraham and his ancestors were descendants of Ham and his son Kush (Cush). Analysis of the Genesis geneologies reveals that the lines of Ham and Shem intermarried exclusively, so Abraham was a descendant of both lines.

Gen. 10:7 says that the Dedanites were the descendants of Kush and they were cave-dwellers. Not all Kushites were cave-dwellers.

You are correct that the Nabateans of Petra were descendants of the Horites who earlier inhabited the hill country of Canaan.

The competition between rulers and their dieties is reflected in the
Old Testament where we find different names for God. However, all the Afro-Asiatics, which includes Sargon the Great, were henotheists. That is, they believed in one supreme creator God who was ruler over the universe and served by lesser divine powers, such as angels.

There were many pilgrimage sites along the Nile, including Elephantine Island, Heliopolis (nxn in Egyptian), Thebes and Karnak. According to the Babylonian Talmud, Abraham's mother was the daughter of a priest associated with Karnak. His name was Karn-evo. Evo (or e-wo)is a suffix indicating "they" so Karn-evo means "they of Karnak."

Alice C. Linsley said...

I forgot to mention that the divine Triad was worshipped at all those shrines and temples. Hor (Horus in Greek), one of the Triad, was called "son" of God. He was worshipped at all of them. Horites were a caste of priests devoted to Horus.

Kelly said...

Hello again, Alice. I evidently forgot I'd made comments at this site. Sorry for leaving you hanging. Please accept my apologies.

You and I are apparently approaching history from two different paths, but that doesn't mean that our paths do not cross for I think ultimately, our views may actually compliment each other.

I view the Horite race as a mixed blood race between the Hurrian sons of Japhet and the Cushite descendents of Ham. In my view, the Babylonian Creation text (the Enuma Elish) tells an important part of the Horite story although I consider that particular text to be very opinionated and not necessarily a fair or realistic version of history. Still, I believe the Enuma Elish gives us the rather one-sided Babylonian version of who the Horites were.

In reference to the Enuma Elish, I take the position that the original Lord Abzu, (the one who was murdered by Ea-Nudimmud) was a Hurrian king married to Tiamat, who was a woman of Cush and an Ethiopian queen of ancient, (very ancient) Egypt.

Unlike the Egyptians, the Babylonian scribes didn't use a double 'a' when they spelled their words and names. In fact, the double 'a' was only regularly used by the Egyptians and the early Hurrians. Obviously, the Babylonian spelling of Tiamat would have been rendered 'TI.A.MAAT' in the Egyptian language, and when we spell her name that way, it takes on a whole new meaning, doesn't it?

The modern-day translators of the Babylonian texts tell us that Tiamat's name is taken from 'tâmtu', following an early form: 'ti'amtum' which represents the 'salt seas.' But if you translated the same name via the Egyptian language, "Tiamat" takes on the persona of "the waters of Nun," i.e. part of the original creation by the original God system, doesn't she?

In the Egyptian religion, the Waters of Nun supposedly represent the 'waters of chaos' in the first creation (Genesis 1) and this indeed tends to mesh with the Babylonian version of the tale where Tiamat is also said to represent 'chaos.' Never-the-less 'chaos' is a totally subjective word and one that readily encourages the human mind to make all sorts of fanciful and imaginative interpretations. Obviously, what represents 'chaos' to one person may represent freedom and truth to another. After all, the name TI.A.MAAT, by Egyptian standards, would represent a woman of truth who is determined to take the straight and narrow path of justice.

In the Babylonian version of the tale, TI.A.MAAT and the original King Abzu have a son who is called "Kingu". When Anu's son, Ea-Nudimmud, murders Kingu's father in his sleep, TI.A.MAAT and her son join forces in a battle against the Mesopotamian "Sons of Anu."

I have found significant historical evidence that "Kingu" represents the Horite race. Racially, he would be the son of a white-skinned Hurrian king and a black-skinned Ethiopian queen and both of these races represent the people who were actually indigenous to Egypt and the Middle East. As both the Ethiopians and the Hurrians were known to be tall, the Horites would have been tall, brown-skinned people, probably very handsome, who in effect would have represented the two elder races of the Middle East and Egypt. In effect both of these races represent the Biblical God system of Genesis One.

We know from countless historical texts that the Anu race ultimately defeats and displaces the indigenous people of the Middle East. The Tribe of Anu are a race of people that history adamantly proves were not indigenous to Egypt or the Middle East, and the Anu race very obviously brought their own god system with them. (And no, they were not "extraterrestrials from Nibiru"…)

The historical texts reveal that there is actually an enormous piece of missing history in the Bible and the Horite race indeed appears to be the missing key.

Alice C. Linsley said...

Kelly,

I'm glad you came back to this post and find your comments fascinating. Do you have any hard evidence that the descendants of Japheth intermarried with the descendants of Ham? The Hungarians claim to be descendants of Japheth and call themsleves the "Magyar." The Magyar are originally a Nilotic tribe and some "Magyar-ab" still live along the Nile. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyarab

The Gilgamesh Epic is not close to the Genesis creation accounts. It is removed culturally from those accounts and comes from a different historical period.

Hur/Hurrians and Hor/Horites are likely cognates. The ancient root is HR and refers to Hor/Horus who these people called "son of God."

Kingu and kingbo are also cognates and originally Kushite words. The gu and gbo are interchangeable in the proto-Kushitic and Akkadian. Consider the African queen "Bilikisu Sungbo" of Eredo. See this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/353462.stm

Please continue to comment here. I value your insights. Thanks!

francien said...

Alice, I read your post about Horites. Fascinating and very helpful. In my reading, I understand that Abraham is a descendant of Shem (Genesis 11). Can you explain how he is a descendant of Ham?
Thanks!
Francien

Alice C. Linsley said...

Francien,

I have answered your excellent question here:
http://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com/2012/01/abraham-descendant-of-both-shem-and-ham.html

The ancient said...

My dear friend Muhammad did not had any concubines all of them were his wives,and they held very high respects in ancient Arabia so,without this mistake you have written well your blog is good.There are some minor moderation also but they aren't very necessary.If you have any question ask me.