Failed Parallels, Confused People

Alice C. Linsley

In historical analysis, literary criticism, and comparative mythology "parallelomania" refers to works that stress apparent similarities and construct parallels and analogies without historical basis. Without historical basis, the parallel is considered false and unfounded. There are many examples of parallelomania and false correlations circulating on the Internet. Here is an example:

• Abraham is a variant of Brahma.
• Sara is a variant of Sarawati.
• Brahma and his wife Saraswati are the founders of the worlds.
• Abraham is said to be the father of many nations.
• Abraham and Sara represent a parallel to the Hindu myth.
• The name of the Jordan River is from the Sanskrit root Jhara.

The mythical Brahma and Sarawati are posed as a parallel to the historical Abraham and Sarah, but there is no historical evidence linking the two set of couples. 

There are linguistic connections between the ancient languages spoken by Abraham's ancestors and the Dravoid peoples. They share ancient Akkadian roots, as has been recognized by Hindu scholars. The Indian scholar, Malati J. Shendge, concluded that the language of the Harappans of the Indus Valley was Akkadian.

Ajay Pratap Singh has written, "Comparisons of Akkadian and Sanskrit words yielded at least 400 words in both languages with comparable phonetic and semantic similarities. Thus, Sanskrit has, in fact, descended from Akkadian." 

Sarawati refers to a river and a sub-caste of Hindu Brahman society. 

The name of the River Jordan is from the Hebrew ירדן‎ Yarden.

Correlations drawn simply on the basis of the resemblance of names is always risky.

This raises a question about the proper boundaries of historical investigation. None would question the value of referring to the writings of ancient historians to better understand their contexts. Ancient sacred texts are useful for historical investigation also. However, secularists tend to regard religious documents as questionable historical evidence. 

As an anthropologist, I am aware of the dangers of constructing parallels without substantial evidence. I have no interest in exaggerating trifling resemblances. The apparent similarities between Horus and the biblical account of Jesus Christ are not an example of parallelomania. Instead, the evidence suggests that the Horite Hebrew belief in Horus as the son of God is the basis of Messianic expectation. 

A close reading of Genesis reveals that Abraham's ancestors came out of the Nile Valley. His cultural context was Kushite. Abraham's father Terah was a Horite Hebrew priest, and the Horite Hebrew were devotees of Re, Hathor and Horus. That has been confirmed by archaeology, anthropology, DNA studies, ancient texts, and migration studies. 

Abraham and his people held Hathor as a sacred archetype. She conceived Horus by divine overshadowing. She points to the Virgin Mary, who by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, brought forth the "Seed" of God in accordance with Genesis 3:15. The message of Christianity is that Jesus fulfilled the expectation of a Righteous Ruler who would trample down death by his death and lead his people to immortality.

The Ra-Horus-Hathor narrative is a form of the Proto-Gospel. To pose Christianity and the faith of the Horite Hebrew as an example of parallelomania is nonsense! The Horite Hebrew believed in God Father and God Son. Horus is the pattern upon which Messianic expectation developed. Jesus is the only figure of history who fits the pattern, and He is a descendant of the Horite ruler-priests, as I have demonstrated through scientific analysis of the Horite Herew marriage and ascendancy pattern. 

Christianity is not an invented religion based on the Horus myth. It is a faith with deep roots, a received tradition concerning a unique hope for life beyond death. That life is given through the divine ruler who overcomes the grave and leads his people to abundant life. The details of the narrative are extremely important. One such detail is the third-day resurrection described in Pyramid Texts, Utterance 667: "Oh Horus, this hour of the morning, of this third day is come, when thou surely passeth on to heaven, together with the stars, the imperishable stars."

The Horite expectation that the Divine One would not remain in the grave is expressed in Psalm 16:10:  For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.

It has been argued that the New Testament accounts of Jesus’ birth, death and resurrection are based on the Horus myth, and that Christianity is a copy-cat religion. This argument has no basis in facts, and has been proven false.

The core of Christianity concerns the expectation of a Divine Son or the "Seed"of God. This is called “Messianic Expectation” and is attributed to the Jews. However, it existed long before there was a "Jewish" ethnicity. It is attributed to the ancient Hebrew (4000-2000 BC).

This expectation can be traced to Abraham’s Hebrew ancestors. They believed that one of their virgins would miraculously conceive and bring forth the Son/Seed of God. This was a central belief of Abraham’s Horite Hebrew ancestors. 

Why would the Horite Hebrew believe this? What was the basis for their hope?  The answer appears to be found in Genesis 3:15. Abraham’s ancestors received a promise that a “Woman” of their ruler-priest lines would bring forth the Seed who would crush the serpent’s head and restore paradise.

The myth of Horus is a form of the Proto-Gospel. Jesus’ Horite ancestry has been demonstrated through scientific analysis of the Horite marriage and ascendancy pattern. We are not speaking here of trifling resemblances between the myth of Horus and the historic Jesus. Scripture itself which indicates that Abraham and his people were a caste of ruler-priest devotees of Horus. Their cultural context was Kushite and they expected a woman of their blood lines to bring forth the "Seed" of God in accordance with the first biblical promise (Gen. 3:15). This is the origin of Messianic expectation, and clearly it did not originate with the Jews who reject belief in God Son. (See Trinitarian Correspondances Between Mesopotamia and the Nile.)

Because the myth of Horus has striking parallels to the story of Jesus, some claim that Christians borrowed the idea of a dying-rising deity from the ancient Egyptians. That claim fails to take into consideration that the New Testament writers were heirs of the Horite Hebrew religion and they saw Jesus as the fulfillment of the ancient hope for a ruler-priest who would overcome death.

This statute of the Kushite-Nubian Pharaoh Taharqa shows him holding two orbs and kneeling before the falcon totem of Horus. The two orbs are the Upper and Lower Nile regions which were first united by the Kushite-Nubian kings before the first Egyptian dynasties. Apparently, the inscription states that Taharka is offering "wine to the little-known Egyptian falcon-god Hemen." Inscriptions are not reliable because sometimes they are written long after the statue was created or are changed to honor the current ruler and the current ruler's favorite deity.

We have reason to doubt that Taharqa is venerating Hemen as Hemen's totem was a hippopotamus. The falcon is the totem of Horus. At Nekhen, the oldest known site of the Horite Hebrew, Hemen was associated with Horus, the Son of  the High God Ra. 

One ancient Nilotic text says, "I am Horus, the great Falcon upon the ramparts of the house of him of the hidden name. My flight has reached the horizon. I have passed by the gods of Nut. I have gone further than the gods of old. Even the most ancient bird could not equal my very first flight. I have removed my place beyond the powers of Set, the foe of my father Osiris. No other god could do what I have done. I have brought the ways of eternity to the twilight of the morning. I am unique in my flight. My wrath will be turned against the enemy of my father Osiris and I will put him beneath my feet in my name of ‘Red Cloak’.”

Here we find the words of Psalm 110:1, a Messianic reference: The Lord says to my Lord: “Sit at My right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.” 

A reference to Horus' resurrection on the third day is found in Pyramid Texts Utterance 667: "Oh Horus, this hour of the morning, of this third day is come, when thou surely passeth on to heaven, together with the stars, the imperishable stars." (1941b)

The early Hebrew expectation that the Divine One would not remain in the grave is expressed in Psalm 16:10: "For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption." However, it was expressed almost 1000 years earlier in the Pyramid Texts.

Related reading: Abraham's Faith Lives in Christianity; The Substance of Abraham's Faith, The Ra-Horus-Hathor Narrative; Righteous Rulers and the Resurrection

The Ra-Horus-Hathor Narrative

The following is a conversation I had with a friend and a reader of Just Genesis. I provide a conclusion at the end which summaries some of the key ideas. There are related articles linked at the bottom also.


David Dickens: I was going to ask you about non-Biblical Horite/Proto-Saharan texts. You've talked about a lot of how Genesis lines up with the culture and some of archaeological work in Africa, but I was wondering if there are other sources of narrative. I'm looking for the Nilo-Saharan equivalent of Beowulf, I suppose.

Alice Linsley: The older Horus-Set narrative may be a close parallel. Horus, as the son of the Creator, comes to vanquish Set and claims the kingdom for the Creator God/High King. Not quite the same elements as in Beowulf. Set means bow, and the land of Nubia was called Ta-Seti, the "land of the bow." The Nubians were famous for archery. This narrative dates to around 5000 BC.

David:  At least that gives me a good place to start. I've seen a lot of anti-Horus propaganda lately whereas I'm perfectly happy with a typological interpretation of the Horus myths. (But then I'm no expert so my opinion is no better than most of the critics.)


Alice: There is much ignorance about Horus. Also, a great deal of nonsense on the internet about ancient Egyptian beliefs and magic. You might find this piece helpful: Ha'piru, Ha'biru, 'Apiru or Hebrew?


David: There's certainly all the pieces there, but the narrative is missing. I can read the first few chapters of Genesis, Ramayana, Epic of Gilgamesh, legends of the Eight Immortals, Beowulf... there are so many ancient stories (some with meticulous detail, but all with unifying themes) but there doesn't seem to be one for Horus or the Ha'biru peoples. It seems almost all we have is archeological evidence and some descriptions from ancient historians.

Alice:  The Bible is the narrative of the Horite Hebrew/Ha'biru. It is the only consistent source of the Righteous Ruler narrative. Unfortunately, there are competing narratives in Genesis that produce contextual incongruities. Nevertheless, we know which is the older tradition. It is the one which speaks of the "Seed" of God (Gen. 3:15) coming into the world and trampling down the serpent. The work published at JUST GENESIS attempts to reconnect Christianity to that older Tradition.

A late editorial hand, the Deuteronomist Historian (700-250 BC), introduced a new idea of God in YHWY. YHWY represents a rabbinic version in which there is no divine son. John's Gospel seeks to correct this. John explains that his purpose in writing is "that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God." (John 20:31) Likewise, Martha professes that Jesus is Messiah, the Son of God (John 11:27), and John the Baptist bears witness that Jesus is the Son of God (John 1:34).


David:  So nothing extra-Biblical remains of the myths and legends of a people who touched three continents, spanned thousands of years and had a hand in every ancient civilization in the eastern hemisphere? I just doesn't sound right.

I'm not saying the Bible isn't the bees-knees, I'm just surprised that its all that remains (besides a few hieroglyphs on some temple wall).


Alice: Oh, there is much that pertains to the narrative outside the Bible. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts and Pyramid Texts provide a great deal of information about Horus, the divine son of Ra. This is expressed in the Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. In the priest's prayer to the King, he says, "Horus is a soul and he recognizes his Father in you..." (Utterance 423)

There are Akkadian artifacts and texts that testify to the belief in a Divine Father with a Divine Son. In Akkadian texts the father is called Ani and the son is called Enki.

Also there is the evidence of burial practices among rulers who were served by Horite Hebrew priests. The righteous rulers who were buried in pyramids from the Nile to the Tarum Valley of China hoped for bodily resurrection. That is why their bodies were mummified. It appears that their hope rested in the one who was pierced in the side, and died and rose from the dead on the third day.

The Nilotic Horites held an annual a 5-day festival in which they mourned the death of the son of God. On the third day, the priests lead the people to the fields where they planted seeds of grain to symbolize his rising to life.

Jesus told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day..." (Luke 24:46) Where is it written? Scholars cannot find this in the canon. However, a reference to the third day resurrection is found in the Pyramid Texts: "Oh Horus, this hour of the morning, of this third day is come, when thou surely passeth on to heaven, together with the stars, the imperishable stars." (Utterance 667)

David: I'll have to hunt them down then. I've never seen that sort of collection.


Alice:  As an anthropologist I am aware of the dangers of constructing parallels without substantial evidence from all of these disciplines. I have no interest in exaggerating trifling resemblances. My first impulse is to regard the similarities between Horus and Jesus as yet an example of parallelomania. This is the initial reaction of most people until the evidence is set before them that Ra and Horus express the Father-Son relationship that is the basis of the Messianic Faith.

The Horite expectation that the Righteous Son would not remain in the grave is expressed in Psalm 16:10: For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.

My assertion that the Ra-Horus-Hathor story from the ancient Nile Valley is a form of the Proto-Gospel has been labeled as an example of parallelomania. Such a claim reveals ignorance of what I have written. The Messiah is not a human invention patterned on the Horus myth. Horus is the pattern by which the Horite Hebrew expected a divine Son who would rule as Messiah, and Jesus is the only figure of history who fits the pattern.

Further, Jesus is a direct descendant of the Horite ruler-priests, some of whom lived in Bethlehem and others of whom lived in Nazareth, the home of the 18th priestly division, ha·pi·TSETS (Happizzez). Jesus' Horite ancestry is demonstrated by the distinctive Horite marriage and ascendancy pattern as evident in scientific analysis of the Genesis King Lists. He is the "Seed" of the Woman, the long-expected Immortal Mortal who tramples down death and receives the eternal kingdom.

Hathor conceived Horus by divine overshadowing of the Sun, the emblem of Re.

The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God."Luke 1:35

Hathor is shown at the Dendura Temple holding her newborn son in a manger or stable. The stable was constructed by the Horite priest Har-si-Atef. Atef was the crown worn by deified rulers. The Arabic word atef or atif means “kind.” The ruler who wore the atef crown was to embody kindness and he was to unite the peoples, as Horus unites the peoples of the Upper and Lower Nile.

The rulers of the two regions wore different crowns, but Horus was called "Horus of the Two Crowns" because he wore both. This is what stands behind the account of Yeshua/Joshua, the priest, receiving the "crowns" in Zechariah 6:11: "Take the silver and gold, and make crowns, and set it upon the head of Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest..."

Of course, "Yeshua" is the Hebrew for Jesus. Horus is the only mythological figure in ancient Egypt who was understood to be a man, and as a man he wears the two crowns.

Christianity is not an invented religion based on the Horus myth. It is a faith that emerges organically from a received tradition. A closer look at the details of that sacred and very ancient Tradition speak of life beyond the grave through the agency of a divine ruler, the Son of God, who overcomes death and leads his people to immortality. The details of the narrative are extremely important. One such detail is the third-day resurrection described in Pyramid Texts Utterance 667: Oh Horus, this hour of the morning, of this third day is come, when thou surely passeth on to heaven, together with the stars, the imperishable stars.

Consider how Horus describes himself in the Coffin Texts (148):

I am Horus, the great Falcon upon the ramparts of the house of him of the hidden name. My flight has reached the horizon. I have passed by the gods of Nut. I have gone further than the gods of old. Even the most ancient bird could not equal my very first flight. I have removed my place beyond the powers of Set, the foe of my father Osiris. No other god could do what I have done. I have brought the ways of eternity to the twilight of the morning. I am unique in my flight. My wrath will be turned against the enemy of my father Osiris and I will put him beneath my feet in my name of ‘Red Cloak’.

This text is at least 800 years older than the words of Psalm 110:1, a clear messianic reference: The Lord says to my Lord: “Sit at My right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”

The reference to the cloak reminds me of this from Proverbs 30:4:

Who has ascended to heaven and come down? Who has gathered the wind in His hands? Who has bound up the waters in His cloak? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is His name, and what is the name of His Son--surely you know!

Conclusion

The expectation of a Righteous Ruler who would overcome death and lead his people to immortality has been found to be a wide spread and rooted in deep antiquity. It can be traced to the Nilotic belief in the bodily resurrection. In the Coffin Texts, the king is to be immortal in his flesh, expressed by his eating and drinking. Egyptologist Louis Vico Žabkar argues that the Nilotic concept of the "ba" is not a part of the person but is the person himself. The idea of a purely immaterial existence was entirely foreign to the Horite Hebrew. They were confident that the body and spirit could be united after death and thus the "second death" could be avoided.

This reality is lost in translation. The Septuagint borrowed the Greek word ψυχή psychē to describe the soul instead of the term ba to describe body. Žabkar concludes that the concept of the ba is so essential to ancient Egyptian thought that it would be better to used the exact term or explain the distinction in a footnote or parenthetically.

According to St. Augustine "the Egyptians alone believe in the resurrection, as they carefully preserved their dead bodies." ("Death, burial, and rebirth in the religions of antiquity", Jon Davies, Routledge, 1999, p. 27)

In The Pyramid Texts, dating from the beginning of the 4th dynasty, we read: "O Hunger, do not come for me; go to the Abyss, depart to the flood! I am satisfied, I am not hungry because of this kmhw bread of Horus which I have eaten." (Utterance 338) The Egyptian word km means to bring to an end, to complete, or fulfill, and hw refers to the heavenly temple or mansion of the firmament above. The Akkadian variant is khenfu cakes which are mentioned in the ancient Code of Ani.

It appears that the "kmhw bread of Horus" is what the Church Fathers call "the bread of immortality." Concerning himself, Jesus said that "unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day" (John 6:53-54).

Certainly, there are messianic elements found among peoples who were not Horite Hebrew. In Hrothgar's view Beowulf is divinely appointed to save his people and he "was led like a lamb to the slaughter" (Is. 53), being betrayed by one of his own inner circle. There are other messiah-like figures in history and literature. The American mythologist, Joseph Campbell, called this the "Monomyth." In his fourth "Eclogue" (written between 42 and 27 BC) Virgil prophesied that a child would be born who would bring peace to the whole world.

These are relatively recent, however. The hope of a righteous ruler who overcomes death and leads his people to immortality can be traced to at least 5000 BC. Messianic expectation predates Abraham and appears to have originated among the Horite Hebrew priest caste that served in the Sun shrines that were found from ancient Nubia to Anatolia and from Edom to the Indus Valley.

The Horus narrative is a form of the Proto-Gospel. Here we find a central truth of the Messianic Faith: that the divine Father has a divine Son. Allusions to the Father-Son relationship appear in ancient Nilotic texts and in the Psalms.

Here is another Messianic passage that speaks of Him trampling the serpent:

"They will bear you up in their hands, That you do not strike your foot against a stone. You will tread upon the lion and cobra, The young lion and the serpent you will trample down." (Psalm 91:12,13)

This expectation was expressed about 1000 years before Psalm 91 in the Pyramid Texts.

"Horus has shattered (tbb, crushed) the mouth of the serpent with the sole of his foot (tbw)" Utterance 388 (681)

Jesus’ Horite ancestry is attested by analysis of his ancestry using the king lists of Genesis and the genealogical data of the Matthew and Luke. These reflect the Horite Hebrew marriage and ascendancy pattern. We are not speaking here of trifling resemblances between the myth of Horus and the historic Jesus. Scripture itself indicates that Abraham and his people were a caste of ruler-priest devotees of Horus. The Horus name appears among many Hebrew figures. Hathor was venerated among the Horite Hebrew metal workers. A temple dedicated to Hathor was discovered at the southwestern edge of Mt. Timnah by Professor Beno Rothenberg of Hebrew University. This is the site of some of the world's oldest copper mines.

Some of the Horite Hebrew rulers are listed in Genesis 36. They ruled in Edom, the same territory that God gave to Abraham. The Horite Hebrew expected a woman of their blood lines to bring forth the "Seed" of God in accordance with the biblical promise in Genesis 3:15. The Proto-Gospel upholds the Father-Son relationship, but this theme is later suppressed by the YHWH cult. YHWH has no son.

Messianic expectation involves the crushing of cosmic forces that oppose the Creator. He who crushes receives in His divine and sinless person the suffering that sinners deserve. He was pierced, scourged, and crowned with thorns. Four centuries before Jesus was born, Plato describes an ancient belief concerned the "Just One"who would be "scourged, bound and crucified." (Republic ii, Chapters 4 and 5). He did not learn this from the Jews. Rather, it was an expectation held among the Nilotic priests, one of which was Sechnuphis, under whom Plato studied for 13 years at Memphis.

The ancient accounts surrounding Horus have many parallels to the story of Jesus. Some skeptics claim that the early Christians borrowed the idea of a dying-rising deity from the ancient Egyptians or from the Roman Dionysus cult. That claim has no historical substantiation, however. It fails to take into consideration that the New Testament writers were biological descendants of and the heirs of the Horite Hebrew, and they saw Jesus as the fulfillment and embodiment of the descriptions of the long-expected Son, born miraculously by divine overshadowing. This is how the Virgin Mary conceived the Son, by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. (Luke 1:35).

The word “Serapis” is a fusion of the names Osiris/Horus and the long-horn Apis bull. The Apis bull was the totem of Hathor, Horus’ mother. Her crown of horns cradles the Sun as a sign of her appointment by divine overshadowing.

Though the main library in Alexandria was destroyed, ancient scholars were still able to access a "daughter library" at the Serapis temple located in another part of the city. Around AD 197, Tertullian wrote: "To this day, at the temple of Serapis, the libraries of Ptolemy are to be seen, with the identical Hebrew originals [the Septuagint] in them" (Apology, XVIII).

In a 134 AD letter to his brother-in-law, Emperor Hadrian wrote, “Egypt, which you commended to me, my dearest Servianus, I have found to be wholly fickle and inconsistent, and continually wafted about by every breath of fame. The worshipers of Serapis (here) are called Christians, and those who are devoted to the god Serapis, call themselves Bishops of Christ.” It is evident that the early Nilotic Christians recognized the Messianic symbolism of the Ra-Horus-Hathor narrative.


Related reading: The Social Structure of the Biblical Hebrew (Part 1 of 7); Who is Jesus?; The Urheimat of the Canaanite Y; Fundamentalism and Syncretism in Hebrew History; Ha'piru, Ha'biru, 'Apiru or Hebrew?; The Priests of Nazareth; Righteous Rulers and the Resurrection; The Virgin Mary's Horite Ancestry; Was the Virgin Mary a Dedicated Royal Woman?

Did Abraham Intend to Sacrifice Isaac?

Caravaggio, 1598

Alice C. Linsley

The Binding of Isaac is best explained by early Hebrew beliefs concerning the High God and His son, Hor/Hur/Horus, from the ancient Egyptian HR, meaning "Most High One." In the symbolism of the early Hebrew the Divine Father-Son were represented by the Sun and the solar arc. The Sun was described as rising in the east as a lamb and setting in the west as a ram. As Abraham and Isaac ascended Mount Moriah, Isaac asked his father "where is the lamb for the sacrifice? Abraham replied that God would provide the sacrifice. God provided a ram. 

Horus is the single figure shown in ancient iconography with the body of a man and the head of a ram. This animal was sacrificed by the Hebrew at festivals. One such festival commemorated the death and resurrection of Horus. This lasted five days and involved sowing wheat seed in the fields. Jesus explained concerning his death and resurrection, "Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit" (John 12:24).

Another festival involved making a three-day journey into the wilderness (Exodus 3:18; 5:3, and 8:26-28). This involved the sacrifice of a ram, an animal that the Egyptians did not sacrifice. This explains why Moses said to Pharaoh that the Hebrew clans had to make a three-day journey into the wilderness. "...for the sacrifices that we offer to the LORD our God are an abomination to the Egyptians. If we offer in the sight of the Egyptians sacrifices that are an abomination to them, will they not stone us?”

There is an interesting linguistic connection between the words for ram and soul in ancient Egyptian thought. Both are the same word - ba. No wonder the Egyptians did not sacrifice rams! Yet God provided a ram. The early Hebrew ruler-priests clearly did not hold to the religious syncretism of the Egyptians. Indeed, their faith is rooted in a Messianic Tradition that existed at least 2000 years before Egypt became a political entity.

The Mount Moriah narrative is best understood in light of the Hebrew beliefs concerning the expected Righteous Ruler who would die and overcome death, rising to immortality. This Messianic expectation was unique to the early Hebrew (4200-2000 BC). 

Archaeological evidence confirms that child sacrifice was practiced by the Moche and Chimú people of Peru, the Aztec and Maya, in parts of Turkey and in Carthage in North Africa. Infant burials at Carthaginian “tophets" and sites in Turkey that date from 3100–2800 BC. It is believed that these sacrifices were performed to appease deities during crises such as impending war, natural disasters, plagues, famines, etc. The story of Abraham on Mount Moriah is posed by Judaism in protest of the practice. However, it is likely that Abraham the Hebrew understood the significance of what happened on Mount Moriah in a different way, as did the Apostles Paul and James. The key to understanding the event as the early Hebrew did is the symbolism of the ram.

This is contrary to the Horite Hebrew understanding of God. In their view, God could never be appeased. Man is guilty of every offense against the Creator, so every human deserves to die. Life was redeemed by the shedding of the blood of an animal, not by shedding human blood.

If Abraham's Horite Hebrew people didn't practice human sacrifice, what is the point of this story? The usual explanation is that God was “testing” Abraham. Is this a test of Abraham’s devotion to God as the rabbis teach, or a test of Abraham's belief in the resurrection of the promised son HR? Why would the sacrifice of Abraham's promised son (Gen. 15:6) be made the test unless it speaks of the sacrifice of God’s promised Son?

Isaac was the promised son and Abraham believed God's promise that Isaac would be his heir. That is why Abraham confidently declared to his servants: "Wait here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship and come again to you." (Gen. 22:5)

Reflecting on Abraham's justifying trust in God's promise, the Apostle Paul reminds the Christians in Rome that "Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness." (Rom. 4:3) Abraham believed God's promise when he saw the ram caught in the thicket. Abraham called that place "The Lord Will Provide" (Gen. 22:14). Here is a clue as to what Abraham believed. He believed that God provides the Ram. Horus was sometimes shown with a ram's head, signifying his maturity, having grown in strength from lamb to ram. The early Hebrew regarded the sun as the symbol of the High God and his son. The son rose in the east as a lamb and set in the west as a ram. Abraham believed the sign of the Son of God that was yet to be fulfilled and by this faith he was justified. All who believe in the Son of God are justified. 

 Horus, the son of Ra (meaning "Father" in ancient Egyptian) was depicted among Abraham's Nilotic ancestors as being one with the Father. He rode with the Father on the solar boat. The boat of the morning hours was called Mandjet and the boat of the evening hours was called Mesektet. While Horus was on the Mesektet, he was in his ram-headed form. The east represented the past, and the west represented the future, as with many indigenous peoples even today. 

The narratives that speak about the death of Horus involve being bitten by a scorpion or by a poisonous serpent. Both accounts are fairly late (c.1720-c.1250 B.C.), but the idea of the Seed of God being bitten by a serpent is found in Genesis 3:15. Some have claimed that Horus was crucified. No such narrative exists in the ancient texts. The lack of description of HR's death in ancient texts may be explained by the symbolism of the solar arc in which the ram is connected to the future, an event to take place after Abraham's time.

The ram was the Heavenly Father's substitute for Isaac who Abraham may have believed to be the long-awaited Messiah. That Abraham believed the sign of the ram became grounds for his justification. The ram caught on Mount Moriah symbolized to Abraham that the offering of his heart was accepted. 
Manage

On Child Sacrifice and the Hebrew 

Jews speak of the "binding of Isaac" as the Akeidat Yitzchak. Most Jews do not believe that Abraham intended to sacrifice his son. In "The Binding of Isaac, Religious Murders and Kabbalah", Lippman Bodoff argues that Abraham never intended to sacrifice his son. Rather, he had faith that God had no intention that he should do so.

Genesis Rabbah holds that God "never considered telling Abraham to slaughter Isaac. Rabbi Yona Ibn Janach wrote that this story is about a symbolic sacrifice. Rabbi Yosef Ibn Caspi maintained that Abraham's "imagination" led him astray. Ibn Caspi wrote, "How could God command such a revolting thing?"

Rabbi Joseph H. Hertz maintains that child sacrifice was "rife among the Semitic peoples," and finds it "astounding that Abraham's God should have interposed to prevent the sacrifice, not that He should have asked for it." Hertz's interpretation of Genesis 22 is that God was correcting the practice of human sacrifice among Abraham’s people. Unfortunately, there is little anthropological and archaeological support for this view. The is no evidence that the early Hebrew practiced human sacrifice.

Jacques Kinnaer reports, "The earliest known example of human sacrifice may perhaps be found in Predynastic burials in the south of Egypt, dated to the Naqada II Period. One of the discovered bodies showed marks on the throat from having been cut before having been decapitated."-- Human Sacrifice, Jacques Kinnaer

Kinnaer also provides two definitions of human sacrifice:

• "The ritual killing of human beings as part of the offerings presented to the gods on a regular basis, or on special occasions."

• "Retainer sacrifice, or the killing of domestic servants to bury them along with their master."

For the first definition there is no evidence among Abraham's ancestors, and regarding the second definition, there is dispute among Egyptologists. Caroline Seawright has written, "Human sacrifice is not generally connected with ancient Egypt. There is little evidence of human sacrifice during most of the dynastic period of ancient Egypt... but there is some evidence that it may have been practiced in the Nile Valley during the 1st Dynasty and possibly also Predynastic Egypt.

Seawright is referring to subsidiary graves at Abydos, the burial place for the first kings of a unified Egypt. However, these were the graves of domestics and officials who probably died naturally, not the graves of servants who were sacrificed to serve the ruler in the afterlife. Even the most provocative National Geographic report has to admit that this is probable, lacking hard evidence that the ancient Nilotic peoples sacrificed humans.

The "binding of Isaac" involves a promise. The promise is understood in the exchange of the lamb Isaac asked his father about, for the ram that God provides. For the Horite Hebrew this speaks of the Creator's son, Horus, who was said to rise with the sun as a lamb and set with the sun as a ram in its full strength. That being the case, this story is about God providing His own sacrifice, but in the future (symbolized by the west). The text supports this interpretation.

"Then Abraham raised his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the place of his son. Abraham called the name of that place The LORD Will Provide, as it is said to this day, 'In the mount of the LORD it will be provided." (Gen. 22:14, 15)

It is apparent that Abraham intended that Isaac should be offered to God, perhaps dedicated to God's service, as Samuel was dedicated to serve in the temple? Genesis tells us that Abraham expected to return with Isaac to his men waiting at the base of the mountain. Abraham the Hebrew expected resurrection and he told the men that both he and Isaac would return (Genesis 22:5).

Abraham knew to expect a son who would overcome death. He likely believed that Isaac would be raised to life after the sacrifice. In other words, he acted by faith. By provision of the ram on Mount Moriah, a site that was sacred to the Horite Hebrew, Abraham received confirmation that his offering was accepted, and he also discovered that Isaac was not the anticipated Ruler foretold in Eden (Gen. 3:15). That one would be revealed in the future.

Paul and James are perceived to be in conflict on the question of justification, yet they both argue based on this story of Abraham and Isaac. There is no conflict in their understandings of this event if they understood that Abraham trusted God to confirm the truth to him. This is the man who posed the great question: "Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Gen. 18:25) This same Abraham believed God's promise concerning the appointed Son who would appear in the future. 

What Abraham discovered on Mount Moriah is that Isaac was not the long-awaited Messiah who would overcome death and lead the people to immortality. That Lamb of God was yet to be born, and He would die a ram (in full strength of manhood) in the future. James tells us that Abraham discovered justification through acting on his Messianic faith... that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only (James 2:21-24).

The Jews call their ancestors "Horim" because they recognize the Horite Hebrew identity of Abraham and his ancestors. The Horite (and Sethite) Hebrew believed in the resurrection, but this fact has been suppressed by rabbinic teaching.

The Horites anticipated that a woman of their ruler-priest lines would miraculously conceive by the overshadowing of God and bring for the Son of God. This explains why their lines intermarried exclusively, as analysis of their marriage and ascendancy pattern shows. Both Joseph and Mary are descendants of the Horite ruler-priest lines. This is attested by the fact that Joseph had to register for the census in Bethlehem. Bethlehem was a Horite town. I Chronicles 4:4 lists Hor as the "father" of Bethlehem.

The Nilotic Horites held an annual a 5-day festival in which they mourned the death of the son of God. He is called Horus, from which come the terms "Horite" or "Hurrian." On the third day, the priests lead the people to the fields where they planted seeds of grain to symbolize his rising to life. This was a custom among Abraham's Nilotic ancestors who hung their hopes on the resurrection of the Righteous Ruler.

Genesis 3:15 speaks of how the Woman would bring for the Seed who would crush the serpent's head. Jesus claimed to be that Seed when He spoke to his disciples about his impending death. He explained: "Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." (John 12:24)

The rabbis do not agree on the meaning of the binding of Isaac, but one thing is certain: the Horite Hebrew did not practice human sacrifice. The biblical evidence indicates that child sacrifice among the Semites developed after Abraham's time because God condemns it between the 8th and 7th centuries BC, about 1200 years after Abraham.

There is little evidence of human sacrifice among biblical peoples. This narrative of Abraham with Isaac isn't about human sacrifice. It is about Messianic expectation of the dying and rising son. The narrative concerning Jephath's sacrifice of his daughter is a moral lesson about not swearing rash oaths (compare James 5:12), and a critique of Canaanite practices surrounding war.


Related reading: Early Resurrection Texts; Abraham's Faith Lives in Christianity; Ram Symbolism in the Ancient World; Jesus: From Lamb to Ram; What Abraham Discovered on Mount Moriah; The Substance of Abraham's Faith

Royal Names in Genesis

Alice C. Linsley

A reader has asked if Enoch is the founder of the sciences. He cites this:


"Sages affirm that all antediluvian sciences originate with the Egyptian Hermes [Tehuti], in Upper Egypt (namely Khmunu (Hermopolis). The Jews call him Enoch and the Moslems Idris. He was the first who spoke of the material of the superior world and of planetary movements...Medicine and poetry were his functions... [as well as] the sciences, including alchemy and magic." [Cf. Asin Palacios, Ibn Masarra, p. 13]

Sufficient historical, anthropological, and archaeological evidence exists to justify the hypothesis that astronomy, mathematics, binary thought, triangulation (pyramids), metal work, stonework, animal husbandry, cultivation, the earliest priestly writings, and the earliest known trade records are found among the Proto-Saharans of the Upper Nile. However, these cannot be identified with any one figure of history. Instead, these sciences and technologies are identified with a group of rulers identified as the "mighty men of old" in Genesis. Enoch/Anoch is a royal title found among these Proto-Saharan and Saharo-Nubian rulers.

Enoch is related to the word Anoch, a royal name found among Abraham's cattle-herding ancestors. The people of Anoch are called "Anakim" in the Bible. The Anakim were organized into three-clan confederations, as were many other groups living in Canaan. The three Anakim clans were named for the three highest ranked sons of Anak whose names are Sheshai (Shasu?), Ahiman and Talmai (Josh.15:14). The Shasu are found in ancient Nubia and among the Horites of Edom.

Two hieroglyphic references dating to the New Kingdom period refer to “the land of the Shasu of YHW.” These are the oldest references to YHWH outside the Bible. The "Shasu of YHW" is found on inscriptions from the Nubian temples of Soleb and Amara West, and corresponds to the tetragrammaton.

Anochi refers to the royal first-person pronoun and is derived from the Akkadian first person pronoun anāku. It is likely that Anoch, Enoch, and Hanock (Reuben's first-born son) are variant spellings of the same word, and all refer to rulers.

The word anochi is also found among peoples who migrated from the Nile westward, such as the Igbo and the Ashante. Among the Igbo, anochie means “a replacer” or “to replace” and among the Ashante the word anokyi means "Ano Junior" or the "Ano who follows his father." In both cases, one finds the idea of succession from father to son, suggesting a line of descent. A Nigerian friend reports that anochie also means "direct heir to a throne."

The name Enoch is clearly associated with royal ascendancy. It means "one who ascends after his father" and there are several who hold this title in the Genesis King Lists. Masarra does not specify which Enoch is identified as Hermes/Tehuti. However, he is correct in the association of the royal name with Tehut. The oldest known code is the Law of Tehut which dates to about 3200 B.C. It is associated with Menes who made Memphis the capital of a united Nile Valley. He issued edicts that were designed to improve food production and distribution, guard the rights of ruling families, improve education, and enhance knowledge of the natural world through geometry and astronomy.

The first Enoch of the Bible is not easily identified because his royal name must be reconstructed using the marriage and ascendancy pattern of these archaic rulers. He is the father-in-law of Kain and Seth. His daughters named their first born sons Enoch (Kain's son) and Enosh (Seth's son) after their father. The names Enoch and Enosh are linguistically equivalent. This feature of the marriage and ascendancy pattern is called "the cousin bride's naming prerogative" and the practice continued among the ruler-priests to the time of Jesus Christ.

The cousin bride's naming prerogative is evident in analysis of this Lamech segment. We note that Naamah named her fist born son Lamech, after her father.

In addition to Enoch, the son of Kain (Gen. 4:17-18), there is also Enoch, the father of Methuselah (Gen. 5:21-13). He was a contemporary of Lamech the Elder who bragged to his two wives.

Lamech is another royal name. It is related to the Hebrew melech, which means king. According to Umberto Cassuto, Lamech is related to the Mesopotamian word lumakku, meaning “priest.” (Commentary on Genesis, Vol. 1, p. 233). Two named Lamech appear in the Genesis King Lists. There is Lamech the Elder (Gen. 4:18-24) and Lamech the Younger (Gen. 5:26-31). Likewise there are two ruler-priests named Esau.

Esau is a royal name associated with the Horites of Edom. There is Esau the Elder and Esau the Younger. The Horite rulers of Edom/Edo/Idu are listed in Genesis 36.

To further complicate matters, we have seemingly conflicting claims about these great clan chiefs who built great territories in the ancient world. Consider the case of Irad, Kain's grandson (Gen. 4:18). The name has these variants: Jared (Gen. 5:18-20) and Yared. Yared is the best rendering of the ruler's name as it has the initial Y - a solar cradle - indicating divine appointment by the overshadowing of the Sun, the Creator's emblem. This Y symbol is found among the Canaanite rulers before the development of Hebrew: Yitzak, Yishmael, Yacob; Yaqtan, Yosef, Yared, etc.

The Igbo identify Yared as the founder of their writing system. He is among numerous archaic rulers identified with Biblical figures by the Igbo who originated in the Nile Valley. According to the Igbo apologist, Dr. Catherine Acholonu:

Sumerian texts say that the first city built by the gods on earth was called Eridu. There they placed the members of Adam’s family. Adam’s great grandson was named Yared, meaning ‘He of Eridu’, ‘person from Eridu’. Its Igbo equivalent, with the same meaning, is Oye Eridu. The father of Yared was Enosh/Enu-Esh. His name meant ‘Master of humankind’, for the first people were called Esh, Adam too was called Esh in vernacular Hebrew. In Sumerian this sacred word Esh means ‘Righteous Shepherd’. All Sumerian kings bore the title Esh. Equally in Igbo land Esh/Eshi/Nshi is a sacred word implying divine origins of the first people, who indeed were wielders of supernatural powers.

The Sumerians and the Igbo have a common point of origin in the Nile Valley thousands of years before either group emerged as a separate ethnicity. Eridu is also spelled Eredo and simply means "Ur of the Idu/Edo" and there were two places with this name. One was in Mesopotamia and the other in what is today Nigeria.

The Eredo of Nigeria (shown above) has 70-foot high ramparts that extend for 100 miles. This Eredo is associated with the royal House of Sheba, to which Abraham's cousin wife, Keturah, belonged. She is the mother of another great ruler, Yaqtan (Joktan) who she named after her father, Yaqtan the Elder. These are the ruling peoples of the Joktanite clans of Southern Arabia and the royal ancestors of Mohammed, the founder of Islam.

These rulers evidently dispersed very widely in the ancient world because Edo/Idu was the Ainu name for the capital of Japan. The original name of Tokyo was Edo.

Many of the rulers of the ancient world had names that began with Ar. This is likely an abbreviation of Har, a Horus name.


Related reading: The Ar Rulers; Edom and the Horites; Who Laid the Foundations of Science and Technology?; Ancient Moral Codes; Cousin Brides and their Ruler Sons; The Genesis King Lists; The Nubian Context of YHWH; Two Named Esau; Andrei A. Orlov, Enoch as the Heavenly Priest

The Shrine City of Nekhen

Tomb 100 wall painting at Nekhen (Hierakonpolis), discovered by F.W. Green in 1899.

Alice C. Linsley

Attention to the data in Genesis 4-12 reveals a movement of Nilo-Saharan peoples out of Africa over a long period of time. These were cattle-herding peoples whose religious imagery was rich in solar and cattle symbolism. Red cattle were especially sacred to them. Abraham is a descendant of the rulers of these people.

The oldest known temple (c. 5000 BC) to have association with Abraham's ancestors is the predynastic temple at Nekhen. The temple was located on the Nile, making it easier for temple officials to weigh and measure goods and assess tolls on the vessels that docked there.

The temple consisted of a large oval courtyard surrounded by a mud-plastered reed fence. The courtyard was paved with multiple layers of compressed mud. This temple appears to be the pattern for later temples as depicted on seals from the First Dynasty. 

Votive offerings at the Nekhen temple of Horus (c. 3500 BC) were ten times larger than the mace heads and bowls found elsewhere, suggesting that this was a very prestigious shrine. These included decorated mace heads and hard stone bowls. The temple was a large structure, fronted by huge cedar timber pillars, and it was to become the prototype for temple architecture for many millennia.

Horite priests placed invocations to Ra and Horus at the summit of the fortress as the sun rose. In the morning the priests faced the eastern horizon to greet the rising sun, the emblem of Ra and his son. 

Prayers were offered at dawn. This practice continued throughout dynastic Egypt. Moses was told to meet the king early in the morning as he was going down to the Nile to pray.

The primary orientation for the early Horite and Sethite Hebrew was east. The Hebrew word for East is קדם (qedem, Strong’s #6924), from the root word קדם (Q.D.M, Strong’s #6923) meaning "to meet," and the rising sun is "met" each morning in the east.

One of the Chief Inspectors of the Horite priests at Nekhen was Horemkhawef. His tomb has been identified.

Nekhen's sister city was Elkab (Nekheb), on the opposite side of the river. The tomb of Horemkhawef in Nekhen and the tomb of Sobeknakht in Nekheb were painted by the same artist. Further, Hormose, the chief priest of Nekhen, was able to request material goods from the temple at Nekheb for use at the temple at Nekhen. Nekhen and Nekheb were typical twin cities of the ancient world.

A later temple (c.3500 BC) was built within the precincts of the city. The earliest phase of this temple was a circular stone wall surrounding a large mound of sand supported by limestone blocks on which there may have been an Early Dynasty shrine. A number of limestone fragments, likely the footings for large pillars, were found within the stone enclosure wall. The central shrine consisted of three rooms and four 20-foot-high wood pillars. Animals, including cattle, goats, fish and crocodiles, were sacrificed in the oval courtyard.

By this time, Nekhen had a population estimated at 10,000 inhabitants and was the most important settlement along the Nile. The city stretched for over two miles along the edge of the floodplain and was an important shrine city and commercial center. There were stone masons, weavers, potters, and beer brewers. Metal workers crafted sacred objects of gold and copper. The earliest preserved house in Egypt, c.3600 BC. was the house of a potter. It was preserved when he accidentally burned it down while firing a load of pots.

Narmer Palette

Many artifacts of great importance have been found at Nekhen. These include funeral masks, statues, jewelry, beer vats, large flint knives, and the pillared halls characteristic of later Egyptian monuments and temples. Nekhen is where the oldest life-sized human statue was found: a priest from the temple of Horus, c.3000 BC.

Charcoal samples found in the tombs of Nekhen date to the Naqada I and II periods and have been identified as cedar from Lebanon.

In 1898 J.E. Quibell and F.W. Green found the macehead of Scorpion II and the macehead and palette of Narmer at the main deposit of the temple of Horus. Also found at Nekhen were a seated red pottery lion and the great gold plumed falcon representing Horus, the son of Ra. Nekhen was named for Horus of the Falcon: Nekheny.

A 36-foot high funerary (c.2700 B.C.) enclosure of King Khasekhemwy, the father of the first pyramid builder, Djoser, is the oldest freestanding mud brick structure in the world,

The vast majority of hair samples discovered at the Predynastic cemetery site HK43 at Nekhen on the Nile were cynotrichous (Caucasian) as opposed to heliotrichous (Negroid), according to The Nekhen News (p. 7). Samples ranged from a single hair to a complete headful, with the largest number originating from the disturbed Burial no. 16 of a female of around 35+ years of age.

Another fascinating find at Nekhen was the recovery of an almost complete beard in association with the redheaded man in Burial no. 79. The man had long wavy natural red hair and a full beard. This individual may be of the same ethnicity as the red-haired ruler known as Ur-David (shown below) buried in a pyramid in the Tarim Valley of China.

Note the solar mark on the face of this archaic ruler.

Related reading: Report on Excavations at Elkab/Nehheb; Why Nekhen is Anthropologically Significant; The Substance of Abraham's Faith; Boats and Cows of the Proto-Saharans; Nekhen News 1998; The Pillars of God

A Tent for the Sun

Alice C. Linsley


The tent in Semitic desert tradition represents the territory of the chief through his wives. The tent was the possession of the wife, not the husband in ancient Hebrew culture. High chiefs, such as Abraham, maintained their wives in separate settlements. Sarah resided in Hebron and Keturah, Abraham's cousin wife, resided in the area of Beersheba. The tent pegs served as standards, marking the northern and southern boundaries of Abraham's territory in ancient Edom

This concept is signified by the Hebrew vav which is the tent peg or the ruler's staff. The vav or waw is designated by the letter Y. The symbol is very old. It is found among the ancient Egyptian, Canaanite, and Phoenician scripts. In the Oasis North Arabian scripts it is a staff with the solar orb on top, as shown below.

In ancient Egypt the waw was a symbol of a scepter carried by deities and deified rulers. The waw/vav originally symbolized the crook/hook of the ruler or the tent peg of the ruler's tent. As a lexeme this represented a cluster of related ideas including:

• the ruler himself
• the ruler's authority
• the ruler's territory
• the ruler's people
• the ruler's resources such as his herds and water sources

The waw/vav speaks of an ancient world in which settlements and shrines near water were ruled by chiefs and priests. Travelers moved from settlement to settlement and the ancient water laws were generally generous to those who wa-ndered.

The great chiefs of the Biblical world were designated as such by the initial Y in their names. This is more evident in Hebrew than in English. Consider the following:

Yishmael - Ishmael (Abraham's son by Hagar)
Yitzak - Issac (Abraham's son by Sarah)
Yaqtan - Joktan (Abraham's firstborn son by Keturah)
Yishbak - Yishbak (another of Abraham's sons by Keturah)
Yacob - Jacob
Yeshua - Joshua/Jesus

The Y-shaped headdress of the Somali nomads is called Barki and refers to the sun's blessing upon the wearer. The word corresponds to the Hebrew Birka.


The Sun as God's emblem

The swelling of the sun speaks of God's greatness and sovereignty. The Arabic yakburu means “he is getting big” and with the intensive active prefix: yukabbiru means "he is enlarging." Such would have been the observation of the Horite priests who greeted the rising sun and watched as it expanded across the horizon. At Nekhen, Horite priests placed invocations to Horus at the summit of the fortress as the sun rose. This is the likely origin of the Hindu sun blessing ritual (Agnihotra) and the Jewish sun blessing (Birka Hachama) performed every 28 years.

In the Lower Nile small pyramids carved from single blocks of stone were known as bnbn (benben), from the root, bn, meaning to "swell forth." This relates to the sun's rising or swelling. The Egyptian word for the rising sun is wbn. Tombs of officials from the 4th Dynasty (2613-2494 BC) were surmounted by conical mounds or benben. These tombs, along with the east-facing royal tombs at Giza, indicate that the ancient Kushite and Egyptian rulers hoped to rise from death, even as the Sun rises. Doubtless this the allusion behind the Prophet's words: “But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise [swell/be magnified] with healing in its wings.” (Mal. 4:2)

The prevalence of solar imagery in the ancient world is evident in the study of sacred texts. Psalm 92:2 describes the Lord as “a sun and a shield.” The Victory Tablet of Amenhotep III describes Horus as “The Good God, Golden [Horus/Her], Shining in the chariot, like the rising of the sun; great in strength, strong in might…” (Tablet of Victory of Amenhotep III, J.H. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, Part Two, p. 854).

The Egyptian word her (hor, har) means "the one on high", a reference to the soaring falcon, Horus' animal totem, and to the Sun as the emblem of Ra, Horus' father. Horus was the principal deity at Egypt's earliest shrines such as Nekhen (Heirakonpolis) in Sudan, and he was the patron of the Nekhen Saharan monarchy from which the pharaonic state emerged. Horus and Ra were the first known national gods of the Egyptians. Their ruler-priest devotees are called Horites (Horim).

One of the most striking expressions of solar imagery for the Creator is Psalm 19:1-4 which distinguishes between the Creator and the Sun by asserting that God has made a tent for the sun.

The heavens declare the glory of God;
    the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
² Day after day they pour forth speech;
    night after night they reveal knowledge.
³ They have no speech, they use no words;
    no sound is heard from them.
⁴ Yet their measuring line goes out into all the earth,
    their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun. 

To praise the Creator with upraised hands in Hebrew is Yana.


Order and boundaries in creation

The Kushites and the ancient Greeks noted that the cosmos is ordered and has certain fixed patterns that are observable by all people. They were making such empirical observations long before the development of modern science. They noted that the constellations moved in a clock like manner. They observed binary sets in the order of creation and recognized that rhythms and patterns of the cosmos could be described numerically. Time was ordered according to 12 months, following the 12 lunar cycles, and the week was broken into 7 stations (days), following the 7 heavenly bodies (stars and planets) that can be observed by the human eye at the eclipses.

For both the Kushites and the Greeks the boundaries and measurements of earth, space, time, the dimensions of buildings, wind directions and sea currents were regarded as having been established by the gods, and most anciently by Horus. From Horus come the words horizon, horas/hours, horotely, horologion, horoscope, and an ancient word for mountain or high place - har. These words express the significance of Horus as the marker of boundaries and directions and reflect the veneration of Horus in the ancient world.

Pythagoras (a contemporary of Daniel and Haggai), Plato (a contemporary of Nehemiah), and Aristotle saw a geometric quality to the cosmos and a numerical order behind musical harmony. This wisdom made its way to the British Isles, to China and to the Americans, as is evident by the geometrically aligned Stonehedge, burial mounds and pyramids. These monuments reveal knowledge of astronomical alignments, engineering, and architecture among Neolithic peoples worldwide. The sun was the principal celestial point of reference.


Ancient water shrines and burial sites faced East

Among the ancient Proto-Saharans the sun was regarded as the emblem of the Creator. This is reflected in ancient texts which speak of the Creator mounting the sun as a rider mounts a chariot, and in ancient images that show Ra sailing traversing the heavens in a solar boat. Often these images also show Horus in the form of a falcon perched on the masthead. Such an image has been found at Anghor Wat in Cambodia (see below). Ankh-Hor means "May Horus Live!" or "Life to Horus!" It appears that the earliest expressions of Hinduism were consistent with ancient Kushite and Proto-Saharan religion.

Horus perched on the mast of Ra's solar boat

Anghor Wat temples reflect early Dravidian architecture. Dravidian priests and their east-facing temples and shrines were called O-piru. The O is a sun symbol. Opiru appears in different ancient texts as Hapiru, Habiru (Hebrew in English). The Habiru were devotees of Horus, the son of Ra. Ra's emblem was the sun. Hathor, the mother of Horus, is often shown with the sun over her. The sun's rays were believed to impregnate or inseminate the earth. Hathor conceived by the overshadowing of the sun.

The Hebrews had a similar conception of God's life-giving shekhinah (golden radiance) and Jerusalem which is spelled with an initial Y (YRWShLM) was a shrine city dedicated to the God of Light. In Abraham's time, Canaan was a collection of city-states that paid tribute to the Great House of Egypt, as attested in the Amarna tablets. Amarna letters dating from 1370 BC refer to Jerusalem as Ur-Salimu which is a variant of Ur-Sal-ma, a reference to the God of Light (Sal-Ma). Many ancient kings carried this name: Soloman, Salma, Selim, Salmoneus, etc.The kings of Judah had constructed horses at the entrance to the temple in dedication to the sun (2 Kg. 23:11)

Among Abraham's Proto-Saharan ancestors were the metal-workers who gathered meteoric iron which to them must have appeared as seeds from the sky. Probably this is the origin of the word beja, which means seeds and refers to cattle-herding people who worked metal. Linguist Penelope Aubin notes, "In Demotic sources they are called Brhm while in classical sources they are the Blemmyes, ancestors of the modern Beja." Here we see the connection between the Vedic tradition of the Brahmins and the Nilotic Proto-Saharans.

Beja name comes from the ancient Egyptian word for meteroric iron - bja and corresponds to the Sanskrit word bija, meaning semen or seed. Meteoritic iron was used in the fabrication of iron beads in Nubia 6000 years ago. As R.F. Tylecote notes, "Around 4000 BC small items, such as the tips of spears and ornaments, were being fashioned from iron recovered from meteorites."  (A History of Metallurgy, 2nd edition, 1992, page 3) These beads or seeds from heaven were likely perceived to bring the wearer divine power. Meteoritic iron was used in the fabrication of crooks and flails, the symbols of the Egyptian and Kushite pharaohs. These symbols were believed to give the ruler powers from heaven.

The Brahmins referred to the Divine Architect as AUM (cf. Buddhist OUM), and the Dravidians as the God of Heliopolis (On), the City of the Sun and the place of sacred pillars (Iunu).  Plato agreed with the latter. He wrote "Tell me of the God of On, which was, is and shall be." Plato studied under a Horite priest at Heliopolis for thirteen years.  He probably traveled to Memphis also.The theology of Memphis was much like that at Heliopolis. Strabo suggests that Plato and a friend curried the favor of the Heliopolis priests, seeking to “let them learn some of the principles of their doctrines.”

The pyramid triads at Giza, Zaqqara and Abusir are aligned to the obelisk at Heliopolis, possible because the ancient Egyptians believe that this is where the first dry mound of earth appeared at the beginning. Baalbek in Lebanon, also called Heliopolis, aligns to Heliopolis in Egypt as well.


The linguistic connections

The term "Kushite" is a general term that refers to Nubians, Sudra, Nilotes, Egyptians, Ainu, Canaanites, and the Akkadian rulers of Mesopotamia. The Dravidian priest-scribes were linked to the Kushite rulers and Proto-Saharan beliefs and practices. Evidence of this is found in linguistics which has established a connection between the Nilotic Proto-Saharans and the Dravidians. Consider these examples:

The Hebrew yasuah = salvation, corresponds to the Sanskrit words asvah, asuah or yasuah = salvation.

The Semitic svam or samyim = sky or heavens corresponds to the Sanskrit svah = sky or heaven and resembles the Proto-Dravidian word van = heaven.

The Semitic word wadi = river, corresponds to the Sanskrit nadi = river.

The Hebrew root thr = to be pure, corresponds to the Hausa/Hahm toro = clean, to the Amarigna (Ethiopia) anatara = pure, and to the Tamil tiru = holy. All are related to the proto-Dravidian tor = blood. In some Kushitic languages mtoro means rain and toro refers to God. The Egyptian ntr = deity is related.

The Hebrew hay = “living being” and the Hebrew iya = mother, corresponds to the Dravidian ka ayi = mother.

There is also a correspondance between the names Ram/Rama, Kush/Kusha, Karnak/Karnataka, and Hari/Hori which are found in Vedic and Hebrew texts.


Who were the Proto-Dravidians and did they leave the Nile region?

The Proto-Dravidians were likely one of the cattle herding groups that made up the C-Group culture of Nubia and Kush. From around 2000 BC, Kush was Egypt’s principal rival. However it does not appear that they impeded commerce between Egypt and Nubia, because from around 1600 BC, commodities moved in both directions on the Nile, likely with cargo taxes being paid to Kushite chiefs who controlled sections of the Nile.

Around 1500 BC Thutmose I defeated the Kushites and this marked the beginning of 300 years of Egyptian control as far south as Jebel Barkal below the Fourth Cataract. Although the C-group cattle herders continued to live along the Nile, there is very little material evidence of their presence from the archaeological record after about 1550 B.C.

One wonders where these Nubian cattle herders went. Were they the Proto-Dravidians who moved into Southern Pakistan and Southern India bringing with them the veneration of cattle, the sun, and devotion to Horus?


Related reading: Where Dwelleth Japheth; Clyde Winters, Ancient Writing in Middle Africa; Solar Imagery of the Proto-Gospel; The Sun and the Moon in Genesis; Afro-Asiatic Metal Workers; The Afro-Asiatic Dominion; Who Were the Horites?; What Language Did Abraham Speak?; Thamudic Scripts; Of Dung Beetles and Red Herrings; Celestial Symbols That Speak of God