Job 9:9 "Which maketh Arcturus" and Enish-go-on-dosh (Book of Abraham, Facsimile 2)

An earlier post considers the name of the governing planet Enish-go-on-dosh (Book of Abraham Facsimile 2, Figure 5); I link the element -dosh with Egyptian names for both Jupiter and Mars.

The Egyptians knew the planet Jupiter, among other names, as Horus, Divider of the Two Lands, or Horus, Boundary of the Two Lands (Hr t3sh t3.wy, or Hr dash t3.wy). (What we transcribe as t would have been pronounced as a d.) Horus is, in this case, both solar figure and also planet or star: he marks, delimits, and circumscribes the earth in and by his revolutions. As for Mars, it is the red planet in Egypt too: Hr tshr or dshr (with the r being dropped early on in pronunciation): Horus the Red.

If we take -dosh, in on-dosh, as a noun (boundary marker) governed by the verb -on (perhaps Eg. 'n(n), to cause to turn, turn back, etc., a verb of revolutions), 'n(n) d3sh.w might then describe the moment of winter solstice: "to go counter-clockwise the (northern or farthest) boundary marker." If, on the other hand, -dosh, in this case, means red, on-dosh may well signify: "to turn back the red sun (at the winter solstice)."

The solstice? Jupiter? Mars? As the Prophet Joseph explains, Enish-go-on-dosh "is said by the Egyptians to be the Sun;" even so, "it is one of the governing planets also." The same idea about borders may be found in a third possible reading of -on-dosh, a reading which links two nouns in genitival relation: 'n d3sh ('n, the beautiful one, or the solar eye at [of] the border or horizon). Let's try a fourth reading: "the beautiful one (the solar eye) in its rubied splendor." In every case, translation evokes the sun.

Yet another candidate for -dosh comes from Scripture. And, perchance, this dosh also refers to the notion of the border or to the color red.

Job 9:9-10:

  9 Which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the south.
10 Which doeth great things past finding out; yea, and wonders without number.

Job 38:31-33:


31 Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?
32 Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?
33 Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?

Much can be made of these verses. The mysterious chambers resurface in a fragmentary Dead Sea Scroll. And consider how we Latter-day Saints understand "the ordinances of heaven," no matter the exact referent of Job's poetic turn of phrase. We need to learn the Scriptures by echoes as much as by analysis, if we are to pursue a Pascalian esprit de finesse. And "wonders without number" surely echoes the sweeping "worlds without number" in the visions of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price. After all, the wonders of which Job speaks seem to be the stars.

"KJ's 'Arcturus with his sons' designates the constellation Bootes which appears to follow the Great Bear" (Anchor Bible: Job, 301 n.32b). What the translators render Arcturus is the odd 'sh (ch. 9) or 'ysh (ch. 38)--which does evoke our -dosh. The star-name spelled Ayin-Shin or Ayin-Yod-Shin, given the correspondence between ayin and daleth in cognate Hebrew and Egyptian words (for example, Heb. 'mr and Eg. dm3 as the verb of binding sheaves), can promptly be read Daleth-Shin. The hametz (long a) makes the tie complete: Dosh. "Which maketh Arcturus" reads as assonance: 'oseh 'osh, or even doseh dosh. But a phonological tie between our -dosh, especially if -dosh corresponds to t3sh, t/chsh, tsh, or dsh (the boundary stone or even Boundary Star), remains fantastic--beyond the tash--just as uncertain as is the translation of 'sh as Arcturus (the bear-ward).

The great Aramaic lexicographer, Marcus Jastrow, identifies Ash or Ayash as the Great Bear itself. The Koehler-Baumgartner Lexicon (II, 1983) names Ash Leo (or the constellation of Leo): Ash is the Lioness (cf. Arabic 'aj(j)ut = Loewe; Syriac 'juta); Jewish Aramaic yields 'ut' (or Yutah[!]). Lioness also evokes Hathor; in this case, Hathor as Sekhmet, the raging Lioness, the Solar Eye--another direct hit for Facsimile 2 with its Hathor cow as the solar Enish-go-on-dosh.

So where do we find our star? In Egyptian writings, Hathor, who like Kolob has a Janus-Face (Hathor Quadrifrons, of the four faces), comprehends both North and South (and also East and West): "Wearing a vulture headdress, with a white crown atop it, and holding the palm-frond on which jubilees were inscribed, she represented Southern Egypt. Then, lion-headed and crowned with a sun-disk, she became Sakhmet, who represented the northern part of the country," Dimitri and Christine Favard-Meeks, Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods, 131. Here we seem to have the Lioness, or Solar Eye, as northern sun among the Arctic Stars. There are animals everywhere, whether they match the legends of Arabian skies or not: next to the figure of the Hathor cow on Facsimile 2 comes the cryptogram, Lotus-Lion-Ram or Ewe (perhaps even Lotus-Lioness-Ewe), which names the course of the sun.

The position of 'Osh in Job's stellar line-up also suggests the northern boundaries of the heavens: Ash or 'Osh, then Orion and the Pleiades, then the Chambers of the South. (We recall Hugh Nibley's reading of chambers for the stars designated Kli [Kli-flos-ises] in Facsimile 2.) Might 'Osh designate the Boundary Stone Star(s), the Farthest Star, the motor of the universe, around which all the heavens revolve? Does 'Osh mark far North? To "guide Arcturus" also suggests a leading, driving, pasturing, a nomadic pasturage, a wandering about or around, ever describing one eternal round.

The American Standard Version yields:

That maketh the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, And the chambers of the South;

a reading that follows Talmudic and other commentary (see Shlomo Sela, Abraham Ibn Ezra and the Rise of Medieval Hebrew Science). For Ibn Ezra, Ash marks the Northernmost part, or border, of the Universal Sphere, which gives us the same sense of circular, spherical, or revolving borders found in the Egyptian writings.

The whole picture recalls the hypocephalus (Book of Abraham Facsimile 2), which represents more sphere than circle (so Nibley, One Eternal Round). The sphere divides into two opposing poles or sectors, top and bottom. At the bottom of the hypocephalus stands (although upside-down in turning or revolving) the Hathor cow, Enish-go-on-dosh; at apex, the colossal, feather-topped Oliblish in his paces; Kolob marks the middle. The two governing stars stand or stare at opposite poles in a moment (or eternity?) of coincidentia oppositorum, mayhaps defiantly, and together stitch the weave of the world.

But why would the northernmost sun be at bottom? Because the Egyptians mark the South, source of the life-bearing Nile, as the primary cardinal point. The hypocephalus thus illustrates the two spheres (within a sphere) of which the Jews speak, with Oliblish as governor (tiller) of the South and Enish-go-on-dosh, the North, the latter region always pictured by the ancients as distant, dreary, dark. Kolob, marking the moment of primeval dawning, properly belongs to the South-East, which, as the Prophet Joseph says, marks the cornerstone of the temple, it being the place where the sun most brightly shines. For Egyptians, that place is distant Punt, which also partakes of the mystery and bounds of the South.

Within the whirling circle that is Job's vision of the cosmos, there opens space a-plenty for a whole winnowing of stars shoveled up by the bushelful and carried on the winds of eternity across, adrift, a-melt the oceanic skies--stars of every hue and degree. I'm thinking here of Mazzaroth. And according to Professor Stephen Kaufman, Mazzaroth (a plural form) comes from Akkadian manzaltu "(star) position" (The Akkadian Influence on Aramaic, 69-70). That much is sure, but consider a further piece of evidence from the Syriac: mwzl', mwzlt' ("sphere"; "heavenly zone"). Could not the Hebrew plural form signify the two zones or spheres of heaven, North and South? We would expect the dual ending, not the plural.

Like Ash, Mazzaroth--midway to Kolob--yet evokes the two halves of the hypocephalus: Enish-go-on-dosh and Oliblish "in his season."



Notes:
Koehler-Baumgartner (II, 1983), citing JJ Hess Festschrift, Jacob, 98f.
Marvin H. Pope, The Anchor Bible: Job.