The Mystery of Identity in Book of Abraham Facsimile 2 And The Eclipsing Binary Star, Algol, in New Findings from Helsinki University

December 24, 2015

The round Egyptian hypocephalus, really a circle within a circle, represents both the solar pupil and the solar iris (the hypocephalus rim). Being the Eye of Re, it encompasses all that the sun sees and all that he governs as he rounds the universe and sets its boundaries. Within its compass--yet opposites sharply demarcated within the pupil--appear reflected the topsy-turvy realms of night and day, darkness and light, the netherworld and the sidereal heavens.

Which brings us--perhaps--to Algol, an eclipsing binary star. . .

"In this eclipsing binary, the dimmer star partially covers the brighter star with a period of 2.867 days." "These eclipses, says Lauri Jetsu, "last about ten hours and they can be easily observed with unaided eyes" (Renu Rangela, "Ancient Egyptian documents may carry records of important astronomical events," Ibtimes, 21 December 2015).

A team of scientists and egyptologists at Helsinki, in an intriguing though not convincing study, now "present evidence indicating that the period of Algol was 2.850 days three millennia ago. For religious reasons, the ancient Egyptians have recorded this period [along with the lunar period] into the Cairo Calendar (CC) [a register of lucky and unlucky days], which describes the repetitive changes of the Raging One" (Lauri Jetsu, et al., "Did the Ancient Egyptians Record the Period of the Eclipsing Binary Algol--the Raging One?"The Astrophysical Journal, 773:1 (10 August 2013), Abstract; the latest article is L. Jetsu, S. Porceddu, "Shifting Milestones of Natural Sciences: the Ancient Egyptian Discovery of Algol's Period Confirmed," PLoS ONE, 10 (12), 17 December 2015).

"We show that n ≈ 200 good prognoses would induce PMoon and PAlgol in CC, even if the remaining n ≈ 700 good and bad prognoses had aperiodic origins (Leitz 1994; e.g., diseases, floods, feasts, winds)" (L. Jetsu, 2013, 1).

In other words, not only did the Ancient Egyptian scribes discover and measure the period of Algol (if not its binary nature), they also paired the symbolism of the lunar cycle with that of the star and applied both to the workings of the Calendar. Measure and analogy were no small thing for the Egyptians. The priesthood held as sacred duty "the measurement of time by observing stars while they conducted the proper nightly rituals that kept the Sun safe during its journey across the underworld. The timing of these rituals was important, because it had to appease the terrible guardians, who opened one gate of the underworld at each hour. The Sun was reborn at the 12th hour, but only if Ancient Egyptian Scribes performed the rituals absolutely right. The risk that the Sun would never rise again was imminent" (L. Jetsu, 2013, 10-11, italics added). There comes to mind a classic scriptural moment of astronomical observation and its subsequent portrayal in the form of a cosmic circle or sphere: "And I saw the stars" (Book of Abraham 3:2).

We return to the round hypocephalus, which itself depicts the moment of sunrise at the morn of creation. The Latter-day Saint reader will here recall how the Prophet Joseph Smith's Explanation of the hypocephalus begins with "the measurement of time"; even "the measurement of celestial time" "according to the measurement of the earth" (which varies by season, note the Helsinki scientists, as the days and nights wax and wane). It is the moment in which the celestial kicks off the earthly time clock. The Prophet further discerns "numerical figure[s]" in the mythological representation of the stellar firmament "answering to the measurement of the time" of a great star, which then perfectly accords with the "revolution" and "measuring of time" of another, like, star. Hugh Nibley sorts the Prophet's "brief explanation" under the following headings: Cosmology, Measurement and number, Transmission of power or energy, Hierarchy or dominion (intelligence and purpose), Ordinances and procedures (Hugh Nibley and Michael Rhodes, One Eternal Round, 240, 244ff., 256). Ritual procedure thus accords with cosmic measurement to ensure the continuing downward flow of divine power--that's the Egyptian picture and that's the Egyptian practice.


Where does the eclipse come in? Hugh Nibley gives us a lead in his commentary on the Book of Breathings, or Sensen Document, this last a ritual serving to unite (snsn) the deceased with his solar father, which is also analogous to the reunion of the solar Ba-spirit and the Osirian corpse:

That he might enter the horizon along with his father Re;
To cause his Ba to appear in glory in heaven
(and) in the disk (itn) of the Moon
that his corpse might shine in (or as) Orion
in the womb (or body) of Nut (ll. 2-3)

The Egyptian verb that describes the fusing of the Ba-spirit of the king with Re is hnm: and "one wonders," says Nibley, "if the meeting or fusing (hnm) of the disks [in the above and related passages] could be anything but an eclipse" (Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment, 83)?

Note the following phases of funerary ritual, which also mark phases of fusing, as that which is celebrated on earth matches, in timed precision, what unfolds in heaven (cf. Moses 6:63 = Hugh Nibley, Michael Rhodes, One Eternal Round, 256).

1) "In the darkest moment of the royal funeral in the deepest and darkest of chambers, the restoration process begins to take place, with the Ba assuming the most tenuous of forms, that of smoke provided by scented candles"(Nibley, Message, 82).

2) "The rites of royal burial ended exactly at sunrise, when the Ba of the dead king joined his father on the horizon" (81). This last is also "The meeting of Re and Osiris in their astral aspects" (Philippe Derchain on the secret ceremony of the Uniting of Re and Osiris in the House of Life = Nibley, Message, 83). Note, then, the left-hand panel of the hypocephalus, the last line of which ends with the prayer: May the Ba of Sheshonq be caused to live! According to the Prophet Joseph, that same line contains things "to be had in the temple of God," that is, things pertaining to a royal etiquette or royal secret set in motion by the workings of sacred ritual in a sacred sanctuary.

The discerning reader will draw the connection between the dim star--the ghoul of Algol, as the Arabs have it--and the scented smoke (or between the darkened moon and the scented smoke). Here is the Ba of Re on the shadowy night journey to join its corpse, in the form of Osiris, the god of the underworld. The Egyptian scribes who penned the Amduat (the Book of What is in the Underworld) do picture the night sun as traversing, at once, both underworld and stellar expanse (in the form of a star). As for the sunrise, Cannot the event also be figured in the bright star of Algol, as it emerges from eclipse? Would it were true! What a find that would be!

The scenario would certainly evoke the appearance of glory in the disk (itn) of the moon--another eclipse, says Nibley. The disk of the sun and the disk of the moon both figure the place and moment of hnm. Meeting in one disk, or meeting in one star or in a single constellation, so signifies the fusing of two (or more) Ba-spirits. Thus the Ba of Isis famously is the star Sothis (Sirius); that of mighty Horus, the constellation Orion. Hugh Nibley sums it up: "The idea that the Ba of one exalted being may unite with that of another is the ultimate expression of the mystery of identity" (Message, 82).

And of all identities, that of Re and Osiris is the most paradoxical; the ceremony that works the meeting in the House of Life thus becomes the most prohibitive, the most mysterious, and the most sacred event in the Egyptian view of the universe (Papyrus Salt 825). The Egyptian hypocephalus thus hardly embraces the run-of-the-mill funerary, as critics of Joseph Smith trumpet. Neither is the gist of the matter, as the Helsinki scientists describe it, the daily return of the sun on the horizon--things are much more fraught with moment than that! The purpose of the ceremony is to work the unity of the sun with its own dark twin and thus to effect the continuation of all life, despite all death, as manifest in Re-Osiris, the ultimate and ineffable power of the universe.

The work at Helsinki, despite its cargo of statistics, remains unproved (see links and the brief, dismissive comments in Electronic Egyptian Forum News 905). Grasp of the intricacies of Ancient Egyptian religion appears tenuous. One might also hope for the discovery of a second reference to Algol, or to its period, in the textual corpus. Still, all such work ought to be encouraged. As Professor Barry J. Kemp points out, students of Egyptian may stumble across ideas and connections very much in line with the sort of thinking pursued by the ancient scribes (Kemp, Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization). The ancient tradition lives on in such discoveries, though we must tread with care.

To identify Algol with Horus, the living king, or with the Eye of Horus, in "his" (read, her) benign and wrathful aspects, intrigues, though it also falls short of the textual evidence. Not that the Calendar holds no surprises. Fascinating is the description of Re viewing the world through the Eye of Horus, as if through a special instrument, or, as described in other places, through a special messenger traversing the expanses (cf. the Explanation of Facsimile 2, no. 7; or even Abraham 3:2). He then invites the "great ones" (wr.w) to see what he has therewith seen. They cower before the flaming wrath of the Eye in the presence of Re. Fascinating, but what has it to do with Algol? Nothing. Besides, it is Sirius in her (read, his) form as Horus Sopdet that flares as the "raging one."

The formulas and the theories equating Algol and royal Horus do not take into full consideration the Egyptian fondness for analogy, multiplicity, fusion, and, well, fuzziness. Like anything else in the Egyptian cosmos, Algol cannot be boxed into a sole star. Neither can Horus: various planets, famously including red Mars, all take the name of Horus. In this case, we speak principally of Horus the Eldest, the prehistoric falcon that encompasses the universe in his revolutions. Horus the child and royal Horus, though tethered to the Eldest in a manner not altogether clear, come into a different story.

According to the Coffin Texts (VII 491h), Horus the Eldest paradoxically stands both in the middle (Hrj-jb = "over the heart") of the stars in the northern hemisphere and also in the middle of all the southern stars. The wording is: "in the middle of the stars of the upper region and of the opposing lower region," a view of the cosmos something recalling the schema of the opposing halves of the spherical hypocephalus. The four Sons of Horus the Eldest also make their appearance in the heavens, one of whom appears as the red star, Dosh-iati-imi-hawt-ins, the One whose two eyes are red, who dwells in the House of Scarlet, that is, the Horizon (for Horus Smsw, see Bernard Mathieu, "Les enfants d'Horus, theologie et astronomie," ENIM 1 (2008), 7-14).

For the Latter-day Saint reader, the Eldest Star standing "over the heart" evokes Kolob as "Heart Star" (qrb; Kolob is fig. 1 in the hypocephalus). Dosh-iati-imi-hawt-ins evokes Enish-go-on-dosh (fig. 5: the Hathor cow), both a star and also the sun, according to the Egyptians--so Joseph Smith. "Said by the Egyptians to be the sun." The four-headed ram that the Prophet names Kolob, and which Daniel Klotz terms the Cosmic Amun, likewise "depicts [both] the creator god in its most powerful manifestation, and thus also the sun at the peak of its glory," according to the very latest study (Gyula Priskin, "The encounter between the sun and the moon on hypocephali," Birmingham Egyptology Journal 2015 (3:24-41), 26). We, here, recall the configuration of the hypocephalus as a circle within a circle, pupil and iris, the dark pupil and the blazing iris or corona. Do we see a solar eclipse here as well?

Kolob and Enish-go-on-dosh make up the dominant celestial figures in their respective, and inverse, hemispheres on the hypocephalus (see Explanation of Facsimile 2 of the Book of Abraham). Enish-go-on-dosh appears just below the red horizon. The n in go-on-dosh, as far as that goes, hints at the Egyptian imi, thus imi-dosh, as the one who is in the dosh, or red horizon, or even the hw.t dSr, the house of red--again, inside the horizon. I suggest transcribing Enish-go-on-dosh as insi.t q3j.t imi dSr.wt, the Exalted Scarlet One, that is the Scarlet Eye, who is in her Red Resplendence.

Lovely Hathor, the Feminine Sun at Dendera, takes the epithet 'n.t x'w, the One who is beautiful [on-] in her manifestations [-go = x'w?], that is, in her manifestations as the solar Eye. Other readings for Enish-go-on-dosh (again, the Hathor cow on the hypocephalus), spring to mind. Consider ond- dosh(t): 'n.t or 'jn.ty dSr.ty (the One whose Wedjat Eye is red--with anger). 'n.t dSr(.ty) also much recalls the divine epithet dSr or dSr.ty ir.ty (dosht-iat) attached to one of the sons of Horus, as we have seen.

I favor reading Enish-go-on-dosh as either the Red Solar Eye (jns.t) or as the Living Solar Eye ('nx.t; 'nsh.t) in her exaltations (-go = q3j.t), even the Beautiful Eye in her Red Resplendence ('n.t dSr.wt). Enish-go-on-dosh, a fused name, thus signifies the conceptual unity of the Solar Eye at the powerful moments of both sunrise and sunset.

Of one thing we may be sure: Egyptian cosmology is more than what the handbooks tell.

"And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them" (Genesis 15:5). Abraham's is an expanding universe.

So where does Algol, a blue star, fit in? The keen-eyed Egyptians could not have failed to spot the ghoulish star. The question remains Whether it signified? Perhaps Algol, like Sirius, like Orion, like the moon, may yet unfold as "ultimate expression of the mystery of identity."

Now to find the Egyptian name for the star!

http://epod.usra.edu/blog/2012/08/contrasting-star-colors-in-perseus.html

The Egyptian Name of Joseph: Zaphnath-paaneah and Facsimile 2 of the Book of Abraham

I

Joseph's Egyptian name, transcribed as Zaphnath-paaneah, presents a puzzle for which many have proposed a solution. I enjoy all such efforts and wish to put my own hand into the game.

The Book of Abraham likewise presents names purporting to be Egyptian: Onitah, Olimlah, Enish-go-on-dosh. For all of these, not having the hieroglyphic Vorlage, we enjoy broad scope for speculation. And a latter-day Joseph invites "the world" to give it a go: to "find out these numbers" (Explanation for Book of Abraham Facsimile 2). 

 
Genesis 41:41-45 reads:

41 And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, See, I have set thee over all the land of Egypt.

42 And Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand, and put it upon Joseph's hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck.

44 And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I am Pharaoh, and without thee shall no man lift up his hand or foot in all the land of Egypt.

 45 And Pharaoh called Joseph’s name Zaphnath-paaneah; and he gave him to wife Asenath the daughter of Poti-pherah priest of On. And Joseph went out over all the land of Egypt.


As these verses show, accession to office requires 1) a new vesture (and a ring), 2) a special name, and 3) marriage into an official priestly inheritance. Clothing, naming, marriage, office, and priesthood here make up a single Heliopolitan constellation. And as every reader notes, accession also signals a reversal of fortunes. Potiphar, master and jailer, meets Joseph anew as the priest Poti-phera, a man from whom Joseph inherits all things. The name Zaphnath-paaneah must then, somehow, also speak to accession or reversal or both. 


II

"The meaning of the name Zaphnath-paaneah is a problem that has much preoccupied the commentators," says Josef Vergote (Joseph en Egypte (1959), 142; for the full discussion of Zaphnath-paaneah, Aseneth, Poti-phera, see 141-152; see also Jan Assmann, "Aseneth," in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, 616-18).

Which interpretation is the best? (Who gets the golden chain?)

Kenneth Kitchen, who tags earlier attempts "weird and wonderful," opts for metathesis: Zatnap for Zapnat. (Kitchen borrows the idea from Rex Engelbach.) "Zatnap corresponds precisely to Egyptian djad(u)-naf, 'who is called...,' introducing a second name after the first--for example, 'Ankhu djad(u)-naf Hedjeri' means 'Ankhu called Hedjeri'" (Kenneth Kitchen, "The Joseph Narrative (Genesis 37, 39-50)," Bible and Spade, Winter 2003; Reginald Engelbach, "The Egyptian Name of Joseph," JEA 10, October 1924, 205). Here, Hedjeri is clearly the nickname, what the Egyptians call the Little Name (rn nDs--or later, and perhaps euphemistically, the Beautiful Name, rn nfr)--while Ankhu (Lives) is the Great Name (rn a3). Such formulations go back to the Old Kingdom: "His great name is Neferherenptah; his little name is Fifi" (see Pascal Vernus, "Name," in Lexikon der Aegyptologie IV, 320-26). The change from Hebrew Joseph to courtly Zaphnath-paaneah, or even Pa-Aneah, partakes of something more significant than the contrast between the Great Name and the Little Name. 

The reading most widely accepted, and thus most carefully critiqued, is that of Georg Steindorff (via J. Krall): "God speaks (or has spoken) and he lives" (Dd-nTr-jw.f-'nx). Understood, though unstated, is also the possibility, "the goddess speaks" (Dd-nTr.t). For many, such a reading is too generic: the record does attest the name formula, which marks a safe birth, but only with mention of a specifically named god or gods. Donald Redford resolves the matter by positing "Ipet and Neith speak and he lives" (Dd-Ipt-Nt-jw.f-'nx: A Study of the Biblical Story of Joseph, 230-231). Here the p fits the goddess Ipet; Neith (nat? neit?) easily replaces neter (the god). 

The (Krall)-Steindorff-(Redford) reading yields a name that denotes a safe birth; it perhaps also answers to the idea of restoration or renewal--a rebirth. Yet already in 1901, the Jewish Encyclopedia names the weakness: "This has become popular, and is philologically possible; however, it does not convey the allusion to Joseph's office or merits which we should expect." For Redford, the author of the Joseph story, who cares nothing about context or meaning or even translating the name, merely picks an Egyptian name out of the air, "for an air of authenticity" (Donald Redford, Joseph, 231). 

That's no fun. Neither does it match the evidence. Poti-phera, "Given of the Sun," date the name how you may, does fit the priestly Heliopolis, City of the Sun. Asenath, as Neith, divine mother of Egypt, also hits the mark. Consider the famous Joseph and Aseneth novella: "Then there is the roman a clef; the author has realized that the Egyptian name Aseneth means 'belonging to Neith.' Many almost inperceptible details of the story can only be explained as referring to the goddess of Sais" (Marc Philonenko, Encyclopaedia Judaica 11:419). Besides, the idea of Joseph and his wife both bearing Neith names hardly sustains the argument for no authorial intent. The author of Genesis 41, however unlikely it may seem, assumes an audience capable of both cultural and linguistic code-switching.

Back to the "weird and wonderful."

Josephus heads the list of those proposing an explanation; the following students have continued the game (Vergote, 151-52):


Df3 nD p3 anx "nourishment, savior of life" (A. Harkavy, 1870)

p3 snts n p3 anx "the founder of life" (A. Wiedemann). 

Weidemann's solution, which derives from the Greek Septuagint version of the name, meets with W. F. Albright's approval: p3-snT-n-p3-anx, 'the sustainer of life' (JBL 37 [1918], 132, cited in Redford, ibid., 230 n. 2)

D(d) Mnts.w iw.f anx  "Montu speaks and he lives" (J. Krall, 1888)

T-s-n-t, i.e., Ts.(t) n.t p(r) anx  "the head of the school of learning, of the sacred college," (E. Naville, 1903)

it n.t pr anx  "(member of?) college of the House of Life" (A. Erman, 1883)

D(d) p3 nT(r) iw.f anx  "the god has spoken and he lives" (G. Steindorff, 1889, as cited in Vergote, 143; Steindorff follows Krall)

Df3 n t3 pdi anx "Nourisher of the Lands, Lebensspender" (E. Mahler, 1907)

Dd.w n.f p3 anx And Pharaoh (to him) "qu'on appelle (aussi) Le Vivant": "He whom men (also) call the Living One" (R. Engelbach, 1924)

di.t xpr nt3 X.t n p3 anx  "And Pharaoh nominated Joseph 'to procure the way of life'" (H.F. Lutz, 1945)

K. Miketta (1904) critiques all--and rejects all.



If we don't take ourselves too seriously (and how could we, after looking over the notes of Naville and Erman?), we can still try our hand at the puzzle. Yet since we face the stern eye of Miketta, it bodes well to prefer originality over success. I accordingly play a verb which does not appear in the scholarly tally: Db3 (clothe, adorn, put on insignia, provide with, equip with, restore, replace, give retribution, recompense, pay back).


III

If Zaphnath derives from Db3 nTr or Db3 p3 nTr, the name signifies "(the One whom) the god (or goddess) shall so clothe" (that is, with office, honor, endowment, dignities). Or as Professor Redford suggests, the element nath may signal the goddess Neith: Db3 nt, Db3 Neith: "May Neith (the goddess of weaving) clothe him"; "May Neith give him recompense and restore him to his rightful honors." As previously mentioned, the name of Joseph's bride, Asenath, likely derives from ns-nt, "belonging to Neith." Does her name belong to a era postdating the Patriarchal? The name pattern, "belonging to such-and-such a divinity," is well attested in the Old Kingdom, though wildly popular in the Late Period. 

That Joseph should be clothed by Neith need come as no surprise: as Genesis closes, we read of Joseph's mummification. And what goddess prepares and winds the mummy bands? Neith. Whether Zaphnath refers to Neith or not, it is yet that same divine mother of Egypt who weaves the insignia of his office--and who also (symbolically) weds him (see Jan Assmann, "Neith"). Asenath, here, officiates as Neith by endowing the king or priest with authority of office. Neith might even appear in one of the Book of Abraham's puzzling names: Onitah (perhaps from '3 Nit, "Great is Neith"). Onitah "one of the royal descent," is known for his three daughters, who are, by default, daughters of Neith, as is every princess of Egypt (Abraham 1:11). Onitah also calls to mind First Dynasty ruler, Anedj-ib; '(n)Dj, the Sound of heart; Sound or Hale is also an attested Middle Kingdom name.

Joseph is, after all, one whom God clothes, or endows, with honor of office. The expression "arrayed him in vestures" answers to the Egyptian expression Db3 mnx. Clothing in robes connotes the endowments and honors of office. First in order comes the ring or seal, Db'.t, which again recalls Db3. The Hebrew consonantal sequence tz-p-n-t matches Db3 + p3 nTr, Db', Db, Tb, etc. Db'.t, a nominal form, suggests reading Zaphnath-paaneah as "the seal of God, the Living One," or, as a verb (Db'), "the god (or goddess, or Neith) will seal (place his seal on, claim ownership of) the Living One." Joseph, with his seal, evokes Solomon.

The first hurdle for any interpretation of Zaphnath-paaneah is whether that interpretation can be readily rendered back into Egyptian. The second, poses the question of whether any such name or naming formula in fact occurs in the Egyptian record--so far as we can ascertain such things. Again, does the name somehow match the themes and imagery of the narrative, or correspond to the other Egyptian names found in the narrative? 

The Egyptian record indeed attests the personal name Db3, Djeba, which frequently occurs as a male name in the Middle Kingdom (H. Ranke, Die Aegyptischen Personennamen I, 406, 5). We also find the names Db3-nfr and Db3-snb (Good successor, Healthy successor), which both suggest the idea of the replacement of the father with a goodly son. The names suggest payback, that is, repayment for some good deed. 

Db3 carries the sense of something restored, repayment; Db3 nfr thus bespeaks beautiful repayment, beautiful replacement, perfect replacement (he succeeds to his father's honor and office, as a sound replacement). Compare the jdn principle by which the sun god finds manifestation and visibility, substitution and replacement, through the agency of the solar disk. The jtn, or disk, becomes the jdn, or replacement, for the hidden, transcendent Amun-Re (see David Klotz, Five Hymns to Amen-Re from Hibis Temple). Db3 (Djeba) "repayer" signifies "he will repay his parents" by attaining to honor. The feminine name, Db3tysj, likewise suggests "she who will pay back": she will be a good daughter that will repay through her worth, and so graces the parents who took pains to raise her well. Db3 snb is the "healthy repayer," but also he "who repays health"; he is the one who gives back health and soundness to the parents who raised him; he repays them with perfect things: beauty and goodness (nfr).

We discover a pattern:

Who repays in health and soundness.

Who repays in goodness and perfections.

She who is to repay.

He whom the god repays or replaces or restores to honor, that is, Joseph restored to honor and to dignity--and from death to life.

The one who has been given back, re-placed in his fit standing; re-stored to his rightly position; and, therefore, fit as a re-placement for the king. He is re-clothed, or re-dressed--and re-dressed.

One whom the god has restored to grace; recalled into grace; put back into honor.


Joseph had lost everything and descended below all; now he is restored, given retribution many times over, provided and equipped with power and authority. He stands the worthy replacement, substitute, likeness of the king himself, clothed and endowed with power. Restored to his dream-destiny, chosen Joseph thereby qualifies to marry the princess, the daughter of the "One given of Re," the high priest of Heliopolis. She now "belongs to you" (to evoke Kitchen's analysis of the name Asenath).

To read Zaphnath-paaneah in light of the rich Egyptian verb Db3 does indeed "convey the allusion to Joseph's office or merits which we should expect."

I do not believe anyone has suggested--perhaps tossed out?--such an interpretation of the name, but it works. Here are three tries--though, alas! no charm:


And Pharaoh called Joseph's name Zaphnath-paaneah, which is, being interpreted, the god shall clothe the Living One with honor of office (or restore the Living One).

The sentence Db3-p3-nTr [or nTr.t]-p3-anxy signifies the action of naming--the pronouncement of the name--it is also the name itself, for naming and name make up a whole, with Paanchi being what might be called the name within the name, the quintessence of being: And Pharaoh pronounced [vayyiqra' = spoke out, pronounced, called] Joseph's name, as follows: May the god clothe with honor of office--the Living One.

And Pharaoh called Joseph's name Zaphnath-paaneah, which, being interpreted, is, May Neith, the Living One, clothe (or Neith shall clothe the Living One) with honor of office.  

And Pharaoh called Joseph's Name Zaphnath-paaneah, which, being interpreted, is, May the god so seal the Living One [P3 Ankh or Pi-Anki, Ranke, 103, 1 and 2: p3 anx and p3 anx.i; cf. Book of Mormon Onomasticon, "Paanchi," q.v.]


Reading -paaneah as the Living One, puts both Naville and Erman back into the game; for, as any student familiar with Professor Derchain's edition of papyrus Salt 825 knows, the mysterious character standing at the center of the House of Life (the pr anx) is the "Living One" (p3 anxy). The Living One of the House of Life, the resurrected Re-Osiris, not only personifies the House of Life as a building, he thus also personifies its fourfold ceremonies--the inner temple--that give Life its continuance. Joseph has also been restored to life, symbolically raised from the dead. And it is Hugh Nibley who notes how the Living One, in the Ritual of the House of Life, standing in the midst of the four houses that make up that great library-temple, also evokes four-faced Kolob at center of the Egyptian hypocephalus (Improvement Era, August 1969 = An Approach to the Book of Abraham).



Facsimile 2 of the Book of Abraham, a hypocephalus, links the word Db3 with Heliopolis (Heb. On): "I am the Djebabty in the House of the ben-ben in Heliopolis." The sentence describes the Kolob figure, or the Transcendent Amun, at the center of all things. By marrying the daughter of the priest of Heliopolis, Joseph becomes the lieutenant of Poti-phera's priestly honor just as surely as he is the king's own lieutenant. He has a priesthood. He may not exactly be an Egyptian priest, but he does stand as a beneficiary of that priesthood and acts under that authority, while retaining his own divine office. Joseph in Heliopolis now becomes what we might call the Db3.ty (the One belonging to or pertaining to the Db3) in the temple of Heliopolis.

Joseph marries the priesthood, meaning its rites and privileges, its honors and dignities. Note how the text does not link any of this to idolatry. After all, "She belongs to you": all that Aseneth inherits now, "and without compulsory means," belongs to Joseph. Great Egypt yields to the true priestly authority of God. The Egyptian priesthood, its rites and privileges, are but the shadow of the true: in the persons of Abraham and Joseph, Egypt is swallowed up in the true kingship.

Clothing, marriage, priesthood, Heliopolis: Is it Abraham Facsimile 2 or Genesis 41 we have to do with here? The Book of Joseph merges with the Book of Abraham.



NOTES


For more on Josephus, Lepsius, and Steindorff, see

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/15167-zaphnath-paaneah

Edouard Naville, "The Egyptian Name of Joseph," JEA 12 1/2 
(1926), 16-18.

For more on Joseph and Aseneth see Marc Philonenko, Joseph et Aseneth and Hugh Nibley and Michael Rhodes, One Eternal Round, 413-420.

An Egyptologist Looks at Enish-go-on-dosh in the Book of Abraham, Facsimile 2, Figure 5

I  An Egyptian Name?

The Prophet Joseph Smith says Figure 5 (the Hathor cow) on Facsimile 2 of the Book of Abraham: "Is called in Egyptian Enish-go-on-dosh; this is one of the governing planets also, and is said by the Egyptians to be the Sun." He speaks further of a certain "governing power" or "grand key" by means of which the sun, in successive cascade, receives its own light and power. The transfer of stellar and solar light appears often in Egyptian art and scripture (see Note 1).

(For Book of Abraham Facsimile 2, an Egyptian hypocephalus, see:
http://www.lds.org/scriptures/pgp/abr/fac-2?lang=eng.)

Is the name Enish-go-on-dosh Egyptian? Nothing about either its form or its elements precludes such an origin, and it can certainly be so read. A larger question becomes whether any reading of the name as Egyptian also matches what we see on Facsimile 2 or in its inspired Explanation. Can the name or like names be found in the hieroglyphic record? Or does Enish-go-on-dosh, in any way, recall Egyptian names for heavenly bodies? for example, Hor-dosh-dawy (or Har-tosh-tawy), a name for Jupiter? Mars as Hor-dosh? Mercury as Sebgu, Sebko, or Sebgo? or spectacular Saturn, Hor-ko-pi-ranef-siu-yaminty-jopi? And what of the red star bearing the name Dosh-iati-imi-hawt-ins? According to Heinrich Brugsch, Har-dosh, Hor-doshr, or Har-tosh can also sometimes name "a feminine form of Horus," or also represent the sun (Heinrich Brugsch, Thesaurus Inscriptionum aegyptiacarum I, 70). 

All these transcriptions and variants thereof are but approximations of the phonemic realities, as is also, it goes without saying, Enish-go-on-dosh (which may as well be transcribed Ins-ko-on-tosh). (See Heinrich Brugsch, Thesaurus Inscriptionum aegyptiacarum I, 67ff., for these and like transcriptions. Sebgu, Sebko, and Sebgo are some of his transcriptions).

The Latter-day Saints need not prove anything to a non-reflective and unbelieving world. We just need to be grateful. "Fools mock, but they shall mourn" (Ether 12:26). A seer gives insight into things "which otherwise could not be known" (Mosiah 8:17). Everybody already "knows" Re, Horus, Isis. Relatively few know of Rait, the Female Re, or Female Sun. The names the Prophet supplies in the Explanation likely describe the various figures in light of their constellative placement on the hypocephalus (our facsimile 2). The word to keep in mind is nuance--and note the Prophet's careful qualifiers: "In this case, in relation to this subject," the Sun is not "called in Egyptian" Re or Rait, rather Enish-go-on-dosh (see Explanation for Facsimile 1, Figure 12). As Sir J. Norman Lockyer pointed out long ago, the Egyptians had special Horus names for "the planets and constellations when rising" (The Dawn of Astronomy, 149, italics added; for the names of the planets, Heinrich Brugsch, Thesaurus Inscriptionum Aegyptiacarum I, 67ff., published 1883).

Professor Kent Weeks further reminds the egyptologist, for whom such seeming ordinary things "can be terribly misleading," that labels, colors, names often speak to states, stages, phases, and actions--they are not fixed stars ("Art, Word, and the Egyptian World View," in Egyptology and the Social Sciences, 63ff; see also Bernard Mathieu, "Horus: polysemie et metamorphoses d'un dieu," ENIM 6 (2013), 1-26). Long-established dictionary or generic animal names may thus turn out to apply to an animal in a particular ritual setting only or at a precise stage in its growth. By analogy, divine names and epithets may describe specific roles, ritual or geographical settings, or powers. Even an ordinary color word like dshr (pronounce: dosh or tosh) ultimately shows up the much-thumbed lexicon as being circular in definition and thus "nothing very imaginative." Dshr is not just dictionary red--it's also yellow, orange, pink.

Consider the following alternative name--a dosh name, no less--for one of the four Sons of Horus, which, "in this case," as one of the Seven Akhu, is said to be a star, a red star: Dosh-iati-imi-hawt-ins (the One whose two eyes are red [dSr.(ty) j3t.ty], who dwells in the House of Scarlet [Hw.t jnsw.t], i.e., in the Horizon, sometimes also called the House of Dosh [Hw.t dSr.wt]). Dosh-iati-imi-hawt-ins? Find that in the handbooks. Track down your local egyptologist. And let's certainly be grateful the Prophet spared the Latter-day Saints a like embarrassing monstrosity! Dosh?! Posh! Every bit as nonsensical appears Enish-go-on-dosh, which formally recalls the very same name, though in reverse order (as if, jns-go-on-dosh = dosh-go-on-jns).

O, do go-on! And let's start by reviewing the iconography of Facsimile 2.


II The Sons of Geb, and Horus the Eldest in the Likeness of Kolob

In the Lower Panel of the hypocephalus we find the bird-serpent Nehebkau offering the Wedjat Eye, symbolic of Wholeness and Fullness, to the enthroned Horus Min. Next we see that same Eye personified as the lady Wedjat, who, in her turn, conveys the power she embodies to the Hathor Cow (or Rait, the feminine sun and Eye of Re). Directly facing Hathor, next appear, in row, the four mummified Sons of Horus or of Geb, as the case may be, followed by the solar cryptogram of Lotus-Lion-Ram, a riddle of solar renewal. The stage-by-stage transfer of vital, renewing energy is what the Wedjat Eye is all about. The sun is about to rise. (For a full discussion of the panel see Hugh Nibley and Michael Rhodes, One Eternal Round, and Hugh Nibley, "The Three Facsimiles of the Book of Abraham," Provo: 1980.) 

Professor Weeks's insistence on specificity ought to be taken to heart; for, "in this case, in relation to this subject," the four genies or b3.w (manifestations) may well represent the Sons of Geb. By Sons (ms.w) the Egyptians meant the instantaneous and fourfold spatial emanation of Geb, the god of the earth. "Represents this earth in its four quarters," is how the Prophet Joseph explains the matter (see Bernard Mathieu, "Les enfants d'Horus, theologie et astronomie," ENIM 1 (2008), 7-14). The Sons of Geb also take their place in the busy transfer of the Eye, distributing its power to the four quarters of the earth, as "they traverse [xnzj] both the South and the Land North" (Pyramid Texts 1510a-c, cited in Mathieu, 13). Already in the Pyramid Texts, the four genies find their essential identity in the four winds blowing from the quarters of the earth (Hugh Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Abraham, 296-334, treats the Sons of Horus as the four quarters, four elements, four winds, four stars, etc.; for the winds, 302-04).

If the Sons of Horus in their manifestation as Geb surprises, what shall we say when we learn that Horus, "in this case," is not Horus at all--at least not Horus of the handbooks? It is Horus Smsw (Horus the Eldest), the archaic sky god, that we meet in the Four Sons, not Horus, son of Osiris. Smsw? Just behind the four genies in that lower panel runs, top to bottom, the cryptogram of Lotus-Lion-Ram (zrp.t-m3wj-zr), which can be also read acrophonically as zmz or sms.w, with reference to the Sun as the Eldest. Perhaps the genies on the hypocephalus represent the Sons of Horus Smsw, after all. 

On the hypocephalus, it is the grand governing star, ram-headed Kolob, that takes center stage, as figure 1 in the Explanation. Notes left behind by the Prophet and a few associates, the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, designate Kolob "the Eldest of the stars"; in Coffin Texts VII 491h (Spell 1143), Horus the Eldest takes his transcendent place in the middle (Hr-jb = lit. "over the heart") of both the northern and also the southern stars. The wording in the Coffin Texts is "in the middle of the stars of the upper region and of the opposing lower region," a cosmic view matching the schema of the opposing halves of the hypocephalus. (For the solar cryptograms, Marie-Louise Ryhiner "A propos de trigrammes pantheistes," Revue d'Egyptologie 29 (1977); for Horus Smsw, Bernard Mathieu, "Les enfants d'Horus.") As Hugh Nibley and Michael Rhodes point out, the Semitic (and Egyptian) root k-l-b/q-r-b signifies heart, middle, to be near. Horus the Eldest appears "at the heart" of all the stars in the Egyptian cosmos, separating them into two spheres, one above, one below--though you'll never find that in any handbook or museum guide. It's buried in the depths of the Coffin Texts. (R. O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts III, Spell 1143, translates: "Horus the Elder is in the middle of the upper stars and opposite the lower ones.")

What the cryptogram Lotus-Lion-Ram encapsulates is renewal--in its several stages--by means of the Wadjet Eye. What does the hypocephalus show? The Eldest, in renewal, appears on the horizon--encompassed by stars--as the fourfold-power-in-emanation and, thus, Transcendent Cosmic Amun-Re--what the Kirtland Egyptian Papers also call "the wonder of Abraham." (For the Cosmic Amun-Re on the hypocephalus, see David Klotz, Adoration of the Ram: Five Hymns to Amun-Re from Hibis Temple [New Haven, 2006].)


III A Study in Scarlet


Horus Smsw and the Sons of Geb are not the one-stop stuff on which egyptological handbooks are made. Handbooks, zealously reinforcing a smattering of half-truths, divert the uncertain visitor, while leading the student to err. So what about the name Enish-go-on-dosh? Shall we reject it out of hand because the handbook harps on Re rather than on Rait, Horus the Eldest, or Zarpot-Mawj-Zer, to name a few; on the Sons of Horus rather than Geb's Sons, Shu's Sons, or Atum's Sons? Let's toss the handbook in favor of our minds.

The first part of the name, Enish-go-, recalls an attribute of the Wedjat Eye as the Living Eye ('nx.t): Life itself (ankh). 'nx.t, a designation of Hathor as Wedjat Eye, thus curiously matches Hebrew Hawah (Eve) as the mother of all living. 'nx.t shows the feminine ending -.t, often dropped in pronunciation; the /x/-phoneme resembles Scottish loch, or, later, /sh/. Anesh- or Enish-go ('nx.t-q3j.t) may accordingly designate the "exalted Living Wedjat Eye." On-dosh suggests both 'n(n) dsh (the One who turns back at the [solsticial or solar] borders) and 'n.t-dsh (the Beautiful one [the beautiful Eye] at the borders). It is no infrequent thing for a goddess to bear an epithet beginning with 'n.t or 'jn.t (one Coptic spelling of which, auon, noted by John Darnell, sufficiently matches our -on). Hathor, the Feminine Sun at Dendera, takes the epithet 'n.t x'w, the One who is beautiful [on-] in her manifestations [-go = x'w?], that is, in her manifestations as the solar Eye. Other readings, both semantically and semiotically linked, spring to mind. Consider ond-dosh(t): 'n or 'jn.ty dSr.ty (the One whose Wedjat Eye is red [with anger]). 'n.t dSr(.ty) matches the attested dSr or dSr.ty jr.ty dosht-iat). I favor reading Enish-go-on-dosh as the Exalted (-go = q3j.t) Red Solar Eye (jnsj.t), even the Beautiful Eye in its Red Resplendence ('n.t dshr.wt).

None of these can in fact be excluded, for it is in the nature of Egyptian to allow for more than one reading, especially where paronomasia and riddling come into play. Though capturing Egyptian in the absence of hieroglyphs perforce becomes a delicate matter, an interpretation centering on the Wedjat Eye and its beauty (especially as manifest in the female sun), and on the working of solar reversal and renewal, here partakes of such peculiar and specific clarity that it approaches rigorous demonstration. 

There's still a bit of room for fun: plays on words, semantic depth, and semiotics all encourage us to keep a vigorous and open mind and simply to enjoy the beauty of language, as we come to discern Egypt's true place in intellectual history. Can we allow Abraham a place in that world, as well?

It is typical of the Egyptians to array their deities in symbolic names. Book of the Dead Chapter 148 lists by name the seven solar Hathor cows. Seven becomes the number of fullness, for the seven names in fact make up a single elaborated Name. One version of the list gives the following combination of strange but beautiful names--or one Name:

She great of love, red of hair;/
oh foremost one residing in the mansion of the red one, beautiful rudder of the southern sky,/
she who is united with life, she of the red cloth.

(John C. Darnell, The Enigmatic Books of the Solar-Osirian Unity: Cryptographic Compositions in the Tombs of Tutankamun, Ramesses VI, and Ramesses IX, dissertation, 105; cf. also the translation of the chapter in Raymond O. Faulkner, The Book of the Dead, p. 142, and especially the various names found in BM 10471. The plate appears on p. 147).

"Red of hair" translates Egyptian dSr.t Snj.t (lit. red of circuit, i.e., the circlets of hair--which also suggests the solar circuit). "Mansion of the red one" (the red horizon) derives from Hw.t dSr.t; which may also be read "she of redness" or "of the red solar eye." DSr.t (the /r/ comes to be dropped in pronunciation) matches -dosh, while Jns.t suggests Enish. The unique name-chain packs in a world complete: Solar Eye, Horizon, Redness, Scarlet, the Solar Circuit, the Beautiful Rudder (gubernator = "one of the governing planets also") of the Southern Sky. Given such an elaborated naming of redness for the Hathorian sun, can anyone lightly dismiss Hathor as Enish-go-on-dosh, "said by the Egyptians to be the sun?"

Hathor manifests solar power as the Eye. Dimitri Meeks and Christine Favard-Meeks note how Hathor's unblushing depiction "as a female countenance seen face-on" evokes "the face-to-face encounter between the sun and the element in which he [she?] appears at the moment of the creation [cf. the four Sons as elemental and spatial emanation]. Thus Hathor can represent the solar eye" (The Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods, 236). No wonder Hathor's symbol is the mirror; she reflects creative light and power, and so distributes it throughout all creation. The Wedjat-lady of figure 5, whose head is the Wedjat Eye itself, recalls that mirror. The Latin (and Greek) verb re-flect conveys the exact notion found in the Egyptian 'nn (-on?), that is, curving, shaping, turning, bending, refraction. Hathor, in a seasonal about-face at Winter Solstice, turns back ('nn) the visage of the hidden sun to a forlorn world. Each reflection also marks an upward turn on the cosmic ladder, from light to light, in a dazzling ascent.

And yet her face is masked (see Nibley, Abraham in Egypt, 433). The face of the sun merely masks the divinity behind the glory. For the Egyptians names are masks. Joseph Smith never comes closer to the spirit of the ancients than with his elaborated and breath-taking cosmological names: "I know you and I know your name; I know the names of the seven cows and their bull" (Book of the Dead, Chapter 148, tr. Raymond O. Faulkner). The Red Name of the Bee, a great and ineffable mystery, is, says Hugh Nibley, the most sacred name of all ("The Deseret Connection," Abraham in Egypt; for the bee symbolism, see also my post, "Joseph Smith Translation Exodus 34:1-2: The Holy Order and the Migration Bees"). Marguerite Rigoglioso finds the closest links between Hathor, the cows, bees, "governing stars" (i.e., the Pleiades), and doves. Oceanus, the celestial sea, encompasses them all--exactly as on the hypocephalus (The Cult of Divine Birth in Ancient Greece; cf. Facsimile 2, fig. 5).http://bit.ly/1apCRdg  : 
http://bit.ly/1jJgUiK . Enish-go-on-dosh is such a hidden name, a mask within a mask. As Heraclitus says: Nature loves to hide.
http://bit.ly/1jJgUiK 

IV  Brother Joseph Hits the Mark

We return to Book of the Dead Chapter 148, which plays to a fare-thee-well on a multiplicity of names for the Hathor cow:

She great of love, red of hair;/
oh foremost one residing in the mansion of the red one, beautiful rudder of the southern sky,/
she who is united with life, she of the red cloth.

The phrase Hnm.t-'nx jnsj.t (she who is united with life, even she, the red one) plays on the words 'nx = 'nsh (life) and jnsj.t (the lady of redness, or scarlet). (Hathor often flows from the brush in a wine red dress.) To unite with life is here to unite with the sun on the red horizon, or "mansion of the red one" (the hw.t dshrw: tosh): red (jns) thus answers to life ('nx). The color word jnsj comes from a bright red linen called jnsj. Yet because the Woerterbuch (I, 100.14) also lists jnsj.t as a name of the Eye of Horus, we can link jnsj.t and 'nx.t, the last also being a name for the Female Solar Eye (cf. Woerterbuch I, 100 passim). Unsurprisingly, dshr.t also names or describes the red Eye of Horus (Woerterbuch V, 489; see also Bernard Mathieu, "Les couleurs dans le Textes des Pyramides"). 

The elaborated double red name, which brings together both dSr and jns, can name either the sun or a governing star--take your pick. After all, a bright red star perfectly images the sun. An unusual, playfully elaborated name for one of the Sons of Horus ("in this case," being one of the Seven Akhu stars) runs round as follows: Dshr-jr.tj-jmj-Hw.t-jnsj, Dosh-iati-im-hawt-ins, He of the two red eyes, who resides in the mansion of the red one (or in the Red Mansion) (Matthias Rochholz, Schoepfung, Feindvernichtung, Regeneration, 111; pLondon BM EA 10477, l.57 = Book of the Dead Papyrus of Nu, 18 Dynasty). As mentioned above, the name much recalls Abraham's Enish-go-on-dosh. According to Bernard Mathieu, the Seven Akhu are stars of the greatest symbolic import. A like solar name is given variously in the Coffin Texts and elsewhere: The Red One (or: The One who belongs to Redness) who is in (or facing) his Red Linen Mansion, dSr.ty-jmj-Hw.t=f-jnsj; dSr.ty-xntj-Hw.t-jnsj; dSr-jr.ty-jmj-Hw.t-jnsj (Thesaurus Linguae Aegypticae, lemmata: Coffin Texts IV 270-1a; pLondon BM 10477, l.57). Hor-dosh-iati (dSr jr.ty) appears already in the Pyramid Texts, where it, perhaps, names the planet Mars; Horus of the Lapis-Lazuli Eyes may name Venus (Bernard Mathieu, "Horus"). All this forcibly recalls the vivid red that yet appears on a hypocephalus housed in Turin's Egyptian museum: red circles encompassing red circles, red Kolob, and red disks of the sun (best shown in a photograph by Art Pollard, on Flikr). The three Zagreb hypocephali show the same red circles. Red Kolob? The Prophet Joseph hits the mark by giving us a Hathor name burning with so much resplendent scarlet.

Because jnsj.t recalls our Enish, I favor the following reading for Enish-go-on-dosh:

The Exalted Red Solar Eye,
even the Beautiful One (or Beautiful Eye)
in its Redness (or in its quality as the Red Eye
jns.t q3.t, 'n.t dSr ~ Anis-qo-on-dosh

Such a name or double name would answer well to the round of mornings and evenings that make up the journey of the sun about the bordering quarters of the heavens and the earth: 

The Exalted Scarlet Eye, 
The Beautiful Eye in its Deep Redness

The phrase -on-dosh, which can be read as 'n dSr (lovely in redness), may just as readily represent 'n.t dSr:

The Exalted Scarlet Eye
The Wedjat Eye in Its Redness (of Anger)

The name--brim though it is with mirrorings and metonymy--doesn't jibe with our ideal of beauty, until we recognize that the solar red is anything but a red barn: it is a resplendent tide that flames like a ruby. Here is a precious "living stone," as well as "living Eye," a translucent diadem among stars (see 1 Peter 2:4-5). (The chapter to read on the connection between hypocephalus and rubies and sapphires is Hugh Nibley and Michael Rhodes, "The Jewel of Discernment," One Eternal Round, Chapter 10, 423-462.) The Egyptians encased Creation's poema into compact cryptonyms: enish and on-dosh--the beginning and the end--each radiate both life and redness, both beauty and the (red) borders (or border stones). The epithet "red (or yellow) of hair" (lit. "'that curled round' red" = dshr.t shnj) clearly plays on the idea of the "red circuit" or "red eternal round" of the sun (the word for the solar circuit is shn.t). Redness, Beauty, Life, the Eye of Horus: all is one--and one eternal round. The exalted female sun, the Eye, as she navigates (D3j ~ the rudder = -go?) from the southern borders to the north, is both vibrantly and gloriously beautiful--both sun by day and flaming Arcturus by night.

The piercing jewel set in Hathor's crown shows the rubied sun itself, ensconced, as it is, between the rounded borders (or bows) of her two horns (cf. Joseph Smith--History 1:35: the description of the Urim and Thummim). The correlation of Eye and Stone (and Crown), by the way, comes to perfection in the hypocephalus design. If the "hypocephalus itself," as Nibley says, is "a giant eye" (318), then it is also a fiery solar stone or jewel. The object, like a round sea of glass and fire, can therefore serve its purpose "to spark a flame under the head of a radiant spirit" (Book of the Dead Chapter 162; Doctrine and Covenants 88:11 = the two eyes, both the visible as also intellectual light). "And I, Abraham had the Urim and Thummim, which the Lord my God had given unto me, in Ur of the Chaldees."

And I, Abraham, had the hypocephalus: it is not given to us this Urim and Thummim, but we do have Abraham's hypocephalus and Abraham's matchless stars! And I saw the stars, that they were very great" (Abraham 3:1-2). . .




V These Are The Governing Ones (Abraham 3:3)

As the Egyptian planet Jupiter, Har-tosh-tawy ("Horus who sets the bounds of the Two Lands"), makes his royal progress, or "annual revolutions," he circumscribes the expanse of space and so secures the cosmos as his demesne. Here is Horus the Cosmocrator. Another name for Jupiter, Determiner (wpj, to judge, determine, divide), bespeaks the same thing: Horus, the Determiner, Separator of the Two Lands, that is, Horus, the Determiner of the Bounds of the Two Lands (Hr wpj t3.wj = *Hr wpj t3sh.w t3.wj). Which Horus does the name address? Horus, son of Osiris, as earthly king, does indeed determine the bounds of the two lands, which he then binds up into one state. Yet the soaring falcon, Horus the Eldest, surveys the bounds of the habitations of man from the very beginning. . . A third name meets the first, with the letters t, 3, and sh now playfully, mysteriously, transposed: Hr wpj sht3 (Horus, Opener of the Mystery). Wpj sht3 derives, by means of word play, from the hieroglyphs depicting expanses of water and tracts of land. The mystery may thus be explained as the mystery of knowing the universe in its entirety. The opener, or separator (wpj) of water and land--all creation--perforce becomes the discerner (wpj) of mysteries. (For the names of the planet Jupiter, see Heinrich Brugsch, Thesaurus Inscriptionum Aegyptiacarum I, 67ff., published 1883.)

And is it too much to suggest a correspondence between the planetary Horus, who makes the rounds and sets the bounds, and the four sons of Geb or Shu or Horus that the Hathor cow faces in Facsimile 2, Figure 6? The four standing sons, as if four standing stones, represent both "this earth in its four quarters," and in a celestial mirroring, the four stars of the ever-turning Dipper. To these, Professor Mathieu also adds the four stars that delineate Orion (Pyramid Texts, 573, Hugh Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri, 113; An Approach to the Book of Abraham, 301; Bernard Mathieu, "Les enfants d'Horus"; Book of the Dead 148: the four Sons, four oars, and the seven Hathor cows = 15). And note how the duality of a sky having four corners in each hemisphere finds its reflection on earth with four corners in the north and four in the south. The Sons of Geb thus mirror the Sons of Horus, and indeed, the shape of reality--the ordering of the cosmos--cannot do without either set of tent pegs. The opposition built into the hypocephalus design, as also the Janus-faced Kolob, accords with the same idea--see Nibley and Rhodes, One Eternal Round.

Of these four stars, brightest shines the falcon, Qebehsenuef. As the Fourth, Qebehsenuef often represents all the rest as a stand-alone, the very same presiding brother the Prophet calls Elkenah. Why does the Fourth star preside? To complete the count of four. Qebehsenuef marks the circuit and thus seals the efficacy of the ceremony. 

Next to these four come the three cryptic figures (Lotus-Lion-Ram) standing for the renewing revolutions of space and time, the universal crank that turns the starry heavens. "If the world can find out these numbers, so let it be": 4 + 3 = 7, the number of completion, the universe in its entirety, which consists of both the tally of the northern Dipper so well as southerly Orion. The sons of Horus, usually four, sometimes number seven (Matthias Rochholz, Schoepfung, Feindvernichtung, Regeneration,111-12). 

Given the placement of the Hathor cow facing earth's four boundary markers, its four t3S.w (dosh.w), followed by the three mysterious symbols of solar renewal, no wonder that, "in this case, in relation to this subject," the cow "is said by the Egyptians to be the sun."

These several planetary name-chains, to which we must add Re Horakhty (Re-Horus of the Horizon), all show the Horus Jupiter as a distant, transcendent super sun coursing the utmost regions and taking their measure. The Horus names are interchangeable; the governing power is one. Again, the question arises about which Horus we encounter here? Should we also see in the Egyptian Jupiter the ancient solar divinity Horus Smsw, all the planets then swim into ken as emanations or reflections of the elder falcon, the central power navigating the paths of the sky. Do all these Horatian planets accordingly share, i.e., receive, exchange, borrow, and lend, their light in the fashion described by the Prophet in his Explanation of Facsimile 2, figure 5? In Egypt, "the glory of the sun is one," no matter the medium through which it shines. In Hor-dosh-tawy, Jupiter in the image of the sun (Eg. twt nj r'), we find a reflection of Enish-go-on-dosh as "one of the governing planets also, and [it] is said [note that disclaimer said] by the Egyptians to be the Sun."

Re himself is sometimes "said by the Egyptians to be" a star (sb3). And because any star or planet can also be called a Re (r'), or a Horus, any star apparently can also be "said by the Egyptians to be the Sun." Joseph Smith's inspired phrases often sum up, with articulate precision, the ideas found in Egyptian books and art. A ringlike name rounds the solar universe: "He [Horus Behedty] is that Re who is the lord of every Re" (r' pw nb r'.w nb.w). The Egyptians knew the sun to be a star (Heinrich Brugsch, Thesaurus Inscriptionum Aegyptiacarum I, 78-9, published 1883).


Beyond, we are assured, fan out "a plurality of skies," each with its governing power (Erik Hornung, Books of the Afterlife, 12). It remains to ascend, world upon mirrored world, "one planet above another, until thou come nigh to Kolob" (Abraham 3:9). Henry Thoreau had it right: "The sun is but a morning star."




Notes

The above comments form part of a longer essay, originally published on this Web site on 14 April 2010. Additional sentences and paragraphs have been added from time to time.

1) The transfer of stellar or solar light from one star or light source to another makes up a motif in Egyptian art and scripture (see Hugh Nibley and Michael Rhodes, One Eternal Round, 220-21, with illustration from tomb of Tutankhamun; 240, 267, 295-99, 334; David Klotz, Adoration of the Ram: Five Hymns to Amun-Re from Hibis Temple [New Haven, 2006], 176, 181-82: Shu-feathers, as on Fac. 2, fig. 2; hypocephalus as iris or pupil hiding Amun-Re, the spiritual light behind the physical manifestation; as for the baboons, they are "agents of justice and communication. In a world become wide-ranging and complex, the baboons maintain the links between above and below. They 'let ma'at ascend' and also disseminate it downward."
They are symbols of "representation and mediation," Jan Assmann, The Mind of Egypt, 187-88; Maat, 202ff.). 


2) Hathorian red is also the red of the bee. The bee, another -dosh, makes a subtle appearance on the hypocephalus (cf. Hugh Nibley, "The Deseret Connection," Abraham in Egypt).



Copyright by Val H. Sederholm, 2014