Posted by: Þórgrímr
« on: December 16, 2010, 01:05:08 PM »Chapter Three
The next morning Hungerford picked up John and Cathy DeShane at their hotel, passed by the one hour photo to collect the prints of the film he had taken, and continued on to Steven’s apartment.
To Simonson they recounted the events of the previous evening. DeShane had brought along the two cherubim statues in an old leather suitcase and when he unwrapped them Simonson let out a low whistle of awe. He reached out to touch one of them and then drew back his hand at the last moment.
Hungerford smiled at his friend, “Me too,” he said with a laugh.
Cathy DeShane was carefully taping four of the photographs together. “Look at this, Johnny, hieroglyphs on the inside of the Ark.”
DeShane took the photos from her. “So that infrared trick really worked, incredible. You…” he addressed Hungerford and Simonson “…have a great future in archaeology. Cathy, have you got some paper handy?”
John sat down at the dining-table and, peering carefully at the photographs, began to make notes. After watching him for a few moments Cathy tugged two books from the satchel she had brought with her. “While he’s working on the translation,” she said with a grunt as she lifted the huge books, “we found some tidbits at the UC library yesterday and we thought that you might be interested in hearing.
“We, of course, knew about the Egyptian design of the cherubim from our original discovery of the Ark. Until now there seemed to be little use in pursuing the matter but your call,” she nodded at Hungerford, “made the difference. So yesterday we were looking for the link, as it were.
“This first book is ‘Religion in Ancient History’ by Jeremiah Doctorov, Religion Department at the University of Manchester. He’s a very bright man. Johnny knew him in graduate school. Listen to this:
“Seraphim are mysterious beings; they clearly derive from a very primitive stage of Hebrew culture. The word ‘seraphim’ means ‘burning ones’, and it is evident that originally they were supernatural serpents with a burning bite. Indeed, as the curious episode in Numbers 21:6 indicates, they were once worshipped. The bronze serpent that was then made was called a seraph, and it continued to be a cult object in Judah down to the reign of Hezekiah (716-687 BC).
“Equally mysterious are the cherubim. According to ‘Psalms 18:10’, they transport Yahweh: ‘He (Yahweh) rode on the cherub and flew; he came swiftly upon the wings of the wind.’ Their association in this passage with stormclouds appears more clearly in Ezekiel’s account of his vision of Yahweh, which he had when he was exiled in Mesopotamia (593 BC):
‘As I looked, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north, and a great cloud, with brightness round about it, and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as it were gleaming bronze. And from the midst of it came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance: They had the form of men, but each had four faces, and each had four wings. As for the likeness of their faces, each had the face of a man in front; the four had the face of a lion on the right side, the four had the face of an ox on the left side, and the four had the face of an eagle at the back. Such were their faces. And their wings were spread out above. (Ezekiel 1:4-5, 10-11)
“In the instructions given in Exodus 25:18-20 for the construction of the Ark of Yahweh, which was the chief cult-object in the original Temple of Jerusalem, Moses is directed: ‘You shall make two cherubim of gold; of hammered work shall you make them, on the two ends of the mercy seat. The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, their faces one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be.’
“Specialist opinion today is inclined to think that the cherubim were similar to the winged sphinxes found in Phoenician art, their images adorning the Ark are also reminiscent of the winged figures of the goddesses Isis and Nepthys that protect the shrine of Tutankhamen.
“It would seem, therefore, that in the pre-exile period, as Hebrew religion emerged gradually from its primitive polytheism, many supernatural beings, of diverse origin and status, were recognized alongside of Yahweh. Since at this stage the idea of the Devil had not emerged, these beings were sometimes regarded as emissaries of Yahweh to bring evil as well as good on men, which they did, most notably on Saul and Ahab.”
“You see the problem here,” Cathy said, “We’re actually trying to make sense out of a religious artifact that, at least where the cherubim are concerned, is not Hebraic at all, but rather Egyptian in origin. Also dating back to a historical period before Yahweh or Jehovah became a single god for the Hebrews.
“Then there is the secondary problem of the Exodus itself. Archaeologically it never happened, at least not in the way it is described in the Bible.”
She set the Doctorov book down and took up the second one. “John Romer’s Testament, a brilliant piece of work. He’s a British archaeologist who spent most of his professional life in the field in Egypt and Mesopotamia. He wrote this as a study of how the present-day book we know as the Bible came to be assembled over the centuries.”
She flipped through the pages and then quoted a passage to them:
“Hard evidence of the Exodus event in the preserving deserts of the Sinai, where most of the biblical wandering takes place, is similarly elusive. Although its climate has preserved the tiniest traces of ancient Bedouin encampments and the sparse, 5,000-year-old villages of mine workers, there is not a single trace of Moses or the Israelites. And they would have been by far the largest body of ancient people ever to have lived in this great wilderness.
Neither is there any evidence that Sinai and its little natural springs could ever have supported such a multitude, even for a single week. Several 19th-century vicars recognized this fact within a day or two of the start of numerous expeditions in search of Moses’ footsteps. ‘Escaping from the rigors of an English winter,’ as one of them said, ‘in a land of the flock and the tent to which our only guide was the Bible.’ They quickly realized that the biblical Exodus was logistically impossible as described, and that the Bible was a most ambiguous guide to that desolate region. The biblical description of the Exodus, then, flies in the face of practical experience. Indeed the closer you examine it, the further it seems removed from all of ancient history.
“Fortunately it is easier to discover the age of the book of Exodus than the route of an Exodus journey, and all the indications are that this was a very long time before Ramses’ City had descended into ruin. For running alongside the ancient theme of creation and re-creation is the no-less-powerful theme of liberation from slavery and of Yahweh's revenge upon the slave masters. It is in this account of Israel’s enslavement that the Exodus story departs from the reality of the world of Genesis and Exodus.
“Slavery on such a scale and of the type described in the Book of Exodus did not exist in ancient Egypt, only the middle east, where mankind was set inside a holy order in which everyone from a pharaoh to a bonded peasant was at the disposal of the gods and the state.
“In such a world modern conceptions of slavery and freedom, even of ownership and buying and selling, have little meaning. Furthermore, explicit documentary evidence from ancient Egypt shows that foreigners who lived in that country, either as prisoners of war or as peaceful immigrants, were carefully and quickly integrated into the general mass of the population. Ancient notions of race and culture were very different, and Exodus’ theme of liberation from oppression is entirely inappropriate to ancient reality.”
Cathy closed the book. “So not only do we have an Ark of extremely mysterious design. It is also supposed to be one of the central features of an event which, as far as we can tell, never took place. Yet here it is. Now…”
“Got it!” John shouted out, pushing back his chair and walking over to join them. “Fantastic. Some of the glyphs were too blurred or indistinct, but enough came through. This is just fantastic,” he said as he waved his notes at them. “Are you ready for this?”
“And... Self-Become-One has said... firstborn son of the great house of Men-maat-Ra, son of the Sun, Ptah-meri-en-Pepi, Life! Health! Strength! Bear away from Khem the sacred Sam-taui... preserved by these nomads with... I adjure thee... writing reveals itself, to return the Sam-taui to their most holy…”
“Most holy what?” Hungerford asked, more than a little confused. “Don’t tell me...”
“Afraid so,” DeShane said. “That’s where they stop. The rest of the writing is presumably on the other tablet, which left no impression on the gold. No matter. We will worry about that later. This is tremendous. Do you know what this means?”
“What’s the name of that Pharaoh?” Simonson asked.
“Sorry, I was giving you the literal translation. It’s Pepi II of the Sixth Dynasty in the Old Kingdom. Now let’s see how good a detective you are.” John said as he passed the notes to Simonson, who looked over them carefully.
“Well, the writer refers to himself only as Pepi’s firstborn son, but not by name. Maybe he had some reason to conceal his name? Maybe to pose as a non-Egyptian, to blend in with these nomads he’s talking about? Of course! Merenere - Moses. That’s why he’s come down to us with that name; it’s just the Egyptian hieroglyphic for ‘son’.”
“Like ‘Thutmose, Son of Thoth’ and ‘Ramesses, Son of Ra’,” Hungerford said with a nod. “So this is proof that Moses was not only an Egyptian, but in fact a prince of the royal house, the crown prince in fact.”
“You got it,” DeShane said, beaming a smile at them. “Anything else jump out at you?”
“Hmm,” Hungerford said. “If Moses lived in the Old Kingdom, then the ‘Exodus’ must have occurred a thousand years earlier than what the Bible says. Along with the fact the Sam-taui are obviously those two statues of Horus and Ra.”
John took over the fact listing, “And they weren’t just any statues; they were two unusually important ones. For whatever reason, perhaps a political crisis or threat of invasion, it was felt necessary to get them out of Egypt in some manner that would ultimately preserve them without revealing their actual significance or value. What better way than as ‘ornaments’ for a mock-sacred treasure, the tablets of the Ten Commandments, which Moses also used to record this message.”
John got to his feet and paced back and forth, getting more excited. “He must have carved the commandments on the front of the tablets, which is all that he showed the Hebrews. They never knew what was on the back, nor could they read the message even if they did see it.
“And Moses made certain that they wouldn’t see the hieroglyphs by decreeing that the tablets were to be locked out of sight in the Ark and not touched henceforth. Even the Hebrew priests who were permitted to open the Ark could see only the Hebrew writing as they looked inside. That’s why what was on the back of this tablet impressed itself into the gold lining of the Ark.”
“How about that ‘Self-Become-One’?” Simonson added. “That’s got to be Xepera, the self-created scarab, right?”
“Or,” DeShane said, “you might translate the hieroglyph into ancient Hebrew as ‘I am that I am’ or ‘I will be what I will be’. But let’s not jump immediately to a simple conclusion.”
He rummaged again in the leather satchel, took out a third book. “Massey’s Ancient Egypt,” he explained. “Massey was an interesting guy. Spent years in research at the British Museum around the turn of the century and published six books on his work. He also lectured extensively in both England and the States. Many of this century’s best archaeologists began their careers as students of his. Unfortunately, for him, he more or less stated that Judaism was merely a plagiarism of far-more-ancient Sumerian and Egyptian legends.
“That did not go down too well with the contemporary religious establishment, which is why he’s been, in a word, suppressed. But there isn’t an Egyptologist worth his salt today who doesn’t know of Massey’s work. Here’s the part I was looking for:
“Ages before the Hebrew Pentateuch was written and ascribed to Moses, the one god had been worshipped as Anu, and as Egyptian under the title of Atum-Ra. This is the god who was one by nature and a triad by manifestation: one in the Sumerian mythos as the controller of the Heavens; En-Lil; one in the eschatology as Anu the everlasting father, and the last one En-Ki the ever-coming son as prince of peace; the one god, called the holy spirit, who was founded typically on the human ghost.
“This is the living (Ankhu), self-originating, and eternal god. This is he who was to be lifted up as god alone in his ark or tabernacle on the mount of glory, that is, as Ra, on the double horizon or in the dual equinox; the deity who gave the law on Mount Shenni through the intermediation of Anhur (En-Lil) or Ma-Shu, the son of Ra.
“In the so-called ‘destruction of mankind’ the solar god resolves to be lifted up in an ark or sanctuary by himself alone. This sanctuary is carried on the back of Nut, the celestial cow. ‘There was Nut. The majesty of Ra was on her back. His majesty arrived in the sanctuary. And his majesty saw the inner part of the sanctuary.’
“This creation of the sanctuary for the one god Ra upon the mount is followed in the Hebrew book. Yahweh says to Moses, ‘Let them (the children of Israel) make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them. According to all that I show thee, the pattern of the dwelling and the pattern of the furniture thereof, even so ye shall make it. And they shall make an ark of acacia-wood.’
“The two together, the sanctuary and the ark, constituted an ark-shrine of the true Egyptian pattern. As Egyptian, the ark of Ra-Harmakhu represented the double equinox in the two horizons. This was the ‘double abode of Ra’ in the dual domain of light and shade, the model of the Jewish arks or tabernacles that were to be erected equally in sun and shade. The part open to the rays of light was exactly to balance the shade or veil of the covering, and not to have more sun than shade (Mishna, Treatise Succah). This was in accordance with the plan of the Great Pyramid in relation to the luminous hemisphere and the hemisphere of shade at the two equinoxes.
“The sanctuary of Ra was a figure of the heavens. The Hebrew ark was a portable copy, a tabernacle fitted for an itinerating deity.
“It was the Egyptian custom to represent the heavens in miniature as an ark of so many cubits. There is an ark of seven cubits, one of eight cubits, another of four cubits, in which the god was ‘lifted up’ or exalted.
“Inside the ark there was a shrine for the deity, with a figure of the god within the sanctuary. As water was the primary element of life, the nature-powers were held to have come into being by water. Hence their images were placed within the shrine that was carried on board the papyrus bark and borne upon the shoulders of the priests.
“These tabernacles, consisting of a boat and shrine, were the sacred ark-shrines of Egypt. Thus the beginnings were forever kept in view. The ark-shrine on the water represented by the boat became a type of heaven as dwelling-place of the Eternal. Thus an ark of En-Ki was constellated in the stars and pictured on the waters of the inundation. The ark of Atum-Ra was depicted with the solar orb on board, which was always red.
“In the religious mysteries, as already shown, an ark of four cubits imaged the heaven of four quarters, or, as the Egyptians phrased it, of four sides. As we have seen, there was an ark of seven cubits for the heptanomis, and one of eight cubits for the octonary. This ark-shrine of eight cubits is to be built for the god to float in after there has been a great subsidence of land in the celestial waters. So likewise in the ‘destruction of mankind’, when Ra becomes the supreme one god, he orders an ark or tabernacle to be made for his voyage over the heavens. The inscription was engraved in the chamber of the cow that was herself a form of the ark as the goddess Nut.”
“So the Ark is an Egyptian device used to transport the Sam-taui,” said Simonson. “So where does that leave us?”
“Jump ahead a few thousand years,” DeShane answered. “What happened to the Ark when Cathy and I first found it?”
“I don’t follow you.”
“O.K., look at it this way: We got to keep the Ark, but without the tablets. The Germans must have drugged us, then opened the Ark and removed the tablets, which are what are supposed to be important about it, remember? Then took just those to Berlin. Presumably the team, it was rather more of a commando outfit than a research group, couldn’t translate the hieroglyphs on site, or just didn’t bother to.
“Why they didn’t take the Ark and the Sam-taui as well I don’t suppose we’ll ever know. Maybe they didn’t have time or the transport facilities. Anyway, by the time the hieroglyphs were deciphered, the Ark was in the United States, out of their reach. There must have been hell to pay in Berlin that day!” John said with a laugh.
“Now we have a most interesting situation. The Germans couldn’t reveal the truth about the tablets, because then the U.S. would know the significance of the statues. As for the Ark, well, my guess would be that it was opened up once we got it to Washington. When nothing was found inside, the powers-that-be decided that revealing that fact might be a bad blow to Judeo-Christianity, or even might be seen as an anti-Semitic scheme to discredit the biblical account. Remember that the whole Western world was pretty touchy about the Jews in the pre-World War II period; it wasn’t just a German trait by a long shot.
“So that’s why the government just buried the Ark in your warehouse. A religious hot potato, if you will.”
Cathy waved her finger in the air. “Now a whole lot of other things are beginning to fall into place,” she said. “Ramesses II, presumably the son of Seti I, moved the Egyptian capital to Tanis during his reign from 1290 to 1223 BC. Tanis remained the capitol through the twenty-second Dynasty begun by Pharaoh Sheshonk, the biblical ‘Shishack’ who raided and sacked Jerusalem in 928 BC. That’s in I Kings 14:26. And if Sheshonk knew about the Sam-taui through court or temple archives that might explain why he went after the Ark, to get the sacred Sam-taui back to Egypt.
“Certainly there’s no reason why he should have gone through all that trouble to enshrine a presumably false, foreign God in the Well of Souls where we found the Ark. That would have been an affront to the Egyptian Gods.
“But what he was actually enshrining was the Sam-taui, together with Moses’ ingenious device to preserve them. And the ‘Staff of Ra’ that you used to find the Well, Johnny; that must have been the ‘Staff of Ramesses’. I’ll bet you anything that the story of the Sam-taui’s concealment was recorded on the original shaft of that staff by Moses’ younger brother, for the eyes of future pharaohs only. Ramesses must have had the Well and the Map Room built in his new capitol against a time when the Ark would be returned. Evidently Sheshonk had reason to think that the time had come to bring it back.”
“So now we have to get our hands on the Ten Commandments, or, more precisely, on the rest of that inscription,” DeShane said with a grunt. “That means we’re off to Germany tomorrow. You interested?”
“I’m afraid I’m out,” Simonson said sadly. “I’ve got too many things holding me in the bay area right now. But I certainly want to know what happens.”
The DeShanes looked at Derek Hungerford. “Right now I belong to the Army,” he said. “But after a couple of weeks…” then paused as John smiled and waved a piece of fax paper in front of him.
“Forgot to tell you. I took the, umm, liberty of having your orders amended. You’re now on casual status, assigned as escort officer to a scholar with a sensitive security background traveling overseas. That’s me. You don’t mind do you?” John said with a embarassed smile.
Hungerford burst out laughing. “Obviously you’ve got what is commonly called ‘clout’.”
“Ha,” Cathy said with a snort. “It’s just that he creates so many problems for so many higher-ups when someone isn’t keeping an eye on him!”
“My reputation must be improving,” her husband commented. “This time I asked for and got two escort officers. We’ll pick up the other one when we change planes at McCarthy in New York.”
