The 6000 B.C. Giza /Ra /Heliopolis Connection
It is this balance that not only set Dynastic Egyptian thinking apart from all its neighboring civilizations but is also an excellent indication of the important role Nubian muthos spirituality (which was intimately concerned with death and rebirth) had in the eventual formation of Dynastic Egyptian spiritual thought.
It is also an indication how seriously the Dynastic Egyptians took the Pharaoh's position as a living God because these complicated theologies linked the very movements of the heavens with the Pharaoh's death and successful rebirth.
Knowing this, we can see that these Dynastic Ra/ Sphinx/Horus/Horizon/Heliopolis cults appear to be an effort on the part of the Pharaohs of the later Dynasties (after 2500 B.C.) to assert a spiritual link to the sun theology. According to Bauval, the force of the Orion/stellar theology with its great astronomical star positioning of the Giza pyramids in the Fourth Dynasty (c.2500 B.C.) began to wane after ensuing dynasties favoring the sun theology began gaining force again.
While I see these cults (the Ra/Atum/Horus/Heliopolis cult and the Sphinx/“Horus in the Horizon” cult) as political/religious moves, the two being intricately interlinked in Egypt, that is not the only possibility. They may also have been a cultural echo of a very ancient preliterate connection between my proposed Giza "Veiled" face (or even the later 6000 B.C. carved face) and Ra (the sun) and Heliopolis, both of which can be seen looking in an eastward direction from the Sphinx.
I believe this is what happened in the case of the Goddess cults, and the Ra cults.
I am now going to develop in some detail what I had suggested in the opening of this section: that Ra had a very ancient (prior to 6000 B.C.) connection with Giza thousands of years before the Sphinx was first carved as a face and for sure before the rise of any of the literate Ra cults I've been speaking about.
Let me guide you through my proposed very early connection of Ra and the Giza "Veiled" face/Sphinx. First, let's take another look at the cult of Ra/Atum/Horus/Heliopolis. This cult was centered, in Heliopolis, 14 miles northeast of Giza. The earliest known literate mention of this cult in Heliopolis is in the Second dynasty (2686 B.C.), but it may have been in existence much earlier. As I have indicated previously, literate cults always have distant preliterate roots. They don't appear out of nowhere, like Topsy.
Today it is mostly destroyed; its temples and other buildings were used for the construction of medieval Cairo; most information about the ancient city comes from textual sources.
Beneath a maze of busy narrow streets of a middle and lower-class district, lie vast hidden remains of ancient Heliopolis about fifteen to twenty metres down. This ancient Egyptian site lies predominantly in the northern Cairo suburb of Al-Matariyyah,
So now let's switch back to preliterate Heliopolis and take a closer look at it. If we go back to 6000 B.C. (or earlier) and imagine standing next to the "Veiled" face on the weathered rock outcropping on
These things happen you know, and may be the reason why Heliopolis came into existence, because otherwise it is in the middle of nowhere.
I arrived at this insight of a meteor falling at nascent preliterate Heliopolis through analeptic thinking. It surprised me to find out later that Bauval mentions the probability of a conical iron meteor falling out of the sky to became enshrined at Heliopolis as the Ben Ben stone. (For some unstated reason, he sees it landing near Memphis, but why I have no idea. )
The Ben Ben stone was held by the Egyptians as the most sacred of objects. Bauval posits that its conical shape is possibly the reason for the shape of the pyramids. For sure, an imitation of the Ben Ben stone capped every pyramid. Constable Research gives a concise definition of the spiritual significance of the Ben Ben stone:
"The Benben Stone was seen as the solidified Seed of Atum, the Stone of Creation. It was on this stone that the Phoenix or Benu Bird would return every 12,594 years and place its new Egg. At that moment a new Era of Mankind was started. The Benu Bird came from the ‘Isle of Fire’, the mythical place where the gods were born."
Author´s Note
12, 594 years is approximately half of the earth's precession cycle of approximately 26,000 years, indicating how advanced Egyptian astronomy was, having discovered and calculated this critical astronomical cycle before any other culture.
End Author´s Note
Here are two other large conical iron meteorites.
If you can't see it yet, let me say it again: if they stood next to the Giza "Veiled" face at summer solstice sunrise, they would see the sun rising behind the Ben Ben meteorite at nascent Heliopolis. And at sunrise, from the Ben Ben meteorite at nascent Heliopolis, they could see the summer solstice sun (Ra) fall directly on the "Veiled face" while in the late afternoon they could also see the summer solstice sun (Ra) setting behind the "Veiled" face.
There is no doubt in my mind that my proposed "Veiled" face did have a very, very early association with Ra and our preliterate, nascent Heliopolis area, probably for millennia prior to 6000 B.C., the earliest date I have proposed for the carving of the Sphinx face over the naturally occurring "Veiled" face.
I am now going to suggest that the carving of the initial bas relief face of the Sphinx in 6000 B.C. further cemented the spiritual/astronomical connection of the "Veiled"/carved Giza face with Ra as well as the position of Heliopolis as the city of Ra, the city of the sun.
This Dynastic temple pillar would obviously be an outgrowth of my suggested preliterate summer solstice marker. The photo to the left is from preliterate Britain. It is an equinox/solstice marker similar to the one I am proposing was built at the site of the fallen Ben Ben meteorite. I also have no doubt that this structure was then used by those standing next to the "Veiled" Giza face to easily focus on the exact point where Ra would appear at summer solstice sunrise, thus visually completing the "Veiled" Giza face/Ra connection as would the Sphinx/ River Mother carving as it unfolded.
I have indicated that the compass bearing from the "Veiled" face to both Heliopolis and the summer solstice sunrise is identical, but let me give you some idea of how that was calculated. Thanks to a web service (Location Works) that computes equinox events at various global positions and dates, I was able to determine that the summer solstice rising sun seen from Cairo (which is very close to Giza) in 2012 is at a bearing of 59°.
After much erroneous computation caused by the fact that I was using the location ( long/lat) of modern Heliopolis, I found that as soon as I plugged in the location of ancient Heliopolis, I got a bearing of 59° from the Giza Sphinx to ancient Heliopolis.
From what I can gather, however, most astro-archeologists seem to consider any sunrise solstice/ equinox bearing changes caused by precession (even over very long periods of time) to be negligible and not worth considering. That being so, I am going to assume it was approximately 59 degrees in 6000 B.C. as it is today.
If anyone steps up to the plate and shows me that it is not negligible, and that there is a small consistent bearing change (as there is with the stars) in that 26,000 year wobble and that it is significant enough to make the 59° summer solstice bearing from Giza to Heliopolis appear only twice, that distant historical time will most probably be the time when the Giza / Heliopolis /summer solstice position first occurred as a result of our falling divine Ben Ben meteorite.
Both sites (the "Veiled"/carved Giza face and nascent preliterate Heliopolis) could have easily seen each other over small obstacles like trees as nascent Heliopolis was 4 miles in from the visible horizon. Early 20th century travelers report that same visibility. (For those who are gear-heads, I have a section at the end of Part One outlining in detail how I computed the horizon and bearings for my proof of a very early preliterate Giza/ Heliopolis/ Ra connection.).
As I suggested earlier, once the meteoric Ben Ben Stone (and its sight lines vis a vis the "Veiled" face at Giza and the summer solstice sunrise were discovered) a marker was most probably erected on the spot of impact in nascent Heliopolis to honor the Ra/"Veiled" Giza face connection.
Based on later Dynastic descriptions of how the the Ben Ben meteorite was displayed on top of a pillar, I believe that in preliterate times the meteorite was placed on a small pillar(s) or a small pillar(s) constructed on top of an earth mound imitating the Mound of Creation.
This mound and its marker(s) or pillar(s) most probably would have raised the visible height of the Ben Ben meteorite by about ten feet, assuming a five foot pillar and a five foot mound, so the site would have been highly visible in preliterate times. (The remnant of that mound (imitating the Mound of Creation) may indeed be what is now referred to as Petrie' s Mound.)
As an aside, some might question why I focused on the summer solstice position rather than the spring equinox position, 90°. The answer is simple. The spring /vernal equinox (an important spiritual/astronomical/rebirth position) wasn't really used as a planting date by the Egyptians. The Egyptians would have preferred, even in prehistoric times, to use the rising Nile as an indication whether to plant or not. After all, if seeds were planted and the Nile flooded afterwards, the seeds would be lost. Even more important, however, is the fact that the summer solstice displays the intense heat of the sun (Ra) at its fiercest, or strongest.
Knowing this, we can now say that Giza (because of the “Veiled” Giza face and its ancient “sun/Ra” connection to Heliopolis) was an important spiritual location in 6000 B.C. (or earlier.) I also believe Sais (Isis)and Sybennytos (Nut) were most probably important preliterate spiritual locations much earlier than the Dynastic dates given.
Sorry, but that’s the way it happens. The same goes for a cult of Ra also suddenly rising and spreading out from Heliopolis c. 2686 B.C. It too, as I have just suggested, had ancient preliterate roots.
