V
– Benben, not Bena-Bena. What’s Bena-Bena, anyway?
– It’s an ethnic group of New Caledonia. Did you know that the wives in that ethnic group should keep the skulls of their late husbands?
– The what should do where?
– New Caledonia, an island in the Pacific, east of Australia. James Cook made port there in the middle or late eighteen century. Saint Pierre Marie Chanel was the first one there to announce the Truth, in the nineteenth century.
– … Anyway, it’s benben.
– You mean like it could have been bar, for «son of», in the Jewish sense, being, then, barbar…?
– No… And I don’t think ben is or was solely used when in reference to the son, but some sort of opposite to ‘ab, father, given that they didn’t have a whole lot of vocabulary for all sort of different things, such as kinship degrees. For instance, Abraham calls Lot his brother, or son – I’m not sure right now –, but anyway, whatever he did call him, Lot wasn’t neither his brother nor his son, but his nephew or cousin or something. As for ‘ab, father, it was also used in reference to the older generations and not only when in reference to someone’s father in the strict sense of the word.
– And it’s rooted in the Acadian, where the kings referred to the god’s as abbu walidum and abbu murabbishu, father according to the flesh and foster father.
– I think it’s the other way around, abbu walidum meaning adoptive father, and abbu murabbishu, the one according to the flesh. And I don’t think that the word has its root in the Acadian. I think it’s in the Sumerian.
– No. I think I’m right about this one, as the god’s in overall Mesopotamia were also called abbu, father, or abi, my father. And, it could be said, the term wasn’t solely used to designate a family member or some other kinship likeness, but also as a form of compliment or honorary title, as the Pharaoh ended up designated Joseph, son of Jacob/Israel; and Axtarxerxes also designated Haman as δέυτερος πατέρ1, second father, nevertheless the latter case being more recent than the former, anyway.
– Whatever it may be, and despite of the metaphorical-like examples for the semantics of the term, the most probable is that the word isn’t rooted in the Sumerian or the Acadian nor in any other language, but in the perceived onomatopoeia of a child, like, for the Greek, πάππα2, or the Latin papa, pappus, as it might also be the case for ‘em, mother.
– But why did it end up being called benben or what does it signify? – continued, while pointing to the aforementioned.
– There are different versions. Some of them related to creation myths others as outcome of events. Well, not only about why it ended up being called the way it did, but also about the significance around the pinnacle stone of the pyramid. There’s one version where the same stone is regarded as a celebration of the first appearance of land after the Flood.
– That makes sense.
The Guardian Angels that were listening to the conversation, sitting near the top of the pyramid, bowed gently their heads to another Angel that had descended from the heavens, taking place across from them, sitting on the head of the sphinx.
– To what concerns creation myths, it’s associated with the god Atum, being held, then, as the original hill where this personified god of the sun performed something sexual in nature, so that the rest of the universe might come to be.
– Of course.
– What did you expect? If humans don’t know, they speculate about it. And it’s no surprise that some creation myths, across different cultures, have some sexual related elements in them, being, as it is, something so centrally linked with conception, as in bringing forth existence.
– Sure, as it could be understood for rivers, such as the Nile, here, or the Ganges or Ganga, in India.
– What do you mean?
– As in related to life and water for survival and crop irrigation and so on.
– But I’m talking about creation, bringing forth existence.
– Okay. I thought that the sun-god in Egypt was Ra, not the other name you said… what was it?
– Atum. Theology or mythology or whatever you may wish to designate it, but, in Egypt, it combined different elements as the times and circumstances shifted. Regarding the sun, a conjugation of different views and personified deities about it ended up in different denominations so to designate the sun in different aspects or circumstances, such as Aton, meaning the solar disk; you also have Kephri for the sun-rise, symbolized by a beetle, for being noted that this particular bug pushes around a dung ball, where its eggs are laid, but it was then used as a symbol for the sun, as if its sphere was being pushed onto the surface of the earth so to become the rising sun; you have Ra, as you’ve said, for the sun in its peak, and Atum for the sun-down.
»The sun, in this particular system, was understood as a vessel that sailed across the sky in the day-time, so to enter the underworld at sun-down, where it would emerge again from it at sun-rise. In some of their creation myths, the Egyptians also understood the moment before creation as of being constituted by chaotic waters. So, from out of those waters, and concerning this personified deity of the sun in this specific creation myth, and out of context from this system, but from out of those chaotic waters arose an original hill, benben, understood as in being pyramid-like shaped, where Atum, the sun-god, was, bringing, then, light and order to that chaotic darkness that existed before he emerged. Therefore, benben, as the pinnacle stone symbolizing that original hill, is also understood as the inspiration and reason not only for the pyramids but also for obelisks, which are usually said to be stylized sculptures of sun rays or the erected phallus of some other god, depending on the tradition.
»I still can’t get over this, however. Why waste so much time and energy with such things? Why did this people, with understandings to make structures such as the pyramids, why would they still invest so much time and energy with things such as these?
– You mean the Sphinx?
– Yes.
– What do you think the Sphinx is?
– Sculpture supersurrealism of the time? A megalomaniac Maecenas influencing the Pharaoh of the epoch? Who knows…? There’s this story that she was completely buried in the sand, and that a prince, while taking a nap near her, had a dream where she appeared to him and told him if he unburied her, she would grant him greatness. Something like this.
– The Sphinx is a living monument to factual genetic experiences in the past. Look at it: human head with body of an animal.
– Do you mean that this, and similar creatures such as this, really existed?
– That’s exactly what I mean. In several creation myths, across different cultures, what do you have? Allusions to visitors from above, from the sky, nevertheless such allusion being made in novel-like literature or in a religious poetic way, but still. In Greek myths, for instance, what do we have? Before the Titans were created, we have Gaia, the earth, and Uranus, the sky, as in alluding to where the Titans came from, the sky. Forget about the narrative plot and just think about these elements. Also in the Bible we find a small allusion to that, in Genesis, chapter 6, right in the beginning, where it says that the sons of God, meaning some angels, came down from the heavens or the sky, from above, anyway.
– But how do you go from there – which, I’ll admit it, is an interesting observation –, but how do you go from there, that is, from angels coming down from the sky, to the Sphinx being a living monument to the outcome of genetic experiences in the past, as in a real creature that existed?
– Empirical sciences, for the angels, pose no mystery.
– And the Flood wiped out completely all traces of that, except, for instance, in novel-like literature and what we are looking at right now?
– It’s how I understand it, anyway.
Both stood quite for a while, looking at the Sphinx, glowing in the full moonlight.