An Essay on Violence, Tradition and Modernity

Rafael Leyre ( Rafael_Leyre@yahoo.com)       Third Edition - February 2007

Egypt

A river of time

Less interested in endurance than the clerks of centralized civilizations, the Indian philosophers investigated the vastness of all being, which is so all-embracing that nothing can disappear without reappearing – the cycles of rebirth. They left us a vast imagery of the complexity and volatility of the universe, but when they addressed time it was rather presented in a spacial way:

That which was before the sun is non-time and has no parts. That which had its beginning from the sun is time and has parts. Of that which has parts, the year is the form, and from the year are born all creatures422

As an aphorism it could be stated that the Egyptians explored time while the Indians ventured into space. Of course both lived before an antagonism between time and space had ever been emphasized, and each of their imageries was whole as such: only when both met in Persia, people conceived the impossible: that space could be imagined without time, and time could be considered without space.423 A few centuries after the Persians the universe had become an immovable three-dimensional vessel, in which time leaked continuously, as a relentless tide. Such would remain the decorum of scientific thought until, in the beginning of the twentieth century CE, it no longer suited to explain more refined observations of the heavenly bodies.424

What we call time is the experience of a series of events - the only things living beings can deal with. This becomes apparent when we speak of ‘the next time’ or ‘the second time’. This vision of time was summarized by Aristotle:

neither does time exist without change; for when the state of our own minds does not change at all, or we have not noticed its changing, we do not realize that time has elapsed.425

In the primeval forager’s world-image those events happened at random. Their performers were capricious entities: demons, ghosts, animals. Later, when forced labour brought about the first kingdoms, the power of performance was given to more stable gods. But although they were prayed and begged continuously, the deeds of those gods were never completely reliable.

It is a prerequisite to further progress of physical science to arrange events into a continuous, countable succession like the sliding of a shadow or the swinging of a pendulum. This is the notion of time we use when we speak of ‘a long time ago’ or press a stopwatch. But to reduce the events of time to a countable succession is also shackling the gods in a chain gang. Taking time away from the discretion of the gods is to paralyse them - the ultimate sacrilege.

Every new Egyptian civilization was conscious of its predecessors, and recycled ancient architecture, artworks and religion more meticulously than any other civilization. Along the Nile, a pumping aorta in a desiccated body, the ruins of previous civilizations are unavoidable. the past remained near, at once stressing the volatility of power and offering elements for new persistence myths. In this imagery the Nile was more than the giver of life: it became also the cosmic clepsydra, water-clock based on the constant running of water. It is no coincidence that the oldest known clepsydra is found in Egypt, where it was made conceivable by the observation of a river streaming along an endless succession of gods and Pharaohs.

The Nile was a clepsydra: the giver of time, the river of time. Plutarch wrote about time after he had travelled the Nile:

eternity whence flowed time

as from a river into worlds.426

He was accused of blasphemy, but the imagery of time as a constant, immaterial flow would conquer the world to reach Europe only in the Renaissance. It would prevail through modern Europe until Einstein rejected it and, unwittingly, returned to the ancient concept formulated by Aristotle:

Till now it was believed that time and space existed themselves, even if there was nothing - no sun, no earth, no stars - while now we know that time and space are not the vessels for the universe, but could not exist at all if there were no contents, namely, no sun, no earth, and other celestial bodies. 427

Sundials also appeared first in Egypt, and were related to the monumental obelisks erected in honour of the sun god. Both clepsydras and sundials date from half the second millennium BCE. Herodotus wrote a millenary later, that sundials were introduced in Greece from Babylon. Thus it is reasonable to assume that they travelled along the main exchange path of knowledge: from Egypt and India to Persia, to be dispersed in the Alexandrian world from there.

The seven foundations of life and the conquest of eternity

At about 3000 BCE, after two thousand years of tribal warfare, King Narmer built the first Egyptian metropolis, Memphis, in the Nile Delta. The totem of his tribe, the falcon, would become the god Horus (Egyptian Har, after the falcon’s cry). Each new pharaoh tried to link his reign with the beginning of times, and necessarily adapted the totem of the first pharaoh, the falcon Horus. Egyptian king lists always start with seven mythological gods, of which the last is Horus, and the five ceremonial titles of each pharaoh starts with a hieroglyph showing the falcon above his palace. This made him a tribal successor, much like Jesus was a successor of David and Caliphs were successors of Muhammad. But when the falcon evolved from a pastoral totem to an Iron Age god, the mortal king became anointed with divine immortality – a new, staggering concept.

In early kingdoms the essence of the divine was not justice, mercy or supreme power. Despite all the superlative qualities chanted about in flattering hymns, gods could be unreliable, uncaring and, even worse, defeated by their rivals as anyone else. What really separated gods from men was immortality:

Therefore Aghatodaemon has said:

Gods are immortal men; men are mortal gods.428

Nothing was easy about this completely new imagery of an immortal man. Clerks were gathered by thousands around the Pharaohs of Memphis. They travelled to the most distant places in an effort to list all spells against snakebites, disease and all other risks; they studied spontaneous mummification to find ways to preserve the body, but also pondered how the other faculties could be kept unharmed, and how to mix all those faculties again to restore a genuine living being, without leaving anything out; they developed magical formulas and complex ceremonies to reopen the mouth of a deceased pharaoh to make him breath again; and built pyramids and funerary temples as precarious attempts to eternity.

Of course, a major drive for the search for continuation of the Pharaoh's existence was business without end to his clerks. All those efforts brought, objectively speaking, more benefit to the eternally employed temple or palace staff, than to the – we must after all admit – departed Pharaoh.

Another major undertaking was the binding together of all gods in one vast mythology, wherein the Pharaoh was presented as the son of Ra, now himself a god reaching hands over the hundred years horizon, in a long chain to the mythical beginning of time. Plato has an Egyptian priest explaining to one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece:

As for those genealogies of yours which you just now recounted to us, Solon, they are no better than the tales of children. In the first place you remember a single deluge only, but there were many previous ones; in the next place, you do not know that there formerly dwelt in your land the fairest and noblest race of men which ever lived, and that you and your whole city are descended from a small seed or remnant of them which survived. And this was unknown to you, because, for many generations, the survivors of that destruction died, leaving no written.429

Before creation, there was no time, because the universe was a motionless ocean. In the Myth of Ra and Isis, Ra calls himself the maker of time:

I am he who, if he openeth his eyes, doth make the light, and, if he closeth them, darkness cometh into being. At his command the Nile riseth, and the gods know not his name. I have made the hours, I have created the days, I bring forward the festivals of the year, I create the Nile-flood…430

This is the most ancient known ‘maker of the hours and the creator of the days’, preluding the ‘first cause’ of Aristotle. It would govern physical science until Medieval Europe.

The ancient Indians had looked at metallurgy for inspiration when searching for the basic elements of life. Egyptian philosophy, less concerned with the universe and more with anthropology, had to solve an equal riddle with the imagery found in African animism and spiritism, and leaned on the hypothesis that a living person was an aggregate of various independently living entities. This is illustrated by Egyptian literature, for example when a man discusses with his own messenger, ‘Ba’.431

By means of the observation of nature and of the study of legends, each of those entities was given the responsibility for specific faculties of the individual person. The resulting view had a tremendous effect on the history of philosophy and religion.

The seven Egyptian elements, inspired by animism, are the philosophical equivalence of the four Asiatic elements inspired by metallurgy. Both created the most ancient known theories about the essence of the world we inhabit, and about our relation to it. It is nitpicking to discuss if they really carried out scientific work: it is important to acknowledge that there would be no science without them and, of course, without all what came to pass since them.

The Egyptian elements can not be as easily assembled in a consistent overview as the four Asian elements. Not only are the Egyptian documents we know written in different ages, and reflect shifting world-images, it is also nearly impossible to find out which imageries existed together, and where and when they originated. Furthermore, while in India matter and atomism allowed relatively simple schemes of blending and merging, the Egyptians had many complex theories about the interaction of their elements, of which each could manifest a separate ‘psychology’. To try to distil a consistent scheme from this abundance could rather enforce misconceptions than ancient reality. After all, neatly organized thinking is rather found in military discipline than on lively markets. Again we must admit that it was the rich inconsistency and diversity that brought about a tremendous enrichment of thinking ever since. The following seven are the best-known Egyptian elements of life. Once more: they have only an historical relation with what we call a ‘soul’ today. 432

The Akh, (Khu), is a person’s imagination, not to be confused with the ‘mind’ or ‘intellect’. The Akh was related with ‘thought’, ‘memory’ and ‘sight’, because images require light, and imagination shows in the eye. The latter also goes for animal eyes, and therefore also animals had an Akh, as is confirmed by the incidence of mummies of dogs, cats, monkeys, crocodiles, birds, end even insects like praying mantises. The Akh is represented as an Ibis, like Thot, the god of knowledge, who is represented with the head of an Ibis. In Alexandrian times, Thot evolved to the famous Hermes Trismegistus of the Gnostics.

The Khat (Kha) is the body, which needed to be safeguarded by means of mummification. Life can only continue when all elements, including the body, are preserved and brought together by means of tricky and laborious rituals. The body is as much an element as all other parts, and mummification is one of those rituals. If the word ‘soul’ is used to translate the denomination of any other Egyptian element of life, then it is only reasonable to call the body a ‘soul’ too. Another prevalent misconception is that the Kha is the ‘mortal’, ‘perishable’ part of an individual. All elements are mortal and susceptible to decay and death, unless preserved by means of the appropriate, accurately executed rituals. The body does not differ from, nor is it the opposite of, the other elements.

Only when all elements – foundations - of life are present, there is an individually living god, man or animal, but for all three the Khat can successfully be replaced by an artefact like a statue, as long as the correct ceremonial procedures are carried out by those who have the necessary skill and power. This inspired to the conviction, in Roman times, that the Egyptians knew how to make their own gods. In a Hermetic writing quoted by Saint Augustine, Hermes Trismegistus communicates this art to Aesculapius. When Aesculapius asks Hermes if he might perhaps be referring to nothing but dumb statues, he is refuted for his distrust (but see also below the paragraph on the Ka):

“however unbelieving thou art, O Aesculapius, - the statues, animated and full of sensation and spirit, and who do such great and wonderful things, - the statues prescient of future things, and foretelling them by lot, by prophet, by dreams, and many other things, who bring diseases on men and cure them again, giving them joy or sorrow according to their merits. “ 433.

The Ba is the autonomous messenger. It bears a resemblance with the ‘spirit’ or ‘ghost’ of a deceased, who leaves the dead body to meet in dreams or visions the ones left behind. It can visit the Khat to tend it, but can also go on a journey. It is the communicator with the outside world, and as such partakes in the funerary offerings. The Ba was originally represented as a stork, the migrating bird disappearing in heaven each year, still found in contemporary birth stories. In later times the Ba was represented as a human-headed hawk, reminding of the bird-men in the Mesopotamian underworld and in pre-historic Lascaux. Where Egyptian texts address the messenger Ba, English translations usually have ‘soul’, which gives a distorted impression of the original meaning. More related is the ‘free will’ of later dualist world-images, including Christianity and Islam. If in documents like the Papyrus of Ani the Ba is sometimes addressed explicitly, this is rather a consequence of its communication assignment. When the influence of Osiris grew, the latter was sometimes hailed as the Ba of the sun god Ra. In this way Osiris became the privileged messenger of the most powerful god.

The Ka is the personal totem, and the sum (not the seat) of a person’s internal feelings, just like animism explained emotions as animal movements. It is represented as a pair of uplifted arms. Very similar to the Persian Fravashi, not only gods, pharaohs and humans, but also animals, plants, water, stones etc.… could have a Ka. The Horus falcon was the Ka-name of each Pharaoh, which made in fact the falcon his Ka - his totem.434 When Ptah created the gods, the priests of Memphis taught, he did this by bestowing statues – made of wood, stone or clay - with their Ka:

He made their bodies according to their wishes,

Thus the gods entered into their bodies,
Of every wood, every stone, every clay,
Every thing that grows upon him, in which they came to be.
Thus were gathered to him all the gods and their Ka,
Content, united with the Lord of the Two Lands.435

The Ka has contributed to the Greek personal demon, to the Roman genii, to the Islamic jinn, and to the Christian guardian angel.

The Ren is a person’s secret name. Ptah, in the Memphite mythology, which is the most ancient, fathered all things by naming them. Grown ups carried their personal name followed by the name of their father. In the myth of Ra and Isis, Ra speaks:

I will allow myself to be searched through by Isis, and my name shall come forth from my body and go into hers.

This Ren reminds of semen, the giver of life in many African creation myths like those of the Bushongo, the Kalyl and the Dogon. 436 This is stressed even more as the pronounced name results from slime dribbling from Ra’s mouth, of which Isis fashioned a snake. In the ancient Ennead of Heliopolis, Atum creates the ancestors of the gods (Shu, ‘air’ and Tefnut, ‘wetness’) by masturbating.

Other Egyptian elements of being are the person’s shadow (Kahbit), corresponding with the worldwide shamanistic perception of which enough has been said above, and the heart (Ab or Ib). Ones heartbeat was thought to be the audible hammering of Ptah, who continuously sculpted ones life as it developed. The sum of things done and things not done is in the heart, and once eternal afterlife is established, the heart is weighed before Osiris during the Judgement of the Dead. If it is too heavy, it will be devoured and the deceased will die forever.

All those elements were as real and near to educated Egyptians as to us a sparrow, a tumour or a remarkable face. Moods and sickness, the growing of crops and the motions of the heavenly bodies existed within this imagery, which evolved over many centuries and had reached its astonishing complexity a millennium before Greeks learned to write their first words. Egyptian anthropology influenced generations of thinkers around the Mediterranean, and handed to the Persians an imagery that lead to the writings of Aristotle and to the paradigm of body, soul and mind. It was fundamental to all ensuing scientific developments up to our time.437

Scientific progress (medicine, mathematics, chemistry, astronomy)

Egyptian Medicine is known from several documents. The most important are the Ebers papyrus and the Smith papyrus, both dating from the sixteenth century BCE. Part of Egyptian medical knowledge pre-dates Hippocrates by two thousand years. The Ebers papyrus alone contains 877 prescriptions and recipes, including chapters on the diagnosis and treatment of intestinal diseases, eye diseases, skin diseases, parasites, diabetes and pregnancy. Other chapters handle dentistry, birth control and psychiatry. Herbs mentioned include cannabis, opium, myrrh, frankincense, senna, castor oil, fennel, thyme, henna, juniper, linseed and aloe. Herodotus wrote about Egyptian medicine:

The practice of medicine is so divided among them that each physician treats one disease, and no more. There are plenty of physicians everywhere. Some are eye-doctors, some deal with the head, others with the teeth or the belly, and some with hidden maladies...438

Mathematics is known from a number of papyri, of which the most important is a training manual known as the Rhind Papyrus.439 The ancient Egyptians knew linear equations, direct and inverse proportion, arithmetical and geometrical progressions and trigonometry. One of the theorems in the Rhind papyrus is a sphere fitted exactly within a cylinder – the ‘discovery’ Archimedes was so proud of that he had it depicted as his epitaph more than a millennium later.440

Fierce discussions have raged among academics about the capacity of the Egyptians to calculate the number Pi, to define the ‘Pythagorean’ theorem, and to use square roots or irrational numbers. The rage shown by all parties is more interesting than the possible outcome, because even if we will never know exactly which formulations African engineers used, their monuments and artworks proof their capability beyond doubt. The emotional tenacity with which this is denied can only be understood as deliberate or involuntary racism. It is deceiving to centre the discussion solely around the presence of specific formulas in the few, partly damaged papyri that reached our times. As in all cultures, mathematics evolve with commerce and engineering.

Clearly Egyptian mathematics were sufficiently developed and conceptualised to allow a broad variety of sophisticated applications: the involved engineering, logistics and arithmetic are analogous to those that would be mobilized by a building firm in our own century, if it was to obtain an order to conceive, estimate, devise, plan and erect the Amon-Re temple of Karnak, and to organise the yard, the supply, the workforce etc.…without any previous example available. No doubt such an order would even today be regarded as a major challenge. Aristotle, Jamblichus and Proclus all testified that Greek geometry originated in ancient Egypt, and Democritus even boasted that he equalled the Egyptians in geometry. This is consistent with most egyptologists today, who admit that the Greeks learned monument building from Egypt.

Egyptian chemistry consisted foremost of the amalgamation of metals and metal working, of the imitation of precious metals and stones, of dyeing and of similar arts. The most ancient glass-work has been found in Egypt and dates from the fifteenth century BCE.

In the third century CE the Roman emperor Diocletan tried to fight inflation by ordering that all laboratory recipes for gold making should be burned. Ironically the ancient Egyptians did never claim to know gold making, they knew how to gild artworks, which was – in their and our minds - more valuable than gold. Only two late chemical papyri survived the decree of Diocletian, as they happened to be buried in time with their owners in their coffins. Those copies are known now as the Papyrus X of Leyden and the Papyrus Graecus Holmienis. The formulas listed on those papyri influenced Zosimus and other alchemists of the Roman era, and still later this alchemy, partly through Arabic sources, inspired European thinkers like Albertus Magnus, John Dee, Roger Bacon and Isaac Newton.441 Indirectly they contributed to Renaissance and Flemish paintings with their distinctive colours, sharpness and luminescence.442

Astronomy is testified from the twenty-first century BCE on, with the first appearance on coffin lids of the Egyptian decans: thirty four star constellations circling the sky near the equator. The decans are still indicated on all contemporary star maps, and form the origin of the partition of the day in twenty-four hours. The Egyptians marked out, revised and changed many other constellations of the southern and northern hemisphere. Just as the Egyptian Pharaohs were divine, monuments were built on a cosmic scale as amendments of the universe, and the sky was a natural tool for the engineers, who leaned on the stars for the alignment of their construction works.