A HIGHLY SPECULATIVE THEORY FOR THE ORIGIN AND MEANING OF THE EYE OF HORUS IN EGYPTIAN TEXTS Jane B.

Sellers, Author of Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt Penguin, 1992 The king was born in the Watery Abyss, Before the heaven came into being, Before the earth came into being, Before the firmament came into being, Before strife ever existed. Before that fear came into being. Which arose on account of The Eye of Horus. Any reading of the writings of the ancient Egyptians will eventually lead to the important questionWhat were these ancient people talking about when they spoke of the Eye of Horus? Which they do, continuously, and most mysteriously. James Henry Breasted, a giant in the early field of Egyptology, considered the quest for the understanding of the Eyes meaning as crucial to understanding this ancient religion. Others, such as R.T. Rundle Clark, lecturer on Egyptian language and history at Birmingham University, England had stated in Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt that the Eye is the key to the Egyptian religion. Yet, in the many decades since the hieroglyphs were first translated, most serious scholars have given the Eye limited, if any, attention. The probable reason for this is that the many allusions to the Eye are so mystifying and so various that any explanation lacks a truly satisfying origin, an origin that would fit all of the many descriptions in the ancient texts. The descriptions of the Eye are manyand are found in writings stretching from 2500 BC, the time of The Pyramid Texts, the oldest body of religious texts ever found, to the end of the Roman Period 396 AD, when the last known hieroglyphic writing was a graffiti inscribed at Philae. After that, this ancient language ceased to be used or understood replaced by Greek, then Latin, then Arabic. The Coffin Texts are dated to the First Intermediate Period, c. 2100 BC, and many others are from the New Kingdom, c.1570-1070 BC. The New Kingdom writings include The Egyptian Book of the Dead, The Litany of Re, The Book of the Caverns, The Book of the Gates, The Book of the Amduat, and The Chester Beatty Papyrus. Later writings from the Ptolemaic Period, c.304-30 BC. include The Songs (or Lamentations) of Isis and Nephthys. The attempt will be made to correlate references in these texts with one of natures greatest spectacles, a spectacle that would have been a terrifying mystery to its early viewers at the very threshold of myth; a mystery that I am speculating led to the worlds first religious stories, and, in time, a mystery that developed into a complete religious system.

The primary Egyptian story told, though certainly not in any one coherent account, is the story of Osiris. Osiris was slain by his brother, Seth, (sometimes Seth was the nephew of Osiris). Horus, Osiriss son, avenges his father in a battle with Seth in which Horuss Eye and Seths testicles are torn out. (In some accounts it is the two Eyes of Horus and Seths testicles are not mentioned.) The sacrificed Eye falls to the opposite side of the battle field, sometimes translated as The Winding Waterwayand sometimes as The Lake of the Ka, in order to protect it(Which of course, would indicate that there was only One eye, one eye that appeared twice. (Obviously whatever the event was it was open to multiple interpretations). Before we continue, let me state my theory. I am suggesting that the ancient Egyptians were attempting, in their varied references to this story, to explain the obliteration of the sun, one of their major gods, during a total solar eclipse, but especially that part of a solar eclipse greeted by the loudest shouts from modern day eclipse chasers. This particular phenomenon is called by astronomers The Diamond Ring Effect.

But let us start with the beginning of this awe inspiring celestial event. The darkening of the sun disk most certainly would have demanded an explanation. In the sky was their sun god and his bright countenance was slowly being overtaken with a dreadfully ominous blackness. What Then is It? The day it is of the fighting of Horus with Seth, Throwing excrement in the face of Horus. Horus too, is a sun godor will become oneand Seth is the god blamed for all evil eventshere, I am contending, he is the personification of darkness. But this darkness is also open to many interpretations by the creative Egyptian.

What Then is This? It is the blood that flowed from the phallus of Re when he undertook to mutilate himself. The partial phase lasts about an hour, sometimes slightly longer. Slowly the darkness becomes more noticeable, then in the final seconds of partiality, the sun is swiftly obliterated and, if we are lucky, we will see a phenomenon called Bailys Beads. As totality begins, light from the corona streams through valleys seen on the periphery of the moon. For a brief instant this causes a row of small beads of light on the edge of the darkened disk which astronomers call Bailys Beads. (They are named after the 18 th century astronomer, Francis Baily, the eclipse watcher who first drew attention to them.) The final bead seems to explode in size and emerge as one huge ball of lightor Stone of Brightness or Diamond Ringwith the coronas slim band of light forming the rings band around the back of the shining diamond. Behold me, men and gods! Set the fear of me and create awe of me on that plateau of the Stone of Brightness. I have come into being as the Lady of Glorious Appearings. Or we read: Who Then is It? Those above their braziersIt is, The image of the Eye of Re, Together with the image of the Eye of Horus The Egyptian Coffin Texts exclaim: Look with your faces, O Primeval Ancestors upon this spirit who comes today, Taking the form of a burst of light. Coming from the Isle of Fire Behold, the Eye will be stronger than all the gods! Sometimes, for a brief second, this awesome image seems to obliterate the whole of the black sun. The ball of light may last just a second, or hang on the edge of the eclipsed sun for many secondsdepending on the depth of the valley and the path of the moon. During the 1998 eclipse in the Caribbean the Diamond Ring was seen for an amazing 12 seconds: 12 seconds of awe and wonder for most, and 12 seconds of high emotionality for all. Anyone who has witnessed this will understand how difficult it is to convey the sense of wonder that this phenomenon engenders. Ancient accounts declare: Come out, semen of Horus!Then it came out as a Golden sun Disk on the head of Seth. .The sky is Enchanted, The earth is enchanted. A friend, awestruck by the Diamond Ring Effect, whispered: It is like the Eye of God.

Editor in chief Leif Robinson adds, Even the best eclipse photography and videotapes are pale reflections of the event, and author Annie Dillard writes, The lenses of telescopes and cameras can no more cover the breadth and scale of the visual array than language can cover the breadth and simultaneity of internal experience. After viewing totality on July 11, 1991, amateur astronomer Barry Slavin wrote: I hardly know what I did. My carefully laid plans were in ruins. I could not take my eyes off that terrible wonderful thing there in the sky over our heads.It was every artists conception of totality, but more brilliant, delicate, and finely etched than I could have ever imagined. The editors of the magazine Sky and Telescope followed this quote with the comment: In truth, we see totality not with our eyes but with our souls. After the first Diamond Ring Effect, the corona flashes into view, a marvelous spectacle of pearly colored streamers of light. Coronas are seen in all directions around the eclipse sundiffering in shape from eclipse to eclipse. This is the flame which shines against you, which surrounds Re, which clings about him so that the Lord of the Storm (Seth) may fear the barge of Re. shine! Holy flame! Totality can last less than a minute or as much as seven minutes, 31 seconds. The total eclipse of June 30th, 1973, which was my first experience of the Diamond Ring, reached a maximum duration of 7 minutes and 3 seconds in the skies over Africa. Sealed is that thing which is in darkness,A flame surrounds it; it contains this efflux of Osiris, placed in Rosetau. He is hidden since he fell down into it. Sometimes, just before totality, while a sliver of the sun is still visible, thin waves of light and dark can be seen moving on light colored surfaces on the earthsuch as the sands of the desert. These are called shadow bands and are the result of distortions of sunlight by the atmosphere of the earth. From The Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys we read: Come thou to me quickly, since I desire to see thy face after not having seen thy face. Darkness is here for us in my sight even while Re is in the sky. The sky has merged in the earth and a shadow is made in the earth today. The Diamond Ring is seen as a great ball of light twiceonce going into totality, and again, coming out, signaling the end of the conflict. The second flash always appears on the opposite side of the blackened sun from where it first appeared.

Your son Horus has smitten him, he has wrested his Eye from him and has given it to you; you have a soul by means of it, you have power by means of it at the head of the spirits. Horus has cried out because of his Eye, Seth has cried out because of his testicles and there leaps up the Eye of Horus, who had fallen on yonder side of the Winding Waterway, so that it may protect itself from Seth. It is being suggested that the two elements crowning the head of Egypts rulers were symbolic of the two Diamond Ring Effects crowning the head of the eclipsed sun. Certainly the Egyptians equated the Two Eyes with the headdress of their rulers. This headdress, or uraeus, consisted of a cobra, which symbolized Edjo, the goddess of Lower Egypt, and a vulture, which represented Nekhbet, the goddess of Upper Egypt. The eye has issued from your head as the Upper Egyptian crown, Great-of-Magic; The Eye has issued from your head as the Lower Egyptian crown, Great-of-Magic. Now, the diadem found on the mummy of Tuthankhamun consisted of both the cobra and the vulture-but because many kings are represented wearing a head-dress with only the cobra uraeus represented, some scholars have speculated that the vulture was mainly worn by queens. (this seems to hold true, at least in the New Kingdom). It has been widely accepted that the cobra was chosen as a symbol of the power of death, but what of the vulture?. Why was the companion of the cobra not a scorpion? Both strike and have the power to bring destruction. But it is known that the ancient religion of the Egyptians had two main concerns: Death and re-birth. Therefore, the correct question should be How can the vulture be, in any way. a symbol of life? Egyptians were keen observers of nature and saw death and re-birth in a myriad of events. They saw it in the seasons of the heavens, they saw it in the cycles of plant life, they saw it in the transformation of threshed grain into baked bread. They fervently believed that death was followed by life. This poignant passage is from The Pyramid Texts: You sleep that you may wake, You die that you may live. They most surely would have observed that the female vulture has a very important role to play when her offspring is born. She strikes her egg with her sharp beak and with a sudden movement, a new vulture is born. It could, by the imaginative Egyptian, be compared to the sudden appearance of the ball of light on the eclipsed sun. The ancient texts seem to be equating the appearance of the Eye with the birth of a new sun god: the birth of a new Horus The choice of the vulture could lie precisely in this new birth aspect . Such an interpretation would seem to explain why the vulture diadem is usually shown as worn by the royal female rather than by the king. Sir Allen Gardiner, author of the widely used text book, Egyptian Grammar, notes that due to an obscure reason, the hieroglyphs that spell out mother include the glyph that depicts the vulture.

In the Pyramid Texts we read: Yours is rebirth in the nest of Thoth within the Field of Tamariskbecause Osiris the king is my brother whojudged the rivals, who parted the combatants, who will split your heads, you godsBehold he is born; behold he is knit together; behold he is in beingBehold, the King has broken the egg. Wherewith can the King be made to fly up? or Mut, the resplendent serpent who wound herself around Re and gave birth to him as Khonsu. The Book of the Two Ways. (Khonsu, of course, occupies the same familial position in the New Kingdom triad of Amun-Re, Mut, and Khonsu, as that of Horus with Osiris and Isis.) The Egyptian Coffin Text. c.2100 BC also relates the story, again telling us that Horusson-of-Isis has inherited Osiris position and more tellingly, he has inherited the sky. He has become lord of the bark and he has inherited the sky. He has become the double of the Lord of All since he entered into it, and it is this Horus-son-of-Isis who rules all the skies and gods who are in them And from the much older Pyramid Texts: Verily his son Horus is seated upon the Throne of the dweller in the Double Lake of Fire, as his heir. or a subsequent story to explain an eclipse is told in this way: On the Crest of That mountain is a Snake, He whose Consuming Fire is within him Is his name. Then after mid-day he will turn his eye against Re, that a stoppage will take place in the bark and great amazement among the sailorsthen Suty will hurl a spear of metal against him and cause him to disgorge all that he has swallowed. This, of course, is a different story entirely, but I am suggesting that it is another attempt to explain the happening in the sky, a happening that would have repeated itself over the many millennia of Egypts history. You will also have noticed that this quote introduces a new element into the story, that of a spear. The flame maketh thine enemies to fall, and thine Eye overthroweth the fiends, and it driveth its spear through the sky into the serpent fiend, and maketh it to vomit that which it had swallowed. It can, if you will, be interpreted as instrument bringing about re-birth, similar to the purpose of the adze, the instrument used in The Ritual of the Opening of the Mouth. This

action has been interpreted as a symbolic means to enable the dead to partake in the ritual meals, meals that are believed to magically take the form of Horuss sacrificed Eye, the Eye that gives the dead a soul; that gives the dead eternal life. Osiris Unastake the Eye of Horus, which was snatched from Seth, which was rescued for thee, that thou mayest open thy mouth with it! Wine, a white jar. James Henry Breasted wrote: The Eye became the symbol of all sacrifice, every gift or offering might be called a Horus-Eye, especially offered to the dead. In this ancient ceremony an adze is touched to the mouth of the mummified dead. In paintings on the walls of the Temple of Hathor at Denderah the mouth of the dead is touched with a spear. Clearly indicated in the Denderah paintings, the spear has reanimated the kingand a spear can cause a spark and of course, we still speak of The Spark of Life. But if writings such as these are to be believed to be attempts to explain and calm the fright and terror brought about by this awesome happening in the sky, are there pictorial examples? We believe there are many. It is in the tomb of Ramesses VI that we find scenes from The Book of What is in the Netherworld. By the time of this pharaoh, the historical Egyptians had, most certainly, witnessed more than one total eclipse. This of course would mean that the story of the conflict between Horus and Seth had already been affixed to a much earlier happening.

The inscription for this scene reads: These gods are like thisthey are in the two sanctuaries of the disc, sanctuaries of his births, and of his mysteries: the souls of Re speaks on his disc, giving orders among whom she is, about the mysteries of the one on highhe comes out, his two arms having become two offspring of Khepri, (the scarab god, thought to personify the morning sun) the one satisfied with his two wings; this great god passeswhile they praise his heatthe great god makes his transformationsthen darkness covers this. Or these: The first is titled The One Being Born.The second bears the inscription He Becomes the Great Khephri (Khephri was a god associated with the scarab beetle who lays its eggs in a ball of dung from which new life emerged.

In conclusion, here are two pieces of information given by Plutarch. Plutarch tells us that to commemorate the day called the Burial of Osiris the Egyptian would fashion a crescent shaped piece of wood. They did this because the moon, when it comes near to the sun, becomes crescent shaped and disappears. Now we certainly know that the moon disappears only when it sets. This commemoration can only be for an eclipse. Plutarch further relates that on the thirtieth day of the Egyptian month of Epiphi (the Egyptians) celebrate the birthday of The Eyes of Horus . He explains that this is at the

time when the moon and sun are in a perfectly straight line. Today we call this straight line configuration syzygy and it always results in a solar or lunar eclipse. If the Egyptian religious concerns originated in eclipses of the sun, where does this fit with the other important stories of their religion? I am speaking especially of the pictorial representations of the Eye of Horus being taken down below the horizon, into the Netherworld.

By any stretch of the imagination , this cannot be an eclipse image, but the Egyptians were exceedingly adept with supplying, not only multiple stories for enigmatic events, and even multiple signs for the same sound, but I believe, for supplying the same name, The Eye of Horus, for a similar, but different image in nature. This image was connected with the other part of their great myth. Horus, having lost his eye, rescued it and took it down to the Netherworld and presented it to his dead father, Osiris. In so doing he gave Osiris eternal lifeand by the symbolic repetition of this act in burial rituals, insured all Egyptians, eternal life. At the time that Egypts religion was taking its early form, a time lost in the mists of prehistory, I have speculated that Egyptians watched the heliacal rising of Aldebaran, bright eye of the constellation Taurus, for the same purpose that the Egyptians in historical times watched the first rising of Siriusas a bench mark for their developing calendar.

The first rising of a star after its seasonal absence is always a rising on the eastern horizon just before dawn. By 4867 BC Aldebaran had ceased to flash forth as far south as Badari, a village dated to 5000 BC. Dr. John A. Eddy, a solar physicist, but also the author of many papers on the history of astronomy, has spent much time investigating ancient astronomies, especially that of the Plains Indian. He has investigated the heliacal rising of Aldebaran, one of the brightest stars in the sky, and written of its possible function of heralding the summer solstice sunrise at the Big Horn Medicine Wheel, a structure dated to 200 to 400 years ago. About an hour before dawn, Aldebaran would rise. The pre-dawn sky would already be blue, and all the dim stars would be gone. Indeed, the coming sun would be brightening the sky so rapidly that on this particular day Aldebaran would flash out like a beacon near the horizon, lasting only a matter of minutes before disappearing in the predawn glare. That phenomenon would make this day a distinctive one, for on the previous day .Aldebaran would not have been seen at all (the suns light would have masked it) and on the day after it would have persisted far longer. In short, watching for Aldebarans flash at dawn would have given a precise indication of the solstice, accurate within a day or two. It is obvious that the observable result of the precession is change, for in historic times, the priests of ancient Egypt watched for the first rising of Sirius, not Aldebaran, for the herald for the summer solstice. By historical times. Precession had moved Sirius into the important position that marked the date of equal periods of night and day and proclaimed, with varying degrees of accuracy, the flooding of the Nile. (Nowadays, precession has changed the observation of the first appearance of Sirius to early August at Cairo.) It is my belief however, that very early in pre-dynastic Egypts history, the year was marked by the appearance of Orion, the most recognizable group of stars in the heavens. This would have been, for a few centuries, a benchmark for the spring equinox, the date of equal hours of dark and lightor perhaps just an occasion for celebrating life over deathuntil precession delayed the last stars of this bright constellation from appearing at its proper time. Which star group might have they decided to award Sahu-Orions position? The Pyramid Texts tell us: Sahu voyages to heaven with his son Horus at his fingertips, that he may nurture him and cause him to appear in glory as a good god in the heavens. The group of stars at Orions fingertips is of course, The Hyades, head of Taurus, our bull, and distinguished by a bright star that we could call the Eye of Taurus. That star is Aldebaran. The star that precession brought into view next on this important date.. Horus would inherit the throne of Osiris after a lengthy trial, a trial that is another important piece in the investigation into the origins of this religion, but space limits this

complex discussion here. I will only point out that although eclipses of the sun are said to occur over a given spot, on average, only every 300 years or so, there can be, have been, and will be, exceptions. The Chester Beatty account of the trial of Horus and Seth tell of eighty years of contendings between the two gods, consisting of four differing battles on four different fields of conflictbut all, of course, experienced somewhere in Egypt. In the United States, six (!) total eclipses will be visible in a much shorter perioda nineteen year stretch from 2234 AD through 2263 AD. The small island of New Guinea experienced consecutive total solar eclipses in 1983 and 84. We can be certain that four total eclipses occurring in a time span of eighty years would make an indelible impression on Egypts early inhabitants. In fact, although accuracy concerning the path of ancient eclipses is impossible, computer predictions have speculated just such a period over Egypt between 4867 B.C. and 4787 B.C. This was a period that also marked the end of a Cosmic Age. In 4868 B.C. southern skywatchers at the pre-dynastic settlement of Badari, would have sighted Aldebarans first rising (a rising after its seasonal absence) on the day of equal light and darkness (the spring equinox) for the last time. (Aldebaran is the brightest star in the constellation Taurus.) But to continue: If we imagine that we are an inhabitant of ancient Badari, a predynastic settlement site in Upper Egypt dated to 5000 BC, we might observe that on the morning of equinox sunrise, in about 4867 BC, the bright star Aldebaran would fail to return as usual after its seasonal absence from the sky. For centuries it had done so on this special date but now it inexplicably remained below the horizon. If used as a marker for some kind of calendar, this would have been another mystery for early Egyptians to ponder. How to explain this backward movement (it is backward, or eastward, for each marker star rises ever laterdays, then months later, as the centuries move on. How to quell the fear? The second part of the Egyptian story of Osiris, Horus, and the Eye of Horus tells of Horus retrieving his sacrificed Eye and taking it below the horizon down into the Netherworld. There he presents it to his father, Osiris. I would like to suggest that it was at an early date that Egypt changed from a stellar religion to a solar one because of such precessionally changed skies. The indisputable fact was that the stars had been slowly subject to change, and perhaps, might continue to change.(Which of course, they would.). But are we certain the Aldebaran can be equated with the Eye of Horus? In Volume III of Otto Neugebauers Egyptian Astronomical Texts., Decans, Planets, Constellations and Zodiacs, Neugebauer has examined the zodiacs and the horoscopes that were constructed late in Egypts history. After extensive study he unequivocally equates specific decans with specific zodiacal signs. Indeed, it was his conviction that there could be no question of the correctness of these equations. Decans originated much earlier than the zodiacs and had a close relationship with actual stars of the constellations that traveled on roughly the same path as the sun. What

changed is that these decans were now allocated exactly 10o which greatly facilitated astrological combinations. Probably because of this use, somewhere, and at some time, two lists were constructed, one called the Seti IB family of transit decans, which Neugebauer states as surely based on astronomical observation, the other, the Tanis family. What Neugebauer attempted was to trace the development of the location of decanal names in the Egyptian zodiacs. Other lists he consulted included an elaborate Papyrus London 98. What is of importance here is that from all of these sources a decan named rt is always associated with the constellation Taurus. On the zodiacs and in horoscopes, decans are aspects of specific deities, (as they were in the earlier Star Clocks), and the Eye of Horus is given deity status. Furthermore, on three of the four zodiacs that Neugebauer studied, Senmut, Senmut B, and Seti IC, the deity of rt is named the Eye of Horus. I am suggesting that pictorial representations of the Horus-Hawk, clearly with his head descending below the horizon, and the Eye, a different shaped Eye than the teared eye depicted as offerings, is a symbolic rendering of another inexplicable event in nature. It is an attempt to explain the backward direction of this magnificent star, the second brightest star in the heavens. I also believe that this precessionally caused loss occurred close to the time of a total solar eclipse. I believe that rt, Aldebaran, the Eye of Horus and the Diamond Ring Effect were interrelated in the mind of the ancient Egyptian. It was an interrelatedness that came about from a sequence of events observed by the pre-dynastic inhabitants of settlements along the Nile, events of such unusualness that they gave rise to the primary stories of their religion, a religion that would survive for millennia.But of course, there remain still difficulties with this scenario. If it is accepted that the Eye of Horus originated as the Diamond Ring Effect, and if one recalls the Egyptian edict that the appearance of the Eye signals the birth of a new Horus, the logical outcome of this acceptance is to consider that any total eclipse of the sun over Egypt should have meant the end of one kings rule and the beginning of a new. (Or perhaps only over the kings capital, or wherever the king was at that moment.) The pharaoh ruled as the Living Horus but there was also that puzzling entity, the Apis Bull, originally associated with Osiris but who was indeed a manifestation of the Living Horus. Plutarch recounts that this bull was chosen for its coloring of black with a white forehead mark and was put to death after a prescribed length of time, or perhaps on a specific date. Could the Apis have been put to death in place of a ruling Pharaoh who also ruled as Horus? Much later in Egypts history the Greeks seem to have been the ones who fused the two names, Osiris and Apis, and the cult of Serapis in Egypt became widespread under the Ptolemies. Plutarch, in explaining the name, has this to say:

Serapis being none other than that common name by which all those are called who have thus changed their nature, as is well known by those who are initiated into the mysteries of Osiris. Plutarch also asserts: Much more tolerable is the opinion of those who would derive the name Serapis from words which in the Greek language import this meaning: One Who First Impelled and gave Motion to the Universe. The discernment of clues pointing to the ancient concern with the movements of the stars; in particular, the movement caused by the precession, should not be difficult . But I have introduced much more than I intended and it is sufficient to state that I more fully addressed the subject of the origins of the Egyptian religious beliefs in Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt, originally published by Penguin, and now available at Lulu.com and Amazon.com. .