Edfu

Throughout the 3000years of their recorded history , the ancient Egyptians honored a tradition which asserted that  no site was sacred unless it had been build upon the foundations of an earlier sacred site .It is a tradition which is richly expressed at the great temple of Horus – the solar deity whose mythical parents were the star – Gods Isos ( Sirius ) and Isiris ( Orion ) – which stands on the west bank of the Nile at Edfu in Upper Egypt …

In the marvelously preserved form in which it survives today , this temple is not old , at any rate not by ancient Egyptian standards , since the building of the central structures did not begin until 237 BC and continued sporadically until 57 BC .
Nevertheless , archaeologists take note of the fact that vestiges of far more ancient engineering works are still in evidence at Edfu . The inner and outer enclosure walls , for example , date from the Old Kingdom ( 2575 – 2134 BC ) and later wall running outside the outer one dates from the first Intermediate period ( 2134 – 2040 BC ) There are remains of other structures that have been dated to the Second Intermediate Period ( 1640 – 1532 BC ) and to the New Kingdom ( 1550 – 1070 BC ) .

In short , archaeology tells us that Edfu was continuously maintained and developed as a sacred site over a period of well over 2000 years – from at least the third millennium BC until around the time Of Christ .

Te evidence confirms the essential accuracy of a vast ” library ” of written information that has come down to us in the form of acres of hieroglyph carved on the towering limestone walls of the temple itself .
These ” Edfu Building texts ” repeatedly describe the temple as a copy of an earlier , pristine original , and speak of the various stages of building ans rebuilding that preceded its present form . Where the texts vary from the archaeological records is in the time – frame thet envisage – a time – frame that steps outside all known history and returns us to a forgotten age thousand of yaers before the first Pharaoh of the First Dynasty sat on the throne of Egypt .

As the late Dr Eve Reymond of Liverpool University has shown , it was believed that :

“the constitution of the historical temple was determined by a pre – existing entity of a mythical nature …The temple is , in a strict sense , the con- creating of its Ancestor…” made like unto that which was made in its plans of the beginning ” .

The texts speak of the sanctuary of the historical temple at Edfu as the god´s ” genuine Great Seat of the First Occasion ” and refer again and again to ancient boks and writings which apparently were used to guide the construction of the temple . These documents , had been handed down from the legendary epoch known to the ancient Egyptians as the ” First Occasion ” ( also referred to as the ” First Time ” – ” Zep Tepi ” – the ” early primeval age ” , the ” time of Osiris ” , the ” time of Horus ” , )

It was an epoch, very far away in the past, in which a group of divine beings known sometimes as the ” Seven Sages ” and sometimes as ” the builders gods ” were believed to have settled in Egypt and to have established ” sacred mounds ” at various points along the NIle . These mounds were to serve as the foundations , and to define the orientation , of temples to be build in the future …

More specifically , and the Edfu texts are very clear on this , it was intended that the development og these sites should bring about nothing less that ” the resurrection of the former world of the gods ” – a world that had been uttery destroyed .

We are told that this lost domain , the Homeland of the Primeval Ones ” , was  ” an island which , in part , was covered with reeds and stood in darkness in the midst of the primeval water … ” We are told that ” the creation of the world begun on this island , and that it was here that ” earliest mansions of the gods were founded ” . At a certain point during the primeval age , how-ever . this blessed ” former world ” was overwhelmed , suddenly and totally , by a great flood , the the majority of its ” divine inhabitants ” were drowned and the ” masions of the gods were inundated ” .

The notion that a temple – or a former world – might be reborn seems strange to us today , since our civilization is accustomed to think of time in a linear rather that in a cyclical fashion .But in ancient Egypt the image of time as an eternal serpent , endlessly swallowing its own tail , conditioned all thought about the past , present and future .  For this reason it was not difficult for people to believe that every living , conscious soul , and every characteristic ” epoch ” of the earth , would return again and again into existence .
Indeed , temples themselves were considered to be living beings , all of which were descended from a common ancestor – ” a temple that once really existed “as Reymond comments , ” in the dim past of pre dynastic Egypt ” . She adds :

The Edfu tradition , and so perhaps the tradition od many other temples , evidently looked on this far – distant temple as the work of the gods themselves in which the creation of the Earth was completed .
It is entirely consistent with the cyclical tone – frame of Edfu texts that the  Far-Distant temple to which Raymond refers should itself have been seen as a copy of an even earlier architecture .

When the goods begin to build it , we are told , theu modelled it upon a place ” that was believed to have existed before the world was created ” .
This place was called the Duat – N – Ba , literally the   ” Netherworld of the Soul ” .

~ by vittidk on May 23, 2009.