Crete, the Philistines and the Biblical Exodus

 

 

 

“In fact, the very name “Palestine” is directly responsive to Minoan Crete for it derives from the word “Philistine” which is the name given to a particular group of people present in the area by the emerging Hebrews, who themselves were operative in Palestine from about 1400 BC onwards”.

 

Alan Butler and Stephen Dafoe

 

 

 

Alan Butler and Stephen Dafoe tell, in their book The Knights Templar Revealed (Magpie Books, London, 2006), of the massive impact upon Crete of the Thera (Santorini) eruption (pp. 21-22):

 

Archaeology shows the absolute devastation that followed on Crete, with huge structures literally knocked flat by the force of the initial explosion and by the tidal waves that followed it. In a very short period of time, rule of Crete passed into the hands of the Mycenaean civilisation. Much of the very fertile land in the north of the island would have been rendered unusable for at least a decade and it is considered likely that a vast exodus of Cretans took place at this time.

 

It may or may not be a coincidence that this period matches very neatly the sudden cessation of megalithic building further west. It is a fact that weather patterns changed markedly around the time of the Thera eruption, together with a suspected plague, or series of plagues that probably decimated populations across the whole body of Europe. … the forced migration of a large proportion of the Minoan people does seem to have affected many areas surrounding Crete, not least of all the Palestine coast of the Levant. In fact, the very name “Palestine” is directly responsive to Minoan Crete for it derives from the word “Philistine” which is the name given to a particular group of people present in the area by the emerging Hebrews, who themselves were operative in Palestine from about 1400 BC onwards. 

 

….

 

It is clear that the Hebrews knew the Philistines to be of Cretan origins and doubtless they represented the remnant of the Minoan civilisation that had fled from Crete either as a result of the Thera eruption or ahead of the invading Mycenaeans. In the Old Testament we find, in the Book of Amos chapter 9, verse 7:

 

Are ye not as children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel? saith the Lord. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt? And the Philistines from Caphtor (Crete) and the Syrians from Kir?

 

On p. 25, the authors note: “The effect of the Minoans, in their alter ego as the Philistines, upon the area of the Levant was probably quite significant in the years immediately after the Santorini eruption”.

 

 

Triplicating woman ruler Khentkaus

 

Part One:

Her 6^th and 12^th dynasty manifestations

 

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

What happens when kingdoms, rulers and dynasties are set out in a ‘single file’ fashion, instead of being recognised as, in some cases, contemporaneous, is that rulers become duplicated and, hence, tombs, pyramids and sun temples, and so on, attributed to various ones, go missing.

See e.g. my article:

 

Missing old Egyptian tombs and temples

 

https://www.academia.edu/41538887/Missing_old_Egyptian_tombs_and_temples

 

This is not because these are missing in reality, but simply because they have already been accounted for in the case of a ruler under his/her other name, in a differently numbered dynasty.

 

However, with my revision of dynasties as presented in, for e.g., my recent:

 

From Genesis to Hernán Cortés. Volume Fourteen: Two Dynastic Kings

 

https://www.academia.edu/41617369/From_Genesis_to_Hern%C3%A1n_Cort%C3%A9s._Volume_Fourteen_Two_Dynastic_Kings

 

these ‘missing links’ can be satisfactorily accounted for.

 

According to an historical scenario that I am building up around the biblical prophet, Moses, the great man’s forty years of life in Egypt (before his exile to Midian) were spanned by only two powerful dynastic male rulers, with a woman-ruler rounding off the dynasty - presumably due to the then lack of male heirs.

Women rulers in Egypt, being scarce - and now even scarcer, due to my revision - can be chronologically most useful. For three of my four re-aligned-as-contemporaneous dynasties, the Fourth, Fifth and the Twelfth, have a powerful woman-ruler, or, in the case of Khentkaus (Khentkawes), Fourth Dynasty, at least a most significant queen who possibly ruled.

 

I can only conclude, in the context of my revision, that these supposedly three mighty women, Khentkaus (Fourth), Nitocris (Sixth), and Sobekneferu(re) (Twelfth), constitute the one woman-ruler triplicated.

And hence arise shocks and problems (e.g., the famous “Khentkaus Problem”), “amazement and even sensation” (see Part Two) for Egyptologists, as well as those exasperating anomalies of missing buildings to which I have alluded above.   

 

N. Grimal, writing about Nitocris last ruler of the Sixth Dynasty (A History of Ancient Egypt), tells of her yet to be discovered pyramid (p. 128): “Nitocris is the only genuine instance of a female ruler in the Old Kingdom, but unfortunately the pyramid that she must surely have been entitled to build has not yet been discovered”.

 

Yet there is another “instance” of an Old Kingdom female ruler, and that is Khentkaus.

Better to say, I think, that there was only one female ruler during Egypt’s Old-Middle Kingdom period.

The semi-legendary and shadowy figure of Nitocris needs to be filled out with her more substantial alter egos in Khentkaus and Sobekneferu(re).  

Grimal (on p. 89) tells of how archaeologically insubstantial Nitocris is:

 

….Queen Nitocris … according to Manetho was the last Sixth Dynasty ruler. The Turin Canon lists Nitocris right after Merenre II, describing her as the ‘King of Upper and Lower Egypt’. This woman, whose fame grew in the Ptolemaic period, in the guise of the legendary Rhodopis, courtesan and mythical builder of the third pyramid at Giza … was the first known queen to exercise political power over Egypt. …. Unfortunately no archaeological evidence has survived from her reign. ….

 

On p. 171, Grimal, offering a possible reason for the emergence of the woman ruler, Sobekneferu(re), at the end of the Twelfth Dynasty, likens the situation to that at the end of the Sixth Dynasty:   

 

The excessive length of the reigns of Sesostris III and Ammenemes III (about fifty years each) had led to various successional problems. This situation perhaps explains why, just as in the late Sixth Dynasty, another [sic] queen rose to power: Sobkneferu. …. She was described in her titulature, for the first time in Egyptian history [sic], as a woman-pharaoh.

 

Whist the conventional history and archaeology has failed to ‘triplicate’ as it ought to have (i) Khentkaus, as (ii) Nitocris, and as (iii) Sobekneferu(re), it has, unfortunately, managed – as we shall find in Part Two – to triplicate Khentkaus herself into I, II and III.  

Part Two: Khentkaus I, II and III

 

“Queen Khentkaus …. In almost every respect she is surrounded by mystery,

beginning with her origins and ending with her unusual tomb”.

 

 

Here I am following the intriguing discussion of Khentkaus as provided by Miroslav Verner, in his book, Abusir: The Necropolis of the Sons of the Sun (2017).

The “obscure and confused period which set in at the end of the Fourth Dynasty”, to which Verner will refer, is due in large part, I believe, to the failure to fill out the period with the other portions of contemporaneous Egyptian history that we considered in Part One.  

 

P. 91 Three Royal Mothers Named Khentkaus.

….

But, beside Shepesekaf, there was yet another figure who came to the fore during the obscure and confused period which set in at the end of the Fourth Dynasty. This figure was Queen Khentkaus. In almost every respect she is surrounded by mystery, beginning with her origins and ending with her unusual tomb.

 

P. 95

 

Among the many extraordinary discoveries from Khentkaus’ tomb complex in Giza, one in particular produced amazement and even a sensation.

This was the inscription on a fragment of the granite reading “Mother of two kings of Upper and Lower Egypt, daughter of the god, every good thing she orders is done for her, Khentkaus”. The inscription contained the never before documented title of a queen, and its discovery immediately raised a fundamental controversy amongst archaeologists, since, from a purely grammatical point of view, two translations … were possible …. King of Upper and Lower Egypt, and mother of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt.

 

Pp. 99-100

 

All the available evidence concerning the titulary of Khentkaus and the form and location of her tomb in the royal cemetery in Giza clearly suggests that she not only belonged to the royal line buried there but that, at the end of the Fourth Dynasty, she played a very important role in dynastic politics …. Importantly, in the vicinity of Khentkaus’ tomb were found several artifacts bearing the name of King Khafre which may indirectly suggest a closer relationship …. between the two personalities. This possibility seems to be supported by an (intrusive?) fragment of a stone stela, discovered in the adjacent building abutting Menkaure’s valley temple, with a damaged hieroglyphic inscription reading “[beloved of] her father, king’s daughter… kau”. According to some Egyptologists, the inscription might refer to Khentkaus and suggest that she could have been a king’s daughter. ….

… The confusing array of different but incomplete historical sources and theories attempting to interpret them finally earned the question its own telling title in Egyptological literature: the ‘Khentkaus problem’.

 

Khentkaus II

 

While Miroslav Verner will take the conventional line that centuries separated the Fourth from the Sixth Dynasty, my view is that ‘they’ were one and the same dynasty.

 

P. 105

The mortuary cult of Queen Khentkaus II lasted … for about two centuries up until the end of the Sixth Dynasty.

 

P. 106

 

The most significant result of the excavation of the pyramid complex of Khentkaus at Abusir was the surprising discovery that there were two different royal mothers bearing the same name as Khentkaus and the same unusual title “Mother of the two kings of Upper and Lower Egypt”, each of them enjoying high esteem and a high-level cult at the place of her burial – Khentkaus I in Giza and Khentkaus II in Abusir.

 

Khentkaus III

 

P. 108

 

Quite recently a third Fifth Dynasty queen named Khentkaus was discovered in Abusir. ….

 

Crete aligned with Egypt

Philistines of Crete

 

Part Two:

Crete aligned with Egypt

 

 

 

 

“The wealth of pottery, sculpture and jewellery that has been found in Crete was

so old that no one could accurately date it, according to Professor [Stylianos] Alexiou.

So many Minoan artefacts are in Egypt that experts are best able to date Cretan finds

by comparing them to Egyptian ones, whose chronology is better understood”.

 

Gavin Menzies

 

 

 

Gavin Menzies (The Lost Empire of Atlantis: History's Greatest Mystery Revealed (HarperCollins, 2011), writing of the “highly prized”, distinctive Cretan pottery (pp. 41-44), will tell of how Egyptian chronology is the yardstick for dating Cretan pottery:

 

The pottery told us loud and clearly that the Minoans [sic] had traded much more than foodstuffs and olive oil. The Kamares designs are dramatic, a modern-looking black and red, and the pottery was first excavated here [Kamares cave] in the early 1900’s.

 

 

I’d learned by now it had been highly prized across the entire Mediterranean. It has been found across the Levant and Mesopotamia, from Hazor and Ashkelon in Israel to Beirut and Byblos in Lebanon and the ancient Canaanite city of Ugarit, near what is now the sea-town of Ras-Shamra in modern-day Syria. Judging by the finds in Egyptian tombs and elsewhere across the region, the Minoan skill in art seems to have given the Minoans of ancient Crete a free pass to the glamour, science and civilisation of the two most advanced cultures of the Early Bronze Age, Mesopotamia and Egypt.

 

In the 14^th century B.C., said Professor [Stylianos] Alexiou, the bounty of Crete – its skilled metal-work, olive oil, pottery, saffron and so on – was exchanged as gifts between Mediterranean rulers. In return, the Egyptians sent exotica: gold, ivory, cloth and stone vessels containing perfumes.

 

The wealth of pottery, sculpture and jewellery that has been found in Crete was so old that no one could accurately date it, according to Professor Alexiou. So many Minoan artefacts are in Egypt that experts are best able to date Cretan finds by comparing them to Egyptian ones, whose chronology is better understood.

 

 

Damien Mackey’s comment: Whilst the following quote from professor Alexiou will show how the successive palatial periods of Cretan history are to be aligned with Egypt, on the basis of pottery finds, the problem is that Egyptian dynastic history itself has not been properly dated, meaning that, for instance, Cretan pottery synchronous with the era of pharaoh Thutmose [Thutmosis] III of 18^th dynasty Egypt, i.e., Neo-Palatial Cretan, will be dated about 500 years earlier than it should be.

 

According to Professor [Stylianos] Alexiou:

 

The absolute date in years of the various Minoan periods is based on synchronisms with ancient Egypt, where the chronology is adequately known [sic] thanks to the survival of inscriptions. Thus the [Cretan] Proto Palatial Period [2000-1700 BC] is thought to be roughly contemporary with the [Egyptian] XIIth dynasty [1991-1783 BC] because fragments of [Cretan] Kamares pottery attributed to Middle Minoan II [c. 1800 BC] have been found at Kahun in Egypt in the habitation refuses of a settlement found in the occasion of the erection of the royal pyramids of this [XIIth: 1991-1783 BC] dynasty. One Kamares vase was also found in a contemporary tomb at Abydos [Egypt - Valley of the Kings]. The beginning of the Neo Palatial period [Crete -1700 BC] must coincide with the Hyksos epoch [1640-1550] since the lid of a stone vessel bearing the cartouche of the Hyksos Pharaoh Khyan was discovered in Middle Minoan III [c. 1700-1600 BC] levels at Knossos [Crete]. Equally the subsequent Neo-Palatial Cretan period [1700-1400 BC] falls within the chronological limits of the new kingdom with particular reference to the Egyptian] XVIIIth dynasty [1550-1307 BC]: an alabaster amphora with the cartouche of Tuthmosis III [1479-1425 BC] was found in the final palatial period at Katsaba [Crete]. ….

Semitic snake charms in the Egypt of Moses

 

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

 

“The text, written between 3,000 and 2,500 B.C. [sic], was inscribed on a subterranean wall of

the pyramid of King Unas. Initial attempt at reading the text in the language of the pharaohs

did not make sense in that language. Steiner recognized the transliterated inscription as Canaanite based on the evident reference of "mother snake," typical of Canaanite spells”.

 

 

 

 

It is a wonder that scholars have not jumped to the conclusion that the “Jannes and Jambres” of Paul’s 2 Timothy 3:8 were the Reubenite pair, Dathan and Abiram, based on traditions such as this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jannes_and_Jambres

“Jannes and Jambres …. It was also claimed that they converted to Judaism, and that they left Egypt at the Exodus to accompany Moses and the Israelites; however, they perished on the way, either at the Red Sea, or the destruction of the Golden Calf, or at the slaughter of Korah and his followers”.

 

Here is their story. 

The tendency, quite a reasonable one, is to suspect that the two characters to whom St. Paul refers in 2 Timothy 3:8, “Jannes and Jambres [var. Mambres]”, were Egyptians (e.g., magicians) who had “opposed” (Gk. ἀντέστησαν) Moses - some translations add “to his face” - when Moses was still back in the land of Egypt.

 

Here it will be suggested, instead, that the pair were Israelite troublemakers for Moses, whose bitter opposition to the great man would lead to their terrible demise. Though I would not entirely discount the possibility that they may also have been magicians in Egypt.

To make a long story short, Jannes and Jambres (this name being preferable, I believe, to the variant “Mambres”) were the ill-fated brothers, Dathan and Abiram, of the tribe of Reuben.

Numbers 16:1: “… certain Reubenites—Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab …”.

 

Neither Exodus (7-8), “the wise men and the sorcerers … magicians of Egypt”, nor Acts 7:22, “the magicians of Egypt”, limits, to a mere pair, the number of magicians serving Egypt’s ruler at this particular time. They may have been quite numerous.

 

Although Jannes and Jambres, and Dathan and Abiram, do get mentioned together in the one sentence in some biblical commentaries, the conclusion tends to be that they are not to be identified as the same pair. E.g.: “These were not Jews, who rose up and opposed Moses, as Dathan and Abiram did, as some have thought; but Egyptian magicians …”. (Gill’s Exposition)

 

Interestingly, the names “Jannes and Jambres” can be rendered as “John and Ambrose”, according to R. Gedaliah (Shalsheleth Hakabala, fol. 7. 1):

https://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/gills-exposition-of-the-bible/2-timothy-3-8.html

“It is commonly said by the Jews ^F15, that these were the two sons of Balaam, and they are said to be the chief of the magicians of Egypt ^F16; the latter of these is called in the Vulgate Latin version Mambres; and in some Jewish writers his name is Mamre ^F17 by whom also the former is called Jochane or John; and indeed Joannes, Jannes, and John, are the same name; and R. Gedaliah ^F18 says, that their names in other languages are John and Ambrose, which is not unlikely”.

 

In this case, Dathan would better be rendered as Jathan, a contraction of Jonathan, hence Ἰωάννης (Iōannēs) in Greek. We can easily see the connection here with Jannes (Iōannēs).

Ambrose, obviously not a Hebrew name: “The later Jews distorted the names into John and Ambrose” (https://biblehub.com/commentaries/2_timothy/3-8.htm), is a very good fit for Jambres. But less so is it a fit for Abiram. Still, Greek transliterations of Hebrew names can often tend to lose important elements – the Septuagint rendering of the Hebrew name Abiram (אֲבִירָם), meaning “(The) Exalted One Is (My) Father”, is Abiron (Αβιρων), in which the crucial Hebrew element, ram (“high, exalted”), is completely lost.  

 

Jannes and Jambres were not Egyptian rulers

 

Since a pair of Pharaohs (actually a title used only later in Egyptian history) did cause trouble for the adult Moses, my tendency had been to look in that direction for the identification of Jannes and Jambres. And indeed, in a revised context in which I would place the historical Moses, there is a monarch with the name Unas that has, in its variants (Onnus, Jaumos, Onos), struck various revisionist historians as being very much like St. Paul’s “Jannes”.

The only reason that I bring in Unas here, though, is because he was a bit of a magician king, with magical writings inscribed on his pyramid – some of which may be Semitic snake spells, enabling perhaps for Semites to have been magicians in the king’s court. Thus we read at:

https://phoenicia.org/byblos-priests-spells.html

“A 5,000 year old [sic] spell in hieroglyphics was discovered in the tomb of an Egyptian Pharaoh, Unas in Saqqara, Egypt. Early on, scholars were unable to decipher the hieroglyphics until an expert in Semitic languages, Prof. Richard Steiner of New York's Yeshiva University cracked the case. Steiner was readily able to read the transliterated Semitic text in hieroglyphics.

The text, written between 3,000 and 2,500 B.C. [sic], was inscribed on a subterranean wall of the pyramid of King Unas. Initial attempt at reading the text in the language of the pharaohs did not make sense in that language. Steiner recognized the transliterated inscription as Canaanite based on the evident reference of "mother snake," typical of Canaanite spells. Other hieroglyphic spells in the Egyptian language further supported the decipherment, based on the subject matter of the "mother snake".”  

 

Moses was chased out of Egypt by one angry king (Exodus 2:15): “When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian …”, in a situation that may have involved Dathan and Abiram. For, as we shall read further on: “… it was they who caused Moses' flight from Egypt by denouncing him to Pharaoh for killing the Egyptian taskmaster, and revealing that he was not the son of Pharaoh's daughter …”.

And later, of course, Moses was opposed by the hard-hearted Exodus king (e.g. Exodus 7:13): “… Pharaoh’s heart became hard and he would not listen to them, just as the Lord had said”.

 

These monarchs, though, were pagans, whereas St. Paul was apparently referring to - in the case of Jannes and Jambres - people, teachers, who had fallen away from faith and the truth. From Hebrew tradition we learn that Dathan and Abiram were Israelite men of status who had resented the authority of Moses even whilst they were in Egypt, before the Exodus.

Tradition, in fact, has them as the two brawling Hebrews whom Moses tried to pacify, but who, in turn, rejected Moses’s intervention.

Nahum Sarna well describes the troublesome pair in his article, “Dathan and Abiram”, for: https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/dathan-and-abiram

 

DATHAN AND ABIRAM (Heb. דָּתָן, cf. Akk. datnu, "strong"; and Heb. אֲבִירָם, "my [or 'the'] father is exalted"), sons of Eliab of the tribe of Reuben, leaders of a revolt against the leadership of Moses (Num. 16; 26:9–11). According to these sources, they joined the rebellion of *Korah during the desert wanderings. Defying Moses' summons, they accused him of having brought the Israelites out of the fertile land of Egypt in order to let them die in the wilderness (16:12–14). Moses then went to the tents of Dathan and Abiram and persuaded the rest of the community to dissociate themselves from them. Thereafter, the earth opened and swallowed the rebels, their families, and property (16:25–33). Modern scholars generally regard this narrative as resulting from an editorial interweaving of originally distinct accounts of two separate rebellions against the authority of Moses. It is noted that verses 12–15 and 25ff. form a continuous, self-contained literary unit and that the former contains no mention of Korah, who is likewise omitted from the references in Deuteronomy 11:6 and Psalms 106:17. The event described served as a warning to Israel and as an example of divine justice (ibid.). Ben Sira (45:18), too, mentions it. However, no further details are given about the two rebels, and the narrative is clearly fragmentary. It is not unlikely that the rebellion was connected with the series of events that led to the tribe of Reuben's loss of its earlier position of preeminence. ….

 

Mackey’s comment: Apparently, then, Dathan and Abiram had ‘form’, going back to their days in Egypt, being traditionally “… identified with the two quarreling Israelites (Ex. R. 1:30) …”. (Did they, however, recognise the “finger of God” and so felt compelled to join the Exodus?):  

 

In the Aggadah

 

Dathan and Abiram are regarded as the prototype of inveterate fomenters of trouble. Their names are interpreted allegorically, Dathan denoting his violation of God's law, and Abiram his refusal to repent (Sanh. 109b). They were wholly wicked "from beginning to end" (Meg. 11a). They are identified with the two quarreling Israelites (Ex. R. 1:30) and it was they who caused Moses' flight from Egypt by denouncing him to Pharaoh for killing the Egyptian taskmaster, and revealing that he was not the son of Pharaoh's daughter (Yal., Ex. 167). They incited the people to return to Egypt (Ex. R. 1:29) both at the Red Sea and when the spies returned from Canaan (Mid. Ps. 106:5). They transgressed the commandment concerning the manna by keeping it overnight (Ex. R. 1:30). Dathan and Abiram became ringleaders of the rebellion under the influence of Korah, as a result of the camp of their tribe being next to that of Korah, and on this the rabbis base the statement "Woe to the wicked, woe to his neighbor" (Num. R. 18:5). When Moses humbly went to them in person in order to dissuade them from their evil designs, they were impertinent and insulting to him (mk 16a). In their statement to Moses, "we will not come up," they unconsciously prophesied their end, as they did not go up, but down to hell (Num. R. 18:10). ….

 

Mackey’s comment: If they were, in fact, “the two quarreling Israelites” (Exodus 2:13-14): “The next day [Moses] went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, ‘Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?’ The man said, ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?’,” then the sharp retort ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us?’ perfectly reflects what Dathan and Abarim would say to Moses later in the desert (Numbers 16:13) ‘And now you also want to lord it over us!’

Clearly, Dathan and Abiram had an inflated sense of their own importance.

Moses had officially been appointed, by the king of Egypt, as “ruler and judge over” these people.

For Moses was at the time, according to my revision, ‘Vizier’ (“ruler”) and ‘Chief Judge’ (“judge”) of Egypt:

 

Historical Moses may be Weni and Mentuhotep

 

https://www.academia.edu/36803542/Historical_Moses_may_be_Weni_and_Mentuhotep

 

 

Missing old Egyptian tombs and temples

 

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

  

 

A similar problem arises with the so-called Fifth Dynasty,

with four of its supposed six sun temples undiscovered.

 

 

 

 

A different approach is obviously needed when, after decades or more of searching, a famous ancient capital city such as Akkad (Agade) cannot be found; nor the tombs of virtually an entire dynasty (Egyptian Second); nor four whole sun temples (Egyptian Fifth).

 

The Second Dynasty of Egypt, however - whose beginning I would re-date to about a millennium later than does the conventional model - appears to overlap, in great part, with (according to what I have already tentatively determined) the very beginnings of Egyptian dynastic history.  

That the Second Dynasty may be, to a great extent at least, a duplication of the First Dynasty, may be supported by the disturbing (for Egyptologists) non-existence of Second Dynasty burials (Miroslav Verner, Abusir, p. 16. My emphasis): “The tombs of the rulers of the Second Dynasty, which for the most part have not yet been discovered, represent one of the greatest problems of Egyptian archaeology”.

 

A similar problem arises with the so-called Fifth Dynasty, with four of its supposed six sun temples undiscovered. Thus Jeff Burzacott, “The missing sun temples of Abusir”:

https://www.nilemagazine.com.au/2015-5-june-archive/2015/6/9/the-missing-sun-temples-of-abu-sir

 

There are some sun temples out there somewhere. 

Abusir is one of the large cemeteries of the Old Kingdom kings, around 16 kilometres south of the famous Great Pyramids of Giza. 

Although the history of the Abusir necropolis began in the 2nd Dynasty, it wasn't until King Userkaf, the first ruler of the Fifth Dynasty, chose to build here that the Abusir skyline changed forever. 

What Userkaf built here wasn't a pyramid; he nestled his final resting place close to the world's first pyramid, that of Djoser at Saqqara. What Userkaf raised at Abusir was something new - a sun temple.

The sun temple was a large, squat obelisk, raised on a grand pedestal, and connected with the worship of the setting sun. Each day the sun sank below the western horizon into the Underworld where it faced a dangerous journey before rising triumphantly, reborn at dawn. It was a powerful symbol of cyclical resurrection.
The obelisk shape is likely symbolic of the sacred benben stone of Heliopolis, which represented the primeval mound, the first land to rise from the waters of Nun at the dawn of time, and where creation began. This was the centre of the cosmos.

For the next 70 years, Abusir was a hive of activity as the pyramids of Userkaf's sons, Sahure (rightmost pyramid) and Neferirkare, (leftmost pyramid), as well as his grandson, Niuserre (centre) raised their own step pyramids and sun temples there. 

Buried in the Abusir sand are also the barely-started pyramids of Fifth Dynasty pharaohs whose short-lived reigns saw their grand monuments hastily sealed, just a few courses of stone above the desert.

Six sun temples are mentioned in inscriptions, although only the ruins of Userkaf's and Niuserre's have been discovered. Hopefully, buried out there somewhere lay four more sun temples, waiting to feel Ra's rays once again.

 

I do not think so.

It is my belief that the rulers of the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt, just like those of the Second, have been duplicated - {a duplication of dynasties occurring at various stages of Egyptian history as well} - meaning that there were not six rulers who built six sun temples.

 

Most likely, then, all (two) of the sun temples that were built have already been discovered.