The House of the Hidden Places: Chapter II. The House of Osiris

roof above the throne), together with the Chamber of New Birth and the Head of the Well, we shall have the portion of the structure more particularly subject to the dominion of Thoth: the divine person, by whom the initiation is effected. Then if we form a

cypher of that region, by tracing a line-plan indicating only the direction of those parts in relation to the Head of the Well, where, as we shall presently see, the rite of initiation is accomplished, we shall have the sacred symbol reserved to that deity alone. And

Sacred hieroglyphic symbol peculiar to Thoth.

as by the power of Thoth the adept, after passing his ordeal, is introduced into the presence of the forty-two judges in the Double Hall, corresponding to the forty-two nomes or provinces of Egypt, so also does that symbol of Thoth enter into the hieroglyphic names of every one of the nomes with but a single exception.

Upon the same harmony between the celestial and the terrestrial country embodied in the masonry of the Pyramid of Light,

depended also the order of the princes of Egypt. For as the Great House itself, the Place of Osiris, the universal God, was represented in its totality in the person of the supreme Monarch; so also the two great divisions of that House, the territory of initiation with its directing angle at the Hidden Lintel, and the territory of illumination with its Sculptured Orbit in the Grand Gallery, the places respectively of the Gods of the Horizon and the Gods of the Orbit, were represented in the two great divisions of the Egyptian Court, the princes of the Angle and the princes of the Circle. And so also was that seven-fold celestial company, the ranks of which were sculptured above the throne in the Chamber of the Splendour, represented in the seven-fold ranks of the "Companions of the King," which immediately surrounded the person of Pharaoh. Thus the Great House with the Double Hall of Truth within, formed a masonic organization not only of the

religious but of the political constitution of the kingdom; with ascending grades from the Purple Arch of the Star defining the Sacred Horizon of Rusta (or Rosetta) to the Royal Arch of the solstice or limit of the solar seat above the water throne of the cataract, and beyond again along the Grand Arch of the Celestial Meridian to the culminating point of the sun at Equinox above the source of the river, in the primæval land of Poont.

As we stand before the portal of that "Great House," the "Pir Aa," while we recall the familiar title which the Pharaohs thence derived, and as we contemplate the heaven reflected in the blue waters of the river as it flows without, and its image masonically expressed in the path within, "the disc" seems lifted "from the tomb," and we gaze upon the unseen world. Egypt, for so many centuries the land of the buried, has suddenly become the land of the risen dead. And the message which the long-silenced voice proclaims as

with a tongue of fire, is the primitive belief in the divine origin and end of man. It is not the Ritual nor the Pyramid of Light alone, which speak to us of the eternal day. Everywhere and always throughout ancient Egypt the same doctrine is proclaimed. From the orbit of the earth, from the pole-star of the heavens, from the dawning of Sothis, from the radiance of the sun, from the waters of the river, from the palaces, from the temples, from the tombs, from the very bowels of the rifled dead, comes forth a voice which for ages has been hushed in the grave; and that voice with startling clearness bears testimony to a judgment beyond the tomb, and the fatherhood of the unseen God.

NOTE ON THE SACRED ANGLE.

AMONG the jewels placed as the last ornaments upon the sacred mummy, was sometimes included the Golden Angle; one of the most obscure, but at the same time

most interesting symbols employed by the Egyptians. The Angle is found, not held in the hand, but borne aloft upon the arm of the great Deity, "Amen, the Eternal Father," and is also one of the sceptres carried by Ptah, the Creator-Spirit. What is more singular, the well-known image called the Pataikos which was carried by the ships of Phœnicia, has been identified very clearly by Champollion with the same god Ptah; and the meaning of Pat-Aik in Egyptian is the Dedication of the Angle.

Great Angle, borne aloft by Amen, Source of Life, in Trinity of Egypt.

current of many migrations and supplied the arena of many collisions. That island took its appellation not from the Romans—for they, as Ovid tells us, called it Trinacris, from its three-cornered shape—but from the Sikeli, a tribe who, according to Thucydides, immigrated into it from the Southern part of Italy, with which territory the island was for centuries intimately associated. Now the Sikeli bear a name which is meaningless in Greek or Latin, but in Egyptian signifies, without change or modification of any kind, "Sons of the Angle;" while the similar but more suggestive title of "Pirates of the Angle" is found in the Greek name Laestrygones, another race who dwelt there, of such high antiquity that Thucydides confesses his ignorance of their origin. From hence, too, we may not improbably derive our own word "sickle," or "sikel," as it used to be spelt. For the sickle-sword (of which an Angle was a symbol in the priestly alphabet of Egypt) was, as may still be seen upon the monuments, the sacred weapon with which the Egyptian monarch slew the captives; and as Captain Burton has shown in his well-known treatise on the sword, it is the instrument from which both the Eastern scimitar and the cutlass of our own sailors take shape.

Again, at the Eastern extremity of the Levant, the name of Angle once more appears in a double form, and a still more marked and suggestive connection. Right opposite the mouths of the Nile, just in the locality where sea-immigrants from Egypt would probably land after passing the almost harbourless coasts of Palestine, lie the countries of Kilikia and Phœnicia, each expressing

that idea of Angle (in Egyptian Kilik, in Hebrew Phœne); while the two together form the Angle of the bight through which runs the great dividing line of East and West.

Yet once more in Egypt itself, according to the account contained in Genesis—and Moses, it must be remembered, was at least an expert in Egyptian tradition—we find among the descendants of Ham the tribe of the Patroosim, which in that language means the Frontiers of the Angle (Pat-Rois), and connects them with those princes of the Angle who formed, as we have seen, an integral portion of the court of Pharaoh.

What angle then is this of such supreme importance that it should be the symbol of the great Deity, and should give a name to the princely races of the earth? Of the highly important part played by the relation

Great Angle of the Nile Delta, Source of Life, in Triangle of Egypt.

between Angle and Circle in the structure of the Grand Pyramid we have already spoken; but there is another Angle which still remains for consideration, namely, that between the two branches of the Delta into which the river forks at Memphis below the Great House. Now this Angle supplies a simple key to a very curious problem in cosmography. Upon examining the well-known triple division of the ancient world, it is

somewhat difficult to perceive upon what principle it was effected. Russia can even now be scarcely considered as forming, either by race or by conformation, a portion of Europe proper; while, as Scythia, it seems to have been regarded as entirely separate. Asia Minor, on the other hand, possesses a shore line almost continuous with that of Greece; and her population, at least upon the coasts, seem to have been derived in great measure from kindred sources. Nor is it easy to find the central point from which the three dividing lines branch out. It cannot, for instance, be situated in Babylonia, where some might be inclined to place it, because Syria lies to the west; neither again can it be in Armenia, where others might look for it, since a considerable space divides that country from Africa. If, however, we take up our stand in front of the Great House at Memphis, the masonic record of primæval science, the entrance to which indicates the principal division of the universal sphere, and look abroad upon the great river which we have seen represented within, we shall find that the form which that river assumes at the spot suggests three divisions of the entire hemisphere. Behind us, towards the South, stretches the long valley leading up to the hidden sources of the far-distant primæval land; indicating the huge peninsula of Africa enclosed between the seas, and constituting also the southern boundary of the vast Mediterranean basin. And right along that valley, above the Great House, through the whole kingdom of Upper Egypt, stretches the Grand Meridian, tracing out upon the earth the Grand Arch of the Universe, and traversing their ancient home beneath the supreme dome of highest

heaven. Next, if the lines of the northern fork be prolonged indefinitely, then Eastward of the most Eastern branch lies the continent of Asia; Westward of the most Western is Europe proper. Finally, between the legs of that earth-dominating Angle, lies the famous kingdom of Lower Egypt, with the princes of the Angle; while on the coast beyond is Kilikia, the land of the Angle; and further again, but still within the legs of the same Angle, stretches the immense plain of Scythia, separating and yet uniting East and West. Upon the Southern borders of that plain, on the coast of the Black Sea, according to the ancient traditions of our Sagas, the ancestors of Odin and of the sea-going race, which still bears the proud name of Angles, had their pirate home. And it is not a little remarkable that the same Saga refers more than once to the boundary line of East and West as passing close by their ancient city upon the Black Sea, and mentions as their neighbours the tribe of the Vans, whose name appears frequently upon the ancient monuments, and is still preserved in the Armenian lake which lies by that boundary line.

It is strange too, to observe that no sooner are the records of our ancestors permitted to speak as to their own history, records incidentally confirmed both by classic historians, such as Florus, and by the ancient monuments, than a glimpse of still higher antiquity opens out through the title of our nation, connecting itself with the widespread symbol of the Egyptian Angle; and a flood of light is poured upon our words and customs by reference to Egyptian sources. Thus the familiar name of Viking, for which no meaning has been assigned, signifies in Egyptian

an Angle-dweller, that is, an Englishman; and the two words composing it are still preserved in English as "wick," a place, and "kink," an indentation. Berserk again, another well-known but unintelligible appellation, means in that ancient tongue "foam-plough;" a striking and most natural image for those ploughers of the ocean to employ, and one which harmonizes exactly with the numerous poetic titles given by the Vikings to their true home, the ship. Odin himself, though the descendant of ancestors who had been settled for generations upon the Euxine, bore an Egyptian name—the significant name of Destroyer; and his standard, the raven, was the Egyptian symbol of destruction. Nor was it only in his character of pirate * (itself an Egyptian word), but as teacher also, that his associations connect themselves with the same source. According to tradition, he was acquainted in some measure with the process of embalmment, and he claimed to know the secret of the sacred writing, while his followers were distinguished by the winged headdress which was borne by the sacred scribe of Egypt, as representing the dominion of east and west bestowed by Ra upon Thoth, the Lord of Wisdom. So with the funeral feasts, the elaborate ceremonies and the intercourse with the dead which had so rooted a hold in the hearts of our Scandinavian forefathers. The Asars, or holy ancestors whom they worshipped, were the very counterpart both in name and in attributes with the holy souls of Egypt who had become united with Osiris (more properly Uasar), and were themselves described

by his name. The title of Hersir, or Leader of the Host, which, as Du Chaillu has pointed out in his valuable work, was older than that of the king, bears in the hieroglyphic (Her-ser) the identical signification of Chief Organizer. The land of Kent (Khent) * was a territory of the holy dead, and its hieroglyph was a sail. Nay, there is scarcely a feature in the strange mythology of Scandinavia which does not reflect an image more or less distorted of some portion of the Egyptian Ritual. Or, to give but one more illustration of a different but equally curious character, our national shout, "Hip, Hip, Hurra!" which rises spontaneously though unmeaningly to our lips, and which is said to be the shout also of the Cossack dwellers by our ancient home upon the Black Sea, conveys in the hieroglyphic (Hep, Hep, Hura), "On, on, to plunder," the significant cry of our pirate ancestors at the moment of accomplishment. Strangest of all it is to think that the last of the Hidden Places of the earth to be opened to civilized man should have been the traditional scene of his earliest dwelling-place; that the source of the historic river which, by its mighty Angle, traces out the lines of the first settlement of the globe, should to-day be the centre of its latest division by the world-dividing nation of Angles; and that while the vast lake which marks the ancient "apex of the earth" bears the name of the monarch of that race, the Egyptian kingdom itself should be ruled at the dictation of her ministers.

It is true that these traditions, like those of other nations also, are entirely at variance with the remarkable adventures of the famous "Aryan race," that marvellous creature of modern myth-making which flits with all the brilliance of a will of the wisp over the most impossible morasses of Imaginative History. Happily however, its illustrious creator, Professor Max Müller, has himself given what we may hope will prove the death-blow to his scarcely less celebrated offspring, by utterly denying before the British Association any reality to its existence; by laughing to scorn the idea of any such thing as an Aryan skull, and by stating plainly that the Aryan race is nothing more or less than a figment of philological convenience. For not until the last glimmer of that alluring but most misleading meteor has disappeared, will the ancient records of nations be permitted to throw their true light upon the past. Nor until then shall we understand our own laws and language, our customs and constitution, or trace the history of that Imperial nation of the waters which perpetuates the name of the sacred Angle. And surely no kingdom ever yet possessed a more romantic story in the past, or attained a position of more absorbing interest or more perilous pre-eminence than that occupied by England to-day, as she stands in the central land of highest antiquity, with hands stretching to every quarter of the globe—a solitary figure of commanding majesty, but uncertain in policy, unguarded in frontier, and almost unarmed in defence; while surrounded by the seething nations which count their hosts by the million, and listening with a careless ear to the muttered breathings of universal war.

Footnotes

43:* The case of the Holy Roman Empire may perhaps suggest itself as a precedent; for foreign princes undoubtedly sat in the Diet. But those princes had jurisdiction not by virtue of treaties or in right of their foreign kingdoms, but of the Imperial principalities of which they happened to be possessed.

51:* As a contrary opinion is still held by some Egyptologists, and was sanctioned by Dr. Brugsch himself, I may be permitted to quote the opinion of a very distinguished authority in support. M. Maspéro, when I put the question to him, most courteously informed me that though years ago he had held the opinion then prevalent of a Northern origin, he had changed his views on further research, and now believes the Egyptians to have come from the South. If this view be correct—and many facts seem to support it—endless difficulties are resolved, or rather do not arise to require solution, which have resulted from a belief in the famous "prehistoric Asiatic family;" that is to say, in a family of the existence of which no record can be produced.

55:* In the innumerable attempts at the identification of the birthplace of man, as recorded in Scripture—attempts which may be counted literally by the hundred, and which have gone far towards rendering any true exposition of human development an almost hopeless achievement—the garden is constantly confused with the watershed, and the "heads" of the rivers with their full courses, while the single river is omitted altogether.

56:* From the same source a good deal of light may, I think, be thrown upon the scriptural account of the Deluge, regarded as a phenomenal inundation of the Nile valley, the dwelling-place of the primæval family, as I have endeavoured to show elsewhere; and this, again, will be found to react upon various questions connected with the early settlement of Egypt; the worship of Nou, the deity of the water; the sacred ark of Amen, the prototype of the ark of Moses; the especial reverence paid to the Nilometer, or "Tat," the symbol of the divine Nou, with its threefold measure of the inundation; the sudden immergence of that lonely yet majestic civilization; the dim tradition of bygone generations; the intense reverence paid to the patriarchal monarchs; the universal jurisdiction claimed by the divine royalty of Egypt; and, above all, the serene contemplation of death as the luminous entrance to the fields of light. The Babylonian tradition also given in the Deluge tablet,

The sacred Tat or Measure of the Inundation.

translated in "Records of the Past," is in agreement of the same view; for, according to that tradition, the theatre of the cataclysm was certainly not Babylonia, since the hero declares positively that he crossed the sea. In fact, so far as I have been able to trace, there is no nation, from India and China in the East, to Mexico and Peru in the furthest West, whose native traditions and archæological relics are in discord either with the Egyptian tradition of the primæval land of Poont, or with the scriptural description of the primæval watershed, if we are content to read, by the light of Egyptian tradition, the account handed down to us by Moses, whom those Scriptures expressly characterize as pre-eminent in Egyptian knowledge.

77:* Some etymologists strangely derive this word from the Greek πειράω, "to attempt;" as though a pirate, of all people in the world, were a man to leave his work half finished.

78:* Pierret, in his Hieroglyphic Lexicon, states that Khent means always to ascend the Nile towards the south, and that the sail is always deployed; thus answering, in the Path of Light, to the ascent of the Orbit by the illuminate beneath the open sail of the firmament.