The Egypt Code by Robert Bauval Read Free Book Online

Sothis to denote the star Sirius. For example, a typical passage from the Pyramid Texts translated by British philologist R.O. Faulkner reads: ‘O Osiris the king, arise, lift yourself up . . . Your sister Isis comes to you rejoicing for love of you. You have placed her on your phallus and your seed issues into her, she being ready as Sothis, and Horus-Spd has come forth from you as “Horus who is in Sothis”’ 37 . Although Faulkner did admit that ‘Horus-Spd’ was also a star, he failed to give an adequate explanation of why this unidentified star was said to ‘come forth’ from the star Sothis, i.e. Sirius. Such a statement simply makes no sense.
     
    In 1994 a young French Egyptologist called Natalie Beaux decided to challenge Faulkner’s translation. Working closely with the American Egyptologist Virginia L. Davis of Yale University, an accredited authority on ancient Egyptian astronomy, she noted that in the Pyramid Texts there were not one but two names that seemed to refer to the star Sirius: one was spd , and the other had the addition of the suffix ‘t’ to give the feminine variant spd-t . But how could this be? The explanation to this mystery is given by Natalie Beaux:
    It is evident that there originally existed a masculine form, Spd , and also a feminine form, Spd-t , and it would be logical that they refer to two different stellar entities. Dr V.L. Davis has proposed that the second form (i.e. Spd-t) is the name of the constellation to which belongs Sirius, in view that most constellations carry feminine names. This proposal has the advantage to make comprehensible texts which, without this distinction, do not make sense as in line 458a (Unas) ‘ Spd is alive, because Unas is alive, the son of Spd-t ’, where it is clearly demonstrated that the filial relationship Spd/Spd-t represents the belonging of the star to the constellation. 38
     
     
     
    Beaux then requotes the same passage from the Pyramid Texts used by Faulkner, with her new interpretation for spd-t and spd : ‘O Osiris (as Orion) the king, arise, lift yourself up . . . Your sister (wife) Isis comes to you rejoicing for love of you. You have placed her on your phallus and your seed issues into her, she being ready as Spd-t (Canis Major), and Horus- Spd (Sirius) has come forth from you as “Horus who is in Spd-t” (Sirius which is in Canis Major).’ 39 The passage now clearly makes sense. It also provides us with the correct metaphor to describe an actual astronomical observation. For when the ancient priests described Horus- spd as being ‘in Spd-t ’, what they really meant was that the star Sirius was in Canis Major, or, in their mythic parlance, Horus was in the womb of Isis. This clever interpretation by Beaux and Davis also provides us with the correct correlation between the astral triad Orion, Canis Major and Sirius and the mythic triad Osiris, Isis and Horus.
     
    By testing Beaux’s interpretation of spd in spd-t on other passages from the Pyramid Texts, it is clear that it is correct. For example:
    Orion is enveloped by the dawn-light, while the ‘Living One’ washes himself in the Horizon. Canis Major (Spd-t) is enveloped by the dawn-light, while the ‘Living One’ washes himself in the Horizon. This king Unas is enveloped by the dawn-light, while the ‘Living One’ washes himself in the Horizon.
     
     
     
    Let the sky brighten, let Sirius (Spd) live, for this king Unas is the ‘Living One’, the son of Canis Major (Spd-t).
     
     
    The ‘Living One’ is obviously the Horus-king (Unas in this case) who is reborn as the star Sirius, i.e. spd , which is within Canis Major, i.e. spd-t . 40 The original hieroglyphs read: nh spd n wnjs js nh s3 spd.t ( spd is alive because Unas is the Living One, the son of spd-t ). 41 Now had Natalie Beaux also been investigating the orientation of Djoser’s serdab , as I had been doing, she would surely have noticed that at the precise moment of the rebirth of spd , i.e. the