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In the ritual of " Uniting with the Sun Disk " at Edfu's New year celebration, the ritual itself was conducted upon the roof the Temple.
It is apparant that the staircase used by the procession of priests who carried out the ritual was symbolic of rising up to the Sky, ie the Eastern Horizon to meet the
rising Sun God.
The texts make this obvious, would it be too romantic to imagine that the ritual began with the first burst of sunlight over the Eastern Horizon, I think that we should
imagine this is being a factual event, remember how Jung was literally immersed in the symbolsim of the Rising sun.
The texts says: " The Sun disk shining on the eastern side,
Earth's consort clear of clouds,
Horus of the East glows,
shining in the sky,
having entered the window of the great place ( ie, TheTemple)!
The Eastern ba as he races up to heaven
his beams make light in the window!
As Horus of Horuses goes out,
having distanced himself to the sky,
may his rays unite with (his) august body!"
" He of the dawn, He-who-comes-into being-in-the -netherworld at daybreak,his brilliance in [his] house-
Re presents himself in the Eastern highlands,
having flown to the sky,
his sunlight( upon) the place of the two dieties( Horus and Hathor?)
Divider of sides, having divided the skies,
his brightness illuminates the House of Horus
As he who is in the sky shines on the arms of the two sisters (Eastern pylon, equated with Isis and Nephthys)
may his birthing mingle ( sensen) with his image ( sekhem)
Re-the-great-shines in the East,
having cast his light on his seat (the Temple)
He goes out from Nun,
having left Punt , having lit up[the Temple]
[...as he rises] in the eastern highlands and as he sets in the Western highlands,
his care is upon his Great Place"
There are many interesting allusions here and all of them refer to the Sun, for instance in referring to Nun in the context above, this a clearly an allusion to the
renactment of Creation, the first moment or first occasion when the creator God-here referred to as the sun-emerges from primeval chaos.
As I have written before, this is surely what the beneben and tekhenu celebrate also, the first moment, the first burst of sunlight bringing light into the darkness and
in a big bang fashion, the beginning of the ordered universe.
This is why I cannot accept arguments which seek to make beneben a stellar symbol, and also the pyramids, which surely cannot be anything other then a symbloic
primeval mound, thus sunlight bursting out of the creator upon his primeval mound is the first occasion and the core of symbolic rational underpining Egyptian
symbolic Architectural meaning.
This is to say that Stars have much less of a role to play than proponents of Stellar meanings would have us believe.
This text from the facade of Edfu's holy of hloies would seem to confirm this theology;
" ( Just as)the sky exists far off bearing Re, while Mesnet (a chapel, behind the holy of holies) is holy bearing his image (sekhem),( so also) exists the " secret horizon"
in it (the Temple), the Great place( here the name of the holy of holies)hidden in Edfu. When the winged sun-disk has come from the netherworld sky every day to
see his statue (bes) in his Great Place,he descends upon his image ( sekhem) with his images ( achem) and his heart is satisfied in his shrine".
Alex</HTML>
