For the world today, the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening. There is no mystery in this knowledge, and where the solar orb disappears to at night is of little concern to us. To the Ancient Egyptians it was quite another matter. They were concerned especially about where the sun went after dark and even built a whole mythological doctrine based on this very problem. For them, once the sun had set down into the western horizon, it began a complex journey through an underworld realm of darkness known as the am-duat, or just simply duat (sometimes spelled tuat), which they saw as divided into 12 equal parts, known as divisions or ‘hours’ of the night.

Taking on the form of a ram-headed figure, the sun-god, now referred to in this guise as the Great God Atum, was pulled along in his high-prowed barque, or barge, by a crew of lesser deities as he passed through each ‘hour’. Whole pantheons of gods and goddesses, demons and shades resided in this realm. Moreover, the sun-god would be obliged to avoid various obstacles such as pits of fire, murderous knives, streams of boiling water, foul stenches, fiery serpents and hideous animals.¹ He would also be required to utter magic spells that would allow him exit from one hour and enter into the next. Ethereal light that illuminated the darkness would be provided by helpful uraei-scrpcnts positioned on the ship’s prow² After all 12 ‘hours’ had been completed successfully, the sun would be reborn anew at dawn on the eastern horizon – the whole process being repeated night after night until the end of time.

As in the case of the Pyramid Texts on the tomb walls of the Fifth- and Sixth-Dynasty pyramids, the accounts that deal specifically with the sun’s passage through the duat were meant as star-maps or guides for the soul-spirit of the deceased Pharaoh as it passes through the underworld on its way to becoming at one with the god Osiris, in his form as the constellation Sahu, or Orion.³ The symbolism used to describe the duat incorporates a number of starry themes which imply that its underworld component is in essence a reflection of the celestial realm through which the sun passes during the hours of darkness.⁴

Yet if this were all that the myths of the duat represented, they could be dismissed as cosmological jargon created initially by the Heliopolitan priesthood to explain away the daily disappearance of the sun. And perhaps this is what these myths actually became in late Pharaonic times. But if we take a closer look at the origins of these arcane traditions, then we begin to find key elements that hint at a symbolic record of a strange chthonic world that existed in Egypt long before the dawn of dynastic times.

GUARDIANS OF THE GATES

Deciphering the ancient books of the underworld⁵ creates a strange though slightly familiar picture. We quickly discover, for instance, that the duat has two gates to the outside world – an entrance in the symbolic mountain of the west, where the sun sets, and an exit on the eastern horizon, where the sun rises in the morning. Each is guarded by a reclining lion or sphinx known as an aker,⁶ which is usually shown in illustrations as a leonine head and fore legs only. Together, the double aker, or akeru, was depicted in illustrations either as two lions back to back or as a single beast with two heads. Like the cave in the Disney film ‘Aladdin’, the entrance to the duat was through the lion’s open mouth, and only by crossing this threshold could the sun-god enter within the subterranean realm.⁷

Such a basic concept of guardianship might at first seem to be of little relevance to our debate. Stone lions are found as guardians to entrance gateways all over the ancient world; the famous Lion Gate at the Bronze Age citadel of Mycenae in Greece or the bull-lions of Assyrian Nineveh being perfect examples. Yet the presence of twin lions on the double horizon begs the question of what exactly they might have represented originally. Were they purely symbolic beasts or did they have a more tangible reality on the celestial horizon around dusk and dawn?

Since the aker-lions were to be found in the path of the rising and setting sun, and thus on the line of the ecliptic, they must represent one of the 12 zodiacal constellations. It does not take much imagination to realise that the most obvious choice is Leo, but does any of this make sense of what we know about Egyptian astrology?

When the ancient books of the duat were set down in writing for the first time, the constellation of Leo would have accepted the dying sun into its care on the west-south-western horizon only at sunset on midsummer’s eve. It would then have released the reborn sun from its guardianship at dawn the next morning on the east-south-eastern horizon, when Leo would have risen heliacally (i.e. with the sun) for the one and only time of the year. At first this knowledge would seem to accord well with what we know of the duat, for the Pyramid Texts speak of the celestial sky as it would have appeared from the ground in the reddish glow before sunrise on the summer solstice.⁸ This is evidenced by the fact that the Pyramid Texts allude to the heliacal rising of the star Sothis, or Sirius, which also occurred only at midsummer and coincided with the annual inundation of the Nile, when the melting of snow on the mountains of equatorial Africa brought necessary flooding to the river’s fertile valleys.⁹

The sun-disc resting on the hieroglyph for horizon, which is itself supported by the aker-lions that mark the entrance and exit to the duat- underworld.

This solution also matched well with the observations of the fourteenth-century Arab chronicler al-Makrizi, who spoke of the priests of Heliopolis using obelisks to define the longest and shortest days of the year. More important, in their book Keeper of Genesis, authors Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock demonstrate that certain utterances alluding to Harakhty, or Re-harakhty, and found in the Pyramid Texts actually refer to the movement of Leo in the 70-day period prior to the summer solstice during the pyramid age.¹⁰

At first there might seem good grounds to conclude that the sun-god’s journey through the 12 ‘hours’, or divisions, of the duat relates to the sun’s course through the 12 constellations of the zodiac, beginning and ending with Leo at the time of the solstice. This makes a lot of sense, but unfortunately there is a major obstacle preventing us from accepting this interpretation of the Egyptian underworld.

Egyptologists consider that the 12 ‘hours’ of darkness in Egyptian mythology derive from an astronomical system that features no fewer than 36 constellations collectively known as the bakiu. Using as a starting-point the first heliacal appearance of the star Sirius on the summer solstice, each constellation was allotted a period of 10 consecutive days as it rose with the sun before making way for the next of the bakiu, which would then reign for a period of 10 days before giving way to the next bakiu, and so on, until the full 36 constellations had come and gone.¹¹ These 10-day periods were known in Greek as ‘decans’ Thirty-six of these decans, each composed of 10 days, makes a calendar year of 360 days, leaving the five so-called epagomenal days to be dedicated to five of the principal netjeru gods belonging to the Heliopolitan pantheon.

It was the night-time procession of the bakiu that was seen to have defined the 12 ‘hours’ of the duat. Apparently no fewer than 12 of them would have been seen in the hours of darkness before the first rising of Sirius. So although the duat-underworld was segmented into 12 divisions, or houses, known as ‘hours’, this term bore no relation whatsoever either to real time or to the sun’s course through the 12 signs of the zodiac.

This, at least, is the orthodox view of Ancient Egyptian astrology held by today’s astrologers, astronomers and Egyptologists. However, the nocturnal calendar system based on the 36 decans is thought to date only to the Middle Kingdom of Egyptian history, c. 2100 BC–1796 BC,¹² and there is some evidence to suggest that Upper and Lower Egypt possessed different views on the importance of star constellations and calendar systems.¹³ Even though the summer solstice is known to have played a key role in the cosmological myth and ritual of Ancient Egypt, there seemed to be an alternative solution to the dark mystery of the 12 ‘hours’ that the sun-god spent each night within the duat.

As we have already determined, the priests of Heliopolis viewed the Great Sphinx as a leonine embodiment of Harakhty, Re-harakhty, the sun-god in its aspect as Horus of the Horizon. It also seems clear that the Sphinx was seen as a physical representation of one of the two aker-lions, quite possibly the one guarding the exit of the duat on the eastern horizon.¹⁴ These links, with both Re-harakhty and the aker-lions, imply therefore a direct relationship between the Sphinx monument and its apparent celestial counterpart – the constellation of Leo.

Yet as we also know by now, the Great Sphinx gazes out not at the position on the horizon where the celestial lion and the reborn sun would have been seen together at dawn on the summer solstice during the pyramid age but where they would have been together as one at dawn on the spring equinox during the precessional Age of Leo, some 8000 years beforehand.

If the sun’s journey through the duat was conceived originally as having taken place not at the time of the summer solstice but on the spring equinox, it would make much more sense of its 12-fold division, for it is only on the equinoxes that we achieve exactly 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness – equal day and equal night. Should this be so, then it implies that the sun was originally conceptualised by the astronomer-priests of Heliopolis as having been received into the custodianship of the aker-lions, the constellation of Leo on the western horizon at sunset on the eve of the spring equinox. Then – having passed through the 12 ‘true’ hours of darkness – the reborn sun would have been released from the lion’s care on the eastern horizon at dawn on the equinox itself.

At no time other than in the Age of Leo would the sun have been seen to set into the stars of Leo and then rise with them at dawn exactly 12 hours later. This, then, is why the Great Sphinx was seen as a physical embodiment of both Re-harakhty and one of the aker-lions - because it gazed out at its starry counterpart on the eastern horizon only during the astrological Age of Leo. In my opinion, this option better explains the duat’s relationship to the celestial horizon and the 12 hours of darkness through which the sun is seen to pass at night. Since the spring equinox not only defines the astrological influence of an age but also the true zero-point in the year’s 12-fold zodiacal calendar, it also makes more sense of the duat’s clear connection with the 12-fold division of the ecliptic.

Everything comes together perfectly when the night of the spring equinox is introduced as the original time-frame in which the sun was ideally conceptualised as having passed through the duat-underworld. Yet it only makes sense if it is placed within the confines of the Age of Leo. Does this therefore mean that the whole concept was developed during this early epoch by the Elder gods, when the Great Sphinx is now thought to have been carved out of the limestone bedrock as an equinoctial marker? If so, then it implies that at a much later date, plausibly during the pyramid age, the whole mythological tradition concerning the duat was altered radically to take into account the precessional shift of the heavens, which now meant that Leo rose and set not at the time of the spring equinox but on the summer solstice, coincident to the heliacal rising of Sirius and the inundation of the Nile.

These factors alone must have signalled a complete change of emphasis in the whole way that the astronomer-priests of cult centres such as Heliopolis viewed the significance of the celestial horizon. Yet since the orientation of the Great Sphinx was fixed for ever on the equinoctial horizon, it remained as a legacy of the more ancient concept of the duat, which also retained certain other themes, such as the twin aker-lions and the 12 ‘true’ hours of the night, which henceforth were equated with the 36 constellations known as the bakiu, instead of what we might refer to today as the 12 signs of the zodiac.

THAT WHICH IS IN THE DUAT

Establishing the astronomical connection between the Great Sphinx and the duat has been essential, for we can now move on to examine the relationship between the Egyptian underworld and the Giza plateau as a whole. To do this we must trace the course of the sun-god as he makes his journey through the 12 divisions of the duat as told in the Shat-ent-am-tuat – ‘The Book of that which is in the Duat’, translated by noted British Egyptologist Sir E.A. Wallis Budge and included in his three-volume work The Egyptian Heaven and Hell.

After entering the underworld via the mountain, or ‘horn’, of the west, the sun-god finds himself within the First Hour, described as an arrit – an antechamber or entrance hall.¹⁵ As darkness overcomes him he encounters various groupings of gods, animals and serpents before he can utter the magic spell to allow him passage into the Second Hour. More trials and tribulations occur here before he is permitted to enter the Third Hour of the night.

The solar barque carrying the ram-headed sun-god in the form of Atum, the Great One of Perfection. It is supported by the aker-lions, which are positioned above the mummified body of the deceased Pharaoh. Above him is a hawk-headed sun, symbol of Re-harakhty, Horus of the Horizon, as well as an arch of stars. These signify the sun-god’s journey through the twelve hours of darkness, reflected in the concept of the twelve divisions, or houses, of the duat-underworld.

Then something odd occurs in the Am-duat text. As the sun-god begins his descent into the Fourth and Fifth Hours of the night, the narrative appears to take on a completely different format. Instead of passing directly through this twinned realm, seen as the central region of the duat, the solar barque is obliged to pass over the top of the main obstacles which lie in its path. This hidden domain also has its own title, since it is described as the ‘kingdom’, ‘land’ or House of Seker, or Sokar,¹⁶ who was the patron god of the Memphite necropolis, which encompassed all the major pyramid fields including, of course, Giza. Indeed, the Sphinx Stela of Thutmose IV actually refers to the Great Sphinx as sitting ‘beside Sokar in Rosta’,¹⁷ with Rostau being the Egyptian name for Giza. Not only is this hawk-headed deity the guardian influence of the Fourth and Fifth Divisions of the duat, but he is also a form of Osiris, the god of the underworld who, as we shall see, is linked intrinsically with both the duat and the mysteries of Giza.¹⁸

The solar barque enters the Land of Sokar via a long descending corridor, with a large ribbed rectangular section in its roof, very reminiscent of the Great Pyramid’s Ascending Passage and Grand Gallery when seen in cross-section – a connection noted by a number of authors.¹⁹ This long descending passage is named specifically as Re-stau, or Rostau,²⁰ while the narrative tells us that it is the ‘road of the secret things of Re-stau . . . the road by which entereth the body of Seker, who is on his sand, the image which is hidden, and is neither seen nor perceived’.²¹

The Fourth Hour, or Division, of the duat-underworld showing the descending corridor known as the ‘road’ of Rostau – Rostau being the ancient name given to the Giza necropolis. Note the rectangular chambers in the roof, which bear an uncanny resemblance to the Grand Gallery inside the Great Pyramid.

This is another intriguing statement, for as we already know the Sphinx Stela of Thutmose IV tells us that Giza-Rostau lay at the end of the ‘sacred road of the gods’, suggesting therefore that the ‘road’ was some kind of underground passageway or corridor along which the netjeru gods were thought to travel. More pertinently, it hints at the possibility that although the rest of the 12 divisions of the duat were perhaps symbolic in origin, based on celestial imagery linked with the precessional Age of Leo, the Fourth and Fifth Hours, otherwise known as the House of Sokar, seem to refer to Giza itself. This was a conclusion drawn by noted Egyptologist Selim Hassan, who observed that: ‘the Fifth Division (as well as the Fourth Division) was originally a version of the Duat and had its geographical counterpart in the Giza necropolis’.²²

Rostau’s sacred ‘road’ of the gods continues to descend in stages as it passes from the Fourth to the Fifth Hour of the night. Here too are rectangular compartments cut into the roof of the descending passageways. Beyond these the sun-god enters the very heart of the House of Sokar, where he finds the ground rising to form a hollow mound that terminates at its highest point in the head of a woman, over which his solar barque must be towed by its attendants.²³ Directly above the mound the ancient texts show the khepri-scarab beetle, a form of the sun-god Re. This is seen descending out of a round-topped object, like a bell, on which two birds, described by Budge as ‘hawks’, cling to either side. He identified this strange object as ‘some form of the dark underworld of Seker’,²⁴ as the Egyptian symbol for ‘night’ or ‘darkness’ appears on top of its curved surface. Yet in the opinion of Livio Stecchini and myself, this fiery-orange bell-like object is unquestionably a representation of a benben-stone or omphalos, like the examples known to have existed in ancient times at Heliopolis, Thebes and Delphi. Its presence in the centre of the House of Sokar therefore signifies not only the precise centre of the duat but also the Point of First Creation, making the mound below this object the primeval mound, or hill, on which the Great God initiated the first acts of creation at the beginning of time.

Stecchini also identified the two so-called ‘hawks’ clinging on to the side of the bell-shaped omphalos.

Usually on top of Sokar, as on top of any omphalos, there are portrayed two birds facing each other; in ancient iconography these two birds, usually doves, are a standard symbol for the stretching of meridians and parallels.²⁵

Immediately beneath the mound, yet seemingly contained within its form, an elongated ellipse is seen. Inside this is a hawk-headed individual who stands on the back of a two-headed (sometimes three-headed) winged serpent. The name given to this god is Sekri, simply another form of Sokar,²⁶ while the ellipse itself is referred to, confusingly, as the ‘Land of Sekri’.²⁷ According to Budge, this curious curved shape signifies ‘an oval island in the river of the Tuat’.²⁸ Two human-headed sphinxes, each facing outwards with only their forequarters visible, cradle the island or ‘land of Sekri’ on their backs. The purpose of this double sphinx, known as the Af, is to ‘keep ward over his [the sun-god’s] image’,²⁹ yet it is clear that they are in effect alternative forms of the twin aker-lions that guard the entrance and exit to the duat. This realisation is yet further evidence that the mythology concerning the House of Sokar is, as Hassan has suggested, a condensed, yet quite separate, rendition of the Egyptian concept of the duat-underworld, a kind of microcosmic variation contained within a more general account of the 12 hours of the night.

The central part of the Fifth Hour, or Division, of the duat-underworld, showing the hawk-headed god Sekri (a form of Sokar) standing on a winged cosmic serpent, which is itself surrounded by an oval-shaped island protected by twin sphinxes. Above it is the mound of creation, capped with a human head, as well as the bell-like bunt (embryo, seed) or benben-stone. On this are perched twin pigeons or doves – symbols of geographical centres or omphali.

Yet the House of Sokar seems to have been much more than this, for somehow it reflected a tangible underworld domain associated directly with Giza-Rostau. The twin lions that support the elongated ellipse or ‘island’ positioned beneath the pyramidical mound at the heart of the Fifth Hour appear to reflect the presence at Giza of the Sphinx monument. Furthermore, the passageway of Rostau, and the duat as a whole, hint at the existence beneath Giza’s limestone bedrock of tunnels, corridors and hidden chambers, the knowledge of which was preserved, either by accident or design, in the symbolic account of the duat-underworld composed by the astronomer-priests of Heliopolis.

The idea that some kind of physical representation of the duat-underworld awaits discovery beneath the sands of Giza should come as no surprise to Egyptologists, for it has long been known that the limestone plateau is riddled with natural cavities and tunnel systems carved out by underwater erosion. Furthermore, a cave-like structure, or ‘Secret Mansion’, actually described in ancient accounts as an ‘underworld’, is known to have existed in Pharaonic times at a place called Kher-aha, a cultic site attached to the sacred domains of Heliopolis. Today the entrance to this Secret Mansion can be found beneath the streets of Old Cairo.³⁰ Indeed, Egyptologist Abdel-Aziz Saleh records a local tradition that asserts that it was reached via the now water-filled crypt below the ancient church of St Sergius.³¹ According to Coptic tradition, this site was visited by the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus during their flight through Egypt.³²

Kher-aha’s quite separate ‘underworld’ domain has no connection with the one thought to exist beneath the bedrock of Giza, although it does show that this actual term was used by the Ancient Egyptians to describe an underground shrine once used for religious purposes.

More important still is the development of the myths concerning the sun’s journey through the duat. Egyptologists consider that they derive their origin from the solar cult prevalent in Egypt during Old Kingdom times. Only after this time were they transformed into the concept of a purely symbolic underworld domain.³³ Yet Selim Hassan crucially points out that in addition to these elements, the myths include facets of an ancestor cult, personified in later times by the god Osiris, which placed the duat in direct association with the tombs of the dead.³⁴ These beliefs he saw as quite separate to, and perhaps even older than, the solar elements that, as we have seen, derive in the main from the Heliopolitan doctrine. It is therefore quite feasible that the physical representation of the duat-underworld was looked on as a ‘tomb’, linked directly with Osiris, or Sokar, and Rostau, the ancient name for Giza.

So is it really possible that somewhere in the vicinity of the Great Sphinx there exists an entrance to an underground complex dating back to the epoch of the First Time? Might this have been what the priests of Heliopolis expected to find when Thutmose IV gave orders for the clearance of sand from around the body of the leonine monument? Did these excavations reveal tangible evidence of hidden chambers that convinced Thutmose, Amenhotep III and finally Akhenaten that the netjeru gods and Divine Souls really did build Giza-Rostau’s first temples and monuments? Could this be why these three kings patronised Heliopolis over and above all others, because they had learned the secret of Rostau? These were tantalising possibilities that may well turn out to have some basis in truth.

A HALL OF RECORDS

Modern-day psychics, occult societies and new-age mystics all believe firmly in the existence at Giza of an underworld labyrinth of concealed corridors and hidden chambers, which they see as having been constructed by survivors of the lost continent of Atlantis, or even by aliens. They refer to it as the ‘Temple’ or ‘Hall of Records’, after the psychic ‘readings’ given to ‘patients’ by American ‘sleeping prophet’ Edgar Cayce during the early 1930s.³⁵ In the previous decade, a similar underground complex, referred to as the ‘Chambers of Initiation’, was independently proposed by English medium Hugh C. Randall-Stevens.³⁶

Such ideas, although highly fascinating, are, as we have seen, not entirely new. As early as Roman times, legends abounded in Egypt concerning the existence in the vicinity of the Giza pyramids of ‘subterranean fissures and winding passages called syringes’, built so that they might preserve ‘the memory’ of ‘ancient rites’ which it was feared would be destroyed in a coming ‘deluge’.³⁷ Similar traditions were also preserved by the Coptic Church, and recorded in writing by later Arab historians.

In 1993 these wild ideas suddenly became more than simply the delusions of the new-age community. Not only was a previously unknown chamber found at the end of the southern shaft of the Queen’s Chamber inside the Great Pyramid by a tiny high-tech robot designed, built and controlled by Munich-based engineer and robotics expert Rudolf Gantenbrink, but another, even more enigmatic discovery was made public for the first time.

Mystics, psychics and new-agers alike believe that a series of concealed chambers awaits discovery beneath the Giza plateau. Are they correct? This image of temples and passageways thought to be located below the Great Sphinx was drawn by British medium H.C. Randall-Stevens following apparent visionary experiences in 1927.

During the autumn of that year, it was announced that seismic soundings of the hard bedrock beneath the Sphinx enclosure had revealed the presence, some five metres down, of a large rectangular room some nine metres by twelve metres in size. Dr Thomas L. Dobecki, the geophysicist and consultant in charge of the operations, which were conducted in 1991, was cautiously optimistic about the discovery, admitting that: ‘The regular, rectangular shape of this [chamber] is inconsistent with naturally occurring cavities, so there is some suggestion that it could be man-made.’³⁸

In 1996 a team of geophysicists, working under the direction of the University of Florida and the Schor Foundation – an organisation set up by Dr Joseph Schor, an American businessman and life member of the Edgar Cayce Foundation – began a new round of seismic testing in the Sphinx enclosure. The official reason given for the exploration by Dr Zawi Hawass of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt was to examine the limestone bedrock in order to pinpoint faults and cavities that might present a potential hazard to visitors if they were to collapse.³⁹ It was, however, patently clear to anyone with any knowledge of the subject that the real purpose of this work was to confirm Dobecki’s findings and to see whether an entrance could be found into the ‘Hall of Records’, which the Egyptian presidential family and the Egyptian authorities firmly believe to exist.⁴⁰

Before they too were ordered to cease their exploration of the Sphinx enclosure in late 1996, for alleged irregularities in their methods of surveying, Schor’s team was able to detect the presence of no fewer than nine further tunnels or chambers located beneath the bedrock. Geophysical sensing equipment also produced readings that strongly suggested the presence in all of them of metal.⁴¹

What might these geophysical teams, led respectively by Dr Dobecki and Dr Schor, have actually found? Have they detected natural cavities caused by underground water erosion, or were they man-made structures created either by the Pharaonic Egyptians or by the Sphinx-building Elder culture? Until further exploration is permitted by the Egyptian government we must all wait with bated breath for an answer. There are, of course, suggestions that these chambers might be linked in some way with the entrance to the proposed ‘Hall of Records’. Cayce predicted that it would be found and opened shortly before the end of the millennium (see Chapter Twenty).⁴² Furthermore, he said that the ‘connecting chambers’ leading into the ‘Hall of Records’ were located ‘between the paws of the Sphinx’, or more precisely below its ‘right paw’,⁴³ the reason for the recent testing in this area of the sunken enclosure.

Only time will tell whether Cayce’s predictions are accurate.

What seemed more important to me was to ascertain exactly what might be contained inside these chambers. Were they in any way linked with Giza’s lost underworld domain, and, if so, who constructed them, and why? Did they really constitute a ‘Hall of Records’ – some kind of museum to the memory of a lost culture containing, among other things, a ‘history of Atlantis’, ‘historical writings’, ‘dietary information’, ‘medicinal compounds’ as well as ‘musical instruments and compositions’,⁴⁴ as Cayce’s latter-day followers seem to believe, or did they have a more profound purpose?

Since the texts accredited to the Heliopolitan priesthood concerning the House of Sokar and the ‘road’ of Rostau found in the Fourth and Fifth Hours of the duat-underworld are silent on such matters, we must now turn our attentions to an entirely different source of inspiration – the myths and rituals that celebrate the gods of the First Time found inscribed in hieroglyphic form on the walls of a Ptolemaic temple at Edfu in southern Egypt. It is here that we must continue our quest to discover the ultimate legacy of the Elder gods.