The Ancient Tradition

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Music

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You’re listening to the Ancient Tradition. A Wonk Media Production. Music provided by Joseph McDade. He is your host, Dr. Jack Logan.

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Welcome to the ancient tradition. I’m your host Jack Logan. Great to have all of you with me today. Today’s the day. Today’s the day we’ve been working towards for over a year. We’re finally here. Today we finally get to talk about the appearance of the first tiny particles of visible matter to form in the cosmos. Tierra firma.

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The first solid lander rise out of the depths of the dark primordial waters of chaos. For me, this is a very important day on the podcast. I’ve been wanting to talk about this for such a long time. In fact, when I thought about putting the podcast together, I’d planned to start the podcast with this very episode. But then I realized that there was just so much more we needed to cover.

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before this aspect of the ancient tradition would take on the relevance and the significance that it needed to for us to understand why this event was so important to the ancients and the ancient tradition. See, among the ancients this day, the day the first mound of land rose out of the Primordial Waters marked one of the most important, if not the most important day in the ancient world.

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And considering all that we’ve learned so far on the podcast, this makes sense. This day marks the day the beloved son triumphed over the dragon. This day marks the day order triumphed over chaos. This day marks the day the triumphant son was crowned a king. This day marks the day the triumphant son was rewarded with his inheritance.

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for conquering the dragon, a kingdom. This day marks the day the triumphant son’s kingdom became a physical reality in the cosmos. It’s a glorious, glorious day. In fact, in the biblical canon in Job 38, verses 48, we read that the heavens shouted,

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with joy when the earth was created. In these verses the Lord is asking Job if he understands who and how the earth was created. He wants to know if Job understands how the earth was laid out and measured. It reads, and this is the Lord speaking to Job, where was thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?

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Declare if thou hast understanding, who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest, or who hath stretched the line upon it, whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened, or who laid the cornerstone thereof, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. In these verses, the Lord states that

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He was the one who laid the foundation of the earth and that the entire heavens were filled with joy when he did so. Among the ancient Mesopotamians, this day, the day of creation, the day the visible creation first appeared, was celebrated on the first day of the first month of the Assyrian and Babylonian calendar, the month of Nisan. Now you see where we’re going with this.

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What is the first day of the first month of the year? New Year’s Day. The ancient Mesopotamians celebrated the birth of the world out of the primordial waters on the very first day of the year, like a cosmic birthday. And they celebrated it every year, cosmogonically renewing the creation each time. This New Year’s Day festival was known as the Akitu Festival.

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And each year, as part of the New Year’s rite, ancient Mesopotamians would stand in Marduk’s temple, Essegila, which actually means house of the new year, and solemnly recite the Anuma Elish, the epic of creation. They would recite as if it were happening in that very moment, Marduk’s combat and victory over the sea serpent Tiamat,

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They would recite how Tiamat slew chaos, how upon victory Marduk was enthroned a king, how Marduk took the sea serpent’s carcass and created a world, and how Marduk now reigned as king over his creation. And it was a celebration and a new birth.

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In fact, our modern day New Year’s Day celebration comes directly from the New Year’s Day rites that we find in the ancient world. Of course, our modern day New Year’s celebrations, as can be easily seen, is a secularized, degenerate, deteriorated form of the original, which came from the ancient tradition. When hundreds of thousands of people gather in Times Square to celebrate the new year,

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Remind yourself that this is a corrupt remnant of a very important and sacred ancient rite which originally celebrated the high gods beloved sons triumph over the dragon. And the day he initiated the creation of his kingdom and the very first mound of land appeared out of the chaos. It was a glorious day indeed.

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over the past couple of years while I’ve been working on this podcast, I’ve had some pretty interesting experiences and some of them have been even a little crazy. And one of those crazy ones happened a couple of hours ago and I glanced up at my wall calendar and I suddenly realized that this Tuesday, March 19th, 2024 is the spring Equinox. And I just about jumped out of my skin. Why?

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Well, in ancient Mesopotamia, the month of Nisan, the first month of the ancient Mesopotamian calendar corresponds roughly with our modern day month of March. The ancient Mesopotamian calendar, New Year’s Day, started on the spring equinox. That’s right. If you’re listening to this podcast on Tuesday, March 19th, 2024, the spring equinox, today is…

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New Year’s Day in ancient Mesopotamia, the day the original creation was celebrated and renewed. I couldn’t have planned this even if I tried. I absolutely love the cosmic synchronicity here. And it makes me wonder how much God has a hand in something as humble as this podcast. Speaking of humility, I realized I made another mistake on the program and this one was in our last episode.

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I really have no idea how I made this mistake because I’m pretty familiar with King Solomon’s temple. In that episode, I said that King Solomon’s temple was aligned to the solstice. It was not. It was aligned to the equinoxes. And there is a difference. It’s not a huge symbolic difference, but there is an astronomical difference. In a future episode, I’ll get into the astronomy a little bit more, but suffice it to say here that King Solomon’s temple, as we learned in episode number four,

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was oriented to the east. The front doors of the temple faced directly east. Outside those doors stood two large pillars called Yakin and Boaz. These pillars marked the northern and southernmost points where the sun rose above the horizon during the year. They marked the summer and winter solstice. So twice a year when the day and the night both equaled 12 hours,

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Equinox, the sun would rise directly between those pillars, directly east over the horizon, marking the spring equinox. On this day, the spring equinox, the sun would shine directly on the doors of the temple. And in ancient Mesopotamia on this day, the first day of the new year, the Mesopotamians would celebrate the creation of the world.

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I hope you aren’t missing the important symbolism here between the creation and the temple. We’ll talk more about it in the next couple of episodes, but note here how the temple was aligned directly with the first day of the new year and how at that time the sun would shine directly on the doors of the temple in a blaze of fiery glory. And if the priests happened to open the front doors, the sun would penetrate the very center of the temple.

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Holy of Holies with a glorious light, reinforcing the notion that God resides in the sacred center of all things. And don’t forget for a second that we learned in our last episode that God seated on his throne in the Holy of Holies, cracked open the doors of the Holy of Holies, the golden cosmic egg, the golden womb, on the day of creation,

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the dark primordial waters and imbue the cosmos with his life-giving light, the light that reversed the powers of chaos and caused the inert elements to form themselves into a world.

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Are you beginning to see the beauty in the elegant sophistication of the symbolic system used by the ancients? I hope so. It’s pretty exquisite. So let’s jump into the ancient texts and see what we can learn about the first land that rose out of the primordial waters on New Year’s Day. For this, we must start with the ancient Egyptian pyramid texts. In particular, pyramid text number 600.

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To me, this text is one of the most important texts in the ancient world. In order to read this text, we need to travel just south of the Nile Delta to Saqqara Egypt. It’s a sandy burial ground or necropolis of ancient Egyptian royalty, located west of the Nile River. It’s there that we find some important pyramids, the pyramids of the fifth and sixth dynasties.

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which are dated to between 2353 BC and 2152 BC. In 1881, a French Egyptologist by the name of Gaston Maspero found that the interior walls of several of these pyramids were inscribed with thousands and thousands of hieroglyphs. Texts which are referred to today as the pyramid texts.

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Here’s a brief description of Gaston’s discovery as recounted by Robert Bauvill. Quote, thus it was that in the second week of February, 1881, under a glorious winter sun, Maspero embarked upon the operation with quasi-military zeal. Excavations went on until late in 1882. Maspero was proud to report that, quote,

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In less than a year, five of the so-called dumb, meaning mute, pyramids of Saqqara had spoken. This was more than he had ever dreamt would be found. Literally thousands of lines of hieroglyphs had now been discovered. One can feel Maspero’s excitements as he explains the quantity of writings involved. Quote, the result, he wrote, is considerable.

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The inscribed pyramids of Saqqara have given us almost 4,000 lines of hymns and formulae, of which the greater part were written originally during the prehistoric period of Egyptian history.

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Deep in the subterranean burial chamber of one of these pyramids was a king of the sixth dynasty known for being the longest reigning monarch in ancient Egyptian history. A king by the name of King Pepe II Neferkari. It’s in King Pepe II’s tomb that we find the answer to a puzzling question. Why did the ancient Egyptians build pyramids? The answer is elegant.

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in its simplicity. But it’s also very, very important to our examination of the creation because the answer is directly tied to the story of creation in the very first solid land rise out of the primordial waters.

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I wanna do something a little different today. Most of us will never get the chance to tour King Pepe II’s pyramid. So I wanna take you down into King Pepe’s pyramid with me so that you can get a feel for how amazing these ancient religious texts are. To do this, you’ll have to draw upon your imagination as we travel through the Sahara Desert to the sun-drenched sands of Saqqara, Egypt.

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Imagine with me.

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The giant sun disc that had painted the Sahara and fiery crimsons and golds is now little more than a spark of scarlet above the horizon, mere seconds from being swallowed by the underworld. Before you is an enormous mound of rubble. At one time, you think to yourself, King Pepe the Second’s pyramid must have been an extraordinary sight.

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But 4,000 years of tomb raiders, an insufferable arid climate, and harsh desert winds has reduced it to ruin. You flick on your headlamp, which sends a beam of light flitting off the rubble. Where you’re standing, in front of what used to be the pyramid’s northern face, is what looks like a gravel pit.

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You follow close behind me as I work my way past a couple of rocky outcrops. As we move closer to the pyramid, your headlamp catches a glimpse of a set of rudimentary stairs that appear to descend several feet into the rubble. The walls of the staircase and the staircase itself is hewn of small limestone blocks. Oddly, the staircase looks new, like it was just built.

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I let you know how lucky you are to be able to go into King Pepe II’s pyramid because up until a couple of years ago, the tomb had been closed for close to 100 years. No tourists allowed. Then about four years ago, the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities granted an American film crew permission to enter the pyramid. When the film crew arrived, there was 15 feet of sand.

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burying the entrance. It took an Egyptian crew four days to remove the sand by hand and build the stairs that you’re looking at. After the crew finished filming, the Ministry of Antiquities locked the pyramid back up, closing it indefinitely to the public. At the bottom of the stairs, I unlock a padlock hanging from a bulky, corroded chain which is locking together a rusty iron gate.

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I tell you the tunnel we’re about to enter into is less than five feet tall, so you’ll need to bend over or crouch as we make our way down the tunnel. You direct your headlamp to the pitch black void and step in to King Pepe II’s pyramid. You shudder for a moment with thoughts of how far down below the pyramid we might be going.

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You suck in a deep breath and notice that the air feels different. It feels odd. The air isn’t moving. It’s still and it has an odd smell to it. The tunnel heads downward at a much steeper slope than you’d been expecting. There aren’t any stairs, just a dark, steep, cramped downward slope taking us deeper and deeper into the darkness. As your headlamp bounces off the edges of the tunnel.

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You notice the walls. They’re rough-hewn, but there are no hieroglyphs. A few rocks and a bit of debris litter the sloping tunnel floor. Descending one footstep at a time, your imagination starts to wander. You don’t suffer from claustrophobia, but you are having no difficulty imagining how a dark, confined space such as this could trigger an irrational, debilitating panic.

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With one hand on the limestone, you inch downwards. Although the temperature is cool, a bit of sweat is scuttling down the back of your neck. Your back is starting to ache from crouching over so long. But down, down we go. Finally, I slow at the bottom of the tunnel. You’re having a difficult time calculating how many feet we’ve descended below the surface.

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You guessed the tunnel was about 60 feet long. So you’re guessing you’re about 25 feet below the surface of the earth now. I step through the tunnel and you see my head disappear as I stand up. You follow close behind. This is the entrance hall, I tell you.

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We’re all standing erect now. You turn your head so your headlamp can reveal the room to you. It looks like a small limestone vault, thick slabs of granite hewn with care sheath the floor and walls. Broken vessels and rubble litter the floor. I point my headlamp to the ceiling. You note, thankfully, that it’s at least 10 feet tall.

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As you scan the ceiling with your headlamp, you note that it’s covered in five rows of white stars. Stars that are shaped like starfish. They’re fixed against a black sky. The paint has faded and it’s deteriorating, but you know what the stars represent. They represent ancient Egyptian kings like King Pepe II, who have died and who now reign in the cosmos.

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as heavenly kings, heavenly kings who shine with glory like the stars in the night sky. I point my headlamp to the other side of the entrance hall to another stooped tunnel that looks even lower than the one we’d just come through. And your stomach falls as you contemplate going deeper and deeper into the pyramid’s entrails.

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As we make our way, again, crouched over through the next tunnel, our headlamps bounce off of the walls and ceilings creating a ghostly drama of shadows and lights. Mercifully we aren’t descending. This tunnel is level. I suddenly stop and aim my headlamp at a massive slab of limestone that hangs above my head.

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It looks like it could slip and crush me at any moment. These were used by the pyramid builders to barricade the king’s tomb, I explain. When the tomb was ready to be closed, the tomb builders would release these slabs and they’d seal off the passage, locking the tomb raiders out.

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Unfortunately, as you’ll see, it didn’t work.

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inching beneath the hovering blocks of granite, we continue deeper into the darkness. A dank, putrid stench washes over us as we work our way through the tunnel. Finally, I step to the side and say, I present to you the antechamber of King Pepe II Neferkari, and I motion for you to exit the tunnel and enter the antechamber. As you step into the chamber,

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stretching out your back, your headlamp scans the antechamber, and you are momentarily stunned. The tunnel is opened to a square chamber, not much bigger than 10 by 10 feet. High limestone walls with a gable roof, again shrouded with five pointed stars, stands before you. But it’s the walls you can’t take your eyes off of.

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The walls are covered in literally hundreds and hundreds of vertical columns of emerald green hieroglyphs, about two and a half inches in width. Birds and feathers, snakes, owls, pots. These are the pyramid texts, I tell you. You’re astonished by how strikingly uniform and well-preserved they are. You suddenly wish you understood hieroglyphs so you could read them.

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You think to yourself, my goodness, these were inscribed nearly 4500 years ago by Egyptians who crouched through the very same tunnels we just came through. Your eyes can’t stop staring at how green the hieroglyphs still are. It was so unexpected. These are the pyramid texts, I say again.

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anywhere in the world.

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You can’t restrain yourself any longer. And you exclaim, this is just amazing. You wanna trace your finger over the hieroglyph of a bird, but you hold back because you know the oils in your fingers might damage the inscriptions. You feel so lucky to be down here, viewing these ancient texts with your own eyes. Even though the thought of going further into the pyramid is starting to turn your stomach.

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While you’re taking the pyramid texts, I tell you that King Pepe II’s pyramid is squared to the points of the compass. It’s almost perfectly aligned to the cardinal points. None of you ask me why, because you already know.

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Come on, I tell you, we gotta keep going so I can show you what we came here to see. On my right is another stooped tunnel. Your headlamp flicks off of the wall. As you duck and follow me through, you immediately gasp. The glimmer of your headlamp illuminates the tunnel walls. They too are sheathed in emerald green hieroglyphs, arrayed in columns just like they were in the antechamber.

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as you inch your way through. It’s almost as if the ancients are speaking directly to you. Your face is inches from the hieroglyphs. And this time, you can’t resist. You just have to touch the hieroglyph on the wall next to you. You reach out, and as you trace the glyph, you can feel the texture of the plaster and the precise indentation. You can’t help but feel a sense of connection.

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connection to the deeper threads of existence. Come, come, I say, exiting the tunnel. You note that the tunnel that we just went through was more of a short passageway than an actual tunnel. As we step out, the room suddenly opens to a grand rectangular chamber, an enormous black sandstone sarcophagus, higher than your waist.

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polished and adorned by a band of hieroglyphs, rests against the west wall. The lid is slightly ajar. It’s empty. The Tomb Raider’s one. A high gabled roof, similar to the one in the antechamber, towers over the burial chamber. It’s blanketed with patches of black sky and once again, with hundreds of white stars.

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Scores of emerald hieroglyphs, each in tidy columns separated by thin black lines, decorate the chamber walls. I pan the burial chamber with my headlamp, studying the walls. Suddenly I spin towards the east wall, directly behind us where we just came through the passageway, and aim my headlamp over the hieroglyphs, hopping from column to column, stopping here and there.

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muttering to myself. Finally, I stop on the hieroglyph of a cobra. I drag my headlamp down the column, illuminating an exquisite emerald hieroglyph of a beetle. Below that, you spot a cup, a vulture, an owl, a bird, and several other hieroglyphs that you can’t identify. A smile swells across my face.

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You can’t hold back. You exclaim, what? What does it say? I reach up with my finger and trace the text down the column saying, several pyramids from the old kingdom contain pyramid texts, but Pepe II’s pyramid is very, very special. It’s the only pyramid in all of Egypt that contains this particular text.

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I zero in on the cobra. Just read what it says, you say, getting impatient with me. So I begin, dragging my headlamp down the column as I read. Oh, a tomb who is coming into being. When you became high as the mound, you rose up as the benben in the mansion of the bird Benu in On. You listen intently to every word.

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But you can’t really make heads or tells of what it means, nor can you fathom why I find this pyramid text so fascinating. You blurt out, okay, so what does that mean? I pull away from the wall and say, think about it for a minute. You understand more of this than you think you do. Listen to it again.

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When you became high as the mound, you rose up as the benben in the mansion of the bird Benu in Awn.

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I see puzzled looks on your faces, so I say, give it some thought as we work our way back through the pyramid. When we get outside, if you still haven’t parsed it out, I’ll tell you what it means. After spending a few more minutes in the burial chamber, we trace our steps backwards, back through the short narrow passage, into the antechamber, back through the flat tunnel,

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beneath the hovering slabs of limestone, into the vestibule, back up the narrow tunnel to the pyramid’s entrance.

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When we finally step out of the pyramid and begin ascending the limestone steps, you take in a huge lung full of desert air, just happy to be outside. A brilliant half moon hangs in the night sky, casting a soft luminescence over the rolling dunes and arid flats. You say, staring across the Sahara desert, I know what’s talking about Atum, the creator god.

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And it’s talking about a mound. So the creator god Atum must have something to do with the mound. But that’s all I’ve got. I don’t know what the Benben or the Benu thing is. Very good, I say. Very, very good.

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Sadly, not a single one of us will ever have the privilege of entering King Pepe II’s pyramid. The tomb is currently being excavated and preserved by an international team of archeologists, and it’s permanently sealed off to the public. But I wanted you to have an opportunity to imagine what it might be like if you did have the opportunity to see the pyramid texts in King Pepe II’s pyramid for yourself, especially Pyramid Text 600.

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I wanted you to get a feel for how special and important these religious texts are. These are the earliest known recorded religious beliefs in the world, which makes them not only remarkable, but incredibly important to the ancient tradition. It’s important to say here that I don’t believe that the ancient Egyptian religion is the original ancient tradition.

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I believe that the ancient Egyptian religion is a remnant of the original religious tradition, but that it’s not the original religious tradition. And there are a lot of reasons for this conclusion, but I’m going to save that for a discussion in a future episode. Suffice it to say here that the ancient Egyptian religion, especially as portrayed in the pyramid text, contain a lot of very important theological stubborn bits.

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So it’s absolutely essential on this program that we give the ancient Egyptian religion, especially the pyramid texts, serious consideration, which we’ve been doing and which we’re gonna continue to do on this program. If you’re a long time listener of the ancient tradition, you already know that there are significant, substantive theological parallels between what was taught by the ancient Egyptians and what was taught by the ancient Mesopotamians.

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the ancient Canaanites, the ancient Israelites, and even by Christ himself, especially in regards to the theology of heavenly kingship. As such, it is no longer possible to dismiss the ancient Egyptian religion as a heretical pagan peculiarity. As the podcast continues, you’ll see time and time again that the ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts are a rich

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repository of theological gems, gems which tie directly to the ancient tradition. Okay, so back to Pyramid Text 600. Let’s break it down. It starts, O’atum, who is coming into being. Atum here refers to the creator god Atum. In ancient Egyptian texts, sometimes Atum is referred to as Atem,

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A-T-E-M or TEMU, T-E-M-U or TEM, T-E-M.

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The name Atum is derived from the verb t-m, tem, meaning to finish or to complete, which scholars interpret as referring to Atum himself as the perfected one or the complete one, or as a reference to him as the finisher of the world. In ancient Egypt, Atum was considered the unparalleled creator of the world, and

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The father of the kings, the divine ancestor of the kings, the pharaohs. Let’s continue. Pyramid 600 reads, quote, “‘When you became high as the mound.'” So here we have reference to a mound. What mound? What mound is this? The mound referred to here is the first mound of solid ground to rise out of the chaotic waters of New, the primordial waters.

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Here, we’re told that when this land emerged from the waters of new, Atum emerged with it. So one way to visualize this is to visualize Atum sitting on the top of the mound as it rises out of the chaotic waters. It continues. You rose up as the Benben. So here we’re getting the rising motif again, the motif of Atum rising or emerging as the mound emerges.

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But what is the ben ben? What’s the ben ben this text is referring to? Well, scholars believe the word ben ben is associated with the ancient Egyptian word weben, W-B-N, which also means to rise. So this passage could be translated as you rose up as the riser, the ben ben. Ben ben is actually the name

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The ancient Egyptians gave to the first mound or hill of solid earth to rise out of new. So ben ben is the name of the primordial mound or hillock that rose out of the primordial waters. So the first two lines of pyramid text 600 are essentially saying the exact same thing twice. O atum, who is coming into being. When you became high as the mound, so there’s the mound of creation, you rose up.

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the ben ben. Again, there’s the mound of creation. From those lines we learn that a very important mound of land rose out of the primordial waters and that this mound is in some important way directly connected to the creator god Atum. Now we know he created the mound but there’s got to be more to it. Let’s read the rest. It reads, quote, you rose up as the ben ben in the mansion of the bird

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Benu in on Let’s start with on o n on Which is also mentioned in the Bible Refers to the ancient Egyptian city of Heliopolis, which is the name the Greeks gave to the city of on in Greek Helio means son Opulis means city of so Heliopolis or on was the city of the Sun Ancient on or Heliopolis

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used to be located in part of what is today Northern Cairo. And unfortunately, I’d love to go visit it, but most of the ancient ruins lay about 15 to 20 meters below the surface of Cairo. And even then, there isn’t much left because most of Heliopolis was pillaged to construct medieval Cairo. Heliopolis, despite the lack of ruins, was one of the oldest and most important cities in the ancient world.

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In the heart of Heliopolis stood a vast temple, a temple that was larger than Karnak, dedicated to Ra, the sun god, the divine force behind the creation and the sustainer of life. Within the temple complex stood a sacred stone, the Benben. That represented the primeval mound from which the world was believed to have emerged. This is the same mound upon which Atum was said to have first appeared.

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The ancient Egyptians actually merged Atum and Ra together to form Atumra. So back to Pyramid Text 600, it reads, “‘You rose up as the Benben “‘in the mansion of the bird Benu in An.'” The mansion referred to in this text is the temple in Heliopolis. So we could translate this text, “‘You rose up as the primeval mound “‘in the temple of the bird Benu in Heliopolis.'”

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Okay, so now we have to figure out what the Bennu bird is. Note here how we’re once again dealing with a bird. We’re back to avian symbolism. And what do we know about avian symbolism? What do birds represent in the ancient world? They represent divine or celestial beings. So in this passage, who do you think this Bennu bird represents? Think on that for a minute while I tell you a little bit more about this magnificent bird.

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For starters, note how the name given to the bird is Benu, which is very similar to the word given to the primeval mound, Benben. So we got Benu and Benben. And ancient Egyptians did this on purpose. Benu, like Benben, is derived from the ancient Egyptian word, webin, like we noted earlier, which means to rise. But what I didn’t tell you earlier is that webin actually means to rise in brilliance.

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to shine. The ancient Egyptians want us to know that this bird shines, a bird that shines like the sun. And we of course are not surprised by this at all because we already know that this bird represents a divine being, a being who adhered to the cosmic law of rightness and as such took on a brilliant glorious light. And you’re seeing here how all of this symbolism is coming together so beautifully.

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I hope so. Here we have a bird, a brilliant shining bird, which lives in a temple, a temple that houses a mound, the mound that rose up out of the primordial waters on the first day of creation. Interestingly, in the fifth century BC, the Greek historian Herodotus equated the Bennu bird with the phoenix bird, the bird who’s

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Plumage was said to be a brilliant scarlet and gold, that immortal bird that according to legend died in a flame of fire and then was born again. Interestingly, the word phoenix entered the English language by way of the Latin word phoenix, and the Latin word was in turn derived from the Greek word phoenix, a word which very interestingly is thought to have meant palm tree.

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So once again, we have a very important bird associated with a special tree. And you long time listeners may find this even more intriguing. Tina Granite, who wrote The Phoenix in Egypt, Arab and Greek mythology, recounts the following legend. She says, speaking of the Phoenix, quote, “‘When it feels its end approaching, it builds a nest with the finest aromatic

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woods, sets it on fire, and is consumed by the flames. From the pile of ashes, a new phoenix arises, young and powerful. It then embalms the ashes of its predecessor in an egg of myrrh, and flies to the city of the sun, Heliopolis, where it deposits the egg on the altar of the sun god.

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Did you catch that? Wow, there’s a lot there. I hope you caught all of the important symbols in this legend. The bird, fire, a tree, a nest, an egg, and myrrh. It’s all there. In ancient Greece, the phoenix is said to collect cinnamon and myrrh for its nest.

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which I remind you were two of the key ingredients in the sacred oil that was used to anoint the kings of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Israel, and others. In ancient Egyptian iconography, the Bennu bird was depicted either wearing the disc of the sun on his head, which clearly associates him with the sun god Ra, or wearing the Ateph crown. Do you remember what the Ateph crown looked like?

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If you don’t, the Atef crown was the crown that Osiris often wore, the white canonical crown that was flanked by two feathers. And what kind of feathers were they? Ostrich feathers, the feathers that symbolized his compliance with Maat, the cosmic law of rightness, truth and justice. So back to Pyramid Text 600, the full text reads, quote,

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O atum, who is coming into being, when you became high as the mound, you rose up as the benben in the mansion of the bird Benu in An. We could translate this as, O atum, who came into being when you rose on the mound of creation. You rose up on the mound of creation in the temple of the sunbird, the phoenix in Heliopolis.

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At the beginning of this section, I asked you to see if you could figure out who the Benu bird represented. Did you figure it out? We know it represents a divine being, but which divine being? Hopefully, with all of the clues we covered, you’ve figured it out. In ancient Egypt, the brilliant, glorious bird that rose up on the mound of creation represented Atum, or Ra, rising at the same time.

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picture the Bennu bird perched on the summit of the primordial mound. Or since the Bennu bird, the glorious sunbird, represented Ra, who was also symbolized by the sun, you could picture the sun perched on the summit of the primordial mound. I hope you see that there’s a whole lot more going on here in Pyramid Text 600 than meets the eye. All of which connects to important things that we’ve been discussing on the podcast.

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For starters, we see that this first solid land to rise out of the depths of the dark primordial waters is pretty special. It’s connected to a bird, which we know is the creator god Atum, a glorious being of light. We know that Atum is the father of the kings, which is reinforced by depictions of the Bennu bird wearing a crown. So we know this mound is in some way connected to kingship.

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And we know the crown the Bennu bird wears emphasizes that he is a follower of Maat, the cosmic law of rightness. And if we draw from the legend of the phoenix recounted by Granite, then we see that this mound is also associated with a sacred tree, the bird’s nest, myrrh, an altar, and rebirth. This primordial mound is no ordinary mound of dirt.

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No, it’s so, so much more. Have you ever wondered why the ancient Egyptians built gigantic pyramid-shaped monuments rather than square or rectangular ones? Well, whether you realize it or not, you now know. See, back in prehistoric days, the ancient Egyptians built mounds over their burial sites to represent the primordial mound of creation.

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Over time, this mound became more and more stylized. And in 2780 BC, Imhotep, King Dozier’s architect, erected Egypt’s first step pyramid by placing six mastabas. These are flat-topped mounds, one on top of each other to create the world’s first step pyramid. And there was a really important reason why Imhotep did this, but we’re gonna have to save that for a future episode.

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At the start of the fourth dynasty, King Sneferu erected the first smooth sided pyramid. A beautiful, monumental, and stylized version of the primordial mound of creation. That’s right, the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids to represent the first piece of land to rise out of the primordial waters. This must have been a very, very special piece of land.

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Indeed. Have you ever noticed that ancient peoples all over the world built pyramids? Everyone knows that the ancient Egyptians built pyramids, but so did the ancient Mesopotamians. The Sumerians, Babylonians, Elamites, Akkadians, and Assyrians all built pyramids called ziggurats. In Sudan, Sahel, and Nigeria, Africans built pyramids. In fact, in the Sudan, Nubians built over 225 pyramids.

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many of which are still standing today. In Mesoamerica, the Aztecs, Maya, Olmecs, Teotihuacans, Toltecs, Zapotecs, Glen Cans, and Chalchuahuites, all built pyramids. In North America, pyramid mounds can be found in Chahokia and all over the Eastern United States among the Mississippians. And in Asia,

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Temple and tomb-like pyramids are found literally all over India, Indonesia, Cambodia, and East, Southeast, and Central Asia, including China. And now you know why. This peculiar architectural form and the widespread distribution of this form, along with correspondences in the belief systems that accompany these pyramidal structures, is yet again

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further evidence that a single religious tradition was revealed to human beings in the beginning. We are in no way done talking about this special hill of land, but for today, if you’re listening on Tuesday, March 19th, 2024, take a stroll outside and watch the spring equinatal sun

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in much of the ancient world. The day the heavens shouted for joy, the day the ancients celebrated with zeal, the day the beloved son, the dragon slayer’s kingdom became a physical reality in the cosmos. It’s a glorious day. Happy New Year. That’s it for me. I’ll leave you with the words of William Shakespeare. Knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.

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I’m Jack Logan.

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You’ve been listening to the Ancient Tradition. A Wonk Media Production.