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. Welcome to the program. Welcome to all of you, long time listeners, periodic listeners, new listeners. We’re thrilled to have all of you listening in. The ancient world is absolutely loaded with amazing texts and myths and legends and writings and artifacts and rituals and architecture that attest that a single religious tradition was given to human beings in the very beginning.

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There’s so many interesting, fascinating clues out there that help us reconstruct the core constitution of that religious tradition. For the past 31 episodes, we’ve been piecing the theology together from evidence left behind by the ancients. And today, we’re gonna continue doing just that. If you’re a new listener, you’re not too late to the party. You’ll definitely learn something new by listening in today. But I encourage you to go back.

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and listen to the episodes that have preceded this one because this podcast is progressive, which means that each new episode builds upon the previous episode. There’s a lot of great stuff in those episodes. I promise that as you give those episodes a listen, you’re gonna learn and understand so many things that you never had before, and you’ll have a much more comprehensive view of what the ancients taught. It’s definitely worth your time.

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Also, check out our website, thea because there you’re gonna find pictures and links and transcripts to each of the episodes. And you’re even gonna find a couple of YouTube videos, not too many, but you’ll find those and you’ll also find a link to our sister podcast, The Ancient Tradition Audio Rit. On there, we have audio recordings of some of the ancient texts that we discuss or talk about on the program. The website’s a treasure trove of resources, so it’s worth checking out.

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Great, so let’s jump into today’s episode. In our previous episode, we took a fun virtual tour through King Pepe Nefakari’s pyramid in ancient Egypt. And we did that because it’s in King Pepe the Second’s pyramid that we find a very, very important pyramid text. Pyramid text 600. In that episode, we learned that pyramid text 600 attests that in the very beginning,

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The very first visible matter to rise out of the primordial waters of chaos was a mound or a hill of land. Scholars call this land the Primordial Hill or the Primordial Hillock. I have a lot of questions about this mound. So outside of it being the first visible matter to form in the universe, we have to ask ourselves, what is so amazing about this first hill of

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firm earth to rise out of the primordial waters. What’s so amazing or important about it that the ancient Egyptians took more than 27 years, an estimated 52 million man days, and 92 million cubic feet of limestone to create a pyramidal form of this primordial hill, to create the great pyramid of Giza, the pyramid of King Khufu.

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Obviously, if the ancient Egyptians were willing to dedicate millions and millions of hours out there quarrying and cutting and transporting millions and millions of cubic feet of limestone to create a stylized permanent version of this primordial mound in the Sahara Desert, then we have to ask ourselves why? What is it about this primordial mound that the ancient Egyptians found so important?

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if you go through and read the scholarly discourses on the Great Pyramid of Giza. Those scholars are gonna tell you that the pyramid is important because it housed the dead king’s remains, because it demonstrated the king’s status, that it served as a permanent reminder of the dead king’s place in society, and blah, blah, blah. It served as a place for the living to bring offerings to the dead king, et cetera, et cetera. That’s all well and good.

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The connection that we see here between the Primordial Hill and kingship is pretty darn important. And we’re going to come back to it. But what these scholars neglect to address is why? Why did the ancient Egyptians consider the Primordial Hill so important that they would expend an enormous amount of time and energy to recreate it? We know it’s important because it was the first visible matter to come out of the Primordial Waters. So we can argue that it’s pretty clear for that reason.

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But again, it begs the question, why did they consider this first hill of land to be so special? What was so special about it? More land rose out of the waters after the first land, but it was the first land the ancient Egyptians considered to be supremely important. So much so that they built some 138 representations of it

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in pyramidal forms, as pyramids across Egypt. The answer to why the ancient Egyptians considered the Primordial Hill to be so important isn’t exactly clear. And I think that’s why so many Egyptologists gloss over it or ignore the question. But today, we are not going to gloss over it. We’re not gonna ignore this question. We’re gonna tackle it head on. Because as you’ll see by the end of today’s episode,

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this hill plays an unbelievably important role in the theology of the ancient tradition. You just have to be symbolically literate so that you know what you’re looking at and what the ancients are trying to teach us. Our goal in this episode is to take what we learned about this primordial hill from Pyramid Text 600 and combine that with clues that we can cull from a number of other ancient texts and.

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myths about this hill. In doing this will serve two purposes. First, it’s going to expose to you how ubiquitous the theme of the Primordial Hill is in the ancient world. The Primordial Hill is another one of those cosmological stubborn bits we find showing up all over the globe, which of course is further evidence that a single religious tradition was revealed to human beings in deep antiquity.

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These texts are going to provide us with a number of new and interesting clues, which if we decipher them, will unveil several remarkable and important aspects about this Primordial Hill. The question of why the ancient Egyptians revered the Primordial Hill will be answered. And the answer does not disappoint. By the end of this episode, you’ll be saying to yourself, Oh, now I…

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understand that makes so much sense. Okay. So while I go through these ancient texts and myths, use what you know from the past 31 episodes to see if you can’t piece together the clues and figure out what’s going on with this primordial hill before I tell you at the end of today’s episode, because like I’ve stated before, the primordial hill is no ordinary hill of dirt. We just need to figure out why.

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So let’s jump in. In our previous episode, we established by way of Pyramid Text 600, a text inscribed by the ancient Egyptians about 4,500 years ago in King Pepe Neferkari’s tomb that an important hill of land emerged from the waters of Nu, a hill that marked the commencement of the physical creation.

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When we examine texts from other ancient civilizations, we find that this is an archaic and widespread cosmological motif. For example, in ancient Mesopotamia, in a Sumerian text dated to between 2500 and 2000 BC, a text titled The Debate Between Grain and Sheep. It’s kind of a fun title.

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we see that the Sumerian creation also started with a hill of land. The text reads, starting in line one, quote, when upon the hill of heaven and earth, on spawned the Anuna gods. Okay, so here we have a hill, the god On, and the birth of the Anuna gods.

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The hill they’re talking about here is the Primordial Hill of Creation. In Sumerian, this hill is known as the Duku, D-U-K-U. Note how the Sumerians refer to the Primordial Hill here as the quote, Hill of Heaven and Earth. What do they mean by this? Well, it’s not exactly clear, but it does indicate that this Primordial Hill is in some way connected to or connects Heaven and Earth together.

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That’s interesting. Add that to your list of clues. Later in the text, the Primordial Hill is actually given the name Horsog Anki Bida, which means the mountain of both heaven and earth. If you remember An, sometimes An is referred to as Anu, he’s the Sumerian high god, the king of the gods. We talked about him a lot in episode number 16, the council of the gods.

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If you haven’t listened to that episode, you’ll definitely want to. According to Dutch Assyriologist, Thor Kold Jacobsen, we’ve talked about him a lot on the program. The high God on is, quote, the fountainhead of all authority and authoritative commands. That’s divine utterance, whether parental, lordly, or royal. He is the power that lifts existence out of chaos and anarchy.

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and makes it an organized whole. From this, it’s clear that the God On is understood to be the demur, the creator, the one that has the power to command the elements through divine utterance to form into a world, which is what we’re talking about in this text, the creation. In this text, where do we find the creator God On? Let me read the text again. Quote,

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the hill of heaven and earth, On spawned the Anunnagods. So in this text, On is upon the primordial hill. He’s either standing or sitting upon the first visible matter to rise up out of the Apsu, the name the Sumerians gave the primordial waters. Is this sounding familiar? Well, it should because this is exactly what we read in Pyramid Text 600.

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The only difference is that the name of the God seated on the hill and the name that’s given to the primordial hill are different. Let me read Pyramid Text 600 to you again, just to kind of remind you of what it said. It read, “‘O Atum who is coming into being, when you became high as the mound, you rose up as the ben-ben.'” So in both of these texts, the high God, whether he’s called Atum or Anu,

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is either seated or standing on the hill of creation, named either the Benben or the Dukku, depending on who’s speaking. In this ancient Sumerian text, we learn something else interesting about the Primordial Hill. The text reads, quote, “‘When upon the hill of heaven and earth “‘on spawned the Anuna gods.'” The text tells us that it was upon the Primordial Hill that the high god gave birth

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to the Anunnagods. Do you remember who the Anunnagods are? The Anunnagods are the Anunnaki, which actually means the offspring of An. The Anunnaki, the royal or princely offspring of the high god An, who is the king of the gods. If you have a good memory, you’ll also remember from episode number 16 that the Anunnaki, An’s royal offspring, make up

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the Council of the Gods. So in this passage, we get a really interesting clue about the Primordial Hill. It was upon this hill that the gods who make up the Council of the Gods were born. Now, you might be wondering to yourself, did Pyramid Text 600 say anything like this? Anything about Atum giving birth to other gods while on the Primordial Hill? Well, the answer to that is yes.

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In our last episode, I actually didn’t read the full text, but had I, this is what you would have heard. Oh, 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 on. You sneezed shoe and spat tefnut. Shoe and tefnut are Atum’s progeny.

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They are primordial gods who are sneezed or spat out of Atum’s being while he was upon the primordial hill. Let’s read a little bit more from the Sumerian text, the debate between grain and sheep. We just read line one. Now let’s skip down to lines 26 and 27. They read, at that time, at the place of the God’s formation, in their home,

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on the holy mound they created sheep and grain. Now, this is an intriguing text. Here we’re told that the Primordial Hill, or Duku, is a quote, holy mound. In fact, the word Duku in Sumerian actually means holy mound. From this we learn that the Primordial Hill is special, in part because it’s holy, it’s sacred.

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We aren’t told here why the Sumerians consider the Primordial Hill holy, just that they do. But it’s actually pretty easy to figure out why. Let’s reread the text. It says, at that time, and the time is the time of creation, at the place of the gods formation, in their own home on the Holy Mount. Did you catch that?

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This text tells us that the Primordial Hill was not only where the royal offspring of the High God were born, it was also their home. We know from past episodes that God is a being who radiates a glorious light. And that’s because He upholds rightness. There is no darkness in Him. Darkness is profane. Darkness is the opposite of sacred. So where God resides is itself sacred.

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ground. That’s another clue. Henry Frankfurt, the famous Dutch Egyptologist we’ve mentioned several times on the program, said this, quote, everywhere the site of creation, the first land to emerge from chaos was thought to have been charged with vital power. And this is

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this holy hill. Now I don’t wanna get too far off topic here, but I wanna throw in something for the long time listeners. In ancient Mesopotamia, the primordial hill is also considered the dwelling place or the seat of the god Demusii. Demusii is the dying and rising god of the Sumerian pantheon, the shepherd god. It was on the primordial mound that Demusii

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was invested or robed with a divine garment. In an ancient Sumerian text titled, a Hymn to Inanna and Her Self-Praise, dated to around the early Isshin period between 2025 and 1975 BC. In column three, line three of this clay cylinder, it reads, quote, let me clothe Ululu. Now Ululu is a Damusi.

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on the Shining Mound. Line six, in the place of a rally. Note that the Primordial Hill here is referred to as a Shining Mound. And note also that there’s a palace on the mound, the Palace of a Rally. Sometimes D’Moussie is referred to as the Lord of a Rally or the Lord of the Shepherd’s Hill, another name for the Primordial Hill.

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Raleigh is actually the ancient Sumerian word for the underworld or the realm of the dead So this means the primordial mound and the dying and rising God the Shepherd King Are also connected to the underworld or the realm of the dead somehow and we’ll talk a lot of more about this in a future episode Now here’s the really interesting part in Sumerian the root Damu of Damuze

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According to Gregory Shushon, who wrote the book, Conceptions of the Afterlife in Early Civilizations, actually means the dead anointed one. So interesting. In addition, in several ancient texts, Demusie is associated with the god Amma Usamgal Anna, who’s a heroic warrior associated with the date palm tree.

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That’s right, the date palm, the same tree that’s associated with the Bennu bird and the phoenix. Wikipedia notes, and this is drawn from the Dutch Assyriologist, Thoracod Jacobson, we’ve talked about him a lot, in an article that he wrote called, Toward the Image of D’Muzie. It was printed by University of Chicago Press in the journal, History of Religions, Volume One. And this is what it says, quote, to ancient Mesopotamian peoples,

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The date palm represented stability. In some Sumerian poems, Damuzi is referred to as my Damu, which means my son. This name is usually applied to him in his role as, now listen to this, the personification of the power that causes the sap to rise in trees. Wow, you heard that right.

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D’amuzi is associated with a power in sap. Here we see the god D’amuzi, the dead anointed one, the shepherd king who sits on the primordial mound is associated with a special tree, the date palm. As the divine king, he personifies the power that causes the sap, sap-like myrrh, to bleed from trees.

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Yeah, Thorkell Jacobson says that the god Demusie was known for quote, the power for new life, a power in the sap that rises in trees and plants. All of you longtime listeners out there should know why this matters. If you’re a new listener and you want to know what all of this means, be sure and check out episode number eight, the fragrant dew of paradise. You’ll learn a lot there.

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As I noted a couple of minutes ago, in ancient Mesopotamia, the land that rose out of the primordial waters, the primordial hill known as Dukku, was referred to as a shining mound. A bright, glorious light was associated with this hill. This is similar to what we saw in our previous episode in ancient Egypt. If you remember, in Pyramid Text 600, we’re told that a brilliant scarlet and gold bird, the Bennu bird, the sun bird,

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perched upon the ben ben, the primordial mound, in Heliopolis, the city of the sun. In that episode, we noted that the word benu is derived from the ancient Egyptian word weben, which actually means to rise in brilliance, to shine. So we’re getting a pretty strong shining motif going on here with the primordial hill. And when we turn to ancient Mesopotamia,

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we see the same thing. In a text known as the Third House Prayer, Cuneiform Tablet 17.41, it says, quote, sun god, when you rise from the great mountain, when you rise from the great mountain, the mountain of the spring, when you rise from dooku, which again is the ancient Mesopotamian word for the primordial hill, the place where the destinies are determined,

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when you rise at the place where heaven and earth embrace. Note how we’re getting the same thing we saw earlier that the primordial hill is where heaven and earth connect or as it said here embrace at the horizon. This is a pretty nifty passage. In this passage we’re told that the Sun God, Shamash, just like we saw in Pyramid Text 600, rises on the primordial hill. In this passage

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ancient Mesopotamians refer to the primordial hill as the great mountain. I like that. There’s actually connections to Egypt with that one. They refer to their temples as the great house, but we’ll save that. Let me reread the passage to you. It says, Son God, who is Shamash, when you rise from the great mountain, when you rise from the great mountain, the mountain of the spring,

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Note, just like we saw in Pyramid Text 600, here the ancient Mesopotamians basically say the exact same thing two times in a row, that the sun god rose on the Primordial Hill. And this is exactly what we saw in Pyramid Text 600, which reads, quote, O Atum, who is coming into being, when you became high as the mound, you rose up as the mound. It tells us twice, back to back, that Atum rose on the Primordial Hill. You know, it’s internal structures like this and consistencies that we find between different

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that suggest that they either borrowed from each other or that they were taken from a common source. Okay, back to the point that the Primordial Hill shined. In Cuneiform Tablet 17, we see that the shining, brilliant sun god Shamash rises upon the Primordial Hill. It’s pretty clear that we’re dealing with solar symbolism here. Here, the ancient Mesopotamians are equating the shining god.

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who rises on the Primordial Hill with the actual sun. This is important. By doing this, they’re trying to help us capture the magnitude of the brilliant radiance of the God who rose on the Primordial Hill. So they use the brightest object that they can find to symbolize him. And what is that? It’s of course the sun. It’s important to me to stress here that when we study these texts,

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It’s clear that the ancients understood that the God who rose up on the mound was in fact a God. This God was the Creator, the God who created the primordial hill he’s rising on. And he shined. He was a glorious being of light. So the ancients used the physical sun to symbolize him. And the nifty thing about doing this is that the sun every day follows a predictable cycle of birth, death,

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and rebirth, which you’re going to see as the podcast progresses, are core theological components of the ancient tradition. So the sun became an unbelievably useful symbol for the god who rose on the Primordial Hill and the theology that’s associated with him. Because of this, we’re going to see the Primordial Hill identified with and oriented to

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the sun all over the world. In particular, like we see in the third house prayer, the primordial mound is identified as the locus of the prototypical sunrise. It’s the place of sunrise. This is pretty clear towards the end of the prayer. Let’s read it again and see if you can pick up the connection. Sun God, when you rise from the great mountain, when you rise from the great mountain, the mountain of the spring.

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When you rise from Dooku, the place where the destinies are determined. When you rise at the place where heaven and earth embrace at the horizon. The horizon, of course, is where the sun rises and sets. This passage clearly stresses the rising at the horizon of the sun god on the day of creation on the primordial hill. I don’t know how much you looked at the photo that I attached.

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to the last episode, but if you give it a look, you’ll notice that the sun is perched atop the Great Pyramid of Giza, a stylized version of the Primordial Hill. Keep this in your back pocket because this is another important clue. And this is also the reason why the Primordial Hill is associated with the rising sun on the spring equinox, which we noted in our last episode, marks the first day of the new year in the Mesopotamian calendar, the day the world was

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created, the very moment that the spring equinidal sun peaked its head over the horizon, marked for the ancients the moment of creation. A scholar by the name of Wolfgang Heimpel, he was a professor emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He noted in the Journal of Cuneiform Studies, volume 38, that in ancient Mesopotamia, the

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the cedar mountain. Now this is interesting. The primordial hill is associated with cedar, a tree. Listen to what he says, quote, in the Tigi song to Inanna, and that’s found in Cuneiform tablet 36, Demusi, remember we just talked about Demusi, is compared to quote Utu.

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Utu is the early name that was given to the Sumerian sun god Shamash, who we just talked about. When he emerges from the mountain of cedar resin. Did you listen closely to that? What did the ancients say in this text? It said that the sun god Utu emerged or rose from the primordial mound, the mountain of cedar resin.

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What is resin? I’m pretty sure most of you know what it is, but in case you don’t, resin is what we get when the sap of a tree dries and hardens. In this light, another name for the Primordial Hill could be the Hill or Mountain of Sap. That seems a very odd name for the Primordial Hill. Why would the ancients call the Primordial Hill the Mountain of Resin or Sap? Well, like I mentioned in episode number eight,

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the fragrant dew of paradise, the sap or resin that bled from the Kamaphora muri tree was infused in the sacred oil that was used to anoint kings. Now, I’m not gonna spell out here all of the reasons why the ancients did this. I’ve discussed this previously on the podcast, but let me quote what Wikipedia has to say about resin, because it explains in part why the ancients infused

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the holy anointing oil with myrrh. It reads, quote, plants secrete resins for their protective benefits in response to injury, wounds. Resins protect plants from insects and pathogens. And of course, we know that insects and pathogens here are the enemy.

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If you wanna learn more about this, you really need to give episode number 22, the wounded hero, and episode number 24, oh Christmas tree, a listen. Suffice it to say here, it’s from the Tigi song to Inanna that we see that the primordial hill is associated with a sacred tree and the sap of that tree, both of which you long time listeners know are directly tied to kingship. So now we know the primordial hill is tied to kingship too.

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All of these are clues. It’s worth noting here that we see the same association between the Primordial Hill and the holy oil used to anoint kings, the holy oil infused with the resin of a tree among the ancient Hebrews. I’m gonna read a bit from Psalm 2 and Psalm 45, and both of these are considered royal Psalms, and they’re gonna illustrate this. In Psalm 2 verse 6, we read.

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and this is the Lord Yahweh speaking, quote, yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. In this verse we have Yahweh telling us that he has, quote, set his king upon his holy hill. And the holy hill here is of course the primordial hill. El Cot’s Bible commentary tells us the Hebrew word for set, Nasak.

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literally means to pour or to pour out. And it’s been translated many times by English scribes as anointed, which Elkhart says agrees well with the mention of the Messiah in Psalm two, verse four. And in case you don’t remember the word Messiah, which is derived from the Hebrew word Masha’a, literally means anointed or the anointed one. Matthew Poole’s Bible commentary translates

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have I said as I have anointed. The connection between the Hebrew word nasak, to pour out and anoint is pretty easy to see. The oil has to be poured out on the one that’s being anointed. Just like we see in early Christianity in Mark chapter 14 verses three to nine. When the woman with the alabaster box of ointment pours it,

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on Christ’s head, anointing him two days before he’s crucified. Verse 3 says, quote, And she break the box and poured it on his head. Interestingly, the Hebrew word nasak is also used in reference to the Holy Ghost, which, if you recall in episode number eight, the coronation of King Charles III in Camilla, the sacred dew of paradise, we learned that right before Charles III was anointed a king,

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the congregation sang an anthem, the anthem, Venet creator spiritus, which in English means come Holy Spirit. They did this as we learned in episode number nine, the green eye of Horus because the holy oil, which was infused with the resin of the Kamaphora tree symbolically represented the protective benefits and healing properties of the Holy Spirit.

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just like the protective benefits and healing properties we see in sap. We find a direct connection between the holy anointing oil and the Holy Spirit in 1 Samuel chapter 16 verse 13, which reads, and this is speaking of the anointing of King David. Quote, when Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brethren and the spirit of the Lord.

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David from that day forward. Have you ever heard anyone say, the Lord poured out his spirit upon the people or something along those lines? Well, we find a scripture in Isaiah chapter 29 verse 10 that says just that. It reads, quote, for the Lord hath poured out, Nasak, upon you the Spirit. Or in Ezekiel chapter 39 verse 29, which reads,

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And this is the new international version, quote, I will no longer hide my face from them, for I will pour out my spirit on the people of Israel, declares the sovereign Lord. You should note that in this verse, there’s a very intriguing connection between seeing the Lord’s face and the pouring out of his spirit. That’s worth pondering. For our purposes though,

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This verse serves as yet another example of the use of naasak in connection to the Holy Spirit. So the next time that you’re reading of the Lord pouring out his Spirit, or you hear someone saying something along those lines, know that the pouring out, the naasak, is a veiled reference to the ritual anointing of that group of people. And let’s not lose sight that all of this is in some way connected to the Primordial Hill, or as the Lord calls it in Psalm 2,

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my holy hill. I wanna share a couple more verses from Psalms with you. This time from Psalm 45, it’s also a royal Psalm, and it ties together a lot of the stuff that we’ve been discussing on the program so far. Listen to the words. I’m not gonna break it down for you. You long time listeners should know why the things mentioned in these verses are important and what they mean. Speaking of the king, it reads starting in verse three.

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thy sword upon thy thigh. Note the sword there. O most mighty! Note how he’s called mighty. Think of Marduk. With thy glory! Note that he’s a glorious being in thy majesty. Verse 4. And in thy majesty ride prosperously because of truth and meekness and righteousness.

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Note the reference to Zedek, truth and righteousness here. Verse five, thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the king’s enemies. Note how he has special weapons here and that he’s a conqueror of the enemy. Verse six, thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. Note that he has a throne and that his throne is

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eternal throne. The scepter of thy kingdom is a right scepter. Note that he has a scepter, a branch of the tree in his hand. Verse 7, thou lovest righteousness and hatest wickedness. Note how he’s a lover of Maat, a lover of Zedek. Therefore God, thy God,

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hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. There’s the anointing there, the anointing by the high God, and the anointing with oil. Now listen to this, verse eight. All thy garments smell of myrrh. And there’s the resin, the sap, the fragrance of the myrrh resin.

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I mean, you might even think that when I started this podcast that I just looked up Psalm 45 and said, hey, I’m going to follow everything that’s in Psalm 45, but I did not. It’s just all there. Now we know in Psalm 2 that all of this takes place in quote, my holy hill, the Lord’s holy hill, the primordial hill, the primordial hill of creation. Now that’s some hill.

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Before I close out this section on the ancient Hebrew and early Christians, I want to leave you with one more thing to think about. Where did Christ suffer and bleed from every poor? We learn in Matthew chapter 26 verse 36 that Christ suffered in a place called Gethsemane, a garden widely held to be a grove of olive trees, because the word Gethsemane, as we’ve mentioned previously in the program, comes from the Aramaic word got-shem-a-nim.

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which translates as oil press or oil vat. So here we’re getting a clear connection between Christ’s suffering and the holy anointing oil. Because recall that olive oil is the base that’s used for the holy anointing oil. That’s worth pondering. But I want to draw your attention to the name of the hill upon which the Garden of Gethsemane was located. The name of the hill.

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upon which Christ suffered. And it really is more of a hill than a mountain. I’ve actually been there and I’ve climbed it. It really is a hill. It’s named the Mount of Olives. We now know that the word olives here refers to the olives that were pressed to produce the anointing oil. So the hill could just as well be called the Mount of Oil or the Mount of Anointing Oil or even the Mount of Myrrh.

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because myrrh was the primary ingredient added to the oil. And believe it or not, that is exactly what we find in the Song of Solomon, chapter four, verse six, which reads, quote, “‘Until the daybreak and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of frankincense.'”

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I don’t have time in this episode to go into the connection between the Hill and frankincense, but we’ll do that sometime down the line.

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All of the names of the holy hill, the Primordial Hill are clues. It’s clear from this survey that the ancient Egyptians, ancient Mesopotamians, ancient Hebrews, and the early Christians give pretty similar descriptions of the first land to rise out of the Primordial waters. Among them all, it’s described as a mound, a hill, or a mountain.

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And what’s even more remarkable is that all of these civilizations share remarkably similar cosmological, theological, and political conceptions of this hill. In each case, the Primordial Hill is considered sacred, is the place where heaven and earth meet, is the seat upon which the glorious Creator sits, and is the location where earthly and heavenly kings are anointed.

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with the sacred myrrh oil. The congruity between peoples here is truly remarkable. And of course, I argue that this is further evidence that a single religious tradition was revealed to human beings in the beginning. You might be wondering, what about the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Hurrians? Did they have similar conceptions? And the answer is that they did, yes, they did. And I could give you numerous examples of those civilizations,

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more of what we’ve already covered so far in this episode. So instead of doing that, I want to take you to two other places in the world. Let’s start by traveling to India. In ancient India, even right up to the present day, thousands of ant hills known as Puthu are worshiped. These ant hills are deemed sacred.

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And the lands on which they stand are believed to be imbued with a special Prantic power. Prantic meaning life-giving force. And yes, you did hear that correctly. In Hinduism, even today, ant hills are worshipped. They aren’t technically ant hills because they aren’t made by ants. They’re actually made by termites or white ants. To most Westerners, this sounds like an exceptionally and almost incomprehensibly odd practice.

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Why would the Hindu or anyone worship a termite mound? That’s a good question. But now that you’ve listened to today’s episode, you probably have a really good idea why the Hindu worship ant hills. A scholar by the name of John C. Irwin studied this phenomenon. And what do you think he found? Well, if you guessed that the ant hills worshiped in India were in some way connected to the primordial hill,

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then you are right on target. In fact, Dr. Irwin published an article titled The Sacred Ant Hill and the Cult of the Primordial Mound. It’s in the Journal of the History of Religions published by the University of Chicago Press. And this is what he said, quote, when we look for meaning in anthill rights, the first clue comes from the nature of the festivals associated with the cult, which are always celebrations of the

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New Year. The ultimate meaning is that the ant hill is a sacred image of the primordial mound. I don’t know about you, but I think it’s absolutely amazing that the Hindu linked the Putu, the sacred ant hill, to the New Year because that’s exactly what we saw in our last episode in ancient Egypt and ancient Mesopotamia. But hold on.

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There are so many more amazing links between the Hindu sacred ant hill and other things that we’ve learned on the podcast over the past year. A couple of which, you long time listeners might wanna sit down for because the connections are just so unbelievable. For starters, the ant hill is the site of solar rights. Irwin says, quote, the worship of ant hills takes the form of ritual circumambulation.

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involving clockwise or sun-wise circulation. So the worshiper identifies with the course of the sun in its life-giving aspect. We haven’t discussed circumambulation on the program yet, but we will down the line, because it’s an important rite connected to the ancient tradition. But for our purposes today, I wanna highlight the connection between solar symbolism, which we know is used to symbolize the creator God who rose up on the primordial mound,

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on the first day of creation, the new year, and the sacred ant hill rites practiced by the Hindu. Second, Erwin tells us this, now listen to this, quote, there are recurrent folk tales about a treasure guarded by a serpent hidden within the ant hill. The serpent is often described as spitting fire and having in its head a wondrous jewel.

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which emits rays causing the rainbow. It is said that if you run to the spot where the rainbow ends and dig into the nearest anthill, there you will find a treasure. That is, if you survive the anger of the guardian serpent, which of course we know is the dragon. Unbelievable. If you haven’t listened to episode number 15, see, monsters see, serpents and leviathans.

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along with episodes number 19 to 25, you definitely need to. And listen to what else Irwin says of the sacred ant hill. And this is the one that blew me away. At some shrines, male and female worshipers take off all of their clothes and ornaments and put on leaf dress for performance of the rituals. The leaves are those of the Margosa or Nym tree.

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one of the sacred trees and a species widely worshiped in India. What did we just read? Did we just read that there at the site of the sacred anthill some of the worshippers performed rituals dressed only in the leaves of a tree? Leaves of a sacred tree? My jaw hit the floor when I first read this.

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If you’re new to the program and you wanna know why my jaw hit the floor, you definitely need to listen to episode number 24, Oh Christmas Tree. The connection between the primordial hill and the wearing of the leaves of the tree is another clue. I wanna point out one more interesting connection, though there are several more that I could point out. This one does not come from Irwin’s article, but from a gentleman by the name of Pedro Delricchio. He says this.

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Quote, holy medicinal honey. In some special locations in India, there are those who are local, who can identify putas, now that’s the ant heels, inside which bees chose to build their beehives. The honey that those bees produced is believed to have very special medicinal qualities. It is said that this holy honey can be used to treat cancer and various other serious diseases.

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Now, of course, this reminds me of the book of Joseph and Azanath. When Christ appears to Azanath and anoints her with honey. In that text, honey is a synonym or symbol of the holy anointing oil, the oil that has special protective benefits and healing properties. So here again, this time among the Hindu, we see a connection between the primordial mound, the sacred ant hill, and honey, the sacred

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anointing oil.

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Before I close out this episode, I wanna take you one more place. I wanna take you to North America, to the Woodland tribes located in what is today Northeastern Canada and the United States. The tribes that lived up there and continue to live up there are the Lenape, the Iroquois, and the Ojibwe. These native peoples give a really interesting account of a turtle and the creation of Turtle Island.

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Their accounts vary a little bit, but in most of them, they tell of a turtle that dove into the primordial waters and rose up carrying a mound of dry land on its back. The earliest known written account of this story comes from the diary of a Dutchman named Jasper Dankerts. He traveled all over New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Massachusetts.

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around 1678 to 1680 AD. So that kind of gives you the time frame. If you are visiting Washington DC and you’re interested in checking out Jasper’s diary, you can find it at the Library of Congress. It’s housed in the Rare Book and Special Collections section. You can check it out there. But keep in mind it’s written in Dutch. On October 16th, 1679.

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Jasper wrote in his diary how he met a woodland Indian elder. He looked to be around 80 years old, named Tant Kwe. And Jasper wrote this of his encounter with Tant Kwe. Quote, we asked him where he believed he came from. He answered from his father. And where did your father come from, we said, and your grandfather and great grandfather, and so on to the first of the race. He was silent for a little while.

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either as if unable to climb up at once so high with his thoughts or to express them without help. And then he took a piece of coal out of the fire where he sat and began to write upon the floor. He first drew a circle, a little oval, to which he made four paws or feet, a head and a tail. This, he said,

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is a tortoise, lying in the water around it. And he moved his hand around the figure, continuing. This was or is all water. And so at first was the world or the earth, when the tortoise gradually raised its round back up high and the water ran off of it. And thus the earth became dry. He then took a little straw and placed it on end in the middle of the figure.

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which was the turtle, and proceeded. The earth was now dry, and there grew a tree in the middle of the earth, and the root of this tree sent forth a sprout beside it, and there grew upon it a man who was the first male. This man was then alone and would have remained alone, but the tree bent over until its top touched the earth, and there shot therein another root from which came forth another sprout.

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and there grew upon it the woman. And from these two are all men produced.” About six months later, on March 4th, 1680, Jasper spoke with another Native American elder, and this is what he wrote in his diary, quote, “‘I told him I had conversed with Tonkwai,’ another old Indian, “‘on the subject from which all things had come, and he had told me they had come from a tortoise.’

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that this tortoise had brought forth the world, and that all things had come from it, that from the middle of the tortoise, there had sprung a tree upon which branches men had grown. That was true, he replied, but Kikaron, Kikaron is the great spirit, made the tortoise, and the tortoise had a power and a nature to produce all things, such as earth, trees, and the like, which God wished through it to produce or have produced.

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If you had been Jasper, or if you’d read the diary entry having no knowledge of the things we’ve discussed so far in the podcast, you might think that the native woodland Indians were so backward that they actually believed that they came from a tree that grew on the back of a giant turtle. It would make no sense. But note how the account doesn’t make sense, not because it doesn’t make sense to the woodland Indians, but because it doesn’t make sense

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understand the symbols Tonkwai is using to convey spiritual things. The truly ignorant one here is not Tonkwai. It’s those who don’t understand the symbols. Even if this were the only ancient tradition episode you’d listen to, you would have a better idea than most of what the account of Turtle Island is really teaching. The water, the turtle, the turtle’s back, and the tree growing in the center of the land. If you’re a longtime listener, you should have a

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Pretty darn good idea of what all of this means. I wanna stress here how amazing Tonk Kuei’s account is. Note that in Northeastern United States and Canada, we’re thousands and thousands of miles away from the ancient Near East. We’re on a completely different hemisphere, on a completely different continent, thousands of years later.

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But the account is the same. It’s the same account given in Pyramid Text 600. Here we have a turtle that rises out of the Primordial Waters carrying a mound of dry land on its back, the Primordial Hill. And what grew right in the very middle on the summit of the Primordial Hill? A tree, a sacred tree.

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And you long time listeners know what this tree symbolizes, a tree from which mankind sprung. And did you catch how the second elder connected the first human beings to the branches of the tree? The ears of you long time listeners should be ringing. Don’t forget that in the ancient world, the earthly king held a branch of the sacred tree in his hand, which symbolized that he reigned under the power and authority of the tree. It symbolized that he was a branch.

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that had sprung from the sacred tree. To me, all of this is mind blowing. I absolutely love the Woodland Indians account of Turtle Island. My children and my husband know this, so every Christmas and birthday, they give me little turtles that have been crafted by Native American artisans. One of the reasons I love the story of Turtle Island, besides the things that I’ve just mentioned, is because the Woodland tribes believed that the first

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landmass to form on the turtle’s back. The Primordial Hill, the Primordial Hill, wasn’t just any old lot of land. They taught that the Primordial Hill that first rose out of the waters of chaos grew into what became the North American continent. That’s why even today, the Lenape, Iroquois, and Ojibwe refer to the United States and Canada as the

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as Turtle Island. And you’re gonna learn in just a second why I think this is so interesting. All right, we’ve packed way too much into this episode. You might have to listen to it twice, but let’s return to the question we started with. What is so important about the first hill of land that the ancient Egyptians were willing to spend 27 years and 52 million man days to create a massive stylized version of it in the Sahara Desert?

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the Great Pyramid of Giza. Well, hopefully while you’ve been listening to this episode, you’ve started to pick up on a few ideas. But were you able to decipher all of the clues and figure out what we are really talking about here? Let’s briefly go over the clues and see what we’ve covered. Number one, we learned that the Primordial Hill in some way connected heaven and earth together. Number two,

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We learned that the Primordial Hill was where the gods came into being and where the high god held counsel with his offspring. Number three, we learned that God rose on the Primordial Hill like the sun rising on New Year’s Day and he sits atop the summit on his throne. Number four, we learned that because the Primordial Hill is God’s home, it’s the holiest place in the world. It’s sacred ground.

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Number five, we learned that a sacred tree grows on the top of the primordial hill, a tree which bleeds a sap that has the capacity to protect and heal. Number six, we learned that earthly kings were anointed kings on the primordial mound. Number seven, we learned that near the primordial hill, human beings closed

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themselves in the leaves of the sacred tree. With all of these clues, have you figured out what the Primordial Hill is and why it’s so important? If not, that’s okay, I’m gonna help you out. Where else have we read about a sacred mountain, a sacred mountain where God, the King of Kings, resides on the summit on his throne?

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Where else have we read of a life-giving sacred tree growing in the center of the holiest place on earth? And where else have we read of human beings clothing themselves in the leaves of a sacred tree? In fig leaves. Ah, now I’m guessing you know. The Primordial Hill that rose out of the Primordial Waters on the day of creation was so incredibly special because it was the Garden of Eden.

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The Garden of Eden was the first land to rise out of the primordial waters. And if you remember, in episode number four, did God reveal the ancient tradition in the Garden of Eden? We learned that the Garden of Eden was so, so much more than a beautiful garden. It was the earth’s first sanctuary, the earth’s first temple. If you haven’t listened to episode number four, it’s an absolute must. You can also listen to it on YouTube.

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It might be a little more fun because it’s loaded with pictures. The Garden of Eden has fascinated people for centuries. In fact, a number of explorers like Alexander the Great, Marco Polo, John Milton, and David Livingston have scoured the planet searching for the actual location of the Garden of Eden. They’ve argued that the garden was in Mesopotamia, in the Persian Gulf, in the Nile River Valley,

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and in the Armenian Highlands. Which brings me back to the account of Turtle Island. See, Tonkwe told Jasper that the sacred tree that grew on the summit of the Primordial Hill, the Primordial Hill that the turtle lifted out of the Primordial waters, grew in the very center of the North American continent. You heard that right.

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When we hear this, it’s easy to see how Alexander the Great, Marco Polo John and David got it wrong when they were looking for the Garden of Eden. From Tonk Kuei’s account, they were looking in the wrong hemisphere and on the wrong continent. According to the accounts passed down among the woodland tribes, the true Garden of Eden lies

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somewhere near the very center of the North American continent. That’s a pretty amazing thought. And now you know why I love the account of Turtle Island.

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That’s it for me. As always, I’ll leave you with the words of William Shakespeare, knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven. I’m Jack Logan.

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