You've just entered the theater of an alien sky.
If the words and images seem strange to you there's a reason for this.
Our world was once a vastly different place.
To experience this won't hurt you and there is nothing to fear.
The Ship of Day and Night
Ancient images of a cosmic ship give us an opportunity
to question many popular assumptions about the ancient sky.
Our message is that the sky we see today
does not provide a useful guide to the ancient experience.
Extraordinary celestial formations above the early sky worshipers
provoked an explosion of mythic images.
If we can see these images as a reflection of concrete human experience,
a reconstruction of the events is possible.
For observers on Earth a revolving crescent in the polar sky,
reflecting light from the Sun, turned visually around a central orb or star
in a daily cycle of brightening and dimming.
In human imagination, that revolving crescent was the ancient ship of heaven.
One additional feature must be included, as we've earlier noted:
the crescent appeared above a cosmic pillar, inspiring a diversity of mythic images.
All pointing to the same underlying form - one form in the sky
fully explaining what will otherwise appear as hopelessly contradictory images.
In our previous episode, we noted the strict identification
of the crescent ship with the horns of the Bull of Heaven.
Inhabitants of the celestial kingdom sailed on these horns
in the daily revolution of a crescent-like ship.
We also noted the absolute identity of the Bull's two horns
as the twin peaks of the cosmic mountain.
We have further suggested that Egyptian and other images of a pillar god
either holding aloft the ship, or standing upright in the ship,
must be understood in terms of the underlying equation
of the ship itself with these outstretched arms.
This equation can be fully elaborated.
The Pyramid Texts say that the deceased king
ascends to the sky to find his place in the cosmic ship
- "within the arms of Atum", they say.
This identity of the ship and the enclosing arms of the sky
is confirmed again and again in Egyptian sources.
"[The king is raised up] in the Day-bark... within the arms of Anubis".
"Make ready your arms for me, O Ra, come and ferry me over to yonder side..."
In the same way the god Osiris sails "on the two arms of Horus".
Any doubt on this equation is removed by the description of the ship in the Coffin Texts:
"Her starboard side is the right arm of Atum. Her larboard side is the left arm of Atum".
But a huge confusion has taken over the language of day and night,
due to the subsequent radical change in celestial conditions.
In the ancient planetary configuration, the crescent - the mythic ship of heaven -
was decsending to the left at sunset
and beginning to grow more bright amidst the darkening sky.
The ship achieved it's greatest splendor
when the crescent reached it's position directly below at midnight.
The ship's brightness then began to diminish as it rose to the right.
And it was at its weakest when directly overhead.
In today's reckoning of time, that would be called Noon.
But when Egyptian texts describe the primeval Sun growing bright,
the translators can only think of one thing:
our familiar Sun rising in the east.
That fundamental misconception sets in motion a series of
irreconcilable contradictions in all of the standard translations.
Egyptian sources are far and away the most complete references on this question.
In unequivocal terms, they describe the vehicle of the gods, the ship of heaven,
in two phases of a daily cycle, a phase of brightening and a phase of dimming.
These phases have nothing to do with the appearance of the Sun itself.
The Sun was not even present within the visual theatre of the gods.
It was simply the external source of the illuminated circumpolar crescent
and it's daily phases of brigtening and dimming.
As commonly translated, the Coffin Texts express the hope of every king,
upon his death, to find his place
"in the Night-bark and the Day-bark like Ra, every day".
But the translators can offer no natural referents for the terms.
All that is literally meant are the two contrasting phases of growing bright
and growing dim, of growing strong and growing weak.
Strength and weakness, life and absence of life,
waking and sleeping are the literal meanings of such terms.
The boat in the phase of growing bright was named Atet,
meaning literally, "strong or growing strong".
And the boat of growing dim was named Sektet,
meaning literally, "weak or growing weak".
Once the literal meanings are clear, the mistranslations become transparent.
"May you sleep in the night-Bark (Sektet), May you awake in the day-Bark (Atet)"
a popular translation reads.
The implied connections to sunrise and sunset are provably incorrect,
and we can make this clear by simply observing the regional positions of the ship
and the directions of the ship's motion in it's daily cycle.
Did the ship actually move upward in it's phase of dimming
and descend in it's phase of brightening?
As we intend to establish beyond any reasonable doubt,
the position of the ship was below in the phase of brightness,
and above in the phase of weakness.
That means a descending motion of the ship as it began to shine brilliantly in the sky
and an upward motion as it began to dim.
The directions of movement and the associated conditions of brightness and dimming
are all critical to the integrity of the symbolism.
The Coffin Texts describe the gods sailing upstream
in the so-called "night", literally the phase of dimming,
exactly the opposite of the solar interpretation,
while another spell announces that
"The sun shines forth when going downstream from the region above to the region below".
Again the opposite of the solar interpretation, and the literal meanings are the key,
"May you sail upstream, toward the upper region in the night-Bark
(literally the ship of dimming) and downstream, toward the lower region
in the day-Bark" (literally the phase of brightening or growing bright).
Such texts as these are complemented by numerous others,
all confirming that the ship of heaven is indeed an acid test of our reconstruction.
We'll return to this explicit evidence in our next episode.