Ra

I must also refer to a fine scarab found in the rubbish mounds of the ancient city of Kamombos in Upper Egypt, which bears upon it the name of Sut-ku-apopi.

It shows us that the author of the story of the expulsion of the Hyksos, in calling the king Ra-apopi, merely, like an orthodox Egyptian, substituted the name of the god of Heliopolis for that of the foreign deity.

Equally interesting are the scarabs brought to light by Professor Flinders Petrie, on which a hitherto unknown Ya'akob-hal, or Jacob-el, receives the titles of a pharaoh.

In volumes 7, 8, and 9, Professor Maspero concludes his monumental work on the history of the ancient East.

It has been discovered from them that the kingdom of Bianainus or Van was founded by Ispuinus and Menuus, who rebuilt Yon itself and the other cities which they had previously sacked and destroyed.

The older name of the country was Kumusu, and it may be that the language spoken in it was allied to that of the Hittites, since a tablet in hieroglyphics of the Hittite type has been unearthed at Toprak Kala.

One of the newly found inscriptions of Sarduris III shows that the name of the Assyrian god, hitherto read Raman or Riman, was really pronounced Hadad.

It describes a war of the Vanic king against Assur-nirari, son of Hadad-nirari, Adad-nirari of Assyria, thus revealing not only the true form of the Assyrian name, but also the parentage of the last king of the older Assyrian dynasty.

Okay, Old Kingdom.

This was really the glory age of ancient Egypt, when you got all the stuff that would later make Indiana Jones possible, like the pyramids at Giza, and the Sun King Ra, and the idea of divine kingship.

The king, or pharaoh, was either a god or very close to a god, which seems like a good gig, except that it meant he wasn't expected to act like a person, he was expected to act like a god, which in ancient Egypt means acting like the Nile.

Calm, cool, benevolent, There's no fun in that.

But not by Moses and the Jews, who showed up on the scene long before the pyramids were ever even a twinkle in Khufu's eye.

This leads to an overwhelming question.

Why? Why in the sweet name of Ra would anyone ever build such a thing? Well, let's start with Ra.

So Ra started out as a regional god reigning over Heliopolis, but he eventually became really central to the entire pantheon of gods in ancient Egypt.

He was positioned.

He stood at the prowl of Ra's solar bark during the nightly journey through the Duat, fighting off Apep, the serpent of absolute chaos, with a spear.

Every night, Ra descended into the underworld, traversing the twelve hours of darkness, and every night, Apep attempted to swallow the sun and prevent the dawn.

Set's violence, the same force that dismembered Osiris and scattered him across Egypt, turned outward against Apep and protected the possibility of mourning.

The ordered world required set's chaos directed at the boundary rather than at the center.

This is humanity choosing revolt against the order that keeps the world alive.

And Ra hears about it.

Imagine the fear built into that moment.

The sun god is not merely a king with an army.

The power behind creation.

The ruler whose journey across the sky makes life possible.

If Ra withdraws, the world does not just lose a government.

It loses the sun, so Ra calls the other gods into council.

He joins the circumpolar stars, the stars that never set, that circle endlessly around the celestial north pole, and becomes imperishable.

He sails across the sky in the solar bark with Ra.

he becomes Osiris, he is reborn each dawn.

The language is incantatory, repetitive, built for spoken performance, and even in translation its rhythms carry a heavy, archaic gravity.

The military that protected those trade routes and, during the New Kingdom, expanded Egyptian territory into an empire stretching from the Fourth Cataract in Sudan to the Euphrates River in Syria was a formidable institution.

egyptian soldiers were initially conscripted peasants armed with simple bows copper-tipped spears and cowhide shields by the new kingdom the army had professionalized it incorporated chariotry Baal wore chariots pulled by two horses carrying a driver and an archer, which the Egyptians adopted from the Hyksos, the Asiatic people who had conquered the delta during the Second Intermediate Period and whose expulsion became a foundational narrative of New Kingdom identity.

The Battle of Kadesh, fought around 1274 BCE between Rameses II And the Hittite Empire, in what is now Syria, is one of the best documented military engagements in the ancient world.

Rameses claimed a total victory and had the account carved on temple walls throughout Egypt.

So another interesting little piece of information about Osiris is that being that he is technically dead, he doesn't have life himself yet.

So the day and night cycle, according to Egyptian mythology, is that during the day, Ra would move across the sky as the sun.

And then at night, Ra would descend into the underworld, give his vital spark to Osiris, who would then live and reign during the night.

And while doing that, that would give Ra time to rest and rejuvenate, kind of seeping some of Osiris's energy to revitalize himself for sunset the next day when Ra would start the transition across the sky all over again.

Okay.

You are kidding that Greek mythology is weird.

Okay, they're laying down.

So...

The Heliopolitan creation story picks up kind of where the Hermopolitan one leaves off.

Heliopolis was the sacred city of the sun god Ra.

That's where it gets its name.

In Greek, Helios is the sun, polis means city, so it is the city of the sun.

Through his own power, possibly by spitting them out, he gave birth to gods of air and moisture, who in turn gave birth to the sky and the earth.

And the sky and the earth then produced the major gods Osiris and Isis and Set and Nephthys.

And somewhere along the way, Ra came into being.

Ra is the Egyptian sun god, and he is, in this story, generally equated with Atum.

First, he gathered up his prisoners, loaded them onto ships, and sailed upriver from the Delta.

Pharaoh visited the great temples of Ra, Ptah, and Amun to make offerings and donate captives as slaves.

A record of this survives at Karnak, where Merneptah seems to have held an enormous celebration.

We hear of a parade, quote, "The victorious army is come after he, Merneptah, has triumphed in victory and power.

You, Merneptah, will present them to your great father, Amun, the bull of his mother." End quote.

Riding in procession, perhaps along the Avenue of Sphinxes, Merneptah displayed the fruits of his army's success.

In the grand temple, the king offered to Amun Ra, and then he appeared in splendor to address his soldiers, followers, priests, and dignitaries of the court.

A hieroglyph inscription, also at Karnak, records Pharaoh's speech.

Then, out of the water, a single mound of earth rose up, called the Benben.

Standing on that mound was the supreme sun god, Ra, or in ancient records, Rei, who basically decided that being alone in the dark was boring.

So, Ra created Air, the goddess Shu, Moisture and the goddess Tefnut.

Then they had two kids, the earth god Geb and the sky goddess Nut.

Geb and Nut loved each other so much they couldn't stop hugging, which meant there was a zero space between the earth and the sky for anything else to live.

Ra got so annoyed that he ordered Shu, the god of air, to literally shove them apart and hold the sky up forever.

Talk about awkward family dynamics.

Sounds a bit like Atlas too, doesn't it? Eventually, Geb and Newt managed to have four incredibly famous children, Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys.

I must also refer to a fine scarab found in the rubbish mounds of the ancient city of Kamombos in Upper Egypt, which bears upon it the name of Sut-Ku-Apopi.

It shows us that the author of the story of the expulsion of the Hyksos, in calling the king Ra-Apopi, merely, like an orthodox Egyptian, substituted the name of the god of Heliopolis for that of the foreign deity.

Equally interesting are the scarabs brought to light by Professor Flinders Petrie, on which a hitherto unknown Ya'akob-Hal, or Jacob-El, receives the titles of a pharaoh.

In volumes 7, 8, and 9, Professor Maspero concludes his monumental work on the history of the ancient East.

It has been discovered from them that the kingdom of Bianainus or Van was founded by Ispuinus and Menuus, who rebuilt Jan itself and the other cities which they had previously sacked and destroyed.

The older name of the country was Kumusu, and it may be that the language spoken in it was allied to that of the Hittites, since a tablet in hieroglyphics of the Hittite type has been unearthed at Toprak Kala.

One of the newly found inscriptions of Sarduris III shows that the name of the Assyrian god, hitherto read Raman or Riman, was really pronounced Hadad.

It describes a war of the Vanic king against Assur-nirari, son of Hadad-nirari, Adad-nirari of Assyria, thus revealing not only the true form of the Assyrian name, but also the parentage of the last king of the older Assyrian dynasty.