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by Janice Van Cleve
Egypt! Land of ancient mystery! Massive pyramids point to the stars (and some would say, to the constellation Orion in particular). Huge columns line the halls of spacious sanctuaries. Cryptic hieroglyphs spell out foreign myths and stories on temple walls. Everywhere one sees the unmistakable tread of ancient gods -- Seth, Horus, Osiris, Thoth and Amon. Overhead beams the greatest god of all, Ptah, the sun, who gave his name to Egypt, the Land of Ptah. Female deities, too, call out for the traveler's attention and worship -- Isis, Hathor, Maat, Nephthys and Sehkmet. Below lies Geb, who is Father Earth, while above stretches Nut, who is Mother Sky.
All of this takes a little getting used to by a pagan whose religious practice tends more toward Celtic witchcraft amid circles of stones. We celebrate the return of the sun; for Egyptians it never left. We witness the cycle of the seasons and the definite contrasts between the time of planting and the time of harvest. Egyptians live in unending summer and reap crops from the Nile's fertile plains four times a year. Even the basic directions are different. Instead of Air, Fire, Water, Earth in four cardinal directions, the Egyptian cosmos recognizes Shu (space-air) and Tefnut (movement-fire) as the dual aspects of creative power which in turn generate Geb (earth) and Nut (sky). It may seem odd that the Nile, which feeds the people of Egypt, is not represented as a deity in its own right, but it is not. Blazing sun and stark desert were the engines of Egyptian religion, driving it toward an obsession with death and afterlife.
My visit to Egypt started many years ago as a child captured by images in picture books. I first set foot in the Land of Ptah last October at 1:30 a.m., alone at Cairo airport with not a clue about where my hotel was or how I was going to get there. Fortunately a guide was there to meet me, and I finally crashed at 3 am. Wake-up call was a bare three hours later for our visit to the pyramids.
Although urban sprawl has brought the suburbs of Cairo almost to the paws of the Great Sphinx, the pyramids at Giza have lost none of their majesty. It was my good fortune to be able to enter the third pyramid, that of Pharaoh Menkaure. I crouched low to descend the narrow, square corridor that sloped steeply down into the pyramid. The air was still inside as if all time had stopped within the hallowed walls of this hoary mausoleum. Exhaled breath of tourists before me hung in humid vapors in the low passageways, unable to find its way to the surface.
Deep inside beneath the earth itself, I finally came to the burial chamber. It was a plain, unadorned stone room. The electric illumination felt incongruous in this final hall of the long-dead pharaoh. I did not sense a special energy about the place but rather a sense of quiet wonder. I had my photo taken lying atop the sepulcher and felt that one of my life's goals was thereby accomplished, although how exactly I cannot yet say. When I reemerged back at the surface, I reemerged from more than a tomb. I felt like I was recrossing a time zone as well
The pyramid complex of Zoser was the most spiritually moving site I visited in Egypt. In spite of the crowds of tourists, all of us seemed to be equally enthralled by the otherworldliness of the place. Zoser, 2780-2680 BCE, was the first pharaoh of the Third Dynasty, and his tomb is the first large stone structure ever built. We were not allowed into the honeycomb of chambers beneath the pyramid, but the vast courtyards, walls and outbuildings were more than enough.
Zoser's pyramid is centered in a huge walled complex lined with galleries, terraces and mortuary chapels. The imposing entrance opens to a colonnade of fluted pillars which exits into the great plaza. As the blazing sun etched shadows on the corrugated ramparts, the crowds of tourists seemed to disappear, and I felt alone. It was something like the usual silence one feels in a desert, but here personified by the presence of death and of the gods. It seemed that gentle Anubis, dog faced god of embalming, had taken me by the hand to show me around his home turf. We walked round the stepped pyramid, up onto the ramparts, and among the smaller buildings of the necropolis. A stone called to take back with me -- a symbol of everlasting life from this place of death.
The Egyptians' fixation on death and afterlife was brought most strongly home to me in the Valley of the Kings. There I entered the tombs of Seti I, Ramses III and Tutankhamen. The walls were as bright and colorful as if they had just been freshly painted, yet this was the original 4000-year-old pigment still attached to the plaster sides. The hieroglyphs told the story of the resurrection of Osiris, listed the dead king's virtues and faults and showed the gods welcoming him into the afterlife where he could continue to intercede for his people.
Later as I reflected on my visit to Egypt, I took note that most of the places I visited were about death, burial and afterlife. Was it merely coincidence that my trip was during our own Celtic rituals of Samhain? What had I let go and what had I picked up as a Celtic pagan in this ancient land? My mind was filled with memories of a desert place far different from the green barrows and standing stones of northern Europe. In my pocket was the stone from Anubis to remind me of another view of our journey in this dimension. And a new deity joined my pantheon -- Maat, goddess of seeing and of judgment. My spirit life is enriched by the new diversification that travel has brought to me. The Goddess continues to reveal her many faces.
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