TRANSLATIONS

TRANSLATIONS

Let us now return to the Dendera 'sky ceiling'. There is more to say:

Libra should be at autumn equinox because we can see it weighs even. Another way to read the sign is to recognize that the 2 scales are alluding to the Moon, who rules the 'watery' lower half of the sky dome and who has two 'legs'.

In this blue southern world we can instead say that she has two sandbanks. One Tea the last (15th) growing moon station ought to be in the west and Hanga Moria One in the east; at the last kuhane station for the ruling Sun king (number 26) a new ruler will soon arrive.

The upper half of the globe, the cap, is ruled by the single Sun. The Sun god in Tiahuanaco (at about the same latitude as Easter Island) has a vertical staff in his right hand and it has a single cap at the top, which probably represents the high sky of midsummer:

According to the Dendera view Libra is inside the blue U-form, which has 'enveloped' 8 of the signs north of the equator. At the other end of the U-form is Pisces. It is clear that there is a relationship between Libra and Pisces also because of the long straight lines. There are 2 fishes and 2 straight lines connecting them with the vertical staff held by the 11th (counted from left to right) blue figure (below the Ram).

The 'blue world' is about to end, because it is autumn equinox south of the equator. I guess the 2 straight lines emerging from the vertical staff are meant to illustrate how the single rule of Sun here changes into the double rule of Moon when she moves backwards in time into winter north of the equator. The withershins movement of Moon is here beautifully explained.

North of the equator winter could possibly have been regarded as 5 months (Scorpio - Pisces) and summer as 7 months (Ram - Libra). South of the equator it could have been 5 winter months from the blue standing 'fools cap' figure up to and including 'waning moon' Anuket followed by 7 summer months from Satit up to and including the great Moon circle below the lower of the 2 fishes in Pisces. Inside this circle we can recognize a gesture similar to how 'waxing moon' Anuket delivers a sun child:

Read from the 'black world' (to which Pisces belong) the 2 straight lines can be interpreted as an illustration of how spring forces apart the original dark world when sky and earth lie in close embrace. The opening between the fishes is on the 'front side', i.e. greeting the rising Sun who arrives from the wintry top.

The same opening sign is used by 'waxing moon' Anuket in presenting her sun child. Her arms are forming it. In the great blue circle in autumn only a single arm is used in presenting the little 'child' who possibly is a hippopotamus (a creature down in the water).

Moving to Easter Island, south of the equator, the Y-form connected with Pisces is in rongorongo apparently represented by the mouth of a single rising great fish:

vaha mea

Y seems to have been used in the dark time which soon was to change into a time for the living (under the revitalizing light from the single ruler the Sun):


toa	rau hei

In the left hand of the Tiahuanaco Sun god the staff has the same kind of Y-form.

Moon envelops 8 blackmarked stations because Libra and Pisces define points in time, and it is by the Moon time is measured. If we eliminate Libra and Pisces from the blackmarked wheel only 10 Sun stations remain, 6 in summer and 4 in winter.

Counting withershins from the 'hippotamus child' (great blue circle below the lower of the twin fishes) we will find the 8th and last sign before next child is born to be the henen figure. He stands in the dark time before the new sun emerges south of the equator. Another 8 signs are then needed to complete the cycle, which ends with the 'opening up in the north' sign described by Pisces. It should be contrasted with the 'opening up below' described by the henen figure. We can see that henen is an opening up sign which is barred - no light can enter.

Khnum, it is said in the comments by Budges (in Book of the Dead):

... supported the heaven upon its four pillars in the beginning, and earth, air, sea, and sky are his handiwork ...

Most interesting is Budge's insertion here of a picture of those 4 pillars:

They are open upwards and they support the sky. Wilkinson has no picture of them, but he has the upside down version (menchet):

It means 'cloth', and we can immediately understand why: There is no chance for the light to come inside the pair of triangular forms. The two pillars are turned upside down and placed on the ground. The similarity with henen is obvious - light is barred. Wilkinson has not mentioned this way of 'reading' menchet. But 4 is the number of 90-day quarters for the Sun and 2 is the number of fortnights for Waxing respectively Waning Moon.

On Easter Island (south of the equator) menchet changes from 2 to 1:

henua ora

A black cloth covers the earth. A single upside down Moon pillar is in the center (it has 2 'bars'). Instead of a straight horizontal line for the ground we have a curved cup-form. The Moon type of menchet is black, while the Sun type is white (cfr at vaha kai):

Y is a form combining the domain of Sun (the single bottom pillar) with the domain of Moon (the V-form at the top). The 4 pillars of Khnum can easily be read as 4 'limbs' for the Sun and 8 for the Moon.

There is only a single 'leg' for the Sun because he is present only during the summer half of the year. In winter he visits his 'winter maid' on the other side of the equator and 'the cloth' lies upon the earth. This image is useful both north of the equator in Egypt and south of the equator on Easter Island.

But close to the equator it falls apart. Sun is never far away. Insted of Y it becomes X, which has 2 openings and no 'cloth':

The central part of X lies at the center of the Belt of Orion, at the star Alnilam:

... the String of Pearls, or, as Recorde said, the Bullions set in the middle of Orion's Belt.

'The String of Pearls' for a single star is a curious name. We can understand it, though, from the other name 'The Bullions':

... precious metal in the mass ... Rom. *bulliōnem boiling, f. L. bullīre boil ...

When water is boiling we can observe bubbles rising quickly towards its surface like a string of pearls.

Water (below the celestial equator) is meeting Fire (north of the equator) at Alnilam, and the result is 'boiling'. Presumably it is an ancient thought, dating from the time when spring equinox (north of the equator) arrived with Orion (i.e. ca 4000 BC).

A curious sentence in Hamlet's Mill (and fetched from the Finnish Kalevala):

'Väinömöinen in the mouth of the whirlpool boils like fire in the water.'

He has travelled to Alnilam. The star is located immediately below the 'water line' of the sky, and Väinömöinen could be a 'garment' of the Sun (the great Fire in the sky).

Other myths insist there is a fire deep down in the water. One such myth we have met, about Raven visiting his grandfather (his older self) on the floor of the sea (cfr at tao). The myth is worth repeating here, because we can understand more of it now, for instance why the sky-people were one-eyed:

... In the morning of the world, there was nothing but water. The Loon was calling, and the old man who at that time bore the Raven's name, Nangkilstlas, asked her why. 'The gods are homeless', the Loon replied. 'I'll see to it', said the old man, without moving from the fire in his house on the floor of the sea. Then as the old man continued to lie by his fire, the Raven flew over the sea. The clouds broke. He flew upward, drove his beak into the sky and scrambled over the rim to the upper world. There he discovered a town, and in one of the houses a woman had just given birth.

The Raven stole the skin and form of the newborn child. Then he began to cry for solid food, but he was offered only mother's milk. That night, he passed through the town stealing an eye from each inhabitant. Back in his foster parents' house, he roasted the eyes in the coals and ate them, laughing. Then he returned to his cradle, full and warm. He had not seen the old woman watching him from the corner - the one who never slept and who never moved because she was stone from the waist down. Next morning, amid the wailing that engulfed the town, she told what she had seen. The one-eyed people of the sky dressed in their dancing clothes, paddled the child out to mid-heaven in their canoe and pitched him over the side.

He turned round and round to the right as he fell from the sky back to the water. Still in his cradle, he floated on the sea. Then he bumped against something solid. 'Your illustrious grandfather asks you in', said a voice. The Raven saw nothing. He heard the same voice again, and then again, but still he saw nothing but water. Then he peered through the hole in his marten-skin blanket. Beside him was a grebe. 'Your illustrious grandfather asks you in', said the grebe and dived. Level with the waves beside him, the Raven discovered the top of a housepole made of stone. He untied himself from his cradle and climbed down the pole to the lowermost figure.

Hala qaattsi ttakkin-gha, a voice said: 'Come inside, my grandson.' Behind the fire, at the rear of the house, was an old man white as a gull. 'I have something to lend you', said the old man. 'I have something to tell you as well. Dii hau dang iiji: I am you.' Slender bluegreen things with wings were moving between the screens at the back of the house. Waa'asing dang iiji, said the old man again: 'That also is you.'

The old man gave the Raven two small sticks, like gambling sticks, one black, one multicoloured. He gave him instructions to bite them apart in a certain way and told him to spit the pieces at one another on the surface of the sea. The Raven climbed back up the pole, where he promptly did things backwards, just to see if something interesting would occur, and the pieces bounced apart. It may well be some bits were lost. But when he gathered what he could and tried again - and this time followed the instructions he had been given - the pieces stuck and rumpled and grew to become the mainland and Haida Gwaii ...

The Roman letter V signifies 'five' (as if it illustrated an open hand seen from the side). By cause of the 4 'pillars' holding the sky up it is also possible to read V as 'fire' (which we hardly would have done without knowing that Polynesian rima means both 'fire' and 'hand'):

Roman X means 10, which we can see is twice V, the lower of them upside down. 10 is the full cycle of the decimal system.

The 4 pillars of Khnum presumably means we should count 4 * 5 = 20. In a year with 360 days we must use 18 sets of these pillars for the full cycle. If we count each pillar as 50 (zero being nothing to illustrate), then 4 * 5 = 200.

On the other hand we should use also menchet:

In addition to 20 (for the time of light) we have 2 * 5 = 10 for the time of 'cloth'. 20 + 10 = 30 measures the length of a month, and 12 * 30 = 360. Or we can count 2 * 50 = 100, which 'supports' a Sun year with 200 + 100 = 300 days.

If we now move to Easter Island we have to invert the signs:

20 can now be understood as 20 nights of the Moon (though we can still read Sun in the form of the pillars, of course, and ought to change them from the Egyptian to the Easter Island system). This presumably explains why the Gilbertese did not count the nights of the month beyond number 20 (cfr at ua).