Egyptologic issues

The context

Plan Here we meet him again, our old friend, the context. The way some authors work - pulling some details out of the context and molding them together to create a new reality - will produce spectacular results, but no reliable ones. The same here. Egyptian reliefs have the characteristic not to be located simply connectionless in the area. We find them usually in temples or graves. Unlike our "general-purpose churches" Egyptian temples normally served special purposes. If the Dendera temple served a light God, or perhaps even a "unknown instructor from the stars" for example - well, this would be a good sign.

Unfortunately, the temple serves no star god. The Dendera temple and its crypt, in which the mysterious figures are, serves exclusive one purpose: The yearly cycle of the sun, the New Year and its celebrations. The complete temple is dedicated to this topic. The crypt had also a practical function: It served to keep of the statues shown on the reliefs for the celebrations, which were gotten out to the ceremonies. The texts in the crypts, which are translated although some authors state otherwise, leave to it no doubt (e.g. " hidden place of the smn pictures "). In the texts can be found which purpose what statue had, how big they were, what materials they consisted of and what was done with them during New Year's Eve. So what have lamps have to do with New Year's Eve?

The meaning of the reliefs

The text, which belongs to the relief, explains all its parts showing only the new year topics shown above. The main theme is the sun having its last day in the old year and its first morning in the new year. We can read this clearly enough: "Resomtus alive with gloss in the sky (and) lives at the day of the New Year celebration". That is in a way the heading of the whole scene.

The oval which contains the snake is according to some authors a light bulb and the snake a light filament. Apart from the fact that snakes in Egypt never represented "light" (and that I know of no lighting snakes) the oval had in Egypt a define meaning: It was a symbol of the morning sky, in ancient Egypt "Duat"!
The snake represents, as in many other pictures, the god of the morning sun, Harsomtus. But, so the sceptics, why should a snake be a symbol of the morning sun? Quite simple. The Egyptians noticed that snakes shed their hide and were believed to renew with each shedding. Almost as the morning sun, which comes up every morning renewed. And the sun moves like the snake without visible outer organs.
Especially in Greek-Roman times from 300 B.C. on Harsomtus is always depicted as snake. Therefore Harsomtus appears in Dendera in all cases as newborn sun, and not as a filament - it would be widely out of the context.

The Djed pillar

A substantial point in the light bulb argumentation is the Djed column. Since it is not exactly known what it represents, it is assumed to be an electrical insulator by some authors of the paleo SETI faction and integrated into the light bulb thesis. However, as we already saw in the technical section, the "lamp" is depicted in three different forms. One in its "functioning" form with the arms from the Djed pillar inside the "bulb". Twice however in completely 'un-isolatoric' :-) manner: Once completely without the Djed pillar - embarrassingly, if it should be a so important item for the lamp case, and once with the "glass bulb" itself resting on the Djed pillar with the arms outside the bulb. In this case the Djed pillar cannot have been an insulator - because glass itself is one of the best insulators known.

What is correct is that we do not know the origin of the Djed form. It could have been many different things. But the hieroglyphic, the sign which used the Djed pillar as a word, was used exclusively for the word "lasting" or "stability" - at all times of the 3500 year long history. The occasional use of the symbol as "support of the sky" supports this meaning additionally. In the bulb representation the Djed supports the morning sky, which corresponds accurately with the conventions. So we can translate "Djed" in many cases just directly with "column".

This quite crucial point is not at all registered by the proposers of the lamp thesis. Why - whether from unawareness or because it can destroy some beloved theory - is unknown to me. But in the texts to the lamp reliefs and in the pictures there is no other meaning for Djed than "lasting", as the writings unmistakenly prove. Until today no attempt was made to state why in this representation does not to apply in these pictures.

Further relief elements

The "light bulb" of Dendera has on the foot something like a socket, into which a "cable" runs, which is connected on the other side with a "generator". This is the description we can read in the more phantastic literature. But the cable is no cable. It is, as we can read directly in the texts describing the scene, a symbolic sun barge, a boat in which the sun floated across the sky. All this is written in the texts beside the objects.
Neither is the form of the barge shown in Dendera unusual. In many symbolic barge representations the boat only consists of a string like object which forms a bow and a stern. And on the horizontal platfom between we find normally gods and objects connected with the sun or the sunrise. One of these objects connected with the sun barge, and normally located at its stern, is the lotus flower. This can be seen in Dendera, too. It's the so called "lamp socket"!!
The ancient Egyptians believed that the sun originally came out of the first hill coming out of the flood of creation (the crypts in Dendera were accurately under this place, so was believed). One version of this was that the sun child (usually Nefertem) climbed out from a lotus flower - the same thing Harsomtus does in form of a snake in the Dendera pictures. A lotus flower is no lamp socket - it doesn't look like one, and the inscriptions explaining the pictures simply state its a lotus flower. The lotus flower was used e.g. for the production of ointments. The God Nefertem, the Memphitic version of the sun god, was even called "The Large Lotus Flower", who emerges as the first thing from the receding waters and started creation - thats much too far to expect from a lamp socket :-) . Lotus flowers looking similar to the ones depicted in Dendera were often shown in desk scenes, and they were the coat of arms plant of upper Egypt - the Knights of the Lamp Socket?? If the objects in Dendera would indeed show lamp sockets, some texts and interpretations would really be more than a little funny.

The figure in the center is called Ka, and the connection of the texts on the north wall suggests that it is the Ka of Harsomtus. Ka is a type of physical soul and no "priest handling a device" as some authors propose.

The God on the "box" is Heh, the carrier of the sky, which supports the rising sun, a scene thousandfold to be found in Egypt. Heh is like Djed a symbol for eternity - it defines however the cyclic eternity, contrary to Djed, which is for the "continuing" eternity. That is not by any means ridiculous, but has something to do with the way the old Egyptians saw "time". There were objects which lasted forever - the sky, the sun, the earth. But an eternal sun wasn't the guarantee, that the sun returned from the kingdom of the dead every morning! This was guaranteed by the cyclic eternity, represented by Heh. The pictures in the east represent the sunrise, whereas the pictures in the western spaces D and E show the sunset. And again without lamp.

With this knowledge, the three forms of the "lamp" objects suddenly make sense: In the first picture Djed carries the Harsomtus to make it eternal, and Heh the morning sky to let it come again in all eternity. In the second picture supports Djed the sky to make it eternal, and in the third one Heh to let it come again for all eternity. Both Reiliefs face each other directly. The technically absolutely unreasonable arm position of these pictures gives now a unique sense.

The Djed, the Duat, the Barge, Harsomtus, the Ka, the snake, Heh, etc. are foundations for whole theologies during all of ancient Egypt. All of these are well understood and give no room for misunderstood technique. For example, the Djed became since oldest time in combination with anch (life) and Uas (welfare) a luck symbol. No place for insulators. Almost as old is conception of the Djed as carrier of the sky, a canopy could rest therefore on four Djed pillars - why should a ceiling rest on insulators??? The Djed occurs very often in pairs. The Djeds is called then Schu (sky carrier) and Tefnut (in this case likewise sky carrier). The list could be continued easily much further, but these examples should be enough to see that there is no place in the Djed to be an insulator.