|
|
The Egyptian civilization lasted at least four thousand years while many civilizations around them came and went. Why is this the case? If they could speak, they would contend that they spent the time to understand the cosmos, to understand the relationship of man to the cosmos, and to actively work to align themselves with the cosmos through their spiritual practices and by the monuments that they built. This gave them the stability to live life from a place of strength and understanding. R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz in The Temple of Man stated it this way:
In Ancient Egypt, inhabited by people the Greeks said were the healthiest and most religious in the world, each person was chiefly preoccupied with the permanent moment of life. (p. 10)
We really do not know why the Egyptian civilization lasted so long. The Egyptians wrote on papyrus, of which very few samples have survived. The only writings we have were mostly carved on stone monuments and burial chambers. It is very hard to reconstruct a civilization and get to the core of what was important to them with so little information.
Another added problem is created by the Egyptologists themselves. It is very hard to study a civilization without interpreting the findings from the perceptual bias of ones own culture. The most insidious bias of all is the belief that contemporary civilization is more sophisticated in every aspect than the Egyptian civilization. It is hard to accept the notion that they might have known something that was valuable that we are completely unaware of.
Our discovery of the nine different soul types may very well be an example of an important understanding that was known to the Egyptians and was lost when their civilization fell. Knowing these human differences based on soul type may have allowed them thrive for over 3,000 years, a feat that we have not even come close to in our so-called modern times.
We have very little knowledge of their spiritual practices, but we do know something of their gods. There is a core group of gods called the Great Ennead of Heliopolis whose written record dates back to the Fifth dynasty pyramid texts found in the pyramind of King Unis (2375-2345 BC). The spiritual purpose of each of these nine gods exactly parallels our understanding of the spiritual purpose of each of the nine soul types.
The Egyptians assigned gender to numbers. The even numbers were female, the odd numbers were male, and the number 1 was both male and female. Of the nine gods of the Grand Ennead, four were male, four were female, and one was both. This indicated to us that each of the gods may have had a number associated with him or her.
Egyptologists usually define the interrelationships of these gods in terms of a family tree:
With this information we were able to assign numbers to each of the nine gods. We assigned 1 to Ra because Ra is the first god. Ra was both male and female. Ra's offspring were 2 (Tefnut) and 3 (Shu). Their offspring were 4 (Nuit) and 5 (Geb). Their offspring, 6 (Nephthys), 7 (Horus), 8 (Isis), and 9 (Osiris), were assigned by comparing the spiritual purposes of the gods with the spiritual purpose of the soul types. There was enough similarity to make definitive assignments.
Soul Type
Egyptian god
Sex
1
Ra
M & F
2
Tefnut
F
3
Shu
M
4
Nuit
F
5
Geb
M
6
Nephthys
F
7
Seth (Set)
M
8
Isis (Aset)
F
9
Osiris (Asar)
M
Copyright © 1999-2002 Alan Sheets and Barbara Tovey