Lingam
Fast forward to the other side of the Pacific Ocean. Here - in Southeast Asia and in India - the worship of the lingam has been widely practiced since time immemorial.
The Big Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron writes about this object:
“Lingam (linga) is the Indian emblem of the phallus, which has a special cult. Lingam is a symbol of the god Shiva and is a relatively late phenomenon, unknown in the Vedic era and mentioned for the first time only in the Mahabharata. The lingam usually consists of a simple stone pillar, sometimes a cone, molded from clay. The people call such emblems Shiva or Magadeva (the Supreme God is an epithet of Shiva). Since Shiva appears in twelve forms, the number of "great" lingams in different parts of India reaches 12. In connection with the cult of the lingam, there is usually the cult of yoni (Skt. Yonivulva). The latter is depicted by a horizontal flat stone through which a lingam pillar passes."
In this definition, the lingam is practically identified with the phallus (erect male member), and the yoni with the female vulva. Their union in a single object of worship seems to symbolize "the indivisible unity of the masculine (Shiva, passive) and feminine (Devi, active) principles, from the combination of which life emanates."
And now the cult of the lingam is actually equated with the cult of the phallus - the veneration of the male genital organ as a symbol of strength and courage. The lingam is most often understood as the phallus. However, this simplistic perception is a very deep misconception that generates a lot of errors.
A significant role in the spread of this misconception was played at one time by a book by the British Protestant missionary William Ward entitled "A Look at the History, Literature and Mythology of the Hindus", published in 1815 in London. In this book, the author directly equated the lingam with the phallus and, for this reason, severely criticized the ritual of worshiping the lingam. Ward, clearly under the influence of his own Protestant attitudes, called the ritual "… the last stage of degradation to which human nature can descend …" and stated that "… its symbolism is too crude even when they try to ennoble it for the public's view."
And although literally ten years later, in 1825, the famous English Indologist and Sanskrit scholar Goras Wilson refuted this point of view in his book, it was too late - Ward's "work" gained popularity and enjoyed authority in Victorian Britain for many years. Ward's point of view resonated with the overtly puritanical sentiments of nineteenth-century European society. The overwhelming majority of European researchers associate the lingam with the phallus, and the yoni with the vulva …
Promotional video:
Wooden phalluses.
The result of this erroneous identification was, in particular, a strong discord in assessing the time of the appearance of the cult of the lingam - different sources name completely different periods of time. So Klaus Klostermeier, based on the data of excavations in the village of Gudimalam, in the state of Andhra Pradesh, which were carried out in the 70s of the last century, expresses the opinion that the veneration of the lingam was spread in India in the first half of the 1st millennium BC. Other researchers believe that the origins of this cult should be sought in the Harappan civilization, in one of the main cities of which - Mohenjo-Daro - phallic figurines dating back to the 3rd-2nd millennia BC were found. Still others attribute this time even earlier - to the Neolithic era (VIII-III millennium BC), referring to the excavations of the Kappagalu mound in Bellara and in the Indus valley,where conical terracotta objects with a rounded top and stone rings to them (supposedly symbolizing lingam and yoni) were found. There are even those who argue that the tradition of worshiping the Lingam dates back to the Upper Paleolithic era (18–20 thousand years BC), based on the find during the excavation of an ancient site in Achinsk (Siberia) of a phallic rod carved from a mammoth tusk and “inlaid serpentine curving spiral pattern.carved out of mammoth ivory and “inlaid” with a serpentine curving spiral pattern.carved out of mammoth ivory and “inlaid” with a serpentine curving spiral pattern.
It is easy to see that everywhere we are talking about certain objects directly related to the phallus (historians and archaeologists now tend to associate any vertical object with the phallus). However, it is with the phallus, and not with the lingam. Lingam is something completely different!..
Lingam The "classic", so to speak, lingam (more precisely: the composite structure of the linga-yoni) is a cylinder of carefully polished stone with rounded corners at the top, passing in the middle into an octagonal part and into a square one at the bottom. In this case, only the cylindrical part of the lingam rises above the "base" (yoni), which has a round or square hole in the center and a lateral extension with a groove-groove. The octagonal and square parts are located inside the yoni …
Have you ever met an octahedral or at least a tetrahedral phallus with someone somewhere?.. There is nothing like this anywhere in nature!
Then why are they trying to identify the lingam with the phallus?..
And who could have come up with such a strange and very non-trivial form for a lingam?.. After all, a square-octahedral lingam could in no way arise from the shape of a real phallus!..
If we look at the mutual arrangement of the elements in the linga-yoni, then there are even more doubts about their "sexual" interpretation.
Have you ever seen that the phallus does not go inside the vulva, but … sticks out of it with the head out?.. With all the variety of poses in the Kama Sutra, it is simply impossible to imagine such a thing!.. Physiological characteristics - not only in humans, but and for all living beings - this is not realizable in principle!..
On the whole, we have to state that there are no objective grounds to correlate the linga-yoni directly with the phallus and vulva.
But what then does this strange complex construction mean?.. And where could it come from?..
Linga-yoni scheme.
In some publications on the subject of linga-yoni, one can find, for example, such a fairly common story.
Once the handsome Shiva was walking naked through the forest, and the wives of the sages, seeing his great manhood, succumbed to temptation and began to flatter him. The angry sage Bhrigu, the husband of one of the libertines, cursed him with the words "Let the object of their passion be torn away from you." The curse worked, but then everyone felt sorry for Shiva. In addition, Bhrigu himself repented, who turned to the goddess Parvati with a request to find a worthy place for the lingam of Shiva. Parvati (in Hindu mythology - the wife of Shiva) fixed his lingam in her yoni, which is why they traditionally always appear together. And now Shiva cannot cheat on his wife (“go to the left”, as his Greek colleague Zeus and many other gods of different mythologies practiced) - his lingam is assigned to a specific yoni.
This plot, alas, absolutely does not explain the complex structure of the linga-yoni. In addition, in its style, it is very much like an ordinary fairy tale, composed in the relatively recent past for the "uninitiated". So it makes no sense to take it into account. And it is better to turn to the "primary sources" - the basic concepts of Hinduism.
According to these ideas, the lingam is the main non-anthropomorphic (that is, not in the form of a person) symbol of Shiva. In this case, Shiva should not at all be perceived in the Western manner in the form of a humanoid god. In Hindu literature - in the Puranas ("Linga Purana", "Shiva Purana" and others), Tantras and Agamas - the lingam is a manifested image of the Eternal Unmanifest Para-Shiva (Impersonal Brahman), which is outside of time, space, qualities, form etc. According to the Saiva Puranas, the lingam is also the direct cause of the existence of the material universe.
As you can see, there is no connection with the human phallus here. As there is no worship of some kind of "fertility". In fact, we are talking about some kind of force or energy underlying all that exists, which the Hindus simply could not explain in reasonable and accessible terms.
In this regard, in my opinion, the myth from the first part of the Linga Purana is very curious, where the lingam is presented in an image directly close to the flow of some energy.
According to this myth, at the very beginning of creation, a lotus flower grew from the navel of the powerful god Vishnu, who comfortably lay on the giant snake Shesha and enjoyed eternal peace among the waters of the world's oceans. In the center of the lotus sat the great god Brahma. Noticing the presence of each other, the gods began to argue which of them created the Universe and who is therefore in charge. Each gave arguments in his own favor, and the dispute continued for quite a long time, until next to them in the form of a column of bright light (in other translations - “in the form of an endless pillar of fire”) appeared a huge lingam - the symbol of the god Shiva. Not realizing what was in front of them, Brahma and Vishnu attacked the post with their weapons, but this had no effect on the post. Realizing that they could not do any harm to this pillar, the gods decided to find its beginning and end. Brahma turned into a swan and flew up,and Vishnu became a boar and went down. Their journey lasted a thousand years, but not one found a beginning or an end to the lingam. When they returned and met again, Shiva came out of the lingam pillar to them, who explained to Brahma and Vishnu their real position in this Universe. The dispute between the gods ended with an unequivocal recognition of the superiority of Shiva.
Many-armed Shiva.
It is indicative that the worship of the lingam is considered the most important ritual.
“In the age of Kali, the veneration of the Lingam is the most excellent of all (other forms of worship) that we see in the world, and nothing else. This is the general conclusion of all sacred texts and religious authorities. In the four Vedas, nothing else is mentioned as holy as the veneration of the Lingam. This is the conclusion of all sacred institutions. All other rituals can be abandoned altogether (if Shivalingam is worshiped). A truly knowledgeable person should only serve the Lingam with great devotion. If the Lingam is worshiped, then the entire Universe, consisting of the moving and the immovable, is also worshiped. There are no other (easier) ways to save people thrown into the abyss of the ocean of worldly existence. People in the world are blinded by ignorance. Their minds are overwhelmed by worldly desires. There is no other way besides honoring the Lingam (to swim across (samsara)). Hari (Vishnu),Brahma and other devas, rishis, yakshas, rakshasas, gandharvas, charrans, siddhis, daityas, danavas, Sesha and other nagas, Garuda and other birds, all Manus, Prajapati (Creator, Forefather), kinnaras, people and other beings, if they worship The Lingam, with great devotion, then acquire all the benefits and fulfillment of all desires that are rooted in their hearts”(Shiva Purana, Vidiesvara Samhita, Chapter 21).
“Whatever the merit of sacrifices, asceticism, offerings, pilgrimage, the merit of honoring Lingam Shiva is more than named hundreds of thousands of times” (Karana-Agama).
In other words, while worshiping the lingam and honoring it, you can do nothing else at all …
And this, by the way, is fully consistent with the main requirement of other modern world religions - the requirement to honor the Supreme God, who is located outside material time and space, is at the basis of everything and controls everything.
The Jews got away from the problem of choosing a specific image of this strange for human understanding essence, by default imposing a ban on attempts to solve this problem (it is forbidden even to mention the name of God). Muslims voiced this prohibition - it is impossible to portray Allah (accordingly, it is simply pointless to discuss his form or image). Christians also essentially bypassed this issue, content with the presence of a completely understandable in form "humanoid" God-son, and by analogy with him depicting God-father in human form. Hindus, however, did not dismiss the problem of a specific image of the Supreme God and took for this a kind of idol-symbol. That's the whole difference.
The Protestant missionary William Ward simply lacked the conceptual flexibility and imagination to understand this. As a result, he, in fact, committed the greatest sin himself - he called the worship of the Supreme God (which, in particular, demanded his own faith from himself) "the last stage of degradation" …
Offering flowers to the lingam.
But why is such an idol symbol taken?..
There is a version that the lingam traces its "genealogy" from sacrificial pillars - stambha, to which animals prepared for ritual murder were attached. So some authors refer to the fact that in the Atharva Veda there are hymns praising the stambha, which was also supposed to have an octagonal shape.
“They erected sacrificial pillars: Six - from the bilva tree, Another six - from the wood guys, Another six - from the khadira tree. And also a pillar made of wood shleshmat. And two - from the deodaru tree, Both, according to the ritual, Reach in two open hands. These sacrificial pillars were adorned with gold by the experts of the shastras and rituals For the sake of the greatness of the sacrifice. They erected twenty-one pillars, each twenty-one cubits, And all the pillars were covered with Precious curtains. Deeply dug into the ground, Fortified by artisans, They had eight corners each”(Ramayana, Canto 14, trans. Grinzer).
However, this version is shared by only a few researchers, since the mentioned hymns in the Atharva Veda have no direct correlation either with Shiva or with the concept of "lingam". In addition, the construction of the linga-yoni is somehow too complicated for a regular sacrificial pillar …
According to another, recently appeared version, the construction of the linga-yoni is associated with one of the most important ancient Hindu rituals - the preparation, consecration and drinking of the sacred drink called soma. Modern researchers believe that catfish (the secret of preparation of which has long been lost) was a low-alcohol or slightly narcotic drink.
According to this version of the origin of the linga-yoni, soma was obtained by squeezing out the sap of plants using a device called "pressure stones" (of which there were two). Then the sap of the plants was mixed with milk and honey, flowed through the "filter" from the wool into the spoons of the participants in the process. It is assumed that "pressure stones", being extremely common in the time described in the Rig Veda, this is the linga-yoni. Accordingly, the linga-yoni is just a press, in which the upper "pressure stone", that is, a heavy stone pillar, was lowered to the base and, due to its weight, squeezed juice out of the plants. The juice rose upward and through special channels present in the structure of the lingam-yoni, flowed from the drain chute.
In this version, it is believed that the spread of linga-yoni is due to the addiction of the ancient inhabitants to alcohol and drugs that were contained in the catfish. And today's rituals performed with the lingam (bringing milk, flowers, spices and butter to the lingam) seem to imitate the ancient process of soma production with a complete loss of its original meaning.
This version is also very doubtful. First, if this were so, then in some remote villages and remote villages such "pressure devices" must have been preserved that would have been used according to their original purpose - that is, they would have served as a primitive press. But such facts have not been recorded either now or in the known past. Meanwhile, there has never been a single case in history when any people completely and completely abandoned the preparation of an alcoholic or slightly narcotic drink known to him and would irrevocably lose its recipe, while continuing to read this drink.
And secondly, this version also does not explain the appearance of the square and octahedral parts of the lingam …
Square yoni.
The analysis of the meanings of the Sankrit terms "lingam" and "yoni" is of little help.
So "yoni" has a large number of very different meanings - both in a secular context and in a religious one: "source, origin, womb, place of birth, resting place, seat, container, storehouse, dwelling, house, nest." And “lingam” is “sign, emblem, symbol, mark, symptom, gender (male), phallus, spot, image, proof, effect, result”. Here the specific meaning strongly depends on the context of the work itself in which the term is used.
But you can draw the following associative-logical chain.
The same phallus is a symbol or image associated with the designation of the male sex. In this case, the lingam is directly related to a specific god - Shiva. And practically all meanings of the term "lingam" can be reduced, in fact, to one thing - it is a certain symbol or image. The image of something having a "divine" origin. A symbol that carries, among other things, the proof of the reality of God.
But best of all, the reality of God is proved by a certain object that once belonged to this god. That is, the linga-yoni, possibly, has a very real and material prototype, which the ancient inhabitants of India and Southeast Asia could contemplate and remember, and later create its "copies-images". The worship of the copy-image in this case is quite natural. Moreover, worship is not just a kind of material object-dummy, but precisely understood as worship of God himself - the owner of the prototype.
Note that the Shiva Purana says: "Linga is a distinctive sign with the help of which you can recognize the nature of someone." In this case, it could well be interpreted as follows: by the properties of the "sign-symbol" (that is, an object), one can find out the nature of its creator - whether it is a person or a god.
But what was this object that served as the prototype for the linga-yoni?..
On the Internet forum of the Laboratory of Alternative History, its participant Aleksey Klevtsov proposed an interesting idea: the prototype of the linga-yoni … was a part of a certain turning device with a crimp device. More precisely, the lingam is a part of the turning device (rod or shaft), and the yoni is a part of the crimping device, with the help of which the lingam was rotated to the desired angle.
Lingam-yoni and its alleged prototype.
This idea is illustrated in the figure above, where the following elements are indicated by the numbers: 1 - handle crimp, 2 - tie bolt, 3 - closed lock nut, 4 - gap between the two crimp levers.
To attach the device to the rod / shaft it is necessary: loosen the tightening bolt (2) for the two levers, lower the handle onto the rod / shaft and fix it in the desired position, then tighten the tightening bolt, then put the nut on the thread of the rod and tighten. A closed retainer nut (3) presses the stem / shaft against the base, and the round nut cap protects the stem nut thread from corrosion and debris or rain.
In my opinion, the similarity is simply amazing!..
Pivoting structures usually need some kind of lubrication in order to facilitate the movement of the contacting elements. The need to use oil becomes even more urgent in the manufacture of such a device from corrosive metals. For example, if the composition of metal alloys contains a high percentage of iron. In this case, the oil protects metal surfaces from rust.
People-eyewitnesses could remember that God, with a purpose incomprehensible to them, poured into his "divine" object with some periodicity something similar to their familiar vegetable oils. And in this case, the tradition of watering the linga-yoni with oil, which acts as such "lubrication", gets an explanation. True, this time only in a symbolic sense, since modern designs do not turn after that …
Linga-yoni are sometimes found not one by one, but several at once, lined up in a single row. From the point of view of the similarity of this design with the technical device presented above, this arrangement is also quite understandable. When it becomes necessary to ensure the coordinated operation of several rotary devices, then when they are located in the same row for this consistency, it is sufficient to add to them a single system of pushers. For example, such a system is quite logical for a number of shut-off devices that rotate the dampers located in the channels of the water dam.
And here it would be appropriate to remember that a number of ancient civilizations were associated with agriculture based on the use of artificial irrigation. According to ancient legends and traditions, the supply of water to this system was often controlled by the gods themselves. So the ancient Egyptian god Ptah sat in the Aswan area and regulated the level of the Nile. Now, as you know, there is a dam there, with the help of which we (people) regulate the water level in this river.
Water is the source of life for vegetation, a guarantee of fertility. Hence the meaning of "source" (aka "place of birth", "vulva", etc.) for the Sanskrit word "yoni" could well have appeared …
"Rotator package" with a common pusher system.
It is significant that the ritual associated with the worship of the lingam, although it boils down to the same thing - that the lingam is Shiva (that is, to the recognition of the "divinity" of the prototype of the lingam), but can be quite significantly different in different places. Differ both in what exactly is brought as an offering (sometimes the complete total list of the names of the offerings can include more than 60 items), and in those ritual texts that are read at the same time. The lingam-yoni themselves can also be made from different materials (although most often they are made of stone). So Wikipedia mentions more than three dozen different materials from which the lingam is made.
All this, on the one hand, indicates that from the very beginning, the ancient eyewitnesses and witnesses of the functioning of the prototype of the linga-yoni, apparently, did not at all understand the true meaning of what was happening. On the other hand, it very much resembles the situation in terms of the difference between cargo cult rituals on various islands of the Pacific Ocean. Everything was drowned in minor, insignificant details. …
And one moment.
There is an Indian myth that tells that Shiva, carried away by an ardent passion, set off in pursuit of the charming beauty Mohini, who, as it turned out later, was one of the incarnations of the god Vishnu. During the persecution of the virgin, Shiva dropped his childbearing family twelve times, which, falling to the ground, immediately "manifested with light" in the form of small lingams endowed with special sacred power. These lingams are called jyortilingam. All twelve jayortilings have their own names - Srikedaranath, Sritriyambakeshwar, Srimallikarjun, etc.
In the places where the seed fell - from the foothills of the Himalayas in the north to Rameshwaram in the south - large centers of religious pilgrimage later emerged with luxurious temple complexes, numerous priests and detailed ritual procedures. And every decent Hindu, even if he is not a Shivaite, dreams of making a pilgrimage to all twelve jayortilings.
If behind this myth there are echoes of real events, then the option is not excluded that once on this territory there were as many as 12 prototypes - real "divine" objects. And, from the standpoint of this version, it would be interesting to try to explore the differences between the local linga-yoni, as well as between the ritual procedures for their worship …
One of the ancient Egyptian texts says that the goddess, best known as Hathor, after her return from the distant African country Bugem, settled in Egypt in a place that in ancient times was called Iunet ta necheret - "The unshakable land of the goddess." After the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great, the Greeks simplified the name in their own way to Tenthiris, which passed into Arabic as "Dendera". This place is known under this name even now.
The home of the returning goddess was a majestic and unusually beautiful temple - the Temple of Hathor, which later became the main building of a large temple complex. And now it is one of the main objects on tourist routes running through the memorial sites of Ancient Egypt.
Temple of Hathor in Dendera.
The Temple of Hathor in Dendera is famous for its many paintings and bas-reliefs. Perhaps, almost everything (except the floor) is covered with drawings and texts - walls, ceilings and massive columns. One of the most famous images is the unique zodiac circle that previously adorned the ceiling of one of the small rooms of the temple. The original is now in the Parisian Louvre, and only a copy is in the same place. Around this zodiacal circle there are serious disputes - when exactly it was created, and what celestial events were recorded on it.
But even hotter controversy is surrounding other images that have been discovered in one of the crypts - small secret rooms. As historians believe, these secret rooms were multifunctional - they served both as storage places for sacred, sacred objects, and as sanctuaries for secret ceremonies. Such secret rooms were an indispensable attribute of many Egyptian temples, but most often they were not decorated with drawings or reliefs.
Fifteen crypts are now known in the temple of Hathor, most of which also have no images. The walls of this crypt, which is only a little more than a meter wide, are covered with reliefs, which are carefully executed on a stone of better quality than the one used in the main part of the temple. This allowed the craftsmen, who worked in a rather complicated technique of low relief (when the general background is located deeper than the drawing itself), to depict finer details.
Egyptologists claim that the most important sacred ceremonies of the cults of the Egyptian gods, rituals and festivals, as well as images of visible images and attributes of the gods are captured on the walls of this crypt. However, there is a completely different point of view, according to which … electric lamps are represented on the relief!..
Bas-relief with a "lamp".
The first to draw attention to the possibility of just such an interpretation of images was the Norwegian engineer Henry Kjellson. In his 1961 book Disappeared Technology, he wrote that the Egyptians were holding incandescent lamps with electrical cables supported by insulators. Erich von Daniken soon borrowed this idea. And his followers, Reinhard Hybek and Peter Crassa, dedicated an entire book “Light for the Pharaoh” to “Egyptian electricity”, in which, in particular, the following is written:
“The walls depict human figures next to bulbous objects that resemble huge electric lamps. Inside the "lamps" there are snakes in the form of wavy lines. The pointed tails of the snakes emanate from lotus flowers, which, without much imagination, can be interpreted as lamp holders. Something resembling a wire leads to a small box. On it stands the god of air, kneeling. Nearby stands a pillar of a Jed with two arms - this is a symbol of power, connected to a snake. Attention is drawn to a demon that looks like a baboon, with two knives in his hands, which is interpreted as a protective and defensive force."
The demon baboon (according to another interpretation, the god Horus with a dog's head) with knives in his hands is interpreted by some researchers as a warning of danger - a type of image of a skull with bones familiar to us, which can be seen on objects with high voltage. In another embodiment, knives represent a switch operating the depicted electrical system.
There are disagreements in the interpretation of what kind of lamp it was. Some researchers believe that it looks more like the incandescent lamp we are used to, for which the "snake" corresponds to a luminous filament. Others believe that we can talk about a gas-discharge lamp, in which the "snake" is related to the discharge arc. For example, about the "Crookes tube", named after the British physicist William Crookes (1832-1919), who was one of the first to study the propagation of an electric discharge in glass tubes filled with rarefied gases. When connected to the high-voltage winding of an induction coil, such tubes emitted a bright glow.
Disputes between supporters of these two versions of interpretation are fueled by the fact that different images (and there are three of them at once) differ in their details. So in one case, the "hands" of the Jed, perceived in the "electric" version most often as some kind of insulator, reach the "snake" inside the lamp, and in the other - they only touch the lamp bulb, as if only supporting it and not being a functional element (in the third case, the case does without a Jed-insulator at all - the lamp is supported by a small man).
The Jed's "hands" only touch the lamp.
The lamp is supported by a human figurine.
Electrical engineer Walter Garn of Vienna reproduced a gas-discharge lamp based on the image where the Jed's "hands" enter the "bulb", which worked quite successfully. And Erich von Daniken even placed a working model in his "Mysteries of the World" amusement park, which he created on the territory of the old abandoned Interlaken airfield near Bern in Switzerland. True, if Garn tried to reproduce, first of all, the physical process, then Daniken strove to keep the shape as close as possible to the original image. As a result, the model in the Swiss park can hardly even be called a model of some real prototype, since the pear-shaped bulb in it turned out to be a non-functional superfluous detail - the entire physical process leading to the glow takes place here only in the “snake”, and not in the bulb as a whole, as it should have been in a normal gas discharge lamp.
Model of a Dendera lamp in Daniken park.
Historians, of course, categorically reject both options for interpreting Dendera images as some kind of electric lighting devices. They have their own versions of the explanation of the contents of the figures. So, instead of a “patron” with a “cable” suitable for it, they see an ordinary lotus - a flower, the image of which was often used in Ancient Egypt.
Egyptologist Sylvie Kaulville put forward the assumption that the serpent emanating from the lotus represents a god named Khor-Sema-Tavi or Hamsomptus - "Horus connecting two lands." Harsomtus, aka Aikhi, is the son of Hathor and Horus, at the same time a falcon and a man, combining the qualities of divine and earthly royal power, uniting the image of the serpent, the son of the Earth, and the god emerging from the lotus (the Egyptian symbol of creation). According to legend, Aihi originated from a lotus flower that grew from the abyss of Nun at dawn. Which is supposedly depicted on the walls of the crypt in Dendera.
Within the framework of this version, the "pears" around the snakes are not flasks of glass, but a kind of "cocoons" of protective magical energy, or the sky in general. "Cables" are not wires, but a symbol of the day boat of the sun god Ra, on which the depicted characters stand. The lotuses were drawn at the stern of the boat, or at both ends - from which Aikhi appears in the form of a snake.
And François Daumas suggested that the events reflected in the bas-reliefs of this crypt contain the New Year's celebration traditional for the Egyptians. And that the first ceremony was performed in these rooms. Thus, the inscriptions represent the plot of the myth, the appearance of which was celebrated in Egypt.
Rook with Egyptian gods.
At first glance, everything seems to be logical. But this is only at first glance. If you dig deeper, you will immediately find a number of inconsistencies.
Firstly, the Egyptians depicted the boat of the god Ra much more like real boats and did not resort to such "symbolism", in which it turns out, in fact, only half of the boat.
Secondly, the sky was depicted not by some kind of pear-shaped bubble, but quite differently. The classical, so to speak, image of the sky contains an anthropomorphic figure of the goddess Nut with stars - this is exactly the image that is also found in Dendera in another room of the temple of Hathor. The "cocoon" of protective magical energy also looked completely different (we will return to it later).
Thirdly, not everything is so simple with Aihi. And the point is not that not everything is clear with his father (in addition to Horus, Ra also claims this title), but that, being considered the god of music, he was portrayed most often as a person in a trance and playing the sistra (an ancient musical instrument), and sometimes - in the form of a small naked child with a finger in his mouth or in the form of a boy with a "curl of youth" and systrum. And his allegedly "symbolic" image in the form of a snake emerging from a lotus is mentioned only in one (!) Case - just when describing the drawings of the Hathor temple in Dendera. And this means, in fact, a frank and objectively unfounded fraud.
The New Year is generally far-fetched here, since the Egyptians' New Year celebration was primarily associated with the floods of the Nile, and not at all with the myth of the birth of a second-rate god …
The sky in the form of the goddess Nut.
Even taking these points into account, the Egyptologists' version looks very weak. She gives the impression of a clumsy attempt to somehow get away from the "electric" version, dumping the general appearance of "inconvenient" Dendera images on a random combination of symbols.
However, when dealing with symbols in general, one should be very careful, since in order to correctly interpret a particular symbol, one must actually know its semantic meaning and it is in the cultural context where it was used - in this case, among the ancient Egyptians, about whom Egyptologists (without being immersed in the real cultural environment of the living inhabitants of Ancient Egypt) can only build theories.
As an illustration, you can consider at least a symbol of two perpendicular dashes, which even in our time has a number of fundamentally different meanings. In the Christian religion, it is a symbol of the crucifixion of God the Son and a symbol of Christ himself, in mathematics - a plus or a sign of multiplication, in chemistry - a sign of an ion charge, in traffic rules - a sign "Stop is prohibited", in questionnaires - a choice of a specific answer, and so on and stuff like that …
In addition, for some reason, no one asks the question of how a rather random combination of various symbols has formed into such a final image, which in people with technical education evokes very clear associations with a specific electrical device. What is the probability of such coincidences?.. It is negligible!..
And even if the "socket" of the lamp really depicts a lotus (this is also possible), this does not at all negate the version of the technical nature of the entire drawing. We, too, often use floral motifs in our lighting fixtures. But this does not mean that because of this, for example, a chandelier ceases to be a chandelier and becomes a bouquet of flowers …
Chandelier in the form of a bouquet of flowers.
The drawings on the walls of the crypt are surrounded by texts that, in a person with a technical education, cause associations with some kind of instructions for using the devices depicted or their description.
Egyptologists also have a completely different opinion about the texts. Moreover, they even use the available translations of these texts as "evidence of the failure" of the electrotechnical version of the objects depicted on the walls of the crypt. For example, there is a translation of one of the texts:
“Harsomtus … the great god who dwells in Dendera. Gold, height 4 palms. Made of metal of the Day boat Ra (?), Lotus flower made of gold. Harsomtus … multi-colored and feathered, sits on a column. Gold, height 1 cubit [meaning Harsomtus as a falcon]. Harsomtus … his living "ba" in the lotus flower of the Day Boat, whose perfection holds the Jed pole with both hands, while his "ka" kneels with bent arms. Gold, precious stones, height 3 palms."
This text is interpreted by Egyptologists as a description of the golden figurines of the gods, which were once kept in this crypt, which, as indicated earlier, also played the role of a storeroom.
Fragment of text above the image of one of the "lamps".
However, not everything is so simple here either.
Firstly, no one has ever seen real figurines here. And there is no guarantee that their storage in a crypt is not fiction, very far from reality.
Secondly, the nature of the arrangement of the inscriptions still testifies in favor of the version that the texts and images are interconnected, and do not represent completely separate independent relief elements. Meanwhile, the banal list of statuettes left for safekeeping does not correlate in any way with the mythological story about the god Harsomtus (see the interpretation of the figure above), or with the version of electric lamps.
And thirdly, the translation of Egyptian hieroglyphic texts is not at all so simple. It is much more difficult than translating from English into Russian. When reading individual Egyptian hieroglyphs, as well as combining them into something meaningful, the subjective attitudes of the "translator" play an important role, which are strongly reflected in the final result of the translation. So even among Egyptologists there are crypts that differ in the meaning of the interpretation of the texts. For example, there is a statement that these texts describe the secret rituals of the priests. And the translation by Wolgang Vaitkus indicates the dedication of these images to a number of holidays and deities, for example, Thoth.
It is easy to see that in this case we already have three fundamentally different interpretations of the content of the texts. So, is there something that forbids us to assume that there may be a fourth interpretation connected precisely with the "electric" version?.. And by the way, there are quite definite prerequisites for such an assumption.
So, for example, in the hieroglyphic texts accompanying the bas-reliefs, "snakes" are described by the verb "seref", which means "to blaze," and we are talking here about a brightly luminous filament or discharge arc.
Note that the obvious abundance of numbers and numbers in the texts around the images on the walls of the crypt (which even amateur translators notice) can easily be related not to the size of mythical figurines, but to the parameters of devices that had an electrical (or some other) purpose. As well as the names of specific materials found in these texts are quite appropriate in this case. And actions that are interpreted as part of priestly rituals or festivals may well turn out to be requirements for the actions of device users. Open any instructions for any technique - you can easily find all these elements there.
Alas, it is quite obvious that not a single Egyptologist, who values his scientific and professional career, will undertake responsible translation of inscriptions in a crypt based on an approach that at least simply allowed the possibility of such a "technical" reading of texts …
A serious counterargument from Egyptologists and other opponents of the “electric” version is that the Egyptians did not have the necessary base to create incandescent lamps, and even more so gas-discharge lamps. There was no technology for the production of glass flasks, there was no equipment for pumping air out of them, there was no production of electrically conductive and insulating materials. In fact, there was nothing that would make it possible to make the simplest light bulb. It is not known among the ancient Egyptians of any energy sources that are necessary for the operation of such lamps.
Sometimes, in an attempt to solve the problem with power supplies, proponents of "electric" cite strange finds in Mesopotamia. In the 30s of the last century, during excavations near Baghdad, the German archaeologist Wilhelm Koenig discovered clay jugs (one and a half dozen centimeters in size), inside which there were hollow copper cylinders. These cylinders were fixed to the bottom of earthen vessels with a layer of bitumen. And in the 40s of the twentieth century, near the ancient city of Seleucia, scientists again discovered similar vessels that resembled flower vases. All these findings were more than two thousand years old.
The design of the vessels indicated that they could serve as … galvanic cells. In order to test this hypothesis, the researchers filled the vessels with an electrolyte (lemon juice) and found a potential difference of 0.25-0.5 volts between the iron rod and the copper cylinder. The ancient element began to give a current of 0.5 amperes. And several of these elements, connected together, could well power a small light bulb from a flashlight.
The American chemical journal "Hemistri" has proposed another hypothesis about the purpose of the mysterious "vases". Based on the fact that the remains of olive oil were found in some of the vessels, the authors of the hypothesis presented in this journal suggested that the "vase" could function as a condenser. In this case, the cylinder and the rod, located inside the vessel, were its plates, and the oil was a dielectric. This capacitor could be charged by repeatedly transferring an electric charge to its electrodes from some external source - for example, from the same galvanic cells.
In Daniken's park, a model of a Dendera lamp is demonstrated along with models of several such "Baghdad batteries" …
"Baghdad Battery".
But even several primitive "Baghdad batteries" connected together will not be enough to operate any large incandescent lamps. And certainly they are not able to generate the voltage that is necessary for the operation of gas-discharge lamps. Realizing this, Walter Garn put forward a different assumption:
“… the priests, probably, had at their disposal something like a Van de Graaff generator, which are now used mainly in nuclear physics. In it, along an insulated tape, electric charges enter the ball, where they are removed by sharp protrusions. Thanks to this, the ball is charged and is under high voltage. With such primitive generators it is very easy to get a voltage of several thousand volts.
However, no signs of a Van de Graaff generator or any of its analogues have been found in Egypt. Therefore, even if the ancient Egyptians were familiar with the "Baghdad battery", it still does not remove the problem with the sources of electricity for Dendera lamps …
But if the Egyptians did not have serious sources of energy and a basis for creating Dendera lamps, this does not mean that the gods also did not have all this - representatives of a highly developed civilization, which left behind a lot of traces on different continents. On the contrary, the level of their development was clearly so high that the creation of such electrical devices for them should have presented no problems. So we have a full opportunity to put forward the version that on the walls of the Hathor temple in Dendera are depicted objects of the gods. And the inscriptions next to these images contain some knowledge of the gods on the design or use of the corresponding electrical devices. In the end, these texts are still not really translated …
Indirectly, this version is supported by the fact that the images of lamps are not only in the crypt, but also on the walls of one of the main halls of the temple of Hathor, and the texts are present only in the crypt - the secret room. And this crypt was not just hidden from prying eyes, but literally walled up!..
The fact is that the crypt itself is below the floor of the temple. Now you can go down there by a wooden staircase, but this staircase is modern. In such important and pompous temples, the Egyptians, apparently, did not use wooden stairs - they built stone stairs. So, for example, a quite decent staircase made of stone blocks leads to a similar crypt in the Temple of Edfu. There is no such staircase in Dendera. There are no debris at all or signs that such a staircase was there!..
But there are clear signs that the massive blocks of the floor that previously covered the entrance to this room were not even removed, but simply rudely broken off. Apparently, the crypt was not just underground, but also a carefully disguised room, the daily entrance to which was not meant. And now you can get there through a narrow and very low manhole only on all fours. From the inside, you can see that the area around the entrance was carefully laid by someone with stone blocks in time immemorial - apparently, in order to close the access of the uninitiated to the knowledge of the gods.
But when was it done?..
We inevitably come to the question about the time of the construction of the temple.
A. Sklyarov