#20 LEADING EGYPT: IMHOTEP, NEFERTITI AND NEFERTARI

Egypt is the land of Isis, one of the earliest forms of the Mary cult. Of the four important women known to us from the Pharaonic period: Nefertiti, Hatshepsut, Nefertari and Cleopatra, three of them are significant lives of Mary.

Does Mary, therefore, have any special influence in Egypt? It was the first question I put to the Gatekeeper and he answered in his usual elliptical way.

“You will notice how Egypt today (2006) has been outside the influence of the extremists, with a secular government and with relative freedom for women. In the past, there were three prevailing energies in Egypt: those of Kuthumi, Hilarion and Bast or Fortuna or Lakshmi, who are three names for the female aspect of Serapis Bey. At the end of the First World War when the Turks left around 1918-1920, the energy of Isis-Mary’s Priestess energy- returned, when Mary took over Egypt as its guiding energy. In doing so, she culminated a long relationship with Egypt. It is the place where she had sought refuge: as Sarah-her Mary the Mother energy- with Abraham, as Leah and Dinah with Jacob and as Mary with Joseph. It is a place which nurtured her when times were tough. The energy she brings to Egypt cannot be named and it can’t be explained but politically we can say that the return of Isis-Mary will bless Egypt. And you can expect to see apparitions of her there.”(Litchfield 2006)

And what of St Germain? Egypt has not been a place where his energy has flourished to greatness. There is one exception. That is his life as Imhotep, the diminutive Prime Minister of Egypt in the reign of the Pharaoh Djoser, a genius who excelled as a physician and surgeon, an architect and an administrator.

Imhotep (2686-2613BC)

Occasionally the world experiences a leader, who accelerates change and challenges those around them with their achievements. Ramses II, Pharaoh of Egypt and an aspect of Hilarion was such a leader while Elizabeth I, Queen of Britain, an aspect of Pallas Athene, was another example. So, too, was the Pharaoh Djoser (pron. Zoser) of Egypt, an aspect of Kuthumi, at the beginning of the Third Dynasty (c2635-2610BC). Djoser expanded the boundaries of Egypt to the first cataract of the Nile, pushed mineral exploration into Sinai, subdued the Bedouin and opened up their deserts to trade, mining and exploration and oversaw the building of the first pyramid. Djoser would be served by one of the world’s most remarkable men, the celebrated Imhotep, whose name means “he who comes in peace”. Imhotep was the chief vizier to the Pharaoh, a high priest at Heliopolis and he was renowned as a sage, astrologer and architect, but most of all he was a founding father of Western Medicine as a physician.

Imhotep’s capacities were so exceptional that Djoser allowed his servant to be immortalized by permitting his titles to be included on his own statue in the funeral complex at Saqqara which Imhotep had built for him. Imhotep’s titles were recorded on his tomb as: “The Chancellor of Lower Egypt, the first after the King of United Egypt, the administrator of the great palace, hereditary lord, the High Priest of Heliopolis, Imhotep the builder, the chief sculptor, the maker of stone vases.”

Gazing at the statue of Imhotep in the Louvre, you see a slight man, modestly dressed, seated with an open scroll on his lap. He looks like an unassuming scribe who today would be a public servant, but in his day indistinguishable from the thousands who worked for the Pharaoh. Today, Imhotep is better known than the Pharaoh he worked for, and not only for his leading role as the mummy in the Mummy movies. But, more importantly, because he was the designer and builder of the first pyramid, the famous step pyramid at Saqqara in Memphis. The pyramid is built of six steps and is the oldest known monument in stone, which is still in existence, at two hundred feet high, or sixty-one metres, high.

We know a little about his life; we know, for example, his parents’ names; Kanafer for his father and Kreduonkh for his mother. But we know nothing of his education or his specific achievements. We suspect he was both a great physician and pharmacist because his ‘sayings’ are recorded and preserved in Egyptian libraries.

After his death, Imhotep was partly deified so that he could be venerated by the Egyptians, somewhat like a Christian saint. His devotees prayed at his temples for miraculous cures for their illnesses and ailments and his temples became clinics for healing and teaching centres. Patients slept there overnight waiting to be visited in their dreams by a god or a serpent to cure their illnesses. There is speculation that the fifteen foot long Edwin Smith papyrus, named for the man who rediscovered the scroll in the nineteenth century, may have been written by Imhotep. This medical text details ninety anatomical terms and forty-eight case studies in clinical surgery of injuries and diseases with diagnostic indicators, and treatments. Durant describes it in this way: “Each case is treated in logical order, under the heads at provisional diagnosis, examination, semiology, diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and glossaries on the terms used.” (P182) The scroll uses the word ‘brain’ – the first time it occurs in any literature. Imhotep may also have founded a school of medicine in Memphis. His qualities and achievements appear to have been appropriated by the Greeks and blended with their god of medicine, Asclepius.

We do not know how Imhotep died because, unlike in the Hollywood movies, we have found neither a tomb, nor, despite his current popularity, his mummy. As the inscriptions imply, he may have been a universal genius with such an extensive range of talents that his name describes a complete line of St Germain, one crowded with inspiring philosophers, navigators, inventors and warriors.

Conversation with the Gatekeeper

“How did Imhotep’s life begin, Gatekeeper?”

“Imhotep was a commoner born on an estate on the outskirts of Thebes. His father, Kanafer, was a man of substance, an architect and builder within the circle of wider royal patronage. His boyhood was happy; his mother Kreduonkh was a joyous, happy woman who was also firm with him. She placed him in the care of a trusted artisan, a brick maker, who worked in their business. Imhotep’s father had recognised the brick maker’s brilliance, his shining intellect, and had him schooled to train as a scribe to serve his household as a lawyer, cum accountant, cum administrator. He became Imhotep’s tutor and was supported by a slave, from Babylonia, who tutored him in mathematics. This man had been taken in a raid against the Hittites – he’d been one of their engineers and he would tutor Imhotep in physics, engineering and mathematics. As a Babylonian he believed that maths, astrology and astronomy were all part of the same science and you see how that integration works in the mathematical and astronomical alignment of pyramids. But it was the brick maker who was most influential in his life; a being that would incarnate 1750 years later as Lao Tzu. Can you see the similarities between their two personalities?

Imhotep attended a “summer school”; a seasonal driving academy for boys. There he learned charioteering and horsemanship… he was very good. In everything he did he showed his exceptional genius. He became an accomplished artist, a mathematician and a scientist who played the lyre with above-average ability. Imhotep had all the characteristics of Apollo together with his great personal charm.

Let me give you a boyhood story. At the charioteering school there was an enclosure for fierce, wild animals which would be trained for circus-like performances. He loved hunting and one day he went missing and the officer of the king’s guard was very worried. “Where is he?’ he shouted. “He’s gone to play with the cheetahs” they replied. “They are wild and untamed,” yelled the frantic guard who raced to the enclosure. There Imhotep sat with one cheetah with his head on his lap while another licked his face. His great facility with strange animals who would immediately accept him, made him quietly famous and held in awe in the school.”

“I thought you’d tell me that Imhotep attended the school for scribes.”

“He did. But that was later, and it was more like university for outstanding student. There, they learned writing, law, accounting and clerical and diarist skills. They spent eight years there. While he was there, he was sounded out for membership of the White Brotherhood at fourteen and was initiated into it at sixteen in a ceremony like your confirmation. The White Brotherhood School was additional to his regular study. It lasted thirteen weeks and he had to pass rigorous exams in meditation, ethics, religion and learning by rote the scrolls of the Brotherhood about equity, one god and reincarnation, similar to the scrolls that the Knights Templar will find in below the Temple in Jerusalem more than three thousand years later. They built temples and Imhotep later would build one.”

“I’ve heard the White Brotherhood is a mysterious secret society and a way of describing the Circle of Masters who appear to govern this planet. Imhotep is described as a high priest. Was he high priest of this Brotherhood?”

“No. He was the high priest of Amun but he was initiated as a member of the Brotherhood.”

“I’ve read about some lurid initiation ceremonies in Egypt where initiates had to swim with crocodiles or survive nights enclosed in a sarcophagus. Are you talking about an initiation like that?”

“This is not Hollywood, this is ancient Thebes. Imhotep was initiated in a cave or a catacomb underneath a temple. He was quizzed in a two-hour examination and I hear him answering the question: ‘What is the nature of God?’ And he says: ‘God is an all-knowing, all-seeing, omnipresent being who said before the world was: I am.’

He also answered questions about the nature of life and death and whether he was prepared to seek the will of God and treat all men and women as his brothers and sisters.”

“It sounds more like the Bible than Hollywood. Where did the Brotherhood come from?”

“It came to Egypt from Sumeria and Imhotep will be our first character to be a member of it. Later, it will become particularly important in Nefertiti’s life.”

“So women were members?”

“They were admitted in her lifetime but not in his. Let’s return to it when we discuss his pyramid building”.

“Well, I’d like to know what Imhotep looked like. Did Imhotep look like his statue in the Louvre? He looks petite and neat.”

“It is a good likeness… actually, now I look at it closely, it’s extremely accurate, he’s only five foot two… he was never excessive in his personal appearance… he rarely drank wine, dressed plainly… ate little, was careful of his diet, ate a handful of dates, some nuts and a little meat. He liked game, duck or quail and ate a lot of venison. His fresh fish came from the Nile which he ate salted with dried fish from the Mediterranean. He drank some beer, but mainly he drank water. He was enthusiastic about clean water because he had seen so much bad water and the disease it caused, so he cleansed his water through three layers of canvas to filter it or he evaporated his water in the Egyptian sun and caught it in canvas. He used that purified water in his other medicines.”

“Imhotep is described as the world’s first doctor and as a priest, sage, poet, astrologer and prime minister or chancellor to Pharaoh Djoser. This is a big ask. Are these titles an accurate description of his role?”

“Yes. He was a kind of natural authority on everything. His genius created the first think tanks bringing together the very best brains from everywhere in the world and that included China. He led these brain trusts on the arts, urban renewal, and canal building; they were public servants from disparate backgrounds. Pharaoh Djoser, and Imhotep had a symbiotic relationship, one which we will see throughout the critical times of history. Kuthumi sets St Germain up to succeed and often gets the credit for St Germain’s achievements.”

“Is there a modern equivalent to Imhotep?”

“Some Nobel Prize winners maybe, but in government, the nearest would be C P Snow, the British physicist, novelist, cabinet minister, rhetorician and philosopher. His was one of the most recent lives of Imhotep.”

“Didn’t Snow write about the two separate cultures of science and the arts and how illiterate those trained in one were in the other discipline?”

“Snow follows a theme of Lao Tzu about the necessity of a broad education. The West has gone to the other extreme and become so specialized so, as you would say, your scholars know more and more about less and less. This will be one of the main reasons for the West’s decline but that is another topic.”

“Did Imhotep design and execute the step pyramid at Saqqara?”

“Imhotep played a part. Believe it or not, it was designed by a committee, a team. Egyptians imported engineers and artisans from unbelievable distances. There were Babylonians and Sanskrit speaking Chinese who made up the team and he designed every aspect of the Edfu temple. The step pyramid is unfinished. The large triangular blocks of white marble are needed to finish it.”

“How is it related to the White Brotherhood?”

“Underneath that pyramid is a crypt used for the Brotherhood’s meetings and initiations. There is a crypt system under all pyramids which were used by the Brotherhood.”

“Is it under the Sphinx too?”

“It’s older than the pyramids but yes, there is a crypt or catacomb there too. Let’s discuss it again when we look at Nefertiti because there’s still so much more to Imhotep!”

“It’s hard to leave but I’ll return to my prepared questions. Was Imhotep the author of what we call the Edwin Smith papyrus?”

“Yes, Imhotep was the first to catalogue much in medicine. He founded a school of medicine at Thebes and that papyrus was his teaching scroll.”

“And was he a pharmacist as well as a physician?”

“He studied drugs and pharmacy and was intensely interested in cataloguing. Born a Virgo, he encouraged order in everything, searching after truth and investigating with intense curiosity anything that puzzled him.”

“Why was he recorded on the Pharaoh’s tomb with the title of ‘maker of the stone vases’?”

“Now that is an interesting question! Imhotep had discovered a new process. This is the first example you see of St Germain as a chemist and inventor. He ground marble to a dust, mixed it with a cement, the secret of which has been lost… but it came from a tree. The result looked like white stone… you can carve it and polish it and it could be moulded. The Egyptians loved it and used it to make ceremonial objects. Several of the jars used to contain organs in mummification were made from it. It’s a puzzle to today’s archaeologists who think it is actually a quarried stone which can’t be found anymore.”

“Well I hope they read this! What was his greatest accomplishment?”

“That’s a hard question! He established the parameters for temple architecture, his medical codices assisted humanity and made possible the contributions of Hippocrates and Galen, he encouraged improvement in government in its systems, in its ethics and in its ability to deliver infrastructure ‘on time and on budget’ as I have heard you say. And he sponsored and encouraged creativity in science and arts.”

“Enough for five lifetimes! In addition to all this, dare I ask if he made any medical breakthroughs?”

“There was one branch of medicine which he especially developed - advanced eye surgery. Physicians came from everywhere to study eye surgery with him. He did cataracts, the removal of growths. Opium was used as anaesthetic and clamps used to peel back the eyelids. He could take out an eyeball and replace it after he had removed small tumours or the barbs of arrows. He was accomplished in trepanning where he would remove part of the skull, drain a hematoma and put in a plate of metal called electrum. He ensured cleanliness before operations by washing his hands then dipping them in lime. He helped design fine cutting tools of iron and designed drills and bone saws. Oh, and by the way, he discovered the circulation of the blood!”