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" The notion that some form of invisible college could have established itself at Heliopolis thousands of years before the Pharaohs, and could have been the initiating force behind the creation and unfolding of ancient Egyptian civilization, helps to explain one of the greatest mysteries confronted by Egyptology - namely the extremely sudden, indeed dramatic, manner in which Pharaonic culture 'took off in the early third millennium BC. The independent researcher John Anthony West, whose breakthrough work on the geology of the Sphinx we reported in Part I, formulates the problem especially well:
Every aspect of Egyptian knowledge seems to have been complete at the very beginning. The sciences, artistic and architectural techniques and the hieroglyphic system show virtually no signs of a period of 'development'; indeed, many of the achievements of the earliest dynasties were never surpassed or even equalled later on. This astonishing fact is readily admitted by orthodox Egyptologists, but the magnitude of the mystery it poses is skilfully understated, while its many implications go unmentioned.
How does a complex civilization spring full-blown into being? Look at a 1905 automobile and compare it to a modem one. There is no mistaking the process of 'development'. But in Egypt there are no parallels. Everything is right there at the start.
The answer to the mystery is of course obvious, but because it is repellent to the prevailing cast of modem thinking, it is seldom seriously considered. Egyptian civilization was not a 'development', it was a legacy.16
Might not the preservers of that legacy, who eventually bequeathed it to the Pharaohs at the beginning of the Dynastic Period, have been those revered and secretive individuals - the 'Followers of Horus', the Sages, the Senior Ones - whose memory haunts the most archaic traditions of Egypt like a persistent ghost?

In addition to the Turin Papyrus other chronological records support the notion of an immensely ancient 'academy' at work behind the scenes in Egypt. Amongst these, the most influential were compiled,

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as we saw earlier, by Manetho (literally, 'Truth of Thoth'), who lived in the third century BC and who 'rose to be high priest in the temple at Heliopolis'.17 There he wrote his now lost History of Egypt which later commentators tell us was divided up into three volumes dealing, respectively, with 'the Gods, the Demigods, the Spirits of the Dead and the mortal Kings who ruled Egypt'. 18
The 'Gods' it seems, ruled for 13,900 years. After them 'the Demigods and Spirits of the Dead' - epithets for the 'Followers of Horus' - ruled for a further 11,025 years.19 Then began the reign of the mortal kings, which Manetho divided into the thirty-one dynasties still used and accepted by scholars today.
Other fragments from Manetho's History also suggest that important and powerful beings were present in Egypt long before the dawn of its historical period under the rule of Menes. For example Fragment 3, preserved in the works of George Syncellus, speaks of 'six dynasties or six gods who. . . reigned for 1 1,985 years,.20 And in a number of sources Manetho is said to have given the figure of 36,525 years for the entire duration of the civilization of Egypt from the time of the gods down to the end of the last dynasty of mortal kings.21
A rather different total of around 23,000 years has been handed down to us by the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus who visited Egypt in the first century DC and spoke there with priests and chroniclers. According to the stories he was told: 'At first Gods and Heroes ruled Egypt for a little less than 18,000 years. . . Mortals have' been kings of their country, they say, for a little less than 5000 years.' 22

An overview of all the available chronologies in context of other related documents such as the Pyramid Texts and the Edfu Building Texts leaves two distinct impressions. Despite the conflicts and confusions over the precise numbers of years involved, and despite the endless proliferation of names and titles and honorifics and epithets:
* It is clear that the ancient Egyptians thought in terms of very long periods of time and would never have accepted the Egyptological view that their civilization 'began' with the First

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* It is clear that they were aware of an 'influence' at work in their history - a continuous, unbroken influence that had extended over many thousands of years and that was wielded by an elite group of divine and semi-divine beings, often associated with leonine symbolism, who were called variously 'Gods and Heroes', the 'Spirits of the Dead', the 'Souls', the 'Sages', the 'Shining Ones', the' Ancestors', the 'Ancestor-Gods of the Circle of the Sky', the 'Followers of Horus', etc., etc.
It is clear, in other words, that the ancient Egyptians envisaged a kind of 'time bridge', linking the world of men to the world of the gods, today to yesterday and 'now' to the 'First Time'. It is clear, too / (Figure 55 omitted)
that responsibility for maintaining this 'bridge' was attributed to the 'Followers of Horus' (by this and many other names). And it is clear that the 'Followers' were remembered as having carried down intact

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the traditions and secrets of the gods - always preserving them, permitting not a single change - until finally sharing them with the first dynasties of Egypt's mortal kings."

The etymology of the ancient Egyptian term Shemsu Hor, 'Followers of Horus', was studied by the Alsatian scholar R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz who concluded: 'The term Shemsu Hor . . .literally means. . . "those who follow the path of Horus", that is, the "Horian way", also called the solar way. . . These Followers of Horus bear with them a knowledge of "divine origin" and unify the country with it. . .'23
The 'solar way' or 'path of Horus' is, of course, the ecliptic - that imaginary way or path in the sky on which the sun appears to travel through the twelve signs of the zodiac. As we saw in earlier chapters, the direction of the sun's 'journey' during the course of the solar year is Aquarius - Pisces - Aries - Taurus - Gemini - Cancer - Leo, etc., etc. The reader will recall, however, that there is also another, more ponderous motion, the precession of the earth's axis, which gradually rotates the 'ruling' constellation against the background of which the sun is seen to rise at dawn on the vernal equinox. This great cycle, or 'Great Year', takes 25,920 solar years to complete, with the vernal point spending 2,160 years in each of the twelve zodiacal constellations. The direction of motion is Leo - Cancer - Gemini - Taurus - Aries - Pisces - Aquarius, etc., etc., i.e. the reverse of the route pursued by the sun during the course of the solar year."

"...Now came that action of the play that had given me, the author, considerable pause, for how could I contrive fecundity without a stout peg to hang it on? We had just seen Osiris forcefully deprived of his. In the end I was forced to stoop to that tired old theatrical device that I so scorned in the work of other playwrights, namely the intervention of the gods and their supernatural powers.
While my Lady Lostris spoke from the wings, her shadowy alter ego on stage stood over the mummiform figure of Osiris and made a series of mystical gestures. 'My dear brother, by the rare and marvellous powers granted to me by our forefather, Ammon-Ra, I restore to you those manly parts that cruel Seth so brutally tore from you,' intoned my mistress.
I had equipped the mummy case with a device that I could raise by hauling on a length of fine linen twine that ran over a pulley in the temple roof directly above where Osiris lay. At Isis' words the wooden phallus, hinged to the god's pudenda, rose in majestic splendour, as long as my arm, into full erection. The audience gasped with admiration.
When Isis caressed it, I jerked the string to make it leap and twitch. The audience loved it, but loved it even better when the goddess mounted the supine mummy of the god. Judging by the convincing acrobatics of her simulated ecstasy, the harlot I had chosen to play the part must have been one of the truly great exponents of her art. The audience gave full recognition to her superior performance, egging her on with whistling and hooting and shouting ribald advice.
At the climax of this exhibition the torches were extinguished and the temple plunged into darkness. In the darkness the substitution was made once more and when the torches were re-lit my Lady Lostris stood in mid-stage with a new-born infant in her arms. One of the kitchen slaves had been considerate enough to give birth a few days previously, and I had borrowed her whelp for the occasion.
'I give you the new-born son of Osiris, god of the underworld, and of Isis, goddess of the moon and of the stars.' My Lady Lostris lifted the infant high and he, astonished by the sea of strangers before him, screwed up his tiny face and turned bright red as he howled.
Isis raised her voice above his and cried, 'Greet the young Lord Horus, god of the wind and the sky, falcon of the heavens!' ..."