The Sacred Landscape

( Extract from the book - "Heka - The Practices of Ancient Egyptian Ritual & Magic by David Rankine - for more information on this book click here)

Sacred geometry was another key element of the Egyptian worldview. The construction of the pyramids and temples reflected the perception of the cosmos. Large pylon gateways represented the mountains of the eastern horizon where the Sun God rose, and sacred lakes representing the primeval waters of chaos. By bathing in these waters and then stepping onto the land, a priest was replicating the acts of the gods, rising from the primeval waters.

This brings us to a very important consideration, which is how the landscape shapes the perceptions of those who live within it. Central to the Egyptian worldview was the desert that surrounded them, and the Nile as the focus of life, through its fertile waters, and the black Nile mud that helped the crops grow. The Nile also enabled the rapid transport of foodstuffs and materials, and ensured the development of the towns and cities along it as centres of trade.

The North-South axis of the Nile served as the focus for the society and culture of Egypt. This is reflected by the importance attached to the Nile in religion, art and trade. The East-West axis of the Sun God's journey provided the other focus, bringing the order and structure of religion and time into daily life.

Away from the Nile the desert landscape is bleak and fierce, and the hostility of this landscape is also reflected in the deities whose nature embodied chaos or the ferocity of the desert sun. The 90% or so of Egypt that was desert was known as the "Red land" in contrast to the "Black land" of the Nile and its environs. At the boundaries and in the bleak lands supernatural creatures and enemies roamed, making the security and stability of Egypt of prime importance to its inhabitants.

At the beginning of the Dynasties the Egyptians had no idea of the size of the world. To them the world extended from Greece and Turkey in the north, to Ethiopia in the South, from Iraq in the east to Libya in the west. Obviously these are modern countries and not the names the Egyptians were familiar with, but it shows how little of the globe the Egyptians were aware of. To the Egyptians they were at the centre of the created world, which was a flat disk.

The underside of the disk was the Duat or underworld, which largely reflected the upper surface of the earth. As the disk was surrounded by water, the Egyptians perceived the circumference of the disk as being marshes.

At the edge of the earth was the Akhet, the region which the sun passed through to emerge from and descend into the night sky. This was why the sun did not emerge suddenly in the morning or instantly disappear at night, but went through a process of fading at sunset and appearing gradually in the morning.
Beyond foreign countries were the primeval waters of Nun, the original chaos, which they also saw as the ultimate source of the Nile. The waters of Nun also rose above and below the disk, encompassing it in a great bubble of water, the surface of which was Nuit, the sky. Nuit formed the boundary between the atmosphere (Shu) and the waters of Nun.

Whilst today we view the world with a focus to the north as being upwards, for the Egyptians south was the upward direction, as South-North was the directional flow of the Nile. Southern Egypt was known as Upper Egypt, and Northern Egypt as Lower Egypt.

( Extract from the book - "Heka - The Practices of Ancient Egyptian Ritual & Magic by David Rankine - for more information on this book click here)