“Today, the local Arabs call the spot where the Temple of Heliopolis once stood El Massalah, the Obelisk. This is because the only visible thing that remains—other than a very small part of a temple's foundation and a few pitiful broken statues—is a lonely free-standing obelisk. When the city of Fustat (medieval Cairo) was built by the Arabs starting in the late 7th century, the remains of the temples and buildings of Heliopolis were systematically ransacked and used as a quarry for building material...
“We vividly recall our first trip to Matareya, ancient Heliopolis, in March 1993... A congregation of impressive-looking Coptic bishops had come into the gallery with their bodyguards. Upon seeing us, one of the bodyguards, indicating that he was armed by placing his hand inside his jacket, shouted “no photos!” But one bishop, named Baba Moussa, asked who we were. After we explained that we were taking pictures for a book, he signaled his bodyguards to let us take all the photos we wanted.
“It was still early when we finished, so we decided to go to Matareya to take some photographs of the obelisk of Sesostris I (a 12th-Dynasty king) and whatever else remained of ancient Innu. The obelisk, 120 tons of solid granite towering some twenty meters, stands like a forlorn sentinel helplessly watching the ever-encroaching slums of Cairo. A beggar approached me with one palm outstretched and his other pointing at the obelisk and cried “El-massalah! El-massalah! El-massalah! Bakshish! Bakshish!” We wondered if he, or indeed any of the locals today, were aware that this quasi-abandoned archaeological site was once the greatest center of learning of the ancient world, where scholars from as far off as Greece came to be tutored by the Egyptian priest-scientists of Innu. For thousands of years luminaries like Pythagoras, Eudoxus, Cnidus, and even, it is said, the great Plato came to be taught the sacred sciences of ancient Egypt: geometry, mathematics, medicine, divination, and, above all, astronomy.
“The various epithets given to Heliopolis make this more than evident-- “the chosen seat of the gods,” “the horizon of the sky,” and “the sky of Egypt,” to cite but a few....
“So important was Heliopolis as a seat of high learning that, even though some of the great scholars from Greece may not actually have made the journey to study there, their biographers nonetheless feigned that they had in order to enhance their scholarly prestige. Even Christ did not escape such a connection, for the district of Matareya was once an enclave of 'Followers of Jesus,' later to become the Copts, the Egyptian Christians who fervently believe that the Holy Family received sanctuary at Heliopolis. The canonical gospel of Matthew in fact says that the Holy Family sought refuge in Egypt from King Herod's campaign to kill all baby boys in Palestine. Indeed, to this day, just a few hundred meters down the road from el-massalah, the small Church of the Holy Family stands, its interior walls decorated with scenes of the family entering on a donkey into the semi-ruined city of Heliopolis.”
Monday, November 25, 2013
ANCIENT HELIOPOLIS: WORLD LEARNING CENTER
IMHOTEP THE AFRICAN: ARCHITECT OF THE COSMOS, by Robert Bauval & Thomas Brophy (Disinformation Books, an imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC, San Francisco. CA: 2013), PP. 6-9
“Today, the local Arabs call the spot where the Temple of Heliopolis once stood El Massalah, the Obelisk. This is because the only visible thing that remains—other than a very small part of a temple's foundation and a few pitiful broken statues—is a lonely free-standing obelisk. When the city of Fustat (medieval Cairo) was built by the Arabs starting in the late 7th century, the remains of the temples and buildings of Heliopolis were systematically ransacked and used as a quarry for building material...
“We vividly recall our first trip to Matareya, ancient Heliopolis, in March 1993... A congregation of impressive-looking Coptic bishops had come into the gallery with their bodyguards. Upon seeing us, one of the bodyguards, indicating that he was armed by placing his hand inside his jacket, shouted “no photos!” But one bishop, named Baba Moussa, asked who we were. After we explained that we were taking pictures for a book, he signaled his bodyguards to let us take all the photos we wanted.
“It was still early when we finished, so we decided to go to Matareya to take some photographs of the obelisk of Sesostris I (a 12th-Dynasty king) and whatever else remained of ancient Innu. The obelisk, 120 tons of solid granite towering some twenty meters, stands like a forlorn sentinel helplessly watching the ever-encroaching slums of Cairo. A beggar approached me with one palm outstretched and his other pointing at the obelisk and cried “El-massalah! El-massalah! El-massalah! Bakshish! Bakshish!” We wondered if he, or indeed any of the locals today, were aware that this quasi-abandoned archaeological site was once the greatest center of learning of the ancient world, where scholars from as far off as Greece came to be tutored by the Egyptian priest-scientists of Innu. For thousands of years luminaries like Pythagoras, Eudoxus, Cnidus, and even, it is said, the great Plato came to be taught the sacred sciences of ancient Egypt: geometry, mathematics, medicine, divination, and, above all, astronomy.
“The various epithets given to Heliopolis make this more than evident-- “the chosen seat of the gods,” “the horizon of the sky,” and “the sky of Egypt,” to cite but a few....
“So important was Heliopolis as a seat of high learning that, even though some of the great scholars from Greece may not actually have made the journey to study there, their biographers nonetheless feigned that they had in order to enhance their scholarly prestige. Even Christ did not escape such a connection, for the district of Matareya was once an enclave of 'Followers of Jesus,' later to become the Copts, the Egyptian Christians who fervently believe that the Holy Family received sanctuary at Heliopolis. The canonical gospel of Matthew in fact says that the Holy Family sought refuge in Egypt from King Herod's campaign to kill all baby boys in Palestine. Indeed, to this day, just a few hundred meters down the road from el-massalah, the small Church of the Holy Family stands, its interior walls decorated with scenes of the family entering on a donkey into the semi-ruined city of Heliopolis.”
“Today, the local Arabs call the spot where the Temple of Heliopolis once stood El Massalah, the Obelisk. This is because the only visible thing that remains—other than a very small part of a temple's foundation and a few pitiful broken statues—is a lonely free-standing obelisk. When the city of Fustat (medieval Cairo) was built by the Arabs starting in the late 7th century, the remains of the temples and buildings of Heliopolis were systematically ransacked and used as a quarry for building material...
“We vividly recall our first trip to Matareya, ancient Heliopolis, in March 1993... A congregation of impressive-looking Coptic bishops had come into the gallery with their bodyguards. Upon seeing us, one of the bodyguards, indicating that he was armed by placing his hand inside his jacket, shouted “no photos!” But one bishop, named Baba Moussa, asked who we were. After we explained that we were taking pictures for a book, he signaled his bodyguards to let us take all the photos we wanted.
“It was still early when we finished, so we decided to go to Matareya to take some photographs of the obelisk of Sesostris I (a 12th-Dynasty king) and whatever else remained of ancient Innu. The obelisk, 120 tons of solid granite towering some twenty meters, stands like a forlorn sentinel helplessly watching the ever-encroaching slums of Cairo. A beggar approached me with one palm outstretched and his other pointing at the obelisk and cried “El-massalah! El-massalah! El-massalah! Bakshish! Bakshish!” We wondered if he, or indeed any of the locals today, were aware that this quasi-abandoned archaeological site was once the greatest center of learning of the ancient world, where scholars from as far off as Greece came to be tutored by the Egyptian priest-scientists of Innu. For thousands of years luminaries like Pythagoras, Eudoxus, Cnidus, and even, it is said, the great Plato came to be taught the sacred sciences of ancient Egypt: geometry, mathematics, medicine, divination, and, above all, astronomy.
“The various epithets given to Heliopolis make this more than evident-- “the chosen seat of the gods,” “the horizon of the sky,” and “the sky of Egypt,” to cite but a few....
“So important was Heliopolis as a seat of high learning that, even though some of the great scholars from Greece may not actually have made the journey to study there, their biographers nonetheless feigned that they had in order to enhance their scholarly prestige. Even Christ did not escape such a connection, for the district of Matareya was once an enclave of 'Followers of Jesus,' later to become the Copts, the Egyptian Christians who fervently believe that the Holy Family received sanctuary at Heliopolis. The canonical gospel of Matthew in fact says that the Holy Family sought refuge in Egypt from King Herod's campaign to kill all baby boys in Palestine. Indeed, to this day, just a few hundred meters down the road from el-massalah, the small Church of the Holy Family stands, its interior walls decorated with scenes of the family entering on a donkey into the semi-ruined city of Heliopolis.”