• never to diminish the offerings made to the temples (against the pantheon & the people) ;

• never to destroy what had been made (against the memorial of the ancestors) ;

• never to speak deceitfully (against truth & righteousness).

What does the text give us ? It starts with Ani invoking his own conscience but also his mother, from whom he received his heart (cf. the major role of woman in nurture, but also as representing the sacred "matrix" of life). We also learn his heart was linked with the Ka "within the body", the vital power making and sustaining one's stride. Next, Anubis weighs Ani's heart against the divine standard (the Feather) and Thoth confirms no sin is found and the equilibrium of the Great Balance is established. Finally, the Ogdoad of Hermopolis (headed by Thoth), confirms the sentence spoken and recorded by Thoth and it is they -the chaos-gods- who lift the curse of the Monster or Ani's "second death". Instead of being annihilated, Ani will be allowed to enter the kingdom of Osiris because he is "maa-cheru" ("mAa - xrw"), i.e. vindicated, justified, triumphant !

What was the meaning of this afterlife scene to those still alive ? The importance given to the heart could not be missed : it is a person's conscience, determined by what he said (wrote) and did (how he lived), which was deemed crucial. As Ptahhotep taught, just speech is the heart of a wise transference of the best of the past to the best of today for the sake of the future (so the memorial of the ancestors remains), as well as of the continuous progress made over the generations. If we study Egypt's sapiental literature, we do not encounter the notion a person may be vindicated during his or her lifetime on Earth. On the contrary, in the Old Kingdom, a non-royal could only hope to endure without being immortalized. The sage was always in the process of attaining the state of veneration, except when his vital force left his physical vehicle. Then and only then could veneration be a final station (a terminus). Although since the Middle Kingdom, deceased commoners could be immortalized and deified as "Osiris-NN", nobody attained this state during his or her lifetime. Only Pharaoh was a living god on Earth. Hence, even during his lifetime, Pharaoh was "justified", for he "lived in Maat".

The concept of the weighing procedure invoked in this scene, is not restricted to the afterlife (were it appears as the final "balance-sheet" of the deceased). The sapiental discourses make it clear that in every situation, the Egyptian wise seeks to do Maat, and does it by "measuring" the scale of the imbalance in order to restore the Left Eye of Horus and bring it to the forehead (i.e. realize a "tertium comparationis"). This to harmonize life and end strife in Pharaoh's name, he who guaranteed the unity of the Two Lands by returning Maat as voice-offering to his father Re.

First comes a careful, concrete investigation of what is at hand, in order to discover its "balance", i.e. the two factors allowing the "Ka" to flow (from high to low) and animate the given context. Next there is the restoration by striking the "nil", the true balancing-point of the beam, arrived at when the difference between the two weights is naught. Indeed, the sinuous waters go up and down and when this flood equilibrates (not too much and not too little), the inundation is perfect and the surplus large. The wise has always enough reserves to compensate for any imbalance ... At the balancing-point, Maat is brought to the nose of Atum ...

The wise of Ancient Egypt made the poise of the balance of truth & justice rest upon the vastness of the non-equilibrium (chaos) constantly threatening the survival of the cosmos. He knew this reclaiming of life by death is of no avail if at every movement of the rudder, the boatman knows how to balance the bark and master the waters, whether he be traveling on Earth or on the Nile of the netherworld. His commanding excellence made his bark float upon the chaotic ocean. His just word was the primordial hill, or the emergence of order out of chaos, the making of the beam of the balance, keeping the two scales together and separated, allowing one to "walk upon the waters", using the surface-tensions of their chaos.

04. Thoth, the first to write.
Thoth's name, written as G26, the hieroglyph of the Ibis :

appeared perched on a standard on slate palettes of the Late Predynastic Period. The sacred Ibis (Ibis religiosa) had a long curved beak, suggestive of the crescent New Moon, and black & white feathering reminiscent of the Lunar phases of waxing & waning. In the Old Kingdom, the association between the Ibis and Thoth had already been made, for in the afterlife, the wings of Thoth carried Pharaoh over the celestial river (cf. Pyramid Texts, § 1176 & § 1254). Hopfner (1914) thought "DHw" could have been the oldest name of the Ibis, implying that Thoth ("DHwT" or "Djehuti") would mean : "he who has the nature of the Ibis". Others, like Wessetzky (1958), conjecture it proceeds from "HwwT" or "messenger" with prefix I10, "D". 

Another, less common, pictogram for Thoth was the squatting baboon, who greeted the dawning Sun with agitated, chattering sounds. These baboons are also represented on their hind legs with front paws raised in praise and greeting of Re (cf. the First Hour of the Amduat). They faced the rising Sun (cf. above the statues of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel). In both instances, Thoth wears a crown representing the crescent Moon supporting the disk of the Full Moon. In the Middle Kingdom, he was worshipped in all of Egypt. In all major temples, the cult of Thoth was present. Why ? 

An exceptional deity, not part of the royal Heliopolitan Ennead, but with an Ogdoad of his own, he was the secretary of Re, and so the "scribe of the gods". He was Re's messenger, who promulgated the laws of "the Lord of All" or sole creator-god, Atum-Kheper-Re. He was a traveler and an international deity, for his name can be found in many ancient languages : neo-Babylonian, Coptic, Aramean, Greek & Latin. Thoth represented the embodiment of all knowledge and literature. He had invented writing and wrote himself. His most important record was the outcome of the mythical battle between Upper Egyptian Seth and Lower Egyptian Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis. Thoth was at the command of all the divine books in the House of Life. The wisdom of Thoth was revered and considered too secret for profane eyes.

In the Middle Kingdom story of the magician Djedi, a man of a hundred and ten, we read that Djedi knew the number of the secret chambers of the sanctuary of Thoth. The latter was "mdw nTr" "medu netjer", the "word of the god", namely Re. He is called the "son of Re" and "Lord of the Eight gods" (of Hermopolis, Thoth's cult centre). In the funerary rituals, Thoth acted the part of the recorder, and his decision was accepted by all deities. Thoth observed whether the heart (mind) of the deceased was light enough to balance the feather of truth & justice. This by "weighing the words", for the heaviness of heart was the result of unwholesome speech (cf. the insistence on silence serving magical purposes). Thoth was also the ultimate teacher of magic, ritualism & the words of power which opened the secret pylons of the underworld. As healer of the Left Eye of Horus (cf. wedjat), Thoth is the deity of medicine.

His original home was Khemenu, or "eight-town", referring to the four pairs of mythical chaos-gods existing before creation (cf. Nun), of which Thoth became the leader and head. The Greeks called it Hermopolis. In myth, it was famous for the "high ground" on which Re rested when he rose for the first time. This "risen land" was a central metaphor, an example of the emergence of creation out of the undifferentiated waters, in which inert chaos lay dormant.

This chaos of pre-existence was personified by the Ogdoad of Hermopolis, showing this theology was intimately linked with the "mind of Re" speaking its Great Word transforming the pre-creational, chaotic Ogdoad Egg (cf. the "Eight of Hermopolis", four female snake-goddesses & four male frog-gods with Predynastic roots) into the created Ennead of Hermopolis, headed by the "First of the Eight", the Great Word of Re, Thoth. The Hermopolitan scheme is magical, for the true magician (like Pharaoh) finds his origin not in the pantheon, but before the Ennead and Ogdoad.

In Isis and the other great goddesses (personifications of the Great Sorceress), the balance tilted towards Lunar sacrality, in Osiris- Pharaoh, Follower of Horus, son of Re, towards Solar divinity, but in both cases not exclusively. Isis knew the "true name" of Re without which Osiris would not have resurrected. The divinity of Pharaoh was not without the sacred, for he was the son of Her who bore Atum !

The peace of Thoth was a neutrality which was also the objective guarantee of objectivity, truth and justice. This middle path had chaotic polarities of equal force (four females, four males) surrounding it. Slight movements away from the straight path could imply going astray and be assimilated by either polarity of the Ogdoad. Disease was the outcome of this loss of equilibrium between and control over the forces of chaos. Through the power of the Great Word, the greatest evil could be conquered (cf. the overthrowing of Apophis, the giant snake trying to swallow Re before dawn). The creative verb is dropped by the sacred Ibis, and order is restored. The mind of Re brings clarity, distinction and operational control in all contexts.

Thoth is known as the divine witness, mediator & messenger who recorded things as they were. He was also the arbiter, and his duty was to prevent Set or Horus from destroying the other. He was able to keep these hostile forces in exact equilibrium. Darkness & light, night & day, evil & good were balanced by Thoth, the heart and tongue of Re. It is Thoth who spoke the Great Word, resulting in the wishes of Re being carried into effect, and once he had given an authorative command ("Hu") and had put it into writing, it could not fail to realize itself ("Heka").

The androgynous nature of Thoth can be derived from his being a male deity. Just as the great magic of mother Isis (female) was derived from her knowing the true name of the creator Re (male), so was the writer Thoth (male) a great magician because he (as the mind of Re) knew how to practice the sacred Lunar traditions (female) to invent writing, science & literature. Pharaoh (male), Lord of the Two Lands, was the greatest of magicians, because as a living god on Earth he had assimilated the power of the sacred Great Sorceress Herself (being Her son) and hence Pharaoh stood before the Enneads abiding in the sky. Pharaoh's Great Word was spoken by a living god-with-us, and hence Pharaoh's "heka" was outstandingly sublime and greater than the greatest deities.

To acclimatize to Egypt, the Greeks identified their gods with native divinities. In the Late Period, Thoth was probably the most popular and diverse deity of the Egyptian pantheon. Indeed, in the Late New Kingdom, Third Intermediate and Late Period, individual destiny and fate had become increasingly important. Both lay in the hand of the gods and this fate could be derived by studying the rhythms of planets & stars (astrology, entering Egypt from Babylon).

Although a national deity, Thoth had local associations and particularities and was regarded as a Moon-god, determining the rhythms of Egyptian national life (festivals & calendars). As "Lord of Time", Thoth, the mysterious, ruled individual destinies too, and was thus very popular. By extension he was lord of knowledge, language, all science, magic, writing and understanding. He was the creator who called things into being merely by the sound of his voice. As guide and judge of the dead, Thoth owed much popularity with common people, and the "power of the Moon" was invoked in the wisdom teachings.

The Greek settlers identified their god Hermes with Thoth. Like Thoth, he was Lunar, and associated with medicine and the realm of the dead. Both were tricksters and messengers. Hermes was the "logos", the interpreter of Divine Will to humanity. In Stoic philosophy, Hermes is both "logos" and "demiurge", which probably owed something to the Hermopolitans. In Alexandrian Egypt, the Greek Hermes (identified with Thoth), became cosmopolitan and Hellenistic, but Egyptianized and known throughout the Roman world as "the Egyptian". Interestingly, by intermingling native Egyptian (Thoth) and Greek theology (Hermes) with Hellenistic philosophy, a syncretic sum was produced, a major and crucial archetypal idea, which encompassed the function of the cognitive in the Mediterranean cultures of before Christianity : Hermes Trismegistus, or Hermes the "Thrice Greatest". Indeed, during their rituals, the Egyptians used to call Thoth "Great ! Great ! Great !". 

However, by people of Greek culture, Trismegistus was not envisaged in the same way as the Egyptians saw him. The Greeks produced fictional stories to explain the emergence of Hermes Trismegistus (cf. the Tabula Smaragdina). For example, it was widely circulated Homer was an Egyptian and a son of Hermes ! The learned Greeks invented a "human" Trismegistus.

The "philosophical" Hermetica (the Corpus Hermeticum) presented Hermes as a teacher of wisdom. However, in the "technical" Hermetica (the Greek magical papyri which readapt Egyptian magic), Thoth appeared, for there Trismegistus was seen as a cosmic deity, able to dwell in the heart of his devotees and object of identification for the magician. This ambiguity of Hermes Trismegistus, the dual-union between the Divine and the human, must have struck many. It may explain why Hermes is mentioned in early Christian literature (cf. the two natures of Christ). Hermetical principles were imported in Europe in the XI - XIIth century by the monastic movement (as part of the "Orientale Lumen" - cf. Bernard of Clairvaux, Willem of St.Thierry).

Hermes Trismegistus the wisdom-teacher influenced both Christianity and Islam. Besides its dogmatic canon, Early Christianity was influenced by neo-Platonism and Stoicism, both linked with Alexandrian Hermetism, and the Pagan notions of "Divine Mind", "World Soul", "Demiurge" and "Pure Act" (developed in the New Kingdom and returning in Classical Greek philosophy).

Through Harran, Hermes established his place in Islamic sciences, which in turn would help initiate the European Renaissance in XIVth century Italy. It is at this point a new mixture was brewed, one which called into being a re-Platonized egyptomanic Hermeticism conquering Europe and finally the New World. It is still with us in Egyptian Masonic Orders and the various branches of Californian New Age religion.

Three fundamental phases appear :

1. native Hermopolitan theology : the perennial worship of the native Egyptian Thoth, "Thrice Greatest", centered in Hermopolis ("Hermoupolis Magna") ;

2. historical Hermetism : the identification of Thoth with Hermes Trismegistus, who, in his Graeco-Alexandrian, philosophical teachings (between ca. 150 BCE and 250 CE) is Greek and human (although Egyptian elements persist), but who assumed, in the technical Hermetica, the cosmicity of the Egyptian Thoth ;

3. literary Hermeticism : the Renaissance produced a fictional European Trismegistus, based on the Alexandrian Hermes Trismegistus and a misunderstood Ancient Egyptian language. Trismegistus became the patron of alchemy, magic, mystery orders, freemasonry, astrology, the New Age, the Western tradition ... and all matters occult. 

Thoth was the first to write. The hieroglyphic system reflects his mentality, for it aims at a fluent communication of the pictorial, non-cerebral, parallel, non-linear "intelligence of the heart", integrating (although ante-rationally) the early layers of cognition, namely its mythical, pre-rational and proto-rational sedimentations.

Our knowledge of the Ancient Egyptian language is the result of modern scholarship, for since the Renaissance, a symbolical and allegorical interpretation was favored, which proved to be wrong (but based on the practice of allegorical mystifications of Egyptian priests working under the Ptolemies). Egyptian belongs to the Afro-Asiatic language family, and is related to Arabic, Ethiopic and Hebrew, but also to North African (Hamitic) languages such as Berber and Cushitic. Being the longest continually attested language in the world, it appeared ca. 3000 BCE and remained in use until the XIth century CE.

The learned Jesuit antiquarian Athanasius Kircher (1602 - 1680) proposed nonsensical allegorical translations (Lingua Aegyptical restituta, 1643). Thomas Young (1773 -1829), the author of the undulatory theory of light, who had assigned the correct phonetical values to five hieroglyphic signs, still maintained these alphabetical signs were written together with allegorical signs, which, according to him, formed the bulk. The final decipherment, starting as late as 1822, was the work of the Frenchman Jean-François Champollion, 1790 - 1832, cf. Précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens égyptiens par M.Champollion le jeune, 1824.

Champollion, who had a very good knowledge of Coptic (the last stage of Egyptian), proved the assumption of the allegorists wrong. He showed, especially aided by the presence of the Rosetta Stone, Egyptian (as any other language) assigned phonetical values to signs. These formed consonantal structures as in Hebrew and Arabic. He also discovered that some were pictures indicating the category of the preceding words, the so-called "determinatives".

After Champollion's death in 1832, the lead in Egyptology passed to Germany (Richard Lepsius, 1810 - 1884). This Berlin school shaped Egyptian philology for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in particular scholars such as Adolf Erman (1854 - 1937), Kurt Sethe (1869 - 1934), who, together with Francis Griffith (1862 - 1934), Battiscombe Gunn (1883 - 1950) and Alan Gardiner (1879 - 1963) in England, laid the systematic basis for the study of Egyptian. Later, Jacob Polotsky (1905 - 1991) established the "standard theory" of Egyptian grammar. These efforts finally made the historical record available to scholars of other disciplines. Hence, by interdisciplinary work, the impact of Pharaonic Egypt on all Mediterranean cultures of antiquity can be put into evidence. The result being, that Ancient Egypt can no longer neglected in the history of the formation of the European intellectual movements (cf. Egypt's impact on Greek philosophy, in particular Memphite thought).

The first hieroglyphs were written down towards the end of the Terminal Predynastic period (end of the fourth millennium BCE), often attached as labels on commodities. There is a continuous recorded until the eleventh century CE, when Coptic (the last stage of the language) expired as a spoken tongue and was superseded by Arabic. 

The Egyptian language knew six stages : 

* Archaic Egyptian (first two Dynasties)
* Old Egyptian (Old Kingdom)
* Middle Egyptian (First Intermediate Period & Middle Kingdom)
* Late Egyptian (New Kingdom & Third Intermediate Period)
* Demotic Egyptian (Late Period)
* Coptic (Roman Period).

In the last two stages, new scripts emerged and only in Coptic is the vocalic structure known, with distinct dialects.  Archaic Egyptian consists of brief inscriptions. Old Egyptian has the first continuous texts. Middle Egyptian is the "classical form" of the language. Late Egyptian is very different from Old and Middle Egyptian (cf. the verbal structure). Although over 6000 hieroglyphs have been documented, only about 700 are attested for Middle Egyptian (the majority of other hieroglyphs are found in Graeco-Roman temples only).

Egyptian hieroglyphs is a system of writing which, fully developed, had 2 classes of signs : logograms & phonograms. The phonograms refer to the actual sounds of the language. Each letter is a phoneme. The consonantal phonograms, representing either one, two or three phonemes are without vocalization, and so lack pronunciation.

Hieroglyphic Egyptian gives a pale reflection of the spoken tongue, and was used as a ceremonial, sacred language. At best, we may derive guides to pronunciation based on Coptic. The "e" of Egyptology is only a convention.

Mainly found in temples & tombs, the sacred script bring into visual evidence the excellence of Egyptian civilization and hence mirrors Egyptian life as an idealized, a-historical (timeless) "golden" form. Precisely this strong desire of most Ancient Egyptians to visualize the afterlife after this-life, and to give an account of the heaven of their desires (in particular in tombs of kings, royals and high officials), makes us recover, through hieroglyphs, parts of the overall typology of their ante-rational mindset, which is lost. These artworks, or archetypes of Ancient soteriology, try to eternalize what was the most creative and efficient, namely the luminous & self-created Re-spirit of eternity-in-everlastingness (Atum-afloat-in-the-Nun, the boundless ocean of darkness).

Contrary to other languages (except perhaps Linear A, Maya script and Chinese), Egyptian introduced visual glyphs (pictorial materializations, actualizations or sedimentations of meaningful shared states of consciousness). These various visual  and artistic representations of crucial typologies brought in effect (in its classical form) a variety of categories, namely : man and his occupations, woman and her occupations, anthropomorphic deities, parts of the human body, mammals, parts of mammals, birds, parts of birds, amphibious animals, reptiles, etc., fishes and parts of fishes, invertebrates and lesser animals, trees and plants, sky, Earth, water, buildings, parts of buildings, etc., ships and parts of ships, domestic and funerary furniture, temple furniture and sacred emblems, crowns, dress, staves, etc., warfare, hunting, butchery, agriculture, crafts and professions, robe, fibre, baskets, bags, etc., vessels of stone and earthenware, loaves and cakes, writings, games, music, strokes & geometrical figures (cf. the sign list of Gardiner, 1982, pp.544-547).

Each visual glyph is a work of art. Because these glyphs (as cultural sedimentations), represent an important part of the iconography of the Egyptian mindset, they form a complex image-language with a sense of nuance broad enough to encompass ancient wisdom and its teachings of the heart, and this for more than 3000 years. To put into evidence the "sacredness" of hieroglyphs, we may try to visualize -with the icons as windows to Egypt's wisdom- how the practical closure offered by this proto-rational cognition created literature, religion and wisdom teachings.

Mature ante-rational thinking enables a first closure of mind, allowing concepts to form concrete "blocks" or mental aggregates. These refer to concrete, specific situations, local contingencies and geosentimental conceptualizations. When the context is changed, the blocks no longer support each other and the concept is undermined. So bound to changing contexts, the concrete concept is unstable. This contrary to the second, stable closure of formal rationality, which operates in the abstract and the decontextualized. Ante-rational thought has no universal operator. Only existential contexts are denoted.

If communication is always based on signs, and the latter are signals (reptile cortex), icons (limbic system) and symbols (neo-cortex - cf. neurophilosophy), then hieroglyphs bring out the best of "emotional intelligence", or the "intelligence-of-the-heart". Its icons bring the synthetic function of symbols to the fore, and appeal -in the right-handed- to the right hemisphere of the neo-cortex, processing spatiality and synthesis.

"Let us remember that prior being a device of physical weighing, the pair of scales is the symbol for the act of exchanging physical and intangible things. In other words, exchanging and not weighing is the main thing."
Mancini, 2004, p.53.

An image is not a sequential symbol, but always a whole. It does not need to be analyzed (like letters in a word), but grasped as a totality. Hence, besides artistic aptitudes, the ability to visualize is trained as well as  thinking in images. Small visual details define important distinctions (for example, the difference between G36, the swallow, & G37, the sparrow, is defined by a tiny change in the tails). Subtlety and nuance are possible by adding pictures with determinative meaning to the phonograms (together forming a consonantal system of sounds).

logogram (word writing) 

A logogram is the representation of a complete word (not individual letters or phonemes) directly by a picture of the object actually denoted. As such, it does not take the phonemes into consideration, but only the direct objects & notions connected therewith. To compose a complete vocabulary with logograms would however be cumbersome. As there were about 500 hieroglyphs in common use, only the same number of words could have been written this way. The rest of the ca. 17.000 known words had to be written with phonograms.

For example :

, depicting the Sun, signifies : "Sun", is a logogram, for this sign alone denotes the Sun.

, depicting a mouth, signifies : "mouth", is also a logogram.

Indeed, a writing system exclusively based on logography would have thousands of signs to encompass the complete semantics of any spoken language. Such a large vocabulary would be unpractical. Moreover, which pictures to use for things that can not be easily pictured, like wisdom, understanding, authoritative speech, love, justice and the like ? How to address grammar (and simple categories as gender and number) ?

The theory according to which Ancient Egyptian was a complex allegorical logography was refuted by Champollion in 1822. Most hieroglyphs represent phonograms, not logograms (or ideograms, in the case of allegorical denotation). As until recently sufficient insight into Egyptian was lacking, trustworthy translations were slow to emerge and their assimilation by historians, philosophers and philologists even slower. The impact of Ancient Egypt on Judaism, Greece and Christianity (curtailing Hellenocentrism) has been put into evidence only a few decades ago (cf. Hermes the Egyptian, 2002 & The Instruction of Amen-em-apt, son of Kanakht, 2003). Via Alexandria, Egypt's wisdom influenced the Hellenistic world and, much later, the Renaissance (cf. the Orientale Lumen and the rise of Hermeticism). This did not bring about a historical Egypt, but an egyptomania turning romantic in the XIXth century.

phonogram (sound writing)

Egyptian phonography (a word represented by a series of sound-glyphs or phonemes -letters- of the spoken sounds) was derived through phonetic borrowing. Logograms are used to write other words or parts of words semantically unrelated to the phonogram, but with which they phonetically share the same consonantal structure. 

For example :

The logogram  , signifies "mouth". It is used as a phonogram with the phonemic value "r" to write words as "r", meaning "toward" or to represent the phonemic element "r" in a word like "rn" or "name".

    "rn" or "name" : the logograms of mouth and water

This pictorial phonography is based on the principle of the rebus : show one thing to mean another. If, for example, we would write English with the Egyptian signary and apply the rebus principle, then the word "belief" would be written with the logograms of a "bee" and a "leaf" ...

The shared consonantal structure allows one to develop a large number of phonograms with limited number of hieroglyphs. These, and not the logograms, as in any other language, are the solid architecture of Egyptian.

The consonantal system was present from the beginning. Three main categories of phonograms prevail :