Clearly, the
same conception guided the hands that built those cathedrals and the temples
of Egypt.
In other words, the idea of Atlantis and
its triple mountain (Trikuta) and collapsed central peak apparently lay
at the root of the ancient Mystery Religions that eventually became the
religions of Egypt and of Christianity, not to mention others that are
not being discussed here.
The pylons of the Egyptian temples are
nearly verbatim replicas of the so-called "Mountain of Sunrise" or its
dual, the "Mountain of Sunset" (or of the West), which are endlessly portrayed
in Egyptian iconographies and in myths as well. This symbolism is indeed
metaphoric, and is taken from India, where Mt. Meru (really the Sumeru
and the Kumeru) are called by precisely these two epithets.
What is in reality allegorized by the rising
sun shining between the two peaks of the Holy Mountain is the explosion
of its central peak (Mt. Atlas), bursting "with the light of a thousand
suns" and disappearing under the seas, where it becomes the Primordial
Abyss (Nun), whence the Sun originally rose, during Creation.
By the way, in Egypt the sun rises and
sets in the Sahara desert, rather than from the sea or even from among
the mountains. So, the image of the sun rising and setting in the waters
of the sea (the Nun) or from the hills of a foreign country can only have
originated elsewhere. And where is that? The only place in the ancient
world that fits the description are India and Indonesia, as can be seen
in a map of the region. So, once more we see that both in the geographical
reality as well as in the mythical image which equates the sun rising with a giant
volcanism of an island over the seas can only have come from there, for
all other places are irremediably wrong.
The Hypostyle Hall
In Fig.4 below we show a drawing
of a typical hypostyle hall being crossed by a procession during a
festival of the god. As can be seen from this figure and the preceding
ones, both the amount of pillars and their impressive thickness are
clearly exaggerated for the weight of the superstructure they had
to bear.
The Egyptians were fine engineers, and
would never commit such a mistake. Hence, we may clearly conclude that
the purpose of the exaggerated number and thickness of these pillars was
ritual. What ritual was that, though? In the introduction to the present
essay, we mentioned the fact that the hypostyle hall was indeed a replica
of the subterranean realm of Atlantis or, rather, of its tropical forest
with its enormous trees. Indeed, it represents the Lost Continent sunken
underground and rendered dark when the sky collapsed over it. Can we justify
such an unusual assertion? We certainly can.
The semi-obscurity of the hypostyle hall
was intended to convey the idea of a nocturnal, gloomy realm like Hades
and Cimmeria. This darkness is further enhanced by the decoration on the
roof, which depicts the starry night sky. The same symbolism is also encountered in tombs such as the
tholoi of Minoan Crete and the tumuli of Etruscan Rome, or even in the domes and crypts of certain early Christian churches. If we look again at our discussion
of Fig.3, we see that this gloomy sky represents the belly of Nut, the
Celestial goddess in Egyptian tradition.
This dark abode of the dead corresponds,
as we said there, to the region of Paradise, enclosed between the four
Pillars of the World. But the Egyptian Paradise, their land ancestral,
was Punt, the Land of the Gods.
