THE EGYPTIAN KNOWLEDGE THROUGH THEIR MASTERPIECES

THE EGYPTIAN KNOWLEDGE THROUGH THEIR MASTERPIECES

Had the Egyptians possessed both their high order of knowledge, and a manner of expressing or encoding it similar to our own, WE would have been unnecessary and the paradox of supposed primitives producing artistic masterpieces would have never arisen. Beyond a certain level, in every one of the arts and sciences of Egypt, knowledge was secret. The rules, axioms , theorems and formulae — the very stuff of modern science and scholarship Ancient Records of Egypt Teti , living forever, high priest of Ptah , more honoured by the king than any servant, as master of the secret things of work which his majesty desired should be done . . .
Ancient Egyptian Architectural Design University of California, Conduct the work, causing to come every prepared one of his workmen , the
best of his lay priests, who knows the directions and is skillful in that which he knows . . . Execute the very secret things, no one seeing, no one beholding, no one knowing his body.

This was not idle talk, for Senmut describes on his stela an archaic text which had been out of fashion for a long time. Some of the writings are described as being on leather rolls, such as the records of annals kept in the Temple of Amun at Karnak during the New Kingdom, or the rolls of the library of the Temple of Edfu.

But among groups where tradition is still vigorous, this knowledge which is expressly characterised as esoteric, is only secret in the following sense. It is in fact open to all who show a will to understand so long as, by their social position and moral conduct , they are judged worthy of it. But the question of secrecy is today thoroughly misunder stood. It is generally agreed among scholars that most ancient societies (and many modern primitive ones) reserved certain types of knowledge for select initiates . At best this practice is considered absurd and undemocratic , at worst it is considered a form of intellectual tyranny, by which a class of priestly conmen kept the masses in a state of quiescent awe. But the ancient mind was rather subtler than our own . There were (and are) good reasons for keeping certain types of knowledge secret, including the secrets of number and geometry; a Pythagorean practice that particularly arouses the ire of modern mathemati cians.

Five was the sacred number of the Pythagoreans , and members of the brotherhood were sworn to secrecy regarding it on pain of death . We know the secrets existed only because they leaked out . That Egypt possessed this knowledge is incontestable in the face of the harmonic proportions of her art and architecture as revealed by the archaeologists.
But perhaps unfortunately , Egypt was also much better at keeping her secrets than the loud mouthed Greeks — so very good that Egyptologists refuse to believe she possessed them . Though by definition circumstantial , the evidence that she did so is commanding , and it remains only to understand the valid motives behind keeping this kind (or any kind ) of knowledge secret. In a world of hydrogen bombs , bacteriological warfare and other progressive horrors , it is selfevident that knowledge is dangerous . It is also selfevident that the ancients possessed no technology capable of unleashing such brutal power. How ever, if we look more closely at the manner in which we are emotionally and psychologically influenced — which in turn makes predictable the manner in which we will react to given situations — we will see that dangerous knowledge lies behind this curious Pythagorean number symbolism.
A work of art, bad or good, is a complex vibratory system. All our five senses are constructed to pick up this data in the form of visual, aural , tactile and probably olfactory and sapid wavelengths. The data is interpreted by the brain and provokes a response that — given wide variations among individuals — is more or less universal : no one thinks the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is a lullaby. Accomplished artists know instinctively that their creations conform to law: consider Beethoven's famous statement, made while working on the late quartets , that 'music is a higher revelation than philosophy' . But they do not understand the precise nature of these laws. They arrive at mastery only through intense discipline , innate sensitivity and a long period of trial and error. There is little they can pass on to pupils or disciples.

Only technique can be passed on, never 'genius' . But in ancient civilisations , a class of initiates had precise knowledge of harmonic laws. They knew how to manipulate them to create the precise effect they wanted . And they wrote this knowledge into architecture, art, music , paintings , rituals and incenses, producing Gothic cathedrals, vast Hindu temples, all the marvels of Egypt and many other sacred ancient works that even today, in ruins , produce a powerful effect upon us. This effect is produced because these men knew exactly what they were doing and why they were doing it: it was done entirely through a complex of sensory manipulation .