Архитектура Аудит Военная наука Иностранные языки Медицина Металлургия Метрология
Образование Политология Производство Психология Стандартизация Технологии


AN APPARENTLY DEFINITE IDENTIFICATION OF MASONS WITH THE EGYPTIAN M-S-N



(Reprinted from the Proceedings of the Merseyside Association for Masonic Research.)

INTRODUCTION

IN the semitic languages the consonants are the important letters, and those of the old semitic languages are, it is believed, quite accurately known. But it is only of recent years, thanks mainly to a study of Coptic, that the value of the vowels has been determined. Therefore, if in reading a book twenty years old, on Egypt, one comes to the name Ari, and finds, in a book two years old, the same name, i.e., the same hieroglyphs, transliterated It, one will understand that in the elapsed eighteen years it has been found that the latter is the more probable rendering.

In the present note, to avoid any possibility of personal bias, I have followed throughout Gardiner's Egyptian Grammar, which is admittedly the latest and most authoritative treatise on the Egyptian language, and have identified the hieroglyphs treated of by the numbers given to them by him in that book and their translation by the page on which he gives it.

DATA

It has often been suggested that the Egyptian M-s-n, the followers of Heru-Behuti, were the original society from which our Masonic order is descended. But, up to the present time, there has been no definite proof of this.

The word M-s-n is translated by Budge (Gods of the Egyptians, vol. I, p. 485), as " blacksmiths, " and Gardiner, p. 544, translates it as " hippopotamus hunters, " and on p. 510 as " weavers."

There is, so far, nothing to connect the M-s-n with Masons, except the similarity of name, and this means nothing by itself, since the Egyptian root m-s also means " to bring, " so that the King's messengers might also claim them as their prototypes, so far as the evidence can be taken to indicate anything.

But in the Book of the Dead (papyrus Nebseni) occurs the name of an Egyptian God, written with the hieroglyphs, in Gardiners' numbered list, -

Hieroglyph   Read Translation Gardiner, page
D 4, An eye   Ì r He who makes 443
G 17, An owl,   em according to 542
F 34, A heart,   ab desire 534
I 9, A viper,   f his. 542

or Ì r-em-ab-f, " He who makes according to his desire": an artificer god.

From the Book of the Dead we learn three things more about him.

From Chapter 125 we learn that he was one, the 36th, of the 42 Assessors or judges who received the so-called " Negative Confession." He was apparently a god, and possibly a great deified man, as for example the deified I-emhotep (Budge, Gods of the Egyptians, Vol. I, p. 522), the celebrated architect and healer.

From Chapter 125 we learn that he " comes forth from the city of Tebti, " and From Chapter 110 we learn that he has blue eyes.

As is well known, the Egyptian gods had many names. See for example the list of names of Osiris given in the Book o f the Dead, Chapter 142. One of the names of Osiris there given, in section 5, is An-mut-f-ab-ur, a name of the same type as the one we are now considering.

Can we find another of the names of this god or deified being? What artificer god, with blue eyes, has his temple in the city of Tebti?

Tebti, the Tanis of Herodotus, the Zoan of the Hebrews, was a great manufacturing place of glass, pottery, etc., and had a great dockyard. In Numbers xiii. 22, it is stated to be older than the time of Abraham (Smith, Dict. Class. Geog., art. Tanis). An artificer god would therefore be natural.

Turning up Budge's invaluable index to his Gods of the Egyptians, we find that the only god he gives, as having a temple there, is Horus Behutet.

In Smith's Dict. Class. Geog., it is stated that the temple there was that of Ptah. Ptah also was an artificer god, and may have been confused with Heru, or, as it is usually spelled, Horus Behutet. Or his worship may have superseded that of Horus. In any case, at the time the chapters of the Book of the Dead were written, it was Horus the artificer who had the temple at Tanis, and the Book of the Dead states that Ptah was the god at Memphis.

When we find that Horus is the only god mentioned in the Book of the Dead as having blue eyes, " Horus of the blue eyes cometh unto you, " chapter 177, line 7, the identification is apparently complete, especially when we note that the name of Horus does not appear along with that of Ì remabf in the list of the 42 judges of the dead, in chapter 125, and this would support the conclusion that Ì remabf was another name for Horus, just as An-mut-fab-ur is another name for Osiris, chapter 142.

Having thus identified Ì remabf with Horus Behutet, it is a matter of very considerable interest to note that Hem-Behutet, or Ì remabf, was the head of the Mesen.

I need not give a description of these, as it will be found given very fully in Budge, Gods of Egypt, vol. I., pp. 476, seq., and this paper is sufficiently long.
As regards the meaning of the word M-s-n, or to supply the missing vowels in accordance with accepted practice Mesen. after very thorough investigation of the Egyptian, Phoenician and other Semitic language roots, and of the places where the words are used, it is evident that the word does not apply to any particular kind of work, but to the position of the men occupied in it.

The root M-s means " to produce, or to bring forth" (Gardiner, p. 544, and others). The word " Factors" would be a good translation, had the factors of the old companies been actually workmen or overseers themselves. Possibly they were. In any case, Mesen means a master craftsman, irrespective of the nature of his work. At Edfu they were undoubtedly blacksmiths, but at other cities they may have been masons, or other craftsmen. In hieroglyphic writing the hieroglyph originally represented the thing itself. It is therefore of interest to note that Ir, " He who does, " is written with a hieroglyph which is the Masonic Eye (Gardiner D 4). Also the word M-s, in M-s-n, is an apron constructed out of three foxes' skins (Gardiner, F, 31). These may be merely coincidences, but there is more likely a connection which is real. It would seem as if in the name Ì remabf we had good evidence of a real connection of our order with the Old Egyptian order of the master craftsmen of the Egyptian order of Mesen.

ADDENDUM

It would be natural to reject the connection with the King of Tyre, as being a story made up to explain certain things. I felt so till it developed that the Mesen were originally, in pre-dynastic times, foreign invaders from the Red Sea (Budge, Gods of Egypt, vol. I., p. 485) who crossed the desert to the Nile near Thebes.

Nine years ago I shewed (Deluged. Civilization; now out of print, but in the British Museum, Atheneum and other libraries) that the Phoenicians came this way. As there was a city of Tyre at their original home at the Stagnurn Assyrium, Ì remabf may have been a king of that original Tyre, but there is no proof of this.

The name Huram-abi, or as it is usually spelled, Hiram-abi, of 2nd Chronicles ii. 13, is a well known type of Phoenician name. Compare Abi-Baal, and name of Huram's father; Abi is (Rosenberg, Phoenician Dict. p. 70 and the Century Bible, Chronicles, p. 184), " Hurom is my father, " i.e. my benefactor or protector. But the word " abi" may have been used as a mnemonic for the widowed mother of Horus Behutet, for such mnemonics are found in many ancient rituals.


Поделиться:



Последнее изменение этой страницы: 2019-03-30; Просмотров: 358; Нарушение авторского права страницы


lektsia.com 2007 - 2024 год. Все материалы представленные на сайте исключительно с целью ознакомления читателями и не преследуют коммерческих целей или нарушение авторских прав! (0.013 с.)
Главная | Случайная страница | Обратная связь