Sun worship
(written by Dr. F. J. Los,
reprinted from "The Northlaender")
The sun has been revered as a deity
by a
variety of peoples. However, it is
clear
that it was not only as a beneficial,
but
also as a dreaded and destructive power,
that this heavenly body was adored
in hot
countries. So in ancient Egypt the
sun god
Rah (or Amon-Rah)was represented by
a man
bearing a sun disc on his head, which
was
surmounted by the Uraeus-snake. The
reptile
symbolizing the withering effect of
the sun
often has been used in the Near East.
Quite
different was the situation in Central
and
Northern Europe, where a sufficient
amount
of sunshine was essential for the ripening
of crops. Here the sun was worshipped
as
a beneficial power as soon as agriculture
became the principal means of support
during
the Neolithic period (+/- 4000 - 2000
BCI).
Consequently it was the ancient Indogermans,
originally centered in the basin of
the Danube,
who spread its cult throughout Europe
and
even into other parts of the world.
How firmly
the befief in the creative power of
the sun
was rooted in the minds of these early
Nordics
becomes clear when we look at the ruins
of
the biggest megatithic monuments of
Northern
Europe, the sun sanctuary of Stonehenge.
Of course it is unnecessary here to
desctibe
in detail this gigantic monument the
remains
of which command, since prehistoric
times,
the Salisbury Plain in Southern England.
The visitor wonders how it was possible
to
transport and set up the enormous blocks
of stone the majority of which had
been hewn,
as modern research has proven, from
the rocks
of the Prescelly Chain in South Wales,
a
distance of 274 km measured along the
overland
route that was in all probability followed.
What people erected this imposing monument
and what was its purpose?
The scientific investigation of its
ruins,
which was carried through in recent
times,
has made it possible to answer both
questions.
The sanctuary was undoubtedly dedicated
to
the worship of the Sun as is proven
by the
fact that the line from the middle
of the
so-called "altar stone",
lying
in its center, to the "Hele Stone"
at the entrance, is directed to the
point
in the NE where the sun rose on midsummer
day.
According to the archaeologists there
were
three building periods, the first of
which
is dated by means of a radio-carbon
test,
at about 1840 BCI. Recently a number
of drawings
of Mycenean daggers and flanged axes
were
detected on some of the stones, and
it is
supposed that the final completion
of the
sanctuary, about 1700 BCI, took place
under
the direction of an architect from
the Greek
town of Mycenae.
However, its construction is ascribed
to
the so-called Bellbeaker Folk whose
graves,
known as the 'round barrows', abound
in the
vicinity of the monument.
This people whose original habitat
lay in
Central Spain spread over Europe at
the beginning
of the second millennium BCI, diffusing
at
the same time the knowledge of the
first
metals: copper and bronze. They reached
Britain
in two successive waves, the first
coming
from the Netherlands, the second from
the
western parts of Germany (about
1700 BCI).
In both countries they had mixed with
elements
of another people, the Indogermanic
(Indo-European)
Battle Axe People, whose original fatherland
lay in Saxony and Thuringia. The amalgamation
of both peoples makes understandable
why
the skeletons which have been unearthed
from
the round barrows belong partly to
the Faelian,
partly to the Nordic type, and why
copper
daggers as well as stone hammers were
found
in them.
That it was the Nordic element of the
Beaker
Folk that introduced the worship of
the sun
in Britain is admitted by one leading
English
archaeologist in the forllowing words:
"So
it was the strong Indo-European element
infused
into our Beaker culture by the Battle
Axe
Warriors which gave its religion this
skyward
trend. We are witnessing the triumph
of a
more barbaric Zeus over the ancient
Earth
Mother dear to the Neolithic peasantry,
the
goddess whom they had brought with
them from
the centers of her fertile power in
the Mediterranean
and the Near East. "
To make it clear that this replacement
of
one religion by another was the consequence,
not of a gradual evolution, but of
an invasion,
we must cast a glance at the Scandinavia
of the Bronze Age. There, on the rock
engravings
of Bohuslan in Southern Sweden, are
to be
seen ships bearing a sun disc and manned
by men who swing battle axes; winged
horses,
concentric circles, spirals, wheel
crosses
and other symbols of the sun can also
be
seen.
The horses are destined to pull the
sun chariot
along the sky in day time, which reminds
us of the ancient myth of Phaeton;
a ship
was thought to transport the sun through
the underworld back to the East at
night.
A slightly different version of the
same
idea is well-known from the Norse legends.
To the same Nordic culture belong bronze
razors adorned with a sun wheel or
the head
of a horse. From a later phase of the
Bronze
Age dates the famoussun chariot of
Trundholm,
a magnificent testimony to the artistic
taste
and professional skill of the old Nordics.
With all the Indogermanic peoples we
find
at the dawn of history the worship
of heaven
gods: Dyas piter with the Aryan Indians,
Ahura mazda with the Persians, Papios
with
the Scythians, Zeus with the Germans
and
Dasjbog with the Slavs. However, the
Greek
Phoibos Apollo (i. e. "the radiant"
Apollo), the Roman Sol invictus (the
unconquered
sun) and the Persian and Mitannian
Mithra(s)
remained genuine sun gods. The anthropomorphic
(humanized) character these gods had
assumed
in the course of time is a late development
which might be considered a degeneration.
How far the sun worship had spread
during
the Bronze Age becomes clear when we
look
at three countries that lie far apart:
Peru,
Egypt and Palestine. In the empire
of the
Inca's the sun was adored in the form
of
a golden disc, surrounded by beams.
Its principal
festival was that of the winter solstice,
on June 21.
The Incas (which were an aristocratic
leading
class among the mongolian American
Indians)
are described by a Spanish author as
of a
white complexion with hair that was
as blond
as ripened wheat. Of one of their forbears,
Vicacocha Inca, who was described as
a blond
and bearded man of white complexion,
the
first Spaniards were told that he had
conquered
the land coming from the North, and
later
fled overseas having suffered a crushing
defeat. According to Thor Heyerdahl,
he reached
Polynesia where ancient legends speak
of
him as Kon-Tiki. All these facts and
many
more make it possible that sun worship
was
imported into Peru by immigrants from
Europe.
We know today that not only the Vikings
reached
America before Columbus, but that also
many
years previous peoples from North Africa
(ruled and occupied by a Nordic upper
class)
could cross the ocean in primitive
but sea-worthy
vessels.
With regard to Egypt it is generally
known
that the pharaoh Amenophis IV (1375-1358
BCI) tried to introduce a monotheistic
religion
by declaring the sun god Aten the only
god,
while he renamed himself Akhenaten
(i. e.
glory of the sun disc). The historians
usually
omit the fact that this pharaoh was
in all
probability, just as his father Amenophis
III, the son of a Mitannian princess
as in
portraits he appears as a Nordic.
The Mitanni were ati Aryan people who
had
founded a mighty empire in Northern
Syria.
Also in this case the connection between
culture and race is apparent. Another
religious
reform, but in the opposite direction,
was
carried through in 622 BC in the kingdom
of Judah by King Josias. Among other
cults,
sun wlorship was suppressed by him
in a barbaric
and bloody manner. It is very remarkable
when we read in II Kings 23:11 "And
he took away the horses that the kings
of
Judah had given to the sun... and burned
the chariot of the sun with fire".
Does
not this text remind us of the sun
chariot
of Trundholm?
Sun worship belongs to the sunken world
of
the Northern Bronze Age, the culture
that
was destroyed by the nature catastrophes
of about 1220 BCI. With the Indogermanic
religions of later times it has in
common
its character of nature worship. To
the elrements
of the former cult that submerged into
christianization
among the Teutons belong the feasts
of the
summer and winter solstices, but also
a number
of symbols such as the wheel cross
and the
swastika. It may be that the christian
mode
of praying with closed eyes is atso
a relic
of the religion of our forbears as
it is
impossible to look at the sun with
your eyes
fully open. |