Eliade on Celestial Archetypes

Alice C. Linsley


Plato conceived of transcendent ideals or archetypes according to which all things in reality are patterned.  He didn't invent the idea. He borrowed it from the ancient Egyptians. Here we find the assertion that real things are perceived by the mind, not by sensory perception.  In this view, the material world resembles, participates in and aspires to these immanent Forms. To understand the ancient world, we must begin from this assumption, which is contrary to the prevailing materialism of western society. 

Mircea Eliade,
the brilliant Romanian
historian of religion

Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) was a Romanian historian of religion who observed that for archaic man “real” objects and events are those that imitate, repeat or are patterned upon a celestial archetype. He believed that “the man who has made his choice in favor of a profane life never succeeds in completely doing away with religious behavior.” (The Sacred and the Profane) It is impossible for humans NOT to aspire to eternal life because we were made to enjoy such life. Surely this is an aspect of what it means to be made in the Divine Image. 

Eliade also noted that "from the beginning, religious man sets the model he is to attain on the transhuman plane, the plane revealed by his myths. One becomes truly a man only by conforming to the teaching of the myths, that is, by imitating the gods." (The Sacred and the Profane, p. 100)  St. Paul understood this and urgesd the early Christians to imitate Christ by putting away the old man in baptism and putting on Christ, the True Man.  John exhorts believers in Christ to "not imitate what is evil but what is good. Anyone who does what is good is from God. Anyone who does what is evil has not seen God." (3 John 1:11) All the New Testament writers encourage us to imitate the faith of our spiritual father Abraham, who, according to the author of Hebrews, looked forward to the coming of the Son of God.

Eliade is one of the thinkers who significantly influenced my anthropological research. In particular, I wanted to test his hypothesis that the ancient pursuit of perfection meant honoring received traditions.  I was sure that such was the case with the Afro-Asiatics of Genesis who clearly regarded the celestial archetypes of blood, water, mountains, and sacred centers with trees and serpents as ontologically real. Further, it appears that Abraham's expectation of the Son who was to be born according to the central myth of his people was what prmpted him to take his son to the top of the mountain to offer him as a sacrifice to God.

However, prior to testing Eliade's thesis, I had to identify the characteristics of the central myth of Abraham's people: the Horus Myth. Then I could investigate whether the artifacts, kinship pattern, gender roles and symbolism of Abraham's Horite people corresponded to the celestial prototype.  In this essay I will examine artifacts only, and in particular, the pattern of the Horus temples and water shrines.
Artifacts

Pillars of Petra 

Petra had hundreds of underground cisterns and water was piped into the city. Petra was in the heart of Horite territory. The Horites were a caste or ruler-priests known as Habiru (Hapiru) in Akkadian inscriptions and as Shasu in ancient inscriptions found on temples in Nubia.


Eliade wrote, " On Mount Sinai Jehovah shows Moses athe 'form' of the sancturary that he is to build for him: 'According to all that I shew thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of al the instucments therefor, even so shall ye make it.... And look that thow make them after their pattern, which was shewed thee in the mount' (Exodus 25:9, 40). And when David gives his son Solomon the plan for the temple buildings, for the tabernacle, and for all their utensils, he assures him that 'All this... the Lord made me undersatnd in writing by his hand upon me, even all the works of this pattern" (I Chronciles 28:19). Hence he had seen the celestial model." (The Myth of the Eternal Return, p. 7)

The tabernacle and the temple on Zion were built according to the tradition of the Horite ruler-priests.  This should not surprise us since both Moses and David, of the Horite settlement of Bethlehem (1 Chronicles 4:4), are descendents of earlier Horite ruler-priests. They were responsible for furthering the pattern/tradition which they received. This meant constructing these temples with three  near water and with pillared entrances and courtyard.  The tabernacle entrance had 4 pillars and the courtyard had 56 pillars, totaling 60 pillars. 

Pillars of the Horus Temple on the Nile

The pattern is first found in the Horus temple (c. 3400 BC.) at Hierakonpolis (Sudan or ancient Kush). It was a large structure, fronted by huge wooden timbers, and it became the prototype for Afro-Asiatic temple architecture for millennia to follow.  How can this pattern have lasted so long and been diffused so far geographically? Because the Afro-Asiatics respected received tradition and honored the celestial pattern.  In a 5,000 year old text, the Egyptian scribe, Ptah Hotep, states: "Don’t modify anything from your father’s (ancestor’s) teachings/instructions—not even a single word. And let this principle be the cornerstone for teachings to future generations."


Related reading: The Mighty Men of Old; The Nubian Context of YHWH; Afro-Asiatic Rulers and Celestial Archetypes

The Sacred Center in Biblical Theology

Alice C. Linsley

The temporal sacred center is when the Sun reaches at the peak of the day and is directly overhead so that there are no shadows. This is represented on many cross-like artifacts that have a solar image at the top center, such as the  ancient Egyptian Ankh or the Agadez Cross (shown below).

Agadez Cross

The sacred center is temporal, that is, halfway between east and west as measured by the Sun’s movement to high noon, and it is spatial, that is, halfway between Heaven and Earth, as on the top of a mountain. The mountain top or high place is where man hopes to see God, and where sacrifice is offered.

Votive offerings at the high places were called tama or tamata. This is related to an ancient word for fortified mounds: tamana. This toponym has been found in 188 countries and five continents. Many tamana predate the high places of Susa, Körös-Tisza, the Indus Valley, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China. The term tamana means "stronghold" in the Manding language of Africa, the Magyar language of Hungary, and the Dravidian languages spoken in India.

Both cool and hot encounters with God are found in the book of Genesis. In the garden, God came to commune “in the cool of the day” (Gen. 3:8), but in the destruction of Sodom, He came “in the heat of the day” (Gen. 18:1). In the cool encounter, God comes to the tree at the center, as the Sun rises over the land from east to west. In the story of the destruction of Sodom, God moves in an eastward direction from the hill country above Sodom.

Confirmation of this cosmological view of the sacred center marked by the Sun comes from study of the Inadan metalworkers. They craft the Agadez cross and speak a secret language called tnt, which is symbolized by the "sign of TNT" which looks like this:

Askelon tanit shows Hathor between the horizons.

Above her is the mountain, a place of meeting God. 

The mountain is crowned with cow horns in which the Sun rests at the sacred center.

A similar image is the simple Tanit of Carthage. This is not an image of a goddess, as some suppose.  It is a symbol of the cosmology of Abraham's people. It designates the temporal center with the sun resting at noon (midway between east and west) and the spatial center with the sun resting on top of a mountain.



Related reading:  Gender Reversal and Sacred Mystery; Peaks and Valleys; The Urheimat of the Canaanite Y

Overview of Human Origins

Alice C. Linsley




From the first appearance of homo about 3.8 million years ago, the Human has been a special de novo creation, unique among creatures. This uniqueness is expressed in Genesis 1. Although humans clearly reproduce humans, they are not said to reproduce according to their own "kind" (Hebrew min). The emphasis instead is on the human belonging to a distinct category designated by the phrase "image and likeness" of the Creator.


Mary Leakey was convinced that her Australopithecus afarensis finds at Laetoli were homo, but Donald C. Johanson had already announced to the world that the A. afarensis was an ape. Mary expressed regret that “the Laetoli fellow is now doomed to be called Australopithecus afarensis.”

A. afarensis used polished bone tools to cut, chop and scrap, shared food, and used fire. Some of the earliest evidence of controlled fire by humans was found at Swartkrans in South Africa. Other sites that indicate fire use include Chesowanja near Lake Baringo, Koobi Fora and Olorgesailie in Kenya.

A. afarensis also had human dentition. In humans, the back teeth are larger than the front teeth (not so with apes), and the canines are not pointed. Humans also lack the characteristic diastema or tooth gap found in apes.

The so-called "Apes of the South" were fully human, though anatomically archaic, and they appeared suddenly and unheralded on the surface of the Earth about 4 million years ago. Humans appear to be a de novo creation. From the beginning humans have had a binary thought pattern, a binary structure, and a fixed essence.

Kind suggests and essentialist worldview, that is a fixed order of creation. There may be change in form and condition, but not in the essence. Further, the survival and technological development of humans has been superintended in a personal way by the Creator and that the Bible is a reliable account of a certain group of humans from whom Jesus Christ became Incarnate, according to an extraordinarily ancient expectation of Abraham's Nilo-Saharan ancestors. This expectation was based on the promise they received concerning a woman of their ruler-priest caste (Gen. 3:15).
Genesis asserts that the order of creation is fixed and unchanging. This assertion must be understood before it can be either accepted or rejected. By fixed order the Bible means that God has established the order of creation with flexible but fixed boundaries. This means that there is change within species but not evolution from one species to a totally different species. This is why humans produce only humans and if there is something wrong with the genetic code, the fetus usually aborts. Likewise, plants produce plants, animals produce animals and bacteria, while it can mutate, is still bacteria.

Examples cited of evolution from one species to another are not backed up with physical evidence. For example, the public school biology books assume that humans evolved from lower primates and show this in drawings beginning with a hairy, stooped-shouldered and long-armed creature whose form over a series of drawings becomes more like modern humans. These drawings have no basis in physical evidence however. They are a theoretical model. In fact, the oldest human fossils show every evidence of being fully human. There is a range of physical structure among these remains, just as there is a range of physical appearance among humans today. In other words, after 85 years of frantic searching for the “missing link” none has ever been found. Nor will such a specimen be found if Genesis is correct in the assertion that God’s order of creation has fixed boundaries.


Pushing Back Speculation

The oldest human fossils are millions of years old so the idea that Neanderthal fossils represent a recent stage of evolution from ape-like hominids to modern humans is senseless.  The sequencing of the Neanderthal genome is almost complete and not surprisingly it reveals that Neanderthals and modern humans are virutally identical.  Here's the report:

After years of anticipation, the Neanderthal genome has been sequenced. It’s not quite complete, but there’s enough for scientists to start comparing it with our own.

According to these first comparisons, humans and Neanderthals are practically identical at the protein level. Whatever our differences, they’re not in the composition of our building blocks.

However, even if the Neanderthal genome won’t show scientists what makes humans so special, there’s a consolation prize for the rest of us. Most people can likely trace some of their DNA to Neanderthals.

“The Neanderthals are not totally extinct. In some of us they live on a little bit,” said Max Planck Institute evolutionary geneticist Svante Pääbo.

It took four years for Pääbo’s team to assemble a working sequence from DNA in the bones of three 38,000-year-old Neanderthal women, found in Croatia’s Vindija Cave. The sequence, published May 6 in Science, covers about 60 percent of the entire genome. (Read it all here.)

Now to older human remains.

WASHINGTON – The story of humankind is reaching back another million years as scientists learn more about "Ardi," a hominid who lived 4.4 million years ago in what is now Ethiopia. The 110-pound, 4-foot female roamed forests a million years before the famous Lucy, long studied as the earliest skeleton of a human ancestor.

This older skeleton reverses the common wisdom of human evolution, said anthropologist C. Owen Lovejoy of Kent State University.

Rather than humans evolving from an ancient chimp-like creature, the new find provides evidence that chimps and humans evolved from some long-ago common ancestor — but each evolved and changed separately along the way.

"This is not that common ancestor, but it's the closest we have ever been able to come," said Tim White, director of the Human Evolution Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

Read the full report here and note the journalist's assumptions that Lucy and Ardi are somehow less than human although researchers concluded that these were human, not apes.

Important facts about Ardi and the Ardipithecus ramidus:

These 30+ skeletal finds represent the earliest known skeletons from the human family. The team found dozens of bones scattered over an area of 33 to 49 feet. The teeth to fit the range of human dentition and are not the dagger-like canines in male chimps and gorillas.

Paleoanthropologists are largely in agreement that the "Apes of the South" were humans who lived about 3.2 million years ago. Ethiopian Ardi pushes that back about one million years. Lucy was found only about 45 miles from where Ardi was found. At the time these populations lived in east Africa it was forested, as was much of Africa. The bones were found in a stretch of the Awash River, near the village of Aramis in Ethiopia.

Ardi walked upright and stood on 2 legs. She shared food with others in her community. These remains reveal human dentition, not that of apes. It has taken 17 years for scientists to reconstruct and analyze these Ardipithecus ramidus findings which included the bones of no less than 35 individuals.

Paleoanthropologist Tim White led the University of California at Berkeley research team.

Physical evidence indicates that humans appeared as humans and unheralded by sub-human ancestors more than 4 million years ago. Apes do not share food or hunt cooperatively.

Now to Lucy.

Lucy and her kin were human who lived about 3.6 million years ago.  The Leakeys suspected this after they did their work in Ethiopia. Mary Leakey certainly had reason to think so after her 1979 discoveries in Tanzania. That was the year that Mary discovered the earliest known footprints of hominids, animals and birds at Laetoli. The footprints were preserved about 3.6 million years ago under falling ash from the nearby Sadiman volcano. The raised arch and rounded heel of the footprints showed that these creatures walked as humans today.

Unfortunately, Lucy and her kin were given the name "Australopithicus" (meaning ape of the south) by Donald C. Johanson, though Mary Leakey would have called the finds Homo, as she thought they were. She expressed her regret that "the Laetoli fellow is now doomed to be called Australopithecus afarensis," a name contrary to the evidence that Lucy and her people walked upright, had oppositional thumbs, short fingers, human dentition, built fire, shared their food, and used flints to scrap, saw and chop.

Now there is evidence that Lucy and her kin butchered meat. Read the NYT story here. If true, this pushes back the use of butchering flints in the same region from 2.6 to 3.4 million years ago.

Here is the gist of this recent report: "stone-tool-inflicted marks on bones found during recent survey work in Dikika, Ethiopia, a research area close to Gona and Bouri. On the basis of low-power microscopic and environmental scanning electron microscope observations, these bones show unambiguous stone-tool cut marks for flesh removal and percussion marks for marrow access.” On page 11 of the supplementary materials, it states that microscopic stone fragments were found in the cut marks.

There are actually 2 fossilized bones with what appear to be marks made by stone tools.

Some say that the researchers are trying to "etch their name into the textbooks in rewriting human evolution."  They are saying that the marks were made by crocodiles, but the marks were made by humans.


Related reading: What is Meant by the Term "Kind" in Genesis?; Does the Binary Feature Signal Greater Complexity?

The Migration of Abraham's Ancestors

Alice C. Linsley

The Hebrew were a ruler-priest caste that maintained shrines and temples along the Nile long before the tie of Abraham (c.2000 BC). The caste had a moiety structure. The two ritual groups were the Horite Hebrew and the Sethtite Hebrew. The oldest known site of Horite Hebrew worship was a Nekhen on the Nil (c.4000 BC).

From the Nile Valley, the Hebrew dispersed into many regions of the ancient world. They were known by various names such as 'Apiru, Hapir, Habiru and Abru. Abru in Ancient Akkadian means "priest."

The words tera, sarki and harwa are related words mean ruler-priest. The words are found across the ancient world which extended from Nigeria to the Orissa region of India. In Hinduism, the sarki are responsible for flaying the sacrificed animal and for preserving the hides. The word harwa is an ancient Egyptian word for priest.

One of Abraham's nephews was named Thahash. This is the Hebrew word tahash, meaning skins. Thahash was likely a sarki who tanned the hides of sacrificed animals. Exodus 25:5 speaks of "five rams' skins dyed red, and

tahash skins; acacia wood." God acts as the first sarki when He sacrifices animals to make coverings for the man and the woman (Gen. 3:21). Today Sarki live in the Orissa province of India and as ‘Haruwa’ in the Tarai region of Nepal. The word Haruwa is equivalent to the ancient Egyptian word ‘Harwa”, meaning "priest."

In Nigeria the sarki are called "Kano Kings" and they are linguistically closer to their Niger-Congo brethren than they are to the Semites. 

Other words for priests of the ancient world include tera, korah, sem, wabau, kalu (lamentation priest), hekau, and šangû. The Akkadian term šangû is the likely origin of the Latin word saguis and the English word sanguine, both referring to blood. The šangû probably offered animal sacrifice at royal sanctuaries.

According to Umberto Cassuto, the name Lamech is related to the Akkadian word lumakku, meaning “priest” (Commentary on Genesis, Vol. 1, p. 233). It also is related to the Hebrew word melek, meaning “king”. Further, Lamech is related to the Akkadian words maklu (burnt offering) and malku (ruler-priest). The Lamech of Genesis 4 and his grandson Lamech the Younger (Gen. 5) were Hebrew ruler-priests.

Genesis also tells us that Abraham was a descendent of Kush, so while Abraham lived in Mesopotamia, he was of the Kushite people. Among these people the ruler-priests intermarried exclusively. Genesis shows that this is the case with Ham and Shem's lines. This should have an effect on the DNA of their living descendants, which it does. The Kushite migration explains the spread of R1*-M173, which is found mainly, but not exclusively in Africa. Haplogroup R1*-M173 is the pristine form of haplogroup R. We would expect just such a result from the Kushites whose rulers intermarried exclusively.

What is even more interesting is that this haplogroup is traced to Sub-Saharan Africa, which confirms the suspicion that the Kushites are descendants of people who moved to the Upper Nile from more southern parts of Africa, probably the Lebombo Mountains.  In Africa researchers have detected frequencies of Haplogroup R1*-M173 as high as 95% among Sub-Saharan Africans. This study supports the picture of diffusion of Niger-Congo (Nilo-Saharan) carriers of R1*-M173 from Africa to Eurasia between 4-5,000 years ago.

In fact, the migration of Abraham's ancestors from Africa to India and beyond, explains the spread of motifs common to Afro-Asiatic, Hindu and Buddhist religions. Those motifs include Trees, Serpents, Water, the Bull, the Sun and the Moon. All of these are found at the temples and shrines of Memphis, Heliopolis and Hierakonpolis, but they did not originate there. They appear to have come from more southern parts of Africa.

Research verifying the Genesis record of Kushite migration from Africa into Eurasia can be found here: http://maxwellsci.com/print/crjbs/v2-294-299.pdf

Current Research Journal of Biological Sciences 2(5): 294-299, 2010
ISSN: 2041-0778 © Maxwell Scientific Organization, 2010

The Kushite Spread of Haplogroup R1*-M173 from Africa to Eurasia
Clyde A. W inters


Related reading: The Hebrew Were a Caste; Five Features of the Hebrew Social Structure; Sent-Away Sons; Hebrew Names and Titles; Why Nekhen is Anthropologically Significant

The Mythological Core of Christianity

Alice C. Linsley

Christianity isn't a religion for people who seek innovation or who prefer a belief system that is open to modification and personal preferences. Unlike synthetic religions which cobble together beliefs and ideas, Christianity is an organic religion that emerges out of a belief that God made a promise in Eden and that He has been busy fulfilling it in the God-Man Jesus Christ.

Most people think of Christianity as an off-shoot of Judaism. However,  the core of Christianity can be traced back to Abraham and his Kushite ancestors, long before there were Jews and Judaism.  In this sense, Christianity isn't original. What it lacks in originality, it makes up for in antiquity and herein rests its authority.

The origins of the Faith of Christ, the Son of God, came to Abraham, not as special revelation, but as a tradition received from his forefathers. The distinctive traits of this tradition align remarkable well with the key features of catholic faith and practice:

1. All-male ruler-priests
2. Blood sacrifice at altars
3. Expectation of the appearing of God
4. As in heaven, so on earth - interpreted by morehs (prophets)
5. Belief in an eternal and undivided Kingdom

Because of God's promise in Eden (Gen. 3:15) Abraham and his ancestors lived in expectation of the Son of God and taught their children to do so.  Their priestly lines intermarried exclsuively in expectation that the Seed of the Woman would come of their priestly lines. In other words, the Edenic tradition is a family-tribal tradition. This is evident when one studies the genealogies and discovers that the ruler-priests of Abraham's people were allied by intermarriage and shared common beliefs and practices, such as circumcision, animal sacrifice by priests, and divine guidance through prophets.

Abraham and his people were Horites, a caste of ruler-priests who were devotees of the mythical Horus who was called the "Son of God."  Many have noted the correspondance between the myth of Horus and the story of Jesus.  The correspondance is uncanny and can be explained in two ways.  Either Christians borrowed the Horus myth or Christianity emerges in an organic way from the belief system of Abraham and his Horite people.  If we decide that Christians borrowed the Horus myth, we must explain why they should have selected this one in particular. There are other great world myths that could have served as the pattern for the story of Jesus.

Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that He will receive an eternal kingdom from the Father.  The citizens of this eternal kingdom must themselves be eternal beings and that is why Jesus alone offers eternal life to all who believe that He is the Son of God, the fulfillment of the Edenic Promise of Genesis 3:15.  He is able to do this because He alone has conquered death and can deliver sinners from the curse of death. This is the core of Christian belief.  Surrounding this core are attendant beliefs which logically follow. One is that to recieve eternal life, we must acknowledge our need for mercy, forgiveness and salvation. Another is that God does this for us out of His boundless love.  John wrote, "This is the revelation of God's love for us, that God sent his only Son into the world that we might have life through him." (1 John 4:9)

There are Christians who eschew Easter eggs as a pagan practice, though Abraham's people painted ostrich eggs as symbol of life after death.

There are Christians who ignore the Virgin Mother of God, though she is is central to the fulfillment of the Edenic Promise of Genesis 3:15. The Virgin Mary was a descendent of the ruler-priest lines of Abraham's people. She is the Woman to whom God makes the promise that her Seed shall crush the head of the serpent and restore Paradise. The whole of the Bible is about this promise. When we lose the core of Christianity we have to put something into the hole left by our prejudices, ignorance and fears. We introduce praise bands, revivals, campaigns to keep the Ten Commandments in public buildings, church marketing to grow our memberships, and activities to pump us up emotionally. These have nothing to do with what God is doing. They are distractions.

If Christians are to have a positive impact on the world, they must return to the mythological core of the Faith. They must believe and proclaim the singular truth that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who came into the world to save sinners because of God's great love.

DNA Research Confirms Kushite Migration

The book of Genesis indicates that Kushites moved out of the Upper Nile area into Eurasia where they established territories. Kushite rulers, such as Nimrod, and their priests spread a common worldview from ancient Kush/Nubia to southern India and beyond.  This vast Kushite/Sudanese (Sudra) sphere of influence is called the Afro-Asiatic Dominion.

Here is the DNA research which verifies the biblical record:

Archaeogenetics is the use of genetics, archaeology and linguistics to explain and discuss the origin and spread of homo sapien sapiens (Renfrew, 2010). In this paper we will use archaeogenetics to examine and discuss the spread of haplogroup R-M173 by the ancient Kushites.

Researchers have outlined two possible out of Africa events in the past 40 ky. Although these out of Africa events occurred during prehistory the Classical writers of Greece and Rome discussed a recent migration of people from Africa into Eurasia. This African population was called: Kushites

A review of the archaeological, linguistic, genomic and craniometric literature was used to explore the role of the Kushites in the spread of haplogroup R from Africa to Eurasia. In this analysis of the linguistic, craniometric, and related scientific literatures we will determine if archaeological and genomic evidence can trace a migration event and dispersal of Kushites into Eurasia as maintained by the Classical writers. This study was conducted in Chicago at the Uthman dan Fodio Institute

Read more here.

The Ostrich in Biblical Symbolism

These 65,000-year decorated ostrich eggshells 

demonstrate common patterns among Paleolithic peoples in Africa.

Alice C. Linsley

The ostrich egg fragments shown above were found at rock shelters in South Africa. They date to between 52,000-100,000 years ago. Pierre-Jean Texier (University of Bordeaux) and his colleagues identified at least five decorative motifs.

Ostriches were prevalent in the ancient world and ostrich shells have been found at Middle and Upper Paleolithic sites throughout the world. Ostrich shells were used as flasks in South Africa 85,000 years ago (Texier et al. 2010, 2013).

Painted ostrich egg 7th century BC. Credit: De Agostini Picture Library

Decorated ostrich eggs have been found in tombs and graves, especially those of rulers and children. They appear to express the hope of resurrection or immortality. Likely, this was due to the observation that the ostrich begins laying its eggs after the Winter Solstice when the hours of daylight increase.

The early Hebrew lived and dispersed mainly in the Northern Hemisphere where the Winter Solstice occurs December 21-22. From the Winter Solstice, the hours of daylight increase. In 12-division zodiacs, this transition is associated with the ostrich because it hides its head for a time and begins laying its eggs after the Winter Solstice. The wild ostrich originated in Africa where it produces 90% of its eggs between January and March. 

In the Church, the egg is both a symbol of new life and the symbol of Christ's resurrection. This is why eggs are decorated and distributed at Pascha/Easter.

The association of new life or rebirth with the ostrich egg has been verified by archaeological finds. Painted or incised ostrich eggs have been found in El-Badari and ancient Kush (Nubia). In the Oriental Museum there are examples of ostrich eggs which have been decorated over their entire surfaces. 

The largest concentration of ostrich eggs to be discovered in one place in Predynastic Egypt were found at a tomb in Hierakonpolis (Nekhen), the oldest known site of Horite Hebrew worship. 

In Kush ostrich eggs have been found in the burials of children. In Egypt, ostrich eggs were placed in the graves of the wealthy. At Naqada, a decorated ostrich egg replaced the owner's missing head. This egg is now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

Where does the ostrich fit among the signs of the Lion (the Summer Solstice), the Bull (the Autumnal Equinox), the Man who was called "Father of Fathers" (the Winter Solstice), and the Eagle or Vulture (the Spring Equinox)? The ostrich comes after the Bull, and this is verified by the book of Job.

The ostrich is the focus of Job 39:13-18, part of the Divine Speech of YHWH. This is found in a lengthy discourse (Job 32-39) which illustrates God's transcendence by describing the Lion, the Nubian Wild Goat, the Wild Donkey, the Wild Ox (bull or rhinoceros), the Ostrich, and the Raven or Griffin Vulture. The ostrich comes between the Bull (Autumn Equinox) and the Vulture (Spring Equinox). Clearly, the ostrich represents the Winter Solstice and the hope of new life or life after death.

In ancient Egyptian art, the ostrich feather represented the hope for immortality. As early as 2600 B.C., the ostrich was associated with Ma’at, who is shown wearing an ostrich feather. Ma'at weighed the hearts of the dead in her scales to determine who would die the "second death" (Rev. 2:11) and who would take on immortality. Excavation of a grave at Kerma (Nubia) uncovered an ostrich feather placed between the horns of a primitive species of sheep.

Related reading: Ostrich eggshell beads reveal 50,000-year-old social network in Africa; Abraham's People Had Easter Eggs; Ostrich Egg Shells in Antiquity; Consider the Ostrich: Job 39 and God's Commentary on His Creation; Prehistoric Stone, Shell, and Egg Technologies in Africa