Horus, the Patron of Kings

Alice C. Linsley

Before the emergence of Buddhism, temples in Cambodia were Hindu shrines dedicated to different deities. Most of the temples had an east orientation, but one at Angkor Wat had a west orientation, suggesting a connection to Horus on the Horizon. The term "Wat" means village, town, settlement, or shrine. Very likely "Anghor" is a variant of "ankh-Hor" which means "Long live Horus!"

Hinduism has many layers that developed over time. As a religion, Hinduism reached its zenith in the Axial Age (900-200 BC). The earliest civilization of the Indus Valley is that of Harappa (2500–1700 BC). In Dravidian, Harappa means "Horus is father." Among many ancient populations, Horus was the patron of kings.

The stone relief (shown above) is at Agkhor Wat. It shows Horus in the form of his falcon totem perched on the mast of Ra's solar boat. 

Parts of the Vedic Samhitas constitute the oldest layer of Hindu tradition and include material that resembles Horite Hebrew concepts. The oldest site of Horite Hebrew worship is at Nekhen on the Nile and dates to around 3800 BC.

Evidently, the Horites spread their religious from ancient Kush to Mesopotamia and beyond. The old fire altars in Hinduism were falcon shaped. The falcon was the totem of Horus. This is why the Shulba Sutras state that "he who desires heaven is to construct a fire-altar in the form of a falcon."

Statue found outside the walls of Angkor Thom in Cambodia. 

(Photo taken around 1958.)

Describing his 1912 visit to Bayon Temple, the French novelist Pierre Loti wrote:

“I looked up at all those towers, rising above me, overgrown in the greenery and suddenly shivered with fear as I saw a giant frozen smile looming down at me … and then another smile, over there in another tower … and then three, and then five, and then ten.”

Khmer Empire was an absolute monarchy that thrived from the 9th to the 15th century. Chou Ta-Kwan was a Chinese envoy to Angkor in the thirteenth century AD. He wrote about the daily life of the Khmer.

"When the king comes out, the troops are at the head of the procession. Their bodies and feet are bare. They hold a lance in their right hands and shields in the left. Then come the standards, the flags and the music. The king and the ministers are all mounted on elephants. In front of them many red parasols can be seen even from far off. Next come the wives and concubines of the king riding in palanquins, carts or on horses and elephants. They carry more than one hundred parasols heavily decorated with gold..." (Horizon: A Magazine of the Arts, January 1959, p. 71)

The Khmer civilization produced the famous Temples of Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, and the Bayon Temple. The Bayon Temple served as the temple of Jayavarman’s new capital, Angkor Thom, and it was originally a Mahayana shrine. Jayavarman VII (shown right) ruled the Khmer from 1181–1218.

Ta Prohm is the modern name of the temple at Angkor, Siem Reap Province, Cambodia. Construction on Ta Prohm began in 1186 AD. A rare inscription at Ta Prohm provides statistics on the temple's workers. The inscription reports around 80,000 workers, including 2700 officials and 615 dancers. It speaks of 66,000 farmers who provided 3,000 tons of rice annually to support the temple workers, priests, and dancers. Imagine this also happening at Anghor Thom and the Bayon Temple. The burden would have been enormous and this explains why the more egalitarian approach of Buddhism took hold, ultimately supplanting Hinduism in that region.

The deification of the Asian rulers finds precedent among the ancient Nilotes, especially the Egyptians. The ruler-priests of the Khmer look like the priests of the Nile. Compare this image of an Egyptian "Harwa" to the image of Jayavarman VII. In Eleanor Mannika's work, "Angkor Wat: Time, Space and Kingship" she argues that the dimensions, alignment, and bas-reliefs of Angkor Wat speak of Suryavarman II as the divinely appointed king.


Related reading: Elements of the Messianic Faith in Early Hinduism; African Religion Predates Hinduism

Elements of the Messianic Faith in Early Hinduism

Alice C. Linsley

Hinduism has many layers that developed over time. As a religion, Hinduism reached its zenith in the Axial Age (900-200 BC). Today there are at least 10 Hindu schools of thought. However, at the earliest level, the Vedic texts reveals the influence of the Horite Hebrew who moved into the Indus River Valley. The earliest known site of Horite Hebrew worship, Nekhen on the Nile, dates to 3800 BC.

The earliest civilization of the Indus Valley is that of Harappa (2500–1700 BC). In Dravidian Harappa means "Horus is father." This stone relief is at Agkhor Wat. It shows Horus in the form of his falcon totem perched on the mast of Ra's solar boat. The etiology of Anghor Wat is also telling. Wat means village, town, settlement, or shrine. Anghor is ankh-Hor which means "Long live Horus!"

In Mannika's best-known work, "Angkor Wat: Time, Space and Kingship" she argues that the dimensions, alignment, and bas-reliefs of Angkor Wat speak of Suryavarman II as the divinely appointed king.

The idea of a universal king who is divinely appointed to rule is much older than Angkor Wat. It is found in the oldest layers of Hindu thought. The Sanskrit word cakravartin and the Pali word cakkavattin refer to a righteous king who rules over the entire world. His "messianic" rule is called sar-vabhauma. From Africa to Nepal the words sar and sarki refer to rulers and priests. The Akkadian word "sar" means king. This is the root of the royal title Sar-gon, which means High King or King of Kings. Nimrod's Akkadian name was Šarru-kīnu, which is usually translated “the true king.”

Messianic expectation appears to have originated among the Horite Habiru (Hebrew), a priest caste that served in the temples and shrines of the archaic world. The Habiru were in the service of the "mighty men of old" (Genesis 10), the early kingdom builders like Nimrod. Nimrod was a Kushite kingdom builder (Genesis 10:8) and the language of his territory was Akkadian.

At its earliest levels of development, Hinduism is older than Judaism, but not older than the Hebrew faith. The Rig Veda, the oldest Vedic text dates to between 1900 and 1200 BC, after the time of Abraham the Hebrew. Judaism emerges closer to 700 BC. The term "samhita" refers to the most ancient layer of text in the Vedas. Parts of the Vedic Samhitas constitute the oldest layer of Hindu tradition and include material that resembles Horite Hebrew concepts.

In the Rig Veda, for example, the number seven is sacred, and the Word of God is called Speech and is described as "a loving wife, finely robed." She resembles the Wisdom of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), personified as a female (Sirach 24:8). In Sirach, Wisdom declares that she “came forth from the mouth of the Most High” as the first-born before all creatures.

In Srimad Bhagavatam 10:16 we find a parallel to Genesis 3:15 where we are told that the serpent's head will be crushed under the feet of the Woman's Son. The Hindu text reads: "The Ancient Man danced on the serpent, who still spewed poison from his eyes and hissed loudly in his anger, and he trampled down with his feet whatever head the serpent raised, subduing him calmly..." (Cited in Andrew Wilson, Ed. World Scriptures, p. 449.)

The same idea is found in Psalm 91:12-13 - "They will bear you up in their hands, that you do not strike your foot against a stone. You will tread upon the lion and cobra, the young lion and the serpent you will trample down."

However, this expectation was expressed about 1000 years before Psalm 91 in the Pyramid Texts. "Horus has shattered (tbb, crushed) the mouth of the serpent with the sole of his foot (tbw)" (Utterance 388)

Scholars from India acknowledge the Nile-Indus connections. The Indian archaeologist, B. B. Lal contends that the Dravidians came from the Upper Nile (Nubia/Kush). Lal writes:

"At Timos the Indian team dug up several megalithic sites of ancient Nubians which bear an uncanny resemblance to the cemeteries of early Dravidians which are found all over Western India from Kathiawar to Cape Comorin. The intriguing similarity extends from the subterranean structure found near them. Even the earthenware ring-stands used by the Dravidians and Nubians to hold pots were identical."

The Indian historian and anthropologist Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan has written: "We have to begin with the Negroid or Negrito people of prehistoric India who were the first human inhabitants. Originally they would appear to have come from Africa through Arabia and the coastlands of Iran and Baluchistan."

The Indian scholar Malati J. Shendge has concluded that the language of the Harappans of the Indus Valley was Akkadian, the language of the territory of Nimrod the Kushite. The Bible scholar, E.A. Speiser, found that names taken to be Indo-European were often labeled "Hurrian" [Horite] only to be identified eventually as Akkadian. The Horites were widely dispersed and spoke the languages of the people among whom they lived. Thus scholars today use terms like Hurro-Akkadian, Hurro-Urartian, and Canaano-Akkadian.

The Indian linguist Ajay Pratap Singh explains,"Comparisons of Akkadian and Sanskrit words yielded at least 400 words in both languages with comparable phonetic and semantic similarities. Thus Sanskrit has, in fact, descended from Akkadian."

Related reading: The Ra-Horus-Hathor Narrative; The Horite High Places; Who Were the Sumerians?; The Substance of Abraham's Faith; Horite Names From Nuzi (2700-2500 BC); The Shrine City of Nekhen