3-3f Other uses

Wedjat eyes appeared in a wide variety of contexts in Egyptian art. Coffins of the First Intermediate Period (c. 2181–2055 BC) and Middle Kingdom often included a pair of wedjat eyes painted on the left side. Mummies at this time were often turned to face left, suggesting that the eyes were meant to allow the deceased to see outside the coffin, but the eyes were probably also meant to ward off danger. Similarly, eyes of Horus were often painted on the bows of boats, which may have been meant to both protect the vessel and allow it to see the way ahead. Wedjat eys were sometimes portrayed with wings, hovering protectively over kings or deities. Stelae, or carved stone slabs, were often inscribed with wedjat eyes. In some periods of Egyptian history, only deities or kings could be portrayed directly beneath the winged sun symbol that often appeared in the lunettes of stelae, and Eyes of Horus were placed above figures of common people. The symbol could also be incorporated into tattoos, as demonstrated by the mummy of a woman from the late New Kingdom that was decorated with elaborate tattoos, including several wedjat eyes.

Some cultures neighboring Egypt adopted the wedjat symbol for use in their own art. Some Egyptian artistic motifs became widespread in art from Canaan and Syria during the Middle Bronze Age. Art of this era sometimes incorporated the wedjat, though it was much more rare than other Egyptian symbols such as the ankh. In contrast, the wedjat appeared frequently in art of the Kingdom of Kush in Nubia, in the first millennium BC and early first millennium AD, demonstrating Egypt’s heavy influence upon Kush. Down to the present day, eyes are painted on the bows of ships in many Mediterranean countries, a custom that may descend from the use of the wedjat eye on boats.

3-3g Hieroglyphic form

A hieroglyphic version of the wedjat symbol, labeled D10 in the list of hieroglyphic signs drawn up by the Egyptologist Alan Gardiner, was used in writing as a determinative or ideogram for the Eye of Horus.

The Egyptians sometimes used signs that represented pieces of the wedjat eye hieroglyph. In 1911, the Egyptologist Georg Möller noted that on New Kingdom “votive cubits”, inscribed stone objects with a length of one cubit, these hieroglyphs were inscribed together with similarly shaped symbols in the hieratic writing system, a cursive writing system whose signs derived from hieroglyphs. The hieratic signs stood for fractions of a hekat, the basic Egyptian measure of volume. Möller hypothesized that the Horus-eye hieroglyphs were the original hieroglyphic forms of the hieratic fraction signs, and that the inner corner of the eye stood for 1/2, the pupil for 1/4, the eyebrow for 1/8, the outer corner for 1/16, the curling line for 1/32, and the cheek mark for 1/64. In 1923, T. Eric Peet pointed out that the hieroglyphs representing pieces of the eye are not found before the New Kingdom, and he suggested that the hieratic fraction signs had a separate origin but were reinterpreted during the New Kingdom to have a connection with the Eye of Horus. In the same decade, Möller’s hypothesis was included in standard reference works on the Egyptian language, such as Ägyptische Grammatik by Adolf Erman and Egyptian Grammar by Alan Gardiner. Gardiner’s treatment of the subject suggested that the parts of the eye were used to represent fractions because in myth the eye was torn apart by Set and later made whole. Egyptologists accepted Gardiner’s interpretation for decades afterward.

Jim Ritter, a historian of science and mathematics, analyzed the shape of the hieratic signs through Egyptian history in 2002. He concluded that “the further back we go the further the hieratic signs diverge from their supposed Horus-eye counterparts”, thus undermining Möller’s hypothesis. He also reexamined the votive cubits and argued that they do not clearly equate the Eye of Horus signs with the hieratic fractions, so even Peet’s weaker form of the hypothesis was unlikely to be correct. Nevertheless, the 2014 edition of James P. Allen’s Middle Egyptian, an introductory book on the Egyptian language, still lists the pieces of the wedjat eye as representing fractions of a hekat.

The hieroglyph for the Eye of Horus is listed in the Egyptian Hieroglyphs block of the Unicode standard for encoding symbols in computing, as U+13080. The hieroglyphs for parts of the eye are listed as U+13081 through U+13087.

We take it one step further, the spiritual explanation:

3-4 Pineal gland, the key to spiritual awakening

The pineal gland, or epiphysis, is a rice-sized organ located right in the middle of our head, between the two hemispheres. It is surrounded by mystery. Some of its functions are known, but not everything is mapped by science. EEGs are not possible because of its deep location in our head, which makes research difficult. Spiritual seekers, however, have discovered millennia ago, without EEGs, the other functions of the pineal gland. In ancient civilisations all over the world we find indications that the pineal gland was seen as the key to spiritual awakening.
Interestingly, this supposed function is very close to what science does know about the pineal gland, namely that it influences our biorhythm through the release of the hormone melatonin: sleeping and waking at the physical level.

The researchers have also discovered that this gland contains light-receiving cells, which are also present in our eyes. Which function do these cells have in the middle of the head, where light cannot penetrate at all? Some evolutionary biologists assume that the pineal gland is a so-called rudimentary eye; that it was once located on the outside of the head and had the function of a real eye. A theory that would be plausible in reptiles, for example, but in humans?

The spiritual theory is that the pineal gland acts as a kind of inner antenna that can pick up subtle energies (more subtle forms of light) and responds by producing DMT, an opiate-like substance, family of the hormone serotonin, which is also found, for example, in the currently popular hallucinogenic drink ayahuasca.

To Chapter 26