This is an archived copy of a post written by Conflict Of Justice (conflictofjustice.com). Used with permission: Conflict Of Justice may not agree with any alterations made.
Sobek Or Horus? – Skeptics claim the crocodile in Facsimile 1 should be identified as Horus, who assembled the pieces of Osiris’ body from the river Nile so that he could be reborn, rather than the Egyptian god Sobek. This is false, however. Several things indicate this crocodile may not refer to Horus:
- The Facsimile doesn’t show the crocodile gathering anything from the waters. An Egyptian author should have at least labeled the Figure or given some indication if it was meant to refer to Horus rather than the typical role of Sobek.
- This is the only lion couch scene ever found with a crocodile in it (that I’ve seen.) This makes it all the more likely that the author would have indicated if it was meant to refer to Horus. The most logical conclusion would be that the author wanted to simply show Sobek in the Nile.
- Isis was often portrayed as the one gathering the body parts sailing on a boat. This role was not always played by Horus.
- This is a biomorphic image of a crocodile. The crocodile was shown with a human body and crocodile head if it was meant to refer to Horus.
In Egyptian art, the crocodile typically represents the god Sobek. But it doesn’t have to be one at the expense of the other: “Sobek was sometimes considered to be an aspect of Horus because Horus took the form of a crocodile to retrieve parts of the Osiris’ body.” Sobek assumed the character of Horus, but his identity was not replaced by Horus. They were often labeled syncretically as one: “Sobk-Horus.” The very name Sobek roughly translates to “he who unites (the dismembered limbs of Osiris.)” I have not read any serious Egyptologist say the crocodile’s identity as Sobek was replaced. So it may very well be the crocodile in Facsimile 1 indicates a gathering of Osiris’ body parts, but there is a lot more to it than just that. The crocodile consumed the sacrifice at the Sed Festival, and was adopted as royal symbol for the king at the Sed Festival. It was the Sed Festival sacrifice which Abraham likely described in the Book of Abraham, and Facsimile 1 is likely derived from the Sed Festival. It is therefore appropriate for Joseph Smith to identify this as “the idolatrous god of Pharaoh,” as Pharaoh was the royal power in charge of the entire affair.
Sobek Lord Of The Sed Festival
Sobek was the Lord of the Sed Festival. His title was “Sobek, Lord of Heb-Sed Festivals.” That doesn’t mean he was the officiator–that role was taken by the priest Anubis, whom Joseph Smith correctly associated with “El-kanah.” What it meant was that Sobek was the royal symbol that ruled over the event. In fact, when you look around Egyptian literature it turns out Sobek had a lot of festivals he was in charge of. I guess he was just a party kinda guy? Well, it makes sense when you consider what the crocodile represented. He provided protection, passage, and creation to all of Egypt, and thus was a suitable symbol for Pharaoh, who provided the same role.
Protection, Passage, Creation – The crocodile started out as a symbol of violence. The fierce crocodile attacked and ate animal alike. But as violent thugs, they could also be hired to provide protection. A pair of crocodiles were present in the Sed Festival to provide the king protection during his journey. It was a portrayal very similar to how the crocodile protected the dead in funerary literature: “Similar to the protection of the dead, a pair of crocodiles represent the protection of the king during his Sed-Fest, in an early Ptolemaic relief at Medamud.” In order to cross the Nile river safely, the crocodile god needed to be worshipped, and this worship sensibility was adopted for revival in the afterlife and restoration of kingship. The Nile waters were the source of life and prosperity in Egypt, and waters were thought to play the same role in the afterlife. The “celestial Nile” inundated the afterlife with life-bringing creation as long as the crocodile god was worshipped, and the crocodile protectors allowed people safe passage. Sobek “controlled the waters” in the celestial creation. “People feared the Nile crocodiles, and so they began to ask the god of crocodiles for safe passage in their realm. As time went on, Sobek became so much more than just lord of the crocodiles. Some Egyptian myths have Sobek, not Nun, as the one who came out of the waters of chaos, to create the world. The power of the crocodile became associated with battle, so Sobek became the patron of the pharaoh’s army… Sobek tended to call upon other gods and goddesses who were more suitable for protection of people in need. In a later myth, it was Sobek who caught the four sons of Horus in a net as they emerged from the waters of the Nile in a lotus blossom.” (Invoking the Egyptian Gods, Judith Page, Ken Biles
Sobek & The Four Sons Of Horus – We see these four sons of Horus in Facsimile 1–the four canopic jars below the lion couch. So it would make sense that this is the main symbolism at play here in Facsimile 1. Each son of Horus represented an aspect of the rituals that brought about rebirth, and the ritual’s application to a quarter of the entire earth. They also represented each a body part of the deceased person, and so by rescuing them Sobek gathered the body parts of Osiris. By gathering them, Sobek assumed title as authority over the entire deal, the Lord of the ritual.
In another Egyptian myth, Sobek ate part of the dead body of Osiris and was punished by the gods for it. He was either healer or violent consumer. Another version of this myth has Sobek surprising a band of enemies and mercilessly eating them, with the gods screaming for him to stop eating them and to “give him bread” to eat instead. This speaks to the Sed Festival’s nature as proxy sacrifice. Earlier human, later animal or food sacrifice, was offered so that the king did not need to himself be sacrificed. It is thought that the Nile crocodiles consumed the sacrifices after they were made in Egyptian rituals. In Egypt, the “Cult of Sobek, a crocodile god,” sacrificed people on an altar and tossed the remains to the crocodiles in the Nile river. Sobek was therefore “fed with the offerings of human sacrifice.” The priests threw the heart and body parts of proxy sacrifices for the king for the Sed festival into the river Nile for the crocodiles, to restore the body of the king and invigorate his rulership.
A hymn praised the crocodile god Sobek: “All you gods of the South, North, West, East, All Nine Gods who follow Sobk-Horus of Shedyt, Let your spirits rejoice over this king: Sobk-Horus of Shedyt, As Isis rejoiced over her son Horus, When he was a child of Chemmis.” (via AncientEgyptOnline.co.uk)
Figure 8 was particularly associated with the crocodile, as Figure 8 was the Son of Horus representing the South, and the crocodile’s eye shows up exactly center in the south quadrant of the Facsimile. Figure 8 is associated with the heart part of the body, and Sobek is said in the Book of the Dead to “steal hearts.” Egyptians located their Temple to Sobek the crocodile in Kom Ombo, lower Egypt to the south. This is why Sobk was shown wearing the “red crown of Lower Egypt.” The Nile flows from south to north, from lower Egypt to upper Egypt, which may explain why the southern direction came to be associated with Sobek and the heart. Egyptians “deliberately” mummified crocodile bodies in Egyptian tombs oriented in north south position, a clear reference to Sobek’s authority over the Nile river. Figure 8 represented the restored heart in the reborn child Osiris. Interestingly, this reflects what we read in the New Testament: Joseph and Mary traveled south to Egypt when Jesus was a small child to avoid his destruction at the hands of a wicked man.
Pharaoh Identifies As Crocodile Sobek
Sobek is also strongly associated with the son of Horus of the east. This god’s protective god was Neith, who was “the flood” god who provided the great primeval waters of creation’s birth. As such, she was considered the mother of Sobek. In funerary literature, the dead Pharaoh identified himself as Sobek and associated himself with Neith. The “dead king identifies himself with ‘Sobk son of Neith'” for two reasons: because the waters acted as “the ultimate source of all life” necessary for the king’s rebirth, and because the flooding allowed “the king to cross to the horizon,” providing a watery path for him to traverse. The king identified as crocodile to be enabled to cross these waters, and to gain authority on behalf of everyone else in his kingdom to do the same.
Neith’s symbol was a click beetle, which made reference to the beetle’s ability to “save itself from the rising flood waters of the Nile” by jumping high distances. This sounds awfully similar to Book of Abraham 1:23 which talks about a woman first discovering the land of Egypt as it was underwater and settling her sons there, from which “sprang” the race of Egyptians. This woman was the mother of all of Egypt. Neith was a protectionary creation god who assumed this characteristic of gathering life and preserving it above the waters of chaos, and as “father” of Egypt, the king Pharaoh assumed this identity. Joseph Smith was therefore completely correct identifying the crocodile in Facsimile 1’s context as “god of Pharaoh.”
Interestingly, Pharaoh’s daughter who rescued Moses from the waters of the Nile took upon herself the name Sobek. It sounds like her story closely reflects the original mother of Egypt we read about in The Book of Abraham and in Egyptian myth. She was named “the beauties of Sobek,” Sobekneferu. She also became the first female pharaoh of Eygpt. Oh, and did I mention she is always shown wearing the Sed Festival cloak? Sobek’s authority with Pharaohship and the Sed Festival is all there.
The Book of the Dead clearly identifies the deceased on his journey as the crocodile. A facsimile shows “a crocodile upon a pylon or doorway,” which is awfully similar to what we see in Facsimile 1–the vertical lines below the crocodile in Facsimile 1 show a palace front facade, pylons and doorways. Here is the text that accompanies this facsimile in the Book of the Dead: “(1) The chapter of changing into a crocodile. Saith Osiris Ani, triumphant: (2) I am the crocodile which dwelleth in terror, I am the sacred crocodile and I cause destruction. (3) I am the great fish in Kamui. I am the lord to whom homage (4) is paid in Sekhem; and Osiris Ani is the lord to whom homage is paid in Sekhem.” (The Book of the Dead: The Papyrus of Ani in the British Museum, Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge )
It describes the crocodile in violent terms: dangerous, terrorizing, and causing destruction. This is another reason why Pharaoh identified as a crocodile: it was cool. “The crocodile’s power and ability to snatch its prey was a symbolic manifestation of the pharaoh’s power.” The Book of the Dead says as crocodile, the Osiris deceased becomes a Lord whom the people of Egypt pay homage to.
Utterance 317 – King Unas of Egypt is also referred to as the crocodile god in Egyptian text, and is explicitly labeled Sobek. This is an oft-cited passage that Latter-day Saint defenders use to defend Joseph Smith’s explanation of Figure 9, but unfortunately I don’t see anyone explain its full significance as “deification of the dead pharaoh.” This is an incredibly important passage because it gives full context for what the crocodile is all about. It describes the crocodile coming from the water flood to his streams, which is where we see the crocodile in Facsimile 1. It describes him as wakeful and alert, and the crocodile in Facsimile 1 is fully alert, his eye located exactly middle. It says the crocodile was born from the “Great Radiant one” which refers to Neith who also gave birth to the sun god, thus associating Sobek with the god Re. It then says he assumes the throne of kingly authority, “seat of contentment” in the green lightland of the afterlife. Like a crocodile, he “eats with his mouth,” is a consumer of sacrifices, and as a creation god spreads his seed as supreme procreator. He fertilizes the mother of Egypt, that woman who arose from the inundation waters at Egypt’s birth.
It’s good to be the king. ““The king appears as the crocodile-god Sobk: Unas has come today from the overflowing flood, Unas is Sobk [crocodile god], green-plumed, wakeful, alert, The fierce who came forth from shank and tail of the Great Radiant one. Unas has come to his streams, In the land of the great flowing flood, To the seat of contentment Which lies, green-pastured, in lightland, That Unas may bring greenness to the Great Eye in the field. Unas takes his seat in lightland, Unas arises as Sobk, son of Neith; Unas eats with his mouth, Unas spends water, spends seed with his phallus; Unas is lord of seed who takes wives from their husbands, Whenever Unas wishes, as his heart urges.” (Utterance 317, in Ancient Egyptian Literature: The Old and Middle Kingdoms, Miriam Lichtheim)
Jeremy Naydler connects Utterance 317 specifically to the Sed Festival. “He has gone through to ‘the land of the great flood’ that lies beyond these doors. And there, in the Akhet, the place of transformation and rebirth, he makes the grass green and brings fertility to the fields. He also brings fecundity (greeness) to ‘the eye of the Great One,’ who is here feminine and should be understood as the cosmic goddess from whom he was born, the ‘Great Flood’ herself. He thus both emerges from and fecundates her, as does the sun god, and this cosmic fertilization spills over into the natural world. And so Unas, enthroned in the Akhet, the mythical place of regeneration, ‘casus the grass to become green.’ We have already seen… that the spiritual regeneration of the king during the Sed festival involved at the same time the renewal of the powers of fertility throughout the land. A Sed festival backdrop to this utterance therefore seems quite plausible.” (Shamanic Wisdom in the Pyramid Texts: The Mystical Tradition of Ancient Egypt, Jeremy Naydler)
Pharaoh Called A Crocodile In Bible – Along the banks of the Nile are the remains of an ancient attempt by the Egyptians to dam the water, in a display of their technological ingenuity and might. It was a spectacular failure, and Israel’s writers weren’t shy to ridicule them for it. There are multiple ancient references mocking Pharaoh for trying to block a river, and in fact modern revelation to Joseph Smith makes reference to it (even though Joseph Smith couldn’t have known about it, as the ruins hadn’t been discovered yet): “ As well might man stretch forth his puny arm to stop the Missouri river in its decreed course, or to turn it up stream, as to hinder the Almighty from pouring down knowledge from heaven upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints.” This appears to be a reference to Egypt’s ancient effort to dam the Nile. Well, the ancient Jewish Midrash speaks in similar terms: “Come and see: anyone who wants to make himself into a god builds a palace for himself in the water. Pharah built himself a palace in the water and he blocked the waters of the Nile and prevented them from flowing down toward the ocean. But the waters were stronger and they took the palace and lifted it up, as it says, Speak, and say, Thus says the Lord God: Behold I am against you, Pharaoh king of Egypt, [the great crocodile that lies in the midst of his streams, which has said, My river is my own, and I have made it for myself. But I will put hooks in your jaws, and I will cause the fish of your streams to stick to your scales, and I will bring you up from the midst of your streams, and all the fish of your streams shall stick to your scales.] Ezekiel 29:3-4” (Tanhuma , Bereshit 7, in Discussing Cultural Influences: Text, Context, and Non-text in Rabbinic Judaism, Rivka Ulmer )
The Midrash thus is claiming that Ezekiel 29 in the bible is talking about Pharaoh assuming the identity of the crocodile Sobek. Instead of a good crocodile, he is the awful destructive kind. Ezekiel called Pharaoh “great sea-monster who lies among his rivers.” The word for sea-monster is hattannim, and was used in the bible “especially as ‘crocodile’, in a more natural sense.” Scholars note this “may have been an indirect reference to the Egyptian god Sobek.” The dam was “a defensive mechanism against invaders,” and thus related to Sobek’s defensive role as bodyguard for the king and people of Egypt. But then, it doesn’t just use the word for crocodile here. As a variant of the word “dragon,” I think perhaps the word hattannim seems to imply some kind of great snake monster, the “leviathan” spoken of in other ancient Hebrew sources. The Leviathan sea serpent is spoken of in the same context in Job, as man’s futile dominance over nature. This would therefore draw a connection between Pharaoh, Sobek, the crocodile, and the Egyptian Uraeus, a serpent symbol of authority and royal sovereignty in Egypt. The Uraeus protected Pharaoh much like Sobek, “by spitting fire on their enemies from the fiery eye of the goddess.” Remember what Utterance 317 said? “Bring greenness to the Great Eye in the field.” The deceased in the Book of the dead must wear “the uraeus on his brow” in order to climb heaven’s ladder and see the hierarchy of stars mentioned in The Book of Abraham.
In fact, this relationship is seen in what may have been the very beginning of Joseph Smith’s translation process for The Book of Abraham. The Egyptian character that he associated with the name Ka-tu-min starts with the Uraeus character, denoting her royalty. In later variations of the character in the Kirtland Egyptian papers, this character became associated with that first mother of Egypt who arose from the flood waters. The same character thus at the same time denotes royal authority, creation and protection from flood waters, and the serpent or crocodile of the Nile. The crocodile in Facsimile 1 itself is drawn much rather like a serpent with legs than a natural crocodile. This would explain why.
Dragon – But it’s a big horrible serpent, not the good crocodile. William Smith’s Bible Dictionary settles it: “The Egyptian crocodile also is certainly the animal denoted by leviathan.” He cites Psalm 74 “Thou O God, my King of old, didst divide the Red Sea; thou didst destroy in its waters the princes of Pharaoh, that great crocodile.” The leviathan clearly refers to the king of Egypt, and the crocodile is “the usual emblem of the prince of that kingdom.” But in the bible the crocodile becomes a great sea monster. Usually it is translated as “dragon.”
This speaks to the crocodile’s association with the Son of Horus of the north. What do we see to the north in Facsimile 1, exactly center on the opposite end of the crocodile’s eye? The priest’s knife. The knife is exactly middle along the axis with the crocodile’s eye, and faces the same direction. This northern Figure is the wicked priest of El-Kanah, who as I showed at great length assumes symbolism of the great evil dragon Lucifer, the primordial devil in the battle in heaven. The Egyptian version of Lucifer in the pre-earthly war in heaven was Seth, and he was sometimes equated with the crocodile Sobek in Sed Festival imagery: “However, in the Sed festival scenes of the Festival Hall of Osorkon II, Seth was included within the pantheon of Egyptian gods, where he was represented in the anthropomorphic form… This epithet was applied to Sobek with reference to the Upper Egyptian temple at Kom Ombo as well as to Seth and his temple at Nubt… ‘Lord of the land of the south’ an epithet of Seth, but this epithet is only applied to Sobek in the Ptolemaic temple of Kom Ombo… constructed after the prescription of Seth. In addition other Sobek figures were portrayed in bimorphic form with a crocodile head or were identified by the text Sobek.” (Deconstructing the Iconography of Seath, Ian Robert Taylor)
Facsimile 1 shows a change of fortune, where instead of being proxy sacrifice Abraham turns into the victor. The healing priest turns out to be a wicked priest, and the crocodile emblem of Pharaoh’s authority turns out to be an evil dragon.
Mayan Crocodile – The Native American altar of sacrifice used the same symbolism involving a crocodile. The water-serpent and crocodile were likewise related and engaged the same symbolism. One one hand you have the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl who brings life and fortune, and then you have the water serpent Paaloloqangw, who “on the other hand, is notoriously associated with human sacrifice… It is the god’s overt connection with human sacrifice, however, that makes him a plausible candidate for an offspring of a Maya-type Water Serpent.” Among the Maya, “human victims are said to have been offered to a living serpent-god by the Zacatecas.” One priestess would “exchange water for little children” and give the children “to a serpent to eat. She is perhaps the anthropomorphic form of a serpent-god to whom the children were offered.”
This serpent was “associated with water and fertility” just like the crocodile in Egypt, and it was “a symbol of authority and rulership.” The “starry deer crocodile” god was “not only connected with destruction (via flood) but also with creation.” Kings and royal authorities “used images of the Starry Deer Crocodile in connection to taking a throne… a symbol of power and of taking the throne.” Idols of the crocodile were fashioned to “concern agricultural and cosmic renewal,” and the ruler’s “role as providers or participants in maize production and world renewal.” The same symbolism.
In discerning the original Sed Festival context for Facsimile 1 and how it applied to Abraham’s particular experience, Joseph Smith was 100% correct identifying this as the idolatrous god of Pharaoh. The crocodile and serpent was absolutely the symbol if pharaoh’s royalty and authority. It appeared as authority over the Sed Festival rituals, and as such assumed the qualities of an evil dragon and symbolism of Lucifer.