Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: And we are back with author, researcher, explorer Andrew Collins.
Speaker 2: And the book is the first female Pharaoh, so beck
Speaker 2: the pharaoho god Ess of the Seven Stars. Why is
Speaker 2: it that we we don't know about her? Why was
Speaker 2: her history suppressed? Andrew?
Speaker 3: Well, up until the nineteenth century, the only reference to
Speaker 3: her was in one chronicle of the Kings that came
Speaker 3: out about two hundred and fifty BC, where she's known
Speaker 3: under the name Schemiophorus, which is said to be the
Speaker 3: sister of the king that ruled previous to her, which
Speaker 3: is Arminemes, which is Arminemet the fourth. She's her brother.
Speaker 3: So that's the only reference we have to her. And
Speaker 3: during the nineteenth century and the early explorations of the Egyptologists,
Speaker 3: they started to find her name on buildings things like
Speaker 3: this and wondered who she was. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: quite literally, she was new in the sense that people
Speaker 3: already didn't know a thing about her. And what gradually
Speaker 3: came out is the fact that her reign had obviously
Speaker 3: been suppressed and that the monuments associated with her had
Speaker 3: been completely destroyed. Now she is mentioned in a couple
Speaker 3: of so called king lists, but others miss her completely.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's one set at Abydos in the southern
Speaker 3: part of Egypt where it has all the kings, you know,
Speaker 3: in this wall panel of all the different cartosans all
Speaker 3: the kings, and it's got all the kings up to
Speaker 3: and including her brother's reign, and then none are all
Speaker 3: until the beginning of the New Kingdom, which is switch
Speaker 3: starts with the eighteenth dynasty, which is where all the
Speaker 3: famous kings that we know generally come from. So I
Speaker 3: can understand why they would not put the kings from
Speaker 3: this dark ai of Egyptian history, because maybe they just
Speaker 3: wanted to forget about it. However, why leave her out
Speaker 3: and why is she the first king to be left out?
Speaker 3: And it's quite clear that they blamed her for this
Speaker 3: the onset of this dark age wrongly, so absolutely wrongly so,
Speaker 3: because it's clear that she actually kept Egypt alive and
Speaker 3: allowed it to prosper again in the New Kingdom when
Speaker 3: that actually rose. And I think that the reason why
Speaker 3: all this happened is that that her death came suddenly.
Speaker 3: I think that there is evidence that she may have
Speaker 3: committed suicide, although she wouldn't have seen it in terms
Speaker 3: of suicide as we would do today. It was more
Speaker 3: like a ritual death. And I think that this probably
Speaker 3: was done, you know, using hallucinogen's psychoactive substances, you know,
Speaker 3: quite literally allow her to walk into the afterlife. However,
Speaker 3: all the indications are that her burial was in sacret.
Speaker 3: She was probably put in a tomb that was prepared
Speaker 3: for somebody else, probably an official, you know, and that
Speaker 3: that tomb layes hidden to this day. And you know,
Speaker 3: that's one of the big mysteries. Where is Sobek Nosro?
Speaker 3: You know, discovering her too would be extraordinary.
Speaker 2: Why why did she take her own life?
Speaker 3: Well because I think they were coming for her. I
Speaker 3: think that that because she had changed the policies of
Speaker 3: her brother, who had you know, who was actually trying
Speaker 3: to create a brand new kingdom outside of Egypt in
Speaker 3: what is today the Sinai, centered around this huge religious
Speaker 3: center called Seabout el Cadame. And he was turning away
Speaker 3: not just from from from Sobek, he was actually venerating
Speaker 3: the sun god Rah and in particular his creative form,
Speaker 3: which was known as Artam. He was moving away, complete
Speaker 3: from everything that her father and the kings before him
Speaker 3: had achieved. And as I said, they had this open
Speaker 3: borders policy, and it would seem as if he was
Speaker 3: probably quite young and very influenced by the people around him.
Speaker 3: And I think that there were some factions that very
Speaker 3: clearly saw this as Egypt being taken in the wrong direction,
Speaker 3: so they appealed to her, so she changed everything back
Speaker 3: when she actually came to the throne. But the problem
Speaker 3: is that all of this would seriously have upset some
Speaker 3: of these factions, and they would have been looking for
Speaker 3: any excuse to get rid of her. And it would
Speaker 3: seem as if in the third year of her reign,
Speaker 3: the Nile floods were particularly low, and this can be
Speaker 3: a disaster because what it means is that the waters
Speaker 3: don't bring the rich nutrients to the Nile valley, so
Speaker 3: that trying to grow the next season, you know, grain
Speaker 3: whatever would have failed sort of been just the sort
Speaker 3: of excuse that they would have, you know, used to
Speaker 3: try and say, look what this woman's doing. You know,
Speaker 3: this would not happen when her brother or her father
Speaker 3: were ruling the country. You know, we have to get
Speaker 3: rid of her. And even though you know that they
Speaker 3: couldn't have just pulled her down. I think that they
Speaker 3: were then beginning to sort of find enough reasons to
Speaker 3: you know, get rid of her, quite literally take her out.
Speaker 3: And what's also known is that some kings would actually
Speaker 3: commit suicide if there were low nile floods, in other words,
Speaker 3: if famine came, because it would obviously be believed that
Speaker 3: they were not strong enough to actually rule the land,
Speaker 3: because quite clearly the king and the land were seen
Speaker 3: to be one, you know, in other words, the gods
Speaker 3: were with the king, the king was within the land,
Speaker 3: and all of them were interlinked. So that if there
Speaker 3: was any reason to doubt that this was the case,
Speaker 3: then quite clearly those rivals that would want to pull
Speaker 3: you down, as it were, would you know, come up
Speaker 3: and say, look, you know you've got to you know,
Speaker 3: you've got to stop this, or you've got to add
Speaker 3: quay or kill yourself or whatever it is.
Speaker 2: Uh, And so would the would her enemies have also
Speaker 2: concluded then that the god that she favored sobec the
Speaker 2: crocodile god, was also ineffectual and therefore should be.
Speaker 1: Replaced with raw.
Speaker 3: That's exactly it, because I mean, sobek obviously being a
Speaker 3: creature of the water was associated with the Nile floods
Speaker 3: and you know, was connected with regeneration, rebirth, whatever. So yes,
Speaker 3: absolutely they would have seen the fact that she was
Speaker 3: making the crocodile God, you know, into this monastery literally
Speaker 3: and monosyistic religion doesn't bate religion as well. Would have
Speaker 3: been something that was pulling the you know, the country
Speaker 3: in the wrong direction. And quite clearly this would have
Speaker 3: come from outside of that priesthood. And I think that
Speaker 3: the people that were coming for her was the priesthood
Speaker 3: of rather the priesthood of Heliopolis, who were quite clearly
Speaker 3: in the pocket of her brother, and I think would
Speaker 3: have been really, really unhappy when he was taken out.
Speaker 2: So I mean, you cast aside the king or the
Speaker 2: pharaoh and their god, you have the whole regime change.
Speaker 2: Then something else goes bad and a drought of famine,
Speaker 2: what have you. They toss out that pharaoh and that guy.
Speaker 2: It's a wonder that Egypt had any sort of stability.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, obviously, you know, acts of God, you know,
Speaker 3: like famines, floods and whatever, is something which is going
Speaker 3: to determine how successful, how prosperous a particular dynasty is.
Speaker 3: And this is why there are are so many different
Speaker 3: dynasties in Egypt, because you know, they all revolve around
Speaker 3: families that eventually fail for one reason or another, and
Speaker 3: you know, natural disasters are easily a part of that picture.
Speaker 3: But at the end of subet Nofru's reign, that particular dynasty,
Speaker 3: which is the Twelfth Dynasty, ends, But luckily she'd managed to,
Speaker 3: you know, kickstart this thirteenth dynasty, which seems to have
Speaker 3: been founded by the two kings, which were the sons
Speaker 3: of her brother, it would seem, and they were the
Speaker 3: thirteenth But it's important to point out that that wasn't
Speaker 3: the only dynasty that rose up at that time. The
Speaker 3: fourteenth dynasty ran concurrently with it. They ran from the
Speaker 3: northern part of the country in the Nile Delta, and
Speaker 3: that is considered to be a Canaanite dynasty. In other words,
Speaker 3: it was a strong Semitic Canaanite dynasty of kings, and
Speaker 3: it was they who made and paved a way for
Speaker 3: the incoming Hikesos kings who came in probably from somewhere
Speaker 3: like northern Palestine or possibly as far north Assyria, and
Speaker 3: they were the powerful ones. They were the ones that
Speaker 3: changed everything when they came in.
Speaker 2: You mentioned upon her death that the sight of her
Speaker 2: burial is unknown, But unless I'm mistaken, it sounded like
Speaker 2: you were saying that she was supposed to be buried
Speaker 2: in a particular pyramid, but that pyramid was destroyed. I
Speaker 2: always thought that the idea of the pyramid as a
Speaker 2: burial chamber for the pharaohs was simply myth, that there
Speaker 2: they were never intended to be burial chambers, that they
Speaker 2: were buried in the Valley of the Kings or someplace else.
Speaker 2: Are you saying that in some cases pharaohs were entombed
Speaker 2: in pyramids?
Speaker 3: Oh? Absolutely, yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, obviously, the whole
Speaker 3: pyramid building eight was earlier than the age. I mean
Speaker 3: certainly when it was at its height during the reigns
Speaker 3: of pharaohs like Cufu Kafri Menkara, who were behind the
Speaker 3: three great pyramids on the Giza plateau, and shortly after
Speaker 3: this time you get what's known as the pyramid texts
Speaker 3: inside the walls of the pyramids, that are the prayers,
Speaker 3: the spells, the sayings that a pharaoh must use to
Speaker 3: enter into the afterlife. There was a very specific journey
Speaker 3: that had to be undergone, and this would appear to
Speaker 3: start with going to the western horizon and setting just
Speaker 3: like the sun, in other words, entering into some kind
Speaker 3: of underworld, and then going through that underworld, which was
Speaker 3: beneath the earth itself and known as the Duat, and
Speaker 3: then rising up just like the sun on the eastern horizon,
Speaker 3: but then going to the constellation of Orion, and this
Speaker 3: would be the being on point to the Milky Way.
Speaker 3: And then the spirit, the soul of the pharaoh was
Speaker 3: then expected to go to the north to the so
Speaker 3: called circumpoler stars, the stars that never sat that revolve
Speaker 3: around the center point of the sky, the so called
Speaker 3: celestial pole, and there they will enter the afterlife and
Speaker 3: also become as a star themselves. That was the journey.
Speaker 3: But it would seem as if during the time of
Speaker 3: Sobic Nofru, they were still building pyramids and they were
Speaker 3: being intended for use. But the style and design of
Speaker 3: her pyramid was completely unique. I spent a whole chapter
Speaker 3: talking about this. The direction of orientation everything was changed,
Speaker 3: and also it was aligned very specifically to one star,
Speaker 3: and that star was Eltinan, which is the brightest star
Speaker 3: in the constellation of Draco, and this seems to have
Speaker 3: been a style that was particularly important to her. It
Speaker 3: represented the eye of the crocodile god Sabak. So this
Speaker 3: is where this whole idea of her being the goddess
Speaker 3: of the seven Stars comes into it, because even though
Speaker 3: most people we never heard of Sobek Nopher, the fact
Speaker 3: is we all know her in one way, and that's
Speaker 3: because she is the Egyptian royal female that rises from
Speaker 3: the dead in every horror film that has you know,
Speaker 3: a woman, every mummy that rises from the dead, it's her.
Speaker 3: And the reason for this is that all of these
Speaker 3: films are based on one book, and that's The Jewel
Speaker 3: of Seven Stars by Brawn Stoker, the writer, the Irish
Speaker 3: writer of Dracula. Now he bought this book out in
Speaker 3: nineteen oh three due the Seven Stars, and it seems
Speaker 3: very much as if the main antagonist of the book,
Speaker 3: you know, there's this Egyptian female pharaoh, is definitely based
Speaker 3: on sobect Nopher. And the reason why he chose her
Speaker 3: is because some of the Egyptologists of that century were
Speaker 3: writing about Sobek and Offer and saying you know, who
Speaker 3: is this woman? What she seems to have been incredibly important.
Speaker 3: She seems to have created this whole cult, this religious cult,
Speaker 3: or revived this this cult of the stars, the seven Stars.
Speaker 3: You know, what more do we know about her? And
Speaker 3: that seems to have impressed brown Stoker enough to use
Speaker 3: her in his book.
Speaker 2: So, I mean, is she deserving of that sort of
Speaker 2: literary treatment or or was she more benevolent?
Speaker 3: Or was she I mean, I mean everything that I
Speaker 3: found out better, I think she was a good woman.
Speaker 3: I think that she was doing what she needed to
Speaker 3: do to save Egypt, to continue what's known as mart
Speaker 3: which means cosmic order, you know, divine truth, and that's
Speaker 3: the ultimate aim of every pharaoh, you know, to create
Speaker 3: that cosmic balance, you know, so that the country will
Speaker 3: continue creation, continue to prosper. And you know, she was
Speaker 3: that she was creating the cosmic order in Egypt, but
Speaker 3: at a price. And I think that the price was
Speaker 3: that when eventually she knew that, you know, people were
Speaker 3: coming for her, I think that she decided that for
Speaker 3: the it was best for the country that she took
Speaker 3: herself out that so she committed suicide. She committed this
Speaker 3: ritual death in exactly the same manner as Cleopatra. Remember,
Speaker 3: Cleopatra also committed suicide at the end of her life,
Speaker 3: and almost certainly in exactly the same way, literally walking
Speaker 3: into the afterlife by taking a cocktail of drugs. The
Speaker 3: whole idea of Cleopatra, for instance, being bitten by a
Speaker 3: snake and her dying through snake venom is just a miss.
Speaker 1: Basically, listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight
Speaker 1: at one am Eastern and go to Coast to coastam
Speaker 1: dot com for more