Discovery at Taposiris: Sphinx/Horon

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billd89
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Discovery at Taposiris: Sphinx/Horon

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I've repeatedly posted my hypothesis that Philo's 'Therapeutae' were actually a heterodox (Sethian) Judaic cult that had assimilated a) Osirian features by proximity of their colony to the Taposiris site, or b) an entire caste or community of Osirian healers, converted at some stage of the Ptolemaic era. If this region was loyal to Cleopatra (and deemed disloyal to the central Egyptian authority, or the first Roman leaders), we can see why their Osirian cult would have been officially suppressed one or two generations before Philo Judaeus.

Over 1,000 years earlier, Semitic Horon-worship had been established in this vicinity in the Eastern Delta: Horon was also represented as a Sphinx. 'Horon protecting the Pharoah' is a symbol of those Semitic mercenaries guarding the frontiers loyal to the Egyptian authority: Horon was their god (=Herem, the god of the Heroon, etc.), rather than (later) Phoenician Melqart precisely. In Egypt, presumably since no late evidence remains, Horon was fully assimilated by the Seth-Baal Semites c.600-400 BC.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/an ... r-AA13I7l7
https://dominicantoday.com/dr/world/202 ... lexandria/

The 1,305-meter-long Greco-Roman tunnel was found by an Egyptian-Dominican archaeological mission from the University of Santo Domingo close to the Taposiris Magna Temple in the western Mediterranean city of Alexandria. The tunnel was carved into the rock and is two meters high and 13 meters underground, according to a statement released on Thursday by the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. The team, led by archaeologist Kathleen Martinez, discovered the heads of two Ptolemaic-era statues made of alabaster close to the temple, one of which was likely a representation of the sphinx.

The tunnel is reportedly 0.811 miles long.

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billd89
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Re: Discovery at Taposiris: Tunnel

Post by billd89 »

I maintain that Philo Judaeus has described this area in DVC as a Judaic "homeland."

Many generations of itinerant Semitic builders, moving (back & forth?) from Assyria into Lower Egypt, and then to the coast (where they shipped out, to build pagan temples across the Med) or further afar, had long settled this secure area west of Rhakotis. The Osiris cult which spread across the Mediterranean had a predominant Semitic element: SO, was Cleopatra (partly) 'Jewish'? To my thinking, that's the Big Story here.

https://www.jpost.com/archaeology/article-785360
Between the years 320 and 1303 AD, a series of earthquakes hit the coast, causing parts of the [Taposiris] temple to collapse and be swallowed by the waves. Previous excavations revealed a network of tunnels stretching from Lake Mariout to the Mediterranean Sea. In 2009, then Minister of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, said, "If we discovered the tomb of Cleopatra and Mark Antony, it would be the most important discovery of the 21st century. If we didn't discover the tomb of Cleopatra and Mark Antony, we still made significant discoveries here, inside and outside the [c.270 BC] temple."

https://www.sciencealert.com/archaeolog ... cle-tunnel

The labyrinth of Lake Morris is another curiosity.
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