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Culture Documents
Renate Quehenberger
Independent researcher
Keywords
There are strong indications that ancient Egyptian mythology contains knowledge of
the nature of space up to higher dimensions and provides ontologic answers to the
question about the creation of matter. This article examines the pentagonal interpretation of the myth of Isis and Osiris by comparing the iconographic details with
recent findings from the art research project Quantum Cinema, where an interdisciplinary group of digital artists and scientists established a virtual space model for
visualizing the usually non-perceivable processes in the microcosm on a Planck scale.
At this scale, quantum mechanics applied to space itself leads to a discrete amount
of quantum states. For this research, a new geometrical tool proved invaluable: the
epitahedron. The double heptahedron named epitahedron (E), a 3D Penrose kites
and darts representation, confines the dodecahedron in many ways and seems to be
Platos fifth element. It is a 5D space cell, decorated with fragments of circles, which
allows to visualize the permutations of symmetry elements within a discrete lattice
(Z5). This higher-dimensional configuration is also the appropriate space to create
a quantum-mechanical depiction of particles with inherent wave-like character by
means of 3D animated geometry. Disguised in a mythological language the same
subscendent space structure with the same golden polytope (E) can be revealed: is
this the origin of the concept of aether, the quintessence model which was a basic
scientific task for the last 2500 years?
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Introduction
Logos and mythos each determine the other. The myth of Isis and Osiris
raises the topic of the connection with the divine, and structures it into argument (logos) and narrative (mythos). The argumentative logos assume arguments axiomatically, and tries to make them plausible without proof. In this
way, the myth turns out to be the completion of the logos, the Greek historian
and philosopher Plutarch states (1936).
In recent research for my thesis and within the Quantum Cinema project
for the development of 3D animated geometry to visualize higher mathematical descriptions, certain equivalencies to ancient Egyptian concepts
were revealed. Here the variontological method is applied to reflect distinct
concepts of reality that emerge from human consciousness influenced by the
different media people used to communicate scientific concepts now and in
ancient times (Zielinski 2008). In this case the myth is the medium.
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the basic spatial element and the medium of light. For Maxwell and Faraday,
the luminiferous aether with the lines of forces was still the right concept to
describe electro-magnetism (1861). Light may be visualized as turbulence of
the five-dimensional (5D) space (Quehenberger 2012b).
Isis was her Greek name, but she was known to the ancient Egyptians as
Aset (or Ast, Iset, Uset). The goddess Isis, she of many names, is sometimes
called Athyri or Methyer, which sounds similar to aether.
Mut (mother) also is the name of the goddess Isis, who attends the pure
and the orderly and stands for the house of Horus. She is the female principle of Nature in accord with Platos gentle nurse and all-receptive who is
cradling the triangles in order to arrange them in a way that matter comes
into existence.
Plutarch points out that the myth of Isis and Osiris explains the principle of
Isis: the division into the visible and the transient. This division is not unlike
the common distinction between matter and spirit or, nowadays, wave and
particle duality. The robes of Isis are variegated in colour, for her essential
power concerns the material, which becomes everything and receives everything light and darkness, day and night, fire and water, life and death, beginning and end; but the robe of Osiris [] is of one simple color, the colour of
light (respectively, of the aether); for the origin of things is unadulterated and
the primal element which is spiritually intelligible (Plutarch 1936: 129).
They write the name of the King and Lord Osiris by means of an eye and a
scepter; some explain the name as meaning many-eyed, since os in Egyptian
means, many and iri eye (Plutarch 1936: 133).
Both are connected to the star-cult: the celestial counterpart of the
Goddess Isis is Sirius and Osiris to the constellation of Orion. The correlation
theory compares the arangement of stars in the belt of Orion to the layout of
the three main pyramids in the Giza.Thus Osiris is as God of the death and
resurection connected with the kings of Egypt.
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Figure 1: Kites and Darts Penrose Pattern with Ammann Bars. Image: Shawcross
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Figure 2: (a) The concave epitahedron E-; (b) convex epitahedron E+. CAD Images: Christian Magnes,
Quantum Cinema.
named epitahedron (E) (Figure 2a, b). Both their volumes are related in
the Golden ratio (EE: E+=E+: E-), which means these polytopes are tiling
space in the Golden mean (Quehenberger 2014). Roger Penrose confirmed
it to be the 3D representation of his kites and darts tiling (2013) which
confines the dodecahedron in many ways and seems to be Platos fifth
element.
It is a 5D space cell, decorated with fragments of circles, which allows
to visualize the permutations of symmetry elements within the icosahedron
(Quehenberger et al 2012). In this way different compositions of this polytope
may serve as appropriate higher-dimensional space configurations to depict
particles with inherent wave-like character conform to quantum mechanical
descriptions.
The knot in Isis dress seems to help not forgetting the pentagon enfolded
into the 5D space cell, which I only rediscovered all credits belong to the
Goddess herself:
Here is the geometrical experiment that can be solved with a piece of
paper: fold a knot in a stripe of paper and flatten the knot. You get a pentagon
with interior angles of 108, exterior angles of 72 and an area of approximately 1.7204774s2 (where s=side length). Thus play Seth and unfold the
so accomplished paper pentagon into triangles and dissipate them. Then fly
to the north (turn the triangles around the apices of three acute triangles)
and a irregular fivefold pyramid evolves into space. From both sides of the
complex layers of the pentagon evolve a convex (E+) and a concave heptahedron (E-) with seven faces that makes the fourteen pieces of Osiris each
with one triangle (his penis?) missing. In this dual shape the five reminds on
Plutarch s description, partly resembles the father, partly the mother, being
made up of the three and the two. We did this experiment in 3D animation,
but ancient Egyptians could have played it as paper enfolding with their
children in the grass.
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Figure 3: (a) Pentagon with kite as flying Isis; (b) pentagon with evolving into the third dimension with
traces. CAD Image (3a) and animation still-frame (3b): Christian Magnes, Quantum Cinema.
The fibonaccization
As A. P. Stakhov puts it, the transgressive character of the golden number is
a process of fibonaccization and the myth describes its geometry disguised
in a story about love and murder including a transformation into a bird: the
pentagon has to be dismembered into triangles and the resulting kite for
the faces of the epitahedron seems to be just another name for swallow (Figure 3a) since the triangle configuration looks alike and the movement for its composition is comparable with a flight around the column.
The above still-frame shows the evolving polytope with traced points of
the triangles in a circular movement in a 3D animated geometry movie
(Figure 3b).
In this way, the triangles take off the plane and form the above described
3D space cell of grid Z5 which are constituting its edges. There Sethos represents the disorder, the dynamic underlying principle is applied on his body
and the creational force which leads to the emergence of matter symbolized
by Isis. The myth describes Osiris resurrection in the higher fractal order of
living matter, nourished by Isis. Mathematically, it contains the transformation of the golden mean into the Fibonnacci series. Their sequence replicates
itself at each level and again reveals the fractal nature of the golden mean.
The equation +^2=^3 shows how the quadratic form transgresses into
the next higher order of the cubic form. The mathematical proof for this was
achieved by French mathematician Jacques P. M. Binet in the nineteenth
century. Thus the golden mean the worlds oldest scientific paradigm of
harmony and beauty as it seems to be discovered in ancient Egypt, leads
to the appearance of a new class of hyperbolic functions, the hyperbolic
Fibonacci and Lucas functions and gives a new approach to Lorentz transformations as used in Relativity Theory (Stakhov and Aranson 2008). The
cubic form is of course the 3D representation of the golden mean, which is
the epitahedron. It can also be considered as space element composing the
fourth dimension where the fifth dimension is evolving in the next higher
level of intersection.
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Figure 6: (a) Flower of life, Oseiron in Abydos; Image: Monkman (b) View through the Hypersphere;
(c) Quantum Cinema, N. Tasic. Animation still-frame: Nikola Tasic, Quantum Cinema.
If ancient Egyptian artisans knew about symmetries of the plane, would
it be likely that they were also investigating in spatial permutations with
concepts even up to higher dimensions?
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Implications
We will never know what was written in the more than 700,000 manuscripts stored in the ancient library of Alexandria that were destroyed by
Julius Caesar in the year 47. Only parts of this knowledge were preserved
by ancient Greeks and carved into stone by Muslim architects in medieval
times. Peter J. Lu identified the Penrose Pattern at the Darb-i Imam shrine in
Isfahan made 400 years before their discovery in the west (Lu and Steinhardt
2007). Thus the religious context preserved the transcendent meaning of this
geometry.
The developed QC_geometry shows in agreement with contemporary
physics as recently discussed with Gerard tHooft that all matter can
be visualized by transformations of a 5D cubic lattice. Sethos stands for the
disorder and chaos in the dynamic spaces subscendent structure and is the
counterpart represents for the golden order and Isis with its spacial element
nourishes matter like the Higgs boson.
Could this have been the concept ancient Egyptians were celebrating in
their secret mysteries?
Plutarch emphasizes that yet the name of Isis temple denotes clearly the
message and the knowledge of all being, because it is named Iseion, as if we
would realize all being itself by approaching the sanctuary of the goddess with
reason and reverence (Plutarch).
This could explain why it is said that Egyptians were not interested in
science because they knew all about it already. It can never be proved for
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certain but it is likely that the mysteries of Sais were established to keeping
the theory of everything a secret.
Finally I like to strike out that ancient Egyptian art research should not
remain underestimated. The above hints to a geometrical concept of transcendent spaces and subscendent structures returns in todays dark matter
physics: the quintessence model which uses a canonical scalar field with
a potential V () that interacts with all the other components only through
standard gravity, regains recognition as the most promising solution for one
of the greatest riddles in cosmology (Amendola and Tsujikawa 2010).
In quantum physics, Klyachko and coworkers proofed the non-classical
state by introducing the pentagon inequality for the most simple quantum
systems (spin-1 systems) where a neutrally polarized spin state is represented
by a real vector directed along fivefold symmetry axis of a regular pentagram (Klyachko et al. 2008).
Furthermore quantum information is investigating solutions for Kochen
Specker proofs whereat the french scientist Michel Planat et al. found that
the generalized three-qubit Pauli group contains 12,096 distinct copies of a
quantum mechanically possible structure, called Mermins magic pentagram
(Planat et al. 2012).
These facts demonstrate an accordance with ancient Egyptian knowledge
that should neither provoke fear against the beauty of fivefold symmetries nor
accusations for golden mean worshipping.
Maybe one day we might know quite the same again like the ancients.
This time, proven by high energy particle physics experiments and with a
precision of about 27 digits behind the comma.
Alas, it is not only about the details alone. A more complete knowledge
includes a mind that enables us to perceive the complex and higher dimensional
reality which we might comprehend again from ancient societies. In times of
stereo 3D digital cinema the imagination of the individuals itself became flat.
Recall the Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli who stated that he did not
believe in the possible future of mysticism in the old form, but that, the natural
sciences will out of themselves bring forth a counter pole in their adherents,
which connects with the old mystic elements (Miller 2010).
We should not forget that Isaac Newton and contemporaries were still
alchemists and that in many respects modern physics is build on the Hermetic
tradition with its foundations in ancient Egypt. The knowledge captured in
ancient myths may once more reveal the coherency for a full picture of the
transcendency nowadays.
And how else could the notion of the aether hold for more than 2500
years, if there would not have been a complete concept about it in the
beginning?
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the Quantum Cinema art research group for
support: head Prof. Peter Weibel and the scientific board with Em. Prof.
Helmut Rauch (ATI), Prof. Elisabeth von Samsonow, Em. Prof. Helmuth
Stachel and Prof. Martin Blmlinger. All CAD graphics above derive from the
project Quantum Cinema a digital Vision (AR 35-G21) facilitated by the
Austrian Science Fund FWF in the framework of the PEEK program. I would
like to thank the digital artists: N. Tasic, R. Friemel, C. Magnes, K. Stumreich
and H. Katzgraber for calculations and programming.
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Note
The participation of the author at the International Conference on Digital Arts
within the International Research Conference in the Series Consciousness
Reframed: Art and Consciousness in the Post-Biological Era in the framework
of the Di-Egy 01. Fest in Cairo (from March 31 to April 2, 2013), with a talk on
same task as the above article, was funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry
for Education, Arts & Culture (bm:ukk).
SUGGESTED citation
Quehenberger, R. (2013), Quantum information traced back to ancient
Egyptian mysteries, Technoetic Arts: AJournal of Speculative Research 11: 3,
pp. 319334, doi:10.1386/tear.11.3.319_1
Contributor details
Renate C.-Z. Quehenberger, is a scientific researcher working in digital arts,
based in Vienna, Austria, investigating higher dimensional space. Currently
she is working on her thesis in philosophy On the hermeneutics of the
Penrose Pattern andediting a book about her Quantum Cinema a digital
vision project funded by the Austrian Science Fund, FWF (20102013).
Quantum Cinema 3D animated geometry films and prints were presented at
digital art and mathematics festivals as well as exhibited in universities and
museums on four continents. She occasionally writes art reviews for www.
artmagazine.cc.
Finding: The 3D representation of the Penrose Kites and Darts (2006),
named epitahedron, has all the properties required for it to be Platos obscurely
remarked fifth element, the quintessence. See http://quantumcinema.uni-ak.
ac.at/site/.
E-mail: reniquehenberg@yahoo.com; renate.quehenberger@gmx.at
Renate Quehenberger has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format
that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.
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