Pope, poet and Opet: pathfinders three

Today, the title of pontiff is held by the pope, yet this title, in its Latin form, pontifex, traces back to ancient Rome, where it was held by the highest-ranking priests.  Indeed, on a recent visit to Rome, I heard that it even dates back further, to the ancient Egyptians, which started me wondering in what sense this might be true.

We might start our speculation with the etymology of this term ‘pontifex’, which is anyway very interesting.  Meaning ‘bridge-maker’, Wiktionary suggests two interpretations –

“either metaphorically “one who negotiates between gods and men” or literally if at some point the social class which supplied the priests was more or less identical with engineers that were responsible for building bridges.”

The first interpretation above, that a priest is a bridge between gods and humans, is one that we can relate to across many ancient cultures.  The ancient rishis of India were visionary seers who expressed their divine visions in the poetic stanzas of the Vedas.  These verses are indeed a word or sound bridge between the divine and the human.  This same Wiktionary entry thus connects the term ‘pontifex’ with a Sanskrit cognate describing these visionary seers –

“Compare Sanskrit पथिकृत् (pathikṛ́t, “path-maker”), attested as an epithet of rishis in the Rig Veda.”

Interestingly, this is a cognate because Sanskrit ‘patha’ is related not only to English ‘path’ but also to the first element in ‘pontifex’, that is, the Latin word ‘pons‘, meaning ‘bridge’.  Again, the ‘rishi’ or ‘visionary seer’ would certainly be one who makes a bridge or path to the divine world.  We find the line of verse referred to, praising these visionary seers who composed the Rig Veda itself, as follows –

“This bow is to the ancient visionary seers, to the ancient pathmakers” (RV 10.14.15cd)

These Vedic ‘pathmakers’ would have indeed provided a bridge to the gods, not literally but through the poetic visions they expressed, so that language itself becomes the route to the divine.  It is the immense expressive power of language then that becomes the path or bridge that is fashioned by these composers of the Vedic verses.

The second interpretation above, that ‘engineers’ and priests were a single class, is even more intriguing, and certainly not implausible, as people with practical skills would have been an elite group in ancient times.  In particular, the skills to enable large-scale human movement across what in ancient times would have been difficult terrain would have been highly prized.  I previously described how, in ancient India, the chariot-maker (rathakāra) was held in high esteem and ranked as an elite member of society by virtue of his skill at making chariots.  The same would likely have been the case in other societies.

These two ideas, of a connection between gods and humans, and of a physical vehicle on a literal journey, perhaps come together in the idea of a ritual journey or religious procession.  On one hand, we have heavenly movements such as the sun’s path across the sky, depicted as a journey of the sun god, carried in a chariot, as often depicted in Indian art, or in a boat, as in ancient Egypt.  On the other hand, religious processions on the ground in these and other cultures involve a god being ceremonially taken from one place to another.

Thus in the Opet festival of ancient Egypt, a form of which has recently been revived, the god Amun-Re was carried in procession from Karnak temple to Luxor temple.  According to Wikipedia –

“The Festival included a ritual procession of the barque (a ceremonial boat used to transport statues of gods and deities) of the cult statue of “Amun-Re, supreme god, his wife Mut, and his son Khons.”  … At the Luxor Temple, a ritual marriage ceremony took place in the Birth room between the Pharaoh and Amun-Re, spiritually linking them to ensure the Pharaoh’s fertility and reinstate the Pharaoh as the intermediary between the gods and Egypt.”

So here too it seems that, through these proceedings, the Egyptian Pharaoh is made into a path or bridge between the human and the divine worlds.  We see similar ‘ratha yātra’ processions across India, where gods are paraded through devotees as they make their journey from one temple to another for mythological reasons.  Indeed, before the days of the popemobile, the pope would likewise be paraded in the sedia gestatoria, that is, papal throne carried sedan-wise in papal ceremonies, in perhaps an echo of such ancient rites, and I wonder if this could be what the suggestion I heard in Rome about the Egyptian origin of the pontifex really refers to.