Baden-Powell: Sun God

Whilst "scouting" for pictures of the Boy Scout Memorial for the last post, we came across this picture of Lord Robert Baden-Powell (and wife Olave's) gravestone. Note the circle with the dot inside; ostensibly this is the traditional Boy Scout trail sign for "I have gone home."

What made us look twice is that this very same sign appears in a quote on our post about the Voortrekker monument:

The creator aspect of Ra, symbolised by the sun at mid-noon, was in ancient times known as Aten. Aten was written as a dot enclosed by a circle in Egyptian hieroglyphics. The monument incorporates the Aten-hieroglyph by allowing the sun to shine through an aperture in the sky dome. Looking upwards at mid noon, the aperture is visible as a backlit dot inside the circular sky dome. At 12:00am on 16 December the sun is projected as a disc-dot onto the cenotaph stone. Looking down from the top dome, the floor aperture in the Hall of Heroes is once again seen to encircle the disc, as the sun's rays strike the cenotaph stone. Moerdijk's message as implied by the interior design is: through exodus out of the British Cape Colony, God has created a new African civilization inland.

Taking that quote out of order we see that:

Based on Moerdijk's reference to the watery floor of the Hall of Heroes, as well as his statement about old Egypt, the opening in the water-floor can be identified with the watery abyss, as in the creation theology of ancient African civilization. Rising out of this watery abyss, was the primeval mound, the Benben stone.

And:

Via the sun, heaven and earth are simulated to be visibly connected through a ray of light.

It should be remembered that B-P first made a name for himself as a hero of the Boer War at Mafeking in South Africa.

Another coincidence for us is that this monument, as described in the quote, would appear to symbolize the regeneration of the Boers as they forged a new nation for themselves.

This idea of regeneration was also mentioned in the context of the Boy Scout Memorial (see comments), which led us to the picture of the B-P grave, whose hieroglyph reminded us of the Voortrekkers and now back again to the Scout Memorial. Full circle.

Voortrekkers, incidentally, means "those who trek ahead." Like say....Scouts, or, as they're known in much of Europe, Pathfinders. In the Netherlands, Scouts 18-21 used to be called Pivo's, an acronym for (Pionier(st)er/Voortrekker Ranger/Rover).

Neat, eh?