Hi Brendan,

I have read your paper several times, and very impressed and intrigued by it. I'm not an astronomer or an archaeologist either, but here are some comments I'd like to share.
In particular, I was interested in the sunrise and sunset aspects: "When you take this into consideration along with the sun hymn identified by Assman, I argue that Userref is in fact the birth of the Giant nht which represented Re resting in Osiris at sunset and now represents Osiris resting in Re which in turn means this occurs at or near the rising sun in the morning", and the concept of " dead sun " put forward by Budge.

I was surprised to find the "1,000 loaves of bread" are "1,000 minutes of R.A = 16 hours 40 mins" corresponding to Mercury on the night of the 2nd December 2800 BCE. Some of the sunrise to sunset periods I've been looking at myself, at various sacred sites, are linked to days or nights that last about 1,000 minutes. For example, at Skellig Michael, on summer solstice, a day lasts 1,001 minutes and 30 seconds, for 2018. Or at Stonehenge, summer solstice has 995 minutes of light. (also 2019 values, as per www.sunearthtools.com) And at Durham Cathedral, a day has 1,007 minutes at summer solstice. In fact, the fact that 1,000 minutes go by in a day at summer solstice, and by night at winter solstice, might be one for the reasons why Skellig was thought to be special. The length of day at Skellig is significant in terms of several alignments, and also Saint Patrick's day is basically equal day and night at Skellig.

In an article shared by Yve, I read several things that might be of interest.

There's a Cherokee story about two brothers, a fish and a whirlpool. While it's very different to the story of the rowers there are some common elements: the fish, the circular motion, and the ability to go or see right to the bottom of the water. From Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee (1900), p. 340:

" It concerns the canoe adventure of two Cherokees at the mouth of Suck Creek. One of them was seized by a fish, and never seen again. The other was taken round and round to the very lowest center of the whirlpool, when another circle caught him and bore him outward. He told afterwards that when he reached the narrowest circle of the maelstroem the water seemed to open below and he could look down as through the roof beam of a house, and there on the bottom of the river he had seen a great company, who looked up and beckoned to him to join them, but as they put up their hands to seize him the swift current caught him and took him out of their reach."

There's also a similarity with Edgar Allan Poe's story about a maelstrom. The whirlpool could symbolise either the year, the Great Year, or the spinning of the milky Way, or perhaps even the connection between the world of the living and the world of the dead. The article also mentions that in the Indonesian Rama epic [n5 W. Stutterheim, Rama-Legenden und Rama-Reliefs in Indonesien (1925), p. 54.] a hole in the ocean which leads to the underworld. Elsewhere in the article, there is a suggestion that there is a whirlpool in the sky in the region of Rigel, in Orion. This is associated with death in several cultures, such as the Maori, and in Greek mythology there is a possibility that Rigel is considered the source of Eridanus "which flows from the foot of Orion." (Franz Boll Sphaera (1903), pp. 57,164-67)

In relation to the bottom of the water being turn up to the top, there is also a similar thing in this article:
"Pliny [n9 9.58. cf. Aristotle, Historia Animalium 8.15.599B-600.] wants to assure us that "the whole sea is conscious of the rise of that star, as is most clearly seen in the Dardanelles, for sea-weed and fishes float on the surface, and everything is turned up from the bottom."

And one last thing worth mentioning from this web page is the "tradition of the lapis lazuli landscape of Styx, which will be seen to extend all over the world".
When I saw lapis lazuli in the text I immediately thought of the fish pendant. There are also mentions of fish being revived from dead, of the star Canopus and the constellation Argo Navis which might be of interest, albeit in the context of non-Egyptian traditions.

http://native-science.net/MilkyWay.Mythology.Keys.htm

Also, in relation to the cutting of heads, these comparisons sprang to mind. Firstly, in the story of the Gawain and the Green Knight, decapitations, followed by a magical revival, take place at winter solstice. The Green Knight arrives at King Arthur's court one mid-winter, and challenges someone to cut off his head, and in turn, have his own head cut off in a year and a day. Is there a link to being able to revive a creature which has had it's head chopped off in the Westcar Papyrus? And another story came to mind: the film Princess Mononoke, in which the Forest Spirit, a god of life and death which looks like a deer, but with more antlers and a human-like face and can transform into a gigantic, translucent humanoid during the night called the Night-Walker. In the story, this Night-Walker is shot and its head stolen, thus unleashing mass destruction and death; this lasts until the main characters Ashitaka and San return its head, restoring peace. This is apparently based on Japanese Shinto but I can't find a text just now to back that up. In any case, the decapitation is an interesting theme in both stories.


Thanks for sharing all your fab research,

Melissa