* There is essentially no
evidence that the Egyptians practised astrology prior to what we now call the
Late Period [712 -332 BC] of their history, and there is hardly any evidence
even in the Late Period. [In contrast we have huge amounts of information
relating to their astral religious practices from before this time.] * It is
not until the Greco-Roman Period [332 BC - 641 AD] that we have any significant
surviving documentation of astrological practices in Egypt. [The famous Dendera
Zodiac only dates to 50 BC.] * These are all based on the Greco-Babylonian
constellations, which the Egyptians did not invent and did not use until after
the Greek conquest [332 BC]. * They are also based on the Babylonian twelve
sign zodiac concept, which was not invented by the Babylonians until the 539 -
331 BC period. The Egyptians did not invent the concept and did not use it
until after the Greek conquest. * It is doubtful that the Ancient Egyptians
had a concept of a constellation as we do now - there is no reference to any
such concept in Ancient Egyptian writings. They associated Gods with the sky
but to individual stars not constellations. [Attempts to assign constellations
to these God figures are all the work of recent authors - with no basis in the
Egyptian texts.] * The Ancient Egyptians used decans [a Greek word for the
Egyptian concept] for calendar purposes instead of constellations. Each decan
was ten days of their calendar and hence 10° in size. [Their complete
calendar was 36 weeks of ten days with five intercalary days at new year.] *
The Ancient Egyptians produced 'decan charts' [see right] as far back as the
early New Kingdom, which still survive, the first being the 'map' on the Tomb
of Senmut [c 1500 BC]. There are no constellations on these 'maps', only
decans. Each decan has its own god. * No information has been found to
suggest that the Ancient Egyptians were at all interested in the Equinoxes -
indeed they did not have any religious festivals associated with them. The
seasons were much less important in Egypt than the annual Nile food. * We
have no evidence of any sort of long-timescale keeping of astrological records
[i.e.. planetary movements, heliacal star risings] in Egypt until the
Greco-Roman period. It would be very difficult to discover the concept of the
Movement of the Ages without these. * The Egyptians,
until they received it from the Greeks, did not have the concept of a
Celestial Sphere.
It's very difficult to come up with the concept of Movement
of the Ages without such a frame of reference. * From the above it
probably not surprising to learn that there is no evidence anywhere in any
Egyptian writings of any period that they possessed the concept of an
Astrological Age [i.e. one associated via the
Vernal Equinox Point with
a particular Zodiac
Constellation.] |
The Northern [Bottom] and Southern [Top]
Panel 'Decan Chart' from the Tomb of Senmut [c 1500 BC]. [In reality this
panel is about 4 m long.]
This is the earliest Egyptian 'decan chart,'
that appears on a tomb, rather than inside a coffin. It is also the first
'decan chart' that has associated planets. The two left hand figures in the
boats in the south panel have been identified by Egyptologists as representing
what we would now call the planets Saturn and Jupiter.
The figure in the boat next to the them is
the star we now call Sirius, but for the Ancient Egyptians was related to Isis.
As always in the decan system, she is occupying the 36th and last decan. [The
decans read right to left.] The decans follow the fairly standard order seen in
decans dating back to their first known instance in the Egyptian record around
2100 BC in the Middle Kingdom.
However, it should be noted that Saturn and
Jupiter are not located in decans, i.e. the decans are not being
used by the Egyptians to record the position of Saturn and Jupiter in
particular places in the heavens, as the
Zodiac Signs in a modern
astrology chart would be used to do for planets. This is a later Babylonian
idea that was still a thousand years in the future.
The decan system was actually used as a clock
for time keeping in the night hours and through the year - modern Egyptologists
call them Egyptian sidereal clocks.
The Star of Osiris. As an example of
how our modern mind set imposes concepts on the Ancients take the example of
Osiris. You can find written frequently that he's associated with the
constellation Orion. In fact, the ancient Egyptians believed that the stars of
the sky represented the bas of individual souls, i.e. one star meant one
soul. Deities were associated with the heavens, but only with single stars,
such as, as mentioned above, Isis with the star we now call Sirius.
In the Senmuts tomb, for example, Osiris is
associated with the star known as hr rmn s3hu, a star under the
arm of what we would now call Orion. Other stars in what we call Orion are
associated with the god Horus or with Horus' children.
Click on the
star map to see a larger version. 184 kB |