Ancient Egypt and Precession


 

 


Definition: [Astrological Ages] Did the Ancient Egyptians understand the Movement of the Ages? Nowadays they are claimed to have possessed this knowledge in a number of popular books which have appeared, subsequent to the popularisation of Jung's Astrological Age concept [see Publishing and Precession]. In contrast amongst academic archeological circles the answer is:

Answer: Almost certainly not.

Facts which Indicate the Ancient Egyptians Would Not Have Had a Movement of the Ages Concept: I'll define Ancient here to mean anytime in Egyptian history up to the fall of the Egyptian New Kingdom in 1070 BC.

* 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

Publishing and Precession after Jung...

6:  Publishing and Precession after Jung... 
6a:  Ancient Egypt and Precession 
6b:  Ancient Babylonia and Precession 
6c:  Mithraism and Precession 
6d:  2012 and the Maya Calendar 

© Dr Shepherd Simpson, Astrological Historian

 

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