A FIRMAMENT ABOVE THEBES: UNCOVERING THE CONSTELLATIONS OF ANCIENT EGYPTIANS

摘要

The study of ancient sacred sources permits us to say that the ancient Egyptians had a complete set of constellations covering the whole sky that could be seen from Egyptian latitudes. There were two dominant groups, one (probably) in the southern sky and another for northern declinations. The northern sky, as beautifully represented in some New Kingdom tomb ceilings, was full of constellations. These took the form of a lion, a crocodile, a bull's foreleg (sometimes a complete Bull), or a female hippopotamus. The southern group was essentially formed by a belt of 'constellations' known as the decans, individual stars or asterisms whose heliacal rising was presumably used for time-keeping, at least from the end of the Old Kingdom (c. 2200 B.C.), if not earlier, since some decanal stars or constellations, such as sih (Sah) or spdt (Sopdet), are already mentioned in the Pyramid Texts. We know this group from the diagonal star-clocks decorating coffin lids (17 have so far come to light) of the First Intermediate Period and the Middle Kingdom, and also from later tombs and temple ceilings, including the famous Zodiac of Denderah (c. 50 B.C.). The system needed to be updated during the Middle Kingdom (c. 1850 B.C.) when the decanal star-clocks were presumably developed, although information about them has been obtained only from a later source known as the Cosmology of Nut, with two relevant extant copies in the cenotaph of Sethy I at Abydos and in the tomb of Ramesses IV (Kings' Valley 2, hereafter KV2).