Egyptian night sky

Egyptian night sky

This section is about the different Egyptian night sky. A survey from Ramadan to New Year and from spring to harvest over Farmers' year is a novelty. Some examples from Ramesses IV:s' tomb and from the astronomy room in Dendera.

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Calendar symbolism

There is an ongoing discussion when and where they created the ritual round. The Mesopotamians seem to be the most active as some details like the Janus-idol must have been the beginning of the ritual year. Then we can also date it by precession to have started about 4000 BC. We do not see that in Egypt. Enki/Ea, Aquarius is a central idol in Sumerian myths and that adds an argument for Mesopotamia.

Some astronomers tell that all arguments show that they made the star configurations for sailors and then between 2500 and 2000 BC. Most of their arguments are about the terms for existence. Does the world exist if nothing is written or we have no artefacts? ... or ... Is our knowledge in proportion to the amount of facts we have? It seems that about that time was a very active period in many areas and why not a reforming of astronomy and rituals.

However, we see it also clearly a thousand-year earlier when Scorpio was in focus of spring. But, further a thousand-year earlier we have too little physic evidences. Still we can see the structure of the ritual round and add that the Jews' tradition tells about their calendar beginning at 3761 BC. Furthermore our Scandinavian civilisation meaning farming and the megalith culture began about 4000 BC. That includes some ritual artefacts like the double axe. Then setting the beginning to about 4000 BC seems reasonable.

Facts are few but up to my reading about the time ca 30000 BC to 4000 BC they had some idols in the sky at that time too. They were still in use in places after the civilisation organised the ritual round.

Scorpio and the birds are surely very old. The same counts for stag, deer, rein deer, elk seen not only in the northern sky but in the caves with some abstract symbol marking autumn above it. Cernunnos the Stag and some pig have surely been on the Middle European night-sky since ever ... and maybe it counts for Tarvos Trigarnos too, the bull and three cranes. From Anatolia we have two lions and the Maid which fit also the picture and also the Man or Hercules and surely a goose and a ram too.

It is a natural evolution that organised farming and cities implied an organised ritual round and calendar. At the same time sailors, travellers, priests and other special interests became aware of the possibilities in different ways to use a reference. The philosophical idea is in this how to use a virtual reference and memory.

It is also natural that it led to bookkeeping and calculation how many could be feed from the common stores. People felt more secure than for instance hunters and gathers, which they say regulated their breath of children up to access of food. They carry the child and breast-feed it for longer time than settled farmers thus it is prevention at the same time.

I have read some saying that our ancestors were afraid of a natural phenomenon like eclipses. Rubbish, during my life I have always been interested in animals and observed their behaviour. The New Year fireworks frightened my first dog and he ran away for a week or two. But I am sure it was because it was alone and not with humans or its own flock. It is like the exception to a rule.

Learning from the surroundings and the own flock is the overall behaviour of all beings. In plain words the flock have a stored memory how to behave in different situations. Eclipses occur seldom but are still normal phenomenon. Nature and the natural phenomenon including eclipses man had been studying for more than a million years before the Stone Age about which we are talking.

I cannot see that the human should have been more sensitive than the thousands of beings I have seen in my life? ... and the size of brain has been the same for a long time. The problem there is to keep order in the chaos of cells and possibilities. Arranging a ritual circuit was an effective solution from which we still profit.

I made once this model of the Egyptian geometry in their night sky.

Some week ago I replayed a videotape telling about the DNA technique used in analysing for instance mummies and what information they can give. They excavated in a place where they found a lot of wounded skulls after a battle of some kind ... alternatively some cult of course. Asking what was the cause is natural. DNA technique cannot give an answer to the cause, but maybe tell if the people were from the place or intruders.

A week later I read about one of the ancient Greek travellers in Egypt. He told about odd customs mainly in places where Seth was the main god. Village battles seemed normal during the feasts ... and they were violent with many killed. For the Egyptians believing in an afterlife life or death was perhaps not that important, so what?

That is one fact, another is mind of man when taught to be a hero.

In Egypt it became like a custom. On the Narmer palette and the ivory plate of Horus Den we see the same ritual gestures as in mega-format on some temple ports and walls. They thought the pharaoh to be "the Great Bull defender of the two countries". Every pharaoh with pride had to follow the custom and then as always men are following the leader. That was a demand for every pharaoh to expand the empire.

Many an officer has learnt from Alexander the Great and in his dreams he is a conquistador. The last I noted was after Hitler and Mussolini general MacArthur.

Our Karl XII knew everything about Alexander, but not that his empire began to erode after thirteen years and his dead. That is the good thing in senseless desires of man that there is other Mights working in the other direction.

... In my childhood I had to face a few battles to get respect. Always I saw it as unnecessary fuss and hard work. After the battle the making of friendships was still left. It would have been easier and wiser to go directly to the peace pipe.

In my mind I cannot see anything heroic in winning a battle or kill many for the sake of pride and food. That is because you always create an enemy at the same time. To me non-violence is a question of water ... always seeking the most efficient way and not eroding or changing its basic structure and its generosity is the main law of nature.

The problems the ecology gives us totally outdate many philosophic schools. The worst cause besides capitalism is utilitarianism and philosophers like Bentham, Moore, Mill could be used only as reference of what philosophy should not be. Both "philosophies" do not stand the ultimate quest for eternal life or survival of all species.

In Christianity may be much of the good will, but do the principles stand the ecological quest? At the Lord's Super they drink his blood and eat his flesh and he was human born? I have always thought that I do not eat human flesh and I do not want to eat more of the nature than necessary. Words and rituals are dangerous things and can lead to misuse of our planet. The reference of quality should naturally be withstanding and survival as ultimate measure.

We cannot compromise and say that some species can we kill and spare others. We do not have the wisdom and knowledge to know what happens if we root out a great deal of life on earth. The intellectual ideas are useless if not tied to nature and reality. Some day mankind will understand that.

It is easy to believe that "Oh yeah; it was in those days" ... but if we stay with truth I have seen behaviour of man in many places in my lifetime. When we study history, we also study the behaviour of man and how it became tradition.

We are brought up to certain behaviours. Some tribes must normally have an enemy. Lastly I remember the Iron Maid in London on the stairs of a church speak about "Beelzebub in Baghdad" .... and over there another hero was praying for good luck in Operation Dessert ... and lately the two World Sires are speaking in old colonial style about murdering someone. Is that democracy? ... and what is it about? ... oil for the machines destroying earth? In second stages in sequence it is food on the tables and ultimate cannibalism. Why not work together in a democratic way? Do Americans really know what democracy is about?

Everywhere is contradictions and so in Egypt too. My visual sources are often from Big Brother "over there" and something amazes me. It is as if Big Brother were a Big Girl standing on a table afraid of a mouse sometimes. Their videos tell about dangerous wild animals and their politics talk about danger outside the small island of North America. They see enemies everywhere. I think provincialism is the right word for their outlook.

Those primitive things are rather studying Egypt for learning about dynasties than learning to love animals. I am concerned about nature and how we treat it. A threat is Big Brother fearing the nature and misusing it. Then there is no future for the planet.

Egyptians were always thinking about and working towards eternity. They made their mummies to be eternal ... yeah man, I go maniac when I go radiac ... they cannot buy culture and we have to wait a thousand years for North Americans to be cultivated. In my life I have seen an American movie or two. They always need a stupid fool and an enemy in their movies.

Their enemy is always far from their own country in East Europe, Dushanbe, dark Africa, and Asia. They got much of the problems after the cold war. Naturally they has space too as an agenda and they expect the occasional beings there to be more fierce and stupid than Americans?

The last trend is that they show us blowups in wholesale and retail. Hollywood made us believe that all Americans have a helium tank in their car and it explodes a minute after a collision. It is a fantastic culture and to me it seems that they never get an orgasm. They only jump, jump, jump in a beat with no variation and no release. That absurd culture should be model? ... and ... it is pure cultural imperialism and a big brother with no human sense. Then they want me to say my ancestors were primitive?

Words like these come as by themselves when I am used to comparison and to have plenty of reference points in the past .... and still I love people and see no enemies before I made them.

The judgements are mostly in the eye of the observer.

In my eyes I think we on the Narmer palette see a normal growing round with the goddess and mate and an early Thot keeping books or is it a the sandal carrier? Perhaps indicating that Thot is a later invention ... or he was not a god in the palace of Narmer? The headless figures do not need to be human. They can symbolise harvest too. We see two portals and four Ox-heads telling us about the organisation of the year in two seasons.

Even at the Den tablet we see early signs of year and ritual. A standard is about the year and the ANKH-sign and the dagger is about ritual. The name of Den is in a rectangle with a portal under, and we see the Horus falcon. Forgetting that every time we se the falcon it is about time or its managing is very easy. It is the mystery of language. How can man be charmed and deceived to be a follower? Then also believe in virtual reality and in his own false images too.

We see from these two examples that the symbolism was well developed at the time around 3000 BC. With a Horus (pharaoh = time = leader) and his palace to pay writers and artists it developed arts by itself. Culture is in many parts an add-on to life and need a sponsor or carriers.

The evidences from that early time are few and no sure battles and no gold, so it could never interest Hollywood and Americans to dig deep in that age. A pro-American I know promised to hit me if I say anything harming about the Americans. Never mind, I have seen the American way of making friends as hard work, when they always need big fights to be friends.

The logic man in me says that a fight usually only show who is strongest, even if not said. My old ASA-concept says that friends should be equal and then a fight is the first step from equality ... it is simply lack of respect for each other ... a fight leave always a winner and a looser. That is not equality. However, Americans have no 6000 years of their own culture in their back. I write this because I do not want our children to take a step back to the primitive life of Americans.

We need much more strength to hold back a hand from striking than the striking itself. Once a stroke is on its way, stopping it is impossible. That all golf-playing men have learned by experience ... as they cannot alter a stroke once it is on its way.

During the last millennium the zodiac we know became fashion as influence from the Babylonians. The cities were the majority and rural life they did not know about. In cities the spiritual problem is mostly a mirror for the stress when living many people near each other. Then followed the arrangement of gods in family clans.

The other side was that they saw that the ritual year of peasants seemed to lead their years as if some gods were ruling and steering the faith. Some new phenomenon were the planets and they seemed independent of the fixed year of the animal round. They became stars for the rulers and then also the ruling phenomenon. The priests created the astrology well fitted as a virtual leader for city dwellers.

If we want to see a structure it is like a mix of the Sumer-Babylonian believe in faith and the Egyptians believe in steering authorities. I believe we can connect it with a Sumerian renaissance. History repeats itself but never in the same dress. Time and evolution have added things to culture. It is not possible to 1:1 copy an older cultures because the original spirit is gone for ever.

Man always takes what he likes best and sees what He wants to see. I stress HE since He became the leader during Bronze Age. We know very little about the woman behind ... as we see from Hatsepsut they could steer with success too. This was a natural process with growth of population over a very long period. I think we can see the same evolution during my life from the rural society to the city and automation.

Now a few words about oracles, sibyls and related things. We know from Malta ca 4000 BC onwards that they made a cave with "an ear of Mother Earth". Similar arrangements have been in other places and most known is the Delphi oracle. In other places it is more simple and near the people when someone specialises in giving advises in dimly and ambiguous words.

It works because what does the asking one do? He or she seeks in the mind how to under-stand the advice. Then the layers of fog vanish. It is a good thing if the sibyl knows the human and as much as possible about the asking one. In every culture and every era the questions are always near the life ... questions about the coming one ... about some fortune in future ... decisions in spending money ... about personal enemies ... and so on.

On this cover from a coffin we see the entire zodiac and only one symbol differs. It is from last millennium BC. It is in the lower right corner "the Blue Lady" for Aquarius. We know it from much earlier symbolism however seldom. It is surely a symbol of pregnancy in the soil or about animals during the rainy season. They painted the Lady green like Osiris and the same was custom with the Sumerian Dumuzi when he was in the Underworld.

This tablet is a little simplified and clear plate showing the Dendera zodiac from late in first millennium BC. Only a pair of the traditional idols are missing such as Aquarius and Gemini. Still, there are very many typical Egyptian idols too. We may note that there are two bulls, maybe a wild one and another tame one. The same is the case with the lions. The tame sphinx is standing on Water-snake.

Egyptian night sky

 …In Egypt and Near East a simple night clock today is to follow how Little Bear rotate in its tail during the night. They need only a simple cross on a pole. The only fact is relativity also in this case. 4000 years ago the pole star was in the other end of the picture. At that time they picture the asterism as a dog-animal on a reaper … see the Dendera sky below. That is precession, which causes also the North Pole to move a degree in its circle in a lifetime. This position should be at Cairo 5:36 PM Dec. 24 1999.

The asterism rise from the horizon in a small 30 degrees' band in east.

In the picture is the slope near its limit in north-east and it swings equally towards south-east. Understanding why they chose east as observation direction is easy. In west the asterisms are going down. This positions Cairo 5:52 AM Jun. 27 18000 years from now, if my programme is right?

If they wanted to follow the ecliptic south is the worst direction.

This is at Cairo 11:36 AM Dec. 25 1999. The sun is nearly in south and hunting Mercurius, which like other stars are impossible to se in daylight in same direction as the sun.

We seldom see sexual themes in Egypt ... Maybe they were prudish in the same way as in my youth.

Then sexual intercourse should be the first cause of divorce in worst case, I think. However when growing up on a farm nothing was unknown in that matter.

Only in the time of the sun pharaoh Akhenaten we see some signs of love. This picture is as near as we come. This is the sexual intercourse between Isis in the guise of a falcon. We know because in other pictures on the theme the iset-step says that. The other falcon is surely Horus the Time as this picture is the growth of vegetation at the act is longer than the animal act. Osiris is the fertile corn. The frog is Heket one of the birth giving goddesses.

At the other side Hathor the nursing goddess sometimes as fertilizer and sometimes as milk. Under the bed are other helpers. The little vibrating, Bez always a part in the critical a jump between the two making love. Here under the foot end of the bed.

Jaret the cobra in pair says "raising" and we see that it works with Osiris. And Toth the Moon is always keeping books about success or no. They connected the moon and its phases to fertility too. This symbolism was used for human, animal and vegetative fertility, love and sexual intercourse as well.