http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ mirrored file For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== ** *FATE REVEALED ** * *by * *JOANNE CONMAN * *© copyright 2002 * * * *Ed Krupp's reply on the Internet bulletin board of the Ma'at site, to my critique of one of his columns , was disappointing for reasons discussed below; however, his courteous tone is very much appreciated. * * * *In my initial essay, I did say that Ed Krupp does "not appear to be specifically trained in art history, anthropology, or Egyptology," as he quotes me. Apparently, he understood this as a criticism of his reliance on his own opinion that an ambiguous animal portrayed on the round zodiac ceiling of the temple of Hathor at Dendera is a lion. However, my criticism was of his characterization of the crocodile-tailed lion as a lion constellation, and what I criticize is his acceptance of widely-accepted speculation as fact. He notes that I correctly emphasize iconographical variations in the portrayal of the crocodile-tailed lion or lion figure that argue against the figure representing a constellation. He counters that with an argument that there are iconographical variations in the Bull/Bull's Thigh, which I admit is accepted as a constellation. I do not accept the Bull or Bull's Thigh as a constellation; however, it is beyond the scope of this essay to discuss the reasons in depth.* * * *Acknowledging that his identification of the disputed creature as a lion is an assertion and not a fact, Krupp states that "evidence suggests it is a reasonable assertion." Unfortunately, he cites no such evidence in his response to my essay. He quotes Richard A. Parker's opinion that the creature is a lion, but an opinion is not evidence. Krupp quotes Parker making the same statement in several places, but that does not make it any truer than if Parker had said it only once. Krupp also cites two other "recognized specialists": Heinrich Brugsch and Otto Neugebauer.* * * *Heinrich Brugsch (1827-94), was brilliant philologist who made important and valuable contributions to early Egyptology. In 1856, he correctly identified some Egyptian names for the planets, based on his translation of a Demotic ephemeris, known as the Stobart Tablets. But Brugsch, who was not an astronomer and who acknowledged that some things were beyond his expertise,^1 <#ftn1> had a tendency to see constellations everywhere. Several of the "six constellations of the 'southern heaven' (the Two Tortoises, Neslu, the Ball, the Disk, Seb-ses, and Nutar)" in Brugsch's /Thesaurus Inscriptionum Aegypticarum/, cited by Krupp, were recognized as being decans by Neugebauer and Parker over thirty years ago.^2 <#ftn2> While we are all indebted to Brugsch, his use as an authority is quite limited because of both the small amount of material that was known to him and the length of time since his death.* * * *Despite co-authoring what are still considered by many Egyptologists to be the definitive work on Egyptian "astronomical" texts, Otto Neugebauer was neither an Egyptologist nor an astronomer. He was a mathematician, gifted in the study of ancient languages, who had a keen interest in tracing the roots and history of Western scientific ideas in antiquity. However, both anthropological and theological insight are completely lacking in his work. He is well known to have mercilessly parodied religious rituals.^3 <#ftn3> He also loathed philosophy and, thus, was not the best person to be studying these ancient religious texts.* * * *That said, I do understand Krupp's puzzlement at my reference to Brugsch's identification of constellations. I was unclear. Brugsch identified many "constellations," which are now known not to be constellations. What I had in mind were actual ancient Egyptian writings about alleged constellations, not an Egyptologist's interpretation of what tomb art may represent. The only pre-Greek era Egyptian writing we have that has been thought to mention constellations is a New Kingdom text that mentions only five names. Early Egyptologists often equated the ancient Egyptians with the ancient Greeks and initially relied on ancient Greek authors to explain Egypt, without realizing how wrong many of those Greek authors were. The Greeks and medieval Europeans drew animals on their sky maps and those animals represented constellations and/or astrological signs. The Egyptians drew animals in the sky, therefore, the reasoning goes, those animals /must/ represent constellations. The fact that stars are drawn around some figures is seen as further evidence that the animals must be made of stars.* * * *With ancient Egypt, we are dealing with a culture that used ideographic writing. Pictures were used to express abstract ideas. The glyph for star means "praise," so to draw a deity surrounded by stars can be correctly understood: "Deity X surrounded in praises." Sometimes the figures are marked with red dots, the meaning of which is unclear. The placement of the dots on identical places on different figures is strongly suggestive of symbolic decoration, not representation of actual stars. The fact that the figures vary also suggests these figures are not constellations. In the tomb art, there is a lion that is sometimes a full lion, but more often has a crocodile tail; a bull that is sometimes a whole bull, but more often is a bull-headed paisley shape; and there is a hippo that sometimes has an entire crocodile on her back, but at other times does not. There are crocodiles that change number and position and a falcon that is present only in certain tombs, not others. No good reason for this much variation, other than the ubiquitous scribal or artist error, has been offered. That these figures are photographic representations of constellations becomes less likely with each example. In addition, we also have Middle Kingdom sky maps that do not show these alleged constellations and that also has not been explained.* * * *Turning to the figures from the Late Period Dendera zodiac ceiling, some of which we know are astrological signs derived from known constellations, Krupp's assertion that the figures are "Egyptianized" is not correct. Cancer, which he alleges is a scarab, is quite clearly a crab. It is identified as a crab by Neugebauer and Parker.^4 <#ftn4> M. Georges Daressy in "L'Égypt Céleste" identifies Cancer in the square zodiac at Dendera as a scarab and remarks the crab depiction of the sign is the result of Greek influence.^5 <#ftn5> Most of the astrological signs represented on the round ceiling are shown in the style of Mesopotamian art. Several of these figures resemble those found on a Mesopotamian boundary stone, dated to 1125-04 BCE.^6 <#ftn6> The figure of a goat-fish, called /suhurmashu/ ("carp-goat"), found on Mesopotamian /kudurru/ or boundary stones, is identical to the goat-fish on the Dendera ceiling that represents Capricorn. The scorpion of Scorpio is also in the style found on /kudurru/, and is a symbol of the Mesopotamian goddess Ishara. The two-headed, winged centaur that is Sagittarius on the Dendera ceiling is the image of the god Pabilsag, an ancient god attested from the earliest times in the Mesopotamian city of Larag.* * * *In his response to my essay, Krupp continues to argue incorrectly that "cardinality, in fact, dominates Old Kingdom architecture, and it reflects recognition of the north celestial pole because cardinality originates in the fundamental rotation of the sky about that completely unique spot." The fact remains that we do not know to what, if anything, the Old Kingdom architecture was aligned. In Egypt, the pole is low on the horizon. There is good evidence from later texts that the Egyptians from the First Intermediate Period on were observing the eastern horizon, and only the eastern horizon. If we assume that some tombs were perfectly aligned to the celestial north pole, we must explain the numerous Old Kingdom tombs that are not aligned due north. If the north celestial pole was so important to the Egyptians, we must explain why later astral texts reveal no knowledge or interest in the north celestial pole. Ed Krupp fails to do either.* * * *Krupp's statement, "The Giza cardinal grid alone informs us the north celestial pole was a 'location of high interest to the ancient Egyptians.'" is circular logic at its finest. He begins by making the assumption that buildings were intentionally aligned to the north (which cannot be proven). Then, based on this assumption, he concludes that the north celestial pole /must/ have been a location of high interest to the ancient Egyptians, thus "proving" that buildings were intentionally aligned to the north. Krupp backs this up with the "argument from authority," citing Mark Lehner. The fact that Lehner here has also fallen into the trap of circular logic does not make it any less fallacious.* * * * We have good plausible speculation here, but it is still speculation, without factual evidence. We also have evidence that Giza was sacred ground before anything that remains was built on it. Structures could have been aligned to something on the ground that happened to be oriented to the cardinal points by chance, or to a point on the horizon that was chosen for reasons other than celestial. It is possible that all buildings aligned with one original structure on the plateau, which is suggested by recent finds in Saqqara.^7 <#ftn7>* * * *With some anthropological naivete, Ed Krupp attempts to argue that any form of skywatching is astronomy. He writes, "There is ample cross-cultural archaeological, ethnohistoric, and ethnological information to confirm nearly universal interest in cardinality and its linkage to the behavior of the sky." Seeming to follow Joseph Campbell's culturally biased, misguided attempts to see one true religion, Krupp apparently wants to argue for a single, universal "true" view of the sky. In this, he is remarkably indistinguishable from Robert Bauval. This cultural blurring and universalizing is truly insidious stuff. It diminishes the rich tapestry that represents the diversity of human understanding of the universe. Ultimately, it diminishes our own understanding.* * * *It is my turn to be puzzled by Ed Krupp, when he writes, "The decans, which Conman characterized as 'mathematical constructions used to measure time' were, in fact, real stars observed by real skywatchers. We don't keep time with mathematical constructions. We keep time with periodic events, and we relied on the sky, all of us, all over the planet, for periodic events until the second half of the twentieth century, when atomic oscillations replaced the sky as the fundamental clock." The Hellenistic zodiac signs are mathematical constructions used to measure time; they are an artificial division of the ecliptic, one that is identical to what the Egyptians did with the decans. The only difference is that the Greeks had 12 signs of 30° while the Egyptians had 36 signs of 10° . Both the round ceiling zodiac at Dendera and the square one from that temple's outer hypostyle hall show the concordance of the decan stars with the Greek astrological zodiac. Of course the decans stars were very "real stars observed by real skywatchers." In fact, I have identified those stars in a paper, which debunks Otto Neugebauer's decanal belt theory. The constellations which gave their names to the astrological zodiac signs were also composed of very "real stars observed by real skywatchers." Real stars and the times they rose were used to structure a mathematical schema that is still used to keep track of time. Our own months are based on the 12 Hellenistic zodiac signs.* * * *Krupp acknowledges that in the Ptolemaic era, astrological "signs still generally coincided with the constellations for which they were named." However, citing Willy Hartner's identification of the square between the two fish of Pisces as Pegasus, he argues that that figure would have meaning only in a representation of constellations, not zodiac signs. This is false. Perhaps Krupp is not familiar with the ancient Greek notion of paranatellonta? The round ceiling shows Sirius and Orion, which, like Pegasus, are not in the astronomical zodiac. However, they are in the astrological zodiac with many other stars, including circumpolar stars, thanks to the Greek belief in paranatellonta. Stars that co-rise with zodiac stars were linked with those signs. The equal division of the zodiac is dated to about 400 BCE. Eventually, that probably led to the ecliptic coordinate system, which was used by most astronomers up until around 1700 CE. Just when the uniformly divided zodiac, that mathematical construction used to measure time, was extended to include stars that were not near the ecliptic is not known. However, the first century BCE Roman poet Manilius discusses stars in paranatellonta in Book V of /Astronomica/.* * * *Last, Krupp implies that I have not critically evaluated and ranked the arguments he mobilized in his effort to spare the Sphinx from having to do Leo duty. In my first article, I did exactly that. The best way to deal with absurd attempts to link the sphinx with Leo is by demonstrating some factual knowledge concerning what is known about the true history of both the constellation and the astrological sign of Leo. This is what I criticized Ed Krupp for not doing in his original piece. Good factual knowledge about the use of zodiac signs to mark the timing of ages of precession was also neglected in Krupp's original article. There is no evidence whatsoever, despite the best efforts of de Santillana and von Dechend, that the Greek astrological signs were used to mark precessional ages at any time before the Greco-Roman times at the earliest. There were cultures that spoke of ages; this idea can be traced to the Hittites, among others. But those ages were not linked in any way to the stars. In fact, writing of a succession of by-gone ages in his poem /Phaenomena/, which is specifically about the stars and their history, Aratus (315-240 BCE ) mentions the well-known metal ages and only the metal ages. There was no more an "Age of Leo" in the minds of ancient Egyptians than there was any conception of modern astronomy. * * * *As for the little creature on the Dendera ceiling, I believe that both Krupp and Bauval have erred in concluding that the creature perched on the Foreleg must be an actual animal, either a feline or a bovid. So who is the little guy? He is a concept and a divinity known as Shay. He is the personification of fate. He represents the span of a person's life (determined at birth for Egyptians), as well as the prosperity that person could expect.^8 <#ftn8>* * Shay * *Shay is shown in his composite animal form in Plate 3 from /Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt/ by R. T. Clark (Thames and Hudson, London, 1959). He has forelegs like a lion and hind legs like a bovid, which enable him to pose like a lamb/ram while bearing some feline resemblance. Shay has a fully human form and he appears in that human form at the weighing of the heart scene in the Papyrus of Ani. Shay's composite animal form resembles the little creature on the Foreleg on the zodiac ceiling. And he has good reason to be there.* * * *There is no exact equivalent to the word /kA/ in English. It has been translated as "spirit," but it also has been understood as "personality," "temperament," or "fortune." "As demotic replaces the obsolete word /kA/ by that for 'ordainer' or 'fate,' /shay/, the conception of it had probably changed in some degree, so as to include perhaps all that was immortal in the man But the connexion between /kA/, 'vital principle,' 'energy,' and /sha/, 'fate,' may have been close even in high antiquity."^9 <#ftn9> In Greco-Roman times, the Egyptian god Shay became assimilated to the popular Greek snake god of fortune, Agathos Daimon. From Roman times on, as Bonus Daemon, he became the eleventh house in astrology. Shay, fate personified, has every right to be perched on the Foreleg in the middle of a zodiac ceiling in an astrological temple. In that era, consistent with the linguistic changes noted by Griffith, Shay is certainly there to represent the /kA/, as the ordainer of fate, underscoring that these texts are first and foremost religious, */not/* astronomical texts! Astronomers can make use of information in texts from ancient astral religions for their own purposes of study, but we should never forget that these texts were created for specific, non-astronomical purposes that offer an equally fascinating area for study.* * * *contact me* * who is in time * * * 1. **Brugsch, Heinrich, /Nouvelles recherches sur la division de l'année des anciens Égyptiens, suivies d'un mémoire sur des observations planétaires consignées dans quatre tablettes égyptiennes en écriture démotique/ (F. Schneider & co, Berlin, 1856), 52-53 * <#ref1>* 2. **Neugebauer, Otto and Parker, Richard A., /Egyptian Astronomical Texts Vol. III/ (Brown University Press, Providence, RI, 1969), 268 * <#ref2>* 3. **Davis, P. J., "Otto Neugebauer: Reminiscences and Appreciation," /American Mathematical Monthly/ Volume 101, 1994, 129 <#ref3>** 4. **Neugebauer, Otto and Parker, Richard A., /Egyptian Astronomical Texts Vol. III/ (Brown University Press, Providence, RI, 1969), 208 <#ref4>** 5. **Daressy, M. Georges, "L'Égypt Céleste," /Bulletin de l'Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale/, Cairo, Volume 12, 1915, 11 <#ref5>** 6. **Black, Jeremy, and Anthony Green, /Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary / (Imprint Austin, University of Texas Press, 1992), see plate 90 <#ref6>** 7. **Magdolen, D., "On the Orientation of the Old-Kingdom Royal Tombs," Bárta, Miroslav and Jaromír Krejcí (editors) /Abusir and Saqqara in the Year 2000/ (Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Praha, 2000), 491-8 <#ref7>** 8. **Hart, George, /A Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses/ (Routledge & Keegan Paul Inc., 1986), 198 <#ref8>** 9. **Griffith, F. Ll., /Stories of the High Priests of Memphis/ (Oxford, 1901), 66 n I.11 <#ref9>** ** <#ref9>** **RETURN TO THE SECRET CHAMBERS OF THE SANCTUARY OF THOTH **