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Authors: Robert Bauval
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the ‘ancient Egyptians were devoted to astronomy. They created the world’s first practical solar calendar. It demanded the measuring of the positions of the sun on the starry background, i.e. to recognise the zodiac.’ There is also the British Egyptologist Richard Wilkinson, who, as we have seen, was among the first in his profession to admit that ‘the stellar constellation now known as Leo was also recognised by the Egyptians as being in the form of a recumbent lion’ and that this ‘constellation was directly associated with the sun god’. To this we can also add the professional views of other scholars such as Yale University Egyptologist Virginia Lee Davis, who, in reference to the star-studded recumbent lion seen in Ramesside astronomical ceilings, asserted that ‘the Lion with its outline of stars must be Leo’, 46 and American scholar Donald Etz who made the same assertion in an article for the Journal of the American Research Centre in Egypt . 47 Even more recently, in 2001, the Spanish astronomer Juan A. Belmonte presented similar cogent evidence to the SEAC 9th Conference in Stockholm, where he informed his colleagues that ‘the Analysis of the astronomical data presented in the diagonal Ramesside Clocks has allowed us to prepare a potential list of correlations between the Egyptian stars presented in them and the actual stars in the sky. Some results are very coherent, such as the identification of . . . the Lion with our constellation Leo.’ Belmonte also showed that ‘the identification of the Lion (in the Ramesside clock) with our Leo and the lion in the ceiling representations’ are one and the same. At any rate, we needn’t get too entangled in this never-ending scholarly debate about the zodiac. What should really concern us is not whether the whole zodiac concept was known to the ancient Egyptians, but whether they saw in the pattern of the stars that we call Leo the same leonine figure we see, namely a recumbent lion; and, if so, whether or not they called this image Horakhti.
Let us, therefore, now focus our attention on this issue alone.
The Step Pyramid Complex at Saqqara.
The Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara.
Details of panelled boundary wall of the Step Pyramid Complex at Saqqara.
Robert Bauval measuring the inclination of the Serdab.
Night photograph of the Serdab with the statue of King Djoser gazing towards the circumpolar stars.
Looking through the peephole at the Statue of King Djoser in the Serdab at Saqqara.
The Giza Pyramids during the flood season.
The Nile at Aswan during the flood season.
The solstices and equinoxes as seen in a flat desert landscape.
The sky-region of the Duat, showing Sirius (lower left of frame), the Pleiades (on middle right of frame), Orion (middle of frame) and the Milky Way.
( Facing page ) The Big Dipper seen upright.
The Bull’s Thigh constellation of the ancient Egyptians (Big Dipper) on the lid of the Asyut coffin, 10th dynasty (c. 2050 BC).
The goddess Isis with the Star Sothis (Sirius), Temple of Dendera (courtesy Sarite).
The goddess Isis suckling the infant Horus in the bullrushes, Temple of Horus at Edfu.
Sirius rising (lower left). Note Orion above the two persons.
The sun’s journey through the Duat: entry at the Pleiades (Spring Equinox) and exit at Leo (Summer Solstice).
As Above, So Below
The idea of developing a huge sacred landscape into an earthly model of the starry Duat is certainly mind-boggling, but it is precisely the kind of idea with which the ancient pyramid-builders of Egypt would have challenged themselves. Could the persistent Hermetic claim that ‘Egypt was made in the image of heaven’ be true after all?
The pyramid-builders were not just interested in Orion per se, but more particularly the 70 days that it spent in the underworld Duat, i.e. from its last setting in the west at dusk (heliacal setting) to its
Let us, therefore, now focus our attention on this issue alone.
The Step Pyramid Complex at Saqqara.
The Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara.
Details of panelled boundary wall of the Step Pyramid Complex at Saqqara.
Robert Bauval measuring the inclination of the Serdab.
Night photograph of the Serdab with the statue of King Djoser gazing towards the circumpolar stars.
Looking through the peephole at the Statue of King Djoser in the Serdab at Saqqara.
The Giza Pyramids during the flood season.
The Nile at Aswan during the flood season.
The solstices and equinoxes as seen in a flat desert landscape.
The sky-region of the Duat, showing Sirius (lower left of frame), the Pleiades (on middle right of frame), Orion (middle of frame) and the Milky Way.
( Facing page ) The Big Dipper seen upright.
The Bull’s Thigh constellation of the ancient Egyptians (Big Dipper) on the lid of the Asyut coffin, 10th dynasty (c. 2050 BC).
The goddess Isis with the Star Sothis (Sirius), Temple of Dendera (courtesy Sarite).
The goddess Isis suckling the infant Horus in the bullrushes, Temple of Horus at Edfu.
Sirius rising (lower left). Note Orion above the two persons.
The sun’s journey through the Duat: entry at the Pleiades (Spring Equinox) and exit at Leo (Summer Solstice).
As Above, So Below
The idea of developing a huge sacred landscape into an earthly model of the starry Duat is certainly mind-boggling, but it is precisely the kind of idea with which the ancient pyramid-builders of Egypt would have challenged themselves. Could the persistent Hermetic claim that ‘Egypt was made in the image of heaven’ be true after all?
The pyramid-builders were not just interested in Orion per se, but more particularly the 70 days that it spent in the underworld Duat, i.e. from its last setting in the west at dusk (heliacal setting) to its
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