Ancient calendars and constellations

by Emmeline M. Plunket

Turning first to some of the facts which archæology has taught us regarding the ancient Egyptians, it will be interesting to see if there are any indications in their astronomy or mythology of honour paid to the constellation Aries in connexion with the progress of the sun and moon through the figures of the Zodiac.

It is true that the acquaintance of the ancient Egyptians with these figures is a matter still in dispute, and the various methods of counting the year followed by them also present great difficulties to scholars. It is, however, admitted that they were a people much given to the observation and worship of the heavenly bodies, and that their astronomy and mythology were very closely interwoven with each other.

In the time of the Middle Empire, it seems, the months in the civil year were not counted as lunar months, but as months of thirty days each. The year was not counted as a sidereal year, but as one of three hundred and sixty days—twelve months of thirty days—with five days added at the end of each year to bring up the number to three hundred and sixty-five days. No attention was paid to the odd hours and minutes over and above the three hundred and sixty-five days, which are occupied by the sun in completing his annual course.

Mr Griffiths has remarked in the number of the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology for March 1892, that the hieroglyph for month points to an originally lunar month, and I would suggest that the star under the first crescent seems to point also to a month originally counted sidereally, i.e., dependent upon the conjunction of the sun and moon in some particular star-group of the ecliptic. As a matter of fact, the Egyptians made use not only of a civil year such as has been above described, but also of a sidereal year, counted from the heliacal rising of Sirius, and it is perhaps possible that the months in this sidereal year were counted as lunar months, and the year treated as soli-lunar and sidereal.

In these two Egyptian calendars—so far as they are at present understood—no reference to the constellation Aries seems to be discernible. The agricultural importance of the season of the summer solstice in Egypt, coinciding as it does with the rising of the Nile, may have induced calendar-makers at some very early date to re-arrange the order of the year, so as to make it begin at the summer rather than the winter solstice—the season, as it is contended in these Papers, originally chosen 6,000 B.C. by astronomers in a more northern latitude than that of Egypt as the starting-point of a year sidereally marked by the conjunction of the sun with the constellation Aries.

But if we turn to the Egyptian mythology, the importance of the Ram, or rather of the head of the Ram, as it is revealed in the monuments, and in the pictorial art of the ancient Egyptians, must continually strike the student of Egyptian symbolism.

Amen, the great god of the Theban triad (Amen, Maut, and Chons), is sometimes represented as ram-headed—his boat and his sceptre are always adorned with a ram’s head, and the great temple to him, in conjunction with the sun, i.e. to Amen-Ra, is approached through an avenue of gigantic ram-headed sphinxes, and this is also the case as regards the temple of Chons—the moon-god—at right angles, and in close proximity, to the great temple of Amen-Ra.

Scholars tell us that Horus, Isis, and Osiris,—the Memphian triad—symbolized the diurnal motion of the sun and other heavenly bodies, and it need not appear improbable that the great Theban triad, Amen, Maut, and Chons, should have originally symbolized the annual course of those same bodies through the constellations of the Zodiac. This would account for the prominence of the Ram in connexion with the worship of this triad—the Ram, which, as I have argued, in many countries, and possibly in Egypt also, marked the first division of the Zodiac and year.

A prayer to Amen is translated by G. Maspero in the April number for 1891 of the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology;[19] from this translation it would appear that Amen is implored to bring the calendar into touch with the real seasons of the year. If Amen represented a sidereally marked point in the yearly course of the sun, such a prayer might suitably have been addressed to him by the Egyptians.

[19] “Il ne me reste plus qu’à donner la traduction suivie du texte (Papyrus Anastasi, iv., p. 10. L 1-5), dont je viens d’expliquer le sens et le développement littéraire.