Ancient calendars and constellations

by Emmeline M. Plunket

“Viens à moi, Amon, me délivrer de l’année fâcheuse, où le dieu Shou (Shou était, à l’époque des Ramessides et plus tard, le dieu du soleil solstitial, du soleil d’été, comme Brugsch l’a montré fort ingénieusement) ne se lève plus, où vient l’hiver où était l’été, où les mois s’en vont hors leur place, où les heures se brouillent, où les grands t’appellent, ô Amon, où les petits te cherchent, où ceux même qui sont encore dans les bras de leur nourrice, ceux-là (crient): ‘Donne les souffles!’—Amon trouve Amon écoute, Amon est le sain devant qui marchent les souffles agréables; il me donne d’être comme l’aile du vautour, comme la palette chargée des discours des Esprits pour les bergers dans les champs, pour les laveurs sur la berge, pour les garde-chasse qui sortent au territoire des gazelles afin de lacer (le gibier).”

M. Maspero states that the latter lines of the text are injured and difficult to decipher or to understand.

The great temple to Amen-Ra at Thebes, approached, as has been stated above, through an avenue of ram-headed sphinxes, is oriented to the setting sun of the season so important to Egyptians, that of the summer solstice, and this fact strengthens the opinion that Amen was considered to be a god in some way presiding over the course of the year and its right measurement. It is true that this orientation of his temple precluded the possibility of the light from any star of the constellation Aries ever shining into the shrine of the god; but it is perhaps possible that the ceremony of “the great feast-day of Amon Father,” described by Ebers, may have been devised by the votaries of Amen as a means whereby they could honour the god, as one presiding over the most propitious season of the year, and also recall the sidereal connexion of the god of the year with the, from times immemorial highly reverenced, constellation Aries.

At pp. 277 and 278 of Egypt, Descriptive, Historical, and Picturesque, vol. ii., Ebers, having referred to some figures represented on the walls of a Memnonium in the Nekropolis erected by Rameses II., exactly opposite to the Great Temple of Karnak, observes:—

“Of these figures the inscription says:—‘As they approach the king their arms are filled with choice produce and stores, and all the good things that the earth brings forth are gathered by them to add to the joy on the great feast-day of Amon, the father.’”

“These words refer to the great ‘feast of the Valley’ (heb en-ant), when, on the 29th day of the second month of the inundation, the statue of Amon was brought forth from the sanctuary with much magnificence and solemnity, and conveyed across the Nile to the Nekropolis, that the god might there offer sacrifices to his ancestors in the other world. The priests of the house of Seti received the procession with the splendid bark Sam, the most sacred of all the vessels that were preserved in the temple of Karnak: in this the statue of the god was placed, and borne first to the Memnonium of Seti, and then round about the Nekropolis, preceded by a crowd of temple servants, who strewed the way with sand. The solemnities ended with a grand nocturnal spectacle, on the great sacred lake of which traces may still be seen to the extreme south of the Nekropolis.

“The Egyptian religion prescribed to all its followers that they should visit the tombs of their dead and bring offerings, in grateful remembrance of their parents and forefathers; and as, day after day, millions of suns had gone to rest—as men do—behind the realm of tombs in the Libyan hills, the god himself was brought to do honour to his departed ancestry, and to sacrifice to them.”

The rising of the Nile in Egypt coincides very closely with the season of the summer solstice. At the date of Rameses II.—a date not yet unanimously agreed on by scholars, but which may be safely placed between 1,400 and 1,100 B.C.—the sun at the season of the summer solstice was in the constellation Cancer (see [Plate II.]), and two months later its place in the ecliptic was a few degrees to the west of a point exactly opposed to the first stars of Aries and to the initial point of the Indian Zodiac. On the evening, therefore, of the 29th day of the second month of the inundation, when the sun had now sunk behind the Libyan hills, and daylight had faded sufficiently to allow them to show their light,[20] the first stars of Aries rose above the eastern horizon, and at midnight attained to the southern meridian.

[20] When the sun is about 7° below the western horizon, stars in the opposite quarter of the heavens begin to be visible.

PLATE II.