Ancient calendars and constellations

by Emmeline M. Plunket

It is curious to note that there seems to be no pronounced allusion in Egyptian art or literature to these four constellations, though there are indications (see pp. 230-238) which may lead us to believe that the astronomical phenomena of the later date, 4000 B.C., were closely observed, and seem to have formed the basis of much of the mythology of Egypt.

These facts tend to confirm the conclusion—so often advocated in this book—that the ancestors of the Egyptians, as also of all the great civilized nations of antiquity, followed through many long ages the same sidereal calendar—one based on the observation of the colures amongst the fixed stars 6000 B.C. And it would seem that not till about 4000 B.C., when the colures had traversed, from east to west, the constellations Pisces, Gemini, Virgo, and Sagittarius, and had arrived at the eastern degrees of Aquarius, Taurus, Leo, and Scorpio, did astronomic authorities in Egypt direct their attention to a reform of the calendar and introduce into it, and into religious observances, references to these four last-named constellations.

Turning to [Plate XVI.] we may notice that the equinoctial colure, marking out as it does the extreme western limits of the constellation Cancer, passes also through a part of the constellation Gemini. This fact may, I think, help to explain some of the legends connected with the twins Castor and Pollux in ancient lore.

A very brilliant star glitters on the head of each twin. These stars are of almost equal lustre and well deserve the name of twin stars; and so we can easily suppose how it was that the imaginative astronomers who, at the early date in question, mapped out the figures of the Zodiac, noticing that the equinoctial colure passed between these two bright stars, should have elected to represent them as marking the heads of twin figures, which they determined should symbolize the equal day and night of the season over which they presided.

These two stars, thousands of years after they had ceased to mark the equinox, were still associated by the Greeks with the twin heroes—Castor and Pollux—brothers who, according to the legend, were “possessed of an immortality of existence so divided among them, that as one dies, the other revives.” The learned Dr Barrett has pointed out that “this furnishes a complete description of Day and Night.” This remark of Dr Barrett’s becomes especially interesting if we attribute the first symbolizing of day and night by these stars to the work of astronomers at a date when the day and night these stars symbolized were of exactly equal length, and when, therefore, the equal stars and equal alternation of light and darkness might both be fitly symbolized as twins.

At [Plate XVIII.] it is to be observed that the equinoctial colure, instead of adjoining Capricornus, occupies an almost central position in the preceding constellation, Sagittarius. This fact, together with other considerations, has led me to think that originally only the bow and arrow of Sagittarius were imagined for that division of the ecliptic; and that the huge composite figure of the archer—half man and half horse—was added to the original design in later ages, by astronomers who chose the spring equinox instead of the winter solstice for the beginning of the year.

In discussing the Median calendar, the importance which seems to have been given by the ancestors of the Medes to the constellation Sagittarius, at a date when it marked the spring equinox, was dwelt upon. It will, I think, appear likely, when we come to study [Plates XIX.] and [XX.], that as early as 4600 B.C. constellations were imagined to honour and mark the equinoctial as well as the solstitial seasons.

Perhaps then, at that date the constellation Sagittarius was extended to its present dimensions; and it may be that some centuries later, when the colure of the winter solstice had passed into the constellation Aquarius, some astronomers desired—like Gudea of Lagash and Tchuen-Hio in China—to honour that season, and to make it the beginning of the year. It may be that such astronomers dealt with the eleventh constellation of the Zodiac, as earlier ones had dealt with Sagittarius, and that they added to what was possibly originally only a water jar, Amphora, the figure of the water pourer Aquarius.

These ideas are put forward very speculatively. They were partly suggested by noticing that in the Indian Zodiac the name of the constellation Sagittarius is merely Dhanus (arrow), and the name of Aquarius is Kumbha (water jar).

In the diagrams which we have been discussing, it will be observed that only the twelve figures of the Zodiac, and two of the extra-Zodiacal constellations, are given in continuous outline, one of these two is Draco—the dragon or serpent whose folds surround the Pole of the Ecliptic—the central point of the circle of the Zodiac.