When one comes to consider the Rig-Veda and the Egyptian monuments from an astronomical point of view, one is struck by the fact that, in both, the early worship and all the early observations related to the horizon. This was true not only of the sun, with which so far we have exclusively dealt, but it was equally true of the stars which studded the general expanse of sky.
In Egypt, then, as in India, the pantheon was astronomical and, to a very large extent, solar in origin. I shall have to show that the remainder—nearly the whole of it—had its origin in stellar relations.
CHAPTER IV.
THE TWO HORIZONS.
It is not only of the first importance for our subject, but of great interest in itself, to study some of the astronomical problems connected with this horizon worship, which in the previous chapter we have found to be common to the early peoples of India and Egypt.
APPARENT MOVEMENT OF THE STARS TO AN OBSERVER AT THE NORTH POLE.
We must be perfectly clear before we go further what this horizon really is, and for this some diagrams are necessary.
The horizon of any place is the circle which bounds our view of the earth's surface, along which the land (or sea) and sky appear to meet. We have to consider the relation of the horizon of any place to the apparent movements of celestial bodies at that place.
We know, by means of the demonstration afforded by Foucault's pendulum, that the earth rotates on its axis, but this idea was, of course, quite foreign to these early peoples. Since the earth rotates with stars, infinitely removed, surrounding it on all sides, the apparent movements of the stars will depend very much upon the position we happen to occupy on the earth: this can be made quite clear by a few diagrams.
