The dawn of astronomy / A study of the temple-worship and mythology of the ancient Egyptians

by Sir Norman Lockyer

"I will now treat of what I before omitted—the garment of the high priest, for he [Moses] left no room for the evil practices of [false] prophets; but if some of that sort should attempt to abuse the Divine authority, he left it to God to be present at His sacrifices when He pleased, and when He pleased to be absent. And he was willing this should be known, not to the Hebrews only, but to those foreigners also who were there. For as to those stones, which we told you before, the high priest bare on his shoulders, which were sardonyxes (and I think it needless to describe their feature, they being known to everybody), the one of them shined out when God was present at their sacrifices.[20] I mean that which was of the nature of a button on his right shoulder, bright rays darting out thence, and being seen even by those who were most remote; which splendour yet was not before natural to the stone."

Josephus[21] states that the miraculous shining of the jewels ceased two hundred years before his time, "God having been displeased at the transgression of His laws."

This remark of Josephus quite justifies the assumption that the effect of sunlight on the priest's jewels formed part of the ceremonial, and in this way. In the earliest times there is no doubt that the equinoctial temples were solar temples pure and simple, and the rising sun would always, in fine weather, shine into them at the equinox, which, while they were used as solar temples, marked New Year's Day. The influence of the later Babylonian astronomy, however, at length replaced the sun by the moon, and the year would commence, not at the equinox, but by a new or a full moon near the equinox. If either of these happened at the equinox, well and good; but if not, then the sun's declination might be widely different from 0°—it might amount roughly to 10° either N. or S.—and under these circumstances, as the amplitude would be greater, the sun's light could not enter the temple at all at the date of the feast. More than this, a mistake of a month might be made, or a question of old style and new style might come in, and that of course would make matters worse. In this way, then, the withdrawal of the sunlight from the temple at Jerusalem admits of being astronomically explained.

It seems highly probable that the temple in question was built on a Phenician foundation, for some of the stones exceed 38 feet in length and weigh 90 tons.[22] This remark is suggested by the fact that at Baalbek or Heliopolis, to which I next direct attention, the most ancient and most massive part of the structure is, in all probability, of Phenician origin. To give an idea of its massiveness, which is almost more than Egyptian, it may be stated that there are three stones each about 64 feet long, 13 feet high, and 13 feet thick. There are smaller stones used in the filling in, of the same height and thickness, and 30 feet long.[23] These form the western wall of the original naos or of its support.

Here the orientation is due E.[24] When we come to Palmyra, we find also another temple to the equinoctial sun; but here the sunset, and not the sunrise, is in question—the temple faces due west.

In the whole problem, then, of orientation as I have had to present it, and as it now stands, we seem for the moment to be face to face with two very remarkable and strange things; so strange that the argument may appear far-fetched and worthless, since we are landed in a region apparently very far removed from our modern habits of thought. But is this really so? I assume the personification or the deification of the sun: I shall subsequently have to include the stars; I indicate special orientations of buildings devoted to the worship of the sun at one time of the year or another. But really both these things, though they seem improbable, have been carried down to our own day, quite independently of any question relating to Egypt. There is nothing new about them at all, and there is nothing really strange. When we go into an observatory we think nothing of turning our telescope towards Venus, or Jupiter, or Mars. Here we have the deification of the planets. It is perfectly true that this religious treatment of the planets is not of our own day: we have inherited it from the Greeks through the Latins; but we do not think it at all extraordinary that a planet should be called Venus or Jupiter. Thus we of to-day are completely in touch with the old Egyptians, except that the Egyptians were wiser in their generation, and looked after the sun at fixed points in the year and the constant stars instead of the variable planets.

Then, again, take the question of orientation. This is, after all, one which survives among ourselves. All our churches are more or less oriented, which is a remnant of old sun-worship.[25] Any church that is properly built to-day will have its axis pointing to the rising of the sun on the Saint's Day, i.e., a church dedicated to St. John ought not to be parallel to a church dedicated to St. Peter. It is true that there are sometimes local conditions which prevent this; but if the architect knows his business properly he is unhappy unless he can carry out this old-world tradition. But it may be suggested that in our churches the door is always to the west and the altar is always to the east. That is perfectly true, but it is a modern practice. Certainly in the early centuries the churches were all oriented to the sun, so that the light fell on the altar through the eastern doors at sunrise. The late Gilbert Scott, in his "Essay on Church Architecture," gives a very detailed account of these early churches, which in this respect exactly resembled the Egyptian temples.

PLAN OF ST. PETER'S AT ROME, SHOWING THE DOOR FACING THE SUNRISE.

In regard to old St. Peter's at Rome,[26] we read that "so exactly due east and west was the Basilica that, on the vernal equinox, the great doors of the porch of the quadriporticus were thrown open at sunrise, and also the eastern doors of the church itself, and as the sun rose, its rays passed through the outer doors, then through the inner doors, and, penetrating straight through the nave, illuminated the High Altar." The present church fulfils the same conditions.