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

by Sir Norman Lockyer

ST. PETER'S AT ROME: FAÇADE FACING THE EAST (TRUE).

But we have between our own churches and the Egyptian temples a link in the chain which has just been magnificently completed by Mr. Penrose by his study of the Greek temples. These interesting results will occupy us in a later chapter.

CHAPTER X.
THE SOLAR TEMPLE OF AMEN-RĀ AT KARNAK.

So much having been premised concerning the early temple-worship of the sun in Egypt and the adjacent countries, and the survival of some of the ideas connected with it down to our own day, I next propose to describe the finest Egyptian solar temple which remains open to our examination—that of Amen-Rā at Karnak.

Of the chief solar temples referred to in a previous chapter, two have passed away; even the orientation of the one at Heliopolis I was only able to determine by the mounds, assuming them to bear the same relation to the temple as other mounds do, and the remaining obelisk.

The temple at Abydos is also a mound; but in the case of the temple of Amen-Rā at Thebes the case is different: instead of being a mere heap, the orientation of which is obtainable only by the general lie of the remains, this temple is still in such preservation that Lepsius in the year 1844 could give us a large number of details about it, and locate the position of the innumerable courts. Its orientation to the solstice we can claim, as I hope to be able to show, as an early astronomical observation. So it is quite fair to say that, many thousand years ago at all events, the Egyptians were perfectly familiar with the solstices, and therefore more or less fully with the yearly path of the sun.

AXIS OF THE TEMPLE OF AMEN-RĀ FROM THE WESTERN PYLON, LOOKING SOUTH-EAST.

This temple of Amen-Rā is beyond all question the most majestic ruin in the world. There is a sort of stone avenue in the centre, giving a view towards the north-west, and this axis is something like five hundred yards in length. The whole object of the builder of the great temple at Karnak—one of the most soul-stirring temples which have ever been conceived or built by man—was to preserve that axis absolutely open; and all the wonderful halls of columns and the like, as seen on one side or other of the axis, are merely details; the point being that the axis should be absolutely open, straight, and true. The axis was directed towards the hills on the west side of the Nile, in which are the tombs of the kings. From the external pylon the South-eastern outlook through the ruins shows the whole length of the temple, and we see at the very extremity of the central line a gateway nearly six hundred yards away. This belonged to a temple pointing towards the south-east. There were really two temples in the same line back to back, the chief one facing the sunset at the summer solstice, the other probably the sunrise at the winter solstice. The distance which separates the outside entrances of both these temples is greater than that from Pall Mall to Piccadilly; the great temple covers about twice the area covered by St. Peter's at Rome, so that the whole structure was of a vastness absolutely unapproached in the modern ecclesiastical world.