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

by Sir Norman Lockyer

In the case of Amen-t and Khons, therefore, where we are free from the difficulties connected with the interchange of the titles of Isis and Hathor at Denderah, the star-cults stand out much more clearly, and we get a step further into the domain of mythology.

But what did the cults mean? What was the utility of them? What their probable origin? The cult of Sirius we already understand.

I will deal with Amen-t first. No doubt it will have been already asked how it came that such an unfamiliar star as Phact had been selected.

Here the answer is overwhelming. This star, although so little familiar to us northerners, is one of the most conspicuous of the stars in the southern portion of the heavens, and its heliacal rising heralded the solstice and the rise of the Nile before the heliacal rising of Sirius was useful for that purpose!

In Phact we have the star symbolised by the ancient Egyptians under the name of the goddess Amen-t or Teχi, whose figure in the month table at the Ramesseum leads the procession of the months.

Amen-t, the wife of the solstitial sun-god Rā, symbolised the star the rising of which heralded the solstice; and the complex title Amen-Rā signified in ancient times, to those who knew, that the solstitial sun-god Rā, so heralded, was meant.

The answer is clear, though not so simple in the case of Khons. The setting of Canopus marked the autumnal equinox about 5000 B.C. We have found that the first Khons temple at Karnak was possibly built as late as 2000 B.C., when the utility of the observations of Canopus from this point of view had therefore ceased; but it is also known that Khons was a late addition to the Theban triad, and I shall subsequently give evidence that the worship was introduced from the south, where it had been conducted when the condition of utility held. The time of introduction to Thebes was the beginning of the eighteenth dynasty, when the priests wished to increase their power by conciliating all worships; and we now see that with their local sun-god Amen-Rā and the goddess Amen-t, with the Northern Mut (Isis) and the Southern Khons, the Theban triad represented the worship of Central, Northern and Southern Egypt.

It is an important fact to bear in mind that in the North of Egypt in early times the stellar temples were more particularly directed to the north, while south of Thebes, so far as I know, there is only one temple so directed. It is suggested, therefore, that the Theban priests amalgamated the northern and southern cults, probably for political purposes. There is evidence that the priests were at heart more sympathetic with the southern cults, and a further investigation of this matter may eventually help us in several points of Egyptian history.

It will have been noticed also that so far as we have gone, whether discussing solar or stellar temples, we have had to associate the cults carried on in most of them with some particular season of the year. If I am right, in the worships at Denderah, Medînet-Habû, and Karnak, we have a strict reference to the year, and in Egypt the year was always, as it is now, associated with the rise of the river.

The sacred river must now occupy our attention for a while; we must become familiar with its phenomena, and the divisions of time and the calendar systems which were associated with them.