THIRD LECTURE
ANCIENT EGYPTIAN ASTRONOMY
Some Terms
Symbols: Things which arbitrarily stand for other things. Signs are similar except that the relationship between the symbol and its referent is not arbitrary, where as with a symbol it is.
Isis: Wife and sister of Osiris. Identified as the star Sirius (Canis Major)
Osiris: husband and brother to Isis. Identified with the constellation of Orion.
Thuban: in Draco, the Drago. Was North Star at the time of the pyramids
Milky Way: Thought of as the celestial Nile. Runs east of Orion
Circumpolar stars: "imperishables" or “Immortals”: Stars which never set at a given latitude.
Important Constellations and Stars:
For Orion (Osiris) the major stars
| Greek Letter | Star Name | Magnitude |
| Alpha | Betelgeuse: (east "shoulder") | ~0.4-1.3 |
| Beta | Rigel: (west "knee") | .34 or .14 |
| Gamma | Bellatix (west "shoulder") | 1.64 |
| Delta | Mintaka (westernmost "belt" star) | 2.20 |
| Epsilon | Alnilam (center star in "belt") | 1.7 |
| Zeta | Alnitak (easternmost "belt" star) | 2.06 |
| Eta | ---- | 3.32 |
| Theta | Multiple star | |
| Iota | ==== | 2.76 |
| Kappam | Saiph (east "knee") | 2.06 |
Notice that the stars of Orion's belt are (from east to west):
Alnitak (2.06), Alnilam (1.7), Mintaka (2.2); The brightest of the three is in the center and the second brightest in furthest east, and the least bright is further west.
However in terms of apparent brightness, the two stars furthest east are of approximately the same brightness and the westernmost star is the dimmest.
For Canis Major (The Great Dog) the major star(Sirius - associeted with Isis):
| Greek Letter | Star Name | Magnitude |
| Alpha | Sirius | -1.47 |
Remember that symbols are "things which represent other things" without there being an intimate connection between them. The foot print of a dog is generally seen as an "sign" for the dog (that is it has a real or intimate connection) while the word "dog" is a symbol. This is clear since wherever the dog leaves its footprint it is recognizable as such, but the word for "dog" varies in all languages.
Anything can act as a symbol. Colors are commonly used. For the West, funerals require black or dark clothing, while first time marriages use white for purity. In China and Japan, white is the color of funerals, and red the color for weddings.
Animals can be used as symbols - the elephant for Reupblicans and the donkey for Democrats.
Numbers can be used to make reference to things as well. We use 13 for unlucky things - "Thirteen Ghost", "Friday the 13th" and so on are phrases and films which contain that number. For the West, three is a commonly used "general" number. It turns up regularly in places where people need a number - the genie who bestows three wishes, the number of bears Goldilocks meets and so on. It commonly works its way even into scientific materials - the early anthropologists postulated 3 stages in human evolution and so on.
Other cultures use other numbers. Four is common and may represent the 4 cardinal directions (N,E,S,W) or the intercardinal points (NE, SE, NW, SW) which may also be taken and the northern and southernmost rising and setting points of the sun. Four is common among many American Indian groups.
Other cultures use 5 (four directions and center); others use 6 (4 directions - above and below) while others may use 7 (4 directions, above below and center).
In addition to symbols that are simple references between things, stories may carry symbolic meanings as well - especially mythology. Anthropology generally distinguishes three (naturally) kinds of narrative stories - myths tales and legends. Myths are stories believed to be true and sacred; tales are not believed to be true, nor are they thought of as sacred. Finally, legends are thought to be true but not sacred. Hence stories that people believe about the supernatural are taken to be myths, even though the word in popular parlance means an untrue story. So the Bible, and so on are taken technically as the mythology of the people. Tales are stories like Cinderella, a fairy tale (often marekd in the West by the opening phrase "Once upon a time" and the closing phrase "and they all lived hapily ever after"). Legends are stories, usually about real people in the not to distant past (George Washington and the cherry tree).
Myths have been considered by many folklorists and anthropologists to be the most significant of the stories in the culture.
In ancient Egypt, the mythology involves many gods, four of whom are the children of an Earth father (Geb) and a sky mother (Nut).
These were the brother Osiris and Set and the sisters Isis and Nephys. Although the story varies in many details, Isis is sister and wife to Osiris and Nephys is the same to Set.
Set is a difficult character in Egyptian mythology being something of a trickster. He ultimately traps Osiris in a box which he throws in the Nile and which is found by Isis who manages to magically have a child by him, named Horus.
Set finds the body, and in some verision hacks it up into 14 pieces and scatters them across the land. Isis is able to find all but Osiris' genitals which have been thrown in the Nile (perhaps accounting ultimately for the Niles fertility).
Isis mummifies the body (a process taking 70 days) and then Osiris takes his place in the sky where he rules as "Pharaoh".
Osiris is often depicted as associated with the moon and vegetation - things which are cyclical since he is born and dies, returns, is dismembered, is restored and so on.
As a result, several numbers taken on symbolic meaning. The moon cycle is taken as 28 days (14 waxing 14 waning). The numbers 14 have significance and in painings in tombs, there are often 14 divinities found in association with Osiris - often ascending or descending stairs or similar objects. These may refer to the 14 days of the waxing and waning moon.
In terms of stars, rather than the moon, it is interesting to note that the 70 period of mummification is equal to the length of time that stars vanish from the sky.
The idea has been put forth that the pyramids are an attempt to construct "Orion" on Earth and that the reason for this was that Orion was Osiris in the Egyptian heavens. As a result, the three pyramids at Giza, which were the resting places of the Egyptian rulers, were oriented in some way to Orion.
There are three major and about 18 minor pyramids at Giza. The major ones are:
| Pyramid | Size | Height | Position |
| Khufu | 230 m sq. | 146 m | |
| Khephren | 214.5 | 143.5 m | Middle |
| Menkaure | 105 m sq. | 65.5 m | |
Of the three major ones, the distances between them and the alignments relative to one another match virtually perfectly the three stars in Orion's belt.
However, the stars in Orion's belt run NW to SE while the pyamid run NE to SW. So there are complex problems about the arrangements.
In the Great Pyramid (Khufu or Cheops) there are 2 shafts that go from inside the pyramids up and toward the outside, allthough the shafts do ot actually exit the pyramid. There function is unknown. They are sometimes refered to as "ventilator shafts", although this seems rather bizarre since the are small and don't exit the pyramid. They are found in no other pyramids. It has been suggested that these were "launch pads" that sent the soul of the Pharaoh to Osiris (Orion). The other chaft was oriented toward the star Thuban, which at the time of the builing of the pyramids would have been the North Star. Since this would have been then "pivot point" of all the stars, it would mean that it was the "head" of the "imperishable" or "immortal" stars.
Remember that ancient Egyptian culture has a rather long run. Predynastic Egypt dates from about 3,000 BC until the first dynasty begins about 2,800 BC and the last (Ptolemaic Dynasty) ends in 30 BC. Since this is a run of about 3,000 years, it is hard to use evidence from later dynasties to discuss problems in earlier ones.