Ancient Egyptian temple reveals previously unknown star constellations

[helicon]

https://www.livescience.com/ancient-egy ... tions.html

[smp]

Wow. Interesting read, Michael. Thanks very much for posting this.

smp

[helicon]

I've been to the temple of Esna and the colors are really remarkable. Over the millennia the temple was filled with sand and actually lost to the desert for a long time, but a village was built virtually on top of the temple in Christian/Islamic times. The sand was cleared out in the nineteenth century and it was used as a storehouse for cotton (as the article states). There was a huge boom in Egyptian cotton for use in Europe as the South could not provide cotton to the world as it had done up to the time of the Civil War. Nowadays the main crop is sugarcane. Archaeologists continue to work on the site and are removing the soot and grime that had obscured the brilliant colors.

As far as the constellations go they were largely defined by Ptolemy of Alexandria in the 1st century A.D. Mostly the constellations we know also were known to the Romans. Ptolemy devised the constellation Argo Navis, which since has been broken up into Carina, Vela, and Puppis...

[pakarinen]

Way cool! And the ba of my former incarnation during the reign of Sahure agrees. Or maybe the ka. Well, one of those guys anyway.

[Greenman]

Interesting stuff, can we marry this up to the computer predicted constellation shape at that time.

[Makuser]

Hi Michael. This is a fascinating read here. But, with no star outlines or patterns carved into the stone, it is difficult to tell how these descriptions relate or compare to our modern system or concept of the constellations. Also, remember that the polar star at that time was not Polaris but Thuban.

Ancient polar star.jpg (18.12 KiB) Viewed 1763 times

Also, as you know, this is due to the slight wobble of earths axis in a 26,000-year precession cycle that causes the north celestial pole to move counter-clockwise relative to the backdrop stars. Thanks for finding and sharing this interesting link with us Michael, and keep "digging up" the great archeological news for us.

[Ylem]

Remarkable information