Al-Ahram Weekly
Posted on 03/24/2023 11:08:54 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Egypt's first complete Zodiac was uncovered on the ceiling of the Temple of Esna in Luxor governorate during restoration work carried out by an Egyptian-German expedition...
After five years of cleaning and restoration work, the joint Egyptian-German mission uncovered a bright and colourful astronomical representation of the ancient Egyptian night sky.
The relief contains all the twelve Zodiac signs, the outer planets of Jupiter, Saturn and Mars, as well as depictions of the so-called seven arrows and constellations used by the ancient Egyptians in time measurement.
...these findings were not recorded by the temple's previous publication by late French Egyptologist Serge Sauneron, who documented the temple's reliefs in 1963 and 1975.
Christian Leitz, director of the project from the University of Tübingen, said that the Zodiac itself was part of Babylonian astronomy that was likely introduced by the Greeks who ruled Egypt during the last three centuries BC.
The Zodiac became very popular as it was used to decorate private tombs, sarcophagi, and was an important element of astrological texts and horoscopes on demotic ostraca...
The Temple of Esna dates back to the Roman period.
Construction began under the reign of Emperor Claudius while its decorations were finished during the time of Emperor Decius, between 249-251 AD...
During the 19th and 20th centuries the temple suffered from urban encroachment as houses were built around it and was even used for cotton storage during the reign of Mohamed Ali Pasha.
(Excerpt) Read more at english.ahram.org.eg ...
Nearly one of *those* topics.
The other GGG topics added since the previous digest ping, chrono sort:
BTTT
By Egyptian standards, that's like taking a New York City phone book where every page represents 5 years and opening up to the very last page. Sometimes it's hard to imagine what wonders have been lost from the years represented by all those other pages. One hopes we never stop finding them.
If I recall correctly, archeologists had (a few years back) come to the conclusion that the Babylonians had originally had THIRTEEN zodiacal signs.
In addition to the twelve well-known zodiacal signs, they had also recognized the constellation of Ophiuchus (the Snake-Bearer) as a zodiacal sign.
Of course, this would require shortening the remaining 12 periods.
I noted it especially because my astrological sign would then have shifted from Sagittarius to Ophiuchus.
Regards,
[snip] As is the case with all of the Zodiac constellations, Ophiuchus was recorded in the 2nd century by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy, and the name is Latin for “serpent bearer.”
...
The Babylonians associated the constellation with Nirah, a god who was sometimes depicted with a human upper body and legs that were serpents.
Ophiuchus is the 13th sign of the Zodiac in astrology (which is not a science) and represents those born between Nov. 30 and Dec. 17. [/snip]
https://www.space.com/21759-ophiuchus.html
[snip] There is no evidence of the constellation preceding the classical era, and in Babylonian astronomy, a “Sitting Gods” constellation seems to have been located in the general area of Ophiuchus. However, Gavin White proposes that Ophiuchus may in fact be remotely descended from this Babylonian constellation, representing Nirah, a serpent-god who was sometimes depicted with his upper half human but with serpents for legs.[57]
The earliest mention of the constellation is in Aratus, informed by the lost catalogue of Eudoxus of Cnidus (4th century BCE)... Ophiuchus is one of the thirteen constellations that cross the ecliptic.[65] It has sometimes been suggested as the “13th sign of the zodiac”. However, this confuses zodiac or astrological signs with constellations.[66] The signs of the zodiac are a twelve-fold division of the ecliptic, so that each sign spans 30° of celestial longitude, approximately the distance the Sun travels in a month, and (in the Western tradition) are aligned with the seasons so that the March equinox always falls on the boundary between Pisces and Aries.[67][68] Constellations, on the other hand, are unequal in size and are based on the positions of the stars. The constellations of the zodiac have only a loose association with the signs of the zodiac, and do not in general coincide with them. [/snip]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiuchus
How do you uncover a thing that is directly above you meant to be viewed from below?
The whole thing was buried in sand.
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