On the Orientation of Ancient Egyptian Temples: (2) New Experiments at the Oases of the Western Desert

Shaltout M. Belmonte J. A. , “On the orientation of ancient Egyptian temples: (1) Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia”, Journal for the history of astronomy , xxxvi (2005), 273–98. Hereafter Paper 1.

For example, at a recent conference, Rolf Krauss argued that “es dudoso que la orientación del eje hacia el solsticio haya sido intencional y no una simple consecuencia de su posición respecto al Nilo”. The manuscript of the conference will be published in R. Krauss, “¿Las ilusiones perdidas? Recientes intentos en arqueoastronomía en Egipto”, Boletín de la Asociación Española de Egiptología , xvi (2006), in the press.

A very good reference for the ancient history and archaeology of the Western Desert Oases (from Bahariya to Kharga) is Aufrère S. Golvin J. C. Goyon J. C. , L'Égypte restitueé , ii: Sites et temples des deserts (Paris, 1994). The oasis of Fayum is discussed in Aufrère S. Golvin J. C. Goyon J. C. , L'Égypte restitueé , iii: Sites, temples et pyramides de Moyenne et Basse Égypte (Paris, 1997). Also interesting, at a popular level, is Siliotti A. , The Fayoum and Wadi el-Rayan (Cairo, 2003). Useful information for the temples in these areas can be gained from Wilkinson R. H. , The complete temples of ancient Egypt (London, 2000) or from Bagnall R. S. Rathbone D. W. (eds), Egypt from Alexander to the Copts (London, 2004). The oasis of Siwa was alien to Egyptian influences until very late in Egyptian history (early sixth century b.c.) and has not been included in this particular study. However, it will be the objective of a future campaign.

A few months before our campaign, the American archaeologist Erin Nell took measurements in some of the larger temples in Bahariya, Dakhla and Kharga. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, these data have not yet been reported or published.

Magnetic anomalies are not to be expected in Egypt, where most of the terrain is limestone and sandstone. Only in Bahariya, where part of the land is covered by basalt, did we take special sunset measurements to verify the standard values. There were no significant alterations. In any case, the temples were mostly measured along their main axis, from inside the sanctuary to the outermost gate and, on several occasions, in the opposite direction checking for possible alterations of the measurement.

Belmonte J. A. , “Astronomy on the horizon and dating, a tool for ancient Egyptian chronology?”, in Handbook of Egyptian chronology , ed. by Hornung E. Krauss R. Warburton D. (Leiden, 2006), in press.

The datum has been taken from appropriate site plans in Werbrouck M. , “Le temple de Qsar es-Shaga”, CdE , xxv (1950), 199–208; and Arnold D. , Der temple Qsar el-Sagha (Mainz, 1979).

See Fakhry A. , Bahriyah and Farafra (Cairo, 2003), Fig. 22.

Even within the Nile hypothesis framework, we could argue that these orientations were followed because they represent more or less the four cardinal directions. Indeed, these could be the alignments actually sought by the constructors when orientating according to the Nile. However, we cannot discard the importance of the river within ancient Egyptian culture, especially in mythology or economy, and double alignments, as determined both by sky-watching and local topography, could be envisaged in several cases.

See for example, Lehner M. , The complete pyramids (London, 1997), 96. However, this explanation looks like a sad example of a vox nihil.

Lehner , op. cit. (ref. 10) offered a completely wrong value of 12° NW. This demonstrates the necessity for accurate local measurements of most of ancient Egyptian monuments that were used as the central idea for the creation of this project.

In Belmonte J. A. Zedda M. , “Light and shadows on the pyramids”, in Light and shadows in cultural astronomy, Proceedings of the SEAC 13^th Meeting, ed. by Zedda M. Belmonte J. A. (Cagliari, 2006), in press. Curiously, Krauss R. (private communication) has discovered that “with one exception, the small pyramids are situated at distances of about 150 Km. along the Nile, i.e. the distance which is covered by the Nile flooding when it flows at a velocity of about 6 Km. per hour”. Accordingly, he suggests the idea that the small pyramids could mark the progress of the high flood in full-day intervals, beginning at Elephantine. Actually, we have the impression that the two hypotheses could be related.

For that location and that particular epoch. As we will discuss later, in later times, part of the Plough ceased to be circumpolar from many sites in Egypt.

Either the star rise and set angular bisection theory defended by Edwards I. E. S. , The pyramids of Egypt, 3rd edn (Harmondsworth, 1993); or the simultaneous transit hypothesis defended by Belmonte J. A. , “On the orientation of the Old Kingdom pyramids”, Archaeoastronomy , no. 26 (2001), S1–20, could work perfectly in this particular case. Indeed, the first author favours the latter.

For a recent discussion on the Egyptian calendar, see Belmonte J. A. , “Some open questions on the Egyptian calendar: An astronomer's view”, Trabajos de Egiptología (Papers on Ancient Egypt) , no. 2 (2003), 7–56. One conclusion of that work was that the ancient Egyptians used just one calendar, the so-called civil, during most of their history. New Year at the civil calendar was wandering across the tropical seasons in rather more than 15 centuries, due to its fixed length of 365 days in contrast to the slightly longer duration of the tropical year.

We will not discuss here whether by sunrise we should interpret the first rays of the sun or the moment when the complete disc can be seen above the horizon. As already mentioned, we are not seeking extreme precision.

The presence of temples aligned with the winter solstice sunrise, whose orientation is not dictated by the Nile, might add new hints to the discussion if the temples orientated in that way in the area of Luxor were a result of pure chance, due to the river's flowing in a suitable direction in that particular region, or were deliberately planned accordingly. We reiterate our opinion that a combination of local topography and sky-watching conspired to create a particularly “sacred landscape” in the area of Thebes. Interestingly, similar arguments have been postulated for some of the most important cities of ancient Mexico; see Šprajc I. , “More on Mesoamerican cosmology and city plans”, Latin American antiquity , v (2005), 209–16. In the same line of argument, it is worth noticing that the Amon-Re temple at Meroe (Sudan) was also orientated to sunrise at the winter solstice, as shown in Kelley D. H. and Milone E. F. , Exploring ancient skies: An encyclopedic survey of archaeoastronomy (New York, 2005), Plate I. These authors postulate that “similar alignments at Karnak were intentional”.

For Karanis, see Aufrère , op. cit. (ref. 3, 1997), 194; for Birbaya and Kellis see Aufrère , op. cit. (ref. 3, 1994), 115–18.

See Aufrère , op. cit. (ref. 3, 1997), 199.

In Aufrère , op. cit. (ref. 3, 1997), 199.

Preliminary results from the excavations certainly suggest a Ptolemaic construction of the temple. Siliotti , op. cit. (ref. 3).

Aufrère , op. cit. (ref. 3, 1994), 100. The place, called Per-Wesekh in ancient Egyptian, was reputed for the quality of its wines, at least from the Twelfth Dynasty.

For example, a similar shrine, no longer extant, was constructed by a Sheshonq King , perhaps the fourth of the series, at the oasis of Bahariya. See Fakhry , op. cit. (ref. 8), Fig. 38.

For a recent interpretation of some of the “mysteries” of Senenmut's astronomical ceiling, see Belmonte J. A. Shaltout M. , “The astronomical ceiling of Senenmut, a dream of mystery and imagination”, in Light and shadows in cultural astronomy (ref. 12), in press.

See Kaper O. E. , “The astronomical ceiling of Deir el-Haggar in the Dakhleh Oasis”, Journal of Egyptian archaeology , lxxxi (1995), 175–95. The author interprets the divinities as representing the lunar months. However, Belmonte , op. cit. (ref. 15), has shown that the only known months are those of the civil calendar.

This demonstrates that the list is of civil months, since the month Paophi is never associated with any series of lunar months, should these ever have existed. Curiously, Opet is represented (see Fig. 9) in the same way as the celestial hippopotamus is depicted in several astronomical ceilings. Besides, other images of this goddess frequently represent her with a couple of long feathers above her head. This supports the idea, stressed in Belmonte J. A. , “The Ramesside star clocks and the ancient Egyptian constellations”, in Calendars, symbols and orientations: Legacies of astronomy in culture , ed. by Blomberg M. Blomberg P. Henrikson G. (Stockholm, 2003), 57–66, that the female hippopotamus of the celestial diagrams and the constellation rrt of the Ramesside clocks, who wears two feathers according to the hieroglyphic inscriptions, are exactly the same. This had been questioned by Neugebauer O. and Parker R. A. , Ancient Egyptian astronomical texts , iii (Providence, 1969). This idea is also independently defended by Lull J. , La astronomía del antiguo Egipto (Valencia, 2004), 273.

For the inscriptions at Edfu, see Brugsch H. , Thesaurus inscriptionum aegyptiacarum , i: Astronomische und astrologische Inschriften altaegyptischer Denkmäler (Leipzig, 1883). For the orientation of the Edfu temple, see Paper 1.

For a map of these interesting chapels, which have been recently restored in a bizarre fashion, complicating the interpretation of the settlement, see Fakhry , op. cit. (ref. 8), Fig. 22. Dubhe reached a western polar distance of 343 ¼° in 600 b.c.

These dates are c. 695 b.c. for El-Fayum Depression and 940 b.c. for Bahariya Oasis. For Dakhla and Kharga Oases, Alkaid was circumpolar for only a few decades around 2500 b.c. For Alexandria, it happened at 500 b.c. The magnitude of Alkaid is 1.9. This means that, according to some basic extinction parameters, it cannot be seen until it is at an angular height of the same order, i.e. 2°.

At the time of writing this paper, we have taken measurements of more than 200 temples. Data will be hopefully completed with temples at the Delta, monuments in the Cairo area (about half of which have been measured) and some isolated shrines in the Eastern Desert and the Sinai.