Sirius of Dendera & The "Degree of Decline"

Introduction

In our previous article on the Sothic calendar we examined the central role of Sirius in ancient Egypt as a marker for time. It was shown that the position of Sirius with respect to the Summer solstice has remained almost unchanged even though the zodiac moves slowly around the ecliptic. In the end we surmised that knowledge of a systematic motion of Sirius in the celestial sphere and in relation to the seasons can only be the result of profound wisdom and/or many centuries of careful observations carried out with mathematical exactitude. However, we must be very careful not to presume that the monuments, motifs and messages the ancients carved in stone are merely a testimony of their material and intellectual wealth. Since we lack the capacity to fully understand the true motives of the ancients for creating such extant records, we must be even more careful not to dismiss their stellar symbolism merely as “fashionable” cultural expressions, naïve religious beliefs or as superstition. Ancient science was neither a cult nor was it based on "coincidence" or "chance", although in the hermetic tradition the ambiguity of the element of hazard was profoundly understood. For the ancient Egyptians, who observed nature and the motions of the heavens, Sirius - the Great Provider - occupied a place far more sacred than our physical understanding of space and time allows us to fathom.

"In sum, it is good that all which is fullest of meaning be couched in concise, even obscure terms - so that a mediocre mind prefers to see only nonsense in it, and so desists from mistranslating it into his native insipidity."

Johann Paul Friedrich Richter (1763-1825)

Dendera

The round zodiac of the famous Temple of Dendera, consecrated to the ancient and pre-dynastic goddess Hathor, is a prominent example of how difficult it is to decipher messages of an ancient civilization.

Ever since this zodiac was blasted out of the temple’s ceiling, the interpretation of its imagery and symbolism has sparked much controversy among historians and astronomers, who thought of it as a planisphere and employed the theory of lunisolar precession to date it. Because of the many flawed dating schemes and orientation theories, some experts suggested that the zodiac is an astrological chart and that the stars, in general, have no positional meaning, although the 36 Decans and the planetary signs may.

The majority of scholars think that this work-of-art, depicting constellations and austral signs, which is essentially a map of the heavenly spaces, was founded in Greco-Roman times; i.e. shortly after the Greek discovery of the phenomenon of precession. We know that the twelve zodiacal constellations, imported by the Greeks, already played an important role in the ancient Sumerian and Babylonian culture. But the one fact that distinguishes this “map” from any other zodiacs of Greek origin is not just its Egyptian style imagery of the constellations. It is the unique position of Sirius, apparently marked twice in the zodiac that is the most revealing astronomical clue and hence, of further significance.

Using the heliacal rising of Sirius and various celestial events which the Egyptian priests-astronomers decided to draw on the zodiac, modern astronomers have done some elaborate computations to show that the temple’s “celestial ceiling” dates back to around 50 BCE. This was the time when the learned Egyptian astronomer Sosigenes developed and re-established for Caesar the ancient Sothic calendar to coincide it with the vernal equinox; i.e. until the solar calendar was allowed to deviate again from the vernal point shortly after 300 CE to be finally corrected by 10 days in 1582 CE. Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that around 50 BCE craftsmen were instructed to build a “map of the sky”, one that was deliberately designed by provident Egyptian priest-astronomers. The meaning of this zodiac has little, if anything at all, to do with various other modifications of the temple during Greek and Roman rule.

This diagram of the Dendera zodiac clearly shows three axes drawn through the various origin points marked by certain symbols. The full-blown papyrus stem supporting a falcon (supposedly representing Sirius) is situated in the temple’s axis. A second axis (North-South) passes between the horns of the cow of Hathor (Isis, her symbol), which unmistakably marks the position of Sirius. The third axis goes through two symbols depicted along the perimeter of the zodiacal imagery. The exact geometry expressed by the specific angles between these axes is self-evident and exists irrelevant of any notion that these axes signify the epoch of the temple’s foundation (anywhere from 4000 BCE to 50 BCE) or the various modifications throughout history.

A three-dimensional coordinate system can be easily drawn using two-dimensional geometry. Thus, if the axis of the temple were to represent Earth’s celestial equator the lower axis going through Hathor, marking the position of Sirius, makes an angle of 16 2/3° with respect to the temple’s axis. Similarly, the upper axis makes an angle of 26.1° with the ‘celestial equator’. Interestingly, this is approx. the same angle of the descending corridor and of the Grand Gallery in the Great Pyramid. Since the ecliptic of the Earth (approx. 23.5°) has hardly changed by more than ± 0.5° over the last few thousand years, the ecliptic does not appear to be related to the 26° axis. Calculations, however, show that the average orbital inclination of all the planets in our solar system (except Pluto)* relative to the ecliptic plane produce a mean value of 26.1° with respect to Earth’s celestial equator.

* [23.4523° (Earth's ecliptic) + 2.6543° (average value of the seven planets)]

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