Past Articles

AR 38
Uranus In
Pisces
2003-2011

AR 37
Twelfth Planet, Plutinos or
Planet X

AR 36
Eclipses – Promise or Peril?

AR35
Solar Fire

AR34
The Lunar Mansions of Vedic Astrology

AR 33
Children of the Gods

AR 32
Wheels Within Wheels

AR 31
Horoscopes of Destiny

AR 30
Zodicac of Dendera

AR 29
A Star Is Born

AR 28
Age of Aquarius

AR 27
Persia's Royal Stars of Ancients

AR 23
The Lore of a Shaman

The Zodiac of Dendera
by Julie Gillentine

Is the round zodiac of Dendera a 3,000 year old astrological chart?

Ancient hieroglyphic texts affirm that Egypt was seen as the mirror of heaven. As above, so below was not merely an aphorism but a way of life. The quest of individual, king and country was to express divine harmony, the principle of goddess Ma'at, and thereby literally reflect heaven on earth. To mirror heaven the skies must be known. The ancients carefully watched the cycles of the heavens because changes above portended changes below.

As above, so below

To orient toward a particular sky or star on a specific date we might paint that image on a ceiling. By rotating beneath that "sky" we could watch the stars apparent motions through the year, our painting functioning as a star dial. In just such a manner the ancient Egyptians replicated a sky in the round zodiac of Dendera. Astronomer priests could have viewed cyclical changes in the sky by positioning themselves in a certain way relative to the sculpture overhead. The ceiling of the temple-observatory would have mirrored the heavens, enabling them to anticipate important dates.

Dendera Zodiac

What remains today of the Hathor temple at Dendera is a Roman relic (circa 100 CE), but the site is much older and reconstruction on top of earlier structures is evident. Numerous references to stars, zodiacs and lunar cycles are etched into tomb and temple walls throughout Egypt, but as far as we know, this is the only circular zodiac. The original is in the Louvre, but a copy remains, and was painstakingly drawn by Lucie Lamy, stepdaughter of Schwaller du Lubicz, and is reproduced here.

Zodiac is Greek, meaning "circle of animals" and describes the twelve constellations of the ecliptic (apparent path of the sun) where the planets move. The round zodiac of Dendera is actually a star map, portraying the heavens overhead at a certain time.

Egyptian New Year

In ancient Egypt a spiritual reciprocity existed between the people and the land. The cyclical relationship between the river and the desert was obvious and ever present.

New Year's Day, which occurred on or near summer solstice, was heralded by Sirius, brightest star in the sky and great benefactor of Egypt, rising before the Sun. This momentous event "opened the year," announcing the annual inundation of Egypt as the life-giving waters of the Nile flood, gift of Isis, returned renew the parched valley after the season of dryness. New Moon festivals were also significant at this time.

Sothic (Sirius) Cycle

Each year the sun returns to the same place in the sky a quarter of a day later. We employ a leap year, adding a day every fourth year to adjust. The ancient Egyptians used two cycles: a "vague" civil year of 365 days, and a "fixed" sacred year, marked by the return of Sirius to the same place in the sky, in exactly 365 1/4 days.

A "Great Year,"or Sothic cycle of 1,460 years, marked the point when the vague year coincided with the Sothic year. Some texts indicate two dates, one in each cycle, which have allowed scholars to date events. Schwaller du Lubicz lists four such conjunctions in SACRED SCIENCE: 140 CE, 1320 BCE, 2780 BCE, and 4240 BCE , which he believed to be the inauguration of the Pharonic calendar.

What sky is it?

Before computers star charts, which track how the sky changes through the year as a result of earth's annual journey around the sun, were manual computations. Ironically, at a time when Egyptian inscriptions were largely untranslated, astronomers spoke volumes about stellar knowledge, sky charts, and temple alignments.

Jean Baptiste Biot, an eminent French astronomer, presented papers to the Academy of Inscriptions in 1822 and 1844. Biot concluded that even though the round zodiac was sculpted in the Roman era it either referred to a much earlier time, or the background sky was copied from an earlier work which may have been rendered on parchment or stone. This could explain a puzzling feature of the round zodiac. The familiar constellations of the zodiac are drawn in a form which we recognize, but the rest of the star groups have a decidedly Egyptian character. The zodiac signs may have been overlaid and copied onto a more ancient drawing.

Biot pinpointed the sky drawn on the ceiling of Dendera at precisely 700 BCE at midnight on summer solstice. Sir Norman Lockyer stated in THE DAWN OF ASTRONOMY that subsequent translated context from hieroglyphics related the round zodiac to the period of 1,700 BCE . He stressed what he felt were important dates when summer solstice and the helical (before the Sun) rising of Sirius coincided. These dates were 270 BCE, 1728 BCE and 3192 BCE.

Striking features of the Dendera Zodiac Scholars are generally agreed that the circumpolar stars are the Jackal, Ursa Minor, containing Polaris, the Thigh is Ursa Major, containing Dubhe, and the upright Hippo is Draco, containing Thuban, which was the pole star during the so-called Pyramid age, circa 2,800 BCE. Additionally, the Cow with the star between her horns is Canis Major, containing Sirius, and the striding man is Orion, containing Betelgeuse and Rigel, two first magnitude stars.

With five potential dates to examine, I used the Skyglobe astronomy software and viewed the skies based on the calendar conjunctions mentioned by both Lockyer and Schwaller. I reasoned that a New Year, or summer solstice, would be represented by the prominent alignment of Sirius, and that an equinox by the presence of Aires on the eastern horizon. Since I have not yet located a reference with a translation of planetary glyphs, I looked for a match with constellations which held a planet.

Aries faces east on the round zodiac, so I chose the epoch of 1700 BCE, during the age of Aries, when the Ram was the equinox dawn constellation. There is an interesting composite figure aligned with the eastern arm of the wheel. A falcon perches on a baboon, which sits on the eye of Ra with a donkey adjacent to the baboon. This seemed a symbolic way to indicate a planetary conjunction or perhaps a New Moon. If the eye of Ra is the Sun, and the baboon is Thoth, the Moon god, The Horus Falcon might be Mars. The equinox dawn of 1728 BCE (April 7 Gregorian) proved to be a good candidate, and there was a new moon conjunction with Mars present in the dawn sky.

Because Sirius is prominent in the figure, aligned with true north, it occurred to me that two time frames might be indicated on the sky map. After considerable searching to match the given years, I viewed the solstice prior to the 1,728 BCE equinox since the Egyptian new year began then. Based on the relative positioning of the circumpolar stars in Skyglobe on that date, the midnight solstice sky of 1727 BCE (July 7, Gregorian), yielded another promising result.

Go down to any sky

Ancient star gazers watched through the nights, just as their modern counterparts do; that's when the stars and planets are visible. The ancients didn't have super malls, super bowls, or electricity to mask the stars. The sky was an enduring source of divine inspiration. Nighttime sky watchers would have been rewarded with a momentous night of sky watching on summer solstice, New Year's Eve, in 1728 BCE, (July 7 Gregorian), building toward a spectacular dawn event.

Overhead at midnight, looking northward, the orientation of the circumpolar stars mirrors the sky map as they align with the cardinal directions. Sirius would have shone brightly in a northerly orientation, moving eastward as earth's rotation advanced toward dawn.

At midnight, the sixth hour of night, the Pleiades rose in the east. By one AM the Hyades rose over the eastern horizon. By three AM the stars of Orion crested the east, and by four AM, in a still-dark sky, Procyon, alpha Canis Minor, rose to join Mars, burning bright in Gemini, slightly southeast. At dawn a remarkable spectacle greeted those who persevered. Sirius, rose on this day before the Sun, welcoming a new day, a new year, and the onset of a "Great Year" of 1,460 years duration.

On this date Procyon, which rose well ahead of Sirius, appears almost due east on the horizon, Sirius is roughly eighteen degrees to the northeast, and sunrise occurs at the southern most point of the year, twenty-three and one-half degrees southeast. .

The axis of the temple of Dendera aligns with the figure of a Horus falcon atop a papyrus stem on the zodiac. Biot believed this indicated two representations of Sirius, but because of the relative positions of Sirius and Orion, I believe this figure portrays the star Procyon. In our modern skies Sirius, Procyon, and Betelgeuse (alpha Orion) form what is called the Winter Triangle, a familiar beacon to winter sky watchers.

Procyon means "before the dog," and Sirius is known as the "dog star." Due to the importance of the event it seems likely that the priests would have employed an early warning system and that the helical rising of Procyon, which occurred days before that of Sirius, and would have allowed time to sound the call and prepare for the celebrations. I believe thousands would have gathered along with the priests to watch the star of Isis rise.

The Living Sky

Sir Norman Lockyer, in The Dawn of Astronomy, demonstrated repeatedly how the Egyptians moved and reconstructed temples to align with certain stars. They choose to do this when solar alignments remain reliable for thousands of years? In Egyptian cosmology stars were goddesses and the goddess Nut, the starry sky, was feminine. Sun god variants were male and reborn at dawn, "birthed" from the womb of the sky goddess. Perhaps the Sun was seen to influence earthly life and the stars to be the realm of eternal life.

Do the stars draw us by their beauty, or is there some inherent power to which we respond? Schwaller described the "living sky," a celestial Neter (Divine Archetype) at Memphis and a metaphysical, supra-celestial Neter at Heliopolis. Did the ancient Egyptians understand something about stellar influences that we have yet to rediscover? Was there a profound metaphor encoded by the stellar myths that was enacted inside the temples of initiation?

The voice of an ancient sky priest

On such a day as described above, surely the priests would have cast the charts and endeavored to divine the significance of the next cycles. Based on the Skyglobe's images, and if I am correct in my planetary correlations, a brief forecast might have read as follows:

The Sun and Mercury were in Leo on opposite sides of the notable star Regulus, indicating the importance of the kingly function and perhaps an imminent proclamation from Pharaoh. The Moon occupied Capricorn, the Seagoat. This is not a strong place for lunar energies and would have portended a possible weakness in the structures and form of the realm, thus alerting Pharaoh's advisors. Venus in Virgo could have been read as a cycle of plenty, fruitful harvests, like the Biblical fat calves. Mars in Gemini energizes mental processes and makes the pen mightier than the sword; good news for a monarch. Jupiter in Aquarius expands the higher mind and might have ushered in a period of heightened learning and widened sharing of education with the masses. Saturn is said to be exalted in Libra. Pharaohs of this time might have seen fit to reform the legal system and the way discretions were judged.

Contemplating the so-called zodiac of Dendara is like peering into a window to the past, capturing a precise moment in the sky for all time. Hopefully more research will shed additional light and understanding on this priceless relic.