mysteries of egyptian zodiacs - HiddenMysteries Information Central

130 5 Symbolism on Egyptian Zodiacs and New Complete Decoding
Egyptologists consider Luxor to be located at the place
of ancient Thebes. Nevertheless, on some old maps instead
of Luxor there is another name indicated, namely Ibrim (see
[3]). On Figure 5.86 we present a fragment of an 18th century
Russian map, showing the region of Egypt with the name
Ibrim clearly written instead of Luxor. The name Ibrim resembles
Abram or Abraham. Actually, the Arabic equivalent
of the name Abraham is Ibrahim, so this city or another place
nearby possibly was named after Abraham. Since the dates
of all the Egyptian zodiacs turned out to be medieval, the
existence of a city with such a biblical name near the Valley
of the Kings is not surprising. In fact, there is some symbolic
link connecting the Kings burial grounds with the biblical
patriarch Abraham, which is the ancestral character of this
place.
5.11 Beginning of the Year on the
Egyptian Zodiacs
As we already explained, a typical ancient Egyptian zodiac is
an astronomical representation of the whole year containing
the main date. Therefore, it is essential to clarify when the
beginning of the year was assumed to take place. Nowadays,
the new year starts on January 1st, but in old times there
were many different conventions concerning the beginning of
the year. For example, year could start in March, September
(what was very common in the middle ages) or another
month. Consequently, we have to answer the question, when
in the ancient Egyptian tradition the new year was beginning?
In order to tackle this problem we need to examine the
structure of the available to us Egyptian zodiacs. On most
of them, it appears that the beginning of the year was taking
place in September. Let us consider first the rectangular
zodiacs, i.e. the Long Denderah, Big and Small Esna zodiacs.
For example, on the Small Esna zodiac (see Figure 2.17)
the constellations and planets are shown in a form of a one
long procession. beginning in Virgo Although the beginning
of the zodiac was destroyed, from the remaining parts we can
deduct that it was Virgo, i.e. the new year was taking place in
September. In the case of the Long Denderah (see Figure 2.8)
and Big Esna (see Figure 2.15) zodiacs, this situation is more
complicated. Each of these zodiacs is divided into two parts,
for each one of them we have two possible variants for the
starting point of the procession, and consequently, for the beginning
of the year. On the Long zodiac the procession begins
either in Leo or Aquarius, but taking into account that additional
Virgo is a part of Leo symbol (see subsection 5.1.5), the
beginning of the year could also take place in Virgo. On the
Big Esna zodiac the first constellation could be either Virgo,
Leo or Pisces (see Figure 2.15). In summary, we can conclude
that the first constellation on these rectangular zodiac was
most probably Virgo. In other words, according to these zodiacs,
the Egyptian year began in September. This conclusion
does not contradicts the information provided by other zodiacs,
except possibly the Athribis zodiacs (we will discuss this
case later in Chapter 8).
It turns out that our conjecture about the beginning of the
Egyptian year in September, which was made purely based on
the evidence from the zodiacs, agrees with the particularities
of the Egyptian climate. It was pointed out by N.A. Morozov
that periodic Nile floods, which culminate in September,
are related to the beginning of the new agricultural season,
so from this point of view the choice of September as the
beginning of the new year was natural in Egypt. 53
Consequently, during the Egyptian year the equinoxes and
solstices were appearing in the following order:
1. Autumn Equinox in September (at the beginning of the
new year);
2. Winter Solstice in December;
3. Spring Equinox in March;
4. Summer Solstice in June (at the end of the year).
In our computation, we didn’t assume as a requirement that
the Egyptian year began in September. In fact all possibilities
were taken into account and the information provided by
the partial horoscopes was verified for all considered variants.
Nevertheless, in all the cases, with the only exception of the
Athribis zodiacs, we’ve obtain a confirmation that indeed the
Egyptian year started in September.
53 See [4], Vol. 6, p. 641.