mysteries of egyptian zodiacs - HiddenMysteries Information Central

156 7 The Dates Shown on the Monumental Zodiacs in the Denderah and Esna Temples
Notice a star sign over the head of Venus, which on the
Denderah zodiacs stands for a planetary visibility attribute.
Since Venus and Mercury are always in proximity
of the Sun, their visibility is an important information. In
this case we know that Venus was visible.
Venus is separated from Taurus by two decans and one
planetary symbol, but it is located immediately behind
Aries. Therefore, we choose its best point in the middle
of Aries.
(5) Mercury — a two-faced male figure with a planetary
walking stick, which is located between Aries and Taurus.
There is no star placed over its head, thus it wasn’t visible
at this position. There is also another location of Mercury
indicated on the Long zodiac — a pair of male figures
behind Taurus. The first male holds a snake (cobra) and
the second one a planetary walking stick. Over the head of
the second figure, there is a star — a visibility attribute,
so it has all the characteristics of a visible planet from the
main horoscope. However, all the planets, except the Sun
and Moon, are already identified. But, the Sun and Moon
were never represented in the main horoscope by figures
of travelers — disks were used for them (see subsections
5.4.11–5.4.13). On the other hand this pair is not far from
the planet Mercury, so the only possible variant is that
it shows Mercury in another visible position. Indeed, all
the other planets are too far from this place, but fast
moving Mercury could be located in two different places in
short period of time (see subsection 5.4.7). The snake held
by the first figure also refers to Mercury (see subsection
5.4.8).
Consequently, Mercury on the Long zodiac is either in
the Aries-Taurus area (for the two-faced figure), or in the
Taurus-Gemini area (a pair of two travelers), so the range
of admissible positions of Mercury is Aries, Taurus, and
Gemini.
In choosing the best point for Mercury we try to avoid
favoring any of its two representations, so we choose as
the best point the middle point in between them, i.e. the
center of Taurus.
We finished the listing of all figures with the planetary
walking sticks on the Long zodiac. There are no more such
figures in its zodiac area (see the colored part on Figure 7.12).
It remains to enlist the “planets” represented by the discs, i.e.
the Sun and Moon.
(6) Sun and Moon — in this case the situation is much more
complicated, what is reflected in the works of N.A. Morozov,
N.S. Kellin and D.V. Denisenko, T.N. Fomenko, and
S. Cauville. Their identifications were completely different.
The problem was related to the fact that on the Long
zodiac there are four discs, which can all be considered to
represent the Sun or Moon, but for the main horoscope
we need only two such disks. However, in our approach
there this is not an issue. Since we know about the presence
of partial horoscopes, we are not worried about too
many disks for the Sun and Moon. We solved the problem
of finding their right representations by considering
all the possible choices for the Sun and Moon, and then by
scrutinizing, according to our selection procedure (see section
6.7), all the astronomical solutions obtained for these
variants. In this process no particular variant is given a
preferential treatment, and its output will be the final solution,
which will show us the correct identifications for
the Sun and Moon. In the same time all the other discs
must be recognized as elements of partial horoscopes.
In the previous attempts to date the Long zodiac, the
authors were forced to choose among these four discs the
symbols for the Sun and Moon. Any kind of such a choice
was more or less arbitrary, and this is the main reason
why their final datings were incorrect.
It is easy to locate all the four discs on the Long zodiac,
which we marked on Figure 7.12 with either yellow/lightblue
or yellow/green colors. The first disc encircling a
figure of a child sucking finger, is located inside Libra.
The second disc, in which there is a female figure holding
a long stick, is situated behind Libra. Inside the third
disc, there is a male figure holding a small animal in a
gesture of making an offering. It is near Pisces on the
same side as Aries. Finally, the last disc is placed on the
back of Taurus. This disc contains nothing inside, except
a very narrow crescent at the bottom. The presence of a
crescent doesn’t necessarily mean that it is Moon, it could
also be the Sun (see subsections 5.4.11 and 5.4.13). In our
computations we have considered all variants, including
the possibility of this disc symbolizing the Sun and Moon
together.
We had an impression that the best candidates for the
Sun in the main horoscope were the disc on the back of
Taurus (the variant suggested by N.A. Morozov) or the
disc next to Pisces (the variant of T.N. Fomenko). The
final result showed that on the back of Taurus is the Sun
in the main horoscope, while the disc near Pisces is the
Sun in the partial horoscope of the spring equinox.
The ranges of the admissible positions and the best points
were determined for each variant separately.
Step 2. (See subsection 6.7.2.) In the First Step, due to uncertainty
about the Sun and Moon, we obtained several variants
of the main horoscope. For each of these variants we calculated,
using the program Horos, all the possible dates in the
required time range (see section 6.7). All the solutions with
the order of planets different from their order on the Long zodiac
were rejected (see section 6.7). As a result, we obtained
few dozens of preliminary dates distributed randomly over the
time interval from 500 B.C. to 1900 A.D. Next, for each of
these dates the partial horoscopes and the visibility attributes
were checked.