mysteries of egyptian zodiacs - HiddenMysteries Information Central

208 7 The Dates Shown on the Monumental Zodiacs in the Denderah and Esna Temples
Cancer and Gemini. The second possibility would occur if
the warrior with raised sword located ext to Cancer was also
representing Mars. We should, however, remember that this
figure of the warrior was excluded from the partial horoscope
of the autumn equinox for our solution. That gives us another
reason to include it in the partial horoscope of the summer
solstice. In this way, Mars in this partial horoscope is shown
on the border between Gemini and Cancer. Consequently, we
get a perfect match and we can annotate this column with
the plus sign.
Column 6: SYMBOLIC DESCRIPTION OF THE
PASCHAL FULL MOON. On the Small Esna zodiac a
special attention is devoted to the Paschal Full Moon and
the festival of Pascha. We have already discussed this topic
in subsection 5.9.1. Let us point out that on the Small
zodiac the festival of Pascha is shown as a celebration of the
Resurrection, exactly in the Christian tradition.
The festival of Pascha takes place in the spring when the
Sun is in Aries or closed to it. The symbolic description of
the Paschal Full Moon on the Small zodiac is located in its
bottom row, under the figures of Aries and Taurus. On the
color annotated zodiac (see Figure 7.42) these symbols are
marked in green. They include: 1) appearance of the new
Paschal Moon, 2) occurrence of the full Paschal Moon on
the 15th day, 3) the symbol of dead Osiris — the Egyptian
Christ, in this grave, before the resurrection, and finally, 4)
the symbol of the seven day celebration of its resurrection.
All these symbols were already discussed in subsection 5.9.1.
The first astronomical spring full moon in 1404, which can
be computed using the Gauss’ formulas, occured on March
27. However, the paschal moon, according to the calculations
of the Easter date, which not necessarily coincide with the
astronomical full moon, occured on March 29. On this day,
according to the Christian Easter tradition, there was also
Jewish Pascha. The Christian Easter in 1404 was celebrated
on March 30. That means, May 8, 1404, which is the date
indicated by our solution, was exactly 40 days after Easter,
and May 7, 1404, which is also the date of our solution, was
40 days after Jewish Pascha (according to the Christian tradition).
Let us point out that the Orthodox church celebrates
the Feast of Ascension, exactly 40 days after Easter. Consequently,
the date commemorated on the Small zodiac turns
out to be the date of the Feast of Ascension in 1404. This
could be probably the reason why on this zodiac there is so
much place devoted to the festival of Pascha. In this way,
we are able confirm that our final solution fits well the symbolic
description of the Pascha on the Small zodiac, so we can
annotate the sixth column by the sign plus.
In this way, we are getting additional reasons to suspect
that the supplementary scene with four planets, which is located
in the middle row in Capricorn, is related to one of
the principal Christian festival — Epiphany, which commemorates
the Baptism of Jesus Christ. Let us point out that
Epiphany, according to the Julian calendar is celebrated on
January 6th, when the Sun is in Capricorn. On the other
hand, as we’ve already mentioned it earlier, the symbol of
Aquarius standing next to Capricorn, probably symbolizes
John the Baptist on the Egyptian zodiacs. Epiphany is a festival
dedicated to John the Baptist who baptized Jesus Christ.
Let us look closely what was happening in Capricorn on
January 6, 1404, on the day of celebration of Epiphany. Were
there located four planets on that day? It turns out that yes,
they were!
Column 7: SUPPLEMENTARY SCENE BETWEEN
AQUARIUS AND CAPRICORN. The chart of the sky observed
from Cairo on January 6, 1404 is shown on Figure 7.45.
We can see that on that day there were indeed four planets in
Capricorn: Saturn, Venus, Mercury and Jupiter. All the other
planets were far away from Capricorn — Mars was in Pisces
and Moon in Virgo. Moreover, among these four planets only
Saturn was well visible in the evening on January 6th. At
the moment Saturn descended on the horizon, the Sun was
submerged behind the horizon about 16 o , i.e. it was almost
complete darkness at that time. When the Sun is 18 o behind
the horizon, we can consider it as the beginning of the night.
Let us point out that the brightest stars are already visible
when the Sun is submerged only 6 o . The brightness of Saturn
on January 6, 1404 was M = +1.1, which can be compared
to the brightness of stars of the first magnitude. Therefore,
Saturn was very well visible on this day.
The remaining planets in Capricorn — Mercury, Jupiter
and Venus — were not visible, because of their proximity to
the Sun (see Figure 7.45). Jupiter almost coincided with the
Sun. Mercury, which was located close to the Sun, had on
that day very low brightness — M = +3.4. Consequently, we
have to exclude the visibility of Jupiter and Mercury. Actually
Venus could be visible for a very short moment, in the
morning on January 6, just before the sunrise. Venus was rising
in Cairo, when the Sun was submerged behind the horizon
only 6 o . At that moment the sky was becoming illuminated
by the raising Sun and even the brightest stars were already
invisible. Venus with its very high brightness M = −3.4 could
be visible, but only for a very short time.
This situation agrees well with the supplementary scene
shown between Aquarius and Capricorn. In this scene on
“snakes and boats” the three planets, including the groups
of Mercury and Venus, are shown as small figures. The forth
planet has significantly larger size. Since in our solution, the
three planets disappeared in the rays of the Sun, while the
forth one — Saturn, was well visible, we can confirm that
this solution agrees well with the supplementary scene on the
Small zodiac.
The exact locations of the planets on the ecliptic on January
5–7, 1404, are shown in Table 7.21. We consider here
two additional days before and after the day of Epiphany, to
find out what were the movements of the planets on the sky
on that day.