mysteries of egyptian zodiacs - HiddenMysteries Information Central

60 3 Previous Attempts of Astronomical Dating of Egyptian Zodiacs
ered two temples, one was estimated to be built in the time of
reign of Ptolemy IX ... and construction of another was “initiated
by Ptolemy XIII Auletes ... and finished by Claudius and
Hadrian.” Athribis is located on the perimeter of the desert
and it was covered by the sand ... The second temple was
similar to the Denderah temple or the temple in Edfu. The
surrounding the temple columns exhibit Greek influence and
sculpture decorations of the both temples point to the “Roman
culture.” ... Not far from the excavation site of these
two temples ... Flinders Petrie discovered a man-made burial
cave with walls covered by paintings and inscriptions. On the
ceiling there were painted in color two horoscopes joined into
one composition. Evidently, they were painted by the same
artist, which means that the lower horoscope was painted not
more than thirty years later after the upper one, but most
probably, even this estimate is too large 20 ”.
Figure 3.9: Two fragments of the Athribis zodiacs. (Taken
from [112], p. 22)
N.A. Morozov’s assumption that the difference between
the dates of the two Athribis zodiacs should not exceed thirty
years, appears to be a mistake which led Morozov to the
wrong result. Further, Morozov writes:
20 See [4], Vol. 6, p. 731.
“The figures on the zodiacs are of Hellenistic type but they
also show some purely Egyptian features. For example, the
Orion constellation (look at the lower part of the Figure) symbolized
by a man with his right arm rised in a gesture inviting
souls of Meri-Hor and his father Ab-Ne-Mani, whose names
were written in hieroglyphs near the symbols of their souls, to
come to Heaven. Their souls were accompanied by their sins
symbolized by snakes and jackals on the left side of the painting.
Both souls are shown as birds with human heads. The
upper horoscope probably belongs to the father and the lower
of his son. Probably, both horoscopes indicate the time of their
passage to Heaven, not their births. Only in such a case, it
was appropriate to show them as birds 21 ”.
We intentionally included this long passage from Morozov’s
book, describing his interpretation of the additional
symbols on the Athribis zodiacs, to indicate his erroneous
approach based on common understanding of the Egyptian
zodiacs as mystic or religious pictures. Morozov declared in
haste that those symbols seemed to him unrelated to the main
horoscope and having no astronomical meaning. For example,
on the Athribis zodiacs he misunderstood an important astronomical
information, namely the symbols of the partial
horoscopes of the summer solstice (see Figure 3.10), which he
categorized as Orion surounded by a mystical entourage.
Figure 3.10: A fragment of the lower Athribis zodiac the symbols
of the partial horoscope of the summer solstice. (Taken
from [111], Plate 10)
Morozov mistakenly took the figures of the partial horoscopes
for the souls of a “father” and his “son,” what resulted
in a huge impact on the final result. By the way, Morozov
himself stressed out that on the Athribis zodiac the planets
are represented by birds, but strangely he didn’t realize the
astronomical meaning of this configuration of figures. Consequently,
he lost the essential astronomical data directly related
to the problem of dating these two horoscopes. Moreover,
this mistake reassured him that the difference between
the dates for the both Athribis zodiacs, which he believed belonged
to a father and his son, should be not more than thirty
years. In fact it was wrong to make such a presupposition. We
will show that the difference between the dates for these two
21 See [4], Vol. 6, p. 731.