Tenth International Congress of Egyptologists Abstracts of Papers

XICE – Abstract of Papers
During the last few years, the Egyptian-Spanish Mission on Egyptian
Archaeoastronomy, conducted under the auspices of the Egyptian Supreme Council of
Antiquities, has been performing a ambitious scientific project with the aim of
studying the cosmovision of the ancient civilization of the pharaohs. Part of the
project consists of a re-analysis of the iconographic and historical sources that has
allowed, among other, a reassessment of the calendar theory 11 , or a new proposals for
the sky-maps of ancient Egypt. 12 However, the most expensive part of the project, in
time, efforts and resources, has been the five campaigns devoted so far to measure the
orientation and study the spatial location of ancient monuments across the Nile Valley
and beyond. Until now, more than 500 pyramids, hypogea, chapels, sanctuaries or
small and big temples have been measured, although our work has mostly
concentrated in the analysis of the 330 sacred enclosures visited so far. Three
successive papers have been published on the temples of Upper Egypt, the Oases and
the Delta, respectively, where, stage by stage, we have analysed the relation of temple
orientation and location with the local landscape, understanding landscape in its
broadest meaning with both terrestrial (basically the presence or absence of the Nile)
and celestial (astronomical orientations) aspects. 13 Our works are demonstrating that
both components were necessary and indeed intimately correlated. In this conference
we will concentrate in a conclusive summary of the results emanating from the
astronomical and topographic analysis of the alignments and the skywatching
techniques presumably developed to obtain them. This should have most conspicuous
implications for the ancient Egyptian way of perceiving the cosmos. As an important
corollary, relevant information on certain chronological aspects of our results, as
related to the most recent dating hypotheses, 14 will be presented as well.
Kom Tuman, “the Island of Memphis”
Galina A. Belova
The Russian Institute of Egyptology in Cairo (RIEC) conducted the regular season of
archaeological works (5-th) at the site Kom Tuman (Memphis) in 2007. The field
works accomplished during the season could be divided in two parts: 1.
Archaeological excavations in 2007 and, 2. Soil investigations.
1. There were attempts made to localize the so-called “Dimick Building”, which
was put on the survey map of Memphis by Dimick in 1955 and accepted by many
scientists as it is. To present day some theoretical tryings were undertaken to identify
the “Dimick Building” with some structures in the field, but the positive result was
not reached because of necessity to excavate the huge territory. It was very important
11 J.A. BELMONTE, ‘Some open questions on the Egyptian calendar: an astronomer´s view’, Trabajos
de Egiptología (Papers on Ancient Egypt) 2 (2003), 7-56.
12 J. LULL and J.A. BELMONTE, ‘A firmament above Thebes: uncovering the constellations of ancient
Egyptians”, Journal for the History of Astronomy XXXVII (2006), 373-92.
13 M. SHALTOUT and J.A. BELMONTE, ‘On the orientation of ancient Egyptian temples: (1) Upper Egypt
and Lower Nubia’, Journal for the History of Astronomy XXXVI (2005), 273-98; J.A. BELMONTE and
M. SHALTOUT, ‘On the orientation of ancient Egyptian temples: (2) new experiments at the oases of the
Western Desert’, Journal for the History of Astronomy XXXVII (2006), 173-92; M. SHALTOUT, J.A.
BELMONTE and M. FEKRI, ‘On the orientation of ancient Egyptian temples: (3) key points in Loweer
Egypt and Siwa Oasis”, Journal for the History of Astronomy XXXVIII (2007), Vol. 2, 141-60 (Part I)
and Vol. 4, in press (Part II). A fourth paper of the series is now in preparation.
14 E. HORNUNG, R. KRAUSS and D.A. WARBURTON (editors), Ancient Egyptian Chronology, Handbuch
der Orientalistik LXXXIII (Berlin, 2006).
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