On the Orientation of Ancient Egyptian Temples: (1) Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia

Abstract

Were the temples of the ancient Egyptian civilization astronomically orientated? This is a very important question and one that, as the above quotation stresses, is far from being solved. Recently, Richard Wilkinson, in his useful The complete temples of Ancient Egypt, clearly stated that “most commonly temples built along the Nile were oriented on an east–west axis, according to local cardinal directions as determined by the river”, and if so local topography would be the commanding reason for temple orientation. However, he also pointed out that “on occasions, orientation towards the Sun or important stars was defi nitely the priority, and this principle may be more important than is often recognized”. As we have explained elsewhere, the ground plan of a temple (or at least its four corners), including the orientation of its main axes, was normally established in a ceremony known as the “stretching of the cord”, records of which exist as early as the 1st Dynasty. The fi rst depiction of the ritual dates from the reign of Khasekhemuy, last king of the 2nd Dynasty (c. 2750 B.C.). The ceremony is represented on several occasions throughout Egyptian history but only in the Graeco-Roman period do the associated inscriptions refer to the way in which the axis was placed. As shown in Figure 1, the earliest inscriptions are written on the walls of Horus’s temple in Edfu, whose foundations were settled in 237 B.C. The texts are unanimous: the King was looking at Meskhet(yu), the Bull’s Thigh or Foreleg, the asterism of the Plough. So, for the Egyptians, at least of later epochs, the orientation was astronomical, in apparent contradiction with the opinion of most specialists. This fact has been well known since the nineteenth century when the inscriptions at Edfu were fi rst translated, and one would have expected that a close collaboration between (archaeo)astronomers and Egyptologists would have been resulted. However, this potentially productive synergy never occurred. We could raise the question of why and the answer, or the blame, could probably be attributed to a book, The dawn of astronomy, published at the end of that century by an otherwise reputable astronomer. This volume was written by Sir Norman Lockyer, the fi rst editor of the JHA, xxxvi (2005)