Exact Date Pinned to Great Pyramid's Construction?

Andrew Bossone in Cairo
for National Geographic News



The Egyptians started building the Great Pyramid of Giza on August 23, 2470 B.C., according to controversial new research that attempts to place an exact date on the start of the ancient construction project.



======================


A team of Egyptian researchers arrived at the date based on calculations of historical appearances of the star Sothis—today called Sirius.


Every year around the time of the Nile River floods, Sothis would rise in the early morning sky after a long absence.



"The appearance of this star indicates the beginning of an inundation period" for the Nile, said team leader Abdel-Halim Nur El-Din, former head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.


Throughout their history, "Egyptians … started their main buildings, the tombs, and the temples at the beginning of the inundation"—an auspicious time, since floodwaters brought fresh soil, maintaining the region's fertility.



In addition, pharaohs always started building their tombs at the starts of their rules. Khufu, the pharaoh meant to be buried in the Great Pyramid, took power in 2470 B.C., according to Nur El-Din and colleagues.


The researchers therefore compared the modern calendar, the ancient Egyptian calendar, and the cycle of the star to find the exact day Sothis would have appeared that year.


The team believes the ancient Egyptians observed the star from July 17 to 19, and the inundation period began 35 days later—on August 23.




Pharaohs Reset the Clock

Using Sothis's arrival to keep track of the annual Nile floods made sense, said Mark Hammergren, an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago who was not involved in the work.



"It happens at about the same time every solar year, so it corresponds to the seasons, and it provides them a good fixed date," he said.



Hammergren agrees with the days Nur El-Din's team calculated for Sothis, based on other researchers' estimates for the dates the star would have risen during ancient Egyptian times.



the "appearance" of the star is subject to weather conditions, which might have obscured its first rise in any given year.



Mahmoud Afifi, the general director of Giza antiquities, is also concerned about placing an exact year on the start of Khufu's rule.



Ancient Egyptian chronology reset to zero at the beginning of each pharaoh's reign, making it difficult to match Western calendar years with the dates given for ancient events.



What's more, dated lists of kings are unreliable, since the ancient Egyptians often had political motivations to alter the historical record.



Some unpopular pharaohs could have been left off the lists, for example, which would have changed the ruling dates of every pharaoh that followed.



Many scholars debate the precise year Khufu ascended to the throne, with some estimates as much as 139 years earlier than the date Nur El-Din and his team selected.



In addition, the design of the monumental Great Pyramid probably took considerable time to prepare, Afifi said, which might have delayed the start of construction beyond the first year of Khufu's reign.

Mayan 2012 And Quetzalcoatl Egypt Astronomy

The Mayans.

The Mayans developed astronomy to the point where they could predict eclipses hundreds of years in the future. Their legends say they obtained their astronomical wisdom from the Olmecs. Little is known about the Olmecs, though traces of their culture have been found dating to about 2000 B.C.E. A Mayan stone calendar is shown at left.

Diagram 1:
The sky on December 21st, 2012 A.D. showing a rare astronomical alignment -the winter solstice sun is right in the "dark rift" in the Milky Way.




This is a feature of the Milky Way anyone can see on a clear midsummer’s night, away from the light pollution of industrial society. At dawn on the winter solstice of A.D. 2012, the sun will be right in this dark-rift, and the orientation is such that the Milky Way rims the horizon at all points around.



Thus, the Milky Way "sits" on the earth, touching it at all points around, opening up the cosmic sky portal. The galactic and solar planes are thus aligned. "Sky portal" is just a term to describe the "opened sky" scenario apparent when the Milky Way rims the horizon. This is not to be confused with the "dark-rift" itself.





In Mayan myth, the winter solstice sun corresponds to the deity One Hunahpu, also known as First Father. The Mayan Sacred Book, the Popol Vuh, is all about setting the stage so that the Hero Twins’ father (One Hunahpu) can be reborn, thus beginning a new World Age.





The dark rift has many mythic identities: it is the Black Road; it is the xibalba be (the Road to the Underworld); it is a crevice in the branches of the cosmic tree (the Milky Way); it is the mouth of the Cosmic Monster (often portrayed as a frog, jaguar or snake with tree-like features); it is the birth canal of the Cosmic Mother.





Overall, the dark-rift is best understood as the birth canal of the Cosmic Mother, who we may call First Mother, to complement First Father. In this way we can trace how these various metaphors are found in Mayan Creation Mythology. And the date of this alignment is, again, the end date of the 13-baktun Great Cycle - a cycle of approximately 5125 years.




Earth's Wobble
==============



The slow process by which the winter solstice sun comes to conjoin the dark-rift in the Milky Way is a function of a phenomenon known as the precession of the equinoxes.



This involves the slow wobbling of the earth’s axis, which causes the stellar frame to slowly shift. To observers on earth, it causes the position of the winter solstice sun to slowly move in relation to celestial background features such as the Milky Way. A full cycle is completed in roughly 26,000 years.



Approximately 2100 years ago, when both the Long Count calendar and the Popol Vuh were devised by the early Maya, the dark-rift in the Milky Way could be observed some 30 degrees above the dawning winter solstice sun

Diagram 2:
Winter solstice sunrise from the early Mayan site of Izapa,
50 B.C. Notice the dark rift in the Milky Way, the
celestial birth canal of Cosmic Mother, some 30 degrees above the rising sun.







When these early skywatchers discovered precession, they realized that every winter solstice the cosmic birth canal was moving closer and closer to the dawning sun.



The winter solstice sun was called the First Sun, the First Lord or First Father, because it is the first day of the year, the beginning of the sun’s annual rebirth into increasing daylight. They calibrated the process, and fixed their Creation Mythology to the future alignment as described.




Monuments from the early Mayan site of Izapa clearly portray, by way of mythological iconography, the anticipated astronomical alignment of the Long Count end date. In this way, the Long Count calendar and Popol Vuh Creation Mythology work together to describe the future astronomical alignment.

Diagram 3:
Stela 11 from Izapa shows Cosmic Father in the "mouth" of Cosmic Mother, the "dark rift" or "birth canal" in the Milky Way. This is an image of the celestial alignment which culminates in A.D. 2012.






The irony, perhaps, is that the impending solstice-galaxy alignment was first mentioned back in 1969 in Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend’s groundbreaking book Hamlet’s Mill.




the astronomical alignment itself (which targets the opening of the new millennium) and the established end-date of the Mayan Calendar in A.D. 2012.



The ancient Maya apparently understood that the future alignment would have apocalyptic effects, and designed their World Age mythology to remind us of something essential. Myth, legend, or ancient message, whatever it is, clearly, it means we must all remember where we come from, where everything comes from: Mother.





====================
The Mayans and Aztecs have a legend of learning great things from a bearded "white man" who came to them sometime after 500 B.C.E. The Aztecs named him Quetzalcoatl, which means "Plumed Serpent.



There is some speculation that Quetzalcoatl could have come from Egypt, and that the "Plumed Serpent" represented the cobra with its hood expanded.


Mayan legend says that the Yucatan was originally inhabited by "people of the serpent," and their leader's name was "Serpent of the East." Mayans claimed that they got their writing from the Tula, and that their leaders sailed over the sea to the East to learn their wisdom.




Ancient Cosmology Points To Our Immediate Future
Based upon these simple facts, ancient skywatchers in Mesoamerica were apparently aware of a subtle celestial process, the precession of the equinoxes.




Knowledge of that process, and the fact that a major alignment in that process culminates at the end of their Great Cycle, strongly suggest a cosmological understanding which modern scholars have yet to explore. While today the conjunction is hidden behind the rays of the solstice sun, to early skywatchers the future convergence would have been the focus of intense calendar calculations and eschatological myth-making.




Mayans counted using a base 20 system. Their numbers used three symbols: a sea shell for zero, a dot for one, and a bar for five. They also had a small curved symbol that served as a filler around a small number of dots, for aesthetics.


====================

The Mayan Long Calendar. The Mayan timeline began on 13 August 3114 B.C.E. (very near the start of the Egyptian Old Kingdom). This is the starting point of the Mayan Long Calendar. The time divisions in the long calendar were:



1 kin = 1 day
20 kins = unial (20 days)
18 unials = tun (360 days)
20 tuns = katun (7200 days)
20 katuns = baktun (144,000 days, about 394.25 years)
13 baktuns = a Great Cycle (1,872,000 days, about 5,125.25 years)



A Great Cycle, or Age, is also known as a "Sun." Their legends state that at the end of each Sun there is a catastrophe, followed by a renewal. They count time in a cycle of five Suns, which therefore spans 9,360,000 days, or about 25,627 years. Some cite this Five Sun cycle as evidence of Mayan knowledge of precession of the equinoxes.




Mayans believed that we are currently in the Fifth Great Cycle, which will end, and a new First Sun begin, on 23 December 2012. Popular literature abounds with speculation on this event, and its near-coinciding with ecliptic crossing to the north of the Solar System's orbit around the Galatic Center.



The Mayan Vague Year Calendar (Haab). Mayans knew that the length of the Solar Year was about 365.25 days long but, like the Egyptians, they used a calendar of 365 days and did not use leap years. Because this calendar does not follow the true Solar Year, is is referred to as the Vague Year calendar, or Haab.



The Vague Year Calendar is divided into 20 months of 18 days each (360 days total), followed by a five-day period. The days of the month are numbered from 0 to 19. Each month is named after a Mayan god. These are:

Pop
Wo
Sip
Sots'
Sek
Xul
Yaxk'in
Mol
Ch'en
Yax
Sak
Keh
Mak
K'ank'in
Muwan
Pax
K'ayab
Kumk'u
Wayeb
—




The Mayan Ritual Calendar (Tzolkin). The third Mayan calendar was the Ritual Calendar, or Tzolkin, which had 13 months of 20 days each (260 days total). This 260-day cycle was related to the period of Venus. They Mayans knew that he Evening Star and the Morning Star were the same object, Venus, and had accurate tables of the planet's motion. The 20 days were named as follows:


Imix
Ik
Akbal
Kan
Chicchan
Cimi
Manik
Lamat
Muluc
Oc
Chuen
Eb
Ben
Ix
Men
Cib
Caban
Etz'nab
Cauac
Ahau



The numbers 1 through 13 increased along with the days. So for example the first day in the cycle was 1 Imix, the second was 2 Ik, and so on. After 260 days, every combination of name and number (1-13) would repeat.




The Mayan "Calendar Round." Every 52 years, the Vague Calendar and the Ritual Almanac coincide at the same beginning day. The Mayans called this a Calendar Round. They considered this an auspicious time, where the old would end and the new would begin. They rebuilt houses, refaced templed, and performed other such acts on this day. This custom has allowed us to accurately estimate the ages of many of their temples.



Mayans followed a longer cycle of 22 Calendar Rounds, consisting of 13 Heavens (the first 13 Calendar Rounds) followed by 9 Hells (the last 9 Calendar Rounds). The last cycle completed in 1987, placing us now in the first Heaven.



Lost Mayan Culture. Today, much of the ancient Mayan culture is lost forever. Their beliefs conflicted in many ways with the Roman Catholic Church, and the first Archbishop of Mexico claimed to have burned tens of thousands of Mayan books in the 1500s. Apart from remaining temple inscriptions, only four books remain today as the remnant of this ancient culture: the Dresden Codex, the Grolier Codex, the Madrid Codex, and the Paris Codex.



=======================================
ref: History Of Astronomy - The Mayans
Spirit Of Sankofa*

Science of the Pharaohs

Mathematics
Measurements
Astronomy
Medical Composition
Magic
Agriculture





The scientific subjects that concerned the ancient Egyptian were confined to mathematics, medicine, chemistry, and astrology.

What we found shows the development and progress the ancient Egyptian achieved in these sciences. Accuracy was the most important characteristic, in addition to science that enabled him to build lofty edifice on scientific basis.



Mathematics:

What we found consisted of mathematical problems and exercises and its ideal solutions, but we found neither theories nor rules. For instance what we found in some papyruses such as in “ Rand’s Papyrus ” where there was a table to divide odd numbers on 2 and some mathematical.

Problems:


A circular piece of land its circumference is 9 khit (carat) find its area?


A circular vessel of 9 cubit height and 6 cubit circumference, what is the quantity of grains that fill it?



Measurements:


The standard dry measure was Bushel (a measure of grains equals 8 gallons nearly i.e. 32½ liters). As for liquid measure there were other measures of different names, but they did not match any measures that are used now.


To measure the length they used two kinds the first is the Royal cubit (long) which equals 52.3 cm and it was used in architecture, the second is the ordinary cubit (short) which equals 45 cm.


For distances they used a unit called fluvial unit equals 10305 km (20, 000 cubit).



Areas and weights:

Area unit is “ mest gat ” = 100 square cubit.

(⅔ Acre, acre = 4000 square meter).

Weight unit is “ dubn ” = 91 grams.




Time Measurement:


Time was measured by years, and the year was divided into 12 months, every month was 30 days, and the month was three weeks 10 days each. The year was divided into three seasons each was four months: - flood season, winter, and summer.


The length of an hour varied according to the seasons. To measure time they used sundials and water glasses which were accompanied by a graduation to set the length of an hour according to the months.



At the end of the year 5 complementary days were added so that the days of the year were 365 days. The day was 24 hours divided equally into day and night. The day was twenty four hours divided equally into day and night. The length of an hour varied according to the seasons.





To measure time they used sundials and water glasses which were accompanied by a graduation to set the length of an hour according to the month.







Astronomy:


The Egyptians were concerned about studying astronomy and due to the dry climate of Egypt and to the absence of fogs except rarely, the study of the skies was easy. The positions of the groups and the orbits of the plants were known because the observation processes began in as early time.


The most two important groups of stars were:

First: The Great Bear seven stars and they were known as the immortal stars.


Second: the Arion (Saho) group and it was worshipped.


The most important star they knew was (Sirus) or (Sotis) because its appearance was a sign of the flood. Its appearance was celebrated at dawn in summer as a religious feast.


This star was considered Isis’ soul and there is a fable that says that the tears shed by Isis on the anniversary of her husband’s Osiris death were the source of the flood.



Texts were found on tombs from the mirth dynasty and these texts were known by diametrical calendar or the diametrical star clock, these texts were given the names of the “ dicons ”

i.e. the stars that appear every 10 days at the time of the rising of the sun and they counted 36 stars of it. The texts were put on the tomb to help the dead distinguish the day from the night.


These texts developed and became more accurate as in Ramsis’ the sixth tomb. In the tombs of some of the kings of the modern state we found a statue of a sitting man who has a net of stars.


Also we found in the attached texts, concerned with the first and the sixth day or every month, the position of the stars in every hour: a star over the left ear then a star over the right ear and etc.


As for the position of the Zodiac it joined the Egyptian astronomy in the Ptolemaic and the Greek era.



Concerning the year and its length astronomers eliminated the lunar year which consisted of 360 days yet they preserved the division of the year into 12 months each of 30 days then they added 5 false days to make the year correspond with the feats of astronomy.


During the harmonic era there were 2 calendars: The civil calendar (the formal) and the solar calendar (The astronomic).

In the formal calendar the year consisted of 365 days and there were no leap years, this means that the year missed a day every four years. This calendar (in respect to Julius Caesar) on the 19th of June.


As for the astronomic calendar (the solon) it consisted of 365 ¼ days therefore by the passage of the time a day was added every 4 years to the calendar and this the formal year (the civilian) precedes the astronomic year by a month every 120 years, and the two calendars correspond every 1460 years for four days.


The astronomic calendar was used in agriculture and appointing the religious feasts. One of the Greeks called Censorious deduced two dates in two years in which a simultaneous rising of Sirius and the sun happened during the days of the pharaohs, and we reached texts which tell us the days of the rising of Sirius.


The importance of these texts lies in determining the periods of the rule of the kings during whose role a rising of the star Sirius.




Medical Composition:


It is well known that the ancient Egyptians worked with medicine and anatomizing the human body and as well treated a lot of diseases compositions we found were written on papyrus and three of them go back to the time of the twelfth family and they are of the oldest papyri.



Some of these compositions were written in hieroglyphic and not in Hieratic as usual (this shows that it was made up before it was written by a long time). One dealt with the hard limbs and another contained amulets and prescriptions for the pregnant and the nursing woman.


I respite of what the ancient Egyptians had reached in medicine, magic was from the essential matters in treat neat for them. They believed that most of the diseases were caused by the devils, thus medicine was used along with the amulets.


Medicines contained bloods and fats of the animals, herbs, honey, and known liquids. They also made ointments and it was mixed with honey or with the fats of the animals like geese fat.


The Egyptians practiced surgery and were excelled at it but they did not recourse to it except for treating injuries.



Edwer Smith’s papyrus was found explaining the right surgery to treat the injuries of the head and the chest. Another papyrus called after I Bris Blizbeg contained information about the surgical treatment of first blisters and cysts caused by burns, sound, on obstetrics and gynecology.



Do not you agree that the ancient Egyptians had studied and penetrated many fields that were complex, difficult to comprehend and mysterious for old nations and in spite of that the ancient Egyptians excelled in it?





Magic:


Like all the ancient nations the ancient Egyptians believed in magic and in the presence of mysterious forces that controlled them. Thus they practiced magic and excelled in it. Different kinds of magic were mentioned in many of the ancient Egyptian literature.



We found that the ancient Egyptians devoted whole papyri to talk about nothing but magic. We also found records that contain amulets against diseases and maladies. The ancient Egyptians made for everyday in the year a magic characteristic which nukes bad luck or an in between one. Thus, they made up a calendar of good fortune days and misfortune days to refer to when they need.



We find in a papyrus a group of dreaand their interpretations each dream starts by “ if a man sees himself in a dream ” then follows a brief description of the dream then a phrase shoring whether the dream is a good one or a bad one and finally comes the interpretation of the dream.

For example.....

If a man sees himself in a dream eating the meat of a donkey, good it means his promotion.


If staring in a deep well repaired.


If staring in a deep well, bad, it means the ruin of his possessions, that is cannot be repaired.



If sitting on a tree, good, it means curing of diseases.

According to this papyrus, the Egyptians practiced the interpretation of dreams penetrating the psychiatry of the dreamer and interpreting what he sees in his dreams.



Problems were solved by consulting fortune tellers. The high positions in the state, even the position of the king was decided sometimes through the inspiration of a fortune teller. Disputes between the opponents were solved by fortunetellers as many papyri stated.



There are also long amulets which contain small wraps of papyrus, with mysterious texts for protection from din asters written on. The pharaonic magic continued even after Egypt’s merge into the Roman Empire.


The ancient Egyptians used magic in life necessities:



To stop the hurricane and the storm, to protect one in the desert against the beasts or in water against the crocodiles, and every where in Egypt against snakes and scorpions and therefore the pyramids of the king were supplied with amulets against hazards.



Magic as well helped on giving birth was recited while preparing medicine and it fought all poisons and diseases. It fought the evil dead who were believed to leave the tombs and look for eirl spreading diseases. Therefore, the ancient Egyptians used amulets for protection from hazards. As well mothers used to hang amulets to their young for their protection.







Agriculture:



Discovering the agriculture was from the most important matters that changed the course of life of the ancient Egyptians before Christ, in that manner man transferred from life of hunting to the life of agriculture, and the ancient Egyptian transferred from life of wandering to the life of residence and settling.

The agricultural era started 8000 or 10,000 years ago (i.e. since the Neolithic period). And as we know Egypt’s culture was an agricultural first and the circumstances of the ancient Egyptian were better than the circumstances of other nations.






Although his life was hard he reaped the fruits of his work this satisfactory situation was due to the river Nile and to the stable climate. With the renewal of the flood, the ancient Egyptians had to plow the land, then to sow the seeds and to look after the yield until its harvest.




The agricultural year started after the retreat of the water of the flood. The land was prepared quickly before cultivation in order not to dry and solidify. This process included: cleaning the irrigation canals, filling up the holes, replanting the hand and putting limit signs in the fields.

This enormous work needed collective efforts and therefore. This work was inevitable that the Egyptians thought that it is a necessity in the After life, and since the Middle state the rich out Oshbanic statues, as we mentioned before to substitute them in the after life.




After preparing the land cultivating the crops starts sometimes they used canals for irrigation but almost they lift the crops to grow without more irrigation. Then in the modern state they used the continuous irrigation system.




Spring was the season of the harvest that usually ended in may then the land was lift uncultivated for two months before the arrival of the new flood and if the land was high it was irrigated by the Archimedean screw (shadoof) which raised water.



The most important crops were grains (like wild wheat, ordinary, and barley corn, and flax) flax was one of the important crops and was cultivated to get fibers for making linen cloth. Papyrus was one of the most important crops and it was used in writing.



The Egyptians used ploughs to breakup the land and as for the solid soil for which the plough is nit suitable it was broken up by axes and hocs. At the harvest time the grains were collected by wooden sickles then gathered in big baskets and transferred to stores on donkeys.



After collecting the grains the processes of threshing and hulling then storing comes. Cattle did the threshing, and it means separating the grains from straw, and during threshing the dead spikes were eliminated.


Hulling took place using wooden fans where the air resulting form the fans hulls the grains and at last the grains were transferred to silos for storage.


After the harvest, taxes must be paid, theoretically all Egypt’s lands were owned by the pharaoh but there were lands owned by individuals.


The pharaoh bestowed lands to temples, nobles, and some individuals. Therefore they had to pay the taxes.



In addition to the abovementioned important crops, there were tow more important crops: Oil and wine, and infect they were extracting industries. Oil substituted grains in barter and it was used in cooking, lighting and in the manufacture of perfumes ointments and mummifying. Oil was extorted from jerboa fruits, castor Oil plant, flax, sesame, radish, and as for wine it was extracted from grapes and dates.



Breeding and taming cattle and birds were the results of agriculture. It was not bred only for food but also because it had an important role in worship purposes and religious rituals where sacrifices were given everyday.



In addition to cattle the animals of the desert were bred like dears and gazelles. The cattle were tattoo marked using a two horn shaped instrument. The Egyptians peasant was proud of his cattle.


As for the birds, they tamed ducks and geese in addition to wild birds. Hunting the birds was a sport practiced by using a hooked hunting stick. As for cats it roused the birds in order to hunt them easily.





HOTEP

Egypt Astronomer Priestesses

World-renown historians of Egypt's early history trace the background of the three astronomer-priestesses who gave to the world higher mathematics.


English historian, Gerald Massey Ancient Egypt, The Light of the World tells us that they were of a long line of distinguished African women who would lead the travel of civilization from its southern origins until it arrived in the north in a land now known as Egypt.


This upper Nile was where the goddess Ater-Tshema-T is credited with having created calculus over 4700 years ago.


G. Michanowsky tells us that about 4000 B. C. there was a giant supernova in the southern constellation Vela.


This and other celestial phenomena inspired these southeastern African people to move to a part of Africa which afforded an unobstructed view of the heavens they found in the barren ground of what-is-now Egypt.


They constructed telescopes and observatories to record precise movements of heavenly bodies.


They drew the land as a right triangle of thirty-six, fifty-four and ninety degrees. Livio C. Stecchini says that this allowed these astronomer-priestesses to calculate all of the trigonometric functions of angles between zero and thirty-six degrees.



The astronomer-priestess Sheshet is credited with the creation of trigonometry.


According to Livio Stecchini, priestess Sheshet analyzed curves by dividing the area under a curve into a series of rectangles which is the basis of integral calculus. In analyzing the curvature of the earth she used rectangles six feet wide.



Geometry, created by the astronomer-priestesses Tekhi, evolved with the object of controlling the flow of the Nile River, so that maximum enrichment of the land would result.



According to E. A. Wallis Budge, Keeper of the Antiquities of the British Museum, in his book, The Gods of Egypt, and Moses Cotsworth say that these priestesses were the most learned of Egypt.



They say that they could measure the length of the year to 365.24219 of days. They were credited with placing the granite slab into the great pyramid, which, according to the French mathematician, Abbe Thomas Moreau, in his book The Mysterious Science of the Pharaohs, is the basis for the metric system.



This is due to the fact that the length of this granite slab is exactly one meter in length which is one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator.



hotep*

Housing in Ancient Egypt

Houses in Ancient Egypt were made out of mud bricks. Mud was in abundance after the annual flood. Brick makers placed the mud into wooden molds and let them bake and harden in the sun. After hardening, the bricks were stacked to be used for building.


The homes of the wealthy were made of double-thick walls that increased the security of the house. The homes of the poor were only one brick thick.




The average Egyptian home had four rooms—a central room with smaller rooms joined to it. The central room was usually higher than the other rooms so that small openings for air could be placed high in the wall. The average person had four rooms in the house.


A family spent most of their time in the central room and used it for sleeping quarters at night. Off of this central room was a kitchen and another room that was used for storage or as an extra bedroom. Off the street was an entry room, which led into the central room.




A nobleman’s house also had a central room in its building plan. There were more rooms surrounding the central room in a nobleman’s home, and the furniture was much more ornate. Flooring was made of mud tiles or covered with a plaster-like material.



Suitable wood for building was very rare in Ancient Egypt. Much of the wood had to be imported since the trees that grew naturally in the dry Egyptian climate did not produce good boards. Wood was used to support doorways, steps, and ceilings.


The roof of a house was frequently used as living space in Egypt, since the insides of houses were dimly lit. Stairs to the roof were part of most every home.

KEMETIC COSMIC VIEW - THE BOOK OF NUT

This book itself is pictured in nature, and resembles to some degree the Book of the Heavenly Cow. There are brief captions that seems to overwhelmed by the huge image of the sky.



We have a few examples of the Book of Nut. There are exanples in the cenotaph of Seti I at Abydos and the tomb of Ramheesses IV, through the latter is abbrieviated.



The only other evidence of this book is a commentary written in the Roman Period, and an incomplete version in the tomb of Mutirdis (TT410) dating from the 26 Dynasty. The longer appended text that accompanies the captions was reproduced in the Papyrus Carlsberg in Demotic script.




It was Jean-Francois Champollion and Hippolito Rosellini who published the earliest drawing of the representation of the sky goddess.
================



These, and some investigations that followed, were all from the versibauer on found in the tomb (KV2) of Ramesses IV, for the Osireion in Abydos, for it had not been discovered at that point.


The commentary from the Roman Period was published by H.O. Lange and Otto Neugebauer in 1940.
=============


Nut is shown as a woman supported by God Shu who holds her body aloft. Interesting, in the tomb of Seti I, she is oriented correctly for the swallowing and birth of the sun, but not in tomb of Ramesses IV.



Other motifs within the scene includes several sun disks, a winged scarab in front of the knees of the goddess, a vulture atop the heraldic plant (lotus flower)of Upper Egypt behind her legs, and nest of migratory birds next to her arms. The captions on the scenes are also accompanied by a longer appended text.

===============



The book itself is intended to provide both a topography of the sky and greater understanding of the sun's daily course. The brief captions augment this understanding and are distributed over the entire scene, describing its detail as well as the actions of the sun god, the decans and other divine beings.



O. Neugebaum set out and coded the various captions within the depiction. For example; Text L provides a definition of the "Far regions of the sky", that are in the primeval darkness and waters, not touched by the sun.



They have no bounaries or cardinal directions. A list of decans that may orginate in the Middle Kingdom are provided in Text S through X. These captions tells us the decans work and their periodic invisibilitey, including thier transit through the meridian.


The text labeled Dd through FFf explains migratory birds and their nests.

============

In the cenotaph of Seti I at Abydos, we find a text reporting a quarrel between Geb and Nut because she is swallowing their children, the stars.


The dispute is settled by their father, Shu who advises that Nut gives birth to the stars each time so they might live.




Hotep*

KMT BOOK OF THE HEAVENS

During the late New Kingdom, a book was developed by the Kemet's, describes the sun's passage through the heavens.


There are actually a number of individual books, but the better documented of these include the Book of the Day, the Book of the Night, and the Book of Nut. Closely Related is the Book of the Celestial Cow.




For example; The Book of the Night, like other books, documented the sun's journey but set within Nut, goddess of the heavens. She swallows the sun at the close of the day and gives birth to it each morning.




Pasages from these books are mostly found in Ramessid period tombs.
======================



The Book of the Divine Cow begins with "The Myth of the Destruction of Mankind", the KMT (EGYPTIAN) version of the story of the flood.

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In the beginning daylight was always present, and humans and gods cohabitated on earth. This was depicted as paradise, but humans rebelled against the aging sun god, Ra. Ra sent Hathor as his eye (cobra snake) to punish the rebels, who begain to destroy them with fire.




However, Ra ended up feelimg sorry for them and so deceived Hathor into thinking some humans live. Ra then rearranged heaven and the underworld and left earth on the back of the celestial cow.




After the death of Akhenaten, signaling the end of the Amarna Period, we find a new set of books related to the afterlife. These books centered around Nut, who swallows the sun god in the evening, only to give birth to him in the morning.




During the day the sun god passes visibly along her body but during the night, He travels through her body, back to the place where he will rise once more.




Beginning with Ramesses IV, two of the Books of the Sky were usually placed next to each other on the ceilings of royal tombs.



They depicted a double representation of Nut, back to back. The main focus is on the sun god, other heavenly bodies are also included.



For the most part, these writings emphasize's the cosmography and topography of the now, through the astronomical ceilings found in the tombs of Seti I (KV17) Through Ramesses III (KV11)can also be viewed as precursors to the Books of the Sky,(HEAVENS).




These books are generally considered to consist of the Book of Nut, the Book of the Day and the Book of the Night.
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Hotep*
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ref: crystalinks*