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| "The Science of Astronomy and the Genius of Ancient Egyptians” salon |
Under the sponsorship of the Ministry of Culture and the Cultural Development Fund, the "Nefertiti Cultural Salon" organized a special seminar titled "The Science of Astronomy and the Genius of Ancient Egyptians” It took the audience on a journey through time to explore how our ancestors understood the sky and stars, using this knowledge to build the great Egyptian civilization from constructing the pyramids to creating calendars.
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| the guests of the salon |
The seminar featured a group of experts, including Dr. Khaled Saad Senior Expert in Prehistoric Studies, Dr. Maysera Abdullah Professor of Egyptian Antiquities at Cairo University and Dr. Magdy Fikry Professor of Egyptian Antiquities at the Faculty of Tourism and Hotels, The event was hosted and presented by the Media host ‘Wafaa Abdel Hamid’, whose presence added a special touch and encouraged the audience to engage with the topics discussed.
The seminar was held at the Creativity Center in Prince Taz Palace in last February, it opened the door for all history lovers and those interested in the brilliance of the ancient Egyptians to discover a new side of our shining civilization.
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| Dr. Khaled Saad speech in the salon |
Dr. Khaled Saad, the General Director of Prehistoric Antiquities, stated that the origin of everything in Egyptian civilization was before history. He explained how ancient Egyptians invented the first astronomical calendar in history before the existence of writing, reading, or language during the Neolithic period, prior to the invention of these forms of communication. During this time, individuals lived in the eastern and western deserts and along the banks of the Nile. However, it was discovered that every human settlement in a specific area invented its own unit for measuring time. Due to droughts and climate changes in the eastern and western deserts, ancient Egyptians moved to live alongside the Nile because of the abundance of water and food available around it. The knowledge of astronomy and its changes was discovered by Egyptian women due to their observations of the sky during pregnancy, noticing the brightness of star groups. On the other hand, men were busy with hunting and farming to provide for their families, so they did not pay attention to this. However, women noticed this link and connected the brightness and dimming of star groups to the months of pregnancy and the timing of childbirth. They observed specific star groups shining at the time of childbirth and named them accordingly. Over time, this knowledge was passed down among women, and it was the ancient Egyptian woman who invented the zodiac signs, shaping them into the forms of the ram, lion, fish, and bull, based on the animals available to them at that time.
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| Dr. Khaled Saad speech in the salon |
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Dr. Khaled Saad explained that the ancient Egyptians understood that astronomy was a unit for measuring time and that time consisted of minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, seasons, and years. They created a unique system to measure each element separately as a standard for time measurement. The first unit they produced was from observing daily occurrences such as the sunrise, solar movement, and shadows by placing a stone on the ground with each solar and shadow movement. They realized that from sunrise to sunset equals 12 hours, or half a day, and that from sunset to the next sunrise equals another 12 hours. They believed that the sun, upon setting, dies in the earthly realm but lives in the afterlife and rises again in the earthly realm, thus they invented a unit to measure the day from one sunrise to the next (24 hours, divided into 12 hours visible and 12 hours not visible). Therefore, they considered the solar unit of time as the sun, and at night they observed the moon, whose phases changed daily. They measured the month from the appearance of the crescent moon to the appearance of the next crescent moon, calculating it to be 30 suns, which means 30 days. Initially, they counted the month as 28 days, concluding that half of 28 is 14, which is the full moon day; half of 14 equals 7, defining it as a unit to measure the week. This means they created a calendar to measure time through celestial observations, linking everything back to the sun to define time, repeating the sun as 7 suns in a week, 14 suns in two weeks, and 28 suns in a month. In the time of the Old Kingdom, this eventually developed into a month of 30 days.
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| Dr. Khaled Saad speech in the salon |
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Dr. Khaled Saad explained that ancient Egyptians found a specific star shining brightly on a certain day and noticed red water, which signaled the beginning of the flood. They considered this time as the New Year. They observed that water remained on the land for four lunar months, meaning four months, and the growth of crops took 4 lunar months as well. They also noted that harvesting (summer) took four lunar months in the land. They calculated the year as consisting of 12 lunar months, divided into three seasons. But how did they create a unit to measure an hour? They invented this by tracking the sun's position and its shadow and placing stones to represent hours or parts of hours. Through this method, ancient Egyptians created the first sundial, where the materials used in its making varied according to local geography; each human settlement in a specific area utilized the resources available to them.
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| Dr. Khaled Saad speech in the salon |
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Dr. Khaled further explained that ancient Egyptians depicted star group shapes based on familiar objects, just as they resembled the star groups in tools used in their ceremonial practices. He elaborated that with the beginning of historical science, through pictorial signs inscribed on walls, the science of numbers emerged, which later developed into mathematics. Over time, ancient Egyptians began constructing houses in circular shapes, leaving a hole in the roofs to let sunlight in, allowing them to measure time from within the house without directly viewing the sun. All these houses faced north concerning the earth's rotation. As time went on, ancient Egyptians invented the concept of time measurement, detailing the Egyptian National Institute of Astronomical Sciences' division of star groups into three types, based on color (white, red, and orange; with white representing young stars, red elderly, and orange being dying stars that explode, producing nebulae, meteors, or stardust).
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Dr. Maysara Abdullah speech in the salon
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Dr. Maysara Abdullah, a professor of Egyptian antiquities at Cairo University, explained that the ancient Egyptians divided the Egyptian year into three seasons: Akhet (the flood), Peret (withdrawal of water from the land or harvest season), and Shemu (harvest time). He stated that the ancient Egyptians considered the season of Akhet to be the beginning of the year, commencing with the burial of the god Osiris (which corresponds to the 26th of Kiahk in the ancient Egyptian calendar). Here, it doesn't refer to the body of Osiris but rather to the seed buried after the flood season. They believed the sacred body was buried, mourning occurring afterward. As months of Peret passed, the month of Bashans would arrive, bringing forth new harvests and the beginning of the harvesting season. Importantly, when ancient Egyptians settled in Egypt millions of years ago, they regarded Egypt as the sky on earth, believing everything existed within it. Therefore, they depicted the sky as the goddess Nut.
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Dr. Maysara Abdullah speech in the salon
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Dr. Maysara Abdullah explained that in ancient Egyptian religion, there's a difference in portraying the goddess Nut, sometimes as a naked woman and other times as a cow. For example, in Abydos, we find this naked form divided by toes into segments or spaces, each marking a time phase in the cosmos around us. Dr. Maysara simply explained why the ancient Egyptians depicted Nut sometimes as a woman and other times as a cow. The answer to this puzzle is that humans naturally tend toward emotional interpretations; they viewed the cow as a symbol of goodness and prosperity, while the depiction as a woman signifies respect and reverence. However, this isn't the real interpretation. The truth is much different—when looking at the southeastern corner of Egypt's sky at the Egyptian-Sudanese border, we find a star group called the Hen constellation, consisting of three stars forming an inverted triangle, which the ancient Egyptians viewed as Nut's womb, from which the sun would emerge, heralding the season in which the crops or sacred seeds would be buried. Looking to the western horizon of the sky in the northwestern corner of Egypt, we find the Gemini stars, which ancient Egyptians perceived as Nut's breasts, believing that between these two stars lay Nut's head just beyond the horizon. On the 21st of March, marking the beginning of the vernal equinox, the sun crosses between the Gemini stars to drop below the horizon. After this midday fall, the sun travels from the northern quadrant toward the south, taking a journey until it reaches the Tropic of Cancer, where it's winter until the 21st of December, when the sun is born from the center of the inverted triangle in the southeast. The duration from the sun's fall between the Gemini stars in the northwestern corner until its birth from the inverted triangle's center in the southeast equals 272 days, which equals 9 months—the typical duration of a woman's pregnancy. Therefore, ancient Egyptians depicted Nut as a woman, as they believed she carried the sun for 9 months. After the sun's birth, the flood season began, with the sun's birth on December 21st being seen as a new rebirth for the earth.
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Dr. Maysara Abdullah speech in the salon
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Dr. Maysara Abd Allah also explained that the arrangement of the months was linked to the river, flooding, and agriculture, as the ancient Egyptian society was fundamentally agricultural. All festivals during these months were based on flooding and agriculture. For example, the month of Thoth, which is the start of the ancient Egyptian year, is a celebration for the god Thoth, the deity of knowledge, beginning on the 11th of July in the Middle Kingdom and on the 17th of July in the New Kingdom. The month of Hathor celebrates the return of Hathor during the flood, and in Kiahk, there's a celebration for the return of Osiris's spirit, who was buried, while the month of Tub as there is a celebration welcoming Horus to the throne, and in the month of Beshir, the celebration of the god Behdet, the god of storms, and so on.
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Dr. Maysara Abdullah speech in the salon
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Dr. Maysara Abd Allah elaborated that the ancient zodiac was depicted in a rectangular shape. Although the Egyptian year begins with the Akhet season, this shape starts with the Peret season, as Peret symbolizes the beginning of the world's birth or the cosmos's birth. The crucial aspect was determining the timings of the cosmos, considering the Egyptian year consists of 365 days, 36 weeks, and each month comprises three weeks, with each week having 10 days. They considered the week to be 10 days because, on the 17th of July, when observing the eastern horizon after sunset or slightly before sunrise, a star group called the decimal group appears. The following day, this group delays its appearance by 55 minutes, and then by 110 minutes the next day, continuing to delay until after ten days, when another group appears on the eastern horizon, which also delays in appearance each day. There are 36 such groups, matching the number of weeks in the year.
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Dr. Maysara Abdullah speech in the salon
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Dr. Maysara Abd Allah described how the ancient Egyptians determined true north by relying on two stars mentioned in the Cairo Astronomical Papyrus held in the Egyptian Museum. These two stars, named the woodworker and the apron, appear to revolve around each other. The two stars align vertically in the middle of the sky every seven years. Using these two stars, the ancient Egyptians could determine true north with a small tool called the merkhit, which is a ruler with a small notch. They placed this notch toward the northern horizon of the sky. If they found the woodworker and apron aligned with this notch, it indicated true north. They would project this line into the ground, marking this spot as north. Through this process, the base of the Great Pyramid was determined, allowing us to estimate the true date of the Great Pyramid's construction as 2472 or 2479 BC, depending on when the two stars aligned on the same line.
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Dr. Maysara Abdullah speech in the salon
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Dr. Maysara Abd Allah recounted how ancient Egyptians observed star groups and linked them together, which revealed astronomical correlations that mirrored those seen in ancient Egypt during the New Kingdom with Mesopotamia, particularly in the Babylonian era. The relationship between the two countries was very strong, which later enabled us to inherit astrology from Babylon, as before, they only had names that were not fixed, there could be as many as 14 signs. However, when these zodiac signs were drawn, they were illustrated using methods borrowed from Babylon, such as depicting Capricorn with its head shaped like a goat and its body like a fish. Sometimes, zodiac signs would be drawn without having been observed in nature, so these illustrations are not uniquely Egyptian. After astrology was transmitted to Egypt from Babylon, it later spread to Greece and then to the rest of the world. However, the difference between astrology in ancient Egypt and in other countries is that ancient Egyptians did not connect celestial zodiac signs to people's fates or personalities. The reason astrology and fortune-telling existed in ancient Egypt is due to the presence of papyri called the papyri of bad days and fortunate days, containing descriptions of each day of the year, with specifications indicating whether it was a good or bad day, but not tying it to the stars above but rather to ordinary daily histories. ancient Egyptian texts do not mention that the ancient Egyptians connected zodiac signs with human phenomena. It was argued that ancient Egyptians considered humans as noble and respected beings, and in their view, a noble being is a virtuous human who thus possesses all honorable traits. Therefore, astronomy for ancient Egyptians was a practical science, not a predictive one, used to regulate the rhythms of life in ancient Egypt.
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| Dr. Magdi Fikry speech in the salon |
Dr. Magdi Fikry, a professor of Egyptian archaeology and civilization at the Faculty of Tourism at Sadat University, spoke at the Nefertiti Cultural Salon event. He began by explaining the relationship between the sun's alignment with temples and the relationship of Egyptian artifacts with geography or the Nile. He stated that indeed, in research, we found that ancient Egyptian artifacts have a close connection with the Nile or with temples overlooking the Nile. He explained that there are several directions or sources for the directions of temples in ancient Egypt, such as the Nile and other phenomena linked to the winter solstice, including the sunrise at this time, the summer solstice marked by sunset, the vernal equinox, the autumn equinox, and seasonal phenomena like the Great Temple of Abu Simbel. He clarified that the summer solstice occurs on June 21, which is the longest day of the year, while the vernal and autumnal equinoxes occur when day and night hours are equal, with 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness. This equality marks a balanced day, with the winter solstice occurring on December 21, considered the shortest day of the year. This day was very significant for the ancient Egyptians, as they believed that the sun was on its path to disappear or die. The following day, the daylight hours would begin to increase, and the sun would eventually align with the face of the king or the deity as they perceived it. To them, this alignment indicated that the king would experience resurrection or rebirth alongside the sun. Ancient Egyptians were keen on building temples facing the winter solstice more than other directions, such as the Karnak Temple, given its immense spiritual significance. Furthermore, there are other alignments related to stars or star groups, such as the northern and eastern star groups. The magnificence of the Old Kingdom pyramids and their alignment with northern stars demonstrates their ingenuity, as determining the orientation for building temples was done intentionally, not randomly, but through a significant ritual that existed from the time of the first dynasty: the "pulling of the cord" ritual, performed by the king who intended to construct a monument dedicated to the goddess Seshat, whose name means "the one of the seven directions" or "the one with seven fingers." This goddess was specifically associated with temple foundations. The king performed this ceremony with Seshat to determine the four points necessary for constructing the temple, and this ritual took place over decades. An important phenomenon known as "Khufu's Horizon," special to the summer solstice at sunset, occurs on June 21. On this day, the sun sets aligned with the back of the Sphinx statue, fitting between the pyramids of Khufu and Menkaure. This site provides us with an idea of what the horizon looks like and illustrates once again that the sun disc intersects the head and back of the Sphinx, representing the name of the pyramid itself, Khufu's Horizon.
The "Nefertiti Cultural Salon" was a wonderful journey into the world of ancient Egyptian science and astronomy. The speakers, Dr. Khaled Saad, Dr. Maysera Abdullah and Dr. Magdy Fikry, shared simple yet amazing facts about how our ancestors understood the stars and used this knowledge in their daily lives.
This event showed us how smart and creative the ancient Egyptians were. It also reminded everyone, especially students, of the importance of knowing our history and learning from it.
As the salon ended, one idea stood out: our past is full of wisdom, and by understanding it, we can create a better future. We look forward to more events like this that inspire us and make us proud of our roots.
