A fact from Dendera zodiac appeared on Wikipedia's
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We should have an article on every pyramid and every nome in Ancient Egypt. I'm sure the rest of us can think of other articles we should have.
Cleanup.
To start with, most of the general history articles badly need attention. And I'm told that at least some of the dynasty articles need work. Any other candidates?
Standardize the Chronology.
A boring task, but the benefit of doing it is that you can set the dates !(e.g., why say Khufu lived 2589-2566? As long as you keep the length of his reign correct, or cite a respected source, you can date it 2590-2567 or 2585-2563)
Stub sorting
Anyone? I consider this probably the most unimportant of tasks on Wikipedia, but if you believe it needs to be done . . .
Data sorting.
This is a project I'd like to take on some day, & could be applied to more of Wikipedia than just Ancient Egypt. Take one of the standard authorities of history or culture -- Herotodus, the Elder Pliny, the writings of Breasted or Kenneth Kitchen, & see if you can't smoothly merge quotations or information into relevant articles. Probably a good exercise for someone who owns one of those impressive texts, yet can't get access to a research library.
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If the pronaos was added under the Emperor Tiberius (reigned 14-37), and the relief forms an integral part of the pronaos, then it is impossible for the relief to have been created in "50 BC." What perhaps was intended was that the star patterns approximately match those of "50 BC," but it is of course impossible to astronomically date with such precision a representation which is itself imprecise.
Also, as far as I can tell, Cauville et al. have fudged their data, and the alignment they claim did not actually take place at the time they claim.
RandomCritic (
talk)
13:27, 14 July 2013 (UTC)reply
Joint or saw mark?
Is the apparent joint that passes through the middle of the carving due to limitations on the size of the stone blocks originally used, or was it sawed through to make it easier to transport to Paris?
70.15.114.2 (
talk)
19:39, 23 February 2008 (UTC)reply
I don't know, but it would be interesting to know. Another odd thing about this joint, besides being badly refitted at the breasts of the goddesses (?) wearing that heaven, is that a few of the figures cut apart are still half figures, one part at either side of the joint and the part at the other side missing. Something went amiss when the blocks were removed from Dendera, maybe. Maybe a few of the figures were seriously damaged at some stone block movement. Said:
Rursus☻20:52, 9 August 2008 (UTC)reply
Pole star
Seems like the French image from Louvre has a pole star somewhere farther at the back of that jackal on the plough of
Taweret. If that jackal back is Ursa Minor, then it's consistent with epsilon or zeta Ursae Minoris being pole stars, topical in the hundreds around 0 AD. Said:
Rursus☻20:59, 9 August 2008 (UTC)reply
Something along this line, reported from published work, would illuminate the bald assertion "...50 BC, since it shows the stars and planets in the positions they would have been seen at that date." --
Wetman (
talk)
03:27, 4 February 2009 (UTC)reply
The current sources aren't modern enough. The source explaining Champollion's dating, which is plausible, also reports another analysis claiming that the positioning of the constellations are just "wishful thinking", which is greatly exaggerated. Most zodiacal constellations are placed reasonably well, excepting
Cancer (constellation), most other unknown constellations coincide with real star patterns, f.ex. the back of the north pole jackal coinciding with Ursa Minor, that
Taweret figure reasonably coinciding with stars in
Draco and probably
Cepheus. It might be that the Dendera Zodiac is academic hotstuff that not many academics dare touching, but hopefully that is not the case, and we might find better sources out there. ... said:
Rursus (
mbork³)
16:43, 30 August 2009 (UTC)reply
The first line of the 'History' section currently reads: During the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt, Vivant Denon drew the circular zodiac, the more widely known one, and the rectangular zodiacs. As I recall there was only one rectangular zodiac found at Dendera, but there were also a couple at Esneh. Could these have been conflated by the original author of this article?
I am amazed to see that the last correction of certain parts of this article, was deleted!
I am a English speaker but i learnt the French language and i can assert that a big part of this article on the Zodiac of Denderah is as well fanciful as full of errors.
I thought that the writing of articles of Wikipedia offered a guarantee of seriousness and searches to avoid spreading the big errors.
I invite you to make translate the page in French about the Dendera Zodiac to notice where are your errors.
That if the Musée du Louvre had not evaluated the French page dedicated to the Zodiac of Denderah on Wikiépedia, this page would have no presentation which it has at the moment.
Would the French speakers be more serious than the English speakers?
As long as this page would not have been corrected, it is certain that the English speakers will have this sad reputation regarding Egyptology...
@
LOGOS & ALOGOS: you ask ". Why is the English page the only one that can not be translated? Is there anything to hide from the English-speaking world?" You don't mention translation software here, but that seems to be your question. I've asked
here.
Doug Wellertalk12:25, 6 August 2019 (UTC)reply
In 1820 it was removed from the temple ceiling by French colonizers and replaced with a fake. There is controversy as to whether they were granted permission by Egypt's ruler, Muhammad Ali Pasha, to do so, or whether they stole it. The real one is now in the Louvre.
The article suggests that between 1865 and the early 1990s no serious astronomical research was done on the Dendera zodiac and further suggests that the work published by Cauville en Aubourg in the 1990s is the final word on the dating of the monument. Note that their dating is based on the assumption that the Dendera zodiac represents a horoscope. Earlier scholars (such as
Otto Neugebauer &
Richard A. Parker, Egyptian Astronomical Texts: Part III. Decans, Planets, Constellations and Zodiacs (Providence/London: Brown University Press/Lund Humphries, 1969), pp. 72-74 & passim) have argued that the planets are depicted at their points of
exaltation, a planetary configuration which in fact can never occur.
No objection. It doesn't look like this article has been worked on in a while, aside from the recent edits by
User:EgyptianAstro. I don't know what to make of those edits, but participation from a more experienced Wikipedia with astronomical expertise would be welcome.
A. Parrot (
talk)
13:51, 22 May 2023 (UTC)reply
Hi A. Parrot,
"with astronomical expertise would be welcome"
I proposed these serious astronomical elements, you can verify them with the references :
Regarding the lunar eclipse, it did not take place on September 25, but on September 26 (
https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/5MCLEmap/-0099-0000/LE-0051-09-26T.gif) as indicated by NASA. Depending on the position of this eye, since there isn't a circular shape exactly opposite this eye, so there can't be a schematic representation of a lunar eclipse because there can't be two suns on this sandstone. It is not one representation of an eclipse, it is rather the oldest representation of the Andromeda Galaxy, also named M31.
Eric Aubourg was published exclusively internally within the IFAO (French Institute of Oriental Archaeology). His theory was never submitted to a committee of readers, nor published in an astronomy magazine. It is therefore recommended to rely on the career of a true astronomer such as Jean-Baptiste Biot, also renowned for his mastery of physics and mathematics."
Above is my modest participation who could be modified of course but why Grachester deleted it all ?
My serious participation was judged not neutral, but I am not Xavier Jubier, I found his website on the Nasa website, where I verified the solar eclipse indicated by Eric Aubourg.
This article without my participation was already not neutral because Eric Aubourg is member of administration of IFAO as we can read on his page in French :
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89ric_Aubourg
IFAO isn't a private society, it is just a department of the Minister of French Culture, its publications are internal and distributed only to the members.
Eric Aubourg never published his theory in an astronomical magazine sold in bookstore, his theory was never verified by astronomers.
Who isn't neutral ? Who not verify the elements ? Who is too lazy to read all the references and the bibliography ? Who don't respect the readers, the students, the knowledge ? Not me !
I did the job that all wikinauts must do before publish a serious article. But some of you don't want a person as me, because too much work for them.
The problem with Wikipedia is because some Wikinauts are there since years, they believe that Wikipedia became their propriety, they don't want to modify anything because they don't want to show to all they wrote a wrong article.
Just use the link below (recommended by Nasa) to see that Egypt could not observe the solar ecipse of March 7 50 BCE because the solar obscuration rate was below 40% in Alexandria and less than 20 % in Dendera: :
Any serious astronomer will tell you that it takes at least 88% of solar obscuration for an eclipse to be observed as an annular eclipse and 100 % of solar obscuration for a total eclipse.
That's why is preferable to retain the dating by Jean-Baptiste Biot, he did astronomical calculations and he find the year ; 716 BCE; He found this dating because he made a stereographical projection cartography which used the position of the star named Sirius.
I've blocked this editor for legal threats. Loved this bit on their talk page "I would say to the judge that after my report about my desire to remove my images, you blocked me, thus refusing to respect my copyrights which I never ceded to you, but just lent." Editing as "Alice-astro" when they added the image.
Doug Wellertalk10:41, 23 May 2023 (UTC)reply
Astronomical dating of the Dendera Zodiac
Hello to all,
I have recently published the astronomically correct solution to the system that was used to define layout of the carved Gods and Zodiac symbols that constitute the inner circular sections of the Dendera Zodiac. The work is scientifically robust and the results of the work are available on the website
www.denderazodiac.com
Because of the complexity of the Dendera zodiac bas-relief sculpture and the number of possible permutations of the positions of the planets of the solar system it is impossible for the sculpture's components to be successfully reverse engineered. The work that I have published uses the date of the winter solstice of 2729 BCE as the input parameter and then references the planetary ephemerides of NASA, specifically the DE441 table, to determine the rotation parameters of the eight planets of the solar system at this moment in time, 14th January in the year 2729 BCE. The NASA data is then applied as rotations to the inner circular section of the sculpture and it is shown that the planets all then align perfectly into dedicated positions in the outer section of the sculpture. There are a total of 24 precision astronomy angles that need to be applied when using this approach, and therefore the possibility of all the planets aligning without the input date also being correct is so remote as to be implausible.
The work is a major breakthrough in terms of our understanding both the Dendera Zodiac sculpture and the fact that it is intrinsically linked to the Great Pyramid of Giza. The two entities must have been designed and built by the same people and therefore the Dendera Zodiac must date back to 2729 BCE, as does the Great Pyramid.
The determination of the date of the 2729 BCE winter solstice being the key to both the pyramid and the sculpture is covered in an academic paper "The architecture of the Great Pyramid's lower northern shaft" that was published in 2021 and which is available from the URL
www.thegreatpyramidpapers.com/paperI.html
The key to unlocking the Dendera Zodiac is to realise that the hook object that was found inside the lower northern shaft of the Great Pyramid is a perfect match for the knee sections of the outer Gods of the zodiac sculpture, which shows that the hook must be an original part of the pyramid and that the sculpture must therefore use the astronomical data that can be extracted from the pyramid's lower northern shaft. Consequently I am currently in contact with the appropriate people at the Louvre museum and the British museum and am working to get the hook object sent to the Louvre museum curator for direct comparison with the sculpture.
Because this work is a major step forwards, it needs to be included on the wikipedia page for the Dendera Zodiac, but as the author of the work I do not consider that it would be appropriate for me to add references to my own work. I am as keen as you will be to retain the integrity of the page. I am therefore posting this to the page discussion and would ask everyone who is tracking this page to look at the published works and then add to this wikipedia page accordingly.
The understanding of the remarkable technical accuracy of the rotations and alignments of the sculpture to the known astronomy angles requires a decent overall understanding of the fundementals of planetary motion and I am also in contact with the department within NASA that creates the DE441 ephemeris. I would suggest that contacting other people within the wikipedia community who have this type of astronomy knowledge would be a good step when considering how to document this work on the Dendera Zodiac page of wikipedia because the remarkable nature of the discovery is concealed within the scientific accuracy of the rotation angles.