Mysteries of Egyptian Zodiacs and Other Riddles of Ancient History. A Guide to Dating Ancient Astronomical Data

288 Pages·2004·53.14 MB·English

by  A.T. Fomenko

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of Ancient Egyptian history ended around . F. FV. V. AAnndd OOtthheerr RRiiddddlleess ooff AAnncciieenntt HHiissttoorryy
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the year 500 A.D. leaving behind bb
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phenomenal monuments, temples and aaGlGl A GUIDE TO DATING ANCIENT ASTRONOMICAL DATA
atiati
tombs. But, can we trust Egyptian
TT
chronology? zz
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kkee
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“Mysteries of Egyptian Zodiacs” will undermine
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mm
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your beliefs in the conventional history of
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KK
FF
Egypt, by providing you with strong . . Z.Z.
TT
ww
yy
scientific proof that ancient Egyptian ololaa
ttslsl
temples and tombs were created after the year 1000 A.D. This aaee
nnWiWi
AA
book is not based on historical speculations, but it is a
SS
comprehensive scientific analysis of the Egyptian zodiacs — the
CC
astronomical calendars holding the real dates of Ancient Egypt. AA
II
DD
OO
Authors of this book are mathematicians who scrupulously
ZZ
investigated the existing astronomical evidence and used
NN
special computer programs to calculate the dates encoded AA
II
in the Egyptian zodiacs. The book explains in every detail how to TT
PP
read the astronomical data shown on the Egyptian zodiacs, and YY
GG
provides the reader with all the necessary tools to conduct
EE
independent research into this area of astronomical dating.
FF
OO

It was always extremely hard to introduce principally new ideas SS
EE
in any field of knowledge. The authors of this book show that there II
RR
EE
are serious problems in a very foundation of the conventional
TT
SS AAnnaattoollyy TT.. FFoommeennkkoo TTaattiiaannaa NN.. FFoommeennkkoo
chronology. This exciting topic will make readers shake and crave
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for more WWiieessllaaww ZZ.. KKrraawwcceewwiicczz GGlleebb VV.. NNoossoovvsskkyy
Mysteries of
Egyptian Zodiacs
and
Other Riddles of Ancient
History
A Guide to Dating
Ancient Astronomical Data
Anatoly T. Fomenko
Tatiana N. Fomenko
Wieslaw Z. Krawcewicz
Gleb V. Nosovskij
New Chronology Publications
January 3, 2004
Preface
We areall awarethat historycannotbe consideredasan show that there are serious problems in a very foundation of
areaof knowledgewhere the portrayedfacts arescienti(cid:12)cally the conventional chronology.
supported. It was always an arena for political or nationalis-
tic manipulations and smaller or larger falsi(cid:12)cation. Ancient Howanybodycanbesurethathistoricaleventswelearned
history is not an exception and in fact its problems are more aboutinschool,frombooksorevenmovies,reallytookplace?
serious than one could suspect. Maybe some of them are simply fairy tales or fantasies that
are considered now to be historical facts. However, a pre-
All the authors of this book are mathematicians and we vailing opinion is that there is no reason to worry about
wouldliketoillustratehowmodernappliedmathematicscan theaccuracyoftheconventionalchronology.Historiansclaim
be used to investigate the chronology of ancient events. Our that their work provides us with clear and comprehensive
results challenge the correctness of the ancient chronology explanations of every historical epoch and that strictly sci-
supported by the overwhelming opinion of reputable experts enti(cid:12)c methods, for example the carbon-14 dating and den-
in history. It is not our intention to create a sensation or to drochronologysupportit.However,thereareseriousproblems
discreditanybody. Ourobjectiveis to attractmoreattention with usage of physical methods for supporting the conven-
to a serious scienti(cid:12)c problem. tional chronology. We do not want to discuss this problem
hereandwerefertheinterestedreadertothebooks[103]and
[115].
We are aware that it was always extremely hard to in-
troduce principally new ideas in any (cid:12)eld of knowledge.
The astronomical dating, using contemporary scienti(cid:12)c
There are numerous examples in physics, mathematics, bi-
theories,remainsinfacttheonlymethodthatcanproducere-
ology, medicine and other sciences, when the new theories
liableprecisedatesforancientevents.Inparticular,remains
were only accepted after long years of absolute rejection by
of old Egyptian zodiacs containing horoscopesare important
almost all experts. Nevertheless, every area of science had
materialforsuchdating.Analysisofsomeofthesehoroscopes
its turning points when, with hesitation and lots of pain, old
wasalreadyattemptedinthe18thand19thcenturiesbutdid
and well established knowledge was rejected to accept new
not lead to any solid date.
concepts. Such reversals happened before in astronomy, me-
chanics, chemistry, physics and even in mathematics. There
Recentlyitwasdiscovered(see[114]) thatEgyptianzodi-
werealso reversalsin economicsand psychologyas well. Sur-
acs contain much more astronomical information that it was
prisingly, the historical chronology throughout the last four
previouslybelieved. This gave us anopportunity to establish
centuries remains intact. There was no signi(cid:12)cant improve-
dozens of unique dates from the ancient Egyptian history. It
ment of the chronology in spite of the computer technology
appearsthat it is possible to determine with very high
and modern methods of data analysis.
con(cid:12)dence the exact dates represented on the Egyp-
Nowadays,moreand moremathematics isused in the so- tian zodiacs.
cial sciences. During the last century, economics owes its de-
velopmenttomathematics.Thereisagrowingneedformath- In this book we have collected many accessible to us old
ematicsinpsychology,sociology,demography,socialepidemi- Egyptian zodiacs containing valid astronomical data (horo-
ology and criminology. Not surprisingly, mathematics is also scopes), which were created in form of reliefs, carvings in
tryingtomakeitscontributioninareasthatseemtobequite stoneorpaintings.Thepurposeofthisbookistoanalyzeand
distant from it. astronomicallydateallthosezodiacs.Theobtaineddatesap-
peartobemuchlaterthanitissuggestedinthe conventional
Historical chronology, when it was created in the 17th chronologyof Egypt.
century was considered as a part of mathematics (even J.
Scaliger,whoisknowasthecreatorofthe presentlyaccepted We are not going to discuss in this book how serious are
versionofthechronology,consideredhimselfasamathemati- the implications of these new dates on ancient history. Our
cian).Later,itwasincorporatedasapartofhistory,whichisa only objective is to present aserious scienti(cid:12)c evidence with-
puresocialsciencenotrelyingonthenaturalsciencesmethod- out making any a priori assumption of its correctness or in-
ology.Withoutsolidscienti(cid:12)ctools,historiansarenotableto correctness. Our research is independent of the restrictions
solve principal problems existing in the chronology (clearly, imposed by the conventional chronology. Being mathemati-
problemsexistinanyareaofknowledge).Inourbook,wewill cians, we simply solve the puzzle of ancient Egypt zodiacs,
iii
where the hidden dates were encoded inside the horoscopes.
We (cid:12)nd these dates and let them speak for themselves.
We are using here the results that were obtained by A.T.
Fomenko and G.V. Nosovsky, and were published in Russia
in 2001 (see [114]). However, it is not a translation of the
original Russian book, but it is a di(cid:11)erent presentation of
thesamematerialwithmanynewillustrationsandsomenew
results obtained recently. We do not require from the reader
anymathematicalbackgroundorastronomicalknowledge.All
theinformationnecessaryforacompleteunderstandingofthe
problem and the methods presented in this book is included
and carefully explained. We also provide our readers with
the tools to conduct their further independent research. The
specialsoftwareusedforthecomputationsofthedatesonthe
Egyptianzodiacsand highresolutionimagesof the Egyptian
zodiacs, are available form the web sites listed in this book.
All the technicalities are separated from the main text and
placed in Appendixes.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to express their gratitude to Profes-
sorY.V.TatarinovfromMoscowStateUniversityforhishelp
in collecting material about the Egyptian zodiacs. Special
thanks go to Mane Leung, who created the Windows inter-
face for the program HOROS, which was used for the dating
of the zodiacs presented in this book. We are also thankful
to our colleagues from the Department of Mathematical and
Statistical Sciences at the University of Alberta, for their in-
terestandsupport,inparticular:JackMacki,JohnBowman,
Jacques Carri(cid:18)ere and Oksana Kotovych. We would like to
thank Florin Diacu from Vicoria Unversity for his sugestons
and comments. Special thanks go to Veronica and Karma
Krawcewicz and Maria Marsh for their help with the proof-
reading of the manuscript. In addition, we would like to ex-
press our gratitude to all the people who were helping and
supportingusduringtheworkonthisbook,includingAlexan-
der Orlov, Grazyna Krawcewicz, Jules de Tibeiro, Dragos
Hrimiuc, Timothy Taylor, and many others.
Contents
1 The Problems of Historical Chronology 1
1.1 Creation of the Contemporary Chronologyof the Ancient Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Who were the Critics of Scaliger’s Chronology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 Questionable Authenticity of the Fundamental \Ancient" Manuscripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.4 Medieval Anachronisms and Measuring Time in the Middle Ages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.5 The Chronologyof the Biblical Manuscripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.6 Vowels in Ancient Manuscripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.7 Controversyover the Ptolemy’s Almagest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.7.1 Coordinate System used in the Almagest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.7.2 North Star as the First Star of the Catalogue Almagest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.7.3 Statistical Analysis of the Star Catalogue Almagest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.8 Peculiarities in Development of Ancient Astronomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
1.9 Mathematical and Statistical Methods for Dating Events of Ancient History. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2 Ancient Egyptian Zodiacs 29
2.1 Egyptian Zodiacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.2 Problem of Astronomical Dating of Egyptian Zodiacs. Why Egyptologists Avoid Astronomical Dating of
Egyptian Zodiacs? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.3 Our New Approach to Dating Egyptian Zodiacs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.4 Pictures of Egyptian Zodiacs used for Dating in this Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.5 Our Abbreviations for Egyptian Zodiacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3 Previous Attempts of Astronomical Dating of Egyptian Zodiacs 53
3.1 History of Dating of the Denderah Zodiacs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3.2 Two Esna Zodiacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.3 Athribis Zodiacs Discovered by Flinders Petrie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.4 Brugsch’s Zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
3.5 Astronomical Dating of Zodiacs by Egyptologists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
4 New Approach to Decoding of Egyptian Zodiacs 67
4.1 New Approach to Decoding of Egyptian Zodiacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
4.2 Equinox and Solstice Points on Egyptian Zodiacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
4.3 Egyptian Zodiacs as Astronomical Pictures of the Whole Year Containing the Main Date . . . . . . . . . . . 73
4.4 Dating of Egyptian Zodiacs with Equal Treatment of all Admissible Decodings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
5 Symbolism on Egyptian Zodiacs and New Complete Decoding 75
5.1 Symbols of Constellations on Egyptian Zodiacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
5.1.1 Aries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
5.1.2 Taurus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
5.1.3 Gemini . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
5.1.4 Cancer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
5.1.5 Leo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
5.1.6 Virgo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
5.1.7 Libra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
5.1.8 Scorpio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
5.1.9 Sagittarius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
v
vi CONTENTS
5.1.10 Capricorn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
5.1.11 Aquarius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
5.1.12 Pisces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
5.2 Symbols of Decans and Principal Scale on Egyptian Zodiacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
5.2.1 Decans on the Long Denderah Zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
5.2.2 Principal Scale on Egyptian Zodiacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
5.3 Male and Female Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
5.4 Planetary Symbols of the Main Horoscope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
5.4.1 Planetary Walking Stick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
5.4.2 Saturn in the Main Horoscope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
5.4.3 Seth, Anubis and Thoth as Egyptian Symbols of Saturn and Mercury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
5.4.4 Jupiter in the Main Horoscope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
5.4.5 Mars in the Main Horoscope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
5.4.6 Venus in the Main Horoscope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
5.4.7 Mercury in the Main Horoscope. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
5.4.8 Additional Symbols associated with Mercury on Egyptian Zodiacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
5.4.9 Representation of Mercury in two locations on one Horoscope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
5.4.10 Relation between Mercury and the Roman god Janus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
5.4.11 The Sun in the Main Horoscope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
5.4.12 The Astronomical Meaning of the Egyptian Eye Symbol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
5.4.13 Moon in the Main Horoscope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
5.5 Planetary Symbols in the Partial Horoscopes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
5.5.1 First Example: Partial Horoscope of Autumn Equinox on the Long zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
5.5.2 Second Example: Partial Horoscope of Winter Solstice on the Round zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
5.5.3 Third Example: Partial Horoscope of Summer Solstice on the LowerAthribis zodiac . . . . . . . . . . 115
5.6 Boats, Snakes, and Other Objects under the Feet of Figures as Pull-Out Symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
5.7 Signs of Visibility of Planets in the Main Horoscope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
5.8 Symbols of Equinoxes and Solstices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
5.8.1 Symbols of the Autumn Equinox in Virgo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
5.8.2 Symbols of the Winter Solstice in Sagittarius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
5.8.3 Symbols of the Spring Equinox in Pisces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
5.8.4 Symbols of the Summer Solstice in Gemini . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
5.9 Supplementary Astronomical Symbols on Egyptian Zodiacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
5.9.1 Paschal Moon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
5.9.2 Bird-Sun on the Long Denderah Zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
5.9.3 Symbol of the Twilights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
5.9.4 Beheading Scenes near Aquarius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
5.9.5 Meeting of Saturn and Mars on the Long Denderah Zodiac. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
5.9.6 Stabbing of a Bull (Bull(cid:12)ghting) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
5.9.7 Wolf on a Scythe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
5.10 The Places of Astronomical Observations: Cairo and Luxor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
5.11 Beginning of the Year on the Egyptian Zodiacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
6 Method of Astronomical Determination of the Dates Encoded in Egyptian Zodiacs 131
6.1 Seven Planets of Ancient Astronomy: Zodiacs and Horoscopes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
6.2 Calculated Horoscopes on the Egyptian Zodiacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
6.3 Movement of Planets Among Zodiac Constellations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
6.4 Partition of the Zodiac Belt into Zodiac Constellations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
6.5 \Celestial Calendar" and Its Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
6.6 Principal Accuracy of the Computations of the Past Planetary Positions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
6.7 Dating of Egyptian Zodiacs Based on Contents of the Main and Partial Horoscopes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
6.7.1 Step 1: Identi(cid:12)cation of the Planets in the Main Horoscope with All Possible Variants Considered. . . 140
6.7.2 Step 2: Computation of the Dates for All Variants of Decoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
6.7.3 Step3:ValidationofDatesBasedonthe PrecisePlanetaryPositions,VisibilityAttributes,andPartial
Horoscopes. Rejection of Incomplete Solutions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
6.8 Color-Annotated Zodiacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
6.9 Conclusive Determination of the Main Date. Final (Complete) Solutions.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
6.10 Constellation-Sized Scale of The Zodiacal Belt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
CONTENTS vii
6.11 Best Points for the Planets and the Planetary Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
6.12 Mean Discrepancy from the Best Points as an Indicator of the Accuracy of the Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
6.13 Example of the Input Data for the ProgramHoros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
6.14 Check-up List for an Astronomical Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
7 The Dates Shown on the Monumental Zodiacs in the Denderah and Esna Temples 149
7.1 Denderah and Esna Zodiacs as Parts of the Gigantic Burial Complex in the Great Bend of Nile . . . . . . . . 150
7.2 sec:0.9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
7.3 Decoding the Date from the Long Denderah Zodiac. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
7.3.1 Constellations Figures on the Long Zodiac. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
7.3.2 Planets in the Main Horoscope on the Long Zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
7.3.3 Partial Horoscopeson the Long Zodiac. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
7.3.4 Final Solution for the Long Zodiac: April 22-26, 1168AD. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
7.3.5 Check-up list for the Long Zodiac Final Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
7.4 Decoding the Date from the Round Denderah Zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
7.4.1 Constellations Figures on the Round Zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
7.4.2 Planets in the Main Horoscope on the Round Zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
7.4.3 Partial Horoscopeson the Round Zodiac. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
7.4.4 Final Solution for the Round Zodiac: Morning of March 20, 1185 A.D. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
7.4.5 Checkup List for the Round Zodiac Final Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
7.5 Decoding the Date from the Big Esna Zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
7.5.1 Constellations and \Constellation Brackets"on the Big Esna Zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
7.5.2 Planetary Figures in the Main Horoscope on the Big Esna Zodiac. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
7.5.3 Main Horoscope and \Double" Planetary Symbols on the Big Esna Zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
7.5.4 Invisibility Attributes on the Big Esna Zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
7.5.5 Partial Horoscopeson the Big Esna Zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
7.5.6 Final Solution for the Big Esna Zodiac: March 31 | April 3, 1394 AD. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
7.5.7 Checkup list for the Big Esna Zodiac Final Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
7.6 Decoding the Date from the Small Esna Zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
7.6.1 Color-Annotated Small Esna Zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
7.6.2 \Constellations Brackets"in the Planetary Row on the Small Esna Zodiac. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
7.6.3 Planetary Figures in the Main Horoscope on the Small Esna Zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
7.6.4 Partial Horoscopesand Supplementary Scenes on the Small Esna Zodiac. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
7.6.5 Final Solution for the Small Esna Zodiac: May 6|8, 1404 AD. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
7.6.6 Checkup list for the Small Esna Zodiac Final Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
8 The Dates Shown on the Zodiacs form Ancient Egyptian Tombs and Sarcophagi 211
8.1 The Athribis Zodiacs of Flinders Petrie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
8.1.1 Decoding of the Main Horoscopes: Six Variants for Identi(cid:12)cation of Planets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
8.1.2 Partial Horoscopesand Supplementary Scenes on the Athribis Zodiacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
8.1.3 Results of Computations for the Six Variants of Decoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
8.1.4 Results of Computations for the Six Variants of Decoding with Arbitrary Order of Invisible Planets . 219
8.1.5 Final Solutions for the Athribis Zodiacs: the LowerZodiac | May 15-16, 1230AD, the Upper Zodiac
| February 9-10, 1268 AD. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
8.1.6 Validation of the Solutions with Respect to the Planetary Positions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
8.1.7 Validation of the Solutions According to the Partial Horoscope of the Summer Solstice . . . . . . . . . 223
8.1.8 Veri(cid:12)cation of the \Meeting Scene above the Lion" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
8.1.9 Archaic Beginning of the Year in June on the Athribis Zodiacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
8.1.10 Final Identi(cid:12)cation of the Last Three Planets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
8.1.11 Stability of the Obtained Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
8.1.12 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
8.2 Brugsch’s Zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
8.2.1 Annotated Demotic Horoscope on the Brugsch’s Zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
8.2.2 Horoscope \Without Walking Sticks" on Brugsch’s Zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
8.2.3 Horoscope in \Boats"on Brugsch’s Zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
8.2.4 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
8.3 Zodiac of Ramses VII |\Color Thebes Zodiac" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
8.3.1 Constellation Figures on the Thebes Zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
viii CONTENTS
8.3.2 Planetary Figures on the Thebes Zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
8.3.3 The Main Horoscope and Additional Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
8.3.4 Preliminary Solutions for the Main Horoscope. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
8.3.5 Checking the Supplementary Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
8.3.6 Conclusion: the Date Encoded in the Color Zodiac was September 5{8, 1182 AD . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
8.4 Two Zodiacs from the PetosirisTomb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
8.4.1 Story of the Discovery and Analysis of the Petosiris Zodiacs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
8.4.2 General Description of the Petosiris Tomb and Its Zodiacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
8.4.3 Planetary Symbols on the Petosiris Zodiacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
8.4.4 Constellations Symbols. Equinoctial Break on the Zodiac (P2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
8.4.5 Constellations Figures on the Inner PetosirisZodiac P2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
8.4.6 The Main Horoscope on the Inner Zodiac (P2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
8.4.7 SymbolsofEquinoxes,Solstices,PartialHoroscopesandSupplementaryScenesonthePetosirisZodiac
(P2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
8.4.8 Astronomical Solutions for the Inner PetosirisZodiac P2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
8.4.9 Constellations and Planetary Figures on the Outer PetosirisZodiac P1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
8.4.10 The Main Horoscope and the Supplementary Scenes on the Outer Zodiac P1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
8.4.11 Astronomically Possible Dates for the Zodiac P1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
8.4.12 Astronomical Dating of the Pair of the Zodiacs (P1) and (P2). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
8.4.13 Dating of the Petosiris Zodiac Under Weaker Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
8.4.14 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
8.5 Dating of the Zodiac from the Tomb of Ramses VI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
8.5.1 The Tomb of Ramses VI and Its Zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
8.5.2 Zodiacal Constellations Symbols on the Zodiac (RS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
8.5.3 Planets in the Main Horoscope on the Ramses VI Zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
8.5.4 Main Horoscope on the Ramses VI Zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
8.5.5 Final Solution for the Ramses VI Zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
9 Summary of the Astronomical Dating of the Egyptian Zodiacs 273
9.1 General Picture of the Dates on the Egyptian Zodiacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
9.2 Stability of the Obtained Dates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
9.3 Unsolved Problems Related to the Dating of the Egyptian Zodiacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
9.4 Astronomical Dating of the Sumerian Tablets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
Chapter 1
The Problems of Historical Chronology