The difference between astrology and astronomy in ancient Egypt

Astronomy should be separated from astrology. The latter is a pseudoscience that tries to predict a person's fate through the running state of celestial bodies. Although their origins are similar, they often mixed together in ancient times. However, there are obvious differences between contemporary astronomy and astrology: modern astronomy is a subject that uses scientific methods to study celestial bodies; Astrology corresponds the position of celestial bodies to people through comparison and association. Simply put, astrology focuses on predicting people's fate. They made their own calendars. Marx said: "The need to calculate the fluctuation cycle of Nile water gave birth to astronomy in Egypt." In other words, the knowledge of astronomy comes from the observation of nature. The ancient Egyptians found that while the sun and Sirius rose on the horizon, the Nile also rose in the delta. They set the time between these two events as 365 days a year. Divide the whole year into 12 months, with 30 days each month and the remaining 5 days as festivals; At the same time, a year is divided into three seasons, namely flood season, grain growing season and harvest season. Herodotus said: The Egyptians were the first human beings to put forward the method of timing the solar year ... In my opinion, their timing method was better than that of the Greeks, who had to insert a leap month every other year to make the seasons coincide.

The Egyptians divided day and night into 12 parts, and each part was the time from sunrise to sunset or from sunset to sunrise112. The Egyptians used a stone bowl to calculate time. There is a small mouth at the bottom of the stone bowl, and water drops leak out of the bowl at a fixed speed. The stone bowl is engraved with various marks to indicate the time of different seasons. There is no doubt that astrology in ancient Egypt was very developed. Just like the characteristics of ancient Egyptian civilization, their twelve constellations are also represented by the gods of ancient Egypt.

The ancient Egyptians' study and knowledge accumulation of stars originated from the needs of ancient agricultural production. Agricultural production in ancient Egypt, due to

In the sowing season, the harvest of fields and orchards depends on the annual flood of the Nile, which is related to the movement of stars, especially every 1460 years, sunrise, Sirius and Nile flood occur at the same time. So monks began to make celestial maps very early. Egypt's astronomy, like mathematics, is still in a low-level development stage and still lags behind Babylon. In ancient Egyptian literature, there is no description of mathematical instruments, and there is no record of observing solar eclipse, lunar eclipse or other celestial phenomena. Egyptians used to regard planets as wandering celestial bodies and named them stars and constellations (rarely equated with modern ones). Therefore, their only creation can be exaggerated into astronomical names. Some inscriptions preserved from the ancient kingdom to the late Ptolemaic era include a list of sky divisions. The so-called Deccan (the tenth degree of the ecliptic) by the Greeks is the so-called night 12 hour depicted on the map. People use dekan to divide the years. A year consists of 36 consecutive weeks, and the duration is 10 days. 36 Dekan * * * is 360 days, which constitutes one year. However, there are still five days missing, so every few years, Dekan's weekly appearance time has to be moved back. The Egyptian concept of the universe is often explained by different myths, and some paintings of different celestial bodies have also been preserved. In the pictures of tombs in the New Kingdom era, we can see the sky goddess Noot, whose body bends on the earth to form the dome of the Heavenly Palace, and her abdomen is the sky, decorated with the so-called star belt. There are two solar boats along the belt, one of which is pulled by the sun god on its head. He travels in the sky by sun boat and sunset boat every day. The god of the atmosphere stood under the cow's stomach and raised his hands to support the cow's stomach, which is the sky. The limbs of longicorn are supported by two gods. According to another myth, Nut, the goddess of the sky, embraced Gabe, the god of the earth. Her father, Shu, the god of the atmosphere, supported the goddess with both hands and separated her from Gabe, leaving only Nut's feet and fingers in contact with the ground, while Gabe was lying on the ground half-way. These myths and legends reflect Egyptians' vague concepts of heaven, earth and stars. Some monks in Egypt were appointed as time recorders. They monitor the movement of the stars every night. They need to record the fixed sequence of stars, the movements of the moon and planets, the rise and fall of the moon and the sun, and the orbits of various celestial bodies. These people also collate the above information and report the changes in celestial bodies and their activities. In the tombs of Ramses VI, VII and IX, the star division maps of different periods are preserved. It consists of 24 tables, one of which is used as an interval every half month. Each table is accompanied by a description of the constellation diagram. The astronomical map in Senemut's tomb under the rule of 18 dynasty can be said to be the earliest known astronomical map. A group of stars known to Tianpu astronomers is Yi Kai Secco, a star that never disappears. Obviously, it's Polaris. The second group is Yi Kai Willidu, a star who never stops. In fact, it is a planet. Whether the Egyptians knew the difference between planets and stars has not been reported. The stars they know are Sirius, Orion, Ursa major, Cygnus, Cassiopeia, Draco, Scorpio and Aries Palace. The planets they noticed were Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and Venus. Of course, their understanding of stars is not accurate, and the relationship between stars and constellations is rarely equated with modern knowledge. Sun worship occupies an important position in Egypt. Since the pre-dynastic era, the sun has been portrayed as a scarab, which occupies a prominent position in Egyptian religion. Moreover, the sun in different periods has different names. There are other sun gods in different regions and times. The Egyptian civil calendar is divided into 12 months, with 30 days in each month and 360 days in a year, and then five days are added to make 365 days a year. However, in fact this calendar is not accurate. Because the astronomical year of. 1 is 365.25 days, the Egyptian civil calendar lags behind the astronomical calendar of 1 day every four years. However, in ancient times, this was the best calendar. The julian calendar in Rome was formulated by Julius J. Caesar by adding leap years to the solar calendar in ancient Egypt. In the Middle Ages, Pope Gregory reformed julian calendar and became a worldwide Gregorian calendar. In this respect, we can also see the great contribution of the ancient Egyptians.