<HTML>I understand Bauval's new book is to be called " Egypt Decoded" , does anyone know exactly what it is he is decoding ????. would I be near the when I say I think it is a lot more to do with stars , does he have any understanding that the predominant factor in Egyptian religious thought, from the 4th Dynasty onwards in most concerned with Solar Religion. One takes into account Osirian beliefs in the mortuary cults.
Also I wonder, does he have any idea of the impact of the Armarna period on Egyptian thinking. Although lasting around twenty years, the attcks on the old Gods affected religious thought for the whole of the remainder of the dynastic period.
You can think of Armarna as the impostion of a police state upon the ordinary inhabitants, who mostly divorced from the heresy, neverless, suffered greatly under the religious persecutions of the Great Crimminal of Akhetaten by having the rites of the Gods withheld from them, so that in order to keep the old cults alive, it became a matter of taking the Gods into ones heart and mind.
The Utter failure of the Aten cult is testimony to its exclusivity and dictatorial theocracy. The Victory of Amun testimony to the popularity of the State god and the interface with the common man.
So , back to my original point, nothing in later Egyptian texts and Temple layout suggets that anything other the Axial path of the Sun is the prime symbolic mover behind all the later great Temples of Egypt.
Whilst I am comming to terms with Bauval, no one should mistake that for acceptance of his arguments, he remains, I believe utterly preoccupied with the Night sky and in much the same way as Sellers is, although Sellers book is technically good, I find little that is convincing and as in many works concerned with attempting an analysis of Archaic texts, much of it is rather incomprehensible.
IAB</HTML>
