The PTs are very clear about directionality.

"The sky is supported above the earth not only by the god Shu but also by pillars or four sceptres. Like the earth, the celestial world is an expanse (pdt), with cardinal directions and limits, which can be circumnavigated."

"….most instances in which the sky is personified as a living being involve the goddess Nut…..Nut's identification with the sky is evident in the spelling of her name, which regularly has the sky determinative….Even when personified, Nut can be envisioned in geographic terms. Like the sky she is above the earth, supported by the atmosphere, Shu beneath her. She has both a north and an east side…."

"….there are a few indications that the Pyramid Texts already envisioned Nut in the manner of later representations, as a cow astride the earth or a woman bending over it, touching its cardinal points with her legs and hands."

See: James P. Allen, "The Cosmology of the Pyramid Texts" in William Kelly Simpson, ed., Religion and Philosophy in Ancient Egypt, Yale Egyptological Studies 3 (Yale 1989).

The basic cosmology is unlikely to change so there is no problem assuming continuity. Gods and goddesses fade in and out of popularity.

Senenmut is irrelevant. Betsy Bryan has proposed that the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III incorporated a "skymap enacted with statues". Those representing the northern sky would have been positioned to the (river) north of those representing the southern sky. Although more than a millennium after the fourth dynasty this is, again, consistent with a "god's eye view".

See: "The statue program for the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III," in Stephen Quirke, ed., The Temple in Ancient Egypt: New discoveries and recent research (London, 1997), 57-81.

Same cosmology over millennia.

Purveyors of numerological drivel lose - again...

Krupp is right.

But we've been through this so many times.

Boring ! Like taking candy from a baby....

John



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/2005 02:59AM by John Wall.