Hi Graham,
> > Well, the birth, the life, the death and the
> life
> > after death, all paralleled and identified
> with
> > the sky. I'd say that about covers it, eh?
>
> Yes that's important but did they just look into
> the night sky and say "ah that's the meaning of
> life".
Of course not because the meaning of life
> is in birth and rebirth, in the cycles of growth
> and decay. It's homespun and available for
> examination through 360 + 5 days of the year,
> through the four monthly periods of the calendar.
> It's always at hand's reach begging to be known.
Erm... I think we are not talking about the same thing here. I am talking about the divinities and the belief system linked to those divinities and the human life in that context.
>
> The observation of nature forms your belief system
> not the unknown wanderings of the stars above. You
> can project your belief system onto the firmament
> above but you cannot go direct without first
> observing how Geb accommodates himself below.
> It's the deserts, the rivers, the mountains and
> everything connected including the fauna and flora
> in habitation
I don't agree with you. The basis of a belief system is the experience of a divine presence. That divine presence must, unconditionally, be experienced as superior to the human life and hence completely out of his control. Otherwise it would not be a divinity in the human eyes. Anthropology 101, Graham.
You reducing the events in the sky to mere "unknown wanderings of the stars above" is rather stupefying! Surely the first concerns were the presence and absence of light, the sun. Especially the absence, since that would have been the most dangerous time for the humans and bordering directly to their very survival. Well, absence of light is the night, with only by the moon and the stars visible. The same goes for thunder and lightning, also events of the sky, and very scary to the human not understanding what it is. Not to point out the obvious, uncontrollable for the mere human!
I am not saying that the tangible forms of nature surrounding the human were not seen as divine, but those divinities (and as you know in the AE they abound) are not of the upper echelon types or the creators on which a belief system is based.
> Knowing this is not a big leap Ritva. What is a
> big leap is recession and the periods of one
> degree that must be reckoned with. All that could
> be observed over say a ten degree period. Did they
> record it or didn't they, that is the question.
A ten degree period would be a mere 720 years. We have evidence that the movements of the decanal stars observed and recorded in the Asyut coffins were still observed during the Ramessides (several Ramesside tombs, Seti I's most importantly) and even later, the LP (see pCarlsberg). In other words, the movement of the stars held their importance for some 2000 years. Knowing that during this time they also very keenly observed the sun, I'd rather think that suggesting them not having noticed the effects of precession (and recording it!) is suggesting the Egyptians not being the Egyptians.
From there to have written evidence of this observation, no. We don't have texts saying: "we have noticed a discrepancy...", but depending on how you read the PTs and the CTs (for example) you either see them having known the phenomenon or not. I'll give you food for thought, though. Think Eye of Horus and all it represents in the afterlife and hence, stellar context. Then think of the Eye of Horus being broken and out of sync. No worries, Thoth can fix it.
Ritva