Hermione Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> > Joanne Conman, It's about Time: Ancient
> Egyptian
> > Cosmology, Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur ,
> > 2003, Bd. 31 (2003), pp. 33-71, accessed from
> > [www.jstor.org]
> > Joanne Conman, The Egyptian Origins of
> Planetary
> > Hypsomata, Discussions in Egyptology 64
> > (2006-2009)
>
> She used to post on HoM, and her work has been
> discussed quite a bit here -
> [www.maatforum.com]

Hi Hermione,

After reading through a number of posts, it appears that there is quite a bit of negative sentiment towards Conman's later work "Ancient Egyptian Sky Lore: Rethinking the Conventional Wisdom". However, her earlier work "It's about Time: Ancient Egyptian Cosmology" was generally well regarded. Less clear is the position on "The Egyptian Origins of Planetary Hyposomata".

For example, the linked pages in the thread appear to rely on commentary by Gary Thompson [members.iinet.net.au] On the earlier paper, Thompson has adopted what appears to be a neutral position:

Quote
Gary Thompson
(Neugebauer's identification of the location of the decanal belt is disputed by Kurt Locher "New arguments for the celestial location of the decanal belt and for the origin of the s3h-hieroglyph." (Atti di sesto congresso internazionale di egittologia. (2 Volumes, 1992-1993.); Joanne Conman "It's About Time: Ancient Egyptian Cosmology." (Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur, Band 31, 2003). See also the unpublished doctoral thesis by Sarah Symons (1999) Ancient Egyptian Astronomy: Timekeeping and Cosmography in the New Kingdom.)

Quote
Gary Thompson
The identification of the various decan names and their proper astronomical identity is extremely difficult. All of the extant star clocks are corrupt textually. Neugebauer and Parker systematically worked through the decan material. Their results were a meticulous analysis of the evidence. Otto Neugebauer, based on the Book of Nut texts, proposed the decan stars circled the sky in a zone approximately parallel to, and slightly south of, the ecliptic. Conman follows William Petrie in identifying the decans as ecliptic stars (i.e., actually marked out along the ecliptic line). Conman finds agreement with the New Kingdom decanal texts. Conman's proposed solution is also based on the Book of Nut texts and the interpretation of those texts given in the Carlsberg Papyri.

Conman's work stands in contrast to say Clagett

Quote
Claget P126
“Though it is tempting to think that the Egyptian round zodiacs represented the divisions of the zodiac in terms of degrees (as some of the earlier investigators seem to have assumed), it is evident from the analysis of the celestial diagrams I discussed above that there was no use of a system of degrees in ancient Egypt to measure celestial arcs.”

Quote
Claget pp128-129
“On more than one occasion in this chapter, I have remarked on the absence in early Egyptian astronomy of the use of degrees, minutes, and seconds to quantify angles or arcs, though slopes were copiously used in the construction of buildings, water clocks and shadow clocks; such slopes were measured by linear ratios. And obviously, in the above mentioned charts, right ascension was being approximated in terms of hours (though we are not completely sure how precisely). So far as I can determine, there were no standard, quantitative evaluations of declinations given in the tables. But of course in determining meridian transits the observers were keeping track of the maximum height of the transiting stars throughout the year.”

However, even where we follow Conman's papers, an allow for a mapping of the zodiac to three decans, there remains no proof of knowledge of degrees as an angular measure. From the Egyptian perspective, the Decans are a time-based measure. I'm not sure where that leaves Mark's point 10.