Holger Isenberg Wrote:
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> Searching around for the definition of Hathor’s
> birthday only turned up the Sirius helical rising day for me.

Byrd Wrote:
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> Hagar, Stansbury. "What was the star of
> Bethlehem." Popular Astronomy 26 (1918): 229.

That article is writing June 21 (I guess they mean the summer solstice) is the temple foundation day, the new year day and at the same time the birthday of Hathor and Horus, all celebrated there at the same day.

I'm not sure why they can say that the Egyptian New Year started at the summer solstice. The Egyptian New Year was definitely defined by the day of the heliacal rising of Sirius, which is a few weeks after the summer solstice and a few days before the yearly Nile flood.

But the article otherwise is interesting as with the other symbology it is describing it indirectly initiated a completely new side-idea about astronomical connections here which is important for my original reason I started all these discussions, the Kreutz Cometary Stream. Many thanks for that! Even with us two not agreeing on this Dendera temple topic, the discussion brought me forward.

> At Abu Simbel, the temple of Ramesses II is aligned so that the sun shines on
> his face on the date of his birth and on the date
> of the beginning of the harvest season:

> There is nothing in the plan of the temple that
> indicates it was an observatory for watching for
> the rising of Sirius... and in fact, none of the
> openings are pointing towards the spot where
> Sirius would rise...

The foundation is rotated by 18° and with that rotation the west-east axis is pointing precisely to the horizon position where Sirius rises every year visible shortly before sun rise for the first time after its pause (heliacal rising).

> There are some temples with stellar alignments and
> the Egyptians adjusted these as the position of
> the stars changed (Lockyer, cited here on this
> NASA page)
> [sunearthday.nasa.gov]

That's interesting that they connect the main Karnak Temple, the famous one with the long ram alley towards the Luxor temple, with some stars. I don't know which stars they talk about here. But the main Karnak temple is aligned to the either the sun rise at the winter solstice or the sun set at the summer solstice. Both are on the line tilted by 27° from the west-east axis. I drew it into the satellite map below.

Further south, also on the satellite map, we have the much older Mut Temple at Karnak. That's rotated by 18° and again pointing to the heliacal rising of Sirius.