Hi Graham,
Although I have not yet checked each of your 9/11 division examples in detail, the number of them indicates that this ratio is not accidental and was likely seen as important.
The explanation of this ratio by the number of gods is satisfactory, but, as I wrote earlier, it is difficult to prove in the case of the Little Ennead.
Your version has stimulated my interest in the Ennead and raised some questions. For example, why are there 9 gods? Why are the gods grouped in sub-groups of three, thus three sub-groups of three? What is the Double Ennead (Two Enneads in the existing translations)? At this stage, it seems to me that the 3 * 3 structure is some kind of fundamental characteristic of this group, associated with its origin. Clearly the Ennead of 11 Gods does not fit this basic pattern.
In connection with your question about what I think the second Ennead is, I remembered one passage from the pyramid texts that is directly related to its possible interpretation: wab.n n.f psDtj m msxtjw j.xm-sk (PT 302 §458b-c). What do you think this might mean?
In PT 219, Unas cannot be associated with Horus who personifies the successor king, but only with Osiris, the deceased king, since these texts are funeral ones. This is also evidenced by the structure of the recitation.
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I realise that some of my hypotheses are incompatible with your multi-star target model, so persuading you to accept them will be unlikely.
I would like to say that our studies are mostly similar and the differences are insignificant. Indeed, we both: used archaeoastronomical approach; agree that the circumpolar region was important for the king's afterlife and thus it needed to be implemented in funerary architecture; examined the sequence of monuments not focusing on only one and this is methodologically correct, etc.
The only significant detail with which I cannot agree is your conclusion that the goal was the celestial Pole, while I argue that the interest was not in the phisical abstraction, but in a specific star, which caused religious madness and led to the boom of monumental architecture. As a consequence of this difference, we get chronological corrections with different signs, while in my opinion, lowering the age of the Old Kingdom (as proposed by Bauval, Spence, partly Hornung, Krauss and Warburton) is completely unacceptable, since this worsens the already existing problems and discrepancies (radiocarbon, Sothic dating).
Alex.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/31/2023 07:07AM by keeperzz.