by This article was originally published by The conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Tutorial & Insights.
Or Graur is an associate professor of Astrophysics at the University of Portsmouth’s Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, an honorary associate professor at University College London (UCL), and a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History.
What did our ancestors think when they looked up at the the night sky? Each culture gave a special meaning to the sun and the moonbut what about the pearly band of light and shadow we call the The Milky Way?
My recent study revealed an interesting connection between an Egyptian goddess and the Milky Way.
Slowly, students are putting together a picture of Egyptian astronomy. The god Sah is linked to stars in the sa Orion constellationwhile the goddess Sopdet is linked to the star Sirius. Where we see ploughs (or the a large blacksmith), the Egyptians saw the foreleg of a bull. But the Egyptian name of the Milky Way and its relationship to Egyptian culture have long been a mystery.
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Some students suggested that the Milky Way was connected to Nut, the Egyptian goddess of the sky who swallowed the sun while she was sleeping and was born again as he rose the next day. But their attempts to map different parts of Nut’s body onto parts of the Milky Way were inconsistent with each other and did not match the Ancient Egyptian texts.
In a paper published in Journal of Astronomical History and HeritageI compared the description of the goddess in the Pyramid Texts, Coffin Textsand the Nut Book to model the appearance of the Milky Way in the night sky of ancient Egypt.
Carved on the walls of the pyramids more than 4,000 years ago, the Pyramid Texts are a collection of spells to aid kings in their journey to the afterlife. Painted on coffins a few centuries after the age of the pyramids, the Coffin Texts were a similar collection of spells. The Nut Book described the role of Nut in the solar cycle. It is found in several monuments and papyri, and the oldest version dates back to around 3,000 years ago.
The Nut Book described the head and sun of Nut as the western and eastern horizons, respectively. He also described how it swallowed not only the sun but also a series of so-called “decanal” stars which is supposed used to tell time during the night.
From this description, I concluded that Nut’s head and groin had to be locked to the sky so that she could give birth and then swallow the rot. stars as they get up and lie down all night. This meant that it could not be mapped directly onto the Milky Way, which has many different parts rise and fall too.
I did, however, find a possible connection to the Milky Way in the orientation of Nut’s arms. The Book of Nut describes Nut’s right hand as being in the north-west and his left in the south-east at a 45 degree angle to his body. My simulations of the Egyptian night sky using the planetarium software Cartes du Ciel and Stellarium suggests that this orientation was exactly the same as the Milky Way during the winter in ancient Egypt.
The Milky Way is not a physical manifestation of a Nut. Instead, it may have been used as a figurative way to highlight Nut’s presence as the sky.
During the winter, he showed the arms of Nut. During the summer (when its orientation goes 90 degrees) the Milky Way outlines its backbone. A nut is often depicted in tomb murals and funerary papyri as a naked, arched woman, a depiction that resembles the arch of the Milky Way.
However, Nut also shown in ancient texts such as cow, hippopotamus and vulture, which are thought to draw attention to her motherly qualities. In the same way, the Milky Way could be thought of as highlighting the heavenly qualities of Nut.
Ancient Egyptian texts also describe Nut as a ladder or outstretched hand to help guide the deceased up to the sky on their way to the afterlife. Many cultures around the world, such as the Lakota and Pawnee in North America and the Quiche Maya in Central America, see the Milky Way as spirit road.
The Nut Book also describes the annual migration of birds into Egypt and connects it to the nether world and the Nut. This section of the Nut Book describes It was birds flying into Egypt from the north-east and north-west of Nut before regular birds turn in to feed in the marshes of Egypt. The Egyptians considered the It wasdepicted as a human-headed bird, to be the aspect of a person who insisted on individuality (similar, but not identical, to the modern Western concept of the “soul”).
The IS Bass the dead were free to leave and return to the nether world as they wished. A nut is often depicted standing in a sycamore tree and providing food and water for the deceased and his two It was.
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Again, many cultures throughout the Baltics and northern Europe (including the Finns, Lithuanians, and Sami) view the Milky Way as the path along which birds migrate before winter. Although these connections do not establish a connection between Nut and the Milky Way, they do indicate that such a connection would place Nut comfortably within the larger world. the mythology of the Milky Way.
