THE PROBABLE HOR-SHESU WORSHIP.
At the end of the last chapter I referred to the Hor-shesu or
followers, that is worshippers, of the Sun-god Horus. I shall have to
refer to the traditions relating to them at a later stage, but it is
well that I should state here that those personages who preceded the
true historic period are considered by De Rougé and others to represent
"_le type de l'antiquité la plus reculée_."
Let us for the moment accept the truth of the various traditions
relating to them, and suppose that they left traces of their worship;
what, in the light of the last chapter, should we expect to find? The
thing most likely to remain would be ancient shrines in all probability
serving for the foundation of nobler structures built in later times.
This brings us to the question as to the probabilities of
temple-building generally in relation to the heavenly bodies; but
before I deal with it, it is important to consider a view first put
forward, I believe, by Vitruvius, and repeated by all since his time
who have dealt with the question, that the temples were built purely
and simply to face the Nile.[5]
The statement is so far from the truth that it is clear that those who
have made it had not studied the larger temple-fields. Indeed, we have
only to note the conditions at Karnak alone to determine whether there
is any truth in the view that the temples face the river. We see at
once that this idea cannot be true, because we have the chief temples
facing in four directions, while the Nile flows only on one side.
Other archæologists who have endeavoured to investigate the
orientations of these buildings have found that they practically
face in all directions; the statement is that their arrangement is
principally characterised by the want of it; they have been put down
higgledy-piggledy; there has been a symmetrophobia, mitigated perhaps
by a general desire that the temple should face the Nile. This view
might be the true one, if stars were not observed as well as the sun.
With regard to all the temples of the ancient world, whether they are
located in Egypt or elsewhere, we must never forget that if astronomy
is concerned in them at all, we have to deal with the observations
of the rising or setting of the heavenly bodies; whereas the modern
astronomer cares little for these risings or settings, but deals only
with them on the meridian.
The place of rising or setting would be connected with the temple by
the direction of the temple's axis.
Now, the directions towards which the temples point are astronomically
expressed by their "amplitudes"--that is, the distance in degrees from
the east or west point of the horizon. For instance, a temple facing
east would have an amplitude of zero from the east point. If we suppose
a temple oriented to the north, it would have an amplitude of 90°; if
half-way between the east and north, the amplitude would be 45° north
of east, and so on. So that it is possible to express the amplitude
of a temple in such a way that the temples in the same or different
countries or localities, with the same or equivalent amplitudes, may be
classified; and the more temples which can be thus brought together,
the more likely is any law relating to their structure to come out.
Let us take this, then, as a general principle. Now how would it be
carried out?
It becomes pretty obvious, when we consider the conditions of things
in these early times, that the stars would be the objects which would
first commend themselves to the attention of temple builders, for the
reason that the movements and rising-and setting-places of the various
planets by night, and of the sun by day, would appear to be so erratic,
so long as the order of their movements was not known.
To go a step further. It is clear in the first place that no one
would think of orienting a temple to the moon, as there is so little
constancy about its path in the sky, and, therefore, in its place of
rising or setting. If the temple caught it each month, the intervals
between which this occurrence takes place would vary very considerably,
and in early times would have been impossible to predict. Similarly it
would not be worth while to orient temples to the planets. But when we
come to the stars, the thing is different. A few years' observations
would have appeared to demonstrate the absolute changelessness of the
places of rising and setting of the same stars. It is true that this
result would have been found to be erroneous when a long period of time
had elapsed and when observation became more accurate; but for hundreds
of years the stars would certainly appear to represent fixity, while
the movements of sun, moon and planets would seem to be bound by no law.
Before, then, the yearly apparent movements of the sun had been fully
made out, observations of a star rising or setting _with the sun_
at some critical time of the agricultural cycle, say sowing-time or
harvest, would be of the highest importance, and would secure the
work being done at the right time of the--to the early peoples--still
unformulated year.
If a star was chosen in or near the ecliptic, sooner or later the
sunlight as well as the starlight would enter the temple, and the
use of a solar temple might have thus been suggested even before the
solstices or equinoxes had been thoroughly grasped.
There is no doubt that if we are justified in assuming that the stars
were first observed, the next thing that would strike the early
astronomers would be the regularity of the annual movement of the
sun; the critical times of the sun's movements as related either to
their agriculture, or their festivals, or to the year; the equinoxes
and the solstices, would soon have revealed themselves to these early
observers, if for no other reason than that they were connected in some
way or other with some of the important conditions of their environment.
After a certain time, solar temples, if built at all, would be oriented
either to the sun at some critical time of the agricultural--or
religious--year, or to the solstices and equinoxes. But at first, until
the fixity of the sun's yearly movements and especially the solstices
and equinoxes had been recognised, it would have seemed as useless to
direct a temple to the sun as to the moon. After a time, however, when
the solstices and equinoxes had been made out, it would soon have been
found that a temple once directed to the sun's rising place at harvest
or sowing time, or at a solstice or an equinox, would continue for a
long period to mark those critical points in the sun's yearly course;
and when this yearly course had been finally made out it would soon
be observed that the sun at any part of the agricultural year was as
constant (indeed, as we now know, more constant) in its rising-and
setting-place as a star.
But dealing with _sun_-worshippers, and endeavouring to think out
what the earliest observers probably would try to do in the case of a
_solar_ temple, we see that, in all likelihood, they would orient it to
observe the sun at one of the chief points in the year which could be
best marked. I have said "which could be best marked," but how was this
to be done? Evidently, if terrestrial things were to be assisted, the
marking must have been by something exterrestrial, otherwise they would
have been reasoning in a circle; and moreover we must take for granted
that what was wanted was a warning of what was to be done.
Now, in the earliest times, as I have said, the constant movements of
the stars would have stood out in strong contrast to the inconstant
movements of the sun, and I think that there can be little doubt that
the first fixing of any point in the year was by the rising or setting
of some star at sunrise--or possibly sunset.
It is obvious that this might have gone on even before the solstices
and equinoxes were recognised.
When this came about, then temples might have been directed to the sun
at a solstice or an equinox.
Was it difficult to do this? Did it indicate that the people who built
such temples were great astronomers? Nothing of the kind; nothing is
more easy to determine than a solstice or an equinox.
Let us take the solstice first. We know that at the summer solstice
the sun rises and sets furthest to the north, at the winter solstice
furthest to the south. We have only from any point to set up a line
of stakes before the time of the solstice, and then alter the line of
them day by day as the sun gets further to the north or south, until no
alteration is wanted. The solstice has been found.
There is another way of doing it. Take a vertical rod. Such a rod,
which I may state is sometimes called a _gnomon_ and used to measure
time, may be used with another object: we may observe the length of the
shadow cast by the sun when it is lowest at the winter solstice, and
when it is highest; at these two positions of the sun obviously the
lengths of the shadows thrown will be different. When the noon-sun is
nearest overhead in the summer the length of the shadow will be least,
when the sun is most removed from the zenith the shadow will be longest.
The day on which the shortest shadow is thrown at noon will define the
summer solstice; when the shadow is longest we shall have the winter
solstice.
This, in fact, was the method adopted by the Chinese to determine the
solstices, and from it very early they found a value of the obliquity
of the ecliptic.
It may be said that this is only a statement, and that the record has
been falsified; some years ago anyone who was driven by facts to come
to the conclusion that any very considerable antiquity was possible in
these observations met with very great difficulty. But the shortest and
the longest shadows recorded (1100 years B.C.) do not really represent
the true lengths at present. If anyone had forged these observations
he would state such lengths as people would find to-day or to-morrow,
but the lengths given were different from those which would be found
to-day. Laplace, who gave considerable attention to this matter,
determined what the real obliquity was at that time, and proved that
the record does represent an actual observation, and not one which had
been made in later years.[6]
Next suppose an ancient Egyptian wished to determine the time of an
equinox. We know from the Egyptian tombs that their stock-in-trade, so
far as building went, was very considerable; they had squares, they
had plumb-lines, they had scales, and all that sort of thing, just as
we have. He would first of all make a platform quite flat; he could do
that by means of the square or plumb-line; then he would get a ruler
with pretty sharp edges (and such rulers are found in their tombs), and
in the morning of any day he would direct this ruler to the position
of the sun when it was rising, and he would from a given point draw a
line towards the sun; he would do the same thing in the evening when
the sun set; he would bisect the angle made by these two lines, and it
would give him naturally a north and south line, and a right angle to
this would give him east and west. So that from observations of the
sun on any one day in the year he would practically be in a position
to determine the points at which the sun would rise and set at the
equinox--that is, the true east and west points.
Suppose that the sun is rising, let a rod throw a shadow; mark the
position of the shadow; at sunset we again note where the shadow
falls. If the sun rises exactly in the east and sets exactly in the
west, those two shadows will be continuous, and we shall have made an
observation at the absolute equinox. But suppose the sun not at the
equinox, a line joining the ends of the shadows equally long before and
after noon will be an east and west line.
It is true that there may be a slight error unless we are very careful
about the time of the year at which we make the observations, because
when the sun is exactly east or west at the time of rising or setting
it changes its declination most quickly. So it is better to make the
above observations of the sun nearer the solstices than the equinoxes,
for the reason stated.[7]
We have now got so far. If the Egyptians worshipped the sun and built
temples to it, they would be more likely to choose the times of the
solstices and the equinoxes than any other after its annual movement
had been made out.
Is it possible to bring any tests to bear to see whether they did this
or not? Certainly: examine the temples which still remain, and where
they have disappeared examine the _temenos_ walls which still exist as
mounds in many cases.
Suppose we take, to begin with, as before, that region of the earth's
surface in the Nile valley with a latitude of about 26° N. The temples
will have an amplitude of about 26° N. or S. if they have anything to
do with the sun at the solstices. Any structures built to observe the
sun will have an east and west aspect true if they have anything to
do with the sun at the equinoxes. Dealing with a solstitial temple,
the first thing to observe is the amplitude of the temple, which must
depend upon the latitude in which it was wished to note the rising or
setting of the sun at either of the solstices. If we take the latitude
26° N., which is very nearly the latitude of Thebes, the amplitude
has to be 26° as stated above; so that a temple at Thebes having an
amplitude of 26° would be very likely to have been oriented to the
sun at the moment that it was as far from the equator as it could
be--_i.e._, at the time of the longest day of the year--in which case
we should be dealing with the summer or northern solstice; or of the
shortest day of the year, if dealing with the winter or southern
solstice.
As we deal with higher latitudes, we gradually increase the amplitude,
until, if we go as far as the latitude of the North Cape, the sun
at the summer solstice, as everybody knows, has no amplitude either
at rising or setting, because it passes clear above the horizon
altogether, and is seen at midnight.
These are the conditions which will define for us a solstitial solar
temple. We see the amplitude of the temple must vary with the latitude
of the place where it is erected.
But the temples directed to the sun at an equinox will be directed to
an amplitude of 0: that is, they will point E. or W., and this will be
the case in all latitudes.
The orientation of a temple directed to the sun at neither the
solstices nor the equinoxes will have an amplitude less than the
solstitial amplitude at the place.
As a matter of fact, as I shall show in the sequel, some of the temples
recognised as temples of the sun in the inscriptions are of this latter
class.