Читать книгу The dawn of astronomy. A study of the temple-worship and mythology of the ancient Egyptians онлайн

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When one comes to examine the texts, whether written on paper or papyrus, burnt in brick, or cut on stone, which archæologists have obtained from all these sources, we at once realise that man's earliest observations of the heavenly bodies in all the regions we have named may very fairly be divided into three perfectly distinct stages. I do not mean to say that these stages follow each other exactly, but that at one period one stage was more developed than another, and so on.

For instance, in the first stage, wonder and worship were the prevalent features; in the second, there was the need of applying the observation of celestial phenomena in two directions, one the direction of utility—such as the formation of a calendar and the foundation of years and months; and the other the astrological direction.

Supplied as we moderns are with the results of astronomical observation in the shape of almanacs, pocket-books, and the like, it is always difficult, and for most people quite impossible, to put ourselves in the place and realise the conditions of a race emerging into civilisation, and having to face the needs of the struggle for existence in a community which, in the nature of the case, must have been agricultural. Those would best succeed who best knew when "to plow and sow, and reap and mow;" and the only means of knowledge was at first the observation of the heavenly bodies. It was this, and not the accident of the possession of an extended plain, which drove early man to be astronomically minded.