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

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But we must now go somewhat further into detail. The various apparent movements of the heavenly bodies which are produced by the rotation and the revolution of the earth, and the effects of precession, were familiar to the Egyptians, however ignorant they may have been of their causes; they carefully studied what they saw, and attempted to put their knowledge together in the most convenient fashion, associating it with their strange imaginings and their system of worship.

Dealing with the earth's rotation, how did the Egyptians picture it? How was this interaction, so to speak, between the earth and the sky mythologically represented? They naturally would be familiar with the phenomena of dawn and sunset, more familiar certainly with the phenomenon of dawn than we are, because they had a climate much better suited for its study than ours. There can be no doubt that the wonderful scenes which they saw every morning and evening were the first things which impressed them, and they came to consider the earth as a god, surrounded by the sky—another god.