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

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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.