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

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It will, I think, be clear to anyone who reads this volume that its limits and the present state of our knowledge have only allowed me really to make a few suggestions. I have not even attempted to exhaust any one of the small number of subjects which I have brought forward; but if I have succeeded so far as I have gone, it will be abundantly evident that, if these inquiries are worth continuing, a very considerable amount of work has to be done.

Of this future work, the most important, undoubtedly, is a re-survey of the temple sites, with modern instruments and methods. Next, astronomers must produce tables of the rising and setting conditions of the stars for periods far beyond those which have already been considered. The German Astronomical Society has published a table of the places of a great many stars up to 2000 B.C., but to carry on this investigation we must certainly go back to 7000 B.C., and include southern stars. While the astronomer is doing this, the Egyptologist, on his part, must look through the inscriptions with reference to the suggestions which lie on the surface of the inquiry. The astronomical and associated mythological data want bringing together. One part of that work will consist in arranging tables of synonyms like those to which I presently refer in the case of the goddesses. My own impression is that this work will not really be so laborious as the statement of it might seem to imply. I have attempted to go over the ground during the last two years as well as my ignorance would allow me, and I have arrived at the impression that the number both of gods and goddesses will be found to be extremely small; that the apparent wealth of the mythology depends upon the totemism of the inhabitants in the Nile valley—by which I mean that each district had its own special animal as the emblem of the tribe dwelling in it, and that every mythological personage had to be connected in some way with these local cults. After this work is done, it will be possible to begin to answer some of the questions which I have only ventured to raise.