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

67 страница из 97

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.