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

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Both observers noted a well-marked temple facing N.E., and also an "observatory." About the temple there can be no mistake, for the fair-way of the light to it is carefully preserved, and there is a flight of wide steps on the north-east side of it.

Place gives the orientation 37° N. of E. in one plan and 39° in another. Botta and Flandin give 31½° in one plan and 32° in another! Now, the change in the magnetic variation between 1849 and 1867 will not explain this difference, nor indeed can it be accounted for by supposing that the magnetic north is in question in one set of plans and the true north in the other;[13] and it is clear that no perfectly certain conclusion can be arrived at till this work has been done over again. But it is known that M. Flandin was a skilled surveyor, and we have the remarkable fact, that if we take his value, we have the amplitude of the sun at the summer solstice in the latitude of Nineveh!

I certainly think the temple may be accepted as a solstitial solar temple provisionally; and if so, the question is raised whether the structures in Assyria, supposed to be oriented so that the angles face the cardinal points, are not all of them oriented to the sun at a solstice or to some other heavenly body. Certainly we must have more definite measures before the statement generally made can be accepted as final.