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

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It seems highly probable that the temple in question was built on a Phenician foundation, for some of the stones exceed 38 feet in length and weigh 90 tons.[22] This remark is suggested by the fact that at Baalbek or Heliopolis, to which I next direct attention, the most ancient and most massive part of the structure is, in all probability, of Phenician origin. To give an idea of its massiveness, which is almost more than Egyptian, it may be stated that there are three stones each about 64 feet long, 13 feet high, and 13 feet thick. There are smaller stones used in the filling in, of the same height and thickness, and 30 feet long.[23] These form the western wall of the original naos or of its support.

Here the orientation is due E.[24] When we come to Palmyra, we find also another temple to the equinoctial sun; but here the sunset, and not the sunrise, is in question—the temple faces due west.

In the whole problem, then, of orientation as I have had to present it, and as it now stands, we seem for the moment to be face to face with two very remarkable and strange things; so strange that the argument may appear far-fetched and worthless, since we are landed in a region apparently very far removed from our modern habits of thought. But is this really so? I assume the personification or the deification of the sun: I shall subsequently have to include the stars; I indicate special orientations of buildings devoted to the worship of the sun at one time of the year or another. But really both these things, though they seem improbable, have been carried down to our own day, quite independently of any question relating to Egypt. There is nothing new about them at all, and there is nothing really strange. When we go into an observatory we think nothing of turning our telescope towards Venus, or Jupiter, or Mars. Here we have the deification of the planets. It is perfectly true that this religious treatment of the planets is not of our own day: we have inherited it from the Greeks through the Latins; but we do not think it at all extraordinary that a planet should be called Venus or Jupiter. Thus we of to-day are completely in touch with the old Egyptians, except that the Egyptians were wiser in their generation, and looked after the sun at fixed points in the year and the constant stars instead of the variable planets.