EGYPTIAN ASTRONOMICAL TEXTS: III DECANS, PLANETS, CONSTELLATIONS AND ZODIACS

(2 vols.). By O.Neugebauer and Richard A. Parker '30.Providence: Brown University Press, 1969.Vol. 1: 273 pp. Vol. 2: 80 plates. $45.

With the publication of Decans, Planets,Constellations and Zodiacs, Richard A. Parker '30 and O. Neugebauer have completed a long and important scholarly work, an edition of all the astronomical texts from Ancient Egypt. Their latest work, carrying forward a series begun in 1960, appears in a text volume and an accompanying volume of 80 plates. Where possible, all texts are reproduced in drawings or in recent photographs.

After a descriptive catalogue of the monuments, a discussion of the later development of the names and groupings of the decans on the astronomical ceilings in tombs and temples includes the representation of the planets and constellations. In the presentation of zodiacs of the late period, several are published for the first time, as well as such famous pieces as the zodiac from Dendera. Complete sets of photographs dealing with all possible demotic astronomical papyri are shown in the final chapter.

The first of the four-volume series appeared in 1960. Entitled The Early Decarts, it treated decans, stars, and constellations used to measure time by risings and later by transits, which first appear on coffin lids (around 2150 8.C.) and which are later represented, in their modified use in transits, in the cenotaph of Seti I and the tomb of Ramses IV (about 1300 and 1150 B.C.). Texts essentially religious or mythological are not included, with the exception of cosmological texts essential for the understanding of the concepts underlying the use of decans for the measurement of time. This book was a bicentennial publication of Brown University Studies in the Fields of General Scholarship. Costing $20, it has 134 pages of text and 54 plates, 36 in collotype.

In 1964 the second Parker-Neugebauer publication, The Ramesside Star Clocks, continued the presentation of texts concerned with the the attempts of the ancient Egyptians to use the stars to measure time. It deals in extenso with the star clocks on the ceilings of three royal tombs of the 12th century B.C., those of Ramses VI, VII, and IX. Each clock consists of 24 tables, two to each month, and gives the position of stars on, before, or after the meridian as seen by an observer using a target figure to determine the beginning and end of the night hours. The texts are produced in hand copy, in parallel for each hour. An astronomical discussion relating the Ramesside star clocks to the results obtained in Volume I completes the volume. Costing $20, it contains 67 plates, 28 in collotype.