Deckenrelief (Kopie des Tierkreises) in der Kapelle des Tierkreises (Zodiak) auf dem Dach des Hathor-Tempels von Dendera, Ägypten, 16 October 2014 by Olaf Tausch
Dear Egyptomaniacs, Egyptologists etc.
Stumbling upon information on a lost Egyptian astrological treatise on the decans in the zodiak, called ‘Salmeshiniaka’, I wondered whether it would be possible to reconstruct the whole decanates based on scant information that we possess.
All of a sudden I got a flash of an inspiration. Perhaps the key lays in the Egyptian Book of the Dead? After all, the passages in the Egyptian Book of the Dead are in some way related to the journeying of the souls and the dead, journeying of the Sun and Deities....
So equipped with Budge’s Penguin edition, I browsed through the story. What I found is astounding!
Indeed the fragmentary stories from the plates correspond to the Dendera Zodiak.
The Book of the Dead, or the 'book of directions' as I like to call it now, was a guide of repeating the ‘descend and ascent’ of the sun and one’s individual spirit (female little Isis, male little Osiris) throughout the Southern gates, upon which the soul-spirit returned to heavens. That would correspond with later Orphic-Eleusinian and Roman-Mithraic mysteries.
I did not research it well YET, but I believe all correspondences may be extracted by future adventurers in Egyptology, for now I leave this small hint behind, as I plan to work on an academic paper related to this, please let me know what do you think?
I'm leaving the correspondences which I found already written on a yellow paper below:
Drawing: Mateusz Zalewski-G.
