Our knowledge of ancient Egyptian astronomy relies on a variety of sources, including religious texts, funerary decorations, and building records. Matching the ancient data to the sky itself, however, is not easy. Religious texts and representations describe the sky in symbolic terms that may or may not reflect distinct celestial bodies or astronomical events. For instance, whilst many stars and constellations were specifically associated with minor deities (Wilkinson 2003: 90-1), an important and single entity like the sun might be identified with three different deities depending on the time of the day (Quirke 2001; Muller 2001; Mysliwiec 2001; O’Rourke 2001). Other sources may not be accurate enough to match our modern expectations: our knowledge of the ancient Egyptian star tables, for instance, is entirely based on artistic representations of ancient time-keeping methods, not on actual working instruments (Symons 2000: 112).
Achievements and problems in the study of ancient Egyptian astronomy may be summarized as follows: our understanding of mechanisms and notation has certainly improved over the years, but the identification of the majority of the stars mentioned in the ancient sources remains an unsolved problem. The introduction of computergenerated models that help to reconstruct the ancient sky has had a significant impact but has not produced results that have met with the general consensus. In general, it is interesting to note that a better comprehension of the ancient sources has weakened, rather than reinforced, some earlier undisputed assumptions, thus opening the way for further research.
World History
