Did Senenmut omit planet Mars from his astronomical ceiling?

Did Senenmut omit planet Mars from his astronomical ceiling?

 

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

 

It is quite useless, I believe, for archaeoastronomers to attempt retro-calculations to a particular night sky when neither BC, nor AD, times have been properly established. Even more so in the case of Senenmut and Hatshepsut, who have been hopelessly mis-dated in the conventional chronology.

 

 

 

 

Senenmut (Senmut), Pharaoh Hatshepsut’s high official of the Eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, I have identified as King Solomon himself in his important contact with Egypt:

 

Solomon and Sheba

 

https://www.academia.edu/3660164/Solomon_and_Sheba

 

focussing there upon the more worldly attributes of this celebrated King of Israel.

 

The famous astronomical ceiling of Senenmut is testimony to the wisdom and culture of the man. King Solomon himself claimed to have had unerring astronomical, and other, knowledge (Wisdom 7:17-20):

 

For it was he who gave me unerring knowledge of existent being,
to know the structure of the universe and the operation of the elements;
the beginning, and end, and middle of times,
the changes of the solstices and the vicissitudes of the seasons;
the cycles of years and the positions of the stars;
the natures of living creatures and the tempers of beasts;
the violent force of spirits and the reasonings of men;
the species of plants, and the virtues of roots.

 

Abraham O. Shemesh, in “‘And God gave Solomon wisdom’: Proficiency in ornithomancy”, has summed up the wisdom and knowledge of King Solomon as follows:

http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0259-94222018000100019

 

The Wisdom of Solomon: The biblical text

 

According to the biblical narrator, Solomon was more knowledgeable than reputable wise men of the ancient world, and he was widely renowned for his wisdom. As a result, people sought his presence and came from afar to witness this prowess; for example, the Queen of Sheba (1 Ki 10:1-24). Solomon's wisdom is described in detail and it encompassed varied domains:

 

And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding beyond measure, and largeness of mind like the sand on the seashore, so that Solomon's wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east, and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all other men, wiser than Ethan the Ez'rahite, and Heman, Calcol, and Darda, the sons of Maḥol; and his fame was in all the nations round about. He also uttered three thousand proverbs; and his songs were a thousand and five. He spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall; he spoke also of beasts, and of birds, and of reptiles, and of fish. (1 Ki 4: 29-33)¹

 

Solomon's great wisdom is evident from the biblical verses, as reflected on three dimensions:

 

1. The relative dimension - his extensive knowledge in comparison to other wise men in the Ancient Near East. Benjamin Mazar contends that when comparing Solomon with other wise men it is evident that worldly knowledge was prevalent in Israel and particularly among the royal house in Jerusalem. Indeed, Mesopotamian literary works enjoyed an extensive distribution and were found in various sites, for example in Megiddo and Ugarit as well as in the al-Amarna archives (Mazar 1980:133).

2. The quantitative dimension - Solomon's impressive knowledge in the literary sphere included a tremendous wealth of parables and poetry.

3. The comprehensive dimension - Solomon's knowledge was extremely comprehensive. Use of the prepositions min [from] and ve'ad [to] for this purpose indicates an endless scope of knowledge that cannot be quantified, similar to literary knowledge (Ha-Reuveni 1985:275-288). Solomon ruled over all extant creatures. He was familiar with all species of flora - from the most highly developed, Cedrus libani, to the most inferior, Majorana syriaca (Feliks 1992:138). He also ruled over the various animal species, with their different characteristics.

[End of quote]

Then why did the great man, Senenmut - even more so if he were King Solomon - fail to include the planet Mars in his astronomical ceiling, if that is what he did?

 

And the general consensus appears to be that that is what he did.

 

J. Belmonte and M. Shaltout, who accept that Mars is not represented there, believe there to be a very ‘prosaic and simple’ reason for the planet’s omission from Senenmut’s star map ceiling (“The Astronomical Ceiling of Senenmut: a Dream of Mystery and Imagination”):

https://www.academia.edu/4993866/The_astronomical_ceiling_of_senenmut_a_dream_of_mystery_and_imagination

 

Abstract

 

The most ancient complete representation of the Egyptian (and of any other people) sky is to be found in the ceiling of the first chamber at the tomb of Senenmut at Deir el Bahari (Tomb 353 of the Theban western necropolis). Since the discovery of the tomb, the astronomical ceiling was compared with other representations of the same celestial diagram found in other monuments, such as the nearby Ramesseum or the tomb of Sethy [Seti] I. One important point was stressed, the absence of the planet Mars in Senenmut´s representation. Consequently, some scholars have tried to show that the diagram represents a real celestial map and have tried to demonstrate that the ceiling was designed in such or such epoch, when Mars was not visible, or visible in peculiar position, in an attempt to date Senenmut´s carrier and, consequently, a very important period of Egyptian history, the reign of queen Hatshepsut. In this paper, we try to show that all these hypotheses are based on erroneous foundations and that the absence of Mars can be explained in a much more prosaic and simpler manner. Other problematic aspects of the astronomical ceiling will be also briefly discussed.

….

 

For example, on the one side, for Leitz (1991), it shows the night sky for different nights in the year 1463 BC and specially that of November 14th (all dates, unless expressed, are in the Julian Calendar) when Mars was not visible … and, on the other side, for von Spaeth, the night of May 22nd 1534 BC, identifying Mars with another star within the diagram ….

 

Mackey’s comment: It is quite useless, I believe, for archaeoastronomers to attempt retro-calculations to a particular night sky when neither BC, nor AD, times have been properly established. Even more so in the case of Senenmut and Hatshepsut, who have been hopelessly mis-dated in the conventional chronology.

J. Belmonte and M. Shaltout now provide their own explanation for what has happened:

….

The hypothesis we would like to defend in the present paper is that the astronomical ceiling of the tomb of Senenmut is a gigantic copy of a papyrus draft of a celestial diagram that would have existed and used to be represented in clepsydrae (as that of Karnak). Because of the lack of space, when moving the design from a conical to a flat surface, part of the decoration was lost. This could have been the case for the image of the King (in this case it should have been Hatshepsut) offering to Re-Horakhty. As a matter of fact, only two outer planets would have remained in the final representation.

 

Hence, the explanation for the absence of Mars would be very prosaic, merely iconographical and not related at all with astronomy.

Indeed, we would like to mention that the hypothesis that an astronomical ceiling might represent an extended design of a clepsydra was already defended by Spalinger (1995), but in reference to the astronomical ceiling of the Ramesseum, where the three outer planets are represented. Thus, that particular ceiling should correspond to a later and improved design of water-clock decoration.

 

The “clepsydra” like astronomical ceiling of Senenmut would include some other  peculiarities. The outer planets were also named also after the Horus title of Queen Hatshepsut, which as a matter does not include the epithet “strong bull” … presumably because she was a woman. As a consequence, her twin-planet could not be “Horus, the Bull of Heaven”, and was transformed to the “Mother of the Bull of Heaven” (no blame for the scribe, who did an excellent work). ….

 

 

 

 

 

Christopher Dawson on laws of mathematics

Gavin Ardley’s Marvellous Perception of the Nature of the Modern Sciences

 

Part One (b): Christopher Dawson sums it up

 

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

 

“If the laws of mathematics are simply the creation of the human mind,

they are no infallible guide to the ultimate nature of things. They are a conventional technique which is no more based on the eternal laws of the universe than is

the number of degrees in a circle or the number of yards in a mile”.

 

Christopher Dawson

 

 

 

 

 

The insightful words of Christopher Dawson (d. 1970) here seem to me closely to echo the sentiments of Dr. Gavin Ardley, in his masterpiece, Aquinas and Kant. The Foundations of the Modern Sciences (1950), who wrote in his Chapter III (“The Nature of Modern Physics”):

 

The Classical, or Realist, Theory of Modern Physics

 

The classical writers on scientific method, men like John Stuart Mill, and the English empiricists generally, took it for granted that modern physics was, like ancient physics, endeavouring to discover the nature and functioning of the physical world about us. Only, they believed, it was doing it much more successfully than was the ancient and medieval physics. They saw the change that came over physics in the days of Galileo as a change occasioned by increased attention to observation and experiment. They accused the Aristotelians of paying too little attention to observation and too much to a priori notions. Liberation from the medieval straight-jacket, and careful experiment and measurement, coupled with the powerful instrument of mathematics, was believed to be the reason for the great strides forward in physical science from Galileo onward.

Physics was thus regarded as a truly empirical science. The physicist was supposed to observe uniformities in Nature and to generalise these into laws. Some varied this a little by pointing out that physicists take hypotheses and then put them to the test of experiment. If experiment verifies the hypothesis then we have discovered a valid law or theory of physics. By these means, it was believed, were discovered such laws and principles as Newton’s Laws of Motion and the Law of Universal Gravitation, the Conservation of Energy, the Wave Theory of Light, the Atomic Theory of Matter, and so on.

Physics was thus held by these philosophers and logicians to be slowly wresting out the secrets of Nature, to be steadily unfolding before us the constitution of the physical world. The uniformity of Nature is revealed in the true laws of physics, and renders them immutable.

Physics is subject at every turn to the test of experiment, and anyone can upset a theory simply by showing that some observation is contrary to it. Thus physics abhors authority and anything that smacks of the a priori. Consequently the modern physicist reviles the old Aristotelian physicist who, he believes, was bound hand an foot by authority and a priori notions.

By this slow empirical advance, it was believed, there was built up this great edifice of modern physics; an edifice which today occupies one of the most prominent positions in our intellectual horizon, while in practical applications it has transformed daily life by surrounding us with a countless multiplicity of instruments and amenities.

Although the classical empiricist logicians were not all agreed on what was, precisely, the scientific method, yet on the general picture they were unanimous. [Footnote: See further Ch. XI, on Scientific Method.]

 

The Eddingtonian Theory

 

Nevertheless there has long been a minority which has held other views about the nature of physics and scientific method. In recent years these views have pushed their way more and more to the fore. The revolt has been rather tentative up to the present, but in this chapter we will extend it further and develop its consequences.

The John the Baptist of the Movement was Immanuel Kant. In more recent times the principles were revived by Poincaré.

[Footnote: Some account of the various transitional theories will be found in later chapters, notably in Ch. XVIII in the Section on Modern Physics and Scholastic Philosophy.] But the new interpretation has received its greatest impetus from the works of the late Professor Eddington, who gave a most elegant expression to what others had long been struggling to articulate. The new approach is based on the mode of acquiring knowledge in experimental physics. It pays little attention to what the physicist says, but much attention to what he does. It looks away from the world to the activity of the physicist himself. To Eddington and his school of thought, the laws of physics are subjective, arbitrary, conventional, dogmatic, and authoritarian. This is, of course, precisely the reverse of the classical theory which believes the laws to be supremely objective. But the new theory holds that the laws of physics are not the laws of Nature but the laws of the physicists. The laws of physics are always true, not because they represent uniformities of Nature, but simply because the physicist never lets them be untrue.

Newton wrote in the Principia that ‘Nature is pleased with simplicity and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes’. The classical empiricist logician would heartily endorse this dictum, although he might be puzzled if asked how he knew it to be true. But the alternative view would insist that it is not Nature which is pleased with simplicity, but the physicist. Whether Nature is pleased with simplicity or not we cannot tell, at least not within the province of experimental science. But we know that the physicist is pleased with simplicity and will exercise all his ingenuity to achieve it. The simplicity of the laws of physics, then, tells us much about the physicist, but nothing immediately about Nature.

This reorientation towards physics can be expressed very neatly by using the parable of Procrustes, and saying that physics is a Procrustean bed. Procrustes lived in ancient Greece. He was a brigand who terrorised Attica until finally he was vanquished by Theseus. Now Procrustes had a bed, and it was his practice to make travellers conform in length to that bed. If they were too short he stretched them out until they fitted, and if they were too long he chopped of their legs until they were the right length.

This is a parable of what the physicist does with Nature. He makes Nature conform to what he wants, and having done so announces that he has discovered a law of Nature: namely that all travellers fit the bed. Hence it is that the laws of physics are always true. It is because the physicist makes Nature conform to them. He runs Nature out into moulds, so to speak. A law of physics is not something discovered in Nature, but something imposed upon Nature.

In brief, physics is a put-up job. The physicist puts it all in implicitly at the beginning, and then draws it out explicitly at the end. Physics is manufactured, not discovered. Eddington puts the matter in his own inimitable style. [Footnote: Eddington, A. S.: The Philosophy of Physical Science (Cambridge, 1939), p. 109.]

[End of quotes]

 

 

Christopher Dawson wrote, in Progress and Religion (Sheed and Ward, 1938, p. 236), concerning mathematics and the universe:

 

The rise of modern physics was closely connected with a transcendental view of the nature of mathematics derived from the Pythagorean and Platonic tradition. According to this view, God created the world in accordance with numerical harmonies, and consequently it is only by the science of number that it can be understood. ‘Just as the eye was made to see colours’, says Kepler, ‘and the ear to hear sounds, so the human mind was made to understand Quantity’. (Opera 1, 3). And Galileo describes mathematics as the script in which God has written on the open book of the Universe. But this philosophy of mathematics which underlies the old science, requires a deity to guarantee its truth. If the laws of mathematics are simply the creation of the human mind, they are no infallible guide to the ultimate nature of things. They are a conventional technique which is no more based on the eternal laws of the universe than is the number of degrees in a circle or the number of yards in a mile. ….