We know they counted the night's hours with specific stars. They'd known about Sothic Cycle for centuries. Clearly the ancients had a very good idea of the movements of the heavens.

William McMurray asserts that Akhenaten may have decided to build Aketaten where he did is because of a solar eclipse which actually occured around that time.

My question is this:
Is it reasonable to assume that the Ancient Egyptians would have been able to predict the onset of such an event, much as we do now? It is so improbable that he would 'happen' to find himself in the path of a total solar eclipse. He was an ardent student in his youth wasn't he. Maybe he was close with the wise men who were planning a pilgrimage for the event. Unless we find out that he was definitely around for, or travelling through to some festival we might have reason to consider Akhenaten's motives and the scribes' astronomical understandings a little more closely.

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I was told that there are no references to astronomical occurances such as comets or eclipses in Egyptian literature.

There is not writing references (and that's not totally certain), but the archaeology has demonstrated that egyptians known since predynastic times the solar movements.

But, particularly, in the case of Akhetaten, I think that the "city" was built for others motives. The astronomical case is an excuse to the right causes.

But that's only a view.


Un saludo,
Álvaro G. P.
pharaonoico@hotmail.com

Interesting. What would that other reason be? To establish a more convenient midpoint along the Nile? To distance himself from the cult of Amun and Re-Harakte simultaneously? Both? Another?

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