Archaeoastronomy in Egypt
The ancient
Egyptian religion is a sun-based religion and the yearly cycle of the
stars was very important for them to calculate their calender. It would
be surprising if there was no an alignment with certain celestial phenomena.
However, archaeoastronomy is not an established science working hand in
hand with archaeology in much of Mespotamia and Egypt. There are several
reasons for this:
"The
problem is that until recently hardly any research was done in that area:
Egyptologists are no astronomers, and calculations in that field are extremely
complex. This was taken for granted, but not a field of research. So nothing
to much 'scientific' can be said, simply because of lack of data. That
is something else than saying Egyptologists dismiss celestial alignments:
they simply never looked into it. That is the disadvantage of a rich culture
like that of the Egyptians: one can't do everything."
Paul
Haanen
Archaeologist in Egypt