Dendera Zodiac

Definition

The Dendera Zodiac is a carved sandstone ceiling relief from the eastern Chapel of Osiris, on the roof of the Temple of Hathor at Dendera — Late Ptolemaic, made before 30 BCE. It shows a near-circular map of the sky, bringing together twelve zodiac-sign figures, 36 Egyptian decans of the Tanis family around an outer rim, the planets shown in their places of exaltation (where each is traditionally strongest), the never-setting northern constellations Hippopotamus and Meskhetyu (the Bull's Foreleg, our Big Dipper) at the centre, and four goddesses with four falcon-headed deity pairs at the compass-points.

In Tradition

Egyptologists treat the Dendera Zodiac as a Hellenistic-Roman-period blend set onto Egyptian temple architecture. Clagett, Belmonte and Lull, and Neugebauer and Parker agree that the way the twelve zodiac signs are drawn comes ultimately from Babylonia, while the decan-deities, the exaltation-deities, and the northern constellations around them grow out of native Egyptian sky-diagrams documented earlier in Clagett's Documents III.3-III.4 and III.11-III.14.

In Practice

Historians read the Dendera Zodiac as an artistic picture of the cosmos, not a working observing instrument. Decan scholars cite it as evidence of the Tanis-family decan sequence surviving into Roman-period temple decoration; historians of astrology use it to anchor how the Greco-Babylonian twelve-sign zodiac and the doctrine of planetary exaltations passed into Egyptian temple imagery. Belmonte and Lull and Clagett point out that the layout is geometrically meaningful: it is built around the celestial pole, with the northern Hippopotamus and Foreleg at the centre, the decans set around the rim, the zodiac band offset and tilted relative to the pole, and the slant of the ecliptic — the sun's yearly path — faithfully kept. Scholars pair this Round Zodiac (Dendera B) with the rectangular Esna A Zodiac (about 200 BCE) as the two main Egyptian zodiac monuments of the Greco-Roman period.

Historical Origin

It came from the eastern Chapel of Osiris on the roof of the Temple of Hathor at Dendera, Late Ptolemaic, before 30 BCE (Clagett, Document III.17, Note 11); it was removed to Paris in 1828 and is now in the Louvre. Clagett records the debate: Letronne versus Biot (both 1846) on dating it from the sign-arrangement; Boll (1903) on its Babylonian-Greek-Egyptian mix; Neugebauer and Parker, EAT Vol III (1969); Belmonte and Lull (2009).

Definition

In Tradition

In Practice

Historical Origin

Further Reading