Mesharu (Decan Lists)

meh-SHAH-roo

Definition

Mesharu is the name for the late-period Demotic Egyptian decan lists — organised catalogues, written in hieratic and Demotic script, that record the thirty-six decans by name, by heliacal-rising date in the Egyptian civil calendar, by the deity tied to each, and by the influence each was thought to carry. The mesharu material is native Egyptian decan astronomy being put into ordered form across the Saite, Persian, Ptolemaic, and Roman periods — just before, and alongside, the Greco-Egyptian Hellenistic horoscopic synthesis.

In Tradition

Egyptologists read the late Demotic decan lists as the bridge that connects the decan-clock astronomy of the Old and Middle Kingdoms with the decanic astrology of the Hellenistic-Hermetic tradition. Belmonte and Lull, Parker and Neugebauer, and Clagett all treat the late-Demotic mesharu material as the local Egyptian decan groundwork that the Greco-Egyptian Hermetic literature then personifies as decan spirits — beings with names, images, and ascribed powers.

In Practice

Historians of astronomy, and astrologers working in the Egyptian decan tradition, treat the mesharu lists as the native Egyptian counterpart to the Greco-Hermetic decan catalogue in the Liber Hermetis Trismegisti. The lists are studied alongside the decan tables on the Senenmut and Sety I astronomical ceilings — the Old and New Kingdom native tradition — and the Dendera Zodiac — the late-Ptolemaic Greco-Egyptian blend — to piece together the full timeline of Egyptian decan cosmology before it was absorbed into Hellenistic horoscopic doctrine.

Historical Origin

The Demotic decan-list corpus survives in late-period papyri, from Saite to Roman Egypt — roughly the 7th century BCE through the 2nd century CE — with major specimens treated in Parker and Neugebauer's Egyptian Astronomical Texts III. Their "Family of Senenmut" classification runs from Hatshepsut's reign (15th century BCE) through the Harendotes BM 6678 coffin (Ptolemy III, 3rd century BCE), spanning roughly 1,200 years of decan-list tradition.

Further Reading

  • Otto Neugebauer and Richard A. Parker, Egyptian Astronomical Texts I-III
  • Juan Antonio Belmonte and Jose Lull, In Search of Cosmic Order: Selected Essays on Egyptian Archaeoastronomy
  • Marshall Clagett, Ancient Egyptian Science, Volume II: Calendars, Clocks, and Astronomy