Senenmut's Astronomical Ceiling

Definition

Senenmut's astronomical ceiling is the painted ceiling of an unfinished tomb (TT 353, about 1473 BCE) at Deir el-Bahari, cut for Senenmut, the high steward of Queen Hatshepsut. It is the earliest extensive Egyptian star-map to survive. The ceiling is split in two: a northern half showing the never-setting circumpolar constellations — among them the Foreleg, our Big Dipper — grouped around a set of month-circles, and a southern half listing the decans (the star-groups Egyptians used to mark the hours of the night) and the planets shown as gods.

In Tradition

Egyptologists treat Senenmut's ceiling as the founding example of the monumental astronomical ceiling. Neugebauer and Parker classed its decan list as the earliest of six 'families' of decan-lists, the Family of Senenmut. Belmonte and Lull read its imagery as a knowledge-aid placed over the body of the dead: the decan-lists and northern constellations were meant to give the deceased command of the sky and the passage of time for the journey through the Duat, the underworld.

In Practice

The ceiling pins down what the early New Kingdom actually knew about the sky. From it scholars reconstruct the canonical order of the 36 decans in their southern band, the layout of the northern circumpolar figures around the Foreleg and the upright Hippopotamus, and which planet went with which god. The 12 month-circles, each split into 24 sectors, are read three ways: Clagett saw two sets of 12 meridian-transit hours, von Bomhard radial star-clocks tying constellation positions to the hours, and von Lieven a rhythm of hourly offerings to each month's gods. One detail stands out — the last star in the bull's tail is circled in red and touched by a triangular pointer, which Belmonte and Lull read as the star Alkaid marked for sighting. The same decan tradition runs on through Heny's coffin and, a thousand years later, the Ptolemaic Harendotes coffin.

Historical Origin

The ceiling is in tomb TT 353 at Deir el-Bahari, dated to about 1473 BCE in the reign of Hatshepsut (18th Dynasty). Its decan list heads the Family of Senenmut in Neugebauer and Parker, Egyptian Astronomical Texts Vol III (1969), which traces the family from this ceiling down to the Harendotes coffin BM 6678 (Ptolemy III, 3rd century BCE). Modern study: Belmonte and Lull, Astronomy of Ancient Egypt (2018), drawing on Clagett (1995), von Bomhard (2012), and von Lieven (2021).

Definition

In Tradition

In Practice

Historical Origin

Further Reading