Temple Alignment

Definition

Temple alignment is the deliberate placing of an Egyptian temple's main axis toward a direction that mattered in the sky — most often the point where a culturally important star rises (Sirius for temples of Hathor, Meskhetyu, our Big Dipper, for foundation work) or a sunrise at a solstice (the winter-solstice sunrise for the Karnak temple of Amun-Re). Belmonte and Lull (2009) sort Egyptian temple orientations into seven families, I through VII — among them Sothic (Family IV, lined up on Sirius), Canopus (Family V), Winter Solstice (Family II), and inter-cardinal (Family VII).

In Tradition

Archaeoastronomers read temple alignment as a deliberate cosmological act, the architecture made to mirror an event in the sky. Belmonte and Lull document the seven orientation families across Pharaonic, Ptolemaic, and Kushite temples of Amun, joined by Caroline Rocheleau's 2008 study of Sudanese examples. The Stretching of the Cord (pedj-shes) foundation ceremony used Meskhetyu sighting, with the merkhet and bay sighting tools, to fix the line of the temple, with the goddess Seshat presiding.

In Practice

To find out what a temple was aimed at, archaeoastronomers measure the direction its axis still points and compare it against the sky as it stood on the building's construction date — corrected for precession, the slow wobble of Earth's axis. Temples set on a solstice, such as Karnak's Amun-Re temple facing the winter-solstice sunrise (Family II), let a shaft of sun reach the sanctuary statues on that one day, so the festival calendar follows the architecture. Temples of Hathor set on Sirius (Family IV) catch the star rising on the heliacal-rising dates that opened the Egyptian New Year — the first dawn it became visible again. The pyramids of Sneferu at Dahshur and Khufu at Giza instead face true north, found by sighting on circumpolar stars, the ones that never set (Family VII, an inter-cardinal variant).

Historical Origin

Inscriptions recording the pedj-shes foundation ceremony run from the Old Kingdom through Ptolemaic temples; the Ptolemaic-period inscription at the Horus temple of Edfu is the standard reference. Modern study: Belmonte and Lull, In Search of Cosmic Order (2009); Belmonte and Magli on the Seshat sign as a surveying instrument (2009a); Caroline Rocheleau's 2008 typology of Amun temples in Nubia; Clagett, Ancient Egyptian Science Vol II (1995). The Akhetaten alignment temple (hwt-jtn) is attested at Amarna.

Definition

In Tradition

In Practice

Historical Origin

Further Reading