Unwearying Stars

Definition

The Unwearying Stars are an ancient Egyptian category of sky and religion — jxmw-wrD, "those who do not know tiredness" (German: die das Ermüden nicht kennen). They are the stars that rise, cross the sky, and set, rather than staying circumpolar. In Clagett's reading the category takes in both the decans and the planets — the "wandering" bodies whose risings and settings paced the night-hours and the seasons. By Egyptian convention they are paired with the Imperishable Stars (jxmw-skjw), the ones that never set.

In Tradition

Egyptologists treat the Unwearying Stars as one half of a two-part way of classifying stars that runs deep in pharaonic cosmology. Clagett (*Ancient Egyptian Science* Vol II) and Belmonte and Lull (*In Search of Cosmic Order*, 2009) document the convention; Brady (*Brady's Book of Fixed Stars*, 2015) maps the jxmw-wrD onto Ptolemy's Arising-and-Lying-Hidden phase types. The Imperishable-and-Unwearying pairing shapes the northern and southern panels of the Senmut and Seti-I celestial diagrams.

In Practice

Egyptologists use the Unwearying-versus-Imperishable split to read Egyptian celestial diagrams: the northern panel (Imperishable) shows the Bull's Foreleg — the Big Dipper — and the circumpolar constellations around it; the southern panel (Unwearying) shows the decanal-belt constellations whose heliacal risings — first pre-dawn appearances — paced the ten-day Egyptian week. The category also organizes the Middle and New Kingdom diagonal star clocks, where the 36 Unwearying decans are set out in diagonal-table form. In later transmission, the decanal half of the Unwearying Stars feeds straight into the Hellenistic decanal system taken up by *Liber Hermetis* and the Hermetic-magical writings.

Historical Origin

The term jxmw-wrD appears in the Pyramid Texts (Old Kingdom, c. 2400-2200 BCE) and in New Kingdom diagonal star clocks. Modern lexicographic reference: Hannig 1997, p. 99. Modern scholarship: Clagett, *Ancient Egyptian Science* Vol II (1995), Doc III.3-III.14; Belmonte and Lull, *In Search of Cosmic Order* (2009); Brady, *Brady's Book of Fixed Stars* (2015), p. 84, mapping the category onto Ptolemy's Arising-and-Lying-Hidden and Curtailed-Passage phases.

Further Reading

• Marshall Clagett, Ancient Egyptian Science Vol II: Calendars, Clocks, and Astronomy
• Juan Antonio Belmonte & José Lull, In Search of Cosmic Order: Selected Essays on Egyptian Archaeoastronomy
• Bernadette Brady, Brady's Book of Fixed Stars