Attempting to Decipher the Hieroglyphs

[sdi]

I realized something fun while trying to read one of my favorite parts of the Iliad in Greek:

ἐν μὲν γαῖαν ἔτευξ’, ἐν δ’ οὐρανόν, ἐν δὲ θάλασσαν,
ἠέλιόν τ’ ἀκάμαντα σελήνην τε πλήθουσαν,
ἐν δὲ τὰ τείρεα πάντα, τά τ’ οὐρανὸς ἐστεφάνωται,
Πληϊάδας θ’ Ὑάδας τε τό τε σθένος Ὠρίωνος
Ἄρκτόν θ’, ἣν καὶ Ἄμαξαν ἐπίκλησιν καλέουσιν,
ἥ τ’ αὐτοῦ στρέφεται καί τ’ Ὠρίωνα δοκεύει,
οἴη δ’ ἄμμορός ἐστι λοετρῶν Ὠκεανοῖο.

On it, he made the earth, the sky, the sea,
the sun that never sleeps, the swelling moon,
and all the signs which circle the heavens:
the Pleiades, the Huades, mighty Orion,
and the Bear (which they also call the Wagon),
which always spins in place, watching Orion closely,
and, alone, being free of bathing in the Ocean.

(Hephaistos decorates the shield of Akhilleus. Homer, Iliad XVIII 483–9, as translated—hopefully not too badly!—by yours truly.)

This is, in fact, almost all that is said of the hieroglyphs on the walls of the great Temple by the archaic Poets. The Homer of the Iliad makes one other reference to the skies:

τὸν δ’ ὃ γέρων Πρίαμος πρῶτος ἴδεν ὀφθαλμοῖσι
παμφαίνονθ’ ὥς τ’ ἀστέρ’ ἐπεσσύμενον πεδίοιο,
ὅς ῥά τ’ ὀπώρης εἶσιν, ἀρίζηλοι δέ οἱ αὐγαὶ
φαίνονται πολλοῖσι μετ’ ἀστράσι νυκτὸς ἀμολγῷ,
ὅν τε κύν’ Ὠρίωνος ἐπίκλησιν καλέουσι.
λαμπρότατος μὲν ὅ γ’ ἐστί, κακὸν δέ τε σῆμα τέτυκται,
καί τε φέρει πολλὸν πυρετὸν δειλοῖσι βροτοῖσιν:

And first the old man Priamos saw him with his eyes
charging the plain and shining like that star
which rises in late summer, whose conspicuous twinkling
outshines the many stars in the dead of night,
and which they call by the name "the dog of Orion."
It is the brightest of all, but it is made out to be an evil sign,
for it brings much heat to wretched mortals; [...]

(Priam sees Akhilleus in his divine armor. Homer, Iliad XXII 25–31, as translated—hopefully not too badly!—by yours truly. The precision of "dead of night" is doubtful, since ἀμολγῷ is a hapax legomenon, but the gist is clear enough.)

Meanwhile, Hesiod adds agricultural timing to the rising and setting of these but mentions no other celestial figures. "The Bear" is the Greek name, and "the Wagon" the Mesopotamian name, for the constellation we Americans call "the Big Dipper." That Orion and the Big Dipper and Sirius are emphasized is surely no surprise, as even a city kid like me in a misbegotten age like this one recognizes these three beyond all others. The Pleiades and Huades are a little surprising—even knowing where to look I have not managed to identify them—but I suppose that, given their intimate connection with trade (Pleiades means "sailors") and agriculture (Huades means "rain-bringers"), their import to the Greeks is obvious enough.

But let me focus on the Bear's behavior: always watching Orion and never going near the water. "The sea" must be the horizon, as the Big Dipper is far enough north that it remains in the sky all year round at the latitude of Greece. Presumably, then, the sky is simply heaven, and the "underworld" is the part of the sky below the horizon which we do not see.

Now, I have said before that Osiris is Orion, the "great man of heaven;" that Horos is Sirius, his son and the brightest star of heaven, literally following Orion's footsteps; and that Isis and Anoubis are Argo Navis and Canopus, searching for Osiris in their little boat together. We might see Egypt as heaven, the sea as the horizon, and Bublos as the underworld. The original home of Osiris is obviously heaven, but Seth kills him and he floats to the ocean, which seems a clear reference to Orion falling below the horizon; Isis follows him and brings him back from the underworld, which is just as clear a reference to Argo Navis following Orion in the sky and Orion rising back up above the horizon again. (Indeed, after he returns, the boat becomes visible again, as Isis searches for Osiris's pieces.) That Osiris is "king of Duat" may be a reference to the fact that he is the most conspicuous constellation in the southern sky, and perhaps then it is no surprise that Odusseus saw Orion when he went to Haides.

I wonder if the Greeks got their star lore from Egypt (presumably via Syria—noting Homer's reference to "the Wagon," and noting that the name Orion is believed to be from Akkadian uru-anna "light of heaven"); if so, then perhaps it is no accident that the Bear is the only other constellation mentioned. Who watches Osiris carefully and never leaves Egypt? Why, Seth does; and Plutarch even tells us (Isis and Osiris §21, though be advised that I ignore his celestial associations for Isis and Horos) that the Egyptians associate the Bear with Seth. (I can even sorta see the Seth-animal in the shape of the Bear.) So perhaps we have another piece of the myth, still written in the stars.

As for the Pleiades, these are not directly referenced as far as I can tell in the Egyptian myth (though perhaps these are the servant-girls of Astarte which invite Isis into the palace). It seems noteworthy that Osiris was forced to the sea unwillingly, while Orion chases the Pleiades into the sea; perhaps this is why the Greeks emphasize sensual desire as the cause of the fall of the soul, while the Egyptians seem to have seen it more as simple necessity.

Very speculatively, I wonder if Thoueris and the serpent are the Little Dipper (an obvious choice for the consort of the Big Dipper) and the constellation Draco, respectively; the Little Dipper defecting to Horos because Polaris points the way North, and Horos begins his upward journey once she joins him. Certainly, the Staff of Asklepios—another symbol of the soul's purification—is a reference to the world axis, topped by Polaris, around which a great serpent is coiled...

Comments

[randomactsofkarmasc]

I suspect the star lore originally came from Babylon to Phoenicia and Egypt and then to Greece. You might be interested in "Babylonian Starlore" by Gavin White (https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25955550M/Babylonian_Starlore_An_Illustrated_Guide_To_The_Starlore_And_Constellations_Of_Ancient_Babylonia).

I used the Babylonian Zodiac to help me align the Herakles' myths to the Greek Zodiac. If you are interested, I have it posted https://randomactsofkarmasc.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2-Herakles-and-the-Zodiac.pdf

[sdi]

It is known that Egypt had it's own indigenous and very sophisticated star-lore, dating at least as far back as the Pyramid Texts (which are fundamentally astrological, focused on the Orion constellation, and of a different character than the early Sumerian sources we have). Alas, I'm working primarily from Plutarch (AD ~100), and the Dendera Zodiac's date is unknown but certainly late (possibly ~50 BC, but probably AD ~150). By this point Egypt absorbed Babylonian influence when it was conquered by Cambyses II (525 BC) and Greek influence when it was conquered by Alexander (332 BC), and aren't very trustworthy when it comes to knowing what the ancients thought.

This is, in fact, why I took notice when both Homer and Hesiod, who wrote very early (predating Babylonian influence on Egypt from temple inscriptions) and from completely different parts of Greece (Boeotia in central Greece and Chios in Ionia), only mention the Orion constellation group and none others. This constellation must have been peculiarly important, and since it seems to relate so closely to Egypt's fundamental myth, it seems likely that there's a relationship there.

It's frustrating that so little remains to us of the Orion myth! At least some variants of it seem to exhibit tantalizing parallels with some of the constellation of Osiris myths (Horos, Perseus, Orestes, Alkmaion), but since two or three versions are told of each part of the myth, it's hard to be sure.

Alas, this stuff was largely lost even to the Greeks due to how ancient it was! We'll probably never know.