Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt
Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt
Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
<strong>The</strong> rising time <strong>of</strong> stars is delayed by nearly four minutes each day. If we watch Sirius’s rising in early August, the rising<br />
will be at dawn. In late October, the rising is at midnight. Sirius’s rising in early January is at dusk. <strong>The</strong>re is a period from<br />
late January to late May in which Sirius has already risen in daylight and seems to emerge out <strong>of</strong> the sky as the dome<br />
darkens after sunset (that is, the sky becomes dark enough for us to see the spot <strong>of</strong> light that is Sirius). If we were at the<br />
Giza pyramids in early March and we looked due south at dusk, Sirius would emerge from the sky directly over the Great<br />
Pyramid. At one point in the year—in late May—Sirius can be seen hovering just over the western horizon after sunset.<br />
In the days that follow this, the star will not be seen anymore, because it is now too close to the sun’s light for its own<br />
light to be seen. Sirius remains thus invisible for about seventy days, until August 5, when it rises anew before sunrise in<br />
the eastern horizon. This first dawn rising <strong>of</strong> Sirius is technically known as the heliacal rising <strong>of</strong> Sirius and was seen by<br />
the <strong>Egypt</strong>ians as the rebirth <strong>of</strong> the star.<br />
BLACK GENESIS: YEAR ZERO<br />
We in the modern world consider the Year Zero <strong>of</strong> our calendar to be the presumed birth <strong>of</strong> Jesus, which, today, is<br />
thought to have been 2,010 years ago. *54 This, however, is purely an arbitrary date. Indeed many other people—such as<br />
the Muslims, the Jews, the Chinese, and the Japanese—had (and some still have) other Year Zeroes for their own<br />
calendars. Usually, years are numbered from the date <strong>of</strong> a historical person, either an ancient person, as in the case <strong>of</strong> the<br />
Muslim, Jewish, and Christian calendars, or a sequence <strong>of</strong> emperors, as in ancient China or modern Japan, where legal<br />
documents are dated “year Heisei 22.”<br />
When was the Year Zero <strong>of</strong> the ancient <strong>Egypt</strong>ians? How can we calculate its date? This is where we can note an<br />
interesting issue regarding study <strong>of</strong> the drift <strong>of</strong> the civil calendar relative to the heliacal rising <strong>of</strong> Sirius.<br />
Sirius was known as the Sparkling One, the Scorching One, or, less flatteringly, the Dog Star or Canicula. †55 <strong>The</strong>se<br />
epithets derived from the fact that the heliacal rising <strong>of</strong> this star occurred in midsummer, when the sun was at its hottest<br />
—the so-called dog days <strong>of</strong> the Roman year. <strong>The</strong> Greeks called this star Sothis, a name that perhaps derived from the<br />
ancient <strong>Egypt</strong>ian Satis, the goddess <strong>of</strong> the Nile’s flood at Elephantine whom the <strong>Egypt</strong>ians identified with Sirius. 55<br />
Modern astronomers know it as Alpha Canis Major or by its common name, Sirius. It is the star that shines the<br />
brightest in the sky—its brightness in absolute terms is twenty-three times the brightness <strong>of</strong> our sun. It is also twice as<br />
massive as our sun and much hotter, and its 9,400-degrees-Kelvin temperature makes it appear to be brilliant white. <strong>The</strong><br />
American astronomer Robert Burnham Jr. tells us that it is “the brightest <strong>of</strong> the fixed stars . . . and a splendid object<br />
throughout the winter months for observers in the northern hemisphere.” 56 <strong>The</strong> star Sirius, however, does not stand<br />
alone. It is, in fact, part <strong>of</strong> a bright constellation we call Canis Major, the Big Dog, which trails behind Orion the Hunter.<br />
As the brightest <strong>of</strong> all the visible stars, Sirius is almost ten times more brilliant than any other star and can be seen in<br />
broad daylight with the aid <strong>of</strong> a small telescope. Its color is a brilliant bluish white. Quite simply, it is the crown jewel <strong>of</strong><br />
the starry world.<br />
When the very first pyramid in <strong>Egypt</strong> was built around 2650 BCE, Sirius rose at azimuth 116 degrees near modern<br />
Cairo. In 6000 BCE, when the prehistoric astronomers <strong>of</strong> the Sahara also observed it, Sirius rose at azimuth 130 degrees<br />
at Nabta Playa. As we can see in appendix 1, in the centuries around 11,500 BCE, Sirius rose almost due south at<br />
azimuth 180 degrees as seen from the Cairo area. It is a well-established fact that the <strong>Egypt</strong>ians observed the rising <strong>of</strong><br />
Sirius, especially its heliacal rising, since at least 3200 BCE. Because <strong>of</strong> the effect <strong>of</strong> precession, the time and place on<br />
the horizon <strong>of</strong> the heliacal rising <strong>of</strong> Sirius will slowly change. Today it takes place in early August. In 2781 BCE the<br />
rising occurred on June 21, the day <strong>of</strong> the summer solstice, when the Nile also began to rise with the coming flood. Of<br />
course, this propitious conjunction—the summer solstice, the heliacal rising <strong>of</strong> Sirius, and the start <strong>of</strong> the flood season—<br />
would have been so for the prehistoric people <strong>of</strong> the Sahara, except that it was the playa flood season that started with the<br />
monsoon season.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Nile and the New Year<br />
<strong>The</strong> summer solstice may have originally marked the first day <strong>of</strong> the civil calendar. This idea was first proposed in 1894