Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

ight angle. After that date, Nabta Playa and the ceremonial complex were abandoned. *22
ONE YEAR OF ASTRONOMY AT NABTA PLAYA
Now suppose you are viewing the various astronomical events during one year at Nabta Playa—say, 4500 BCE. You
begin your observing year on the afternoon of the winter solstice. You intend to use the Calendar Circle that night, and so
you observe that the winter solstice sun sets into the solstice gates of the circle and the sky begins to darken. You move
to the north end of the circle to use the meridian gates as your sky-viewing guide, and over the next forty-five minutes the
sky becomes dark enough that the stars seem to pop out around you. Then, fifty-five minutes after sunset, directly on the
meridian, you see the belt of Orion shining into the deepening dark, oriented very much like the three southerly stones
inside the circle. Trailing Orion is the brilliant Sirius, which crosses the meridian an hour and forty minutes later. Two
hours after that the very bright star Canopus crosses the meridian, skimming low above the horizon. Perhaps, if you’ve
learned your sky lessons, you know that when you travel north, Canopus drops even lower to the horizon. The starry
show continues for eight more hours; then the sky begins to brighten, and the sun rises to make its low winter arc across
the sky.
One month later the nightly show is similar, except that the sun sets a bit north of the solstice gates of the circle, and
when the sky darkens, you see that Orion has already passed the meridian and Sirius is already there. Two more months
pass, and the sun rises due east and sets due west. It is the spring equinox, and now when the sky darkens after sunset,
Orion’s belt is gone—already set below the horizon—but Sirius is still visible low to the southwest for about forty-five
minutes before it too sets. About ten days later Sirius also disappears. *23 Another twenty-eight days later, just before
dawn, Orion’s belt reappears in the southeast. †24 After another twenty-nine days, Sirius also reappears in the southeast,
when you can glimpse it momentarily before dawn. *25 At Nabta Playa you have moved south of the Calendar Circle to
view this heliacal rising of Sirius from Complex Structure A, the central megalithic construction that your society built
to view stars rising over lines of megaliths. There, just before dawn, you see Sirius rise above a distant line of megaliths
to the southeast, and when you look to the northeast you see hovering there, above another line of megaliths, Dubhe of
the Bull’s Thigh constellation.
Of course, these alignments are just as you have expected, because this is in fact a year of heavy construction, when
you are completing the building of those two lines of megaliths. It is now just four weeks before summer solstice, and in
seven more days, it will be exactly three weeks before summer solstice, the time when, at noon, the sun passes directly
overhead and the standing stones cast no shadow, which occurs only twice per year.
Now the annual rains have come, and if they are plentiful, the playa basin fills with shallow water. The Calendar
Circle is located on a low mound just off the edge of the playa, so you can continue your star viewing from there even
while the playa is full of water. On the night before summer solstice you watch Orion’s belt rising about an hour after
midnight, followed, as always, by Sirius an hour and forty-five minutes later. Orion’s belt moves toward the meridian and
fades out of view about an hour before it reaches it, as the sky brightens and the sun rises in the solstice gates of the
Calendar Circle. Three weeks after summer solstice the noon sun again passes directly overhead and the standing stones
cast no shadow, and the nightly show repeats. This time you can see Orion’s belt just approaching the meridian as the sky
brightens with the sunrise. The sun now rises a bit south of the solstice gate, as the sunrise location moves toward winter,
and the whole annual show will repeat.