Kanda & Maat

What is recognized as astrology today was not seen as separate from astronomy in the times of the ancient Egyptians. The Coptic calendar follows the ancient Egyptian calendar in name but was fixed to the Julian calendar of roman times. It would be more helpful to note the similarities of the Ancient Egyptian calendar to that of the Zulu of South Africa both having epagomenal days and being dependent on the sighting of the moon to start the month. Scholars like Juan Antonio Belmonte in his article Keeping Ma’at on Earth reviewed the ongoing debate between whether the Ancient Egyptian calendar was solar or lunar but if we use the zodiac, we can see that it is actually both. By that I mean to say that since the Egyptian year is not fixed and gradually moves, it is the position of the sun and moon on their course through the zodiac that determine when a new year begins. This correlates to the practices of tropical and sidereal astrology. Tropical astrology is fixed which makes the calendar day and a specific degree of the zodiac sign fixed over time. Sidereal astrology, however, allows the day to shift, meaning the days wander from the same degree over time, taking a Sothic cycle of about 1460 years to return to the same position just like the Egyptian calendar (Belmonte, 2009). As an example, in 2024 the Sun crossed the 0 degree of Aries on March 20 in Tropical astrology, while in Sidereal the sun crossed the 0 degree of Aries on April 13.

Now we will look at the signs and how they line up with the months of the Old Kingdom Ancient Egyptian calendar obtained from Belmonte’s article.

Virgo – Thy

Libra – Mnht

Scorpio – Hwthr

Sagittarius – k3 hr k3

Capricorn – sf ‘bt

Aquarius – rkh wr

Pisces – rkh nds

Aries – Rnnwtt

Taurus – hnsw

Gemini- hnty hty

Cancer – ipt hmt

Leo – wpt rnpt

Stay tuned for part 2!!!

Reference
Belmonte, J. (2009) Keeping Ma’at on Earth. In Search of Cosmic Order: Selected Essays on Egyptian Archaeoastronomy / edited by Juan Antonio Belmonte and Mosalam Shaltout ; foreword by Zahi Hawass. Supreme Council of Antiquities Press, Cairo ISBN: 9789774794836, p.75-127

Planetary Returns on Particular Degree Calculator, accessed on Oct.18 2024. Planetary Ingresses & Returns on Particular Degree – Astrology Online Calculator (astro-seek.com)