The Egyptian star-gods,whose stories are among the most bizarre ever told - helped humans develop the concept of the 360° circle, the 12-month year and the 24-hour day.
The story goes that from out of nowhere came the Sun God Ra. He then created the gods Tefnut and Shu.From them came the star-spangled goddess Nut.
Nut straddles the sky and each day gives birth to Ra.
Throughout the day he travels across her back with Thoth and Ma'at.
Every night Ra is swallowed by Nut
The sun defines the points of the compass.The suns appearance meant victory of light over darkness.good over evil.
The Ra and Nut story is also a clever way of marking the position of the sun in the sky, as its in a different position at different times of the year.
The Milky Way does look like a human form arching over the sky.
The Egyptian Priests realised that at the time of the spring equinox, the sun rose in the sky at a point which corresponded with Nut's mouth.
Over the course of the next 9 months it moved through her body to be born 9months later at the point which corresponds to her birth canal.
The priests knew that 9 months is the duration of a human pregnancy.
Now add to that that Egyptians believed that women could concieve through their mouths and the myth makes a lot more sense.
So, Ra and Nut's story helped egyptians mark two events in the year, the Spring Equinox and the Mid-Winter Solstice.
The Nile flows from great lakes in africa and egypt harnessed its power.It was th the worlds first agricultural society.
The river was central to the growth of Egyptian civilisation.
Farming takes planning. They needed to know when to sow and when to reap and when the Nile would flood to bring nutrients and fertile mud to the lands.
Hathor was a seductive dancer and lover of Ra.
divine Ra grew old and was mocked by mortals.
so he summoned the other major gods to his house.
It was decided that the eye of Ra (Hathor) was to go and destroy all those who spoke against Ra.
Hathor went on a killing spree in Egypt.
She continued slaying untill there were hardly any humans left.
Ra realised Hathor had to be stopped in order to preserve humanity.
So he made 7,000 pots of beer and poured them into the Nile.
The Nile rose and flooded the land.
Hathor saw her beautiful reflection in the water and knelt to drink the water.She continued to drink the water untill the river had subsided.
By this time she had consumed all the beer and she was so drunk that she could not kill anymore.
This myth represents the yearly flooding of the Nile and the two central characters Ra and Hathor represent the two astronomical bodies that the Egyptians used to plan when the river would flood.
Ra was the Sun and Hathor was the Dog Star.Otherwise known as Sirius.or 'Sothis' in Egyptian.
Somewhere around 3,500 BC it was realised that just before the Nile flooded each year, Sirius would rise before the sun in the dawn sky.
It was a warning that the river would flood.
So they connected events on earth with godly events.Which made their worship of the various gods very important.
In Thebes there is a big temple dedicated to Ra.It has 12 large columns.
The Egyptian priests were the first people to systematically measure time.
To do this they turned to the gods. One of the greatest gods was Thoth (god of wisdom and lord of time) who represented the Moon.
The moon has many cycles.They realised it matched the tides, menstrual cycles etc..
So, they could divide the year into months by watching the moon.
They had a few difficulties.
The moon is good for measuring days and months, and the sun defines the length of the year but there is not a neat number of lunar months.
Also they never knew exactly how many days there were in a year or when it ended and started.
Most important egyptian myths were attempts to solve problems in time reckoning and the calendar.
Take the length of the year, at first the priests thought that Ra's annual cycle took 360 days (which is the origin of our 360degree circle). But this error, meant seasons would keep slipping gradually out of line, forcing them to adjust their calendar every few years.
The priests finally calculated that the year needed to be 5 days longer.
The resulting calendar reform found religious expression in a story of jealousy and revenge.
Beautiful goddess of the Milky Way Nut fell in love with her brother, the god Geb, who took the form of a bird on earth, and they became lovers.
Ra discovered them and placed a curse on his wife Nut, so that she could not give birth on any day of the year.
But cheating Nut realised she could get around this curse if the year could somehow gain some extra days.
So she seduced Thoth, the god of time.
After having his wicked way with Nut, he agreed to help.
Odd as it may seem, he did this by playing draughts with the goddess Isis, wife of Osiris, whos death marked the shortest day of the year.
To the Egyptians, the game of drafts represented the movement of the planets.
Thoth won the game and the prize he claimed from Isis, was an extra five days, which Nut used to give birth to five children.
And so it was that the ancient egyptians were the first people to use a 365 day calendar.
The priests were not only astronomers but also court officials who needed to organise the business of state, calculate taxes, agree contracts etc..
There people needed to know what day it was.
Indeed, such was the sophistication of egyptian society, that they felt the need to measure time in smaller units than a day.
Again, the egyptians found their unit of measurement in the heavens.
And again this astronomical time-keeping took the form of a religious saga which continues the story of Ra and Nut.
As Ra was swallowed each night by the goddess Nut, he was transformed into Osiri.
