Like a spinning top the earth ' s axis also wobbles. It wobbles very very slowly. Three and half thousand years ago, during the days of pyramids, the earth ' s wobbling axis pointed close towards Thuban and not towards Polaris.
They could determine the cardinal directions- the east, west, north and south pretty accurately. So accurate were they, that they could build the great pyramid of Giza, more than two football fields on each side, hardly deviating from the exact cardinal directions by just a minute percent. How could they do it?
As stars travel east to west each night, they cross an imaginary line in the sky extending from north to south. For a person lying down on the ground, a string hung tight along the north-south direction exactly above him, acts as this imaginary line. Every star, every heavenly object in the sky, crosses this line some time or the other. This is the meridian line. Looking towards the south or, the north a vertical plumb line would serve the purpose. Looking north, you can see some stars are crossing the meridian line not once, but, twice during the night: once, travelling east to west above the pole star, and again travelling west to east below the pole star. These stars never rise and never set. The Egyptians called them immortals, undying or, indestructible. Blessed by Osiris, after death the immortal ' ba '- the soul of the Pharaohs, flies to meet those undying stars in the heaven in search of everlasting life. The short ' ankh ' in the hands of Pharaohs is a symbolism of that immortality. The god kings lived on earth and then journeyed to the heavens to reign forever with the imperishable stars.
Osiris once possessed human form and lived on earth. He became the greatest king and civilised the barbarous and cannibalistic Egyptians through kindness and persuasion. He went about among the people teaching what to eat, how to worship gods, and gave them the art of agriculture and the social laws.
SKYASACLOCK- Decans
Egyptians had twelve hour days and twelve hour nights. When Lord Amun-Ra gets reborn in the east, it ' s the beginning of the day: when at meridian, it ' s the mid-day; and when he moves to the underworld in the west, a twelve hour long day ends and the night begins. So, the sky is the dial of a clock and the sun or, a star is its hour hand. Just as the sun in the day, a star is a marker of time during the night. However, a star clock runs fast by four minutes everyday. At this rate it gains two hours over a sun clock in a month. So, the Egyptians changed the star hand or, decans every week. After every week of ten days, a different star or a group of stars became the new hour hand to keep time in the night. A set of thirty six decans helped to keep time throughout the year. The decans are heavenly figures and they help us to keep time. The gods stay in the heavens and the decans were also worshipped as gods.
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