Archeologist and Egyptologist Hannah Pethen Barrett, who presently is in Egypt on an expedition, recently discussed with us the importance of landscape archeology. It is her work’s primary focus and one she finds quite curious. In our conversation with her, we discuss the exploration and analysis of ancient topographical features and how they played a role in the development of ancient buildings. This is important because as climates change over the course of time and the Earth itself shifts, it often leaves us asking today why the ancients built something so far away from a body of water or out in the middle of the desert. The short answer often times is, a couple thousand years ago, it was right next to a body of water and it wasn’t out in the middle of nowhere….
Map of Ancient Egypt, showing the Nile up to the fifth cataract, and major cities and sites of the Dynastic period (c. 3150 BC to 30 BC). Cairo and Jerusalem are shown as reference cities. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
For example, we discussed sites like the Temple of Karnak, which now is located some distance from the Nile River, but apparently was quite close to the ancient Nile River. Over the course of time, landscapes change and most of us probably don’t realize how much. But according to our learned scholar, things change quite a bit over the course of 2,000-3,000 years.
Though she isn’t an archeoastronomer by title, she does say that when it comes to dating the ruling periods of Egyptian Pharaohs it is largely done by “Year so and so, of such and such Pharaoh.” That makes it hard to put into terms of something having happened in X BC/AD.
So by focusing on things like the Dog Star, Sirius, and references to Sirius’s location in the ancient night skies in the writings left behind, archeologists can do calculations to help better determine when, in terms of our modern day calendar of BC/AD, when a pharaoh reigned or a particular recorded event in ancient history likely happened.
And so, in this way, planetary alignments are of great importance in Egyptology and the study of other ancient cultures around the world.
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