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The Dendera Zodiac


The Dendera Zodiac is a well known 256cm x 256cm low-relief roof sculpture that was originally located in the Temple of Dendera, an ancient Egyptian temple 48.5 km north of the city of Luxor on the banks of the Nile river. It has been removed from its original location and now resides in the Louvre museum in Paris.

There are several academic studies of the sculpture that have been published since its discovery in the early 1800s and a visit to the wikipedia Dendera Zodiac page provides links to relevant major sources of information as well as giving basic background information on the subject.

The debate about the age of the sculpture and its origins is not addressed on this website nor are any of the other details originating from previous studies. The work in this website is a study of the sculpture exactly as it appears in its current day state in the Louvre museum and the principal graphic in the center of this page is created from the museum's publicly available high resolution images.

The zodiac symbols

The only information from external sources that is used is on this website is the principal features of the carving that have been established, those being the Zodiac symbols that are present on the inner circle of the sculpture which can be seen by clicking and holding down the following button.


(Click and hold)

Animated sections

The central graphic that is used on all of the pages of this website is a composite image that has had the circular sections of the sculpture separated into their component parts so that each of the sections can be rotated around the central point of the sculpture, a demonstration of which can be seen by clicking the following buttons.

First point in Aries

It is impossible to resolve the design of the Dendera Zodiac without being able to rotate these sections of the sculpture independently of each other and independently of the outer frame, and it is for this reason that no reference is made in this website to any of the previous studies of the sculpture as all those studies have considered the Dendera Zodiac to be a static immovable object.

In addition to the inner parts of the sculpture needing to be rotated there is also an external object which is required to be overlaid onto the sculpture's outer frame, that object being the hook shaped object that was found within the lower northern shaft of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

... continued

This hook object is currently in the possession of the British Museum object number EA67819 and is shown in the illustration below.



This hook object is the marker object for the 'first point in Aries' from which the Aries symbol of the ram's horns is derived and the object is crafted so that it duplicates the shape of the knees of the four principal outer Gods of the Dendera Zodiac as shown in the following illustration:




The structure of this website is dictated by the sculpture itself whereby each of the planets of the solar system are specifically documented within the carving and therefore a separate webpage has been dedicated to each planet. The order in which the planets are documented is also dictated by the design system of the sculpture and they are not documented in the obvious order starting from the inner most planet and moving through to the outer.

At the end of each page there is a link to the next planet in the dictated sequence and therefore this website has a linear narrative. When first reading through it, it is recommended to use the inherent structure of navigation. It is for this reason that there is no principal menu for this website and it is suggested that the reader make their own menu by bookmarking each of the pages once they have been read.

Logically, the Dendera Zodiac starts out with the Earth as the first of its planets and the astronomical alignment of the planet is documented in the carving by using the Moon as the principal astronomical feature of the Earth-Moon system.


Click here to be taken to the Moon page.