The Dendera Zodiac

Summary

The circular Denedra Zodiac, from the Osiris chapel in the Hathor temple in Dendera, has previously been studied by academics who have dated the sculpture to the year 50 A.D. and who have then attempted to understand the layout of the carvings of the planets and night sky contained within it by reference to this date.

In this work I prove that the circular Dendera Zodiac was created by the same architects as the Great Pyramid of Giza, and that it is an astronomically perfect animated model of the orbits of the Moon and the solar system's planets from the year 2729 B.C.E. on the day of the winter solstice. I show that the Dendera Zodiac's carvings form an intricate and logical cryptic astronomy puzzle, the start of the solution to which is explained by the sculpture's stonemasons within the hieroglyphs that are carved around the outer stone ring of the design. This work uses those original hieroglyph instructions to solve the sculpture's design in great detail.

Introduction to this work

The circular Dendera Zodiac is shown in this website to be a precise cryptic astronomy puzzle which, when solved, allows the numerical astronomy data of the orbits of the solar system's planets to be extracted from the sculpture. The method used to solve the Dendera Zodiac puzzle was to partially solve various sections of it and then go back and start again, using the knowledge gained in the partial solution, to produce a more refined version. This technique was repeated several times until the definitive solution was determined. At the end of that multi year process it was then possible to fully understand the hieroglyph translations from the outer ring of the sculpture, which contain the instructions of how to solve the puzzle and allow the explanation of the puzzle's design to be presented in the manner that was intended when it was created.

The principal image of the sculpture on the right side of this page is a composite image that has been diligently created from the Louvre museum's publicly available high resolution photography and is a true representation of the sculpture with a negligible error margin in the placing of the component parts. The error margin was determined as being negligible by placing the composite finished high resolution image over a blown up low resolution single image of the whole sculpture and ensuring that the two images matched using a layer switching technique. The image on the right is 1100 pixels square and the center of the circular stone sections of the sculpture lies at the coordinates in the center of this square image.

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 established sources of information as well as giving basic background information on the subject. From these publications the information that is used on this website is the identification of the component parts of the sculpture and an incomplete translation of the hieroglyphs on the outer circular section. None of the solutions to the astronomical layout of the sculpture or the dating of the Dendera Zodiac that appear in previous academic studies has been used in this work because they are demonstrably incorrect.

Introduction to the sculpture

The Dendera Zodiac is a nearly square 254cm x 254.25cm low-relief sculpture that was originally located on the ceiling of a portico of a chapel in the Ancient Egyptian Temple of Hathor in the town of Dendera, 50km north of the city of Luxor. It was removed from its original location in the 1820's and currently resides in room 325 on the first floor of the Sully wing of the Louvre museum in Paris.

The conceptual design of the carving is that the outer square portion, which contains the large carvings of the standing Goddesses, represents the fixed roof of a temple which has a circular hole in the center, through which one can look up at the night sky in the central circular section.

The sculpture is composed of two slabs of stone, the top section (as shown on the graphic on the right) measuring approximately 64cm x 254cm and the bottom section measuring 190cm x 254cm. The joint between the two stones is very rough compared to the almost invisible joints often found between stones in ancient Egyptian monuments and detracts from the circular nature of the zodiac. The sculpture could quite easily have been carved into one single slab of stone and the predominant feature of the carving would then have been its circular nature, rather than the two rectangular slabs.

The following sections of this index page highlight each of the component parts of the Dendera Zodiac and explain their composition.

The planet symbols

In the sculpture, the planets of the solar system are represented by carvings of Gods, and which God represents which planet has been established in the previously mentioned publications because each of the God carvings has the God's name written above it in hieroglyphs, and the planetary association of each of the Gods has been determined through extensive study by Egyptologists. The carvings of the currently known planet Gods Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn can be displayed on the graphic on the right by clicking the following button.

The zodiac symbols

The 12 symbols of the traditional zodiac are carved into the inner circle of the Dendera Zodiac and can be highlighted in white on the image to the right by clicking the following button.

The twelve highlighted zodiac carvings on the illustration are annotated using the two letter English abbreviations for the zodiac symbols. The following list shows the zodiac divisions in date order starting from Aries, along with the modern conventional zodiac symbol that is associated with each section.

• AR
  Aries
  ♈︎
• TA
  Taurus
  ♉︎
• GE
  Gemini
  ♊︎
• CN
  Cancer
  ♋︎
• LE
  Leo
  ♌︎
• VI
  Virgo
  ♍︎
• LI
  Libra
  ♎︎
• SC
  Scorpio
  ♏︎
• SG
  Sagittarius
  ♐︎
• CP
  Capricorn
  ♑︎
• AQ
  Aquarius
  ♒︎
• PI
  Pisces
  ♓︎

It is therefore implicit in the sculpture's design that the passage of time flows in a clockwise direction around the circular portions of the carving and, as the months of the year pass by, the Sun would appear to move through the static circular section of the carving in this clockwise direction. Alternatively, if the Sun were to be in a fixed position on the outer square carving then the circular disk of the night sky would need to rotate in an anticlockwise direction. Whichever of these two scenarios is selected, on the Dendera Zodiac the forward passage of time remains clockwise.

The zodiac Decans

In the central circle of the carving, around the outside portion of the inner circle, are the Decans, which are the characters representing the star clusters that rise every 10 days over the horizon during the annual rotation of the Earth around the Sun. Because there are 12 Zodiac segments, and each of the Decans represents 10 days, there are 3 Decans in every Zodiac constellation and from this scholars have managed to identify where the division lines between of the Zodiac symbols are positioned on this outer section of the inner circle. These can be seen by clicking and holding down the following button.

There is no circular carved line between the Decans and the inner part of the circle, and therefore the inner and outer sections of the central portion of the carving need to be treated as on piece, at the outset of any analysis. Also note that there is one symbol within the Decans which is incomplete, and the damaged or incomplete section of this carving is coloured in light yellow on the illustration.

The intermediate ring

The intermediate ring is the circular section of the Dendera Zodiac that is outside the Decan ring and mostly covered up by the carvings of the large standing Goddesses that dominate the sculpture. This ring contains four unknown items, two marker points and two plinth like objects, which can be seen by clicking and holding the following button.

The outer frame hieroglyphs

There are four sections of hieroglyphs on the outer square frame of the Dendera Zodiac which can be highlighted by clicking and holding down the following button. They are labelled as North, South, East and West in the hieroglyphs with the North section being located in the top left of the illustration, the West in the lower left, the South in the lower right and the East in the upper right. Each set of hieroglyphs is a quotation from the standing Goddess located next to them. The Eastern hieroglyphs is substantially worn away, whereas the other three sections contain clearly distinguishable characters.

The transliterations and translations of the four sets of hieroglyphs are as follows :

North

Transliteration: Mḥt. Ḫyt: Twꜣ.n.ì twꜣt 'wy.ì ẖr ḏsrt, ṯbty.(ì) ḥr tꜣ ìwty whn m ìrw.sn, dwn.ì ʾwy.ì n mnmn m st ʾhʾ.ì ìm.s, kꜣ.tw ḥr ḏnn.ì

The Northern Rising-Woman: I have supported the lower sky; my two arms are under the splendid place, (my) two soles are upon the earth, which does not collapse in their forms; I stretch out my two arms so as not to stir from the place in which I stand, as it is high upon my skull

West

Transliteration: İmntt. Twꜣyt: Fꜣ.n.ì [...] ḥr ḥꜣt tp.ì m ḥʾ n rw m st.ì r' nb, ꜣḫt nt nb.(ì), sḳd.f m-ḫnt.s m Sꜣḥ m-ẖnw mwt.f Nwt

The Western Supporter: I have lifted [...] upon my forehead, in the joy of the lion, in my place every day. The horizon belongs to (my) lord; he sails within it as Orion, inside his mother Nut

South

Transliteration: Rsy 'h'yt 'h'.n.ì ẖr ḥꜣyt m smnt smn.tw tp ʾwy.ì ꜣḫt nt Sꜣḥ Spdt m wꜣ.tw ìḳr.tw n wn pḥwy.s, bꜣw nṯrw ʾnḫ.tì m-ḫnt.s

The southern mourning-woman, I have stood under the portal in the foundation. It is established upon my hands; the horizon of Orion and Sirius is in its distance, excellent in opening its end; the souls of the gods live within it.

East

Transliteration: İꜣbtt Fꜣyt: Ḫy.[n.ì.....] ìšš [n.ì.....] wꜣḥ.tw [...] rwḏ.tw gꜣbty [ì....] st.f, twꜣ.n.ì [......] pt bꜣḳ.tw ẖr ìwn-hʾʾ

The Eastern Carrier (Faytet): [I have] risen... I have spat [for me]... [it is] laid down... the two arms are firm... [its] place; I have supported [the sky]... the sky is bright under the Pillar of Joy.

The outer ring hieroglyphs

The outer ring of the Dendera Zodiac contains a series of eleven hieroglyph phrases in which every character is clearly distinguishable. Many of the individual groups of glyphs are placed in specific positions that make sense once the functionality of the sculpture is fully understood. The ring is bordered on its inner and outer sides by a significant 1.94cm wide carved ridge. The individual hieroglyphs can be shown by clicking the following button.


A principal source of translation currently available of the outer ring of hieroglyphs of the Dendera Zodiac comes from page 157 of the work of the Egyptologist Gyula Priskin :

Gyula Priskin, « The Dendera zodiacs as narratives of the myth of Osiris, Isis, and the child Horus », ENiM 8, 2015, p. 133-185

and whilst parts of the hieroglyphs have been accurately transliterated, there are some fundamental and consequential omissions in the work. For example, the hieroglyph for the word "North" has been missed out in two of the phrases and is critical to the phrases' meaning and there are a number of sections of the hieroglyphs which have been ignored. Having identified these faults, the work does however provide a reasonable starting point from which to produce a diligent and accurate transliteration, from which a translation and then meaningful comprehension of the text can be produced.

Each of the eleven groups of hieroglyphs are translated in the sections below. When you place your mouse over a group of hieroglyphs, the corresponding characters on the right side graphic will be highlighted so that that group's location around the ring of hieroglyphs can be seen. The hieroglyphs are read clockwise around the outer ring of the Dendera Zodiac and therefore correctly follow the passage of time as they are being read. The individual hieroglyphs are all facing anti-clockwise, and therefore the outer ring would need to rotate anti-clockwise to allow the hieroglyphs to move in their direction of travel and for the sentences to read correctly from start to finish.

The question as to where to start the hieroglyph translation can only be solved once the whole ring has been correctly translated, and also once the mechanics of the puzzle's rotations are understood. In phrase one below, this start point can best be seen by placing your mouse over the first characters of the phrase which shows a green circle on the main illustration at the start point of the outer ring's phrases. The reason for reading starting from this point becomes apparent at the end of the final phrase.

The translations are directly related to the astronomy that appears during the solution to the Dendera Zodiac that is determined over the coming pages of this work and requires the understanding of that astronomy for them to make sense. Therefore when initially reading them, without the knowledge that is yet to be presented, some of the phrases will appear to be too modern and technical with regards to the age of the sculpture. They are, non the less, correct translations.


This first phrase is declaring the celestial north, also known in astronomy as the the vernal equinox, is identified using the Goddess name Nut who was the Goddess of astronomy, the cosmos and the universe in Ancient Egypt, and specifying that this is the most important aspect in the Dendera Zodiac, to get the celestial north correctly aligned. The final part of this phrase, 'most important' is deliberately placed either side of the division between the two slabs of stone from which the sculpture is carved, and the stone split line can thereby be determined as being directly related to the phrase and an integral part of the North alignment mechanism.

The plural marker under the word 'golden', which is the hieroglyph of three dots, is important as it tells you that there is more than one part to the north alignment on the sculpture. As will be seen, this hieroglyph wording appears again in the final phrase on the ring and requires a second line which is perpendicular to the stone split line to be drawn onto the sculpture.

The final piece of information that can be gleaned from this first phrase can be seen by placing your mouse over the first group of hieroglyph characters and noting in the angle display at the bottom left of the main image that this is nominally located at a rotation of 0°, and then placing your mouse over the second hieroglyph group and noting that the angle of this grouping is 33+1/3° relative to the first. This angle will prove to be vital later on.

This phrase refers to the mother of Horus, Isis, the Goddess of the planet Venus in ancient Egypt and states that Venus is the primary planet in the Dendera Zodiac and is the mistress of all the other planets, and therefore will appear first in the solution to the Zodiac puzzle. The reason that the hieroglyph phrase for Isis is not used is to specifically make the point that it is the mother body part Venus that is being referred to, used in the same way that we would describe a planet as being a body in the solar system.

This is an unusual phrase and refers to Ombos province, which is the correct geographic region in which the town of Dendera is located, so the first and last hieroglyph groupings make sense. However, the middle hieroglyphs with the jars do not. The lower of these jar hieroglyphs translates as 'to not understand' and the upper jar hieroglyph does not appear in any previously studied translations or dictionaries, and is therefore not possible to understand. The best translation that can be given, after fully solving the Zodiac's astronomy, is using first two letters of the place names giving the cryptic sentence "OM allows the understanding of DE".

This phrase is explaining that their are three planets in conjunction on the Dendera Zodiac and that the massive outer planets of the solar system are responsible for putting them in that position. The word 'concealed' refers to the fact that when three planets are in conjunction and plotted on a circular map of the solar system which shows their rotation from above or below, a planisphere like the Dendera Zodiac, the lines to the planets will end up superimposed and therefore concealed.

This phrase states that in the Dendera Zodiac the planet Venus is located in the constellation of Orion, with the 'bound in flight' hieroglyph group being literally translated as the modern word 'ephemeris', which is a numerical listing at a given moment in time of the position of heavenly bodies in space. The Orion constellation is not one of the constellations of the traditional zodiac, but its boundary lines very nearly overlap the ecliptic at the end of Taurus and the beginning of Gemini, and Orion is therefore easy to locate on the carved zodiac.

This phrase is an explanation as to how the ephemeris that was used to plot the planets on the Dendera Zodiac was set up. It tells that the mass of a planet, identified using the God Sokar of the underground, needs to be attached to the mass of the atmosphere, identified by the God of the atmosphere Shu when calculating overall mass of a planet system. The final hieroglyph in this phrase does not appear to be connected to the rest of the phrase, and is an isolated single circle. This phrase gives the first hint that the scientific knowledge within the Dendera Zodiac is profound.

This phrase has a subtle alteration to the bird hieroglyph in the phrase 'not bound in flight'. Where the wings of the bird in the previous two phrases were horizontal they are significantly tilted in this carving so that the glyph forms an X, and signifies the negation of the phrase. Translated, the phrase tells you that in the ephemeris the atmosphere (though which sound is transmitted) does not affect the observation of the stars. In modern scientific terms this is telling you that aberration of light through the atmosphere has not be included when calculating the ephemeris data.

This phrase is beautifully written and can be understood by considering The Earth and its moon as an example. The husband of The Moon is The Earth, and this is locked at the base to the moon, telling you that the Dendera Zodiac astronomy is using the center of gravity of the Earth-Moon system in its calculations, also known as the planet system's barycenter in modern astronomy. Phrases 5,6,7 and 8 are the declaration statements of how the underlying parameters that dictate the astronomy data within the Dendera Zodiac needs to be set up.

This phrase is identifies the God Sah on the inner part of the carving, who was the God that represented the Orion constellation in Ancient Egypt and is therefore directly related to phrase five. The carving of the God Sah on the central section of the Zodiac can be seen by clicking on the following button.

The dashed yellow parallel alignment lines come from the front of the toes of each foot of the God Sah and are angled at 3.33 degrees relative to the axes of the sculpture, aligning with the outer part of the outer circle of hieroglyphs where phrase nine is located. These lines have a forward reference to phrase ten, and are showing that the 'plural three' from phrase ten needs to be applied in degrees, thereby establishing a unit of angular measure.

The staff of the God Sah is aligned perfectly with the intersection of the outer hieroglyph ring and the split between the two stones of the Dendera Zodiac, and is angled at 33+1/3° to the stone line showing without doubt that the carving has been constructed using degrees as the angular unit of measure, with the 'plural threes' from phrase ten used once again.

This is a master phrase and instructs that the stone disks that make up the Dendera Zodiac need to be rotated. They should be turned by hand by 'plural 3s', which can be deduced as being 33+1/3° by referring back to the first two hieroglyph groups in phrase one which are set 33+1/3° apart, and also to the God Sah in phrase nine which has his staff set at this angle to the split in the stones.

This phrase explains that when the instructions in the hieroglyphs are correctly carried out, and the rotation is applied to the stone circles, then there is a second reference point directly below the first marker point, or expressed in another way, that the top of the Dendera Zodiac is located directly above the bottom of it. This may seem an unusual statement to make, but diligent analysis of the carving shows that the outer Gods are not placed exactly opposite each other and one of them contains a small angular offset relative to the other three. Once this has been identified it allows the top of the sculpture to be identified and then displayed as is shown on the illustration on the right side of this page.

The damaged sections of the sculpture

At the top of the sculpture, as shown, there is a missing section of stone where the slab is damaged, directly between the knees of the two Gods. This missing section shows a quite distinct form, having two approximately 8cm diameter shallow holes making up its inner shape and has not been created by accidental damage. This section of 'damage' is an original part of the sculpture and the damage needs to be replicate on the graphic by removing this part on the image so that the hieroglyph circle part of the carving becomes exposed through the created hole.

Rotating the stonework

The wording of the hieroglyphs can only be understood by rotating the stone sections of the Dendera Zodiac carving independently of each other, as instructed in phrase ten. The parts of the hieroglyphs and carvings that are pertinent to the initial rotation can be shown by clicking the following button (which will also reset the graphics to their initial positions if you want to run the animation again).

These parts are :

• the removed damaged section of stonework at the top, which exposes the hieroglyph ring below
• the eleventh hieroglyph phrase, which contains the second mention of the phrase 'celestial North', shown in yellow with the dark background
• the end of the tenth hieroglyph phrase 'turn the stone dials by multiple 3 degrees', shown in green
• the God Sah, which represent the constellation Orion, with his staff which points to the split in the stones on the hieroglyph ring, shown with the white dot
• the split between the two component stones of the Dendera Zodiac as a horizontal black line, which is pinned to the outer hieroglyph ring at the white dot on the right side
• a line perpendicular to the stone split line, pinned to the outer hieroglyph ring at the white dot in the exact center of phrase eleven's 'celestial North' wording

With these components highlighted, the stone circles can be rotated by 33+1/3 degrees in a clockwise direction by clicking on the following button.


The yellow hieroglyph wording 'celestial north' from phrase eleven now perfectly aligns into the damaged section of the carving at the top of the sculpture. The horizontal stone split line perfectly aligns with the knees of the falcon Gods on the left of the sculpture and the line perpendicular to the stone split line perfectly passes through the knees of the falcon Gods at the bottom of the carving - 'in the valley below' from phrase eleven. The initial positions of these two black lines prior to rotation was deliberately calculated so that they align with the falcon God's knees.

The green highlighted hieroglyphs which show the phrase 'turn the stone dials by multiple 3 degrees' are now located at 333+1/3° clockwise rotation from north, which can be shown by clicking on the following button, noting that the hieroglyphs are carved sufficiently accurately to be able to determine that the angle is not 333°.


From this initial rotation it is evident that the Dendera Zodiac is not a simple stone carving, but a sophisticated movable puzzle.

With the precision shown so far in the design, one's attention is now naturally drawn to the left to right central black line, the sculpture's X axis, which passes through the knees of the falcon Gods on the left of the image but does not go through the knees of the falcon Gods on the right side of the illustration. The utmost care was taken in the creation of the images used in the animations on this page, and the center of the stone circles is known to be accurate to 1 pixel, therefore it can be stated with certainty that the knees of the falcon Gods on the right of the Dendera Zodiac cannot be in line with those on the left when referenced to the center of the circular carving and the X axis.

The reason for this deliberate anomaly is to focus attention onto the falcon Gods' knees on the right side, and after investigation it was discovered that there is a missing piece to the Dendera Zodiac which is external to the sculpture and which fits perfectly onto the knees of these Gods.

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