Did Senenmut omit planet Mars from his astronomical ceiling?

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

 

It is quite useless, I believe, for archaeoastronomers to attempt retro-calculations to a particular night sky when neither BC, nor AD, times have been properly established. Even more so in the case of Senenmut and Hatshepsut, who have been hopelessly mis-dated in the conventional chronology.

 

 

 

 

Senenmut (Senmut), Pharaoh Hatshepsut’s high official of the Eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, I have identified as King Solomon himself in his important contact with Egypt:

 

Solomon and Sheba

 

https://www.academia.edu/3660164/Solomon_and_Sheba

 

focussing there upon the more worldly attributes of this celebrated King of Israel.

 

The famous astronomical ceiling of Senenmut is testimony to the wisdom and culture of the man. King Solomon himself claimed to have had unerring astronomical, and other, knowledge (Wisdom 7:17-20):

 

For it was he who gave me unerring knowledge of existent being,
to know the structure of the universe and the operation of the elements;
the beginning, and end, and middle of times,
the changes of the solstices and the vicissitudes of the seasons;
the cycles of years and the positions of the stars;
the natures of living creatures and the tempers of beasts;
the violent force of spirits and the reasonings of men;
the species of plants, and the virtues of roots.

 

Abraham O. Shemesh, in “‘And God gave Solomon wisdom’: Proficiency in ornithomancy”, has summed up the wisdom and knowledge of King Solomon as follows:

http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0259-94222018000100019

 

The Wisdom of Solomon: The biblical text

 

According to the biblical narrator, Solomon was more knowledgeable than reputable wise men of the ancient world, and he was widely renowned for his wisdom. As a result, people sought his presence and came from afar to witness this prowess; for example, the Queen of Sheba (1 Ki 10:1-24). Solomon's wisdom is described in detail and it encompassed varied domains:

 

And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding beyond measure, and largeness of mind like the sand on the seashore, so that Solomon's wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east, and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all other men, wiser than Ethan the Ez'rahite, and Heman, Calcol, and Darda, the sons of Maḥol; and his fame was in all the nations round about. He also uttered three thousand proverbs; and his songs were a thousand and five. He spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall; he spoke also of beasts, and of birds, and of reptiles, and of fish. (1 Ki 4: 29-33)¹

 

Solomon's great wisdom is evident from the biblical verses, as reflected on three dimensions:

 

1. The relative dimension - his extensive knowledge in comparison to other wise men in the Ancient Near East. Benjamin Mazar contends that when comparing Solomon with other wise men it is evident that worldly knowledge was prevalent in Israel and particularly among the royal house in Jerusalem. Indeed, Mesopotamian literary works enjoyed an extensive distribution and were found in various sites, for example in Megiddo and Ugarit as well as in the al-Amarna archives (Mazar 1980:133).

2. The quantitative dimension - Solomon's impressive knowledge in the literary sphere included a tremendous wealth of parables and poetry.

3. The comprehensive dimension - Solomon's knowledge was extremely comprehensive. Use of the prepositions min [from] and ve'ad [to] for this purpose indicates an endless scope of knowledge that cannot be quantified, similar to literary knowledge (Ha-Reuveni 1985:275-288). Solomon ruled over all extant creatures. He was familiar with all species of flora - from the most highly developed, Cedrus libani, to the most inferior, Majorana syriaca (Feliks 1992:138). He also ruled over the various animal species, with their different characteristics.

[End of quote]

Then why did the great man, Senenmut - even more so if he were King Solomon - fail to include the planet Mars in his astronomical ceiling, if that is what he did?

 

And the general consensus appears to be that that is what he did.

 

J. Belmonte and M. Shaltout, who accept that Mars is not represented there, believe there to be a very ‘prosaic and simple’ reason for the planet’s omission from Senenmut’s star map ceiling (“The Astronomical Ceiling of Senenmut: a Dream of Mystery and Imagination”):

https://www.academia.edu/4993866/The_astronomical_ceiling_of_senenmut_a_dream_of_mystery_and_imagination

 

Abstract

 

The most ancient complete representation of the Egyptian (and of any other people) sky is to be found in the ceiling of the first chamber at the tomb of Senenmut at Deir el Bahari (Tomb 353 of the Theban western necropolis). Since the discovery of the tomb, the astronomical ceiling was compared with other representations of the same celestial diagram found in other monuments, such as the nearby Ramesseum or the tomb of Sethy [Seti] I. One important point was stressed, the absence of the planet Mars in Senenmut´s representation. Consequently, some scholars have tried to show that the diagram represents a real celestial map and have tried to demonstrate that the ceiling was designed in such or such epoch, when Mars was not visible, or visible in peculiar position, in an attempt to date Senenmut´s carrier and, consequently, a very important period of Egyptian history, the reign of queen Hatshepsut. In this paper, we try to show that all these hypotheses are based on erroneous foundations and that the absence of Mars can be explained in a much more prosaic and simpler manner. Other problematic aspects of the astronomical ceiling will be also briefly discussed.

….

 

For example, on the one side, for Leitz (1991), it shows the night sky for different nights in the year 1463 BC and specially that of November 14th (all dates, unless expressed, are in the Julian Calendar) when Mars was not visible … and, on the other side, for von Spaeth, the night of May 22nd 1534 BC, identifying Mars with another star within the diagram ….

 

Mackey’s comment: It is quite useless, I believe, for archaeoastronomers to attempt retro-calculations to a particular night sky when neither BC, nor AD, times have been properly established. Even more so in the case of Senenmut and Hatshepsut, who have been hopelessly mis-dated in the conventional chronology.

J. Belmonte and M. Shaltout now provide their own explanation for what has happened:

….

The hypothesis we would like to defend in the present paper is that the astronomical ceiling of the tomb of Senenmut is a gigantic copy of a papyrus draft of a celestial diagram that would have existed and used to be represented in clepsydrae (as that of Karnak). Because of the lack of space, when moving the design from a conical to a flat surface, part of the decoration was lost. This could have been the case for the image of the King (in this case it should have been Hatshepsut) offering to Re-Horakhty. As a matter of fact, only two outer planets would have remained in the final representation.

 

Hence, the explanation for the absence of Mars would be very prosaic, merely iconographical and not related at all with astronomy.

Indeed, we would like to mention that the hypothesis that an astronomical ceiling might represent an extended design of a clepsydra was already defended by Spalinger (1995), but in reference to the astronomical ceiling of the Ramesseum, where the three outer planets are represented. Thus, that particular ceiling should correspond to a later and improved design of water-clock decoration.

 

The “clepsydra” like astronomical ceiling of Senenmut would include some other  peculiarities. The outer planets were also named also after the Horus title of Queen Hatshepsut, which as a matter does not include the epithet “strong bull” … presumably because she was a woman. As a consequence, her twin-planet could not be “Horus, the Bull of Heaven”, and was transformed to the “Mother of the Bull of Heaven” (no blame for the scribe, who did an excellent work). ….