Ancient Egyptian Diagonal Star Tables: A New Fragment,and Updates for S16C and S1C

Abstract

Introduction

Ancient Egyptian coffins may contain astronomical information conveyed through depictions of diagonal star tables (also known as diagonal star ‘clocks’ or ‘calendars’) on the underside of the innermost lid. Only a small number (<30) of these diagonal star tables are known to exist,¹ therefore any new discoveries have the potential to provide critical insights for these objects, their origins and their purpose. The extant diagonal star tables can be split into two groups, labelled T and K depending on their content (see below).

An entire ideal diagonal star table contains 40 columns² as shown in Table 1. Each of the first 36 columns represents a decade (ten-day period) in the ancient Egyptian civil calendar. Three decades compose one month, and there are 12 months as indicated in the date row.∗ There are 12 rows in a decade, corresponding to the 12 hours in the night. Each cell in the table contains a decan name (i.e., the name of a star or an asterism) and also, in most cases, a representation of a star. As one advances through the year from one ten-day period to the next, the initial decan from the top of the previous column is removed and a new decan is added to the bottom of the new column, thus producing the diagonal pattern that give these objects their names.

Table 1.

A schematic of an ideal diagonal star table. Each number or letter within a cell represents a decan name. DR, HS and VS stand for the date row (which contain the names of the months), horizontal strip and vertical strip, respectively. Columns C1 to C4 are the list columns. Each row represents a different decanal hour.

Four list columns are added at the end of the table to the 36 ten-day period columns. The first three list columns (C1–3) contain the ordinary decans 1–36, in order, twelve decans to a column. This arrangement also has the property of reproducing the three columns from the main body of the table which each represent the first column of a season: Akhet (i.e., list column C1 is identical to main body column 1), Peret (C2 = column 13), and Shemu (C3 = column 25). The fourth list column (C4) represents the five epagomenal days at the end of the civil year. The epagomenal column lists the ‘triangle decans’. These triangle decans are so called because they are gradually introduced, starting in column 26 and continuing through to column 36, to produce a triangular shape in the bottom left portion of the table.

Tables are categorized as type T or type K depending on the content of their decans, in particular, the starting decan of each table.³ A concordance of star table designations together with their host coffin sigla is given in Table 2. A list of decans in type T tables is presented in Table 3 and an equivalent list for type K tables in Table 4.

Table 2.

Concordance of table classification in the T and K system (Symons, “A star's year” (ref. 2)), coffin siglum (Zitman, op. cit. (ref. 1)) of the table's host coffin, and coffin number in EAT 1.

Table 3.

The numbering system for decans in the T tables, along with the EAT1 numbering system for ease of reference. The decans are divided into two groups: ordinary decans on the left, and triangle decans on the right.

Table 4.

The numbering system for decans in the K tables, along with the EAT1 numbering system for ease of reference.

Mallawi Monuments Museum's Batten with Diagonal Star Table Fragment

Until August 2013, the Mallawi Monuments Museum, Middle Egypt, publicly displayed three ancient Egyptian coffins in glass cases, visible from all four sides. These included two diagonal star tables: K10⁴ and a newly-identified fragment. The authors recorded the details of this fragment in a visit to the Museum in May 2013.

The fragment is located on a cross-bar or batten of a coffin lid assigned to Ḥnyt or Ḥnty (female), and dated to the early Middle Kingdom.⁵ The coffin's museum number is 568.⁶ Its exact provenance is uncertain, but it probably originates from Asyut or Meir. Its siglum, reflecting this uncertainty, is S?3Mal⁷ or just S3Mal,⁸ where ‘S’ stands for Siut or Asyut, its assumed place of origin, and ‘Mal’ for Mallawi, its most recent museum location. Although Messiha and Elhitta attribute the coffin to Asyut,⁹ Lapp instead believes the coffin is from Meir¹⁰ on the basis of the exterior decoration's typology and he refers to it as M∗26,¹¹ with ‘M’ standing for Meir. Zitman agrees¹² with Lapp's assessment of the exterior, and notes the similarity with another coffin, X2Y (containing the star table K5),¹³ which has a Meir-style exterior but an Asyut-style interior. Zitman notes Willems's suggestion¹⁴ that X2Y originated in Meir, where its exterior was decorated, but then a visiting artist from Asyut decorated the interior. However, Zitman also proposes that S?3Mal could have been excavated in Asyut because this coffin is associated with S1Mal, known with more certainty to have been excavated in Asyut.¹⁵ The question of S?3Mal's exact provenance therefore remains unanswered.

The lid has three battens attached to it, and (at the time of recording) was displayed with one end raised by approximately 15cm above the coffin such that the entire underside of the lid and all three battens were visible. The lid and battens are all plastered with the same light-yellow colouring; the battens all appear to have the same proportions as one another, and each has three dowels attaching it to the lid.

The diagonal star table fragment is visible on one of the outer battens. The other outer batten, the middle batten, and the lid itself appear blank.

The diagonal star table fragment has one column of decans containing eight rows, split symmetrically by the horizontal strip. The horizontal strip is obscured by the middle dowel; similarly, two other cells that may have contained decans also contain dowels and any original inscriptions in these cells are no longer visible. All cells are separated from one another by thin black lines, and the horizontal strip is between two thick red lines bordered by thin black lines. Decans in six cells are observed but are fragmentary; these decans are drawn in Table 5. Sufficient details were observed to enable identification of each decan in the following order: spty xnwy, [decan obscured by dowel], sŝmw, knmw, [horizontal strip], tpy-ʿ smd, smd, [decan obscured by dowel], and sšwy srt.

Table 5.

Hand drawings of the decans on the diagonal star table fragment found on the batten in the Mallawi Monuments Museum. The thick grey lines indicate the boundaries of the horizontal strip, and the circles represent the dowel placement.

The fragment can be placed confidently among the K tables¹⁶ because of the inclusion of decans that appear only in that category (spty ḫnwy, sŝmw, tpy-ʿ smd and smd). Each decan is associated with its numerical K table value, as shown in Table 6, following the convention in Symons.¹⁷ Table 7 compares these decanal fragments with decans from other star tables.

Table 6.

Mallawi Monuments Museum diagonal star table fragment with the K numbers in each cell (see Table 4). A number within square brackets indicates the decan name that is consistent with the fragmentary writing. The dark squares no longer contain legible signs. The white strip in the middle row indicates the horizontal strip. Other notation is the same as in Table 1.

Table 7.

Writings from K tables of decan names that appear on the Mallawi Monuments Museum diagonal star table fragment. In the first column, below each decan name is the associated K list number. The drawings have been made directly from observations (for K10), from photographs of the sources (K4, kindly supplied by the Museo Egizio, Turin; K8, from photographs by S. L. Symons; K9, kindly supplied by Jochem Kahl), or are re-drawn from Lapp (K5) (Särge des Mittleren Reiches (ref. 11)) and EAT 1 (the remaining four). K6 and K7 do not have any occurrences; they themselves are also fragments of diagonal star tables Symons, “Two fragments” (ref. 1).

The fragment's decan sŝmw is the most interesting to consider as it has the most distinct hieroglyph (Gardiner code Aa23)¹⁸ of all the decans on the fragment. The Aa23 sign is shown at least twice in the single occurrence of this decan on the fragment. The same sign appears on four other K tables: once per decan in tables K3 and K9, twice per decan in K8, and three times per decan in K5. The fragment's occurrences of spty ḫnwy, knmw and tpy-ʿ smd are similar to those found on K2, K3, K4, K5 and K8 (if they are present on these tables). The final two decans, smd and sȝwy srt, are the least constrained decans on the fragment for use in this comparison. Considering only the epigraphy, the fragment is most similar to K5.

The fragment may be a part of a newly-discovered diagonal star table. However, we discuss another interesting possibility, that the batten originally belonged to another coffin lid. Only two other diagonal star tables contain four rows above and below the horizontal strip: K1 (published in Neugebauer and Parker's Egyptian astronomical texts, hereafter EAT 1)¹⁹ and K5,²⁰ so we consider these as the possible matches for the diagonal star table fragment.

K1 is located in the basement storage in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Photographs in EAT 1 show that K1 had all three battens attached to its lid. These battens do not look similar to the Mallawi fragment, if we take into account both the epigraphy and the placement of the dowels. The writing of one particular decan, sȝmw, that is one of the most easily identifiable decans on the fragment, clearly does not match that on K1. It is difficult to determine whether the fragment's contents could fit K1 because of the disordered nature of the latter (see Table 8), but given the other evidence we are confident that K1 is not a candidate for the original home of the fragment.

Table 8.

The K1 diagonal star table with the K numbers in each cell (see Table 4). A number within square brackets indicates the decan name that is consistent with the fragmentary writing. The dark squares no longer contain legible signs. The white strip in the middle row indicates the horizontal strip. Other notation is the same as in Table 1.

K5 is held in a private collection, current location unknown. Through a selection of hand-drawings and photographs of astronomical and mythological texts,²¹ it was studied with respect to its astronomical information by Locher.²² Neither of K5's original battens are present on its lid in the photographs in Lapp.²³ The dowel holes are barely discernible, but the upper dowel hole appears to match the location of the fragment's dowel. K5 and the fragment both lack a date row. We also compare the placement of the decan names in the fragment (Table 6) with those of K5 (Table 9). We note that if the fragment is placed on the end (i.e., at the left) of K5, the diagonal sequence of decans is maintained across both objects.

Table 9.

The K5 diagonal star table with the K numbers in each cell (see Table 4). The dark squares no longer contain legible signs. The white strip in the middle row indicates the horizontal strip. Other notation is the same as in Table 1.

T10 – S16C Update

The coffin associated with lid T10 (museum designations CG 28128, JE 36318, SR 3/912; coffin siglum S16C) is on public display in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, on the middle shelf in case D in room P37. The lid sits flush on the coffin and very little of even the exterior of the lid is visible through the case. S16C is from Asyut, from the early Middle Kingdom, and the owner was Nḫtì.²⁴ Initial information about T10 was published by Locher.²⁵ We re-visit T10 and present the new findings here.

The majority of the table's plaster is no longer attached to the lid. The batten at the start (right-hand end) of the table is present on the lid. It is clear that there were originally two other battens, as indicated by the missing plaster and dowel marks, but these are now missing. The lid and the surviving batten are plastered with a light yellow background. The decan names appear light blue and are outlined and have details in black. Each decan name is followed by a light-blue coloured star which has a light-yellow centre, creating what we will call a decan-star pair. The cells have a black border, and each decan-star pair is followed by two vertical black lines. The horizontal strip is bordered above and below by a thick red strip, also outlined in black. The beginning of the table is one of the better-preserved areas, and a faint date row written in red is visible. The end of the table retains no plaster, but there are several (approximately 20) characters directly inscribed in the wood that are unrelated to the star table and not dealt with here.

Enough of the table remains attached to the lid to be count six rows above and six rows below the horizontal strip, with a date row above all. This is the same format as all other T tables except T11, which has only four rows above and five below. Between the first batten and the location of middle batten, there is space for 13 columns of the decan-star pairs, with one of the columns starting on the first batten. The first batten has space for one further column, and the middle batten would have two. The vertical strip begins immediately after the middle batten. Between the vertical strip and the location of the end batten, there is space for 11 columns. The end batten would have one more column. In relatively few areas the plaster has cleanly detached from the wood of the lid. In these areas, the missing plaster can trace out shapes of hieroglyphs in the horizontal strip, vertical lines and stars. The lines and stars help verify our estimation of number of columns by spacing alone: there are 16 columns before the vertical strip, and 12 columns after.

We can confirm the decans within 19 cells identified by Locher and also identify 15 further cells. Table 10 displays all cells, with a corresponding key in Table 3, and highlights the newly-identified ones in grey. The new cells include seven decans not previously identified on T10 (‘ḫnwy’,∗ hry-ìb wìȝ, srt, sȝwy srt, bȝwy, kd and ḫȝw). Only a small part of the horizontal strip and an even smaller part of the vertical strip are visible.

Table 10.

The T10 diagonal star table with the T numbers in each cell (see Table 3). The newly-identified cells are highlighted in grey. The white strip in the middle row indicates the horizontal strip. Other notation is the same as in Table 1.

T1 – S1C Horizontal Strip

T1 – S1C coffin is on public display in the Egyptian Museum at Cairo; however, the lid is lying upon the coffin so that its underside is not visible to the public. Zitman notes²⁶ that EAT 1 follows Lacau²⁷ in dating this table to the First Intermediate Period, but suggests it may date from an even earlier period.

We make a brief but important correction to the horizontal strip in table T1. This table is included as Coffin 1 in EAT 1 and, in the comparison of the horizontal strips of all coffin lids presented on page 27 within, it is the only coffin lid whose strip is shown preceded with a nfr symbol rather than a large red dot. As such, it was conspicuous.

The present authors were granted permission to view the underside of the lid in May 2013 on the same day that T10 was examined. There is a large red dot present on the first batten of T1, heading the offering formula, as seen on most other horizontal strips. There is no nfr sign and no room for one. EAT 1 references Lacau as the source for T1 data, where the erroneous nfr symbol is also recorded.²⁸ We note that Lacau uses thin arrows with fletchings to indicate the direction of inscriptions, so one possible explanation is that a directional arrow, perhaps in his original notes, was misread and reproduced as a nfr symbol.

Discussion and Conclusions

If the batten containing the Mallawi Monuments Museum diagonal star table fragment was not misplaced, it is curious as to why the decoration on this one particular batten only has survived (or why this one batten was decorated), given that the rest of the lid and the other two battens appear entirely blank. If it has been misplaced, it seems most likely that the batten originally belonged to K5 for the following reasons. The alignment of the dowel holes and lack of a date row are consistent between the fragment and K5. The epigraphy is also consistent. The content of the batten provides an exact continuance of the table if placed at the end of K5. Furthermore, K5 and the coffin to which the fragment is currently attached both have uncertain provenances, both having a mixture of artistic influence from Meir and Asyut. Despite all these points, however, we cannot decisively conclude whether the fragment is from an as-yet undiscovered coffin lid or it is part of K5 until we can find more information about K5, in particular the distribution and size of the dowel holes. This has not yet been possible because K5 is in a private collection and the current status of the Mallawi fragment is now unknown.

The discovery of a batten containing a diagonal star table fragment is the third event of its kind: two were previously found in the British Museum, London.²⁹ Battens easily detach from coffin lids, and of course are smaller objects, meaning that they have the potential to remain unexamined for longer. However, the existence of diagonal star table fragments hint that there could be excavated coffin lids with diagonal star tables still awaiting recognition, perhaps in private collections. As these latest examples show, diagonal star tables are being recognized and indeed are still being excavated.³⁰ The number of coffins known to have diagonal star tables has now doubled since the publication of EAT 1.

T10's newly-identified cells confirm that this diagonal star table is well-ordered, at least in the parts it is preserved. The additional length of the table presented here (9 new columns, making a total of 28 columns) means that T10 is no longer one of the shortest of the type T tables but approximately midway between the shortest (T5; 16 columns) and the longest (T1; 40 columns).

Many decorated plaster fragments were observed in the bottom of the T10 coffin. Along with the fact that its diagonal star table appears to be well-ordered, this suggests that a restoration project may be possible.

The fragment possibly belonging to K5 and the damaged table T10 are both orderly and the rediscovery of more decans in each provides no surprises in terms of decanal content. However, given the rarity of diagonal star tables among the extant Middle Kingdom coffins, which number approximately 600,³¹ new details are welcome. Together, these updates on three of the surviving sources are presented with the hope of consolidating knowledge about the corpus of diagonal star tables.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada. They also thank the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Egypt; Dr Lotfy Abdel-Hamid, Director of Antiquities, Egyptian Museum in Cairo; the curatorial staff at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and the Mallawi Monuments Museum; and Mr George E. Yani.

∗

The only T tables without a date row are T3, T6 and T10, whereas the only K tables with a date row are K0, K6, and K10.

∗

The transliteration of this decan is uncertain, so is conventionally written enclosed in quotation marks or corner marks (see EAT 1, 2, decans 10 and 10a).

References

Neugebauer

Otto

and Parker

Richard A.

, Egyptian astronomical texts, i (Providence, 1960); Kurt Locher, “A further coffin-lid with a diagonal star-clock from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom”, Journal for the history of astronomy, xiv (1983), 141–4; Günther Lapp, Särge des Mittleren Reiches aus der ehemaligen Sammlung Khashaba (Wiesbaden, 1985); Arne Eggebrecht, Suche nach Unsterblichkeit (Mainz, 1990); Kurt Locher, “Two further coffin lids with diagonal star clocks from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom”, Journal for the history of astronomy, xxiii (1992), 201–7; Arne Eggebrecht, Pelizaeus-Museum Hildesheim: Die ägyptische Sammlung (Mainz, 1993); Kurt Locher, “Middle Kingdom astronomical coffin lids: Extension of the corpus from 12 to 17 specimens since Neugebauer and Parker”, in Proceedings of the 7th International Congress of Egyptologists (Leuven, 1998), 697–702; Sarah L. Symons, “Two fragments of diagonal star clocks in the British Museum”, Journal for the history of astronomy, xxxiii (2002), 257–60; Jochem Kahl, Mahmoud El-Khadragy, Ursula Verhoeven, Eva-Maria Engel, Ulrike Fauerbach, Yasser Mahmoud, Omar Nour el-Din, and Monika Zöller, “The Asyut project”, Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur, xxxiii (2005), 159–67; Marcel Zitman, The necropolis of Assiut (Leuven, 2010); Sarah L. Symons and Robert Cockcroft, “An ancient Egyptian diagonal star table in Mallawi, Egypt”, Journal for the history of astronomy, xliv (2013), 457–63; Sarah L. Symons, “Contexts and elements of decanal star lists in ancient Egypt”, in Traditions of written knowledge in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, ed. by Annette Imhausen and Daliah Bawanypeck (Münster, in press).

Neugebauer and Parker, op. cit.; Sarah L. Symons, “A star's year: The annual cycle in the ancient Egyptian sky”, in Calendars and years: Astronomy and time in the ancient world, ed. by John M. Steele (Oxford, 2007), 1–33.

Symons , “A star's year” (ref. 2).

Symons and Cockcroft, op. cit. (ref. 1); Zitman, op. cit. (ref. 1).

Zitman , op. cit. (ref. 1).

Messiha

Hishmat

and Elhitta

Mohamed

, Mallawi Antiquities Museum (Cairo, 1979).

Zitman , op. cit. (ref. 1).

Willems

Harco

, Chests of life (Leiden, 1988).

Messiha and Elhitta, op. cit. (ref. 6).

10.

Lapp

Günther

, Typologie der Särge und Sargkammern von der 6. bis 13. Dynastie (Studien zur Archäologie und Geschichte Altägyptens; Heidelberg, 1993).

11.

Ibid.; Lapp

Günther

, Särge des Mittleren Reiches aus der ehemaligen Sammlung Khashaba (Wiesbaden, 1985).

12.

Zitman , op. cit. (ref. 1).

13.

Symons , “A star's year” (ref. 2).

14.

Willems , op. cit. (ref. 8).

15.

Bey Kamal

Ahmed

, “Fouilles à Deir Dronka et à Assiout (1913–1914)”, Annales du Service des Antiquités de l'Égypte, xvi (1916), 65–114.

16.

Symons , “A star's year” (ref. 2).

17.

Ibid.

18.

Gardiner

Alan H.

, Egyptian grammar, 3rd edn (Oxford, 1957).

19.

Neugebauer and Parker, op. cit. (ref. 1).

20.

Lapp , Särge des Mittleren Reiches (ref. 11); Locher, “Two further coffin lids” (ref. 1).

21.

Lapp , Särge des Mittleren Reiches (ref. 11).

22.

Locher , “Two further coffin lids” (ref. 1).

23.

Lapp , Särge des Mittleren Reiches (ref. 11).

24.

Zitman , op. cit. (ref. 1).

25.

Locher , “Middle Kingdom astronomical coffin lids” (ref. 1).

26.

Zitman , op. cit. (ref. 1).

27.

Lacau

Pierre

, Sarcophages antérieurs au Nouvel Empire (Cairo, 1904).

28.

Ibid., 110.

29.

Symons , “Two fragments” (ref. 1).

30.

Kahl et al., op. cit. (ref. 1).

31.

Lapp , Typologie (ref. 10).