The sculptured Dendera zodiac (or Denderah zodiac) is a widely known

Egyptian ''Egyptian'' describes something of, from, or related to Egypt. Egyptian or Egyptians may refer to: Nations and ethnic groups * Egyptians, a national group in North Africa ** Egyptian culture, a complex and stable culture with thousands of year ...

bas-relief Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces remain attached to a solid background of the same material. The term ''relief'' is from the Latin verb , to raise (). To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that th ...

from the ceiling of the '' pronaos'' (or

portico A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cu ...

) of a chapel dedicated to

Osiris Osiris (, from Egyptian ''wikt:wsjr, wsjr'') was the ancient Egyptian deities, god of fertility, agriculture, the Ancient Egyptian religion#Afterlife, afterlife, the dead, resurrection, life, and vegetation in ancient Egyptian religion. He was ...

in the Hathor temple at Dendera, containing images of Taurus (the

bull A bull is an intact (i.e., not Castration, castrated) adult male of the species ''Bos taurus'' (cattle). More muscular and aggressive than the females of the same species (i.e. cows proper), bulls have long been an important symbol cattle in r ...

) and

Libra Libra generally refers to: * Libra (constellation), a constellation * Libra (astrology), an astrological sign based on the star constellation Libra may also refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Libra'' (novel), a 1988 novel by Don DeLillo Musi ...

(the scales). This chapel was begun in the late Ptolemaic period; its ''pronaos'' was added by the emperor

Tiberius Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus ( ; 16 November 42 BC – 16 March AD 37) was Roman emperor from AD 14 until 37. He succeeded his stepfather Augustus, the first Roman emperor. Tiberius was born in Rome in 42 BC to Roman politician Tiberius Cl ...

. This led Jean-François Champollion to date the relief to the Greco-

Roman period The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...

, but most of his contemporaries believed it to be of the New Kingdom. The relief, which John H. Rogers characterised as "the only complete map that we have of an ancient sky", has been conjectured in the past to represent the basis on which later

astronomy Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest includ ...

systems were based. It is now on display at the

Musée du Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is a national art museum in Paris, France, and one of the most famous museums in the world. It is located on the Rive Droite, Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement of Paris, 1st arron ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

Description

The sky disc is centered on the north pole star, with

Ursa Minor Ursa Minor (, contrasting with Ursa Major), also known as the Little Bear, is a constellation located in the far northern celestial hemisphere, northern sky. As with the Great Bear, the tail of the Little Bear may also be seen as the handle of ...

depicted as a jackal. An inner disc is composed of constellations showing the signs of the

zodiac The zodiac is a belt-shaped region of the sky that extends approximately 8° north and south celestial latitude of the ecliptic – the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year. Within this zodiac ...

. Some of these are represented in the same Greco-Roman iconographic forms as their familiar counterparts (e.g. the

Ram Ram, ram, or RAM most commonly refers to: * A male sheep * Random-access memory, computer memory * Ram Trucks, US, since 2009 ** List of vehicles named Dodge Ram, trucks and vans ** Ram Pickup, produced by Ram Trucks Ram, ram, or RAM may also ref ...

, Taurus, Scorpio, and Capricorn), whilst others are shown in a more Egyptian form: Aquarius is represented as the flood god Hapi, holding two vases which gush water. Rogers noted the similarities of unfamiliar

iconology Iconology is a method of interpretation in cultural history and the history of the visual arts used by Aby Warburg, Erwin Panofsky and their followers that uncovers the cultural, social, and historical background of themes and subjects in the visu ...

with the three surviving tablets of a Seleucid zodiac and both relating to ''

kudurru A kudurru was a type of stone document used as a boundary stone and as a record of land grants to vassals by the Kassites and later dynasties in ancient Babylonia between the 16th and 7th centuries BC. The original kudurru would typically be stor ...

'' ('boundary stone') representations: in short, Rogers sees the Dendera zodiac as "a complete copy of the Mesopotamian zodiac". A comparison with other Mesopotamian pre-zodiac astronomical material led Hoffmann to the suggestion that the depiction shows a Babylonian star chart (and not only the Babylonian zodiac) with some Greco-Egyptian additions and variants. Four women and four pairs of falcon-headed figures, arranged 45° from one another, hold up the sky disc, the outermost ring of which features 36 figures representing the 36 asterisms used to track both the 36 forty-minute "hours" that divided the Egyptian night, as well as the 36 ten-day "weeks" ( decans) of the Egyptian year (with 5 days excluded). The square of the overall sculpture is oriented to the walls of the temple. This sculptural representation of the zodiac in circular form is unique in ancient Egyptian art. More typical are the rectangular zodiacs which decorate the same temple's pronaos.

History

During the

Napoleonic campaign in Egypt The French invasion of Egypt and Syria (1798–1801) was a military expedition led by Napoleon Bonaparte during the French Revolutionary Wars. The campaign aimed to undermine British trade routes, expand French influence, and establish a ...

, Vivant Denon drew the circular zodiac, the more widely known one, and the rectangular zodiacs. In 1802, after the Napoleonic expedition, Denon published engravings of the temple ceiling in his ''Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte''. These elicited a controversy as to the age of the zodiac representation, ranging from tens of thousands to a thousand years to a few hundred, and whether the zodiac was a planisphere or an astrological chart. Sébastien Louis Saulnier, an

antique An antique () is an item perceived as having value because of its aesthetic or historical significance, and often defined as at least 100 years old (or some other limit), although the term is often used loosely to describe any object that i ...

dealer, commissioned Claude Lelorrain to remove the circular zodiac with saws, jacks, scissors and gunpowder. The zodiac ceiling was moved in 1821 to Restoration Paris and, by 1822, was installed by

Louis XVIII Louis XVIII (Louis Stanislas Xavier; 17 November 1755 – 16 September 1824), known as the Desired (), was King of France from 1814 to 1824, except for a brief interruption during the Hundred Days in 1815. Before his reign, he spent 23 y ...

in the Royal Library (later called the

National Library of France National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ce ...

). In 1922 the zodiac was moved from there to the Louvre. In 2022

Egyptologist Egyptology (from ''Egypt'' and Greek , ''-logia''; ) is the scientific study of ancient Egypt. The topics studied include ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, architecture and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end ...

Zahi Hawass Zahi Abass Hawass (; born May 28, 1947) is an Egyptians, Egyptian archaeology, archaeologist, Egyptology, Egyptologist, and former Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (Egypt), Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, a position he held twice. He has ...

started a petition to bring the ancient work back to Egypt, along with the

Rosetta Stone The Rosetta Stone is a stele of granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a Rosetta Stone decree, decree issued in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty of ancient Egypt, Egypt, on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle texts ...

and other artifacts.

Dating

The controversy around the zodiac's dating, known as the "Dendera Affair", involved people of the likes of

Joseph Fourier Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier (; ; 21 March 1768 – 16 May 1830) was a French mathematician and physicist born in Auxerre, Burgundy and best known for initiating the investigation of Fourier series, which eventually developed into Fourier analys ...

(who estimated that the age was 2500 BC). Champollion, among others, believed that it was a religious zodiac. Champollion placed the zodiac in the fourth century AD.

Georges Cuvier Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, baron Cuvier (23 August 1769 – 13 May 1832), known as Georges Cuvier (; ), was a French natural history, naturalist and zoology, zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "founding father of paleontology". Cuv ...

placed the date between 123 AD and 147 AD. His discussion of the dating summarizes the reasoning as he understood it in the 1820s. Eclipse solaire du 7 mars -51

Sylvie Cauville and

Éric Aubourg Éric Aubourg is a French astrophysicist at the Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique and a member of the APC/Université Paris-Diderot Cosmology Group. Life Éric Aubourg has published several contributions to Egyptology, including a dating of ...

dated it to 50 BC through an examination of the planetary configuration. It depicts the five planets known to the Egyptians, in a configuration that occurs once every thousand years, and the identification of two eclipses. The solar eclipse indicates the date of March 7, 51 BC: it is represented by a circle containing the goddess

Isis Isis was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kingdom () as one of the main characters of the Osiris myth, in which she resurrects her sla ...

holding a baboon (the god

Thoth Thoth (from , borrowed from , , the reflex of " eis like the ibis") is an ancient Egyptian deity. In art, he was often depicted as a man with the head of an African sacred ibis, ibis or a baboon, animals sacred to him. His feminine count ...

) by the tail. The lunar eclipse indicates the date of September 25, 52 BC: it is represented by an

Eye of Horus The Eye of Horus, also known as left ''wedjat'' eye or ''udjat'' eye, specular to the Eye of Ra (right ''wedjat'' eye), is a concept and symbol in ancient Egyptian religion that represents well-being, healing, and protection. It derives from th ...

locked into a circle.

Notes

References

External links

The Zodiac
in the Louvre collections database * Gyula Priskin
The Dendera zodiacs as narratives of the myth of Osiris, Isis, and the child Horus
''ENiM'' 8 (2015), 133–185. {{DEFAULTSORT:Dendera Zodiac 50 BC 1st-century BC sculptures 1802 archaeological discoveries Egyptian antiquities in the Louvre Sculptures of ancient Egypt Ancient astronomy Egyptian calendar Reliefs in France French invasion of Egypt and Syria Isis Ptolemaic Kingdom Louis XVIII