The Egyptian Narmer palette: are we seeing declination and precession?! |TaniaDaniels Astrologer

When I went to Egypt last year, I felt like we have been told a lie about our history. A big, fat lie. Something about our timelines is completely off. I went to the Old Egyptian Museum, full of dust and artifacts, and I was lucky enough to visit the Grand Egyptian Museum even before its official opening. And of course, I spent entire days in Giza and Saqqara. Giza actually impressed me much less than Saqqara for many reasons, but that’s not my topic today.

I went armed only with my phone camera (next time I will do better!), searching for anything that might point to astronomy. I found so much in so few days that, by the end of each day, my head was heavy and my brain overloaded. That’s not difficult in Egypt – and I only went to see Cairo!
Of course, I was prepared and I am not new to Egyptian cosmology and religion. But still.

So here is one of my treasures.

The so-called Narmer palette, found in the temple of Horus in Nekhen (Hierakonpolis),

This artifact was displayed in the Old Egyptian Museum when I visited.

In this post, I am only going to discuss the image to the right., otherwise the post gets far too long.

The Narmer Palette is said to depict King Narmer symbolically unifying the two lands of Upper and Lower Egypt. Narmer is therefore sometimes even considered the founder of ancient Egypt. No need t go into that here.

The rulers of Upper and Lower Egypt wore distinct crowns and in the image on the right, we see the pharaoh wearing the red crown, symbolizing Lower Egypt (the delta region).

According to the museum’s information, the object dates to around 3000 BCE and is considered one of the oldest Egyptian historical records.

So what do we actually see?

My attention was caught by what somebody (seriously!) interpreted as dinosaurs.

Well, this made me laugh, but more out of despair and disbelief than amusement – or perhaps both. Nothing against cute sharp-toothed dinosaurs, but this image is neither that old nor is it about fiction.

There are two lions. Their long necks are intertwined like two snakes, forming a perfect circle between them. The two lion heads are held by ropes, each controlled by a man. It is not clear whether the two men standing on either side are trying to twist the necks or if they are attempting to separate them, but it doesn’t really matter. The heads are facing each other and are therefore also looking in two different directions.

This seems to point to some kind of apex, the highest point, from which the lions can only descend, either to the left or to the right, like from a summit. The circle beneath the two heads lies exactly at the center of the lions’ bodies.

Now we have to consider two more points:

The symbol of the snake was often used to describe the ecliptic.

The circle itself represents the position of the Sun.

If this is true, then this image represents the Sun at the summer solstice, when the Sun reaches its furthest declination in its annual cycle, 23°26′. This degree therefore also corresponds to the highest altitude during the year. But if this image indeed shows the solstice in a particular epoch, we would need additional information to confirm this theory.

Beneath the two lions we find the bull.

When the Sun was in Leo at the summer solstice, it was in Taurus at the spring equinox.

However, below the bull comes the real surprise.

There is a man, who is apparently swimming. Could he possibly describe the constellation Aquarius?

For a better understanding of the details I have edited those I think do not belong to this figure. However, there is a strange object close to him. At first I thought this might be some kind of strange a snorkel or even a breathing hose. But the wheel shape with does not fit this first thought.

Then it came to me: it looks just like the wheel of a water milI.

Well, we might never know for sure, but a water mill would fit the associations still used today for Aquarius.

While I cannot be sure about the snorkel or wheel, I am positive that the figure above is swimming. Not only in the image shown before, but there are two more swimmers on the reverse of the Narmer palette. These are not running or escaping men, as some suggested. Their position is simply not upright enough!

Swimming was, of course not an unknown activity in Egypt (there is even a famous cave of swimmers)

The cave of swimmers is in the middle of the Egyptian desert, in the Gilf Kebir plateau near the Libyan border, about 720 km west of the Nile.

(Photo courtesy: By Roland Unger, CC BY-SA 3.0,)

Well, a swimmer is certainly a good way to represent the constellation Aquarius.

The Greek’s had the god Triton, Hollywood has Aquaman, but the idea of a human either living in the water or being very familiar with the water environment is certainly very ancient.

Let us also not forget the Mesopotamian Apakallu, sometimes also referred to as Oannes and represented with a fish garment.

Of course there was also the demon Kulullû, usually depicted as a man with a fish tail.

The interesting point here is that the swimmer is in the lowest part in the Narmer palette, just as we would imagine Aquarius to be at the nadir when the Sun at the solstice is at the zenith.

So there is Leo, Taurus, and Aquarius – three out of four constellations, or what we call today “fixed signs,” but which were cardinal in Narmer’s times. The one constellation that appears to be lacking is Scorpio.

For the Egyptians, snakes, scorpions, and crocodiles were protective entities and sometimes interchangeable. Plus, the extension of the Scorpio constellation was much greater in antiquity and included what we know today as Libra. The separation of the two constellations appears to have occurred in the Late Egyptian or Neo-Babylonian period. But more importantly, when the greater Scorpio, with its claws (now Libra), rose over the horizon, it did so in parallel with Ophiuchus and his two serpents. In other words, when the Sun was culminating, the Egyptian horizon was guarded by a lot of snakes!

If we check on Stellarium, we find that by 3000 BCE, the summer solstice was indeed in Leo, the winter solstice in Aquarius, the spring equinox in Taurus, and the autumn equinox in Scorpio.
Sorry guys, no dinosaurs here. Just astronomy!

But there one other point to consider.
When I saw these two lion-heads, I was immediately reminded of the Indian story of the Churning of the ocean of milk. If you are not familiar with this narrative, here is a link.
The story is all about the precession of the equinoxes. If the Egyptians intended the ropes in the same way, they just wanted to show that the solstice point is not fixed, but changes over large periods of time, just like the equinoxes.

If so, then, my dear Hipparchus, you were not the first who noticed precession…!

I might be writing more on this intriguing palette, stay tuned!

Watch out for my upcoming book Astrological Origins The lost knowledge of our ancestors. On declination, latitude, the nodes and the apogee.