DIFFUSION OF ASTRONOMICAL KNOWLEDGE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

ORION
King and Judge of the Dead across ancient Egypt and
Mesopotamia

GEORGE BEKE LATURA

The Egyptian Pyramid Texts (c. 2300 BC) link Osiris, king of the
netherworld and judge of the dead, to the constellation Orion: “Behold, he
has come as Orion, behold, Osiris has come as Orion… O King, the sky
conceives you with Orion, the dawn-light bears you with Orion…” –
Utterance 442. In the tomb of Thuthmoses III (c. 1425 BC), an angled white
path – the Milky Way – intersects the horizontal course of the Sun (ecliptic)
in the Fourth Hour of the Amduat, and the mummiform Osiris guards a
hinged gate at the intersection. By another gate along the Milky Way sits
the scorpion symbol of the goddess Selket, giving us two gates in the
heavens. A similar arrangement is encoded in the standard version of the
Babylonian story of Gilgamesh (c. 1100 BC), where the hero travels to the
gates guarded by scorpion-men (Scorpius) after his friend Enkidu dies.
Earlier, the two had defeated the Bull of Heaven (Taurus), offered its heart
to Shamash (Sun), and incurred the wrath of Ishtar (Venus) – all
astronomically indicated events. Orion faces Taurus along the Milky Way
at one of the heavenly intersections where – according to Macrobius (c. 400
AD) – stand the gates of the afterlife. Like the Egyptian Osiris, the
Babylonian Gilgamesh would be seen as “king and judge of the dead,” and
already on the Sumerian plaque from the King’s Lyre in the Royal Tombs
of Ur (c. 2550 BC) we can recognize this celestial pattern. At the bottom,
the scorpion-man stands for the constellation Scorpius, while at the top a
heroic figure – Gilgamesh as Orion – wrestles bulls (Taurus) at the
opposite crossroads in the firmament. Eventually, Greek myth will have
the great hunter Orion fleeing the heavens when the constellation Scorpius
rises at the opposite location in the sky. Did these similar celestial
topologies evolve independently or could a diffusion of astronomical ideas
be traced across the ancient world?

Left: Hour four of the Amduat in the tomb of Thuthmoses III. The middle course of
the Sun (ecliptic) meets an angled path (Milky Way); at the intersection, a gate
guarded by Osiris/Orion. Center image: King’s Lyre plaque from the Royal Tombs
of Ur; scorpion-man at bottom: the constellation Scorpius. At top, bulls (Taurus)
contend with a hero – Gilgamesh as Orion – who wears only a belt (the Belt of
Orion). His exposed genitals represent the Orion Nebula that hangs below the
Belt, and is euphemistically called the Sword, or Dagger, of Orion. The parallel in
Egyptian myth is the phallus of Osiris that Isis searches for when she tries to
rejoin the dismembered king. Right: The constellation Orion, with the “Sword” of
Orion hanging from the 3 stars of the Belt of Orion.