User:Immanuelle/Twelfth hour of the night (Ancient Egypt)
| Zwölfte Nachtstunde in hieroglyphs | |||||||
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Wenut-medj-senu-en-gereh Wnwt-mḏ-snw-n-grḥ Zwölfte Stunde der Nacht | |||||||
Peteret-neferu-nebes Ptrt-nfrw-nbs Die die Vollkommenheit ihres Herren sieht/schaut | |||||||
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In ancient Egypt, the twelfth hour of the night at dawn marked both the last hour of the night and the last hour of the ancient Egyptian day . It was ended by sunrise, which marked the first hour of day in the ancient Egyptian calendar .
Mythologically, since the Middle Kingdom, the twelfth hour of the night was under the patronage of Isis and Sopdet, goddesses of light and darkness . The twelfth hour of the night symbolized in particular the time of the heliacal decan risings as the birth hour of the Baktiu :
Emerging from the Duat, settling in the morning barque. Sailing the Nun at the hour of Re. Transforming into Khepri and ascending to the horizon. Entering the mouth, emerging from the vulva. Lighting up in the doorway of the horizon at the hour that beholds the perfection of its lord, to create the sustenance of humans, of livestock, and all creatures that Re has made.
In the twelfth hour of the night and thus the last hour of the old year, on the fifth day of Heriu-renpet, the heliacal rising of Sirius, star of the goddess Sopdet, also occurred. As the sun rose shortly afterwards, the New Year celebration of the Sopdet festival for the first day of the year began.
Since the Late Period, the goddess Nebet-seschep had taken over the functions of Isis and Sopdet as mistress of light . The inscriptions of the Naos of the Decades show that the astrological effectiveness of the respective decan constellation of a decade begins with the heliacal culmination in the twelfth hour of the night.
See also[change | change source]
literature[change | change source]
- Christian Leitz : Ancient Egyptian star clocks . Peeters, Leuven 1995, ISBN 9-0683-1669-9
- Alexandra von Lieven : Outline of the course of the stars. The so-called groove book. The Carsten Niebuhr Institute of Ancient Eastern Studies and a., Copenhagen 2007, ISBN 978-87-635-0406-5 ( Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications 31), ( The Carlsberg Papyri 8).