Credit: NASA/ABREBY GEMIGNANI
Astronomy can often give us clues about the past that otherwise are lost in history. In one case, an Italian astronomer proposed that a dramatic total solar eclipse has unleashed a religious crisis in ancient Egypt and led the last pharaoh of the 4th dynasty to abandon the construction of the pyramid of his ancestors.
Related: The biggest eclipse for the rest of our life – Astronomy In Egypt for a total solar eclipse
A strange tomb
Source from the desert in the south of Saqqara is a curious structure: a flat building, similar to a table reminiscent of a pyramid in the middle of the fold. Known today as Mastabat al-Fir’Aun, his interior has all the usual rooms and structures of the most famous Giza pyramids and obviously derives the inspiration of design from those previous structures. This was the rest of the rest of Shepseskaf, the last sovereign of the fourth Egyptian dynasty, which probably reigned only for four years before he died around 2498 AC his kingdom marked a dramatic turning point in Egyptian history.
Why did Shepseskaf build a tomb so small for himself in a corner so out of the desert? For decades Egyptologists have proposed many solutions. Perhaps he was trying to cement his authority by planning his burial place closest to his ancestral homeland. Perhaps there was a dispute with the upper priests of his court. Maybe he simply finished the money.
A sunny solution?
But recently Giulio Magli, an Italian astronomer, has proposed an explanation of much more cosmic proportions in a document published in Arxiv Preprint server. A total solar eclipse has exceeded the central Egypt during the esteemed kingdom of Shepsskaf and the construction of the pyramid is associated with the cult of the sun. Perhaps Shepsskaf and his people believed that the sun had betrayed them and that several deities and cosmic beings deserved recognition in the burial of a pharaoh.
On the morning of April 1, 2471 BC began perfectly normally, with the sun that stood east early in the morning. But in a few minutes the eclipse began and by 7:59 it was total, with the band of Darkness that reached the fertile Egyptian heart well, including the holy city of Buto. Memphis, the capital of Egypt of the time, was located a little further south, but experienced a total of 95 % – more than enough to point out that judicial astronomers, especially when the word of the event spread from the north.
At the time, total solar eclipses were impossible to predict. Astronomes would not have had this capacity until the beginning of the 18th century with Edmond Halley’s work. Before that time, astronomers have built elaborate calendars cyclicals known as Saros cycles which could provide for approximately an imminent eclipse. But even that approximation was not available for Shepsskaf. This eclipse would have been a total surprise and unwelcome.
Magli notes that surely the Egyptians would have noticed many eclipses throughout their history of millennia, but they tended to avoid registering these events. This is quite different from other sophisticated ancient cultures, such as the ancient Babylonians and the Chinese, who have duly noticed these strange events. A hypothesis is that the ancient Egyptians worshiped the sun as a primary divinity and saw the eclipses as dark and dangerous omens, not wanting to preserve it in their written registers.
The cult of the sun is directly linked to the practice of the pyramidal building which exploded with the pharaohs of the 4th dynasty. But during the short kingdom of Shepseskaf, the sun and by extension the god of the sun, did not behave as expected, and thus chose to move away from that tradition.
Uncertainty remains
This is obviously highly speculative. The dates of the kingdom of Shepseskaf are uncertain, since Egyptologists must rely on the counting back from lists (unreliable) of the pharaohs and their kingdoms. And also the eclipse, although more rooted in mathematics and astronomy, is uncertain. We know with certainty that an eclipse took place at that time, but the precise moment and position depend on the rotation of the earth, which changes slowly but measureably over thousands of years. This effect can be modeled only to give us an approximate date for the eclipse. And since we do not have records of the eclipse writings to combine the calculations, we must leave the estimate as it is.
However, the close connection between these two events – a total solar eclipse and Shepskaf ‘decision not to build a pyramid – is intriguing. We will probably never know his real motivations to build his mastabat, or what he, his priests or his people have thought of the eclipse who obscured their April morning.
But we know that eclipse lights fear, curiosity and wonder even in modern times when we know the second in which they will occur and what is happening. An event of this reach almost five thousand years ago could have been more than enough to make his Cosmic customers doubt the Pharaoh and to break traditions that were already ancient even for him.
