A Contemplação do Céu pode ser um Acto Religioso: Exemplo Textual

Fowden, Garth, 1993, The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind, 91-2.

Something was said at the beginning of the present chapter about the crucial role played by the stars in the dissemination of divine ‘energies’ through the universe, and in the related workings of cosmic sympathy and fate. This complex of beliefs - and, by extension, their religious dimension to be discussed here - was a characteristic product of the Hellenistic and Roman periods; for while such general notions as cosmic sympathy, fate, and even the influence of stars on human affairs can be traced in ancient Egypt and classical Greece, the fundamental presupposition of astrology - namely belief in a direct and calculable connection between planetary movements and human actions - first emerged in the aftermath of Alexander’s conquests, through a fusion of Greek with Egyptian and Babylonian ideas effected principally by the Stoics. The mechanistic character of this doctrine, with its vision of Man as the helpless victim of ineluctable forces, seems inimical to the religious spirit, at least in the individualistic sense in which the modern Western mind understands such things. By their very nature, astrological prognostications tended to induce gloom, or at least a sense of impotence; and there was often a temptation to dismiss the whole subject with a strong dose of Lucianic irony. Yet the astrologers saw themselves as men of religion, and clothed their teachings in the language of sacred cult. It is important to gain some understanding of the reasons for the wide appeal of astral religion in late antiquity.

There is a sense in which even the simple, untutored contemplation of the heavens can be a religious act. 

Fowden, Garth, 1993 (1986), The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind. Princeton: Princeton University Press

A Origem do Zodíaco - Circulação e Transmissão Cultural: Exemplo Textual

Stevens, K., 2019, Between Greece and Babylonia: Hellenistic Intellectual History in Cross-Cultural Perspective, 39-41.

As Aristotle’s claim about Egyptian and Babylonian observations implies, Greeks were engaging with the celestial scholarship of their eastern neighbours well before the Macedonian conquest. Some Mesopotamian constellation and star names were borrowed in the late second or early first millennium and are attested in fragmentary Greek astronomical poems from the eighth to the sixth centuries BC. If reliable, Pliny’s claim that the astronomer Cleostratus of Tenedos introduced the signa in the zodiac suggests that zodiacal constellations were known in the Greek world by the late sixth or fifth century, although not the uniform zodiac of twelve 30-degree signs, which was not invented in Babylonia until around 400 BC. Nor could the uniform zodiac have been known to Meton of Athens or his near-contemporary Euctemon around 430 BC: apart from questions of chronology, Daryn Lehoux has effectively demolished the thesis of Albert Rehm and Bartel Van der Waerden that Meton and Euctemon used zodiacal months to construct their parapegmata (lists of dates of solstices, equinoxes and annual risings and settings of fixed stars, combined with weather predictions). Meton did, however, draw on Babylonian celestial scholarship in another way. The Metonic Cycle attributed to him (the period of almost nineteen years where the solar year and lunar month coincide, which enabled the development of consistent intercalation schemes) is almost certainly derived from Babylonia, where a similar cycle had been in use since around 500 BC.

Secure evidence for Greek knowledge of the zodiacal constellations, although still not necessarily the uniform zodiac, comes in the fourth century with the Phenomena of Eudoxos of Knidos (ca. 390–340 BC), known today via a commentary by Hipparchus of Nicaea and Aratus’ versification of its contents in his Phenomena. Aratus’ statement that each night six ‘twelfth-parts (duodekades) of the (zodiacal) circle’ set and six rise could refer to the zodiac signs, but he makes no explicit mention of the 360-degree zodiacal circle, and Hipparchus’ criticism of Aratus for conflating the zodiacal constellations with the signs implies that neither he nor Eudoxos made this distinction. If De Caelo predates Alexander’s campaigns, Aristotle’s claims about planetary movements reported by the ‘Chaldaeans’ indicates that Greeks were also using Babylonian observational data before the Hellenistic period.

While these examples attest to cross-cultural contact, they are relatively isolated and self-contained; there is no evidence for detailed Greek knowledge of Babylonian astronomical or astrological scholarship before the third century BC. Unsurprisingly, then, the crucial period of cross-cultural exchange seems to have been that which brought the inhabitants of Greece and Mesopotamia into closer contact than ever before. We will examine the results of that contact across three areas of celestial enquiry: data and terms relating to celestial observation; methods of predicting celestial phenomena; and the concepts and techniques used to interpret the significance of these phenomena for events on Earth.

Stevens, K., 2019, Between Greece and Babylonia: Hellenistic Intellectual History in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

A Procedência dos Decanos (Decanatos) e as Origens Egípcias do Horóscopo (Ascendente): Exemplo Textual

 

Greenbaum, D. G. & M. T. Ross, 2010, “The Role of Egypt in the Development of the Horoscope” in Egypt in Transition, 153-4.

Although no ascendant appears in the corpus of extant Babylonian horoscopes, this lack does not negate the cuneiform birth charts as examples of natal astrology. The earliest evidence connects Egypt to the introduction of the ascendant in astrological practice. Balbillus, whose antecedents were probably Egyptian, provides the earliest non-Babylonian literary charts containing cardines in Greek. Balbillus wrote in the first century CE, but his charts were cast for 72 BCE and 43 BCE. The earliest documentary chart containing cardines, Ashmolean D.O. 633, appears in a Demotic context and astronomically corresponds to 38 BCE. The date of composition was probably some time after this date. Barring lacunae, however, subsequent Demotic charts generally contain at least an ascendant. Greek charts follow this standard of composition. In pOxyrhynchus 235, the diagram for a chart dated between 15 and 22 CE contains perpendicular horizontal and vertical lines which divide the circular form of the diagram into quadrants. The author clearly labelled the ascendant, midheaven and lower midheaven angles; though the horizontal line indicates the setting cardine, there is no label for it.

Because of Balbillus’s probable origins, the Demotic context of Ashmolean D.O. 633 and the Egyptian provenance of pOxyrhynchus 235, the cardines display an early and strong connection to Egypt. In fact, the cardines – specifically the most important cardines, the ascendant and midheaven – relate to known Egyptian astronomical practices. A first century CE chart which equates the decans with “36 bright horoscopes” (λ̅ϛ̅ λάμπροι ὡροσκόποι) hints at the practices which may have prompted astrological interest in these positions.45 Before discussing this chart, along with other texts which call decans “horoscopes”, a brief overview of the decan system in Egypt, in particular the origin of rising and transit decans which correlate best with the astrological chart, will be useful.

Greenbaum, D. G. & M. T. Ross, 2010, “The Role of Egypt in the Development of the Horoscope” in Egypt in Transition: Social and Religious Development of Egypt in the First Millennium BCE, ed. L. Bareš, F. Coppens & K. Smolarikova, 146-82. Praga: Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague.

Templo de Ísis em Philae

Templo de Ísis, Philae, Egipto.             Wikipedia