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Books > Science & Mathematics > Astronomy, space & time > Time (chronology) > General
‘The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Moon: Coffin Texts Spells
154–160’ argues that Coffin Texts spells 154–160, recorded at
around the beginning of the 2nd millennium bce, form the oldest
composition about the moon in ancient Egypt and in the whole world.
The detailed analysis of these spells, based on a new translation,
reveals that the spells provide a chronologically ordered account
of the phenomena that happen during a lunar month. It is argued
that through a wide variety of mythological allusions, the separate
texts – after an introduction which explains the origins of the
month (spell 154) – describe the successive stages of the monthly
cycle: the period of invisibility (spell 155), waxing (spell 156),
events around the full moon (spell 157), waning (spell 158), the
arrival of the last crescent at the eastern horizon (spell 159),
and again the conjunction of the sun and the moon when a solar
eclipse can occur (spell 160). After highlighting the possible
lunar connotations of each spell, further chapters in the book
investigate the origins of the composition, its different
manuscripts preserved on coffins coming from Hermopolis and Asyut,
and the survival of the spells in the later mortuary collection
known as the Book of Going Forth by Day.
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