[ahtimeline-event-heading]
France was thrown into a tumult after the revolutionaries seized power and beheaded their king and queen. It was a period of ferment, when ideas were published that would have once been censured. In year 3 of the French republic, Dupuis publish his monumental book, titled “Origin of all Religions.” It was a massive 3 volume tome that cost upwards of 3000 livres. In it, Dupuis argued that religion had originated from observing the relationship between the rotation of the stars through the year and regular procession of the agricultural cycle. (47)
Dupuis learned astronomy at the College Royale. His teacher was none other than Lalande, whose biography may be summed up with the following colorful description:
An enthusiastic astronomer avid for fame, praised by Voltaire, extremely ugly, obsessed with pornography, and peculiarly addicted to the consumption of insects, Lalande was not only an excellent teacher (if not a first rate astronomer); he was also an ardent and quite vocal atheist. (48)
Dupuis seems to have shared Lalande’s atheism before he became his student. In any case, he made it his life’s ambition to discover the origin of all religion, which he believed was rooted in astrology.
“Unlike the religious (if unorthodox) Newton, Dupuis used astronomy as a weapon to attack supernatural belief by cracking the very foundations of time itself. (49)
The division of the night sky into 12, each presided over by a constellation, formed the basis for ancient mythology. If Dupuis could find the first zodiac, he would find the first religion, and the source of all others, including Christianity. Rather than seeing Christianity as the counterpoint to pagan religion, Dupuis argued that Christianity was itself essentially a solar fable, not unlike that of Apollo. Dupuis connected the twelve apostles with the the division of the night sky into twelve; the virgin birth to the constellation Virgo; and the later Christian tradition that placed the birth of Christ at the winter solstice was viewed as further proof of Christianity’s pagan roots.
Ironically, this theory became the basis for the rescue of the sculptures that adorned the Notre Dame. Threatened with destruction at the hands of a mob, the statues were saved by arguing that the patriarchs and apostles of the Bible were really ancient Egyptian deities. Thus the sculptures were spared, although the church itself was turned into a pagan temple?? check.
The French revolution exhausted itself in a series of bloody convulsions followed soon after by the rise of Napoleon.
The opportunity then arose for real debate about the merits of Dupuis’ ideas. One of his critics, Peres, pointed out that if one were to follow the logic of Dupuis, then Napoleon was no less a myth than Christ.
After all, Peres argued, just consider the coincidences. “Napoleon” sounds rather like “Apollo,” deity of the sun, and “Apollo” also signifies exterminator, an apt name for a conqueror. Apollo’s mother was Leto; Napoleon’s was Letitia – an obvious coincidence. Peres went on to point out that Napoleon was said to have twelve marshals, as the zodiac has twelve signs’ that Napoleon had four brother, as the year has four seasons’ and that three of these were kings, as the seaons of spring, summer, and fall reign over flowers, rain, and fruits, all gifts of the sun. But just as one brother had no kingdom, neither does winter reign over anything, for the wintry sun sojourns in the South. And so forth. From all this, Peres amusingly concluded that Napoleon, this “alleged hero of our era,” is “an allegorical person whose attributes are borrowed from the sun,” one who therefore “never even existed.” (237)
These verbal jousts were dwarfed by an argument over several zodiacs discovered in Egypt carved into the temple roofs. This zodiac was widely believed to prove Dupuis correct. Based on detailed and complex calculations of the positions of the constellations preserved in the zodiac, it was widely believed that the zodiac itself had to have been devised no less than 13,000 years ago. This, of course, went against what was then the common Christian understanding of the age of the earth, which was considerably less than that. Many who belonged to the French academy proclaimed Dupuis’ theories proven.
Johann Burckhardt wrote, “the zodiac of Henne [Esneh] seems to me to dispel any doubts that might remain about that hypothesis [of Dupuis’] which, in an astounding way, rips away the prejudices that had fixed the age of the terrestrial globe.” (107) Fourier likewise argued that the Dendera zodiac “confirms perfectly the conjecture of citizen Dupuis.” (102)
Another scholar, Biot, wrote a lengthy book on the subject filled with complex calculations. He concluded that his “geometrical proofs thereby achieve a probability nearly equal to certainty.” (301)
placed the zodiac’s origin at a time when the summer solstice occurred in Capricorn, the zodiac must have been devised no later than thirteen thousand years ago, and perhaps as much as fifteen thousand (depending on whether the zodiac was first delineated when the solstice occurred…
precession – armillary sphere – Nicholas Fortin, Museum of the History of Science at Oxford University
“From it, he might have learned of the birth of religion in Egypt, and “the pretended history of a God, born of a Virgin at the winter solstice, who resuscitated at Easter or at the equinox of spring, after having descended into hell; of a God, who has twelve apostles in his train… of a God-conqueror of the Prince of Darkness, who restores to mankind the dominon of Light, and who redeems the evils of Nature- is merely a solar fable.” (69)
Dupuis 13,000 BC
zodiacial ceiling dated byac five or six thousand yars
Dupuis hypothesis that had placed the zodiac’s origin “fourteen to fifteen thousand years before our time.” (109)
Fourier: Until now the history of men and the sciences and arts had nothing certain and authentic except for very recent epochs, and it was difficult to choose among the chronicles of different peoples; those of Egypt were particularly uncertain. Diogenes Laertius had them reach back to four thousand years before Jesus Christ. The discussion of the astronomical monuments which have just been discovered will determine ideas about these different opinions; it justifies the chronology of Herodotus, and it remains certain that the present division of the zodiac, as we know it, was established among the Egyptians about fifteen thousand years before the Christian era, was maintained unchanged, and was transmitted to all other people. This zodiac was evidently nothing other than the primitive calender of Egypt. When it was established the vernal equinox occupied the sign of Libra; the earth was sown under the sign of Taurus, and the harvest took place in that of Virgo. One cannot avoid recognizing, on inspecting the zodiacs found in the temples, that th efigure of Aquarius, crowned with a lotus, was for the Egyptains the astronomical sign of the inundation. It is accordingly natural to place the summer solstice in the that constellation, and one thereby determines a position of the [heavenly] shpere, such that the name of each sign becomes, so t say, the natural attribute of the corresponding parts of the year. This confirms perfectly the conjecture of citizen Dupuis. (113)
Temples at Esneh reaches back to six thousand yars before JEsus Christ; and the beautiful temple at Denderah, the more recent perhaps of those that were consecrated, was, resasonly, constructed more than a thousand years before the siege of Troy. (113)
Visconti argued Virgo placed at start of zodiacal symbols.
that it was during the reign of Augustus that the Julian year of 365 and a quarter days was correctly adopted, producing the so-called Alexandrian Calendar. That calendar’s year began on August 29, which worked well because throughout the reign of Augustus the sun rose on that day near the head of Virgo. Ergo, we are back again to Greco-Roman times.
Biot humbly concluded that his “geometrical proofs thereby achieve a probablility nearly equal to certaintny.” (301)
716 BC
Rosetta Stone
Champollion – impoverished student in Paris in 1807-1808
Taught at Grenoble
Coptic place names
Favourable impression
Napoleon “He must be alright, he has half my name.”
return of monarchy
1816
Champollion known for his anti-royalist ditties
exiled to Figeac
run family business, a bookstore started by their father
clues in Caesar’s Commentaries, the brother conjectured that
Uxellodonum must have been located at capdenac-le-Haut, three miles
outside Figeac.
excavations turned up Roman artifacts.
set up school based on Lancaster method – Pestalozzian method – doing rather than rote memorization
Champollions life was in shambles. exhaustion, fevers, coughing
fits, and bouts of anorexia, he had not touched his work on
decipherment in 17 months
embarked on an excavation to find
Catalogueing books – health worsened – doctor ordered him placed under house arrest. “It is my Egyptian studies that shall win.” – to his brother.
[ahtimeline-event-heading]
France was thrown into a tumult after the revolutionaries seized power and beheaded their king and queen. It was a period of ferment, when ideas were published that would have once been censured. In year 3 of the French republic, Dupuis publish his monumental book, titled “Origin of all Religions.” It was a massive 3 volume tome that cost upwards of 3000 livres. In it, Dupuis argued that religion had originated from observing the relationship between the rotation of the stars through the year and regular procession of the agricultural cycle. (47)
Dupuis learned astronomy at the College Royale. His teacher was none other than Lalande, whose biography may be summed up with the following colorful description:
An enthusiastic astronomer avid for fame, praised by Voltaire, extremely ugly, obsessed with pornography, and peculiarly addicted to the consumption of insects, Lalande was not only an excellent teacher (if not a first rate astronomer); he was also an ardent and quite vocal atheist. (48)
Dupuis seems to have shared Lalande’s atheism before he became his student. In any case, he made it his life’s ambition to discover the origin of all religion, which he believed was rooted in astrology.
“Unlike the religious (if unorthodox) Newton, Dupuis used astronomy as a weapon to attack supernatural belief by cracking the very foundations of time itself. (49)
The division of the night sky into 12, each presided over by a constellation, formed the basis for ancient mythology. If Dupuis could find the first zodiac, he would find the first religion, and the source of all others, including Christianity. Rather than seeing Christianity as the counterpoint to pagan religion, Dupuis argued that Christianity was itself essentially a solar fable, not unlike that of Apollo. Dupuis connected the twelve apostles with the the division of the night sky into twelve; the virgin birth to the constellation Virgo; and the later Christian tradition that placed the birth of Christ at the winter solstice was viewed as further proof of Christianity’s pagan roots.
Ironically, this theory became the basis for the rescue of the sculptures that adorned the Notre Dame. Threatened with destruction at the hands of a mob, the statues were saved by arguing that the patriarchs and apostles of the Bible were really ancient Egyptian deities. Thus the sculptures were spared, although the church itself was turned into a pagan temple?? check.
The French revolution exhausted itself in a series of bloody convulsions followed soon after by the rise of Napoleon.
The opportunity then arose for real debate about the merits of Dupuis’ ideas. One of his critics, Peres, pointed out that if one were to follow the logic of Dupuis, then Napoleon was no less a myth than Christ.
After all, Peres argued, just consider the coincidences. “Napoleon” sounds rather like “Apollo,” deity of the sun, and “Apollo” also signifies exterminator, an apt name for a conqueror. Apollo’s mother was Leto; Napoleon’s was Letitia – an obvious coincidence. Peres went on to point out that Napoleon was said to have twelve marshals, as the zodiac has twelve signs’ that Napoleon had four brother, as the year has four seasons’ and that three of these were kings, as the seaons of spring, summer, and fall reign over flowers, rain, and fruits, all gifts of the sun. But just as one brother had no kingdom, neither does winter reign over anything, for the wintry sun sojourns in the South. And so forth. From all this, Peres amusingly concluded that Napoleon, this “alleged hero of our era,” is “an allegorical person whose attributes are borrowed from the sun,” one who therefore “never even existed.” (237)
These verbal jousts were dwarfed by an argument over several zodiacs discovered in Egypt carved into the temple roofs. This zodiac was widely believed to prove Dupuis correct. Based on detailed and complex calculations of the positions of the constellations preserved in the zodiac, it was widely believed that the zodiac itself had to have been devised no less than 13,000 years ago. This, of course, went against what was then the common Christian understanding of the age of the earth, which was considerably less than that. Many who belonged to the French academy proclaimed Dupuis’ theories proven.
Johann Burckhardt wrote, “the zodiac of Henne [Esneh] seems to me to dispel any doubts that might remain about that hypothesis [of Dupuis’] which, in an astounding way, rips away the prejudices that had fixed the age of the terrestrial globe.” (107) Fourier likewise argued that the Dendera zodiac “confirms perfectly the conjecture of citizen Dupuis.” (102)
Another scholar, Biot, wrote a lengthy book on the subject filled with complex calculations. He concluded that his “geometrical proofs thereby achieve a probability nearly equal to certainty.” (301)
placed the zodiac’s origin at a time when the summer solstice occurred in Capricorn, the zodiac must have been devised no later than thirteen thousand years ago, and perhaps as much as fifteen thousand (depending on whether the zodiac was first delineated when the solstice occurred…
precession – armillary sphere – Nicholas Fortin, Museum of the History of Science at Oxford University
“From it, he might have learned of the birth of religion in Egypt, and “the pretended history of a God, born of a Virgin at the winter solstice, who resuscitated at Easter or at the equinox of spring, after having descended into hell; of a God, who has twelve apostles in his train… of a God-conqueror of the Prince of Darkness, who restores to mankind the dominon of Light, and who redeems the evils of Nature- is merely a solar fable.” (69)
Dupuis 13,000 BC
zodiacial ceiling dated byac five or six thousand yars
Dupuis hypothesis that had placed the zodiac’s origin “fourteen to fifteen thousand years before our time.” (109)
Fourier: Until now the history of men and the sciences and arts had nothing certain and authentic except for very recent epochs, and it was difficult to choose among the chronicles of different peoples; those of Egypt were particularly uncertain. Diogenes Laertius had them reach back to four thousand years before Jesus Christ. The discussion of the astronomical monuments which have just been discovered will determine ideas about these different opinions; it justifies the chronology of Herodotus, and it remains certain that the present division of the zodiac, as we know it, was established among the Egyptians about fifteen thousand years before the Christian era, was maintained unchanged, and was transmitted to all other people. This zodiac was evidently nothing other than the primitive calender of Egypt. When it was established the vernal equinox occupied the sign of Libra; the earth was sown under the sign of Taurus, and the harvest took place in that of Virgo. One cannot avoid recognizing, on inspecting the zodiacs found in the temples, that th efigure of Aquarius, crowned with a lotus, was for the Egyptains the astronomical sign of the inundation. It is accordingly natural to place the summer solstice in the that constellation, and one thereby determines a position of the [heavenly] shpere, such that the name of each sign becomes, so t say, the natural attribute of the corresponding parts of the year. This confirms perfectly the conjecture of citizen Dupuis. (113)
Temples at Esneh reaches back to six thousand yars before JEsus Christ; and the beautiful temple at Denderah, the more recent perhaps of those that were consecrated, was, resasonly, constructed more than a thousand years before the siege of Troy. (113)
Visconti argued Virgo placed at start of zodiacal symbols.
that it was during the reign of Augustus that the Julian year of 365 and a quarter days was correctly adopted, producing the so-called Alexandrian Calendar. That calendar’s year began on August 29, which worked well because throughout the reign of Augustus the sun rose on that day near the head of Virgo. Ergo, we are back again to Greco-Roman times.
Biot humbly concluded that his “geometrical proofs thereby achieve a probablility nearly equal to certaintny.” (301)
716 BC
Rosetta Stone
Champollion – impoverished student in Paris in 1807-1808
Taught at Grenoble
Coptic place names
Favourable impression
Napoleon “He must be alright, he has half my name.”
return of monarchy
1816
Champollion known for his anti-royalist ditties
exiled to Figeac
run family business, a bookstore started by their father
clues in Caesar’s Commentaries, the brother conjectured that
Uxellodonum must have been located at capdenac-le-Haut, three miles
outside Figeac.
excavations turned up Roman artifacts.
set up school based on Lancaster method – Pestalozzian method – doing rather than rote memorization
Champollions life was in shambles. exhaustion, fevers, coughing
fits, and bouts of anorexia, he had not touched his work on
decipherment in 17 months
embarked on an excavation to find
Catalogueing books – health worsened – doctor ordered him placed under house arrest. “It is my Egyptian studies that shall win.” – to his brother.