The djed pillar was also known as the world tree and was identified as the backbone of Osiris with thirty-three ribs.
Staff: Device to Measure Angles
A staff (scepter) was used for measuring angles. Sometimes the staff was known as Jacob’s staff. The staff could be very tall: five or six feet high. The bottom of the staff had a semicircle groove for rotation. The top angled crossbar (crook) was usually at a thirty-degree angle to the main shaft. One could rotate the staff and have a thirty-degree reference point.
The sun’s shadow could then be generated by anyone carrying the scepter. If the staff was vertical and the sun reached a thirty-degree angle, then the start or the end of a working day could be determined.
From a seafarer’s viewpoint, the thirty degrees could be a reference point for the thirty-degree sun-shadow latitude of the Giza pyramid region. So when an angle was measured, it would be in relationship to the pyramid. Thus, the north-south distance could be estimated because each degree of latitude was about sixty nautical miles. (See Appendix D for the math.)
Ankh: A Device to Set a Reference Grid
This symbol was called an ankh, a symbol for life, by the Nile River dynasties. The ankh was carried by all royalty in the Nile River dynasties as a symbol of power. The cross is the axis for north, south, east, and west. A thirty-degree angle exists from the bottom of the ankh to the side bars.
The rose petal on the top represents Venus and usually has, at the petal base, a seventy-two-degree angle. Originally, the rose petal was a circle, which was the symbol for Venus. Venus is associated with calculations for longitude (a topic that is developed in Chapter 7). The ankh’s head may also represent the Nile Delta. The ankh represents the intersection of the sun and Venus—in other words, latitude and longitude.
Figures 6-1a, b, and c show the symbols for the pillar, staff, and ankh together. Figure 6-1d also shows the pillar, staff, and ankh combined into a sextant.
Figure 6-1: The development of an ancient sextant
Sextant: A Device to Measure the Angles to a Reference
The combined counting and measuring symbols form a primitive sextant. A sextant was a device used by the seafarers to measure angles; it was also used to set land boundaries. Figure 6-1d shows the sextant of 3200 BCE, a device that measured angles in two directions: latitude and longitude. Key reference angles are shown. Figure 6-1e shows a modern sextant.
Figure 6-2a shows the pillar, staff, and ankh in hieroglyphic symbols that are frequently seen because the Nile River regions were the “land of measurement.”
Figure 6-2: Sextant used by the Nile River dynasties, (Reference 61)
On the bottom of Figure 6-2b, the staff, ankh, and pillar are shown seven times on top of the basins or baskets. This measuring device was used in the process for the filling of the baskets, whether the basket was grain or the basin was for metals. There are thirty bundles of grain on the top of Figure 6-2b, indicating thirty degrees latitude of the pharaoh.
Instead of rotating the staff from the ankh, the staff—called Jacob’s staff—was modified over time to have the crossbar move up and down the main axis (see Figure 6-3a). The Jacob’s staff can further be modified, as seen in Figure 6-3b.
Figure 6-3: Jacob’s staff, used to determine angles, (Reference 61)
Grid Map
Figure 6-4 Stecchini Grid Map for ancient Nile River dynasties, (Reference 51)
If latitude and longitude can be measured, then a grid map is needed for navigation on land or water. Noted antiquarian Livio Stecchini (Reference 51) generated in the 1700s CE the grid that was used by the Nile dynasties (see Figure 6-4). The Nile River was the “prime meridian” at that time. The key latitude was thirty degrees north, the Giza pyramids; and the key longitude was zero degrees—the Nile River. The Nile River dynasties in the land of measurement would insert numbers representing latitude and longitude into their hieroglyphs. The Nile River was the region of the principle customers during the Gold, Copper, and Bronze Ages.
Clocks to Measure Time
The sun, the moon, and Venus have cycles that were used to measure time. The seafarers would initiate trips at specific times so that the clocks could be synchronized. Chapter 7 will address these clocks in more detail.
The key clock was the sun. The sun’s shadows would indicate time and were used as sundials. The taller the staff, the longer the shadows and the more refined the daily time estimate. This is why the obelisks were so tall and why they were located in a center of the stone circle and in the center of the village. The center of the village, a place for congregating on important issues of the time, became a “house of life,” symbolized as a per ankh. The per ankh is the main passageway/chamber design for the Irish Mounds (see Chapter 9).
Calendar and clock information was readily available to the seafarers in 3200 BCE. The Nile River dynasties had a calendar as early as 4800 BCE, and in 4200 BCE, their mathematics and astronomy produced a 365-sun-day calendar (twelve months of thirty days plus five feast days). The moon clock provided a nightly time clock. Venus’s clock was used to keep time on a forty-year time horizon. Other celestial bodies also provided timing information on a broader time scale.
Water clocks, which could have twelve- and twenty-four-hour timing, also existed. The earliest-found water clock in the Nile River dynasties was found around 1500 BCE. The Chinese may have had a water clock as early as 4000 BCE (Reference 54). Based on a specific celestial event, water clocks representing two different locations could determine longitude.
So to find longitude, you need to know three things:
1.The speed of the Earth’s rotation, 15 degrees per hour
2.The time the sun peaks at a prime meridian, 1200 GMT
3.The time the sun peaks, in GMT, at your location.
Seafarers also developed a tool, called a nocturnal, to calculate “relative” longitude. A nocturnal works by determining the angle between the North Star and the pointer stars in the Big Dipper. Calibrated for date, the seafarer can tell the time to within a quarter hour, good enough for relative longitude. This concept relates to “grooved” ware pottery that has the counts and diamonds recorded.
From a seafarer’s perspective, the clocks and calendars indicated when to start sailing toward the supplier’s harbor and when to sail back to the customer’s harbors. What this means is that the night sky is an enormous, 24-hour clock face. All you have to do is figure out where the hands are.
From a seafarer’s perspective, the clocks and calendars indicated when to start sailing toward the supplier’s harbor and when to sail back to the customer’s harbors.
Logbook to Record Symbols
Logbooks existed in 3200 BCE. A ship’s logbook was always needed to record key information about a trip, which would include counts and angles for the key locations of the sailing trip. The logbook information was recorded on stone, pottery jars, and tablets. One of the main functions of the Irish kerbstones was to record information about trips on the stones.
On land, the recording was done on stones. The logbooks recorded on stone will be described in Chapter 8. On the waters, the seafarers used pottery, which was abundant onboard the boat because the pottery were the containers for water, grain, seeds, etc.
Today there is a classification of the ancient peoples based on their pottery. They were called the Grooved Ware and Bell Beaker peoples. Figure 6-5 shows examples of jars and tablets with some of the symbols described in Chapter 5.
Figure 6-5 is of pottery, showing the navigation symbols (Reference 61).
Figure 6-5 features counts, grooves, zigzags for water, diamonds for latitude, and grids.
For example, in Figure 6-5, the Chinese jar (bottom middle), when rotated ninety degrees, shows angles of the wing zigzag increasing from forty to forty-five degrees. An exact duplicate of this jar is found in the Hunt Museum in Ennis, Ireland.
Figure 6-6 is the Orkney Venus, an excellent example of pottery with grids, zigzags, and positioning dots.
Figure 6-6: The Orkney Venus found in the Orkney Islands, (Reference 61)
The ultimate logbook will be presented in Chapter 12.
Map for Multiple Locations
A major map was the celestial sphere, “as above.” The star dots were connected.
Figure 6-7, Reference 61, www.ogdenucc.org/scrapbook/creativity/thenortherncross/.
Figure 6-7: Connecting the star dots to form named objects (Reference 61)
What was above was then constructed, in part, as structures on Earth, “as below.”
The orientation of earthen structures to the star configurations was a key design feature of the mounds in Ireland. Hamilton’s book, The Star Mounds of North America (Reference 23), is an excellent summary for the mound builders in America. They, the otherworld, learned from the mound builders of the Old World.
It is key to this book that the star configurations were built into the Irish mounds, and they will be discussed in Chapter 9.
Device to Be Used in Cloudy Weather
Figure 6-8: Iceland Spar Crystal: the radar unit in ancient times, (Reference 61)
Iceland spar, also known as an Iceland crystal or a sunstone, is a transparent variety of calcite, originally brought from Iceland and used to polarize light into a double refraction. Seafarers, like the Vikings, used the Iceland spar to tell the direction of the sun on cloudy days, for navigation purposes. Put a dark spot (dot) on one side of the spar. Point the spar toward the sun behind the clouds. On the back side of the spar, two dots appear. Maneuver the spar until both dots have the same intensity of darkness. This is the position of the sun. It works!
So anyone familiar with getting gold from crystals may have had a crystal with parallel sides. He or she may have discovered this fact, as the seafarers were gold traders, and the Orkney Islands are close to Iceland. Identifying the direction of the sun to within a few degrees in both cloudy and twilight conditions was possible using the sunstone and the naked eye.
The question is whether the seafarers had such a device in 3200 BCE. They surely worked with the white crystal quartz at Newgrange and other Irish mound locations.
Boats
Figure 6-9: Ancient boats having high bows and sterns for positioning to determine angles (Reference 61)
Boats were designed for navigation on rivers as well as oceans. Appendix B illustrates both boat types. It was common to have boat lengths exceeding one hundred and fifty feet long, having crews of twenty men and a hauling capacity of twenty to forty tons. Two-hundred-foot-long boats could haul two one-hundred-foot obelisks. A fourteenth-century BCE fifty-foot boat was found off the coast of Turkey with merchandise from eight different Mediterranean cultures.
The boats were designed to have high bows and sterns. The purpose of the high bows and sterns, other than protecting the boat from flooding, was to align the boat with some reference point and then measure another angle. Primarily for measurement, the bow and stern were aligned north and south, and then, the angle of the location of interest was measured. On land, the location of interest was usually a harbor. On the seas, out of sight of land, the locations of interest were the celestial bodies. The high bows and sterns were positioning devices. Counting lines designed into the bow, stern, and masts of these boats probably existed.
The speed of the ancient boats is summarized in Reference 11 and Reference 34. For selected harbors, the sailing times were as follows:
•Alexandria, Egypt, to Cyprus was between six and eight days.
•Alexandria to Rome was about twelve days.
•Carthage to the Strait of Gibraltar was between six and eight days.
•Spain to Ireland was about nine days.
The sailing times were significantly dependent on favorable winds and currents. In general, the boats could average four or five nautical miles per hour and travel about one hundred miles per day.
Boat directions could be determined without a compass, as seen in Figure 6-10.
Figure 6-10: Using the boat and the sun’s shadow to determine an angle.
Figure 6-10 shows the angle of about twenty-five degrees between the shadow and the floorboards, which were aligned between the bow and stern of the boat. I was going from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to the Azores Islands five days after the spring solstice. The sun was setting such that the sun’s shadow would be close to the east-west axis, or ninety degrees. The boat’s course would then be ninety degrees minus twenty-five degrees, or a course direction of sixty-five degrees from the north.
It was easy to sail at a fixed latitude using the North Star or a fixed angle.
The phonetic names of the tools were the NK and CR. The NK was for the ankh, and the CR was for Chi Rho or Rho Chi.
Conclusion
The tools that a seafarer needs for navigation existed in 3200 BCE:
Devices to count: pillars, staffs, and ankhs
Device to measure angles: primitive sextant
Grid with axis: Stecchini Grid
Clocks to measure time: sun, moon, and Venus, and water clocks
Logbooks to record symbols: stones and pottery jars and tablets
Map grid for multiple locations: celestial stars forming objects, zodiac
Device to be used in cloudy weather: sunstone crystal
Boats with the above built into it: high bow, high stern, and masts
• • •
Chapter 7:
Celestial Navigation: 3200 BCE
Fact: All invaders to Ireland from 4000 BCE to 1000 BCE were excellent sailors who sailed the oceans between the location of the customers, who sponsored the trip, to the location of the metal supplier during the Copper and Bronze Ages. It is one of the objectives of this book to help the reader understand how the seafarers used celestial navigation to guide their trips. This is not a book on navigation. However, some navigation concepts are needed to enable the decoding of the Irish symbols.
One navigation objective is to determine one’s location on the water or on land. The location’s position is classified as latitude, north-south direction, and longitude, east-west direction. Once the location is numerically defined, that location is known as a fixed position—“fix.” This has not changed over the last five thousand years.
The location’s position needs a navigation triangle to determine a “fix.” The navigation triangle requires three points (dots relative to some axis), a pole (north or south), two land objects, or two star positions, and your position. The line between you and some known object has an angle and is called a line of position (LOP). Two LOPs are needed to determine a “fix.” The two LOPs intersect, and that is your position. More LOPs are more helpful. Figure 7-1 may be helpful to understand latitude and longitude.
Figure 7-1: World axis map (Reference 61)
Figure 7-2 may be helpful to understand a line of position (Reference 61).
The LOPs have angles associated with them, and they form a triangle—a navigation triangle. A grid (map) is then needed to plot the angles for the position. On land it is easy to find two objects and a reference axis. On the water, out of sight of land, the stars are needed. The LOP angles require a good guess as to your position, which is known as the dead reckoning (DR) position. The DR is the best estimate of your position based on distance and direction traveled from the last “fix.” It is assumed that this position is not absolutely accurate, but it only needs to be close enough that the celestial LOP will fall within the bounds of the grid map being used. This chapter describes the stars used to determine the LOPs.
It is easy to determine the latitude component of the “fix.” The longitude component is also easy to determine if the seafarer has land objects to sight on. At sea, longitude needed a timing device (clock) to determine the “fix.” John Harrison developed a longitude clock (chronometer) in the 1700s (Reference 49). However, the ancient seafarers also had timing devices, including sundials, water clocks, sand clocks, string clocks, and celestial bodies, that would act as clocks, which were used to determi
ne longitude.
By connecting the star dots, various geometries were created. This led to triangles, squares, and zodiacs.
The seafarers in 3000 BCE were able to determine their position using the celestial stars. Primarily, the seafarers knew latitude and sailed east and west on fixed latitudes, trying to keep in sight of land. The need for longitude was critical when sailing the oceans out of land sight. Sailing close to land did have serious issues: rocks, shallow water, swift currents, shoals, etc. Also, people on land could see the seafarers and take necessary actions.
This chapter will briefly describe the key celestial bodies used to determine a location’s position by the seafarers around 3200 BCE. Emphasis will be on the symbols used to represent each body and their use for calculating position and time.
Sun
The sun is the most important celestial body, determining both latitude and longitude. Using a center stone, the sun casts a shadow throughout the day. Each day at sunrise and at sunset, the shadow is the longest. Placing a stone at the end of the shadows each day forms an angle relative to the center stone. Placing stones throughout the year at the end of the shadow results in two arcs. The extreme stone positions became known as the winter and summer solstices (see Figure 7-3).
Figure 7-3: Stone circle as a sun shadow calendar for the solstices (Reference 61)
An X is then formed from the sun’s shadow, isolating the winter and summer solstices by connecting the stone dots. The angle formed relative to the east-west axis determines latitude and is referred to as the “sun-shadow” latitude for this location. All locations having the same latitude have the same angle of the X. It should be noted that the sun’s arc with the X forms a bow-tie symbol. A circle is formed by connecting the two arcs with the same arc shape. When the two arcs are connected with straight lines, a cartouche, a symbol for royalty by the Nile River dynasties, is formed. Other shapes can be formed by connecting the two arcs with the shapes from other celestial bodies. The shape of interest in this book is the heart shape, the rose-petal shape of Venus. This is the shape of the Newgrange Mound.
A Seafarer's Decoding of the Irish Symbols Page 7