Ancient Astronomy Around the World - The Stones and the Stars: Building Scotland's Newest Megalith - page 35

F IG . 3.6 ( a , b ) Solar alignment in the Temple of Amun-Re, Karnak, near
Luxor. Photos by Chris O'Kane
Astronomy in ancient Egypt was far from over, however.
The evolution of the solar temple at Karnak (Fig. 3.6 ) and the star
maps first known in the tomb of Hapsheptut, most famously the
one known as 'the Dendera Zodiac,' are too well known to need
description here. But Chris O'Kane, inventor of the Vistamorph TM
lens through which he took the remarkable panoramic photo-
graphs of this chapter and the next, believes that the planet Mars
has a central role in Egyptian cosmology that has still to be recog-
nized. To this day Egypt's capital, Cairo, takes its name from Al
Kahir, the Conqueror, the Arabic name for Mars.
While mentioning controversies, it's often asked whether it
can be mere coincidence that the Ziggurats, the pyramids of Tuc-
ume and Egypt, Stonehenge, Avebury, and the origins of Chinese
(claimed) and Mayan civilization (see below), all lie within the
same 500 years. In their book The Cosmic Serpent, Victor Clube
and Bill Napier suggested that a 'super-comet,' similar to the icy
bodies Phoebe and Chiron in the outer Solar System, might have