Egypt, China and Mesopotamia


It is probably in Egypt that the study of the sky was born, to be jealously guarded by the priests 3000 years before our era. Astrology has never been practiced in Egypt.

Several books report the astronomical observations concerning the Sun, the Moon and the stars. The Egyptians used a 365-day calendar and knew the constellations. The great pyramids, for example, were aligned with the North Pole. The rising of Sirius (which the Egyptians called Sopdet and Sothis by the Greeks) was also a particularly important event to set during the year because it marked the beginning of the Nile floods and thus the supply of fertile silt in the fields located in river border.

It should already be pointed out that several millennia later, Egypt will know great astronomers such as Theodosius (395 BCE) and Ptolemy (90 AD).

In China, around 2600 BC, the observation of the sky was in the service of the emperor and astrology. The Chinese believed that the sky was organized in the image of their society. It sheltered living beings. Thus, the Emperor lived in an Upper Palace, located on the Polar Star, watching from above on his subjects. Jupiter, the Green Governor was managing the spring while the other planets were performing administrative functions. This mythology will remain until contacts with the West. We will talk about it a little later.

Astronomy was already a science in Mesopotamia (here's a map) 2300 years before our era. We find the first records concerning the observation of lunar eclipses, comets and the first predictions of the conjunctions of the planets between them. On the tables of Ammizadouga (around 1580 BC) are recorded ten years of observations of the planet Venus.