Naos of the Decades
Unknown · Reign of Nectanebo I, 379-361 BC
Before you is the roof of a small stone shrine, a naos, made to hold the statue of a god. Its sloping top and the band beneath are covered with tiny scenes: a winged sun disc with cobras, the long hieroglyph of the sky, and row after row of figures in little compartments. Each compartment belongs to one of the thirty six decans, the star groups whose risings divided the Egyptian year into ten day weeks. Beside each decan a short text explains what happens on earth when it rules the sky: plenty or shortage, health or sickness. The cartouches give the throne name of Nectanebo I, one of the last native pharaohs.
The shrine is the oldest known attempt to set out the influence of the stars on human affairs in a systematic table, an ancestor of later astrology. The roof was found near Abukir in 1777, came to France with the ambassador Choiseul-Gouffier, and was bought by the Louvre at the sale of his collection in 1818. The rest stayed under water: two fragments were raised by Prince Omar Toussoun in 1940, and four more by Franck Goddio's divers in Abukir Bay in 1998 and 1999.
Did You Know? The pieces of this shrine were fished out of the sea in 1777, in 1940 and again in 1998, more than two centuries apart.
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