Personal Blogs

I've just been reading about star charts from ancient Egypt. Not many of these have been found and much about them is mysterious: for example what they were for. Most of the examples we have were on the inside of coffin lids, so they weren't for the use of the living.

One suggestion is that the ancient Egyptians believed that someone with enough inherited divinity (such as a pharaoh) would after death ascend to become a star (this notion has parallels in many cultures of course). So the start chart on the coffin lid would be there to help your ka know where to go.

This is a poetic idea but more poetic is what I believe is the truth; we shall not become stars—rather, starts have become us.

At first there was only hydrogen but the reactions in the stars that condensed from the primeval hydrogen have produced all the other elements.

When the Solar System was formed it can't have been just from hydrogen, there must have been many other elements swirling around in the mixture.

How did these arrive there? Stars must have come to the end of their lives and exploded. Small stars that just died and fizzled out will simply have shrunk to embers. None of their constituents can have found its way here. No, the rocks on which we stand, and most of the elements necessary for life, must have come from the explosions that are novae or supernovae, and after billions of years come to form part of you: or me; or the pharaohs.