The Reliefs of the Chapel of Nebhepetra Mentuhotep at Gebelein

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The Astrolabe

An ancient instrument for solving problems of location and distance, as well as time

Astrolábon órganon is the word used in Ptolemaeus Syntaxis 5.1 to describe a form of armillary sphere consisting of both fixed and rotating rings for determining the ecliptic co-ordinates of stars. Also called astrolabe were two-dimensional representations of the celestial sphere: over fixed disks with a representation of the horizon of the earth (in each case for a specific geographic latitude) and its parallels up to the zenith lies a rotating representation of the heavens (called ‘spider’ or ‘net’) with zodiac and indicators for some of the brightest stars. On the back is an indicator (‘alidade’) with visor plates for calculating the height of the stars. The astrolabe allows its user to determine the hours of day and night, the positions of stars, and the height and depth of objects on earth (mountains, buildings, wells). The oldest extant descriptions of the flat, planispheric astrolabe come from Iohannes Philoponus, 6th century AD, and (in Syrian) from Severus Sebokht, c. 660 AD. Indirect references may date back as early as Theon (4th cent.). Between the 8th and the 9th centuries the Arabs appropriated the knowledge of the astrolabe. At the end of the 10th century and again in the 12th century, they passed it on to Western Europe, where astrolabes were constructed up until the 17th cent. Today, one Byzantine astrolabe (from 1062) is extant, as are some 750 Arabic-Islamic astrolabes and approximately the same number of European astrolabes.

This information is abstracted from Brill's New Pauly, the English edition of the authoritative Der Neue Pauly, Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World. The encyclopaedic coverage and high academic standard of the work, the interdisciplinary and contemporary approach and clear and accessible presentation have made the New Pauly the unrivalled modern reference work for the ancient world. For more information see www.brillsnewpauly.com or visit our website catalog: www.brill.nl/bnp
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Publications & Services> Books> Book Series> The Reliefs of the Chapel of Nebhepetra Mentuhotep at Gebelein

The Reliefs of the Chapel of Nebhepetra Mentuhotep at Gebelein

Elisa Fiore Marochetti. Translated by Kenneth Hurry

Books

Available
Publication year: 2010


Series:	Culture and History of the Ancient Near East, 39
ISBN-13 (i)The ISBN (International Standard Book Number) has been changed from 10 to 13 digits on 1 January 2007:	978 90 04 17964 6
ISBN-10:	90 04 17964 X

Cover:	Hardback
Number of pages:	xiv, 214 pp.
Google Book Search:	View this book at Google Book Search

List price:	€ 146.00 / US$ 216.00

Table of contents

I. INTRODUCTION
II. DATING THE CHAPEL
III. THE CULT OF HATHOR, LADY OF DENDEREH, AND THE PANTHEON
OF MENTUHOTEP
IV. HYPOTHETICAL RECONSTRUCTION OF ARCHITECTURE AND DECORATION
V. CATALOGUE
VI. PLATES
VII. COLOR PLATES

Readership

Egyptologists, Archaeologists, art historians, and scholars interested in the architectonical and decorative reconstitution of monuments.

About the author(s)

Elisa Fiore Marochetti, M.A., M. Lit., Ph.D. in Egyptology, is director at the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici del Piemonte e del Museo Antichità Egizie. After postgraduate studies in Oxford and Rome, with the theses The Development of the Design of the Mastaba Tomb and The Chapel of Mentuhotep at Gebelein,she took up her appointment as curator at the Soprintendenza al Museo delle Antichità Egizie in Turin. Her fields of interest are mainly design and symbolism in art and architecture from the Old Kingdom to the Middle Kingdom, and the collection of the Egyptian Museum in Turin. Since 2000 she has lectured on Egyptology for the Faculty of Language and Foreign Literature at the University of Turin, and for the Faculty of Literature at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata.”

In 1910 Ernesto Schiaparelli, along with the Italian Archaeological Mission on behalf of the Regio Museo di Antichità Egizie, excavated the area where, during the Eleventh Dynasty, King Nebhepetre Mentuhotep erected a chapel to the goddess Hathor at the site of Gebelein. Some of the blocks belonging to this chapel had already been moved to the Cairo Museum during the nineteenth century, and finds during Schiaparelli’s campaign were taken to the Egyptian Museum at Turin. In this work, Elisa Fiore Marochetti presents documents from these two museums and gives an architectonic and decorative reconstitution of an unknown monument. The mostly unpublished blocks and fragments, presented here as the General Catalogue of the Turin Museum, follow a general introduction to the geographical, religious, and historical setting of Gebelein and of the chapel before Mentuhotep’s reunification of the land. The dating of the chapel is formulated on the basis of the iconographical style of the reliefs and of the titulary borne by Mentuhotep.

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