Zodiacs and monuments: An early pictorial “horoscope” from Egypt

Abstract

A pictorial horoscope in a late Ptolemaic papyrus (P.Kramer 17) may be assigned more precisely to late 56 or early 55 BC based on the preserved astronomical data, making it the earliest such representation from Egypt. Instead of a copy for presentation to a client, the papyrus is rather a draft for the depiction of a zodiac, probably in a funerary monument, where it would have represented the planetary positions at the time of birth of the person commemorated. The central pictorial element can be identified as a dog, and contextualized in a complex tradition of Egyptian and Greek concepts and iconography related to Sirius-Sothis, and the beginning of the new year.