Astronomy And Religion

Astronomy and religions rooted in the stars are present in every culture. Astronomy evolved from a heavily religious context of astrology and divination to modern astronomy, and became what it is today because of a necessity of using it for long term timekeeping, record keeping, city planning and agriculture. The use of astronomy as a basis of time allows for a degree of predictability that was not previously present in other forms of timekeeping. Astronomy is the use of mathematics to understand and predict the movement of the moon and stars. While astrology and divination takes those same elements from astronomy and adds a spiritual element. It could be used to predict personal futures, the personality of a baby, or in religious rituals.

Their moon cult divided the year into 12 months of 29.53 days, each year 354 1/3 days (123 Englund). “The new moon returned nearly every 30 days, that harvest time returned nearly every 12 moons.” (122 Englund). Each month could be either 29 or 30 days, resulting in some unevenness in time keeping. They had sacrifices of animals every month, implying a connection to the lunar cycle but because of the lack of record, it is impossible to know if these sacrifices where religious in nature. We do know that the lunar cycle was used in time keeping and record keeping. “Feed notations seem to have recorded the grain expended on sheep, goats (together in summations qualified as UDU) and possibly calves (AMAR) over a given span of time” (148 Englund) Their calendar was used to keep track of how much to feed animals, when to feed them, how much was produced vs how much people worked. This is very important administratively, without time there is no way to know how much to pay a worker for their work days if there is no way to measure a day, or

They “went to great lengths to develop their calendar for divinatory purposes, specifically for the formalization of ritual relating to agriculture. Some aspects of this written calendar, for example the Venus Table in the Dresden Codex, indicate an interest in precise knowledge of celestial events” (56 Aveni) The stars were used for predicting the future, but they were also used in city planning. “Prominent clusters of structures are distributed in a uniform manner along generally north-south lines that often are delineated by causeways. Pyramid-temples at the ends of the long axis usually face one another” (56 Aveni). There was a large geographical distance between many of these cities and without compasses a universal point of reference must be used. “there can be no conceivable way of actually laying out the chosen direction other than by the use of astronomical bodies at the horizon as reference objects” (8 Aveni). Their use of the stars was not entirely astronomical. “Later builders… had either developed or imported a rather specific set of rules (undoubtedly with accompanying rituals) for aligning buildings, and with that set of rules, a rather precise orientation calendar” (53 Aveni). The societal construction of cities called for a certain orientation of the city for what is assumed to be religious reasons. They wanted their cities and monuments to correspond to certain astrological times which would not be