The adjutants of royalty or the royals themselves were said to have revealed the arcane art in a glorious past. The invention of the art was ascribed to the higher echelon of Egyptian society. The connection between astrology and Egypt was already recognised in antiquity: the Egyptians were often credited with the discovery of astrology. The thema mundi depicting the planets in their houses is in itself an Egyptian concept that can be linked to the rising of Sothis at the beginning of an Egyptian year. That is, they represent the thema mundi, the arrangement of the celestial bodies at the beginning of the world, and thus express ideas central to astrology as it was practiced in Egypt. While the depictions in the sepulchral sphere often attempt to configure the planets and the zodiac signs to provide the date of birth of the interred person(s), the temple zodiacs tend to depict the planets in their exaltation or houses. It reached beyond the temples tombs and coffins could also be embellished with ornamentations involving the zodiac and related concepts. This was a theological innovation that had a deep impact on Egyptian society. The first tangible evidence comes from the late Ptolemaic period, while most can be dated to the reign of the Caesars, a time when astrology came into vogue across the Empire. Zodiacs appear as a new element in the decoration programmes of temples in the Graeco-Roman period.
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