Himmelsscheibe Online - The Sky Disc

The Sky Disc

On the 25.11.2002 there was an article about the sky disc found near Nebra in the newspaper "Der Spiegel". Some thought the single stars didn't have any meaning. This made me think.

The sky disc "Himmelsscheibe von Nebra" is said to be 3600 years old. The sickles on the right end left mark the ankle of the sun rise and sun set on the winter and summer solistice. Some scientists believe that the star cluster on the disc shows the The Plejades. You'll get further official details if you click on the links.

Sky on the 21.12.1600 B.C.21:00 made by the freeware programme "Cartes du Ciel ".

The Sky disc

Girdle of Orion
It is possible to recognise the girdle of Orion and Sirius in the four lowest stars. The bark also appears on the Equinoxstone (s.below) in Loughcrew.

Trade
At this time trade was already done across Europe to transport goods from one place to another. Maybe as the number of contacts between single villages or with traders rose a certain coordination was needed. Stonehenge is on almost the same latitude and the knowledge was probably the same. People have to talk to trade. So the same language is needed. And if people talked f.e. on long winter evenings they exchanged stories, religions, knowledge and traditions. Its unlikely that peoples didn't influence each other by and by.

Crete and the symbol with the seven dots

Maybe the 7 stars are the Plejades. They were important showing the farmers that spring time was near. They can be seen from autumn to spring in the constellation Taurus.

What about the word Septentrion ? This word derives from septem(seven) and triones (a team of 3 oxen used for a plough). It means the Big or the Small Dipper/Plough and means North. Due to the precession the stars in the North change.

Amazingly on a clay disc found on Crete there is a symbol which looks like the 7 stars. (Diskos zu Phaestos) This disc of the Bronze Age hasn't been deciphered yet. The symbol with the seven dots mainly appears on the upper side next to a little head.

side 1

side 2

In this article it is discussed if the bull leaping in ancient crete shows the constellations Orion (jumper) and Taurus ( the bull).

Maybe the white spot on this ancient fresco (Archeological Museum Heraklion, from Knossos) represents the Plejades.

Taurus

bull leaping fresco

On this head of a bull (Archeological Museum Heraklion, from Knossos) are lines on the side of the head. Seen from the side it could be the Hyades and the Plejades.

bull head

bull head

bull head

On this head of a bull (Archeological Museum Heraklion, from Knossos) is also the symbol of the sky disc. The question is if the number and the place of the dots on this head mean something. (z.B. constellations) Maybe also the Plejades?

bull head

On this picture of a bull on a vase (Archeological Museum Heraklion, from Knossos) the dots look odd. The bull faces the "wrong" direction. The brown dots on the front leg don't look like they were placed at random.

vase

The first picture of the Plejades could be in the Lascaux cave. (see links for further details)

Lascaux

Around the year 3000 during spring equinox the plejades rose just before the sun in the east. Though maybe they couldn't be seen because of the daylight.

Is this that can be seen on Knowth 15, the Entrancestone of Newgrange and the sky disc?

In Knowth, Ireland, there is Kerbstone 15.

Knowth Kerbstone 15

If one puts this Kerbstone 15 flat on the floor and turns it to the North (i.e. 90 degrees), it resembles the Nebra star disc. There are 7 circles (red) which look like the Plejades.

In Newgrange, Irland, there is an Entrancestone. There are 7 symbols on the right and 4 on the left.

On the sky disc the seven stars are directly opposed the bark including 3 stars and one to the right. The Sky Disc is about 1000 years younger but if f.e. two crosses are found, one in Spain from 500 B.C. and one in Polen from 1500 B.C., it is automatically assumed to have the same meaning. So this shouldn't be an excluding factor.

There are 7 stars, perhaps two bigger half circles and then 4 symbols(green) with a bark beneath them.

The left star which was moved

The star on the left of the line was replaced when the sickle was attached - but in a way that the line was still intact. It was not put to a different place which would have been more likely if the stars were randomly placed. One can draw a horizointal line to another star on the rigth side.

But why were two stars removed on the other side?
Maybe they couldn't be moved close enough which would mean that the position was important. The number of stars seemed to have been unimportant by then.

missing stars

The star on the upper left is just lost not removed.

White vertical Line
On the left side the horizontal line is remarkable. It is divided into 4 equal segments. This doesn't seem to be accidentally. Coincidence?.
The white line could have been used to put the plate in a correct East - West position. This can be done with the Indian circle. Maybe this line represents the equinox. I think it is also possible to stretch ropes along the yellow diagonals across the sky disc. At the end of the ropes sticks can be put into the ground. After the middle has been marked with f.e. a rock a new sun observation place has been built.
In this way anywhere on the same latitude observation places could have been erected. Maybe every village got its own.

Maybe those lines were used to identify other important days.

Proportion
The symbols on the disc seem to drift to the right.

But if one takes the four stars of the vertical line as one symbol, the disc seems symetrical and well-proportioned.

Perpendicular
A friendly reader pointed out that the star cluster is aligned to the sun bark. This would mean that it was intentioned and there seems to be a connection.

Thornborough
Thornborough looks like the girdle of Orion. and has almost the same angle as the bark in Loughcrew (siehe unten).
map .

Tara in Irland and the Pyramids in Egypt

Tara in Ireland looks similar. Coincidence?
It is situated on a hill overlooking a great part of Ireland. It is 5000 years old. The "Mound of Hostage" is a small artificial hill where people were buried with the entrance to the East. The "Rath of Kings" and the "House of Cormac" are earth walls.

The Cheops Pyramid was built in such a way that the shafts of the burial chamber pointed to Thuban - then the polar star- and to the star in the centre of Orion's Belt. The pharaoh wanted get to the circumpolar stars. These are the stars which are seen throughout the year. The shaft of the burial chamber of the queen pointed to Sirius. A boot was put into the pyramid for the travel after death.

The patterns are the same: the North and Orion's Belt - both as ways to reach heaven. Just as we still today believe in heaven.

Furthermore the groups of pyramids at Gizeh, Abusir and Djoser around 2500 BC have an angle of about 199-215 degrees. This seems not coincidental.

Tara

The Sunbark, Loughcrew in Irland and the Pyramids in Egypt
The bark (in other theories the Milky Way, the Northern Light or a rainbow) looks like a bow with stripes. This symbol appears in Ireland too.

Loughcrew (ca.3000 - 3400 B.C.), 70km north of Dublin, is situated on the highest of 4 hills. Maybe these hills were chosen because they resembled the girdle of Orion.

A stone in Cairn T. is illuminated on the equinox days for 20 minutes (Equinox Stone ( film )).

What might the symbols on this stone be? A star map?

Equinox Stone

Many symbols are there twice though they are not exactly alike. So they are maybe the same stars on different days or it symbolizes a movement on the Equinox days.

The light of the sun moves from the upper left corner to the lower right corner. The sun is rising in the east. The beam moves across the two big "flowers". So let's assume the two big flowers are the sun.(The two other, lower flowers match to the path of the moon, the planets and the sun if seen as the star map.)

I think the bark is Orion's belt - again at two different times. While the sun moves across the stone, the bark moves to the place to meet the sun (Maybe the lines in the second barque symbolize the souls on their journey which arrive at the sun at last - this is the half-circle with the lines above the second flower.). At least on the picture.

In reality the sun rises in the east while Orion is setting in the west - Orion moves away.

But maybe this is just a question of explanation. If one takes a look at the religious believes in the ancient Egypt everything starts to make sense. After death it was believed the deceased traveled in a barque into the west into Osiris (= Orion) realm to reach eternal life. In this burial chamber in the end of this journey the deceased appears as a sun disc in the east to show that he or she is born again.

Dublin 23.9.2999 BC 3:25

Dublin 23.9.2999 BC 7:30

Dublin 23.9.2999 BC 3:25	Dublin 23.9.2999 BC 7:30
Orion is in the South	The sun rises in the East, Orion sets in the West

If this is true it would underline the theory that the position of great pyramids resemble the girdle of Orion.

One last look at the disc of phaistos: Single words seem to lead in or outside on both sides of the disc. On one side in the centre there waves (water) and on the other side the very symbol which represents in Loughcrew on the Equinox Stone the sun. Here Flower or sun.

These motives appear all over Europe and parts of Asia and Africa: cult and burial places on mountains - or in the case of the pyramids they were built for that purpose -, the stars, a boat, Orion and the sun. It seems that people always wanted to get to the stars after death. Maybe Orion's Belt became the boat which from then on appeared throughout mythology. Perhaps one should take the religious believes of a well-known culture as Egypt and apply them to other cultures - just to see how far one gets. Maybe all these culture were more simliar than we imagine.

Important note :

I have to point out that this is my personal theory which may contain mistakes. and it needs to be scientifically approved.

So read this website critically and tell me if , where and why I am wrong !

The fotos of the Sky Disc are shown by courtesy of
(c)Landesamtes für Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt 2002.

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