The date is April 1, 2471 B.C., and a total solar eclipse has forced night to fall during the day in Egypt.
The sun has morphed into a lifeless black circle surrounded by a milky halo, a consequence of the moon passing perfectly between the Earth and its radiant star.
Darkness has swept across the Nile Delta. The sacred city of Buto’s usual luster has been blanketed in shadow.
Pharaoh Shepsekaf, the reigning ruler of the fourth Egyptian dynasty, is shaken.
Could this be an ominous message from the heavens?
Such is the picture painted by a new study from archaeoastronomer Giulio Magli, who calculated that this ancient solar eclipse’s path of totality coincides with a major shift in Egyptian tradition that occurred in tandem with Shepsekaf’s tenure: a shift away from solar worship.
This king precisely corresponds to the eclipse,” Magli, a professor of Archaeoastronomy at the Department of Mathematics of the Politecnico di Milano, told Space.com.
I say precisely because I’m adopting here one of the possible chronologies of the Old Kingdom.
There are others, because it is not easy to fix the dates of the beginning of the regnal years but also in the other chronologies, it is compatible.
Source: https://www.space.com/the-universe/sun/a-total-solar-eclipse-from-2471-b-c-may-have-shaken-egypts-cult-of-the-sun
