Definitions
After realizing the sun and the moon make the river rise, Africans created the sciences of astronomy and astrology. Astronomy is the chart of scientific data of the movement of stars, planets, sun, and other celestial bodies in relation to each other. Astrology is the physical relationship of astronomy to natural occurrences, I.e,, water rising at the high tide. Astrology connects the changes in celestial bodies and other aspects of nature to the movement and position of celestial bodies. Astrology connects the effect to the cause. Astrology has nothing to do with your love life. (1)Astronomy and astrology are the sciences of cause and effect.Origins
The Ethiopians invented the science of stars. They gave names to the planets descriptive of the qualities which they conceived them to possess. They passed this art, still in an imperfect state, to the Egyptians. Count Volney gives the following description: Astronomy appears with certainty to have been established about 17,000 years ago by the first tribes of Egypt. Reason finds in that country all the circumstances which could lead to such a system. Reason finds there a zone of sky, bordering on the tropic, equally free from the rains of the equator and the fogs of the north. Reason finds there a central point of the sphere of the ancients, a salubrious climate, a great but manageable river, a soil fertile without art or labor, inundated without morbid exhalations, and placed between two seas which communicate with the richest countries. Reason conceives that the inhabitant of the Nile, addicted to agriculture from the facility of communications, addicted to astronomy from the state of his sky and always open to observation, must have been the first to pass from the savage to the social state, and consequently the first to attain the physical and moral sciences necessary to civilized life. On the borders of the upper Nile, a black race of men organized the complicated system of the worship of the stars [astronomy] in relation to the productions of the earth and the labors of agriculture [astrology]. The Ethiopian of Thebes named stars of inundation under which the Nile began to overflow; stars of the ox or bull, those under which they began to plow, stars of the lion, those under which that animal, driven from the desert by thirst, appeared on the banks of the Nile; stars of the sheaf, or of the harvest virgin, those of the reaping season; stars of the lamb, stars of the two kids, those under which these precious animals were brought forth. The same Ethiopian having observed the return of the inundation always corresponded with the rising of a beautiful star which appeared towards the source of the Nile, and seemed to warn the husbandman against the coming waters, he compared this action to that of the animal who, by his barking, gives notice of danger, and he called this star the dog, the barker. In the same manner he named the stars of the crab, those where the sun, having arrived at the tropic, retreated by a slow retrograde motion like the crab of Cancer. He named stars of the wild goat, or Capricorn, those where the sun, having reached the highest point in his annuary tract, . . . imitates the goat, who delights to climb to the summit of the rocks. He named stars of the balance, or Libra, those where the days and nights being equal, seemed in equilibrium, like that instrument; and stars of the scorpion, those where certain periodical winds bring vapors, burning like the venom of the scorpion.” (2)The Wheel of Heaven The Astronomical Chronology of the Nile Valley, Dr. Charles S. Finch 1 of 12
Notes:
(1) ben-Jochannan, Dr. Yosef, "The Nile Valley Civilization and the Spread of African Culture," http://www.blackherbals.com/nile_valley_civilization.htm, Accessed 01/07/15.(2) Jackson, John G., “Ethiopia and the Origin of Civilization, A Critical Review of the Evidence of Archaeology, Anthropology, History and Comparative Religion: According to the Most Reliable Sources and Authorities,” (1939) https://archive.org/stream/EthiopiaAndTheOriginOfCivilization/EOC_djvu.txt , Accessed 01/07/15.
