Star-aligned temples hint at Pompeii`s religious mix
Baku, January 29 (AZERTAC). Mount Vesuvius looms large in the story of Pompeii - but the temples of the ill-fated Roman town might have looked to loftier bodies. A preliminary survey of 11 temples in the ruins found evidence that at least nine were aligned with the rising of particular stars or with the position of the sun or moon on days of cultural significance.
If confirmed, the discovery could offer a unique perspective on the blending of religions in the heyday of the Roman Empire.
Pompeii had been a Greek and Phoenician port of call for hundreds of years before it fell under Roman rule in 80 BC. Buried under volcanic ash from Vesuvius`s major eruption in AD 79, Pompeii`s well-preserved ruins are famed for the insight they provide into Roman life.
To see if heavenly objects played a role in temple orientation at Pompeii, Tiede combined digital elevation models, satellite images, ground surveys and maps of the past positions of stars. In work presented last week at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in National Harbor, Maryland, he showed that most of the temples have potential links to celestial objects important in Greek, Roman and Egyptian mythology.
Oddly, two Greek temples in Pompeii - those for Apollo and Venus - appear to be aligned with a relatively obscure star called Phact, which has no known importance in Graeco-Roman myth. However, Tiede has uncovered previous work that shows alignments of Phact with at least 12 temples in Thebes for the Egyptian god Amun.
Claudia Moser at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World in Rhode Island says that it is possible the builders of at least some pre-Roman temples in Pompeii were taking astronomical influences into account.
"This is not just about celestial mechanics and mathematics," says Tiede. "It`s a way to track the cultural exchange of people by sea from point to point."
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