Event Calendar
Philosophy Colloquium: Explanatory Strategies in the Egyptian Book of Nut
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Title: Explanatory Strategies in the Egyptian Book of Nut
Speaker: Tom Davies, The University of Melbourne
Monday, 17 November at 1:30pm
Location: AC04-302
Description: The Book of Nut is an Egyptian composition of the New Kingdom (1550–1069 BCE). It contains hieroglyphic texts giving dates for the risings and settings of certain stars, set within a massive illustration of two anthropomorphic figures: Shu, the god of air, raises Nut, goddess of heaven, over the earth. At first glance, it appears to confirm a long-held view that, while Egyptians were good observers of natural phenomena, they attributed them to supernatural agents, checking any theorization of nature we could call philosophical.
I think this reading is mistaken. The star-dates of the Book of Nut are not, and could not be, derived from observation. They are instead a hypothetical construction used to establish a geometrical model of the unseen parts of the sky. This model in turn is the basis of a theory of the causes of stellar motion. In this talk, I will look at some strategies the composer(s) of this text employ in theorizing the cosmos: what kind of arguments do we see, and what counts an explanation, in Egyptian philosophy?