e heavens sufficiently to use the rise of certain stars as a predictor of the timing of the annual Nile flood. Their evident lack of fear of eclipses suggests that they knew how to predict them (Murray, 1964, pp. 189-90), knowledge possibly gained from the Mesopotamians.
There is no evidence, however, that the Egyptians applied any of this practical knowledge to speculation regarding the nature of the world around them. The daily motion of the Sun was interpreted by Egyptian religion as the action of the god Ra, who each day traveled by boat across the sky, then returned by underground channels during the night to his starting point (Kaster, 1968, p. 65). If any Egyptian ever questioned this mythical explanation, or wondered if the active intervention of a god was truly required to explain a phenomenon as regular as day and night, no record of such speculation has come down to us. The Egyptians, so far as we can tell, regarded the world around them as entirely in the hands of the gods, who were to be worshipped, perhaps feared and propitiated, but neve
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