Readers looking for new things will be pleasently surprised with this article. It does not contain loads of astronomy facts and mathematical calculations, and you do not need to be an astrologist or a historian to enjoy reading it. Personally, I am completely different.



The people who settled in Mesopotamia (roughly, present-day southern Iraq) around 4000 BC considered the sun, the moon and Venus to be gods, or the homes of gods. Mixed with the other people were those who were believed to have the ability to contact Gods. They were good with astronomy and could follow the patterns of the planets and stars. Later held beliefs and astrological traditions, including the practices of classical Greek and Hellenistic astronomies, were based on the astrological theories initially developed in ancient Mesopotamia. Hellenistic astrology would in turn influence Islamic astrology and, finally, Western astrology.

So what is Ptolemaic Alexandria? Alexander the Great founded the Egyptian city of Alexandria in 331 BC, and the city later became the Ptolemaic Kingdom's capital (named after its first ruler, Ptolemy) from 332 BC (when Alexander died) up until the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BC. Alexandria continued to be the capital of Egypt for nearly a thousand years until the Muslim conquest of the country in the middle of the 7th century AD and Hellenism (the Greek way of life spread by Alexander) continued to prosper there throughout that time.

The distinguishing feature of Hellenism was the blend of Classical Greek culture and the cultures of the peoples to the east and south conquered by Alexander the Great. In Alexandria, this translated into a mixture of Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Macedonian, Persian, Syrian, Jewish, and Babylonian (Mesopotamian) cultures. One aspect of the rich cultural activity underway in Ptolemaic Alexandria is the development of astrology.(ordinarily the date of the individual's birth or conception); most contain no predictions. Nevertheless, Horoscopic Astrology had its beginning in Babylonian Astrology.

During the middle of the 4th century BC, Babylonian astrology was introduced in Greece and using the names of the Gods in Greek mythology, the two practices blended together introducing those familiar names we know today. However, the most significant contribution of the Greeks to Western Astrology was the development of Horoscopic Astrology under Hellenistic rule in Ptolemaic Alexandria.

It was in Ptolemaic Alexandria, now the center of Greek culture, that Babylonian astrology and Pharaonic Egyptian astronomy came together. Greek had become the language of communication from Greece to India to Egypt, allowing for unprecedented amalgamation of knowledge. Hellenistic astrology built on Egyptian and Babylonian traditions and produced a system of Horoscopic Astrology that was to form the basis of modern day western Horoscopic Astrology.

Claudius Ptolemy is the astronomer/astrologer who created the development of the horoscope astrology from Alexandria at this great time. Even though he was born of the south of Egypt, Ptolemy was a Hellenistic scholar (85 BC?) and died in Alexandria (165 BC?), no one knows whether he was Egyptian or Greek. He was a Greek man who had been born in Egypt yet resided in Rome, but it did not make the difference that it does now.

Ptolemy, a writer, is famous for his works the Tetrabiblios (where he compiled all known astrological theories of the time), and the Almagest (a thirteen volume discussion of how the solar system functions). Ptolemy not only believed that the earth was round, he also thinks that the sun and the planets revolved around the earth. The Ptolemaic theory taught astronomy students that the sun revolved around the earth for 1400 years, until it was found that the opposite was true. In spite of his contribution to the theory of Horoscopic Astrology, no horoscopes actually made by Ptolemy have ever been discovered.

However, several zodiacs found in Egypt and dating back to Ptolemaic era provide evidence of Ptolemaic Egypts contribution to Horoscopic Astrology. The most widely known of these is the Dendera zodiac ,found on the ceiling of a chapel dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Osiris. You will be able to visit and glance at these articles in the Louvre Museum in Paris.

In the early 19th century, the renowned French linguist Jean-Francois Champollion (who, just a few years earlier, had managed to decipher hieroglyphics) correctly dated the Dendera zodiac to the Ptolemaic era. The accepted date of 50 BC is shown the set date of the stars and planets. The Dendera zodiac shows the twelve constellations and this is the map of the starts in plane projection (the band of the zodiac) making the 36 ten-day Decans, as more proof of how the Babylonian astrology combined with the traditional Egyptian Decan astrology.

The Horoscopic Astrology developed by Hellenistic scholars in Ptolemaic Alexandria was the result of the fusion of Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Greek astrology. The seventh century AD marked the end of Hellenistic astrology. In the eighth century, Muslim scholars revitalized interest in the basic elements of ancient astronomy to provide the original source for Western Horoscopic Astrology as we know it today.