SteveM wrote,
There is possibly also a standing baboon on the Bembine? I cannot see it clearly enough to be sure (lettered K on the wiki entry picture)
Yes, I see it. That must be the "moonrise" image that Boas cited. The goddess in front of him has a growing plant flanked by two feathers on her head. How it might relate to the Cynocephalus is not clear, probably not at all, although she might be a fertility goddess.
SteveM wrote,
Well sphinx or baboon could have an 'egyptian' meaning - though I agree it is more sphinx like; however, it looks more like a male head to me, like the male sphinx in your clip of the Bembine in post above -- [edited to add - which I thought was on the Benbine tablet clip, but no longer is, did you edit the clip, or is my memory playing tricks on me!? Anyways, it is numbered 9, top row of the wiki entry reproduction]
I have restored the sphinx to the image of my previous post. Yes, after seeing how the three images were jammed together (as they appeared then, a defect of this "improved" version of the Forum), it seemed like the row with the sphinx was both confusing and irrelevant, so I removed it. It is back, with a comment that I hope will make it less confusing.
On the relationship between "Cynocephalus" and "baboon" my problem is, how did educated Europeans of the 15th-18th centuries, before Egyptology, know that the Cynocephalus was a baboon. as opposed to a dog or a dog-headed man, or some weird wild-man? The examples you gave all seem to be things known in the 19th century or later. The Bembine Tablet images look like dog-headed men with very hairy midrifs to me, perhaps one of those weird races or species that were thought to live in the uncivilized and unexplored parts of the world.
Your images from Arab manuscripts are very much to the point. It was Seznec (
Survival of the Pagan Gods) who persuasively argued for the influence of such manuscripts on Western European astrological images and images of the gods of the ancients. I have not quite given up my Dendera hypothesis, but such manuscripts do seem a more credible explanation. If so, what needs to be determined is whether the images in these manuscripts would have been thought to derive from Egypt? As I've said, alchemy was thought to have derived from there, so why not this version of astrology, especially with its decans, corresponding to the 10 day weeks, 30 day months of the Egyptians?
The two designs on either side of the Cancer figure could easily be taken for fish, I think, perhaps doubling, with their crescent mouths, with the waxing and waning of the moon. What fish have to do with Cancer is not clear, except that fish live in the sea with the crab, and the tides are related to the moon. They could perhaps morph into crocodiles in Western eyes, if those eyes were looking for something Egyptian (not that crocodiles have anything to do with Cancer, but they do with Egypt and the Cary Sheet card).
SteveM wrote,
Valeriano discusses the dog in relation to other things, in relation to the Dog star Sirius for example and its relation to Isis, the Nile and its flooding; also along with the Wolf (and/or the crocodile) in relation to 'two deaths' {Mortes Duae -- Sed qui veterum instituta eludunt, non alia de causa cultum apud Romanos ignem asserut, quam apud Aegyptios vel Canis, vel Crocodilus, vel Lupus enutriretur. }, and with Diogenese, under Mollitie {cinaedica petulantia, mollisque & enervis lascivia notatur, per vulgato illo Cyni Diogenis dicto, qui cum a petulcioribus quibusdam convio incessertur, quod canis esset, ac subinde fugitaret, quaerente eo cur fugerent, ne mordeas, respondentibus: bono estote, inquit, animo, canes non edunt betulas}...
That looks interesting. Where is that in Valeriano specifically? Can you translate it into English? GoogleTranslate gives rather unclear results.
Added next day: I found the first quote, about the dog, the crocodile, and the wolf, on p. 581,
https://books.google.com/books?id=LgNCA ... us&f=false. "Canis" wouldn't give it to me. Still don't know what it means, but probably not significant.