Excavating the Puzzle of the Paris Zodiac

NATURE|Vol 465|3 June 2010 OPINION billion as problem solvers. People are a country’s infrastructure in poor countries did not come The supply of aid or a reliance on centralized biggest natural asset, and their engagement from state mineral wealth. Instead, individuals’ mineral wealth destroys or prevents this link can bring about economic progress. Nearly ability to pay, stemming from their increased from emerging. two decades ago, I started an effort to pro- productivity, attracted investment. Entrepre- The Plundered Planet is right to highlight vide widely accessible mobile-phone serv- neurs capitalized on this opportunity to provide the importance of government accountability ices in Bangladesh, leading to the creation of a service. As economist Joseph Schumpeter in addressing poverty and climate change. But it the company Grameenphone. A competitive noted in the 1930s, entrepreneurs — armed will be the dispersion of power, fuelled by entre- multibillion-dollar telecommunications indus- with ideas but not necessarily money — can preneurship and innovation, that will ultimately try has since grown up there, based simply on rearrange the means of production to boost empower individuals to create accountability products and services that increase people’s economic growth. In other words, empowered and solve global problems. ■ productivity and income. In parallel, mobile- by tools and schemes that enhance productiv- Iqbal Quadir is professor of the practice phone technology has attracted billions of ity, the poor can tackle problems without rely- of development and entrepreneurship and dollars in investment to other countries that ing on coordinated efforts by governments. founder and director of the Legatum Center lack drinking water, health care and electricity, It is a virtuous cycle: citizens advance their at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, such as in sub-Saharan Africa. businesses and states collect more taxes, mak- Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA. The money invested in mobile-phone ing them more accountable to the populace. e-mail: [email protected] Excavating the puzzle of the Paris zodiac The Zodiac of Paris: How an Improbable and thus Egyptian civilization, was much older that the Roman dating was correct. The modern Controversy over an Ancient Egyptian than the age permitted by the biblical account of date is the first century bc, which is in the time Artifact Provoked a Modern Debate Between human creation — as much as 15,000 years bc. of Cleopatra, who is depicted in the temple. Yet Religion and Science Competing experts suggested that the zodiac the church’s glee at this later date was not to last by Jed Z. Buchwald and Diane Greco was merely Greek or Roman, only 2,000 years — other hieroglyphic inscriptions from the Val- Josefowicz old, post-dating the Egyptian pharaohs. ley of the Kings showed, to the satisfaction of Princeton University Press: 2010. 376 pp. The zodiac became a cause célèbre for left- Champollion, that Egyptian civilization went wing atheists and the right- back at least 5,000 years. $35.00, £24.95 N wing devout. A vaudeville The zodiac did not support theatre production, Le creationism after all. Compared with other ancient astronomical Zodiaque de Paris, was Buchwald and Josefowicz NDOWSKI/RM artefacts, the Egyptian carving known as the staged in 1822 even though excavated the story of the A W Dendera zodiac has been largely forgotten. it had been censored by the Paris zodiac by drawing on E . L . Yet, two centuries ago, it was as celebrated as French government. Actors extensive primary French H the just-discovered Rosetta Stone. The zodiac played the signs of the sources. They include cru- relief is now the subject of a groundbreaking zodiac accompanied by a cial illustrations and colour study by historians of science Jed Buchwald chorus of wailing mummies in the background to the and Diane Greco Josefowicz. to satirize the popular, offi- debate with lively accounts, After Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of cial and scholarly reactions for example, of Napoleon’s Egypt in 1798, the elaborate panel was encoun- to the antique. savants in Egypt and life tered on the ceiling of a temple at Dendera, In the end, the Gordian Dating this Egyptian artefact pitted in Restoration Paris. But north of ancient Thebes, now Luxor. The main knot was cut not by the quar- science against religion. the challenge of integrat- part of the zodiac was removed by an enter- relling scientists but by a ing so much diverse and prising, if unscrupulous, French engineer and young philo logist, Jean-François Champollion, unfamiliar material can overwhelm the reader. shipped off to Paris in 1821, where it resides who deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphs in The Zodiac of Paris provides an intriguing today at the Louvre Museum. 1822–24. Studying a drawing of a surrounding insight into a tumultuous era. The story was For decades after its discovery, the dating part of the zodiac that had been left behind in the hardly a triumph for “the calculating savants” of the ‘zodiac of Paris’ was contested. Leading Dendera temple, he translated the meaning of a over “their pious antagonists”, say Buchwald French scientists bitterly disagreed about the hieroglyphic cartouche within it as autocrator, and Josefowicz — astronomy alone did not artefact’s age on the basis of their astronomical a Graeco-Roman title. The Catholic Church was establish an age. Champollion eventually suc- calculations, including physicist Jean-Baptiste delighted that this agreed with their view and ceeded in understanding the zodiac because Biot and mathematician Joseph Fourier, who the Pope offered to make Champollion a cardi- his decipherment embraced both the logic of had accompanied Napoleon to Egypt. So too nal — much to his disgust, given that he was an science, the ambiguity of the humanities and did other public figures, from sympathizers of anti-royalist religious sceptic. the exigency of ancient Egyptian religion. ■ the French revolution to supporters of Napo- Ironically, the drawing was erroneous: when Andrew Robinson is a visiting fellow of Wolfson leon and his royalist successors. Champollion visited Egypt in 1828 he saw that College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge Key to determining the zodiac’s age was the the crucial sketch did not match the in situ Den- CB3 9BB, UK. He is writing a biography of Jean- historical position of stars in the depicted ancient dera cartouche, which was empty of hieroglyphs. François Champollion. sky. Fourier and others estimated that the object, But different evidence from the site confirmed e-mail: [email protected] 551 © 2010 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.

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