The Zodiac They Chiseled Off the Ceiling

In 1820, French antiquarian Sébastien Louis Saulnier saw the Dendera Zodiac ceiling and decided it was too valuable to leave in Egypt. He paid a local official to let his team chisel it out. The 2.5-ton ceiling slab was shipped to Paris, where the Louvre displayed it as 'decorative art.' The zodiac contains: the precession of the equinoxes (known 2,000 years before Hipparchus), the 36 decans with their exact stellar positions, and the alignment of temple pillars to Sirius' rising. The chisel was not archaeology. It was theft dressed in scholarship.