Until the Egyptians came under the influence of Asiatic nations and Greece, what they knew of astronomy was very limited. The five planets that they knew were Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The thirty-six dekans were known, but the signs of the zodiac were not. They obtained knowledge of the later from the Greeks, who had learned about them from the Babylonians, who had in turn learned about them from the Sumerians. They did know of the stars that never set. There is no evidence that the Egyptians had a system of star observing over many thousand years.
During the New Kingdom, there were lists of the risings of stars. Later lists contain the thirty-six dekans (star divisions of 10° each) and the twelve signs of the zodiac. In the fourth century BCE, they recognized a twenty-five-year lunar cycle. Apart from the fact that the shafts coincide with the north-south passage of the stars Thuban, in Draco, and Alnilan, in Orion, there seems to be nothing to indicate that the Great Pyramid has any relationship to the study of astronomy.
