The fiery face of an angry god appeared in the skies over ancient Egypt and terrified the Egyptian's enemies into surrender, according to research presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting. A cloud of gas blown out from a star, it suggests, projected a turbulent face-like image towards earth in around 2,700 BC.

The now-placid Owl Nebula may have appeared as a burning face to warriors. Image © Colleen Gino/NASA.

The rebellious Libyans dropped their weapons in fright and the grateful Egyptians were inspired to build Djoser's famous step pyramid to communicate with their gods, suggests W. Bruce Masse, an archaeologist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico. The gas clouds that formed the transient visage, he says, now make up the Owl Nebula, which at three light years across, is one of the biggest nebulae visible from earth.

Other cultures from the period also chronicle a mysterious stellar event at around the same time. Huang Di, the Yellow Emperor of China, was conceived when his mother witnessed a great flash of lighting around the star Dubhe in the Big Dipper -- part of the Ursa Major constellation. The mythology of the Latin American Quiche Mayan people also associates the occurrence of a bright light with the Big Dipper.

A telescopic image of the Owl Nebula drawn in 1848 is "hauntingly similar," Masse says, to a 4,000-year-old clay model of a demon in Assyro-Babylonian mythology called Humbaba. He predicts that many other myths and legends have their roots in actual occurrences in the night sky.

Virtually all past cultures seem to have been keen observers of the heavens. The sun, moon and stars were used to create calendars and to mark the seasons, but transient events such as comets and eclipses may also have had an enormous impact on developing cultures.

"Evidence from Hawaii, Mesoamerica, the American southwest and old world bronze age cultures indicates that transient celestial events were not only recognized and categorized, but formed a critical component of mythology, cosmology, politics, religion and formative science," proposes Masse.

Masse reached his conclusions after constructing a database of more than 1,200 of these transient celestial events using astronomy computer software and historical records dating back to 200 BC. What the rest of the research community will have to say about this work remains to be seen. "I look forward to engaging my colleagues in healthy debate once my analyses are complete," Masse says.

The database includes sightings of supernovae, comets, meteor storms and cosmic impacts, along with planetary conjunctions and eclipses of the sun and moon. The descriptions of these phenomena allow direct comparisons of the archaeological and historical record of many past civilizations. "Most events were described in sufficient detail to determine their class and general character, the date of observation and its general position in the sky against the backdrop of named stars and constellations," he explains.

Masse has also studied the royal chiefs of Hawaii and says that the names of the chiefs who get the most stories told about them can be associated with one-off shows in the heavens. "A literal translation of these names yields objects sounding suspiciously like transient celestial events, with some names being so richly detailed that they can indeed be associated with known events," he says.

Splendid examples of these names include 'the sparkling period' and 'the serene anchored eye' for chiefs who were around during times that Masse's database shows there was a supernova. Those who would have witnessed a Hawaiian solar eclipse do not fare so well. Royal chief or not, it must have been difficult to go through life known as 'being faded' or 'appearing blotted'.