General Queries for the Chapter - 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting
From The Observatory
General Queries for the Chapter
Below is Hudson’s general research that interested him for possible inclusion in Chapter 2 but that was omitted from the current chapter. Can you help us answer the queries inside the original note below and work anything relevant and significant here into the body of Chapter 2?
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Hudson’s Original Note:
Fixed equinoctial hours went hand in hand with variable seasonal hours whose length shortened and lengthened with the time of daytime and nighttime. Days were longer in summer, shorter in winter. Only at the equinoxes were nighttime hours equal in length to daytime hours (divisions into 12). These are what the modern world has, as a byproduct of mechanical clocks, which began appearing in Italy in the early 14th century, starting with Orvieto’s public clock in 1306.Fact CheckHelp us check this fact. (Milan had a clock by 1355,Fact CheckHelp us check this fact. Bologna by 1356, and Siena by 1360.) But public clocks became even more prevalent in northwest Europe, ringing out each hour.
Equinoctial hours are found in the 12th-century BC papyrus Cairo 86637 (in the Cairo Museum), recording the changing lengths of day and night over the course of the year. Lengths are expressed in “parts,” or hours.
Egypt’s 12 hours seem to be a scale model of the months in the year.
The practice spread to Greece after Alexander’s conquests in the 330s and 320s BC. But Herodotus (c. 485–425 BC) mentions “the 12 parts of the day that the Greeks adopted from the Babylonians.”Verify CitationCan someone help us add a source link/citation for us and check the text in the quotation against it to make sure it matches a translation? This would correspond to the zodiac.
Suppose, for symmetry, that the year begins at the top of the zodiac, in midsummer when it is hottest, mirroring the sun’s midday noon; and when it is coldest, at the bottom. This would explain why the spring equinox is “in the middle” on the left side. But then, should it not rise toward midday? Is our zodiac backward? (Or does it reflect precession?)
“It arcs down to the 6th month. At the nadir of the circle is the tritone. Here is where the extra days go. In Egypt, for instance, there are 5 of them, that lie “outside the year.”Missing Quotation MarkA close-quotation mark appears to be missing. Can you help us figure out the original quotation? They fall approximately in August.
After that comes New Year’s Day. This is actually the seventh month, which of course sounds weird, until you reflect that this is in fact what happens in the Jewish year—Rosh Hashanah comes in the seventh month of the Hebrew calendar, and indeed, usually in September as well. (The same thing still happens approximately with the American school year, in fact.)
From here, the year arcs back up to the first month again.
In Britain, the timing must have been different—the octave must have correlated to midsummer, with the first month happening right after midwinter.”Missing Quotation MarkThe open-quotation mark appears to be missing. Can you help us figure out where the quotation begins?
